big government

The Oil Spill in the Gulf has yet again highlighted one of government’s major failings – government regulators and bureaucracies are inept. President Obama is being criticized for his reaction to the leak, and some are comparing it to President Bush’s reaction to Katrina. However, a more suitable comparison is the financial meltdown that occurred late in President Bush’s second term. For both presidents there was little that they personally could have done prior to these terrible events, and both had strikingly few options after the event occurred. While they both have to answer questions about the effectiveness of government under their watch, in reality these events aren’t showing a failure of the executive branch, instead they show the massive failure of government regulation and associated agencies.

In both cases the failure of regulators has been so complete that it’s left the citizenry asking, ‘How did this happen?’ After the financial meltdown people wondered what good the SEC is if it can’t figure out blatant financial cons like Bernie Madoff’s ponzi scheme. Ponzi schemes have been around for eons, and shouldn’t be particularly hard to detect for someone with proper education/training. However, it’s the credit default swaps that appear tanked several large banks along with the U.S. economy, yet there was no recognition of this problem by the SEC until it was too late.

The question that most everyone has heard post oil spill is, ‘Seriously, they don’t have a plan to stop the leak?’ It seems like such a no-brainer that if a company drills offshore there should be a plan in case something goes wrong. Not just one plan, but several plans both to prevent disasters, and to mitigate disasters if they do occur. Now we’re over a month out from the initial explosion, and BP is still guessing about what might possibly stop the flow of oil. Again government regulators by definition have failed. Similarly the Minerals Management Service appears to be a joke.

Thus we end up with Government’s Catch 22. There is a need for some regulation, yet the government clearly sucks at regulation. This unfortunately is on both a big scale and on a small scale. I work for a company that was recently visited by an FDA regulator; much of it was the theatre of the absurd. Our file cabinets are now much more clearly labeled, and we provided copious amounts of information about things that have nothing to do with the FDA. Not a huge deal, but somewhat depressing when considering how much money is being spent on useless regulation, and how many serious violations are likely being missed.

There is blame to put on Congress. They are responsible for oversight, and clearly they’ve failed at providing adequate oversight of these agencies. Yet there is an even bigger problem than Congress. As a country our regulatory agencies have failed and continue to fail. We need a better system. First, we need a better selection process for picking the people who run these agencies. Choosing the buddy of someone powerful or choosing someone who has done political favors for an influential person clearly is inadequate selection criteria. Experience and knowledge matter - a lot, if people running and participating in these agencies don’t know their stuff then they don’t belong there. While that sounds obvious, clearly it’s not happening.

My theory is that people with a military background may be better leaders for these agencies. The one person during the gulf disaster that has inspired any confidence (and basically the only person that hasn’t talked in circles) is Admiral Thad Allen. Maybe the structure and the directness that a military commander would bring to an overly political government bureaucracy could help. Congress also needs to wake up and worry less about placing blame after a disaster, and instead provide the proper oversight to these agencies; that could even prevent disasters. Finally, voters have to demand that this problem is addressed. This isn’t a glamorous issue, but it is a critical one. There is a real need for voters to insist that politicians give sustentative answers on how they will make government work again. As a country we’ve created a monster with big regulatory agencies that suck up money and fail to effectively regulate. The fix isn’t obvious, but it is vital.

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Big Government’s Catch 22 – We’ve Created a Monster

Senator Coburn Blogger Call – Addresses Fiscal Crisis and Potential for the U.S. to be in the same position as Greece in Four Years. (embedded mp3)

The tax system has become another emblem of the government’s seemingly insatiable desire to make things complicated. In the culture of Washington never use one word when ten will do the trick, never hire one bureaucrat when five can do the same amount of work. It is little wonder then that the income tax code stretches to 3.4 million words, filling more than 7,500 letter size pages. A taxpayers nightmare and H&R Block’s dream. But as Tax Day approaches the whispers to simplify the bureaucratic behemoth turn into shouts. Hopefully the government will listen.

In the Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith famously noted that complexity makes taxes “more burdensome to the people than they are beneficial to the sovereign.” To this end the government has traditionally done some Spring cleaning on the code every 15 years. The government initiated major tax reform efforts in 1954, 1969, 1976, and 1986. But in the intervening 24 years we have done nothing.

The result has been a steady build up of loopholes, deductions, alternate tax schemes, and ways to game the system. The ever-multiplying deductions will mean that 47% of Americans will not pay a dime in federal income tax this year. Congratulations if you’re in that half, terribly sorry if you’re part of the remaining 53% left holding the bill.

The tax code has grown unwieldy in other ways as well. As Ezra Klein writes in the Washington Post,

We’ve begun running more of our social policy through the tax code. Rather than creating programs, we create tax credits. “It’s easier politically,” says Roberton Williams, a senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center, “because it’s easier for a congressman to say that I cut your taxes rather than that I started a new program to spend your money.”

We’re left with an outdated mess that is costing taxpayers a fortune. A 2006 report by the Tax Foundation found that taxpayers spend an estimated $265.1 billion to comply with the tax code. That means for every one dollar paid in taxes, 22 cents goes toward compliance costs. Eliminate, or reduce, the complexity of the tax code and we could cut taxes and give the government the same amount of money. The definition of a win-win.

The problem is not unique to the tax code. It is merely a reflection of the larger federal government which has seen its ranks steadily grow to just over 2 million federal workers. Since 2008, while the private sector was contracting due to the recession, the government has hired an additional 25,000 employees. Turns out Ronald Reagan was correct when he said,

“No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs – once launched – never disappear. Actually a government bureaucrat is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this Earth.”

The problem is that the government rarely cleans house. Obviously it is much harder than the tax code. Fixing the code takes cutting out some words. Fixing the bureaucracy takes cutting out some cushy government jobs. People fight harder for their position than words. Nevertheless, our current path is simply unsustainable.

A recent editorial to the Chicago Tribune lamented the growth of the Illinois bureaucracy,

“Our governance infrastructure has become overgrown and overpriced. We have 7,000 often redundant governments, far more than any other state. We populate those governments with armies of employees, and give them duties — some essential, some make-work. Many politicians of both parties enlist these workers as their allies in a cozy paradigm: If you help us win re-election, we will reward you with adequate salaries today — and fabulous retirement benefits tomorrow.”

This is not merely Illinois’ problem, this is the United States’ problem. Our bureaucracy is swelling beyond the point of private citizens to pay for it. Public sector jobs do not create a profitable product and thus must be paid for on the backs of a private citizen. Any growth in the government’s ranks, especially during a time of a contracting private sector work force, requires a greater burden to be placed on fewer people.

We speak of tax code reform but we must also speak of federal bureaucracy reform. The same waste, fraud, and redundancy can be found in both. It is costing taxpayers a fortune. We should be working to identify and eliminate the overlaps. Simplify and streamline the remaining system. And pass the savings along to the taxpayers. With careful decisions the federal government could accomplish the same workload but using up far fewer tax dollars.

It’s time for some Spring cleaning but the tax code shouldn’t be the only place we scrub.

by Brandon Greife, Political Director of the College Republican National Committee

Read more: www.collegerepublicans.org

by Lance Thompson 

by Rose Pedenko 

The Washington Post, bastion of journalistic excellence that it is, recently reported what most Americans already know – that the United States Postal Service is a failed government enterprise.  The Postal Service estimates $238 billion in losses in the next 10 years and a drop of 26 billion pieces of mail.  As most federal estimates go, that figure will likely increase exponentially under the ever coercive lawmakers, postal regulators and labor unions that want even more flexibility to compel Americans to absorb the cost of their inefficiency.  They seek impossible remedies in an effort to expand government control and ultimately stifle American incentive.  It’s as if the bureaucrats and liberal leaning media are tone-deaf to the mounting anger of the citizenry that want to reduce government spending--and want to reduce it now.

There was once a commonly held belief that delivering the U.S. mail was too big or impossible for private enterprise to handle efficiently.  It is clear that even the Postmaster General now acknowledges that the 13% drop in mail volume last year was a result of business migrating away to faster, cheaper and more dependable delivery via the internet or other more efficient, competitively-priced services.  That, of course, begs the question, why do we need the USPS?

Delivery services, like UPS and Fed-X, have been fully capable of handling comprehensive domestic distribution for years.  The fact they have been subject to corporation taxes, sales taxes, vehicle license taxes and other onerous regulations, means they have also effectively been subsidizing their biggest competitor--the U.S. Postal Service.  What a great country!!

The postal service lost $2.4 billion from April through June of 2009, bringing the year’s losses to $4.7 billion.  In spite of a bad economy, in the 4th quarter of 2009, UPS' domestic profits increased over 60% from the previously mentioned low point in the 2nd quarter.

Rather than Congress rationally evaluating the failures of this government entity to compete in the free marketplace, it has allowed Postmaster General John E. Potter to throw good money after no money by spending an additional $4.8 million for outside consultants to provide even more ideas to further rip-off American taxpayers.  At a time when other (better) products and services mean a drop in prices to Americans, as we have witnessed with cellular, cable and satellite services, the Post Office will increase prices that exceed the rate of inflation.

Another question that begs a rational answer is why we permit federal/public employees to unionize and further drive up costs to American taxpayers.  Labor unions not only complicate the agency’s path to a firm fiscal footing but will inevitably prevent it from ever achieving the kind of profits enjoyed by private enterprise.  The Post Office does not need to reshape how Americans send and receive their letters and packages--Americans are doing that themselves.  Perhaps this bad news from the post office will be accompanied by yet another attempt by government to regulate the chief competitor to the USPS--the internet.

Congress should be asking itself “what would happen if the Post Office failed?”  The answer, of course, is nothing.  Private enterprise is 100% capable of delivering all of the United States mail in a time and cost-effective manner.  But rather than stop the fiscal bleeding, our elected misrepresentatives will probably enact further mind-numbing legislation to prevent what should be the complete and utter demise of a badly run business.  Where else have we heard this lately?

Unlike consultants paid to blow smoke up the Postmaster General’s ass, I have no interest in the Post Office reducing its costs.  Americans should strongly encourage their “elected” officials to shut down the Post Office, eliminate the Postal Regulatory Commission, and while we are at it, the handful of other useless and inefficient agencies whose sole purpose is to swindle and steal from a citizenry that is quickly going postal.

Barack Obama finds himself stuck between a rock and a hard place, or should I say, between Democrats and Republicans. In an attempt to please them both he has satisfied neither.

The death of the Democratic health care reform proposals remain the prime example of the war he finds himself in. Throughout the debate Obama was attacked from his Left flank. Liberal critics such as Howard Dean who attacked the bill’s lack of a public option and went so far as to say that “I would certainly not vote for this bill if this were the final product.” Many Democrats also took hard line stances. Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) said that,

“[i]t’s time for the president to get his hands dirty. Some of us have compromised our compromised compromise. We need the president to stand up for the values our party shares.”

This represents the fundamental problem Obama and Democrats find themselves in. As different factions of the party compromise to capture the nation’s political mood – they find their chances at reelection compromised. The question, as John Harris of Politico put it, is “WWCD: What Would Clinton Do?”

In a rare unity of interest, following the Clinton approach would be simultaneously the best thing for Barack Obama to do and the best thing that could happen for the Republican Party. After a disastrous first two years in office, in which Clinton was lambasted for a liberal agenda that included failed attempts at health care reform and gun control, he course corrected. His march toward the right was highlighted by bipartisan achievements such as welfare reform and a balanced budget and crowned with his famous line, “the era of big government is over.” In words as well as deeds, Clinton grasped the fundamental truth that this is a center-right nation.

But “triangulating” a path toward the middle is fraught with peril. For one, Democrats will be furious. The party would no doubt begin to share the concern of Rep. Dave Obey, who has already chastised Obama’s centrist leanings saying,

“It’s ridiculous, and the Obama administration is sitting on the sidelines. That’s nonsense.”

Second, in the race to the middle some Democrats are going to be left behind. The right-leaning public needs someone to blame amongst a government that at present is solely represented by the Left. If the President follows Clinton towards the middle, many liberal Congressmen will lose the political cover of Obama’s name.

By shifting the target that has been firmly placed on his back, come November the firing squad of the American people will be aimed at liberal Democrats as voters wonder what the heck they’ve been doing with those huge majorities up there in Washington. If Obama decides to stay the course, the political pressure that has thus far been released in Virginia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts will be a force again in 2010. Regardless of the path chosen, someone is going to be blamed for being moderate and someone is going to be blamed as liberal.

While Obama attempts to save his presidency by gratuitously distancing himself from the far Left influences of his party, Republicans find themselves in a place of power. Even without majorities, Barack Obama will be compelled to adopt many conservative positions, or at the very least let Republicans into the room. Republicans must use this opportunity to support reforms that relieve some of the pressure faced by America’s youth – namely reform Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security to slow the growth of entitlement spending. There is also no doubt that we must pass a health care reform plan that focuses on maintaining affordable health care for America’s youth as well as lowering insurance costs for families and small businesses.

Obama finds himself between a rock and a hard place. But Republicans cannot rest on the knowledge their foe is suffering, we must pick up the mantle of real reform.

- Brandon Greife, Political Director of the College Republican National Committee

by Lance Thompson

 Barack Obama rode to the presidency on a tidal wave of campaign enthusiasm, famously promising Hope and Change.  Instead, his administration has been governed by Fear and Loathing.  The arguments for Obama’s health care reform bill–ten pages shy of two thousand pages at last count–have all used fear.  Twenty million Americans are without health insurance, we are told, then 32 million, then 47 million.  If we don’t pass this massive, indecipherable bill, insurance will be unaffordable, you will go broke if you get sick, millions will die.  Prescription drug companies, insurance companies, doctors and hospitals who question the grand prophecies of the bill’s proponents are told that if they protest this massive takeover of one sixth of the economy, they will be punished with retributive amendments and strangled by federal regulation.    The cap and trade bill was sold in the same way.  If we don’t hobble our industries with restrictions and regulations, the Earth will grow warm, ice caps will melt, polar bears will starve, coastal cities will be inundated.  Carbon dioxide, a gas all animals exhale, is now a toxic substance that must be regulated as well.  We are all polluters, and we must literally be saved from ourselves.  The stimulus bill passed on fear and panic.  If we don’t pump $800 billion into the economy within a week, the market will crash, millions will lose their jobs, your savings will vanish, your home will be foreclosed, you will be living in an appliance box under the freeway.  The federal government took over banks, auto companies, Wall Street firms, this time applying the voice of terror to the corporate officers and boards of directors.  If you don’t agree to a government takeover, your pay will be cut, your pensions cancelled, your stock made worthless.  Go along with us, or the full weight of the federal government will be used to crush you.  What the Obama administration cannot convince us to fear, they loathe.  The administration loathes our international allies.  The White House significantly recharacterized the “special relationship” we’ve had with Great Britain since World War II to a “special partnership,” putting our English cousins at arm’s length. We observe diplomatic niceties with Iran, Libya and leaders of Hamas while warning the Israelis we may shoot down their jets if they do the world a favor and knock out Ahmadinejad’s nukes.  The French, whose relationship with the United States warmed when Sarkozy took over, are snubbed when Obama is too busy to meet with the French President on a European trip.  Taiwan and Japan look for backup from us against North Korean missile launches, but we scarcely can find the time to lodge a half-hearted protest.  The Obama administration holds our allies in contempt.  The administration loathes a free press.  They like the main stream media, as long as they are Obama-worshiping cheerleaders and not impartial referees.  But if Fox posts a critical story, the administration attacks them, and threatens to cut off access to top officials.  When the Associated Press found last week that the White House had overstated stimulus-created jobs by 5,000, the White House immediately attacked the wire service.   If a conservative commentator lambasts the administration, he is discredited, insulted, and prevented from engaging in his right to enter a bid on a football franchise.  Most of all, the Obama administration loathes America.  They despise its military power, so often used to defend against tyranny and aggression.  They are ashamed of its capitalistic system and economic strength, though both are inspirations for the world.  They dismiss the independent spirit, the individual liberty, and the unlimited opportunity that characterize the American dream.  Instead, they believe in an all-powerful state that redistributes wealth, picks winners and losers in the private sector, and takes over companies and entire industries by fiat.  The Obama team’s loathing for America becomes more evident every day, as more and more administration officials are shown to be involved in corrupt organizations like ACORN, sympathetic to or adherents of communism, or enablers of terrorists foreign and domestic.    The fear weapon also has a limited term.  Just as Al Gore’s shrieking alarms of global warming become less and less credible with passing time and lowering temperatures, so will all the dire predictions the Obama administration uses to run up massive debt, pass nationally destructive legislation, and appoint subversives to positions of power.  The case that only government can save us from catastrophe becomes harder to prove each day, as government itself is clearly shown to be the greatest danger we face.  When Americans become wary of their government, then the Obama administration will find that fear is a two-edged sword, and an irresistible motive for change.  Or so we hope.

If you can make it through the puerile and prurient ravings of David Shuster, sitting in for the normally oh-so-(mentally)-balanced Keith Olbermann, you find this nugget at 5:50 into the 8-minute-long stream of sexual jokes:

Lawrence O'Donnell, "[Medicare and Social Security] are well-working Socialist programs within the American government.  There's absolutely no other description of them."

Nice to hear a liberal admit this instead of trying to pretend these programs are anything but government taking from some to give to others.

GM's Rick Wagoner being fired by President Obama is unpresidented. While Not typically one for slippery-slope arguments, this is noteworthy and concerning. Larry Kudlow discusses this remarkable shift in his article A ‘Truly Breathtaking’ Departure - which is defenitely worth a read...

Remember, as bad as Wagoner’s performance has been over the years, it was the federal government — not shareholders or the board of directors — that threw him under the bus. (By the way, GM’s board is being thrown under that same bus.) And I’m not arguing in favor of Wagoner or his board; they’ve made a zillion mistakes. But I am wondering if we’ve officially entered a new era of government-controlled business. Sen. Bob Corker (R., Tenn.), probably the most knowledgeable man in Congress about the car bailout, and someone who argued months ago in favor of a pre-planned government-sponsored bankruptcy for GM and Chrysler, calls the Wagoner firing “a major power-grab by the White House on the heels of another power-grab from Secretary Geithner, who asked last week for the freedom to decide on his own which companies are ‘systemically’ important to our country and worthy of taxpayer investment, and which are not.” Corker calls this “a marked departure from the past,” “truly breathtaking,” and something that “should send a chill through all Americans who believe in free enterprise.”

GM Involvement Put Government Into Realm of Industrial Policy Maker

December 16^th, marks the 235^th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party.

235 years ago the residents of the American colonies had enough. They could no longer quietly tolerate the oppression of a ruling authority that dictated too much. They were tired of the majesty’s demands upon them and it all came to a head in Boston when the cry of “taxation without representation” resulted in a tea party that was anything but sedate or civil. Back then, American colonists were developing a sense of independence that wanted government out of their lives. They wanted to make their own wages without a ruling authority limiting how much of it they could earn. They wanted the right to have a say in the way their territory was run. This spirit led to the Declaration of Independence and eventually it led to the birth of what the world would came to know as the freest, most innovative and powerful nation in the universe.

Today, we still hold that impressive title but many of us see it being lost.

That greatness is a bi-product of freedom. A freedom that has allowed individuals to flourish well beyond the limited framework that any one established authority could set it’s people on. The diversity of thinking, and goals has created the greatest pool of ideas known to man.

Our freedom and individuality has been the key to our greatness but unlike the people of colonial America, today, Americans are giving up their freedom and relinquishing their individuality to a controlling authority that they want to give greater control to.

Instead of demanding “no taxation without representation” we are accepting of the practice.

If you live in New Jersey but work in New York, in addition to a litany of federal taxes and state taxes, you have to pay a commuter tax. Does paying that tax give New Jerseyans the chance to vote for leaders and representatives in New York? Heck no! But without any representation for them in New York, they are forced to pay taxes to New York.

This scenario is not limited to New York. It exists almost everywhere in the nation but that does not make it right. It is simply an indication of the spirit that has been lost since days of old.

Further indication of this is made in other areas of government.

Instead of that sense of responsibility that the colonists had, today we look towards government for everything. Where the colonists wanted less of the majesty’s governance, we want more of the federal bureaucracy’s governance.

Have a business that isn’t successful? Let the government bail you out.

Want to start a business? Let the government give you a grant to do it.

Lost money on a business deal or investment? Let the government give you the money back.

Let the government do everything and pay for everything, right?

Wrong!

The money the government gives you is not theirs to give away. It is your money, it is our money. It is the tax dollars we let them take from us and the more we refuse to do for ourselves, the more money they take from us.

Economically, that doesn’t sound like a bad thing but in reality it is anything but a good deal.

When the bureaucracy of government does something, they do so in a way that costs much more than any individual or private sector institution can. So by letting the government do more, is allowing more money to be wasted. If you needed a hammer would you buy one for 8 bucks at Home Depot yourself or would you buy the same one from the Pentagon for 108 dollars?

The government needs to get out of our business and Americans need to recapture the independent spirit that founded this country and made us the great nation that we are.

We need to start doing for ourselves what we have come to expect government to do for us. Our reliance on a controlling authority has taken control of our lives away from us. That reliance has created a dependency that has led to the growth of government and that growth has created the need for more money. Money that is raised by increasing the taxes that the people have to pay.

The Boston Tea Party may not have been a cozy afternoon gathering but it was a good thing. It signaled our deep rooted yearning for our God given freedom and believe it or not, freedom is still a good thing.

235 years later Americans are far removed from that fact. Instead of demanding less government and more personal freedom, we ask for more government and more government action. Instead of protesting excessive taxation we just held an election that endorsed more taxes and “spreading the wealth around”.

Maybe we will have to lose some of our freedom in order to realize what all the hullabaloo in Boston was about.

Slowly we already have lost some of our freedoms but apparently not enough. Not enough to select candidates who want to limit government. Not enough to force representatives to stop trying to solve problems by restricting our freedoms and creating more problems.

Just how much freedom we must lose before we begin to miss it, is quite important.

That freedom made us the great power and people that we are and the more of it that we lose, the further from greatness we shall fall.

So today, before charging the spouses gift on that past due credit card, take a moment and reflect on the participants of the Boston Tea Party. A bunch of colonists who saw more value in their freedom than any Christmas gift. A group of soon to be Americans whose desires for a better life led them to renounce the authority of a government for the sake of their freedom and the eventual freedom that we have come to take for granted and whittle away.

A man took a trip out West after a harrowing IRS audit. He stopped in a bar, and after a few drinks, stated to no one in particular, "IRS agents are horses' asses."

One of the locals spoke up on hearing this: "Mister, you'd better watch what you say. You're in horse country."