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Monday

7

May 2012

Overgovernment: Cookie Police Edition

Written by , Posted in Big Government, Health Care, Welfare & Entitlements, The Nanny State & A Regulated Society

The nannies in Massachusetts are on a sugar-hating kick, picking on that most popular of targets in recent years – so-called junk food:

Bake sales, the calorie-laden standby cash-strapped classrooms, PTAs and booster clubs rely on, will be outlawed from public schools as of Aug. 1 as part of new no-nonsense nutrition standards, forcing fundraisers back to the blackboard to cook up alternative ways to raise money for kids.

At a minimum, the nosh clampdown targets so-called “competitive” foods — those sold or served during the school day in hallways, cafeterias, stores and vending machines outside the regular lunch program, including bake sales, holiday parties and treats dished out to reward academic achievement. But state officials are pushing schools to expand the ban 24/7 to include evening, weekend and community events such as banquets, door-to-door candy sales and football games.

The heavy-handed, paternalistic rules are bad enough, but what really irks me is this mentality:

State Sen. Susan Fargo (D-Lincoln), chairwoman of the Joint Committee on Public Health, said the problem of overweight children has reached “crisis” proportions.

“If we didn’t have so many kids that were obese, we could have let things go,” Fargo said.

“But,” she added, “this is a major public health problem and these kids deserve a chance at a good, long healthy life.”

No, obesity is not a “public health problem,” it is an individual health problem. Public health problems exist when one persons sickness can make me sick or unhealthy. But one person being fat has no impact whatsoever on whether or not I am fat.

There is a related problem where I am expected to bear the cost of another’s health choices, but that doesn’t make it a public health issue, that just makes inherently unfair regulations requiring some to subsidize the healthcare of others, even when the cause of the need for care is based on choice.

What State Sen. Susan Fargo (D-Lincoln), chairwoman of the Joint Committee on Public Health, is doing is using one set of boneheaded policies put in place by people like State Sen. Susan Fargo (D-Lincoln), chairwoman of the Joint Committee on Public Health, in order to justify a further collectivized society, and more power in the hands of people like State Sen. Susan Fargo (D-Lincoln), chairwoman of the Joint Committee on Public Health. Funny how that works.

Friday

4

May 2012

Nancy Pelosi Blows the Whistle

Written by , Posted in Liberty & Limited Government

The dog whistle, that is:

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi wants President Barack Obama to lay off the weed.

Reacting to an ongoing crackdown on medical marijuana facilities in California, Pelosi said in a Wednesday statement, “I have strong concerns about the recent actions by the federal government that threaten the safe access of medicinal marijuana to alleviate the suffering of patients in California.”

The California Democrat said that medical marijuana is “both a medical and a states’ rights issue.

States’ rights? States’ rights? Doesn’t Nancy know that invoking states’ rights is dog-whistle racism? Or so the left tells us anytime someone on the right points at that, no, the federal government cannot just do whatever it wants and, yes, states do have sovereignty over some areas in which the federal government has no authority.

Nancy Pelosi is actually right for once; the federal government is grossly overstepping its bounds in pursuit of the “drug war.” And I should point out that “states’ rights” is actually a misnomer, as only people have rights. States have sovereignty. Regardless, since she is using the language of the racist small-government types, I am eagerly awaiting* the usual leftist uproar directed at the former Speaker.

*And by eagerly awaiting, I mean not holding my breath.

Tuesday

1

May 2012

Everyone is Wrong on Student Loans

Written by , Posted in Big Government, Education, Free Markets

In an otherwise decent speech where he called out the Democrats’ political gamesmanship, Speaker Boehner said that, “Nobody wants to see student loan interest rates go up.” It’s certainly true that the entire political class is united on continuing to subsidize borrowing for higher education, but last time I checked there are more people in existence than just politicians. I, for one, want to see student loan interest rates go up.

I have nothing against student loans, the students who borrow them, or the general idea of borrowing money to receive an education that is expected to provide greater future value than the costs. But the reality is that many today are borrowing more than they can afford and which isn’t justified by the value added.

The federal government is the biggest supplier of student loans, accounting for 90% of all borrowing in the 2010-2011 academic year. Because they are heavily subsidized, student loan interest rates are lower than would otherwise be offered by the market, which means students are taking out more and bigger loans than they otherwise would. This is the intended effect of the policy, but is it a good one?

One result has been skyrocketing tuition costs, as colleges simply raise tuition rates to capture any increases in government financial aid. As the below chart from Dr. Mark J. Perry shows, college tuition growth has considerably outpaced medical care and home prices over the last 30 years.

While the costs of obtaining a degree have ballooned, their value has plummeted. As degrees become increasingly common, their usefulness in signaling diminishes. Degree-holders just aren’t as special anymore, and having a degree no longer conveys the same kind of information to potential employers as it used to.

Meanwhile, the actual educational benefit of obtaining a degree are also decreasing. Colleges are increasingly failing to teach the most basic knowledge and skills, opting instead for obscure courses focusing on identity politics and which have little to no practical value in the real world.

All the trends point toward a massive higher-ed bubble, and with an ever growing number not paying off their loans it’s likely to blow up in taxpayers’ faces.

What exactly the necessary steps are to reverse these trends, I do not know. Part of it is political, and involves removing federal distortions from the lending market. But part of it is cultural. Many see college attendance not as a time to take in as much knowledge as possible, but a rite of social passage that requires doing in excess all manner of social activities. It would be a good start if society – whether it be parents, teachers, politicians or popular culture – stops mindlessly repeating the trope that everyone must go to college. Universities were not designed for everyone, and not everyone will benefit meaningfully from the experience. Some would be better off in trade school, others in the work force gaining an extra 4 years of experience on their peers, while some are simply ready to strike out on their own. But whatever it takes to resolve the issue, this is a major problem that is only going to become increasingly salient for both society and the political class.

Friday

27

April 2012

Stabbing Rampage Halted By Gun Owner

Written by , Posted in Gun Rights

While nannies like Michael Bloomberg continue to wage war on the Second Amendment, guns are saving lives (Hat-tip: All American Blogger):

A man stabbed two people at the Smith’s Marketplace grocery store in downtown Salt Lake City before being subdued by a bystander.

…According to a witness, it appears one man was stabbed in the side of the head and another was stabbed in the stomach. The exact condition of the victims is unknown, but police believe the injuries are very serious and possibly critical.

…Police say a bystander with a concealed carry permit witnessed the attack and stepped in to keep it from escalating.

“(The bystander) was suspicious of what might be going on, and when he saw the stabbing, he just drew his pistol and challenged the individual,” which caused the alleged attacker to lie down on the ground, said Salt Lake City police officer Brian Purvis.

How many more victims there would have been if not for this gun-toting bystander, we can never know. But one thing I know for certain is that you won’t see this story get any significant play at the national level, as it doesn’t fit the narrative.

Saturday

21

April 2012

Freedom and Social Engineering Don’t Mix

Written by , Posted in Big Government, Liberty & Limited Government

Slate reports on Sweden’s radical move toward gender-neutrality:

Many are pushing for the Nordic nation to be not simply gender-equal but gender-neutral. The idea is that the government and society should tolerate no distinctions at all between the sexes. This means on the narrow level that society should show sensitivity to people who don’t identify themselves as either male or female, including allowing any type of couple to marry. But that’s the least radical part of the project. What many gender-neutral activists are after is a society that entirely erases traditional gender roles and stereotypes at even the most mundane levels.

…Earlier this month, the movement for gender neutrality reached a milestone: Just days after International Women’s Day a new pronoun, hen (pronounced like the bird in English), was added to the online version of the country’s National Encyclopedia. The entry defines hen as a “proposed gender-neutral personal pronoun instead of he [han in Swedish] and she [hon].”The National Encyclopedia announcement came amid a heated debate about gender neutrality that has been raging in Swedish newspaper columns and TV studios and on parenting blogs and feminist websites…

Hen was first mentioned by Swedish linguists in the mid-1960s, and then in 1994 the late linguist Hans Karlgren suggested adding hen as a new personal pronoun, mostly for practical reasons. Karlgren was trying to avoid the awkward he/she that gums up writing, and invent a single word “that enables us to speak of a person without specifying their gender. He argued that it could improve the Swedish language and make it more nuanced.

Today’s hen champions, however, have a distinctly political agenda…

The Swedish school system has wholeheartedly, and probably too quickly and eagerly, embraced this new agenda. Last fall, 200 teachers attended a major government-sponsored conference discussing how to avoid “traditional gender patterns” in schools. At Egalia, one model Stockholm preschool, everything from the decoration to the books and toys are carefully selected to promote a gender-equal perspective and to avoid traditional presentations of gender and parenting roles…

Ironically, in the effort to free Swedish children from so-called normative behavior, gender-neutral proponents are also subjecting them to a whole set of new rules and new norms as certain forms of play become taboo, language becomes regulated, and children’s interactions and attitudes are closely observed by teachers. One Swedish school got rid of its toy cars because boys “gender-coded” them and ascribed the cars higher status than other toys. Another preschool removed “free playtime” from its schedule because, as a pedagogue at the school put it, when children play freely “stereotypical gender patterns are born and cemented. In free play there is hierarchy, exclusion, and the seed to bullying.” And so every detail of children’s interactions gets micromanaged by concerned adults, who end up problematizing minute aspects of children’s lives, from how they form friendships to what games they play and what songs they sing.

As a philosophical conservative I place value on tradition, or the social roles and institutions that have developed over time. I am not resistant to change per se, but think it should be largely endogenous and happen gradually. I also see political systems, which necessarily operate on the principle of force, as existing outside civil society, which is governed by voluntary interaction. Therefore, I naturally resist the exogenous nature of social change as directed by government.

But I have more than just philosophical objections to this sort of meddling. There are also very practical concerns. Namely, it necessarily means a loss of freedom.

In order to force change on society, government must discourage the old behavior while also encouraging the new. The more entrenched the behavior, and I can’t really think of anything with a deeper foundation in human society than gender roles, the more discouragement tends to become suppression and encouragement force. The last paragraph above provides examples.

Social engineering necessarily diminishes freedom. The greater the change desired, the greater the loss of freedom required. For that reason alone, Sweden’s experiment is one I would consider dangerous and unwelcome.

Friday

13

April 2012

How Much of Your Money Does it Take to "Translocate" a Bush?

Written by , Posted in Big Government, Waste & Government Reform

I wrote recently about a situation that demonstrated how much more inefficient and wasteful is government compared to private action. Another story, this time out of big government mecca San Francisco, provides further evidence of government waste:

The government spent at least $205,075 in 2010 to “translocate” a single bush in San Francisco that stood in the path of a $1.045-billion highway-renovation project that was partially funded by the economic stimulus legislation President Barack Obama signed in 2009.

…“The translocation of the Arctostaphylos franciscana plant to an active native plant management area of the Presidio was accomplished, apparently successfully and according to plan, on January 23, 2010,” the Interior Department reported.

The bush—a Franciscan manzanita—was a specimen of a commercially cultivated species of shrub that can be purchased from nurseries for as little as $15.98 per plant. The particular plant in question, however, was discovered in the midst of the City of San Francisco, in the median strip of a highway, and was deemed to be the last example of the species in the “wild.”

Prior to the discovery of this “wild” Franciscan manzanita, the plant had been considered extinct for as long as 62 years–extinct, that is, outside of people’s yards and botanical gardens.

Before that, the bush had grown in the “wild” in two cemeteries in San Francisco’s Richmond District as well as on Mount Davidson, a peak in the middle of San Francisco. The Department of Interior said that there had also been “unconfirmed sightings” of the shrub in the city’s Haight-Ashbury District—an area that became famous in the late 1960s as the epicenter of the psychedelic hippie movement.

I feel like the country has gone completely mad. Step back and think about this for a moment. Our government is running trillion dollars deficits, we are piling unsustainable debts upon future generations, and are barreling down a path that without a sharp correction will eventually see us turn into Greece. Yet we’re willing to spend $200,000 not just to move a freaking plant, but to move one that isn’t actually rare in any real sense of the word, and even if it was, so what? It’s a plant, people! Are we insane, or am I?

First of all, what in the world were they doing to move the plant that could possibly cost that much? Second, it is ludicrous to make a distinction between “wild” plants and…what, domesticated plants? Plants held in captivity?

A plant is a plant is a plant. Whether the initial seed wafted unobstructed on the wind until reaching its resting place and sprouting, or was consciously planted by a human being makes no material difference regarding the nature of the plant. The plant does not experience life differently depending on whether it is “wild” or not.

Finally, who says “translocate”? Such self-aggrandizing bureaucratese is an indication that the author understands what the government is doing is both shamefully unimportant and worth neither their time nor the taxpayers money. The bureaucrats involved are merely trying to obscure the issue and deceive the people and, perhaps even more so, themselves. Nobody likes to feel like what they do is unimportant, so just imagine how it must feel to write a report about spending boatloads of taxpayer dollars to move a shrub. Of course, that’s nothing like how the rest of us are forced to feel in paying for such nonsense.

Tuesday

10

April 2012

Overgovernment: No Bags For You Edition

Written by , Posted in General/Misc.

Sometimes I think nannies just put things on a giant roulette wheel and spin to find the next thing to ban. For the enviro-nuts in Los Angeles, the new(ish) evil is disposable bags.

You know that horrible feeling when you get to the grocery store ready to use reusable bags and realize you forgot them at home? Well, pretty soon forgetting them won’t be an option for customers at 7,500 supermarkets throughout California.

According to the LA Times, the  Los Angeles City Council’s Energy and Environment Committee approved a ban on plastic and paper bags at grocery stores last Wednesday, saying it would make consumers more likely to use reusable bags. It has not yet been voted by the City Council as a whole.

My own little bastion of tyranny, otherwise known as Montgomery County, Maryland, recently decided to slap a pointless and obnoxious $.05 tax on bags. So I have to actually tell the cashier at Subway that yes, I want a freaking bag; I’m not going to just carry around a bagless sandwich like a hobo.

What has the world come to?

Saturday

7

April 2012

Friday

6

April 2012

Department of Labor Propaganda

Written by , Posted in Liberty & Limited Government

I once again find myself forced to draw parallels between the current administration and dictatorial regimes. The inundation of propaganda intended to invade the very thoughts of  the people is a necessary component for any dictator or strongman regime.  And apparently the same is needed in a democratic society when you run not on the soundness of ideas, but instead on empty sloganeering and the iconography of a charismatic leader:

Government-financed political propaganda at the Department of Labor is causing discomfort for some employees.

Signs posted in at least 20 DOL elevators depict Secretary Hilda Solis carrying a bullhorn and rallying alongside the Rev. Al Sharpton, the Free Beacon has learned. Next to the pictures is a quote from Solis that reads in part: “We all march in our own way.”

“Whether we take to the streets or simply do our work with integrity and commitment here at the U.S. Department of Labor… we are all marching toward the same goals: safe workplaces, fair pay, dignity of the job, secure retirement, and opportunities to make a better life,” the poster states.

It concludes with a call to action.

“I believe in the power of collective action. We all play a role. We all march.”

I believe in the power of individual liberty and free thought, two things which are anathema to the collectivized state.

Wednesday

4

April 2012

Private Does It Better

Written by , Posted in Big Government, Liberty & Limited Government, Waste & Government Reform

This is apparently an old story from a couple years ago, but I just came across it. First, the story:

Their livelihood was being threatened, and they were tired of waiting for government help, so business owners and residents on Hawaii’s Kauai island pulled together and completed a $4 million repair job to a state park — for free.

…Polihale State Park has been closed since severe flooding destroyed an access road to the park and damaged facilities in December.

The state Department of Land and Natural Resources had estimated that the damage would cost $4 million to fix, money the agency doesn’t have, according to a news release from department Chairwoman Laura Thielen.

…And if the repairs weren’t made, some business owners faced the possibility of having to shut down.

…So Slack, other business owners and residents made the decision not to sit on their hands and wait for state money that many expected would never come. Instead, they pulled together machinery and manpower and hit the ground running March 23.

And after only eight days, all of the repairs were done, Pleas said. It was a shockingly quick fix to a problem that may have taken much longer if they waited for state money to funnel in.

It would be easy to take a story like this and generalize about the uselessness of government, but I don’t want to overstate the lesson here. This is a very particularly case that is not likely to be applicable in many other situations. Specifically, the residents had a very strong financial interest in restoring access to the park, enough to overcome the collective action and free-rider problems.

But what strikes me as really interesting is the stark contrast between the cost estimates by the government and the amount of work it actually took from the volunteers. The government needed $4 million dollars to do what a handful of volunteers got done in eight days. That is a shocking amount of waste and incompetence, and this sort of thing probably goes unnoticed every single day. Only this time, because folks got together to act, we were able to see clearly just how incompetent government is.

If ever there was proof for the inefficiency and waste inherent in government, this is it.  The lesson here is not that government is necessarily unneeded, but rather that anything which can be accomplished by some other means than government, should be.

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About Me

profileI serve as Vice President of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity, a non-profit think tank dedicated to preserving tax competition and free markets. This site features my personal views, which are not reflective of CF&P.

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