From: matt@smoke.brl.mil (Matthew Rosenblatt)
Newsgroups: misc.legal
Subject: Re: Who's weakening the constitution?
Summary: Popular referendum on tax and spending line items.
Keywords: Elite; Racket; People; Rabble
Date: 5 Jan 93 15:23:35 GMT
Organization: U.S. Army Ballistic Research Lab, APG MD.

In article <1993Jan5.041033.1484@Cadence.COM> phz@cadence.com 
(Pete Zakel) writes:

>In article <168C37506.MCMASTER@LSTC2VM.stortek.com> 
>MCMASTER@LSTC2VM.stortek.com (Jim McMaster) writes:

>>I am for a line-item veto that requires a simple majority on a
>>roll-call vote to override each separate line-item vetoed.  This allows
>>the President to force each pork-barrel item to stand on its own.
>>[Jim McMaster]

>Although I am against a true line-item veto, the proposal above (refered to
>as "enhanced recision") is one that I would support.  [Pete Zakel]

As long as there is representative government, there will be log-rolling.
Senators and Representatives will make deals to pass one another's pet
projects over the President's veto.

A better idea would be to put the entire budget and tax structure for
a given year up to referendum, line by line.  Next to each spending
line item would be the amount of tax to pay for it.  The majority of
the voters would decide whether it is worth accepting that much in taxes
in order to get that much benefit from the proposed spending.

Why do I support this idea?  Well, I read that among the exit polls
taken at last November's election was one that asked voters whether
they would prefer to pay higher taxes and get more government services,
or forgo some government services in order to pay lower taxes.  The
results were that 58% of the voters wanted less government and lower
taxes, and 41% were willing to pay more in order to get more.  

I figure that when voters are considering whether to take hard-earned
money out of their own pockets, money that they could decide how best
to spend for their own families, and put the decision power over that
money into the hands of government functionaries, they will vote to
keep more decision power for themselves and give less to government.
Essential functions of government, like Education, Public Safety,
Roads, Ballistics Research, and Army Materiel Systems Analysis will
prove worthwhile, while the assorted frills and usurpations we have
seen since 1950 will be tossed into the garbage can.

What about the great number of people who have been lured by the
spending programs of the past four decades into becoming dependent
on these programs?  I suppose they will vote in favor of higher taxes
(on other people!) in order to keep the programs growing.  And if, as
the above-mentioned exit polls seem to indicate, the dependent people
are outvoted and lose -- why, they lose.  That's what democracy is all
about.

It may be of interest that although the Maryland Constitution allows
acts of the General Assembly to be petitioned to referendum, it makes
an exception for any act that has to do with appropriation of State
funds.  This tells me that the Elite who set up and run the System
are quite aware that if the People had the power to vote directly on
taxes and spending, the People would put an end to the unholy racket
that the Elite have devised, the racket that uses the People's earnings 
to line the pockets of the Elite's Contractor and Government-employee 
cronies while bribing the Rabble not to pull another violent storming 
of the Bastille.

					-- Matt Rosenblatt
                                        (matt@amsaa.brl.mil)

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