Three Way News

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Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Congress shall make no law

This is a good example of what's wrong with political coverage. It's the Star Tribune profiling Ron Paul supporters:

David Fischer has run a three-person research firm in Des Moines since 1993. When he started his firm, he had to pay state and federal unemployment insurance and fill out lengthy forms.
Eventually, his obligation to provide payments to the state stopped, because no one at his firm was laid off, "yet I have to file reports every quarter, and I keep getting mail from the government," Fischer said.
"This is a small example of what's wrong with government. There's too much regulation," he added. "I can't even put a Ron Paul sign in my yard without making sure I've complied with all kinds of city and county ordinances going on for hundreds of pages."

This is patently false, yet the Strib prints it. Why? When the Strib puts this dreck into print without comment, it makes Fischer's statement seem credible.

In fact, there is one regulation going on for one sentence governing this issue:

Congress shall make no law regarding an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press...

So, no, if Fischer wants to put up a regular old yard sign, he certainly can, and no government in the United States can stop him. Now, if Fischer lives in a planned community of some sort, then the private market can certainly put all kinds of restrictions on what he can and cannot put up in his yard. It's the tyranny of the marketplace. If Fischer doesn't like that, he can move or stop supporting Ron Paul.

Alternatively, if Fischer wants to put up a 20 foot high sign in a residential area, local governments certainly might object to that. But Fischer is complaining about a problem that doesn't exist. If your best reason for voting for a candidate is a complaint based on a fundamental misunderstanding of how the world actually works, I suppose that's fine for you -- but a newspaper certainly shouldn't print it as fact.

Added by Jambo:

Yeah, we need to get the government off our backs.