The most common opposition to replacing income tax with a sales tax is saying it is regressive because "poor" people will need to spend a larger portion of their income on taxes than a wealthy person. Ok, so don't food or primary residence. A poor person isn't buying a $300,000 car or a second home. The best part is that if somebody is having a hard time getting by, every dollar they earn can be saved instead of giving Uncle Sam a short term loan until tax day.

I live in a rain forest. Every winter washes the soil clean of the majority of nitrogen that was built up the previous summer. To keep a raised bed alive I have to amend with bulk compost in the fall and spring. Without the fall amendment the soil starves and the spring amendment is less effective. That was until I added biochar(innoculated charcoal) to my beds. The charcoal prevents nutrients from being washed out of the soil when there are no plants replenishing it. In beds amended with biochar I get higher production and lower inputs. Biochar can help reduce inputs on chemical farms too. But, the combination of healthy living soil and biochar, for me, makes gardening easy. I am more concerned with whether a plant has enough sun than anything else these days.

When the Bill of Rights was passed the purpose of those amendments was to restrict government action that may limit a person's ability to share ideas. I think that clearly makes anything that makes privacy online harder unconstitutional.

But, we also don't need the Supreme Court to weigh in on constitutionality. It is the responsibility of citizens to assert their Constitutional rights. That often looks like law suits against the State trying to infringe on our rights.

I have also found dying birds in my yard a few days after the neighbor sprayed their house perimeter for ants. No toxicology report but there was no sign of any physical damage.