Senate Health Reform Plan Prescribes Heavy Tax Dose | Michael F. Cannon | Cato Institute: Commentary

Senate Health Reform Plan Prescribes Heavy Tax Dose | Michael F. Cannon | Cato Institute: Commentary: "One levy would take $15 billion from sick patients with high out-of-pocket medical expenses, including elderly and low-income patients.

If you have a health savings account or flexible spending arrangement, there are taxes specific to those health plans, plus a third tax that would apply to all "consumer-directed" plans.

Another levy would tax medical devices, and another would tax prescription drugs. Those two taxes would increase health insurance premiums by about 1 percent, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. There's another $60 billion tax that would drive health premiums higher still.

If your premiums climb high enough, you'll become subject to a $149 billion tax on those with high health insurance premiums. Yet many face high premiums simply because they have expensive medical needs, making this yet another tax on the sick.

The legislation would increase the Medicare tax on wages above $200,000, yet divert the revenue toward new entitlement spending.

And lest any corner of the health care sector go untaxed, the bill would even impose a 5 percent tax on cosmetic surgeries."

"Senate Democrats promise to fund half of their new entitlement with $491 billion of Medicare cuts. Yet those promised cuts are merely a tax increase waiting to happen."

"Another hidden tax comes in the form of price controls that would increase premiums for young adults in order to subsidize their parents, even though the parents typically have higher incomes. The same price controls would increase premiums for people with healthy lifestyles to subsidize those who (for example) overeat or consume alcohol to excess.

Those price controls could even tax farmers to subsidize office workers. The bill would allow populous urban areas like Omaha to make all of Nebraska one single 'rating area,' which would increase premiums in rural areas to subsidize wealthier urban areas."

"The bill's largest hidden tax, however, is a mandate that would force all Americans to purchase health insurance, whether they want it or not.

Here's why that mandate is a tax. When the government forces you to pay $10,000 to the IRS, and then gives that money to a private insurance company — as this legislation would do — we rightly call that a tax.

If instead the government forced you or your employer to pay $10,000 directly to a private insurance company — as this legislation also would do — the outcome would be the same. That makes the mandate a tax, even though that $10,000 never passes through the federal Treasury."

Time to Wind Down the War on Drugs | Gene Healy | Cato Institute: Commentary

Time to Wind Down the War on Drugs | Gene Healy | Cato Institute: Commentary: "At the state level, nearly 60 percent of those serving time for drugs have 'no history of violence or significant selling activity,' Webb notes.

The United States has 5 percent of the world's population, and nearly a quarter of the worlds prisoners -- more per capita than authoritarian regimes like Iran, China and Russia. We probably shouldn't take official Chinese prison stats at face value, but is there really good reason for the United States to imprison people at six times the rate Canada does?

As Webb puts it, 'Either we are home to the most evil people on Earth,' or we're doing something wrong."

"Pot is less harmful than alcohol, as shown by government-commissioned studies, including a 1999 report by the Institute for Medicine and the 1972 Shafer Commission"

"In 2001, Portugal became the first -- and so far, only -- Western democracy to decriminalize possession of small amounts of all drugs, including cocaine and heroin. The results of that experiment are now in.

In a recent study for the Cato Institute, Glenn Greenwald reports that decriminalization has 'had no adverse effect on drug usage rates in Portugal,' drug-related pathologies "have decreased dramatically," and there's little public support for recriminalization."

For those who believe in limited government, where is the Constitutional authority for the federal government to do anything. (Maybe the interstate commerce clause but that was supposed to keep states from limiting commerce between themselves.)

Three Myths about Trash - Floy Lilley - Mises Institute

Three Myths about Trash - Floy Lilley - Mises Institute: "The EPA had noticed that the number of landfills was dropping. They failed to notice that the size of landfills was getting much bigger much faster. Total landfill capacity was actually rising. The EPA also underestimated the prospects for creating additional capacity."

"Today, 1,654 landfills in 48 states take care of 54 percent of all the solid waste in the country. One-third of them are privately owned. The largest landfill, in Las Vegas, received 3.8 million tons during 2007 at fees within the national range of $24 to $70 per ton. Landfills are no longer a threat to the environment or public health. State-of-the-art landfills, with redundant clay, plastic liners, and leachate collection systems, have now replaced all of our previously unsafe dumps."

"More and more landfills are producing pipeline-quality natural gas. Waste Management plans to turn 60 of their waste sites into energy facilities by 2012. The new plants will capture methane gas from decomposing landfill waste, generating more than 700 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 700,000 homes."

"Holding all of America's garbage for the next one hundred years would require a space only 255 feet high or deep and 10 miles on a side."

"The amount of new growth that occurs each year in forests exceeds by a factor of 20 the amount of wood and paper that is consumed by the world each year. Wherever private-property rights to forests are well-defined and enforced, forests are either stable or growing."

"Recycling is a manufacturing process, and therefore it too has environmental impact. The US Office of Technology Assessment says that it is 'usually not clear whether secondary manufacturing such as recycling produces less pollution per ton of material processed than primary manufacturing processes.'"

"Manufacturing paper, glass, and plastic from recycled materials uses appreciably more energy and water, and produces as much or more air pollution, as manufacturing from raw materials does."

"Recycling is a long-practiced, productive, indeed essential, element of the market system. Informed, voluntary recycling conserves resources and raises our wealth, enabling us to achieve valued ends that would otherwise be impossible. So yes, people do recycle even when they are not forced to do so."