Ending Entitlements

As a small-government constitutionalist (actually I prefer the Articles of Confederation), I shudder when I suggest that it may not be prudent or practical to end our federal entitlement apparatus. Entitlements represent the epitome of government theft by force. They take the wealth and property from one citizen and transfer it to another. The problem is that our entitlement mentality has become so entrenched that weaning the recipients could result in violent confrontation. The very last development we can afford in times of fiscal and social stress is to encourage or implement robust policing by the government. Neither the welfare state nor the police state is healthy for liberty.

Another factor that affects the wisdom of eliminating the major portion of the entitlement structure is the regulatory over reach of government at every level. If our goal is to remove people from government benefits, there must be a viable alternative for them to support themselves, their families and to pursue personal wealth. The present regulatory nightmare is not friendly for new startups and, in many cases, discourages creative, energetic people from becoming entrepreneurs. The same government that developed programs to create dependency status for recipients has erected innumerable barriers for those who wish to become self-sufficient.

Dismantling the entitlement and welfare superstructures is a good start towards smaller more constitutional government, but for the reasons cited above and for philosophical and constitutional reasons, the regulatory maze must be simultaneously disassembled. In many respects an attempt to develop a sensible regulatory regime will be infinitely more challenging than ending the entitlement fiasco. Layer after layer, exception after exception and rule after rule exist in a political lasagna of nanny-state oversight. The multi-layered regulatory control mechanism will be extremely difficult to unravel. As one tier or another is peeled away, some unscrupulous individuals or companies may seek to take advantage of the opening. Their schemes could cause the public and the professional political class to demand the restoration of the regulatory oversight. In addition the various agencies and departments are so over-lapped that eliminating one noxious regulation may expose another just as toxic.

Now we move back to the original premise of this column. The drastic reduction of the entitlement/direct subsidy function of the government must be drastically reduced or eliminated altogether in order to restore fiscal sanity and constitutional government. That isn’t enough however as the myriad rules and regulations lie in wait to subvert our efforts to secure our liberty. The task is monumental, but it is vital if we are to pull Nanny’s rug out from under many of our fellow citizens. Concurrent with their weaning they must have a corresponding freedom to pursue their personal prosperity. We cannot in good conscience destroy their lifeboats on which they have depended perhaps for generations without providing the life vests of freedom. Unskilled people whose motivations and dreams have been blunted by government handouts must be allowed as much leeway as is possible to develop the skills and habits necessary for survival…..and for thriving.

Our federal government has grown so large and cumbersome that an objective analysis would suggest that inefficiencies and cost overruns are standard operating procedure. One doesn’t have to be a constitutionalist to understand that our government cannot adequately perform the tasks that it has claimed for itself. Reducing the monster to a functional role is a monumental task. Shrinking the leviathan to its constitutional function requires a radical vivisection that will cause massive disruptive upheaval. The radical remedy is the only viable one because we have experienced the steady growth of government in our lifetimes. Partial solutions will result in little gain as the incremental reestablishment of big government will accelerate and overwhelm us.

We cannot simply address the looter class and their living off the largesse of productive taxpayers. We must attack and eliminate every tentacle of the big government monster in order to rebuild the dream of our Founders and Framers. Restructuring and rebuilding will be painful. The path to restoration is littered with traps and foes. We must be strong. We must be resolute. We must be victorious.

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Laws and Responsibility

Back in the day when I served in the state legislature, I often remarked in my speeches that the six most dangerous words in Ohio are “there ought to be a law…” We are over-lawed (new word?). In other words we have too many laws. What we need are accountability and responsibility. If you hurt someone or their property because you were negligent or intentionally destructive, then you should be held accountable. As an example, if you’re texting, drinking or under the influence of prescription drugs and you crash into another car, you should be charged with negligence and failure to maintain control.

Why is it necessary to have traffic laws that ban driving while drinking, driving while texting or any number of potential distractions or performance degraders? If they are necessary, we should include driving while drinking coffee or eating. We might also include shaving or applying makeup as tasks that should be prohibited while one is operating a motor vehicle. There are even more activities that could or should be banned while driving such as reading, talking to a passenger, adjusting the radio or CD player, or picking one’s nose. I have witnessed every one of these distracting behaviors while driving. It isn’t pretty out there, folks.

Obviously as the clever readers you are, you have discerned that I am disturbed by the proliferation of laws that our legislators and regulators have thrust upon us. It is a common practice among despotic or totalitarian governments to pass numerous laws so that nearly every citizen breaks some of them and then selectively enforce them. This bi-polar approach causes the populace to be fretful and fearful but allows the leaders to dole out favorable treatment for friendly elites. For example you may be charged for munching on an Egg McMuffin while pursuing your morning commute, but the police may have strict orders to ignore the Assistant to the Associate Deputy Secretary of Secretarial Assistants when she rabidly consumes a bowl of Frosted Mini Wheats while scampering down the freeway at 20 mph above the legal limit. Lots of laws create a maze of regulatory tape that is impossible to navigate without violating one or more of them…that is “soft tyranny.” The government doesn’t throw you in the clink for no reason, but they do create a multitude of trip wires to legitimize your incarceration.

Paranoia is not a typical condition for me, but the profusion of laws, rules and regulations that impact our behavior, our commerce and our daily lives have caused me to become extremely skeptical about our government’s commitment to individual liberty. For now…if we violate a number of the “gotcha” regulations, we are fined. If enough people systematically fail to follow the proscribed rules, it seems probable that harsher penalties may be employed. There are so many fronts where Big Government is attacking the people that this one may seem trivial, but it can lead to hard tyranny as the government and its big-government supporters and enablers seek to wield control---for our own good….of course.

Too many laws lead to confusion, so why not streamline the criminal code to identify the broad categories of unacceptable activity. The penalties, if any, could be based on outcomes rather than law enforcement personnel seeking to interdict every potential violator. If you drive and you harm someone or their property while negligently distracted, you must pay restitution, fines and jail time if appropriate for the offense and the damage. It shouldn’t matter what activity led to the negligent distraction. It’s the result of the negligence that generates the penalty. As someone who cherishes my liberty, I resent the nitpicking package of laws and regulations that have invaded our lives. As someone who believes strongly in accountability and responsibility as necessary for citizenship, my resistance to the plethora of controlling rules grows greater every day. The Nanny State mentality has drifted from our social welfare policies into law enforcement. It sickens me.

It has been thirty years since I first began uttering the line about “there ought to be a law.” Given the nature of our ineffective, inefficient and dominating government today, those six words may not be the worst…the most evil. They are still noxious and still toxic. We have too many laws. We have too many constraints on our freedom. We must be responsible for our actions, our behavior and our stupidity. When the law becomes too complex, it can become abusive. Liberal progressive socialist busybodies love laws because they narrow the parameters of our liberty. The lefties assume that we are too stupid to live without the benign intervention of the government. They do not yet realize that we may be too angry to live with it.

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Safety First

The Nanny State cares about you. The Nanny State wants you to live life without facing any adverse situations….well, without facing difficulties that have not been caused by government. You see, when life throws you curve balls, those are bad. When government throws you bean balls, those are called “shared sacrifices.” The Nanny State is committed to protecting you from every type of imaginable or potential harm…except for the damages inflicted by the government. Even when I personally resent the Nanny State’s annoying meddling in my life, I could, at some level, understand the insatiable desire by the government to control so many facets of my life if they were not ideologically and agenda driven constraints. Many of the limitations and regulations do not make sense from an economic or a safety point of view, but do satisfy some misbegotten ideological purpose.

A glaring example that we have previously discussed on these pages is the banning of the incandescent light bulb in favor of the compact fluorescent variety. For the moment the House has suspended the implementation of the policy, but government never gives in, never gives up. The insanity of an ideological unproven “global warming” scare leading Congress and the EPA to ban a tried and true technology and replace it with a toxic-laden substitute illustrates the folly of much government regulation—particularly the ideological-driven rules. The collectivist attitude is blatantly apparent in this regulatory fiasco….preserve the planet from a theoretical future of global warming, but put individuals at risk with more expensive deadly products.

When any child loses his or her life, it is a tragic circumstance. According to the Product Safety Commission, in the last ten years 32 children have been mortally injured by baby cribs with sliding adjustable sides. With the publishing of the data the PSC has arbitrarily determined that ALL parents are too stupid or lack discernment to choose a crib for their children that is not so risky. So, they have banned the sliding-side infant crib, and forbade reselling of older models at garage sales and thrift shops. We are waiting for a definitive rule that bans “giving” the lethal cribs from one family member to another as has been the historical norm. While 32 deaths are regrettable and heart-breaking, the banning of the crib can, to some degree, affect nearly all of the 308 million residents of the nation.

Unlike the infant crib regulatory ban, RU-486, the “morning after pill,” is ideologically and politically correct. The statists promote unrestrained abortion, and resist any attempt to curtail the deadly industry. It is apparent that ideology trumps safety when the impact of RU-486 is examined. According to analyst David Alton of Great Britain, roughly 5-8% of RU-486 users experience severe complications…including death. So, the obvious question is “why are sliding-side baby cribs banned because of their dangerous potential when RU-486 has a much higher level of malfunctioning?” Clearly the answer is that Big Government and the Nanny State are driven by ideological considerations. Aborted children and their deceased mothers are an acceptable risk to preserve the right to destroy children at will according to the government’s priorities.

As the government and the multiplicity of agencies, bureaus and departments roam the country looking for ways to make my life better and safer, the unspoken factor is that every little regulation that makes my life safer also limits my freedom. Many would argue that the comprehensive examination conducted by the TSA at our airports is necessary to protect us from nefarious characters. We know, however, that their “so-called” random extensive observations have no basis in reality other than mere statistical happenstance. Profiling is forbidden because it may be deemed as discriminatory whereas groping small children and little old ladies in wheelchairs is considered acceptable. Once again, the Nanny State’s efforts to enhance our safety do little to make us safer and do restrict our personal liberty.

Finally, this observation does not involve product safety or the efficacy of pharmaceuticals. I wonder how can a government that is so concerned with the potential safety of every citizen when they interact with the private sector, be so nonchalant about high-level bombing using aircraft and drones? The resultant collateral damage from those sorties exceeds the losses by far from some of the issues they seek to regulate. Does our federal government practice gross discrimination by assuming that Libyan civilians or Afghanis are not as valuable as U.S. residents? Or is it that Nanny State’s real concern is for the power to control us? Our actual safety and well-being are secondary considerations. Every little regulatory element places another nail in our boxes. The motto of the new order is “safety first, liberty never, state forever.” Enjoy your safe trip toward tyranny, because it will be nearly impossible to come back.

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Transfering Wealth

The lefties of our nation and the globe as well, insist that “fairness” can only be achieved by transferring wealth from the “haves” to the “have-nots.” As one can expect from most socialist reasoning (an oxymoron…emphasis on MORON), the holes in their policy are massive. Bernie Madoff sits in a jail cell as police, prosecutors, and plaintiff’s attorneys confiscate every remnant of his former ill-gained fortune. Now he appears to be broke. Should someone be required to share their wealth with the former prince of ponzi? I suspect that when we speak of transferring wealth from the “richer” to the “poorer,” we are in reality discussing transferring earned wealth from producers to socialist-voting looters. A person’s “right” to the wealth of others is determined by her or his likelihood of voting a certain way.

Transferring wealth is more complex than merely dropping a dollar into the bucket of a curbside beggar. The various governments, non-government agencies (NGA’s), non-profits, churches and other elements of the society employ a number of coercive devices to generate wealth-sharing. First, there is the direct tax, direct payment method. Welfare, Social security, Medicaid and Food Stamps are the most brazen examples. Some transfers are more indirect. They might include tax credits for munchkins (children), subsidies for behaviors (education) and massive industry and corporate subsidies or tax breaks. Straight forward foreign aid is direct. Sweet trade deals for preferred countries are an indirect form of the share the wealth mentality.

The transfer of wealth may also involve some subtlety (or sneakiness, if you prefer). Laws that include certain prohibitions may create a competitive advantage for one or another industry or company. For example, when I served in the legislature, there was a representative who introduced an absolutely devastating axle tax for the trucking industry. And….he introduced a similar bill every session…year after year. As I fielded the calls from truckers in my district and notes from lobbyists representing independent truckers, I sought to discover why he would introduce such a job-killing piece of   legislation. My older colleagues informed me that the offending representative was “in the pocket” of the railroads. No one took his legislation seriously, and it would not go anywhere, but just like biennial elections, he introduced it every session to earn his campaign check. When those pieces of legislation are taken seriously and passed, then a law-induced transfer of wealth is the result. Wait, there’s more.

Nearly every regulatory initiative passed by nearly every legislative body or agency impacts some industries more than others…a subtle transfer of wealth. Within given industries some companies may be more adversely affected than their competitors by new rules because of their size, location or any number of intervening factors….in essence a transfer of wealth because compliance costs are not fairly assessed. The great dream of the socialist agenda, ObamaCare, is the epitome of a wealth transfer mechanism at every level. The more than one thousand, one hundred (1,100) waivers granted so far to corporations and labor unions with the “correct” political leanings is the epitome of an indirect and sometimes subtle transfer of wealth. As you can detect, wealth transfers involve much more than simply “robbing Peter to pay Paul.” They also include subsidizing Paul and giving him tax breaks. They may involve regulating Peter at a much greater level than Paul so that Paul gains a competitive advantage. Think of coal, oil and natural gas rules and regulations versus the subsidy packages for wind power, solar systems, and bio-fuels. And yet…the “green” technologies are not competitive on the open energy market.

Licensing and registrations are another form of wealth transfer that operates outside the public view. In my early days as a broadcaster, there were no licensing fees for stations to operate once they had paid the initial start-up licensing amounts. Now stations must pay annual fees based upon their transmitter power, their markets and their gross revenues. In other words the more successful stations must pay a penalty for their efforts while the ones that are not so successful get by with lower fees. Stations that have made the effort to attract topnotch on-air talent and hire competent sales people must subsidize the regulatory administrative costs for less popular stations.

Transferring wealth by force is how the government functions. Government by its very nature is the definition of force. In a world where liberty reigns, wealth would be transferred unfettered by government coercion. A series of voluntary transactions wherein quality, productivity and service would thrive is the model for free commerce. While government stacks the deck and enforces its preferences, wealth is transferred….and we’re all much poorer and less free.

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Government-mandated Outsourcing

In February it was announced that Deutsche Boerse had agreed in principle to purchase the New York Stock Exchange (Euronext) for $10 billion. With the purchase, the German company would become the largest exchange operator in the world. Politicians and the financial community lauded the proposed deal as one of great opportunity for expanding markets. In response Nasdaq OMX Group Inc. joined with Intercontinental Exchange Inc. to offer a competing bid for the NYSE. While the New York entity was considering the offers…one from Germany and the other primarily U.S. based…the federal government sprang into action.

Even though the final offer from the domestic Nasdaq group was sweeter than the original offer of the German concern, the NYSE rejected the proposal from the American suitors. Although they stated a primary reason was that the prospect of being a part of the largest exchange in the world intrigued them, concern was also expressed about the monopoly aspects of a merger with the other U.S. company. In other words, there were reservations about whether or not the United States’ Federal Government would initiate anti-trust action against the merger. Government regulations and the potential for heavy-handed litigation were influential in the final decision to sell the NYSE to a foreign entity. This little scenario is emblematic of the legal and regulatory environment in our country today and may be a significant indicator for the reasons some companies may choose to relocate their headquarters offshore.

The NYSE-Nasdaq kabuki dance is a reminder of the effect that government power has on businesses. Just the threat of government action may alter the decision-making process for a company. That could be a good thing if the corporation were intending to engage in harmful or radically unsafe practices. The other side is that subjective or arbitrary regulating may lead companies to become timid or frustrated. We can see evidence of that in the distribution of waivers for “Obamacare.” Friends, contributors and supporters receive favorable treatment while the remainder of the nation is expected to comply with the thousands of arcane rules and mandates. Big government holds the power to subjectively enforce its many rules. For a serious business operation this milieu may be intolerable because it is nearly impossible to successfully forecast and plan when the rules are implemented in a whimsical fashion.

Even if government were to enforce a given law uniformly, the businesses involved will always suspect that, at some point, the rules will change or enforcement would be unevenly practiced. The weakness of big government regulatory mechanisms should be readily apparent. In many countries and cultures bribery and corruption are the best method for companies to avoid getting lost in the regulatory maze. It is possible for smaller government to be corrupt, but because of its limited influence on the marketplace, the corruption may not have much of an impact in the marketplace. Most people and businesses seek stability. They may prefer consistent corruption to an unevenly enforced regulatory environment.

The proliferation of new rules, laws and regulations have generated a marketplace that finds its workers treading on eggshells. Government enforcers at every level appear to be constantly prowling for violations, real and imagined. Laws and regulations are unevenly enforced from sector to sector, business to business, and region to region. Bureaucrats have assumed the power (or it has been given to them) to transform vaguely-worded, over-arching legislation and molding the result into an unending series of nitpicking, nonsensical requirements. Despite the insanity of the rules, business must comply or be fined………………or relocate. Now add unrealistic union workplace rules to the bureaucratic morass and one wonders why any businesses remain here.

Fear is often as lethal as force. Fear is a prime motivator for behavior modification. In other words, fear of punishment or fear of retribution may cause you or a business to act in ways that are not in your best interests. In a democratic republic the people should not fear the government, but the government should fear the people (credit and kudos to Thomas Jefferson and “V for Vendetta”). When we fear the government more than it fears us, it is time for reordering our priorities….time to restructure the way things are.

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