Puerto Rico gets a vote in DC
This is just one of those interesting little tidbits, one of those "learn something new every day" moments.The Hill: Puerto Rico's Fortuno has a vote in contests
I tend to lean toward statehood for PR (my in-laws live there), but if they're going to send a Republican to Congress, forget it.
posted by Kinder Gentler Little Man @ 11:34 AM
4 Comments:
My sisters husband grew up in Communist Romania. He says they had less regulation there in their communist era than they do here now in our "free" country.
I've been thinking about that issue a lot lately. It is a very delicate line to walk. I don't believe in complete deregulation because the populace needs a level of protection from bad actors. But there is also a line where regulation turns into too much government control.
In my township, there has been a lot of development in the last two years. During the recent campaign for supervisor, the mantra of one of the candidates was, "Have you had enough?" To me, this suggests that the township supervisors should step in to stop the development. The problem is that the land previously belonged to a private citizen, and that citizen has every right to sell it to whomever he pleases.
But, at the same time, what Ralph Nader did for the country in the 1960s and early 1970s was very important to stop corporations from endangering the public.
It's a difficult line to walk, and, of course, we all draw it in a different place.
His version of regulation is in required SS#, required licences, required insurance (via DMV), taxes, etc. etc. You are regerstered in so many manners, how could you truely be private when everything you do is monitored via the government licencing, filing, homes, autos, belongings, weaponns, etc. Everything we own, everything we do, even everything we buy (via out SS#, account #, address, Visa #) is monitored to see who we are, where we buy, what we spend, what we own and then we can be taxed on it, held accountable for it, charged additional fees for owning it........it's endless. Like cattle being run through the shoot, numbered and sold at auction. Is there a difference? And where does freedom come in when you are controlled and cataloged via every action, purchase, job, move... That is the regulation that Communist Romania was missing. Everything else was a barter system. A bra for a sausage, a sausage for a dress and on it goes. But the Govnt wasn't following a paper trail so it could tax you in the end for an oil filter.
Interesting point. At a talk I gave recently on the Real ID Act, someone brought up the SS#. Certainly, our SS#s and our drivers license have gone far beyond their original intent.
Of course, our SS cards don't have a biometric piece (fingerprint, iris scan) or a chip in the magnetic strip, but both of these items will be in our drivers licenses beginning in 2008, unless Congress stops the madness of the Real ID. We also are not asked for our SS card when boarding a plane, entering a federal building, etc.
I don't have a big feeling one way or the other about the SS program but would be open to abolition talk based on the super-regulation angle that you're talking about.
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