Congressman Scott Garrett’s tax plan would be a real gas for Jersey drivers: Mulshine
In the New York Times the other day a panel of experts debated the wisdom of lowering the drinking age. Those in favor of doing so pointed out that current law encourages younger people to binge on hard liquor in private instead of drinking beer or wine at a bar.
The article was sent to me by Assemblyman Mike Carroll of Morris County. Carroll, who is a father of five or six or some such number, said he supports lowering the drinking age to the voting age, which is 18.
“If you’re not capable of making a determination to drink a beer, are you capable of making a determination that Barack Obama should be president of the United States?” asked Carroll.
As you might deduce from that remark, Carroll is a conservative Republican. But there are liberal Democrats who also support lowering the drinking age. It all makes for a high-toned and illuminating debate and it might have great meaning – if this were a free country.
Unfortunately it’s not. Americans love to yammer on about their love for freedom, but they love pushing other people around even more. That’s how we ended up with such draconian regulations as a national 55-mph speed limit and a national drinking age of 21.
Scott Garrett has an idea that would end all that over-regulation – and free up a lot of money for transportation as well. Garrett, a conservative Republican who represents the northwest corner of the state, is sponsoring a bill that would accomplish both those ends through the simple expedient of turning the federal gas tax into a state tax.
https://www.nj.com/opinion/index.ssf/2015/02/congressman_scott_garretts_tax_plan_would_be_a_rea.html
FREEEEEEEEEEEEERDOM!!! (Sorry, just having a William Wallace moment.) Keep up the good work, Congressman!
Pretty much the entire world has a drinking age of 18. It’s the age of adulthood. If nothing else, lowering the age to 18 might go a long way to accepting that our 18 year old’s are adults, and not the perpetual children that we treat them as. It’s no wonder our homes are full of 20-30 year old’s with their failure-to-launch issues.
I’m not saying that drinking will somehow change things for the better, but for God’s sake, let start having them act as the adults.
Many 13-18 year olds I know have me and most of my age cohort beaten by a wide margin in terms of the maturity we displayed at that age and our awareness at that time of what real life is and what it requires from a citizen of the United States. With my three children I believe a change back to 18 in the drinking age would improve my ability to relate to them as adults at a critical time (newly voting, newly eligible for draft, finally emerging from the K-12 cocoon) when they are exposing themselves to the standards and expectations of the wider world and learning first hand how they measure up.
This proposed measure by Garrett, even if it is not signed into law, is quite instructive in terms of what changes might be made to roll back the tide of Mother Government, and what can be done to encourage the governments of the several states to reconnect with their residents and resume many of the roles they have been steadily shedding, for good or ill, since the early part of the 20th century.
Considering tha the teen brain at 18 is still not fully developed maybe the drinking age should be 25.
NFN, but I know a particular brain about 55 years of age that can’t seem to produce in its owner the ability to recognize the white-on-rice connection between Islamic doctrine (Medinan Koran, Sira, Haddith) and Islamic political behavior (taqiyya, kafir, jizya, dhimmitude, jihad, death for apostates and kafir who refuse to convert or pay the jizya, more than a thousand years of bloody raids and brutal attacks and subjugations, millions taken into slavery and the sex trade, and the biggie…indiscriminate killing and terrorizing of unbelievers and lukewarm believers). And it’s owner refuses to intervene with his wife’s plans to starve our children of nutrition and his K-12 curriculum development friends’ plans to starve them of substantive knowledge. I think we should stop infantilizing young men and women through our warped public policies and begin encouraging them to become more self-reliant and responsible. And there darn well better be some progress made on this economy in the near- and medium-term so that our domestic industries can produce employment and create attractive and respectable career paths that allow young people to get the most out of their skills and talents.
Let’s see, you can vote, get drafted, tried as an adult, buy an AK47 in the Darwinian deficient state gun shows but no, you can’t buy a beer….