As promised, here is my second tax reform proposal: do away with the corporate income tax. Now, I know, this is politically unpopular because we all love a good populist “stick it to the man” type thing, but hear me out.
To begin, remember my criteria for tax reform: justice and honesty. Fairness is not listed because fairness just seems to mean whatever the proposer wants, which is far too subjective to be a workable standard.
Now, how would eliminating taxes on “big corporations” help with justice and honesty in our tax policy? Actually, it would help on a number of fronts. [continue reading…]
In a powerful part of his excellent book Law and Revolution, Harold Berman notes the importance of eschatology and a faith in the ultimate victory of something to a people. He writes:
Rosenstock-Huessy has shown how the belief in an end-time, the end of the world, had influenced the great revolutions of Western history. Each of those revolutions translated the experience of death and regeneration into a different concept of the nation and of the church. When Christian eschatology was discarded by the Enlightenment and by liberal theology [continue reading…]
In last night’s State of the Union address, President Obama had a lot to say about “fairness” in the tax code. I must admit that I don’t know too much about “fairness.” My kids talk about it sometimes, at least the younger ones do. It goes like this, “that’s not fair!” Which, when properly translated, means “that didn’t go the way that I wanted it to go.” My feeling is that President Obama’s populist, tax-code fairness statements are just more sophisticated versions of the way little kids use the word. So, translated, his statements go something like this, “the tax code just isn’t set up the way that I want it to be set up!”
So much for fairness as a standard as far as I am concerned. Fairness is in the eye of the beholder. It is an unworkable as a standard for policy because it is too subjective. [continue reading…]
I was pleased today to hear that the U.S. Supreme Court, in Hosana-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC, 565 U.S. ______ (2012), upheld the so-called ministerial exception to the nation’s employment discrimination laws. For those of you who don’t know what the ministerial exception is, on page 13 of the slip opinion, which can be found here, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote: “Since the passage of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U. S. C. §2000e et seq., and other employment discrimination laws, the Courts of Appeals have uniformly recognized the existence of a ‘ministerial exception,’ grounded in the First Amendment, that precludes application of such legislation to claims concerning the employment relationship between a religious institution and its ministers.” (You can read about the case here and here.) [continue reading…]
In Book II of Homer’s Odyssey, Athene appears as Mentor to Telemachos, Odysseus’ son, to give him advice. As a part of her speech to him, she states that “few are the children who turn out to be equals of their fathers, and the greater number are worse; few are better than their fathers.”[1] While common experience may indicate that this is true, it seems exactly counter to what most of us would want for our children. Most of us want our children to be “better than their fathers.”
In a particularly poignant passage in his classic book on Augustine of Hippo, Peter Brown writes of the hurt that Augustine still felt late in life over the loss of his son. Brown writes: [continue reading…]
In case you were looking for that perfect gift for a third-year law student who is taking Basic Uniform Commercial Code with me in the spring, here is the book list for that course (with a little help from Amazon, of course):
At the end of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck states, “and so there ain’t nothing more to write about, and I am rotten glad of it, because if I’d ‘a’ knowed what a trouble it was to make a book I wouldn’t ‘a’ tackled it, and ain’t going to no more.” That quote has been running through my head quite a bit lately because, thankfully, I just completed my first book, Logia of Business Organizations Law for Paralegals.
There were plenty of times that I felt like Huck Finn and thought maybe I shouldn’t ‘a’ tackled it. But, now that it is all done and the first copies have shipped to MBS Textbook Exchange, Liberty University Online’s bookseller, I must admit that, overall, I really enjoyed the process. It is always helpful to reduce our ideas to writing, and, unlike Huck Finn, I do intend to write more books.
This first book is written for students in the Liberty University Online Paralegal Program taking the course on business organizations law, and I doubt that it would be of much interest to anyone not enrolled in the course! It is meant to accompany the textbook for the course, entitled Business Organizations for Paralegals by Cheeseman and Reed. The book is self-published through Logia Press, LLC. It contains eight chapters, and each chapter begins with an edited case or law review article which is then followed by notes and questions.
Here is a sample from the notes and questions following the case in chapter one: [continue reading…]
Contrary to what many of us might think or have been taught, the Bible has a lot to say about financial unfairness and oppression. It is also interesting to note that, while condemning financial unfairness and oppression, the Bible assumes, but does not condemn, the competitive marketplace. Here is a list of some relevant passages (taken from the King James Version):
Above is the video of the baptism of our precious Olivia Grace. It was a special day made even more special by the fact that it was also Sierra Hope’s birthday. (Obviously, this is an example of infant baptism, i.e., paedobaptism.)
(If you are having trouble viewing this video, click on the link above to view it on Vimeo’s site.)
, (3rd 2011) (this is an excellent book that I expect you will want to keep)
, (2011) (I will be using this new version, but the one you used for Business Tax should be fine)
.
, (4th 2009)
, Huck states, “and so there ain’t nothing more to write about, and I am rotten glad of it, because if I’d ‘a’ knowed what a trouble it was to make a book I wouldn’t ‘a’ tackled it, and ain’t going to no more.” That quote has been running through my head quite a bit lately because, thankfully, I just completed my first book, 
by Cheeseman and Reed. The book is self-published through Logia Press, LLC. It contains eight chapters, and each chapter begins with an edited case or law review article which is then followed by notes and questions.