People, government, and spending money

“The people know how to spend their money better than the government.”  Really?

A Minnesota politician was quoted last month stating some variation of this Libertarian statement, but I can’t find it in a search of the Duluth News Tribune or the Star Tribune.  This mantra keeps popping up when a Republican doesn’t like a particular program or a given tax.  Funny how they rarely apply it to the bailout of the big banks.  And it never applies to any government activity that they support.

Let’s start with the military budget.  Do the people really know how to spend their money on the military better than the government does?  Those who spout my introductory statement seem to want to throw even more money at the military budget.  Regardless of your attitude toward the military, it is in the Constitution that the government should spend money on the military: “provide for the common defense”.  I don’t think the signers meant for the government to take up a collection to support our numerous wars.  Wars are often strongly supported by those who make the claim about the people knowing best how to spend money.

If your house were burglarized, would you want to be responsible for paying for an investigation, a trial, and a prison term for the culprit?  Would you want to have to buy insurance to ensure the thief was brought to justice?  We buy insurance to cover the loss, but we pay taxes for a criminal justice system.  Who runs the criminal justice system?  The government.  Who runs on platforms of “tough on crime”?  Those who are first to put government down.

If your neighbor’s house catches fire, do you want to pay for your private fire department to ensure the flames don’t reach your house?  Government pays for and organizes fire departments that are a phone call away for taxpayers and tax dodgers alike.  Even when local fire departments are all volunteer, they seek support from local taxes and state and federal grants.

We complain about the condition of our streets and the congestion of our freeways.  If we know best how to spend our money, do we want to be responsible for the condition of the streets in front of our houses?  You pay for a nicely paved street in front of your house, and your neighbor leaves the street a muddy mess.  We need government to co-ordinate this so we don’t get our cars stuck in the mud.

We go to restaurants and buy groceries without giving any thought to the cleanliness or condition of the food.  Most restaurateurs and grocers are scrupulous about what they provide, but they aren’t in control of every step of processing the food or even have the time or means to give a thorough quality check.  Government provides some oversight with food inspections, for example, in meat-packing plants.  Many corporations complain about this government “intrusion”, but without it we would have many more food-borne illnesses.  Think about Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle”.  Think about the City of Duluth closing a couple of local restaurants because of numerous health violations.  Would “the people” have all the resources to make these checks?

Corporations complain about the lack of “qualified” employees, but they complain about the taxes to train these “qualified” employees.  Industrialized countries invest heavily in public education supported by taxes.  And they provide a range of subjects that provide skills to learn more about technical subjects and about subjects that make for better informed citizens.  What if education were only supplied by parents, either directly or by paying tuition to schools.  First, few parents know enough about all the subjects to fully education their children.  Second, many parents don’t have the resources to pay tuition for professional teachers.  Think of the literacy rates in countries where parents must pay school fees.  Only the well-off in these countries are sufficiently literate.

Speaking of education, a parallel statement to the one about spending money is that “parents know best what is good education for their children”.  A close example is the sweeping generalization that “Parents know kids don’t need Common Core, so politicians should listen”, Ben Boychuk, republished in Duluth News Tribune, February 1, 2015.

We were involved in helping our children with schoolwork, but we didn’t even pretend to know how to teach them the various subjects they took.  Except for the six years we lived in Europe, we sent them off to the local public schools.  In Europe, we sent them to Anglo-American schools because we expected to be in a given country for only two years.  About the only curriculum shock I had was when our daughter showed us the catalog for American history.  Rather than an overview, she had to select one or two narrower subjects, such as Andrew Jackson.

My own education experiences were more self-directed or teacher-encouraged than parentally involved.  My mother encouraged my brother and me to do well, but I doubt she knew much about what we learned or how we learned it.  For the most part we went to schools in the neighborhood. However, we rarely stayed in the same neighborhood for more than three years.  When we moved after I started high school, I selected an out-of-area high school to be with friends who I had known before.  And as Robert Frost wrote, “that made all the difference”.

It was Mr. Rush, a math teacher who punctuated his remarks with “when you go to Case”.  Six of us in my class went to Case Institute of Technology.  It was Mr. Cameron, the assistant principal who recommended that I apply for a Huntington Fund scholarship, which paid full tuition my first year.

Thank you, government, for spending so much money on me to get to that point.

Also published in the Reader Weekly, 2015-02-05 at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2015/02/05/4777_people_government_and_spending_money.

The fraudulent campaign against "voter fraud"

"The list of acceptable forms [of voter ID} includes a concealed-handgun license but not a state university student ID. The omission suggests it is not voter fraud but voters unfriendly to the GOP that Abbott and other Texas Republicans are trying to thwart."

"The Republican Push to Make It Harder to Vote", Linda Killian, The Atlantic, 2013-08-02

The same article has a statement from the Libertarian Party:

“Republicans claim to be the party of limited government. Now we see what that term really means: when Republicans say limited government, they apparently mean government limited to them and their supporters.”

What too few people realize is that too many who had only themselves to blame for not voting let Republicans win time after time.

As of 2013-08-04, registration in North Carolina was 2,765,857 Democratic and 1,987,750 Republican.  But here is something strange, the vote in 2010 for governor was 1,931,580 for Walter H. Dalton (DEM) and 2,440,707 for Pat McCrory (REP).  Does this mean over 500,000 Democrats voted for McCrory?  Does it mean that over 800,000 Democrats didn't even show up and Republicans picked up over 400,000 votes from non-affiliated voters?  Turnout in 2012 was 68%.  68% of 2,765,857 is 1,880,783.  Given that Romney got 50.39% of the vote in 2012, I lean to the notion that lots and lots of Democrats were disappointed in Obama and just didn't show up.  How to lose elections in one easy lesson!

Another point, maybe too many Democrats voted for President but left much of the rest of the ballot blank - 2,178,391 Obama and 2,270,395 Romney.  Reading these tea leaves is really getting confusing.  Obama received more votes than Dalton, but McCrory received more votes than Romney.  About the only firm conclusion I can come to it is that at least 21% of the registered Democrats did not vote for Obama and at least 30% of the registered Democrats did not vote for Dalton.

Business-friendly is often people-unfriendly

Scott Walker, governor of Wisconsin, is famous for his desk sign: "Open for business".  But somehow, his attitude seems to be more "closed for people".  Wisconsin has already severely curtailed the rights of government workers to organize and bargain.

The explosion at the West fertilizer plant in Texas was definitely people-unfriendly.  It was indirectly caused by a state government that likes to consider itself business-friendly, that is, low taxes and few regulations.

"It's rare for Texas to require insurance for any kind of hazardous activity.  We have very little oversight of hazardous activities and even less regulation."
Randy C. Roberts, one of the plaintiff lawyers, quoted in "Texas plant that blew up carried only $1M policy", Christopher Sherman, Associated Press, Duluth News Tribune and others, 2013-05-04 and 2013-05-05

Because of the explosion, the company will likely file for bankruptcy.  An ounce of prevention is worth millions of failure?

Where does Texas rank in taxes, regulation, and business-friendly indicators?

For taxes, Texas is sixth lowest, with 7.9%; New York is highest with 12.8%. See http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2013/03/02/state-local-tax-burden/1937757/

Surprisingly, Freedom in the 50 States ranks Texas 24th for "regulatory freedom".  Freedom in the 50 States is a web page of the Mercator Institute of George Mason University.  Most of its rankings seem to be predicated on the freedom of businesses to reduce costs to the detriment of people and the freedom of people to make themselves nuisances to other people.

Nanny state or bully state

Have you noticed that many who complain about the U.S. becoming a nanny state seem to want the U.S. to be a bully state?

They complain about seat belt and helmet laws, want to do away with food safety regulations, and feel their rights have been trampled when they are stopped for a traffic violation.

On the other hand, some of these same people want every one to support any war the U.S. engages in, including having others do the actual fighting; they support the death penalty without any consideration of the fairness of the trial; and they want long prison terms for those who do things they don't like.

Just what are conservatives conserving?

Just what are conservatives conserving?
Melvyn D. Magree
Originally published in
Reader Weekly
August 8, 2004

Conservative – another sweeping term that is used as a pejorative by some and as a badge of honor by others.  In many ways both views are wrong, conservatism is not necessarily a bad idea and is not necessarily the best idea.  The problem is that the term conservative is used to describe a grab bag of conflicting ideas and to pretend that all who call themselves conservatives will adhere to all these conflicting ideas.

Both George Will and William Safire have catalogued the factions contained in the Republican party – economic, social, libertarian, idealistic, and cultural (1).  Safire wrote that the economic conservative is against “enforced redistribution of wealth” and for reduced taxes; the social conservative doesn’t like the violence in entertainment and opposes partial-birth abortion; the libertarian “is pro-choice and anti-compulsion”, the idealistic conservative believes it is America’s role to extend freedom, and the cultural conservative prefers traditional to avant-garde and the thoughtful to the emotional.  He offered more complex descriptions but space and copyrights limit my explaining more.  He also offered some stands that “liberals” would agree with – consumer protection from monopolies, right of counsel, and keeping “fundamentalists out of schoolrooms.”

I would make a slightly different catalog: pro-business, religious right, libertarian, and militaristic.  Pro-business is more pro-CEO of larger companies; religious right is enforcing one’s religious views on others; libertarian is as Safire described, and militaristic is projecting power more than defense.  They are all mixed up in a weird dance of support and conflict.  Some very large businesses provide the violent entertainment that the religious right opposes; businesses like military contracts but they don’t want to pay the taxes to pay for the contracts; the religious right supports the militaristic because they believe it is bringing on Armageddon, the battle to end all battles; the libertarians resent actions of the religious right; and the militaristic play on the desires of all to promote “freedom and democracy” even as they run roughshod over “freedom and democracy” here and elsewhere.  Please note: I did not write “military” but “militaristic”.  The members of the military may be behaving honorably  but the “militaristic” have designs beyond “defense”.

The classical definition of conservatism is holding on to what is traditional and making change gradually.  It is hard to find fault with this view, we all have a bit of conservatism in ourselves.  The business owner who doesn’t alter his plans until he has looked thoroughly at what change will bring about.  The religious person who prefers the King James Bible rather than reading the newer translations.  The person who prefers older music or art to the latest trend.  Or the person who eats the same thing for breakfast every day.

However, much of what passes for conservatism is more radicalism – the abrupt change of how things were.  Large businesses destroy smaller competitors or businesses that are in the way of their expansion.  The religious right takes small parts of the bible literally and ignores the larger truths accepted by more traditional churches.  The militaristic ignore traditional international relations in order to act on their own worldview.  It seems to me that what these conservatives are attempting to conserve is their power over others.

One way they attempt to conserve power is to wrap themselves in the flag and proclaim that they are promoters of freedom and democracy.  Freedom is not promoted by telling people how to conduct their private affairs, what they must believe, and what rituals they must perform.  Democracy is not promoted by hiding information in the name of security or by taking checks and balances from voting to promote sales of technology.

One of the characteristics of current conservatism is unquestioning promotion of “approved” beliefs.  Have you noticed that no matter how many news quotes from “conservative” sources, no matter how many letters from “conservatives”, and no matter how many opinion pieces by “conservatives”, if a newspaper or broadcaster has any news or opinions outside of this set of views, it is “liberal”?  Very interesting because many newspapers and broadcasters are owned by “conservative” businesses.

A slogan that captures this mind set is RINO – Republican in name only.  One of the supposed attributes of having only two political parties is that they each will cover a wide range of views – the so-called “big tent” parties.  However, conservatives are increasingly demanding orthodoxy – a strict adherence to a set of beliefs.  You can see this is the writings or hear it on radio shows of conservatives.

Rush Limbaugh is supposedly the master of not allowing anyone to contradict him with a different interpretation of facts.  Ann Coulter hammers away with a repetitious call for orthodoxy.  I’m having a tough time making it through her book Slander because of all the generalizations and selective quotes she makes to show how bad “liberals” are.

This orthodoxy carries over to support for President George W. Bush.  About the only conservative commentators who might question Bush’s actions are William Safire and George Will.  They may point out an inconsistency in something Bush said or did.  Otherwise the President can do no wrong, unless it is not going to the right far enough.

Maybe George Bush doesn’t see himself as the Roman Emperor that Garry Trudeau depicts him as in “Doonesbury” (the empty helmet), but many of Bush’s supporters treat him as if his actions should no more be challenged than those of early Roman Emperors.

Remember, the Roman Republic fell when a general overstepped the limits the Senate set for him.  Could the American Republic fall when a Commander-in-Chief reinterprets the Constitution and oversteps its limits?  If so, conservatives will not have conserved freedom and democracy.

(1) William Safire, “Inside a Republican Brain”, New York Times, July 21, 2004 (Page may be available online only to subscribers)


©2004, 2007, 2013 Melvyn D. Magree

Contrasting counters to radical Islam

The January-February issue of Utne Reader has two articles about wildly contrasting ideas about countering radical Islam.

The first is "Jihad Against Islam, America's right wing is on a witch hunt, and they're tying Muslims to the stake" by Robert Steinback, from Intelligence Report, a publication of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

It is a summary of how a large number of people in the U.S. believe that all Muslims are sympathetic to Al-Qaeda and that "mainstream Islam advocates violence against non-Muslims". Much of this is being fueled by a "coterie of core activists". Max Blumenthal called it "the Great Islamophobic Crusade." Their complaint about the Islamic center near the World Trade Center gained support from Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich. The assumption of these modern Crusaders is that the likes of Osama Bin Laden are interpreting the Koran correctly.

The second is "Bollywood's Soft Power, India's hugely popular films wage a cultural war on extremism" by Shikha Dalmia. The article was original published in The Daily. The Utne article is excerpted from Reason, a libertarian magazine.

Bollywood is "India's flamboyant film industry", and its films are shown all over Asia from Indonesia to Dubai. Dalmia likens the effect of Bollywood to extremism to the effect of rock and roll on the demise of the Soviet Union. It wasn't Reagan that brought down the Berlin Wall but the Beatles, and "Mikhail Gorbachev acknowledged to Paul McCartney that the Beatles paved the way for perestroika and glasnost".

Bollywood's allure is that it is based on Eastern values and that the actors look like the viewers. Some countries like Dubai embrace Bollywood. Others that are trying to control all aspects of life, like Pakistan, "are trying to purge Bollywood from their soil". The harder they try to limit Bollywood, the greater its popularity.

BTW, Bollywood's "three highest-grossing male leads are Muslims".

These two articles illustrate the old saw about catching more flies with honey than vinegar. And you would think that the intellectuals in the anti-Islam jihad would have learned that all the vinegar (and money and lives) that have been sloshed around in the name of defense of the U.S. would have caught on by now to the fallacy of their approach.

Ron Paul for President? Listen carefully

We heard an interview yesterday on NPR with Ron Paul, a libertarian candidate for the Republican Presidential nomination.  He sounded very sincere and reasonable and made some important points contrary to current political "wisdom".  But then I realized his underlying assumption, which makes him a bad choice for governing a complex nation.

He assumes that this country was founded to promote individual liberty.  I think those who wrote the Constitution would disagree.  Their idea was to have the liberty to govern ourselves rather than be governed by a foreign power.  Personal liberties were an afterthought.  Even then, many of these signers went on to curtail "personal liberties".  Like George Washington leading the troops against a tax rebellion, the Whiskey Rebellion.  Like the "Alien and Sedition Act" signed by John Adams.