Reinke Faces Life

Op-Ed Contributor
The Flags of Our Sons
By BILLY SHORE
Published: August 4, 2006
Washington
Billy Shore is the founder of Share Our Strength, an antihunger organization.

**Begin Quote***

WHEN you fly as often as I do you learn to mind your own business as soon as you take your seat. But that wasn’t possible once I saw the military honor guard boarding US Airways’ 1:45 p.m. flight from Boston to Washington earlier this week.

*** AND ***

The mom and dad stepped away from the man in the T-shirt and to another window, still not touching, their movement synchronized by grief. They waited until the marine in charge came back up from the runway to escort them to a government vehicle. I went to my car and drove to work with no ambition for the day other than to be worthy.

***End Quote***

It’s real easy to forget the price being paid by real people. Blame the body politic’s failure in civic virtue by not supervising what our politicians are doing, the stupidity of ALL those politicians, gubamint ineptness, humanity’s passions, and a bunch of other reasons. But bear in mind that the piper will be paid!

http://channel-surfing.blogspot.com/2006/08/debating-open-space-taxes.html

I think there are three reasons for a voluntary solution: Ethically, Effectiveness, and Efficiency

Let’s handle a few specific items.

>It is an interesting approach,

I would have appreciated if you had called it an “ethical” or “moral” or “principled” approach.

>I couldn’t disagree more with his reasoning.

I didn’t think one could disagree with the logic. Premises, assumptions, or values are open to disagreement. The logical steps should be obvious to all.

>Basically, he views the taxman, to use George Harrison’s word, as a thief

Let’s start from the logical premise that we are entitled to keep what whatever earn by the sweat of our brow. Seems like a simple principle. Whatever we decide to do is our business. Seems simple.

>government in general as an imposition.

Government takes our money. Sometimes that taking is not voluntary. That’s immoral. Seems simple.

>This assumes that all potential land buyers are equal.

Huh. If I have a million and the State has a million we are not equal? All buyers ARE equal. I don’t understand that.

>Developers have deep pockets

Which they have accumulated by satisfying the needs of other people. They have accumulated either by saving, by borrowing, or by partnering with like minded individuals, to amass the vast amounts of capital necessary to swing these deals.

>citizens, even large groups of citizens, do not have the kind of cash

Do you think that 100,000 people pledging $1,000 would NOT be equal to an evil developer? A private group working towards a common goal could raise funds in numerous ways. A farmer might even cut them a special deal that the government can’t get.

>that would be needed to target and then outbid developers for land.

If you believe that economics is a science. It tells us that markets are the ultimate arbiter for the assignment of scarce resources. By paying more for something, the person with the greatest need for an item “out bid” those to whom it is not as important. However, especially when one is talking about voluntary project, things happen differently.

> That’s why citizens turn to their local, county and state governments to intercede.

You speak as if the citizens are a homogeneous group. While someone may like the idea of open space, maybe they have other priorities for their money. Some may not care about open space. But, some citizens come to government to COERCE other people to chip in. I’d repeat the robbery example, but you found that unconvincing. Jefferson said that government exists with the consent of the governed. What happens when one doesn’t consent? You vote with your feet?

>As a general rule, I distrust large accumulations of power.

Good idea. What bigger accumulation of power is there but the government?

>But there is a difference between elected government and a corporation.

Yup, a corporation has to convince you voluntarily. The government just orders you about. Don’t like WalMart for any reason, just don’t shop there. Don’t like the South Brunswick library, try not to pay that portion of your taxes. See the difference? Government is the ONLY organization that can provide goods or services or even just make demands that you MUST pay for whether or not you want or use the services. Big difference.

>The government — at least in the United States — derives its power from the citizens.

I think that is an fairy tale or an illusion. Even during the Revolutionary War, at best, a third of the population supported the Revolution. One third opposed and one third was apathetic. Pre WW1, Wilson was elected on the promise to keep us out of war which he promptly got us in. Pre WW2, there was about half the population that want to be isolationist. Voting stats show that more than half of the people, who register, don’t vote. We don’t know how many people don’t even register to vote. The politicians like to manipulate us but there is a reason that the school elections are in April and there’s a ton of if and maybe that make the vote a joke. So there is no consent. The politicians figure out what they can get away with. Ross Perot will be the last third party candidate to get on the ballot. He got too close. Look at how they restrict ballot access.

>Corporations do not.

No, they derive their power from their investors and their customers. The evil WalMart can’t make me shop in their store or buy their stock.

>That makes government the equalizer, the leveller, protecting individuals against corporate abuses.

Oh, what a joke. Who protects me from the government? At least, in the in the feudal days, I could seek protection from the Church against the monarch. And, which corporate abuse is it protecting me from? Government creates regulated monopolies and then “protects” me from abuse?

>elected officials view themselves as accountable not to voters, but to campaign contributors

Hey there’s a reason that individuals spend millions to get a job that pays thousands.

>it is the power of local, county and state governments to raise money

They don’t RAISE money. You make it sound like they are running a telethon like Jerry Lewis. They use TAX money.

> and then spend it that offsets the ability of developers to dig into their own deep pockets.

Oh yeah, they are just the pure of heart knights battling the evil developers. Did you ever think about the incestuous relationships between the government, developers, landowners, and lawyers? Don’t over look the power of taxing authority, zoning, and regulations to increase the “cost” of land. It’s a giant shell game and it is NOT being run for our benefit.

>This allows citizens to compete for undeveloped land

Yeah, and this system is just so so successful.

> and — maybe, just maybe — keep some of it green and untouched.

That may or may not be the best result.

>
>
>

Now that the detailed responses are covered, let’s take the high points.

> Ethics

Theft is immoral. Even if we stipulate that the majority “consents”, it’s still immoral. If EVERY one agreed, then we would NOT need to use the power of government to FORCE the unwilling and reluctant to pay for our pet ideas.

> Effectiveness

Government doesn’t manage open space well. It is inept at best and incompetent at worst. A government bureaucrat doesn’t have a vested interest in doing ANY task well.

> Efficiency

My best argument that sending money to South Brunswick Township, Middlesex County, Trenton, or Washington DC is the most inefficient way to amass the capital necessary to preserve open space.

Here’s a crude example. Let’s assume for argument’s sake that open space is my TOP priority. Ever hear of “agency costs”?

Let’s assume that I can get 20,000 other people to chip in a grand each. That’s twenty million bucks. And we form a 501c with some rules and buy a piece of open space. I count the pennies and other donors check up on me. We twist some lawyers, accountants , and bankers to “volunteer” to be on the committee. Administrative expenses are very low. People are rewarded with applause not money.

Now, let’s assume South Brunswick “chairs” the same activity. They have to hire some help, get some advisers, bring in a lawyer, have some accountants. So out of my grand, let’s say they are very efficient and they spend 10% for “handling”.

Now, let’s bring in Middlesex County, same activity, but their costs eat up 20%.

Now, let’s bring in Trenton, same activity, but their costs eat up 30%.

Now, let’s bring in Washington DC, same activity, but their cost eat up 40%.

(These guesstimates are conservative swags.)

So, when you use gubamint taxes, the agency fees, (i.e., the cost of having an agent involved), eat up a huge amount.

Take the same thousand. Let’s have all five actors kick in equal shares. I toss my two c notes into the tin cup. SBTWP tosses in my 200 minus 20 for handling. Middlesex County ponies up net 160. Trenton net 140. And DC net 120. So instead of a thousand, we only have 800. That’s agency cost.

(Realistically, the Trenton number is probably 60% and the DC number is probably close to 80%. But those are details.)

You can reverse the process to see how much each level has to tax to get the same amount. To have 200 to chip in, SBTWP has to tax me 200=.9 * X or 2000/9=>222.22 … You get the idea.

Even worse, is when instead of directly chipping in, one level sends it to the next level incurring more overhead to eventually get it in. Think of a Federal Grant to Trenton, who turns around and gives a grant to Middlesex County, who turns around and gives a grant to SB Township, and SB TWP chips in. Arggggh, guess what the agency cost in that mess is?

I guess that about wraps it up. Government open space is unethical, ineffective, and efficient!
Remember my gripe about the SB Library and the comparison to the SM Movie. The movie didn’t make it and became a CVS. The library was mismanged and they got more of my money and an expansion! That’s the difference between gubamint and the marketplace.

IMHO

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig7/taddeo1.html

Socialist Water
by John Taddeo
***Begin Quote***

According to the City of Cleveland’s Division of Water, a man by the name of Benhu Johnson started a water delivery company in 1810. He would deliver 2 barrels of Lake Erie water to your home for 25 cents. They go on to say that others started water companies but none were able to handle the development of a water works for an entire city. Therefore, government had to step in and fix the problem. This is the classic “market failure” argument that is used to justify government action. Now since government maintains a monopoly on water distribution, we will never see what alternatives the free market can deliver. However, we can compare it to another utility that is much less regulated: cellular telephone service.
***End Quote***

Ahh, yes, the old market failure argument. Interesting that there is never a “government failure” argument.

Take schools for instance. The gubamint runs the schools lock, stock, and barrel. The output is defective. Children come out dumb as stumps at best or with heads filled dumb ideas (i.e., the gubamint knows best; global warming is a fact; business is bad; and how to put on a condom). Yet we never discuss alternatives to the gubamint skool failure. Why is that?

http://sbeva.blogspot.com/2006/07/do-you-want-to-help.html

***Begin Quote***

If you are interesting in helping preserve the Van Dyke Farm, here is a list of important people who need to hear of your support for this important project.
<List of Politicians>

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If you are creating a private fund with no government funding, then I’d love to help. Voluntary solutions are best. If this is more government open space where we are going to take tax dollars extracted at gun point from unhappy taxpayers, count me among the opposition. The hallmark of a bad idea is if you can’t convince people to support it voluntarily. “Tin cupping” or “passing the hat” good; taxes bad.

Yes, yes, I KNOW Open Space is GOOD for me. Yes, Mommy Government, I’ll take the medicine that you think I need. And, of course, Father State, you’ll take all the money you need, or give me a good whuppin, and I’ll shut up ’cause you’ll give me what I need to teach me some respect for my betters. :-(

http://www.acton.org/ppolicy/comment/article.php?article=336

Acton Commentary
– bringing moral reflection to bear upon current issues
August 2, 2006
The ‘Moral’ Minimum Wage Increase Hurts Teens and Minorities
by Anthony B. Bradley, Research Fellow

**Begin Quote***

Religious activists are stumping for a minimum wage increase as a way to help the disadvantaged. But do they understand the economics? Anthony Bradley observes that government-mandated pay hikes “actually hurt teens and low-skilled minorities in the long run because minimum wage jobs are usually entry-level positions filled by employees with limited work experience and few job skills.”
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I’ve ranted about this before. The Republican Statists are just trying anything to avoid being defeated in November. So they try and make themselves more like the Democratic Statist. Guess the figure you won’t be able to tell them apart.

The article misses the impact on the politican’s salaries, the gubamint workers’ salaries, the union members’ salaries, and such related since they will all go up in lock step with the minimum wage. Then when all those added costs come due, there will have to be additional taxes to close the budget gaps that they created. Or, if it’s the federal gubamint’s cost we’re talking about they will just raise the inflation tax we pay to cover the gap.

They know we are too dumb to realize it.

Network World’s Messaging Newsletter, 08/01/06
Why is the healthcare industry slow in adopting messaging technologies?
By Michael Osterman

>We all know that the healthcare industry has been fairly slow to adopt a variety of communications

I would call it glacial, or possibly even negative progress if such is possible.

I blame the technology industry primarily. Yes, you can pick your jaw off the table and let me explain.

No one has a good easy public key encryption system. I look for a “solution” with identification, authentication, authorization, accountability, confidentiality, non-repudiation, continuous protection, and recovery across the problem spaces of Users, Systems (Platforms and Operating Systems), Applications, DataBases, and Networks. Technology Industry has know the problem space for at least four decades. I remember being lectured about it when the personal computers were first put into use! This is all our faults. I could go on for hours.

PKI and GSSAPI are, were out there. Encryption engines abound. Yet, I can’t sit down and email, fax, call, or im my doctor. AND, the doc can’t communicate with me.

Next in line for derision is the gubamint and it’s asinine attempt to control every aspect of our lives worthy of a Communist country. They have ruined health care with several things: flawed policies (e.g., WW2 wage and price controls that created “company benefits”, disconnecting the payer from the consequences of their decisions, and many many others), regulations (e.g., FDA), licensing (e.g., Doctors, nurses, hospitals), Medicare / Medicaid rules ‘n’ reimbursements, the War on Drugs, and taxes. The inet has demonstrated what we knew in the late 1800s. No centralized control allows everyone to make decisions efficiently. The marketplace gives everyone the freedom for all participants to make the best decision for them.

Let’s look at one aspect of the current system that kills people, runs up costs, and is terribly inefficient. Paper prescriptions make me laugh. First, you have to payoff the doctor. Then you take this government order (It’s partially printed on the government’s official pad with the doc scribbling the important part in sanskrit.) The pharmacy checks with your insurance company to see if you can have it. That’s if the FDA has “approved” its use. Arghhh.

I have a solution. The doc tells me what I need and I go buy it. Period. I pay the doc for his advice like I do the tax accountant, the dentist, the vet, the lawn guy. I buy the products I need in a Home Depot or Wall Mart. No government, no rules, no expensive infrastructure. What do you bet that Wall Mart could have it all done with one trip to the store like eyeglasses, mobile phones, McDOnalds, and a bank if they’d let them.

So the problem is that industry did NOT solve the KNOWN general problem of which healthcare is a subset. Then the gubamint continues policies that guarantee the problem is unsolvable. IMHO

http://channel-surfing.blogspot.com/2006/07/reform-minded.html#comments

> Reform pension and health benefits received by government workers

Already covered, eliminate the pension and health benefits. Workers can save on their own and buy the benefits they want on their own.

>Encourage shared services and consolidation among towns and school districts

Change the state Constitution to put the gubamint out of the education business. I wrote a 40 year transition plan that would do it in baby steps to minimize the human impact. It took decades to get into this mess; it’ll take decades to emerge out of it. BUT, let’s change the paradigm!

>through a $250 million fund created with new sales tax revenue.

More money down the rat hole.

>Reduce debt to free up funds to use for property tax relief.

Cut State, County, and Municipal government 10%. The guv did on Wall Street. It was a common exercise. Zero base budgeting. Exercises in spending reduction. Let’s put gubamint on a diet.

>by selling, leasing and naming state assets.

Oh I see, we paid for these assets. So sell and lease back so we can pay for them again! Dumb.

# a local sales tax.

NO NEW TAXES! NO TAX INCREASES! Period, exclamation point, Carved in stone.

# Create a state comptroller to audit all departments, agencies and programs.

Another gubamint bureaucrat! Nope. Let have external private auditors who get paid based on the fraud, mismanagement, waste, or stupidity they can find an eliminate. Let them “bid in” for the right to look and we get our money up front!

# Move school budget votes to November.

Why bother … …  unless defeating a school budget means something!

# Cap property tax increases at 4 percent.

Wrong. This guarantees that taxes will increase at 4%! I’d suggest that property tax decrease of 4% of year instead!

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rozeff/rozeff85.html

***Begin Quote***

Compare a corporation with many shareholders whose stock trades on an exchange. A shareholder in such a company can exit ownership at any time by selling the stock; and therefore all the owners hold the stock willingly and unanimously at a given time. A citizen of a country has no comparable low-cost means of terminating whatever arrangement he has with the state. Shareholders are not stuck with their company, but citizens are stuck with their state. Furthermore, voters disagree all the time about what they want the state to do. At any given time a large part of the electorate disagrees with what the state is doing. There is no voter unanimity, and if a voter disagrees he can’t do much about it. Shareholders for the most part are in agreement, virtually unanimous agreement, about one thing. They want their agents to select investments that raise the price of the stock. If they do not like what managers are doing, they can do something about it. They can part company by selling the stock.

***End Quote***

So here we have an organization, the gubamint, that presumes consent of the governed, but we have no way to “un consent”. Interesting!

http://www.tjc.com/38states/

***Begin Quote***

The map reducing the U.S. to 38 States is the creation of C. Etzel Pearcy, geography professor at California State University, Los Angeles. The new boundaries totally erase the 104 lines currently separating the 50 States. Each State’s new name, chosen with the help of a poll of geography students, represents a physical or cultural aspect of the new territory. For example, Cascade (named after a major mountain range in Washington and Oregon), Cochise (named after the Apache Indian chief of Arizona), and Alamo (named after the mission in San Antonio, Tex.).

***End Quote***

But, I still think the Free State Project http://www.freestateproject.org is a better idea. A plague on all the politicians, bureaucrats, and the parasites.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_07/009254.php

***Begin Quote***

RAGS TO RICHES….The latest from the GOP:

Republican leaders are willing to allow the first minimum wage increase in a decade but only if it’s coupled with a cut in inheritance taxes on multimillion-dollar estates, congressional aides said Friday.

Clearly, the Republican Party is the party of common sense. After all, if you give a few hundred dollars a month to the poorest of the working poor, it’s only fair that you also give several million dollars to the richest of the idle rich.

Right?

***End Quote***

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

(1) Raising the minimum wage is a joke. All it does is put poor people out of work and give raises to the politicians and the politically connected unions. If 7$/hour is good, why not 10$/hour? Why not a 100$/hour? Argh.

(2) Estate taxes are theft. And the graves being robbed don’t vote.

How stupid are we?