Speed limits on Federally-funded highways

I support a tiered system of speed limits on highways built even in part with Federal funds.

If a citizen owns an automobile or motorcycle that is engineered to cruise safely at 100 miles per hour, and he is willing to insure it for such driving habits, and his insurer offers coverage for such driving habits, and the road and traffic can tolerate it, and the State will go along with it, I want the Federal government to get out of the way and let it happen.

It is a State matter and a free country. If she wants, Colorado can issue special hot-pink license plates, with transponders built in that identify the vehicle as a lawful 100mph platform whenever a police radar strobes them. Colorado can charge $1000 a year for it and there will be takers, enough to support the costs of enforcing the program, with some money left over to fund some pet guilt program. That's Colorado's business. I support the idea if it can be made pay-as-you-go.

Offering the severance package

If unemployment rises again to the level of last summer, when people who were remaining unemployed until their Social Security unemployment benefits ran out, I will support extension of these benefits only if a Social Security severance package is part of the deal.

Under severance, any person who receives additional unemployment benefits will also be presented with an agreement that in effect terminates that person's further participation in Social Security. They get six months more unemployment stipends, but never pay into Social Security again, and will never be able to claim benefits from it again. For the rest of their lives.

That person receives a certificate, matched to an entry in the Social Security Administration's databases, showing future employers that he or she is exempt from FICA withholding, and that the employer may offer the employer's share of FICA withholding to the employee as salary or other compensation, free from Federal income taxes as well, if the employer so desires.

Likely only people just starting out in their careers will be interested in such a severance package. Those workers who feel they have "too much invested to back out now" because of their age will stay in, decline the package and the extended benefits, and try to find a job or change careers.

Unfortunately, we could offer this package only to persons who were already unemployed and facing the exhaustion of their benefits at the date the package program begins. Otherwise we'd have hundreds of thousands of people quitting their jobs and staying unproductive for months just to qualify themselves.

Drinking age

Peter Coors is being lambasted for proposing a return to the 18-year legal drinking age. Some pundits suggest that as the executive of a brewery, he is merely acting in his own interest.

I don't know why he proposes it but I agree with it and I'll tell you why. It's a State matter. It's been made a Federal matter by Washington twisting arms in the State capitols---change your drinking age to 21 or lose your highway funding. Change your blood alcohol content DUI threshold to .08 or lose your highway funding. Build light rail that costs more per passenger mile than buying people hybrid gas-electric cars, and build it with money you would have used for more highway lanes instead, or lose your highway funding.

Transportation isn't the only area where States are merely puppets of the Federal government. Housing, insurance, banking, you name it. It has to stop.

More on eligibility to run

I met someone who serves the military and is seeking National office. I've also done some more research on eligibility to run for office.

Meet Bruce Asay, Assistant Adjutant General for Air, Wyoming National Guard. He just assumed that post, and the rank of Brigadier General, but he's been campaigning for the single seat in the US House for Wyoming's half-million people.

If he wins this partisan office, he has to retire from military service. If he wins, he can probably afford to. As my readings tell me, I'd be in the same boat. I have my 20 years in and then some.

Term limits and related issues

I don't support them. Many other people whom I respect have run for National elective office, promising to term-limit themselves. Most of these people have kept their promises, and I suspect that many of them left office at a time when their constituents and their States needed them most.

In a way, it's like the comic who wouldn't want to join a club that would admit him as a member, or a young couple so serious and circumspect about childrearing that they feel they aren't fit or conscientious enough for it and remain childless.

Somebody running for elective office on the plank of term-limiting himself is fooling somebody, either himself or the voters.

I suffer no such disability. If you think I've been corrupted by the office, I'm counting on you to remove me when you get the opportunity, every six years. No doubt I'd get tired of living in Northern Viriginia, shuttling back and forth between Colorado and there, so I'd stop running for reelection anyway.

Of course, I believe that it was a serious mistake to amend the Constitution to elect Senators by popular vote---Senators were not intended under our brilliant system to represent voters, but the States directly, to keep the system of dual Federal/State sovereignty in balance. States had the power to appoint and to remove Senators. If I thought such an effort would have a snowball's chance in Hell, I'd support a return to this arrangement, even if it meant I'd be kicking myself out of office.

h0m0s3%ual marriage

I'm a Federalist. States are supposed to be doing the bulk of governing. One of those areas where the State governs, and has governed traditionally, is marriage. States vary in whom they will allow to marry, in terms of age both relative and absolute, blood relation, and so forth. Even the States are governing marriage less than they used to.

I do not support the Federal government getting any more deeply involved in marriage than it arleady has gotten. I don't support an amendment to the Constitution, defining marriage or prohibiting marriage between any two parties. I surely don't endorse Federal law, or the grant of Federal power, to build or rebuild society, or define marriage, in the name of protecting it.

On the other hand, I don't really accept that the people who are seeking rights for homosexuals to marry are doing so to make homosexual couples happier, more devoted or faithful to each other, or safer for the raising of children. Some of the activists do indeed believe this and want it, but most do not.

I see this movement, perhaps cynically, as yet another attempt to use the legislatures and the courts to compel employers and institutions to deliver valuable benefits to yet more people. There are few genuine rights that marriage confers to a spouse under the law---immunity from compelled testimony against a spouse, for example. But there are many benefits, such as health and life insurance, free services such as university tuition, that are offered to married couples today and homosexual couples cannot as easily access. A marriage license, they think, is their ticket to getting these benefits that until now have been denied them. The force of the State will be used if necessary.

I disapprove of this practice. An employer or institution should be free to offer services and benefits to whom they wish; it follows that they should be free to choose not to offer them to others. If an employee or member who is denied those benefits finds this unfair, he is free to persuade the provider, or to take his skills elsewhere. That's happening now, and is increasingly common.

There is a limited role for the Federal government to play in this matter, pertaining to how a marriage license issued in one state will be honored in another. Congress owns this field and has already acted. The Defense of Marriage Act is law, still, though untested by the Courts, and excuses a State from respecting homosexual marriages if its legislature so moves.

Amending the Constitution is said to resemble brain surgery. It's usually permanent and we'd best not do it unless we frankly admit what we're after and can't get it any other way.

My position is to let the DOMA have its chance, and meanwhile tackle some of the genuine underlying issues of taxation and employer benefits that spur a crass economic demand for homosexual marriage. All of us, gay or straight, will be better off.

Health care

I support the expansion of high-deductible health insurance combined with health savings accounts where people can deposit pre-tax money, let it accrue interest tax-free, and use it to pay the deductibles.

Medical costs will not come under control until more people pay directly for their own health care, rather than involve a third party, such as an insurance carrier or an employer, to make the payment for them.

There are other causes for increasing costs for medical care, including unreasonable jury awards for medical malpractice and the expense of clearing new medicines through the Food and Drug Administration. I'll discuss those aspects under other posts.