We are not amused at your nanny-state prank. Now pull your weeds or ELSE.

Humor, Nanny Statism
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april fool's!Given that Boulder is home to the University of Colorado — a former “top party school” — you’d think April Fool’s pranks would be more common than bong pipes and mountain bikes.  But the city seems less than amused at this inspired stunt that parodied municipal property codes:

Person or persons unknown have created a hoax door hanger declaring that homeowners who don’t remove the dust and insect larvae from their sidewalk cracks by noon tomorrow will receive a fine of up to $4,620.

“This is the only warning that this household will receive this spring!” the door hanger exclaims. “Please be sure your crack stays clean for the rest of the year!”

The “ticket” then goes on to suggest that if homeowners need help they can look up “Crack Removal Services” in the Yellow Pages.

Pretty funny, right?  But city officials were quick to point out that it wasn’t real:

[Boulder spokeswoman Judy Jacobson] knew right away that the door hanger wasn’t legit.

“It’s definitely a joke,” she says. “There’s no such code as the one it references. So it’s making fun of the City of Boulder — which is fine. But we just want to make sure nobody takes it seriously and sends us a check, or gets upset because we gave them a ticket. Because we didn’t leave this for them.”

It’s ironic that the city wants to reassure residents that they have no code mandating clean cracks, but don’t think twice about all of the other ordinances that require property owners to maintain their abodes and land in city-approved fashion.  Because they’re a joke as well, just not a very funny one.

We are not amused at your nanny-state prank. Now pull your weeds or ELSE. Read Post »

Fighting The State’s Legalized Theft

Police Statism
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The Institute for Justice, which has fought the state on a number of fronts, including eminent domain abuse (the infamous Kelo v. New London case), economic liberty, and most recently political speech in the wake of the Citizens United ruling, is now taking aim at a lucrative revenue stream for law enforcement agencies nationwide, one that doesn’t require higher taxes or even a traffic ticket: asset forfeiture laws.

All it takes for someone to lose their car and everything in it, is to be pulled over by the cops with “probable cause” of wrongdoing.  It could even be their house, if the cops suspect any sort of shenanigans such as drug sales taking place there.  They don’t even have to find any evidence of a crime, and the owners need not be charged with one.  The police can seize the property, sell it, and pocket the proceeds–and in most states, there is nothing the former owner can do about it.

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Mandate. You keep using that word.

Corporatism, Health Care
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But I’m not sure it means what the Democrats think it means:

The penalty [for not carrying insurance as required by the new health care bill] is assessed through the Code and accounted for as an additional amount of Federal tax owed. However, it is not subject to the enforcement provisions of subtitle F of the Code. The use of liens and seizures otherwise authorized for collection of taxes does not apply to the collection of this penalty. Non-compliance with the personal responsibility requirement to have health coverage is not subject to criminal or civil penalties under the Code and interest does not accrue for failure to pay such assessments in a timely manner.

So the IRS might gaze at you sternly and maybe wag a finger or two, but there’s nothing they can do at this point to collect the non-compliance penalty. Megan McArdle lays out the possible consequences:

It would mean that in practice the mandate would only apply to people who get tax refunds; otherwise, just write the IRS a check for everything except the mandate. And since you don’t have to get a tax refund–you can have your employer change your withholding–anyone who doesn’t want to pay it, wouldn’t have to.

But it’s not clear that this is what’s actually going to happen. If the IRS can reorder the priority of the tax dollars they take from you, then they can simply put any funds towards the mandate first. That way, if you attempt to go without insurance and then pay the IRS everything except the mandate penalty, you’ll end up with a tax liability the exact size of the mandate penalty . . . for which they can now garnish your wages, put tax liens on your house, and otherwise do all the nasty stuff that they are authorized to do under Subtitle F.

Naturally I’m all for not providing government revenue agents with more authority to steal money from me, although I suspect that the enforcement problem will be fixed sooner than later (the personal responsibility clause itself doesn’t begin until 2014).  But just imagine how much revenue the IRS would collect, if it could not threaten taxpayers with imprisonment.  It might just be enough to cover the printing costs on Obama’s health care bill.

In the meantime, to paraphrase Captain Barbossa, consider this rule more like…a guideline.

Mandate. You keep using that word. Read Post »

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