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Citizens Against Government Waste: Don’t Let Congress Shoot Down 53 Joint Strike Fighters for the Price of One Engine!

Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it.

— Milton Friedman I think all too often we forget that people in power are ambitious and the person who reins in power to do some good now also reins in power for so many others to do so much bad tomorrow.

Sheldon Richman worte the following in Obama’s Uninformed Optimism on the Future of Freedom Foundation web site.

There is more to fear than fear itself. There’s government and its dim-witted attempts to fix the economy.

The article articulates a pet peeve of mine. Lawyers, like President Obama, do not have the training needed to make economic decisions about a whole country. Heck, economists do not have the training to make economics decisions for a whole nation. IMO, we need a system of government which strips government of the power to affect the economy. Swearing a person into office does not magically imbue that person with a means to predict the future or to understand an economy. Relying on any government official to “fix” the economy reveals at least one major flaw in our system of governance. As long as we rely on a flawed system of government we do ourselves and our descendants a huge disservice.

It seems counter-intuitive to some folks that raising tax rates might lower tax revenues. Here’s a story about a story about oil companies leaving a high tax nation for a low tax nation. This is how we chase tax revenue from our country by raising taxes.

IMAGINE you are seated at a table with two bowls in front of you. One contains peanuts, the other tablets of the illegal recreational drug MDMA (ecstasy). A stranger joins you, and you have to decide whether to give them a peanut or a pill. Which is safest?

Answer. It is common to hold one’s own beliefs to a different test than the beliefs we are confronting. I have been guilty of that. I will be guilty of it again. I only hope that I’m not guilty of it now. Where do your beliefs fit? Can they withstand the scrutiny you apply to new beliefs? THink about it.

I have a book from the seventies somewhere around here called The Disaster Lobby. It’s out of print, but you can probably find it on half.com or at a used book seller. It is an important book because it tells the history of many of the disasters that were going to happen last century which never came about. Here’s a little video from The Heartland Institute about our favorite Bogeyman, Global Warming. If you are Global Warming advocate or even a skeptic, why not skip over to Heartland to see the skeptic side of the argument? It won’t kill you to look.

Here’s an excerpt of a dialog I am having with someone in my local newspaper that I thought was of interest. (I cleaned up a few typos.) Creed wrote:

If we treat drug addiction as a disease, yet legalize drugs, are we not offering up the disease to even more weak-willed persons?

Yes. But protecting weak-willed persons from their own self-destructive behaviors is not a legitimate use of government. I’m addicted to those Little Debbie Swiss Rolls. I know I shouldn’t eat them. They’re little rolls of sugary goodness, but they are detrimental to my health. I don’t think anyone would seriously make the case that making them illegal is a legitimate use of government. BTW, I just ate a whole box of HEB Swiss Rolls while I was writing this reply. [Don't say it. Don't say it.] (more…)

The U.S. President is often called the Leader of the Free World. This is an oxymoron. Free people are able to choose at a whim who their leaders are without being locked into a choice for an arbitrary period of time. Having an elected leader of the free world makes the world less free. True freedom dictates that any person has the freedom to choose their leader or not choose any leader at all. A free person should be allowed to change that leader or elect to follow no leader or to elect to follow multiple leaders at any time. Truly free people would be allowed to follow different leaders. If John wishes to be led by Bob on financial matters and by Sue on political matters it should also be possible for Sue to follow Jean for political matters today and change her leader tomorrow to Sarah. Getting everyone to elect one person as a leader for any set period makes people less free. The President of the United states is not the leader of the free world. No one person is. Freedom requires that we are not bound to the poor decisions we made earlier except when we do so willingly, like under a private contract.

Glenn Beck and Judge Carter go over the latest in the saga of House Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel’s failure to pay income taxes. I make a monthly payment to the IRS for back taxes. Perhaps I should call them to take advantage of “The Rangel Rule.”

I received an email from Townhall Spotlight today. Like all fiscal conservative groups, Townhall is all for smaller government except when it comes to defense spending. Then the sky is the limit. Never mind the DoD cannot account more than $1 trillion in inventory, let’s feed them more taxpayer money. I’m sure they will handle it right this time. So I trotted over to their latest project to cut government size by spending $12 billion on the F-22 fighter. I read a little bit of what they wanted and decided that I didn’t want to lump a $12 billion fighter plane project in with my monthly bills. Maybe I’ll spend the money in March. Who Knows? Then I went over to the White House web site to get the President’s email address. I got a support form. Go take a look at it. I starts with these words:

President Obama is committed to creating the most open and accessible administration in American history. To send questions, comments, concerns, or well-wishes to the President or his staff, please use the form below:

Wow. That sounds great, but actions are louder than words. Try using Google AutoFill to fill in the form. It’s completely screwed up because the form designers used form field names with a prefix of ctl05$txt. So, the last name field is named ctl05$txtLastName which fools the Google Autofill feature. So I have to fill the form in by hand. Next I get down to the box to add my comment.

Message Please limit your entry to 500 characters.

500 Characters! Holy Crap, I’d better be succinct. So much for “creating the most open and accessible administration” blah blah blah. Don’t listen to politicians. Watch them. Actions always speak louder than words. Here’s what I sent:

I just received an email from Townhall Spotlight about saving the F-22 Raptor project. It seems it is up to the President to fund the project. Apparently the project employs 95,000 and costs at least $12 billion dollars. That’s a pretty steep price for jobs. Before you spend taxpayer money please do what taxpayers do. Think about whether there is any better use for that money. Can I pay the rent? Can I pay down some debt? Do I have enough money for groceries? Can I buy a jet fighter?

For those wishing not to do the math, taxes generally cost about 20% in compliance cost and 8% in collection costs. So, a dollar in government spending required somebody to spend $1.30 ( ( $1 + $0.20 ) / ( $1 – $0.08 ) ). A $12 biilion project requires people in the private sector to spend more than $15.6 billion dollars on taxes. $15.6 billion divided by 95,000 jobs equals $164,211 per job. That’s a pretty steep price for jobs.