The United States Congress led by

          Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi (D- CA)

and

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV)

The Senate was gaveled to order at 9:30 a.m. the Friday before the Christmas weekend, and shut down 26 seconds later. Then on Sunday the Democrats convened another nanosession, and again the day after Christmas — for nine seconds. This affectation will continue through January. At least Congress is operating with abnormal efficiency.

Need we say more?

Moonbat is a special feature of Liberally Conservative and posted each Saturday. For previous awards visit Moonbat Awards. 

In the 1993 hit movie, Mrs. Doubtfire, Robin Williams play Daniel Hillard finds himself suddenly divorced without custody of his kids. To solve this problem, he disguises himself as an old Scottish nanny to get hired by his ex-wife and be closer to his kids.

Mrs. Doubtfire was a comedy but real life transgendering is now becoming a political issue for Liberals.

A California state law that takes effect in January says schools not only can’t discriminate by sex but also can’t take into account “a person’s gender identity and gender related appearance and behavior whether or not stereotypically associated with the person’s assigned sex at birth.”

Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm has just issued a similar order in her state, barring discrimination against state workers based on their “gender identity or expression.” And members of Congress have been trying for several months to add crimes against the transgendered to the list of categories punishable under federal hate-crimes law.

The transgendered are now grouped with gays, lesbians and bisexuals in the abbreviation GLBT. It is estimated by the National Center for Transgendered Equality that between 0.25% and 1% of Americans place themselves in the transgendered category.

As one such individual recently wrote to the San Francisco Bay Times:

“My medical condition was not a matter of nurture and/or a choice but was caused by a biological error in the womb.”

John Nemecek, a business professor at Spring Arbor University, an evangelical college in Michigan, was demoted earlier this year because he started wearing makeup and earrings and calling himself Julie. Mr. Nemecek was diagnosed by a doctor with “gender-identity disorder” and started hormone therapy.

A Christian group called the Advocates for Faith and Freedom has launched a lawsuit to stop the aforementioned California law from going into effect. Robert Tyler, a lawyer for the group, asks:

“What will prevent the 250-pound linebacker from deciding he wants to share the locker room with the cheerleaders?”

A couple of years ago, Pauline Park, a man who feels he is a woman, was stopped by security officers coming out of the ladies room of New York City’s Manhattan Mall. Mr. Park filed a complaint with the city. Under the terms of the settlement, Advantage Security adopted a policy allowing people to use bathrooms “consistent with their gender identity.”

The American Psychiatric Association (APA) notes that

“many transgender people do not experience their transgender feelings and traits to be distressing or disabling, which implies that being transgender does not constitute a mental disorder per se.”

Michael Bailey, a psychologist at Northwestern University, published a book in 2003 suggesting that some men who want to change genders are living in a kind of fantasy. They are motivated by an erotic idea of themselves as women. Dr. Bailey was chastised for his writings with one critic even posted pictures of Mr. Bailey’s children on the Internet with sexually explicit captions under them.

Atlanta hosted the nation’s first transgender career fair in September. According to a report in the Los Angeles Times, the expo drew representatives from 20 major corporations. But logistical questions came up. Should applicants list both their male and female names on résumés? What if a potential employer called an old reference who didn’t know about an applicant’s “change”?

An article in the New York Times revealed how parents of children with gender confusion are now being encouraged to dress their children as members of the opposite sex. “At the Park Day School in Oakland [Calif.], teachers . . . are urged to line up students by sneaker color rather than by gender.”

When officials in Port Ewen, N.Y., decided to let a school principal stay on even after a sex change, most parents didn’t protest. But one resident of a neighboring town told a reporter: “God makes things perfect and people want to screw it all up.” It’s a passing remark but it raises an interesting question. What does it mean that, once conceived, a person was somehow given the wrong body? Should we hold God responsible? And what bathroom does he want us going into?

Source: Naomi Schaefer Riley in Taste at The Wall Street Journal [Subscription]

Happy New Year!

1. In New Hampshire, a late surge in the polls by Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) shows that the original frontrunner’s long-shot strategy is paying off. McCain, as he did in 2000, has written off Iowa, and he is hoping a poor finish in the caucuses won’t hurt him in New Hampshire five days later — especially if Huckabee, and not Romney, wins the caucuses. A win in New Hampshire could aid McCain in third-in-the-nation Michigan on Jan. 15.
2. If Romney finishes behind Huckabee in Iowa and behind McCain in New Hampshire, he’s seriously wounded and probably finished (with a big win in Michigan a week later his only hope to hang on). He still has the most money and the strongest campaign team, but those two early losses would devastate his strategy of winning big early to get ahead of Giuliani, who still leads (though barely) in national polls.
3. Rep. Tom Tancredo‘s (Colo.) decision to drop out of the race at the last minute equally helps former Sen. Fred Thompson (Tenn.) and Romney, with some of his support likely going to Representatives Ron Paul (Tex.) and Duncan Hunter (Calif.). Romney garnered Tancredo’s endorsement, which has some value, but immigration voters will be most attracted to Thompson. That said, Tancredo’s supporters were a small bunch to begin with.
4. Thompson is counting on a late surge in Iowa. He’s shown some superficial signs of success, garnering the backing of Iowa’s two grassroots conservative heroes: an endorsement from immigration hawk Rep. Steve King (R) and the support of Tancredo’s former Iowa chairman, Bill Salier, who challenged liberal Rep. Greg Ganske (R) in the U.S. Senate primary in 2002. However, it’s not yet clear whether Thompson is connecting with Iowa voters on the ground.
5. The campaign of former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani is looking imperiled. His New Hampshire poll numbers, like his national poll numbers, have steadily fallen since mid-November. He can’t count on a strong showing in Iowa or South Carolina, and so all his hopes will rest on big wins in Florida (January 29) and on February 5 Mega-Tuesday after a month of losses. His best hope is if Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Michigan go four different ways, which is very possible.
6. If Huckabee does not win Iowa, his run may be over, especially if he has to compete with Thompson in Southern states. Even if Huckabee wins Iowa, his chances at winning the nomination are slim. His coffers are too empty, his conservative credentials too flimsy, and his campaign infrastructure too sparse.
7. For Ron Paul, a third-place finish in Iowa is not out of the question.

Source: Evans-Novak Political Report

H.R. 3996: “Sales Tax Fairness and Simplification Act”

Sales Tax Fairness and Simplification Act – Grants the consent of Congress to the Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Agreement (Agreement), the multi-state agreement for the administration and collection of sales and use taxes adopted on November 12, 2002. Expresses the sense of Congress that the Agreement provides sufficient simplification and uniformity to warrant federal authorizations to states that are parties to it (member states) to require remote sellers (sellers without a physical presence in the taxing state) to collect and remit the sales and use taxes of such states and their local taxing jurisdictions.

Authorizes each member state, after 10 states (comprising at least 20% of all states imposing a sales tax) have petitioned for and become member states, to require all sellers, except those sellers with gross remote taxable sales nationwide of less than $5 million, to collect and remit sales and use taxes on remote sales owed to such member state under the terms of the Agreement.

Allows any person affected by the Agreement to petition the Governing Board established by the Agreement for a determination of any issue arising under the Agreement. Provides for judicial review of Governing Board determinations by the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.

Sets forth minimum simplification requirements for the Agreement.

Expresses the sense of Congress that member states should work with each other to prevent double taxation where a foreign country has imposed a transaction tax on a digital good or service.

Got all that? If you like shopping online, like the deals and can skip the tax, shopping the Internet way is convenient, fast, and private and did we say convenient. For online seller’s, like myself, we develop user friendly, easy to navigate sites and work like hell to get noticed in the search engines where competition is an understatement. Many of us pay for ads to draw prospective customers and are too small to play tax collector and accountant for federal and state governments.

“Build it and they will come” is not necessarily true in business and certainly not an easy task on the world wide web of shopping. However, “build it and they will come” is true when politicians sniff out money they believe belongs to them so they can earmark away and waste more dollars on pet projects in their districts. 

Congress is reviving a plan to increase tax collections on Internet consumers. Congressman William Delahunt’s (D., Mass.) bill, subject of a recent House Judiciary hearing, would give new powers to America’s tax collectors. There is a limit of $5 million before a business is required to collect sales taxes but the nightmare for larger businesses will lead to higher prices for consumers when an online store owner recovers increased operating expenses with higher prices. The other result will be lost sales and eventually closing down.

This is a problem Liberals don’t grasp when they smell other people’s money. How far away when to politicians lower the gross sales cap to capture more revenue? After all, the tax and spend members of the beltway feel a small business owner earning $200,000 per year is a member of the “rich and wealthy” class.

Currently, online stores that don’t have a building in your state don’t have to collect state and local taxes on your purchases. That’s because of a 1992 Supreme Court decision called Quill. SCOTUS ruled that forcing such obligations on companies with no physical presence in a state could cripple interstate commerce. The Supremes also ruled that Congress could have the last word on this question under the Constitution’s commerce clause.

Mr. Delahunt’s bill would make mandatory the inappropriately named “Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Agreement (Pdf.),” forcing all but the tiniest businesses to answer to every one of America’s 7,500 taxing jurisdictions. If making a small Web operator calculate, collect and remit taxes to every locality where he has a customer doesn’t sound like “streamlining,” we have second thoughts to that lopsided logic.

Senator Enzi (R-WY) introduced the Sales Tax Fairness and Simplification Act (S. 34) (Pdf.), which corresponds to the House bill in an effort to require out-of-state sellers to collect sales tax on remote sales.

Each merchant would also have to submit to audits from governments coast to coast. And while “only” 7,500 state and local governments currently collect sales taxes in the U.S., more than 22,000 other governments can choose to collect them in the future, and there’s no limit on the creation of new taxing entities. This “streamlined” plan allows every jurisdiction to create two separate tax rates, depending on the good or service sold?

Anticipating growth in government and complexity, the plan limits the tax collectors to two rates per zip code. Multiply that by America’s 43,000 zip codes and small merchants could potentially have to keep track of 86,000 different tax rates, depending on what they sell and to whom. But what about nine-digit zip codes? Could governments create different rates within each one? Yes indeed.

The board of state and local tax collectors that administers the “streamlined” plan recently amended the agreement. Now the plan would allow some states to choose whether to tax online purchases at the seller’s address or the buyer’s, depending on whether they’re in the same state. The end result will be different tax rates for in-state and out-of-state vendors — a clear Constitutional violation.

Most states, the intended beneficiaries of this new tax bureaucracy, have not endorsed the agreement. Money-hungry revenue departments have largely failed to convince their home legislatures to sign off. So they’ve gone to Congress to whine about revenue “lost” to e-commerce transactions.

Fred Thompson’s view of similar claims by federal bureaucrats:

“It ain’t lost. It’s in my pocket.”

Mr. Thompson may be referring to the government as in “pick your pocket.” The fact is various levels of government have been doing just fine in the era of electronic commerce. State and local tax collectors have enjoyed 18 consecutive quarters of increasing revenues.

A Tax Foundation analysis shows that, even after adjusting for inflation, state and local tax revenues have increased almost 48% since 1992, when Quill was decided. Throw in the generous federal-to-state transfers, and the states and locals are now collecting almost $2 trillion annually.

Since Democrats gained control of Congress their ambitions have been to tax and spend at historical levels never seen before. Fortunately, President Bush has used his veto pen to control the Liberal fever but a Clinton, Obama or Edwards in the White House could change all that.