NPR Cheers ‘States’ Rights’

Hold the cheers. Ben Abrams writes:

Yesterday evening, just after six, I was listening to the local NPR station – I think it was WNPR, but might have been WSHU. In any case, they talked about how wonderful it was that Amazon was opening a new distribution center in the state. The thought of providing jobs was only secondary to them, for the real joy came from the fact that they can finally force the company to pay sales tax in the state. A law was passed a while back, but Amazon is anything but stupid and used the loophole of cutting ties to Connecticut-based affiliates to bypass the law. But the real key to this story was the NPR announcer claiming that this was “a great victory for states’ rights.” Oh, really!? So, it’s backwards, foolish, racist, unconstitutional, and whatever else they want to throw at us when it’s about anything else but it’s a wonderous and beautiful thing when it comes to raising taxes, eh? Sadly, I think the double-standards go unnoticed along with the rest of their cognitive dissonance.

JackofSpades

This is often what happens when one operates from a “the ends justifies the means” framework instead of higher principles.

Contradictions galore, but those contradictions are less important than the social capital the person receives and the face they present to their peers by taking a particular position, particularly when that position is applied to an end that is seen as positive in and of itself. No thoughts regarding morality. Even from a purely cause and effect perspective, these people virtually never examine the situation in its totality with respect to distal effects, confounding variables, tradeoffs, etc…it is almost always a particular outcome in isolation.

For example, supporting gun control makes you “hip and cool”, and a person…no….an INTELLECTUAL, who has “evolved” beyond the “mindless violence” of the “unwashed masses”. At this point you tilt your nose upwards and sneer at people who are opposed to gun control laws for either moral or consequentialist reasons. Don’t they know we need to stop mass murder of children at schools? Ick! How…uncouth!

One thing I will always be thankful for is the Ancaps helping me appreciate moral arguments for liberty, divorced from the consequences and cause and effect relationships of liberty (which is where I pretty much start my political journey, as a Milton Friedman Libertarian).
Guest

nearly every governmental policy is discussed in the inappropriate context. There are the merits and rationale related issues of a policy, and there are the legal foundation from which authority can be derived to enact such a policy. When discussing a policy that are constitutionally problematic, only the merits of such policy are debated; ignoring the source of any legal authority. When a tax policy such as this is discussed, the merits and legal basis are ignored, giving way to limitless, baseless, purely ideological arguments whose only claimed merit is in the good intentions of the ideology itself, not on the effectiveness of the desired outcome.
http://www.facebook.com/ross.kecseg Ross Kecseg

Nearly every governmental policy is discussed in the
inappropriate context. There are the merits and rationale related issues of a
policy, and there is the legal foundation from which authority can be derived
to enact such a policy. When discussing a policy that is constitutionally
problematic, only the merits of such policy are debated; ignoring the source of
any legal authority. When a tax policy such as this is discussed, the merits
and legal basis are ignored, giving way to limitless, baseless, purely
ideological arguments who’s only claimed merit is in the good intentions of the
ideology itself, not on the effectiveness of the desired outcome.