Legal tattoos and tax breaks for hookers
Tattooing is now legal in the state of Oklahoma…
Some say it’s an art. Others say it’s a sin. But nobody can say tattooing is illegal in Oklahoma after Wednesday, when the state becomes the very last to permit it. The moral tangle is over. The win goes to lawmakers who argued that tattooing is inevitable, so it may as well be regulated for safety. The win is also claimed by the state’s tattoo artists, who can now ink most anyone 18 and older without fear of handcuffs and fines.
Norwegian Finance Minister Kristin Halvorsen is considering giving prostitutes a tax exemption…
“My primary desire is to get those involved in prostitution out of it. There are examples of individuals who are forced to continue because they need to earn money to pay back taxes and this is a situation we don’t want,” Halvorsen told newspaper Dagbladet. [...]Member of parliament Inga Marte Thorkildsen, like Halvorsen a member of the Socialist Left Party, said the state acted as a pimp when it defined prostitution as not being work but taxed earnings from it.
Cool with the new OK law, I had no idea tattooing had been illegal there. That’s one small step toward social liberalism.
Tax break sounds like a socialist policy. Phil, am I right if I guess that you as a libertarian want the same flat tax used on everybody no matter what (and some anarcho-capitalists would advocate no taxes at all, while they would think exempting some and not exempting everyone is unfair)???
Comment by Helsinkian — Tue, Oct 31st, 2006 @ 2:26 pm
So every US state tolerates tattooing now? Are there any countries left where tattooing is still illegal?
Comment by Helsinkian — Tue, Oct 31st, 2006 @ 2:29 pm
I had no idea that states outlawed tattooing!
Comment by Phil — Tue, Oct 31st, 2006 @ 2:30 pm
When in Norway, I always try to deduct taxes from her pay. Then, on the way out, a large man named Olaf makes me give it back to her.
Would this proposed ruling mean I don’t have to play that game anymore?
Comment by Kristian (in Espoo) — Tue, Oct 31st, 2006 @ 2:43 pm
I’d sure want to hear what US Senator Tom Coburn from Oklahoma thinks about the legalization of tattooing.
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/t/tom_coburn.html
He’s one of the most quotable politicians. Some of these I knew previously (he got famous for the “Lesbianism is so rampant in the schools of southeast Oklahoma” quote during his senatorial campaign, school authorities denied that lesbianism was rampant there) but during his first two years in the Senate he has added some gems to his previous record.
If you find Don Rumsfeld quotes funny (Don Rumsfeld is actually poetic and smart in a way), this guy is hilarious. He’s like a politically incorrect (or religiously correct) version of George W. Bush.
Comment by Helsinkian — Tue, Oct 31st, 2006 @ 3:04 pm
The other Senator from Oklahoma, Jim Inhofe, is also one of the more quotable US politicians.
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/j/james_inhofe.html
When he spoke about Abu Ghraib, it was pretty much the same kind of stuff that winter uses at this blog’s comments section.
“If they are in cell block 1A or 1B, these prisoners - they’re murderers, they’re terrorists, they’re insurgents. Many of them probably have American blood on their hands. And here we’re so concerned about the treatment of those individuals.”
-Republican Senator Inhofe from Oklahoma
Comment by Helsinkian — Tue, Oct 31st, 2006 @ 3:10 pm
It’s *AMAZING* how different from each other Norway and the US are, isn’t it?
Comment by funkybrownchick — Tue, Oct 31st, 2006 @ 3:33 pm
Norway is an interesting country because it used to be the most religious Nordic country. It may still be that way but there has been a huge movement toward more socially liberal attitudes there.
American Conservatives like to think Norway is what will become of US red states if Conservatives don’t watch out. Stanley Kurtz has specifically used Norway as a horror scenario in his anti-gay marriage treatise “The End of Marriage in Scandinavia”. His point is that in liberal Norway (that used to be conservative only some years ago) straight people are increasingly behaving like gays and marriage has stopped being the requirement for having kids. To combat that kind of attitudes he advocates for Conservatives to check out what’s happening in Norway so they don’t fall down the slippery slope from conservative to liberal in just a matter of years.
Comment by Helsinkian — Tue, Oct 31st, 2006 @ 3:42 pm
Stanley Kurtz actually acknowledged that the fact that so many kids are born out of wedlock in Scandinavia is not a disaster, since there is no widespread poverty in Scandinavia. He meant that if US out of wedlock birth rates would reach the same level, the result would be very disastrous, given the US poverty rate. Kurtz attributed the high out of wedlock birth rate among straight Scandinavians to the acceptance of gay couples.
This slate column by M.V. Lee Badgett denied Kurtz’s claims:
http://www.slate.com/id/2100884/
“But Kurtz’s smoking gun is really just smoke and mirrors. Reports of the death of marriage in Scandinavia are greatly exaggerated; giving gay couples the right to wed did not lead to massive matrimonial flight by heterosexuals.”
Comment by Helsinkian — Tue, Oct 31st, 2006 @ 3:53 pm
@funkybrownchick
It’s *AMAZING* how different from each other Norway and the US are, isn’t it?
Yeah, but if I’m not mistaken, you live in NYC. That’s a whole different thing altogether. Nothing like the rest of America. I love the 24-hr lifestyle of NYC. Wish we had it here. And ‘The Village’ is great ’cause anything goes
Comment by Kristian (in Espoo) — Tue, Oct 31st, 2006 @ 10:36 pm
Great news for all the fans of Don Rumsfeld press conferences!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6108704.stm
Bush says he wants Rumsfeld to stay in his job until January 2009. Rummy’ll be seventy-six and a half then, that’ll be some record to break for any future Secretary of Defense.
Comment by Helsinkian — Thu, Nov 2nd, 2006 @ 11:49 am
thank god… that tattooing is legal in all the states now… i had not idea that it was ever illegal until i heard the big riff about it just two days ago… i first heard about it being illegal in oklahoma from the cable show “Miami Ink”………….i have 6 tattoos myself and am planning on getting many more…no one and i mean no one can take this constitution right from me…i love getting tattooed……….
Comment by ocm — Thu, Nov 9th, 2006 @ 3:21 am
norway is riach biatch!
Comment by king — Fri, Nov 24th, 2006 @ 12:32 am