Why MSM is dying: Part 456,438
By D.J. McGuire | Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010 | Policy
My local paper, the Free Lance-Star, is unahppy about Corey Stewart’s Rule of Law Resolution. Stewart, the current chairman of the Prince William Board of Supervisors, is reacting to the kerfuffle over Arizona’s SB1070, and trying to take his own PW policies on illegal aliens and adapt them to the state. He adds one twist that caught the FLS editors’ attention: a fee on monetary wire transactions.
The FLS did not approve:
Just one big flaw of his plan would put a surcharge on the “remittances” that many foreign-born residents send to hard-up relatives abroad. Those who paid these fees and later filed a state income-tax return–with, of course, their Social Security number–would get a penny-for-penny credit for them on their taxes. But this seems an undue burden for those who work in Virginia legally–indeed, who might be naturalized (or even native-born) U.S. citizens. How could the state justly, in effect, impound money sent by one Virginian to Tío Miguel in Monterrey, but not by another to Aunt Fanny in Sioux City?
Such discrimination would violate the American credo, which holds that the fellow who just pledged allegiance to the United States at his citizenship ceremony is, in the law’s eyes, as good as the blue blood whose ancestors arrived at Plymouth Rock or Jamestown. A “two-tiered American” approach is also plain meanness.
Now, one can argue the merits of the fee; what one cannot do is misrepresent it – but that’s exactly what the editors of the FLS do here.
Perhaps if they had actually read the RoLR, the editors would have noticed the verbiage in Section 7 (page 8 of 10):
Any licensee of a money transmission, transmitter or wire transmitter business and their delegates shall collect a fee of five Dollars ($5.00) for each transaction not in excess of five Hundred Dollars ($500.00), and in addition to such fee an amount equal to one percent (1%) of the amount of the transaction in excess of five hundred Dollars ($500.00).
Notice any “discrimination”? Any reference to foreign transmissions? Me neither. Sure, the expectation is that remittances from illegal aliens out of the country will be discouraged, but the fee itself is not triggered by destination alone.
Things like this are what have sent tens of millions of Americans fleeing from MSM, newspapers included.
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About the author
Former candidate for Board of Supervisors in Spotsylvania, current blogger, economics teacher, and long-rumored windbag. There are two causes closest to the heart: steering the country away from the social democratic nonsense that is sinking Europe, and convincing the rest of the "rightosphere" that the NBA really is a joy to watch.
Comments
9 Responses to "Why MSM is dying: Part 456,438"
[...] Cross-posted to BD [...]
I’ve had this experience with newspapers. Editors are usually a collection of people with minimal experience in much else. They try to be competently expert-level in way too many issues than they can be, and the result is what you read there.
Those who actually have expert experience wouldn’t write for a newspaper, as they would have little patience being edited by people who know less than they do.
Newspapers still have value, as anyone who can drop something on a hundred thousand doorsteps every day would. But their editorial model is strained by a readership that demands more broad information then newspapers are equipped to provide.
I find newspaper to be messy. That ink just rubs off and turns paws black. I accept it if they would deliver it without ink so the puppies did not get that toxic stain on them. The advertising is worse, multi color stains on coats..
That is the only thing I can think of that most news papers are good for.
I think you and the FLS are speaking past each other, as it were.
The discrimination in the proposal is between people who send money by wire transfer and people who send it by other means. The FLS makes the completely rational assumption that the *effect* of this discrimination would primarily fall on recent immigrants.
You respond by indignantly denying that Stewart has any specific intent to discriminate against anybody, because the wording of the requirement is nicely evenhanded.
Somehow I don’t think you and the FLS are really talking about the same thing. It’s kind of a tired rhetorical exchange. Anyone who reads the draft of this act can honestly conclude nothing other than that its *effects* will fall primarily on brown people who speak Spanish.
In law a person may often be presumed to intend the likely and foreseeable consequences of their actions. For my own political opinion, I don’t need to fret about what I think Stewart’s true intentions are, in his heart of hearts. I don’t really care. The Act itself is a piece of crude, reactionary cruelty, and I shall, and do, oppose it.
I also think that whoever tried to dress up Arizona’s SB1070 as “Virginian” by substituting in the terms “General Assembly” and “Commonwealth” might want to reflect that Virginia has no such thing as “Superior Court” in which its citizens might sue local officials for thwarting the Act.
For that matter they ought to review the Dillon Rule and reflect that maybe little liberal towns in Virginia — being basically powerless as they are — pose less of a threat to the Act.
And lastly can we sort of take time to consider whether it’s really desirable to blithely adopt in cookie-cutter fashion, into Virginia law, the enacted public policy of Arizona?
Donald, that’s pretty racist of you to assert that “certain” people wire transfer more than others.
Donald… “fall primarily on brown people who speak Spanish.”??…
The American “Apartheid” experience is alive and well and you should be proud that it is growing by leaps and bounds by your support of the current leadership of our country.
The only way that the (gangster) socialists can maintain order with all the competing demands for freebies that they encourage is to establish a rigid quota system. Group X has 7.6 percent of the voters so you get 7.6 percent of the govt handouts and we can’t give you more because of the quota. Whats amazing is how the gangsters are able to skim 30 percent off the top for themselves while their supporter suckers applaud them for being so generous. Of course over time the suckers begin to realize that a percentage is not a fixed amount of money. Since the socialist economy steals from itself the suckers find that a percentage of zero is zero (see the Soviet Union, Cambodia, Zimbabwe, Cuba, Greece etc). Thats when the gangsters bring out the army.
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