Jewamongyou

Florida rep. Frederica Wilson loves her hats, and she wants to wear them in Congress.  Unfortunately for her, there is a long-standing rule against wearing hats in Congress.

“It’s sexist,” Wilson told the Miami Herald’s Lesley Clark. The chamber’s hat ban “dates back to when men wore hats” Wilson explained, “and we know that men don’t wear hats indoors, but women wear hats indoors.

Generally speaking, I have little sympathy for members of Congress; they are the ones most responsible for relieving us of our liberties.  If Wilson were a mere mortal, like the rest of us, and she were complaining about one of the myriad burdens placed upon her by law-makers, those law-makers would reply, “doing (fill in the blank) is not a right, it is a privilege.  If you do not wish to (fill in the blank), then don’t (fill in the blank)”.  Examples would be having insurance while driving or subjecting oneself to searches at the airport.  Nobody is forcing us to drive or fly (in theory).  Likewise, being a member of Congress is not a right, but a privilege.  If she must wear her hats, then let her resign.
On the other hand, the ban is a silly one.  Is it sexist?  I don’t think so.  It might have been sexist a hundred years ago, when it specifically targeted women (who were wont to wear their hats indoors).  But how many female members of Congress were there a hundred years ago?   There were none.  So it was not the hat rule that was “sexist” but the public that refrained from electing female congressmen.  In my view, the public had no business electing anybody to the position of curtailing their freedoms.  As Mark Twain so eloquently put it, “”No man’s life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session.”  Refraining from adding females to a gang of criminals is an odd form of sexism.  Was the old Italian mafia also sexist for their dearth of female bosses?
So we see that, even in the old days, any description of the no-hat rule as “sexist” is rather tenuous.  These days, American society knows no distinction between females and males when it comes to wearing hats indoors.  Therefore, the rule is certainly not sexist today.  Both genders are equally affected by the ban.  The fact that Wilson happens to be female does not make the rule sexist.
If Congress does take the time to rescind the ban on her behalf, it would be an outrage – which we can add to their long list of previous outrages.  Such an action would show that they care far more about the inconveniences suffered by one of their own than the inconveniences suffered by the man in the street.  If they find the time to accommodate Wilson, then surely they can find the time to accommodate the rest of us by removing any number of the ridiculous laws that often make our lives miserable.

This flowchart was part of a presentation given by the company I work for.  Reportedly, it comes from a government website:

Three words come to mind when I see this: “Not my department”.

I had the misfortune, recently, of being issued a citation for turning on a yellow light.  In this city, yellow is considered the same as red for this purpose.  Go figure.  Now I am several hundred dollars poorer.  Here, I am assuming a minarchist approach, assuming that we are stuck with government traffic laws.
But I am not here to moan and groan over my misfortune.  I simply wish to call attention to the injustice of traffic tickets as they are administered in the U.S.  For a person who earns  hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, a $400 fine is a minor inconvenience.  For a single parent living one minimum wage, that same fine would be catastrophic.  His children would suffer for it.  Also, a person who barely gets by might not be able to afford insurance or keep the registration up to date.  In that case, he may end up losing his car – and, along with it, his means of earning a livelihood.  Two extreme examples, to be sure, but the fact remains that fixed fines necessarily punish the poor more than they punish the rich.  Supposedly, government strives to be even-handed.
In Finland, the amount of the fine is based upon the victim’s income.  This seems like a much more fair system than what we have in the U.S.  But it does have problems of its own.  A sliding scale involves the government knowing how much money each citizen earns – and this should be none of its business.  Perhaps a better solution would be to base the fine upon the estimated value of the car being driven.  One drawback to this would be that people might buy very cheap cars for the express purpose of driving irresponsibly.  This would surely cause many needless deaths and injuries.  Another drawback is that traffic cops would focus mainly on fancy cars, so much so that few would want to drive them.   It would also severely harm the auto industry and it would unjustly target the wealthy.  This system would have to be coupled with criminal charges against repeat offenders and oversight to help prevent abuse.
Like so many other government programs, there can be no fairness unless so many safeguards, stipulations and oversights are added that it becomes too complex to ever work properly.  In our quest to make traffic tickets “fair”, they would become as convoluted as the I.R.S. tax code.  Nobody would understand them and we would all have to hire expensive attorneys to defend us – who would charge more than the initial fine itself.