Overgovernment, Puppy & Kitty Dept.

You thought the nanny state had run out of ridiculous ideas? Colorado legislators are now regulating the sex lives of dogs. Never mind dealing with a projected $600 million budget shortfall. A law that just went into effect this month addresses the pressing concern of our authorities over the sex lives of dogs. That’s right, our legislature is now mandating when (and rather) dogs are spayed or neutered.

In the Speakout section of the RMN (Wednesday January 14th) Georgia Cameron spelled out from an animal rescue professional’s perspective just why this latest law is bad policy, pointing out the negative effects on animal’s health, increased administrative burden on rescuers and prospective adopters, and increased costs to nonprofits, government oversight, and therefore taxpayers at large. It’s a thoughtful, well-reasoned, and articulately argued critique of one particular legislative overreach.

I’m just here to point out how silly it is that the legislature even poked its snout – er, nose – into this whole business in the first place. And speaking of more pet-related legislative silliness…

From the same people who find it a horrendously onerous burden for presumably sentient (at least they walk upright) human beings to present identification in order to exercise the most sacred duty of citizenship: voting (ref. “Bill to require photo ID when voting fails”, RMN 23 January 2009, p. 18) comes a new demand that cats carry some form of ID (tags, implanted chips) on their –er, persons – at all times.

That’s right, like the AmEx commercials of old, kitties – don’t leave home without it. The mind’s eye conjures up legions of itinerant identity-checking inspectors wandering the streets in a scene from the old Soviet Union, marching up to cats and barking out “Propusk!” (papers). “Mrrrowr?” No ID? Well, it’s off to the kitty gulag with you, my fine furry feline friend…

Tax for news bailout is a bad joke

Newspapers have been an important part of our society, communicating information and news. But the Internet has served the same function (and I'd say even better) than newspapers have in recent years. I'm not impressed with how they've competed in the marketplace, and how "impartial" (or biased to the left in their reporting) they've been. Given the amount, quality and diversity of information you can get online from other sources, I don't think newspapers have an inherent right to stay in business. I can get more news in a more timely manner online, than I can through traditional print media. Unfortunately, another big, dumb, slow company is now being talked up for help by big-government do-gooders through a proposed “Newspaper Tax.”

Where do the taxes and bailouts end? I don't agree with the bailouts of Wall Street, the big banks, or the Big 3 Automakers.. and I damn sure don't want the newspapers bailed out. Let's call a spade a spade - this is socialism. Through this proposal, they're essentially holding a gun to taxpayers' heads (or wallets, in this case), and saying "Fork it over, or the fish wrap gets it!"

Local blogger Andrew Hudson frames the issue in a nice way (ironically, through the Internet) but he and other Democrats have no problem using the coercive power of government to prop up their favorite industry or company... or decide which business or industry fails or succeeds – at least in the short-term. In fact, I'd say they're rewarding failure - just like Congress has with the banks and automakers. It's getting to a tipping point where taxpayers are saying "ENOUGH" to more tax increases.

It's not so much a political issue as it is about economic freedom, and how individual citizens should have the freedom to spend our money how we choose to – not how government can. It's like a Jerry Lewis Telethon where taxpayers are forced to "give 'til it hurts." Mr. Hudson knows that almost all taxes enacted by government stay in place forever, and are rarely repealed. This sounds like a sneaky way to extract more money from Colorado taxpayers, to fund an increasingly greedy state government.

Currently, 44 of our 50 states face budget shortfalls. What bureaucrats fail to remember is that budget deficits occur when spending exceeds cash inflows. To reduce or eliminate these deficits, they should (gasp!) cut spending. Trying to balance state budgets on the increasingly-burdened backs of taxpayers qualifies as cruel and unusual punishment. The cause of these shortfalls is that government has spent too much money and made too many promises that it can't deliver on.

Our country wasn't founded or built on propping up industries or companies who “deserve” to be in business. This is another step of slouching towards socialism, all in the name of good intentions – which the road to hell (in this case, bigger government) is paved with. Enough's enough –this “Newspaper Tax” idea should be dropped like a bad habit.

Nanny state has you covered

The Lofgren Family Carbon Monoxide Safety Act, now pending before the Colorado House, has emotional power because of the four Lofgrens' recent death in a borrowed house in Aspen. Of course we feel for their loss and wish to prevent similar occurrences in the future. Monoxide killed some friends of mine in their mountain condo years ago, and almost killed my wife's family when she was a child. We have monoxide detectors in our house. But I still say no to this mandatory detector bill for newly built homes or older ones being resold. If you legislate by anecdote, the lawbooks will soon overflow as liberty and personal responsibility are smothered with nannyism. If the bill addressed public accommodations such as hotels, and left private homeowners to make their own safety provisions, I might be receptive. But it does just the opposite, as today's Post reports.

This is the same mentality that had Gov. Bill Ritter saying in his State of the State last week, "We'll be introducing legislation with Representative Merrifield and Senator Carroll requiring that all new single-family homes come with a "solar-ready" option. Today, homebuyers already have choices when it comes to countertops, paint colors and flooring. People should have similar options when it comes to sustainability."

Another example is Sen.-designate Bennet saying "we have an opportunity to reinvent" the auto industry, where "we" means Congress -- as noted by Vince Carroll in the Rocky today.

Be it safety or energy, the liberals will always find an excuse to inject government coercion between freely choosing buyers and sellers. Uncle Sam becomes Mr. Mom and we're all children on the apron strings.

We, the people, should control commerce

The hearts of progressives everywhere are racing as they contemplate the delightful prospect of a federal replay of the New Deal and Great Society, those overrated nostrums intended to solve major economic problems which they only made worse. In less than two months the sainted Obama Administration will take power, already in transition promising to stimulate our commerce with massive public works projects (including unprofitable and inefficient "green" energy) and doubtless more bailouts of companies "too big to fail." Preference will be given, of course, to those saddled with huge costs imposed by federal mandates, with expensive union pensions, "job banks" (money for not working) and top wages.

Hint: The initials are GMC, FMC And CMC.

The late great economist Henry Hazlitt, author of the remarkable volume, "Economics in One Lesson," advised economic policy makers to look not just at the immediate consequences of a given policy but the long-term consequences as well. Actually, one does not have to have a very long attention span to notice that the first bailouts of the credit markets have begotten still more in any industry or business whose bottom line is in trouble. This took only days and weeks, not years, to become evident.

A still longer term consequence has to do with how Americans view their commerce. Is it a multitude of transactions between willing buyers and willing sellers? Or is it a single entity waiting for the expert guidance of politicians to maximize the payoff to those most deserving of consideration, which always means the influential and the powerful?

A thoughtful article in the Wall Street Journal earlier this year debunked the false notion that there is such a thing as "the economy." When one considers the billions (yes, billions) of people who are buying and selling every day, 365 days a year, in a multitude of different markets and a great variety of ways, it leads the prudent person to scale down massive expectations. Commerce cannot be saved by government policy that intervenes on behalf of those not benefitting enough–whoever they are, whatever their resources.

Many who take this sober view of the possibilities of controlling the marketplace by political action consider themselves exponents of what has been called "laissez-faire" economics. Far from seriously quarreling with this point of view, I only hasten to mention that the United States Constitution authorizes Congress to "regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes."

Government, with its power to tax and spend, will always be the greatest single influence on commerce, particularly in this era of Big Government. For decades federal spending has accounted for about a fifth to a fourth of the nation’s total, not to mention that of 50 state governments and thousands of local jurisdictions.

Prominent economists of the past such as John Maynard Keynes and John Kenneth Galbraith argued that, given the massive influence government had even before the New Deal dwarfed all previous federal spending, it should intervene on behalf of socially desirable objectives, such as reducing unemployment, raising wages and redistributing wealth.

But government by nature is not a commercial enterprise. It does not compete in a free marketplace. It depends upon forcible collection of taxes and other revenues in order to ensure the performance of its basic functions, viz., insuring our safety inside and outside our borders and administering justice, civil and criminal.

Republican government was designed to be impartial among the many (fortunately) competing interests of our people. To regulate is to "control or direct according to rule, principle, or law." Rules, principles and laws are no respecters of persons. The object is the common good, not the good of favored groups.

Of course, this republican restraint is more easily advocated than practiced. But we Americans have been governed by principle to an extraordinary degree, and for that reason the majority of us still believe that the purpose of government is not to reward indolence or failure but to promote enterprise and provide no more than a ground floor for victims of circumstances beyond their control.

But as we are tempted once again to consent to massive controls over our commerce, here and abroad, let us remember, as Ronald Reagan said, "Government is not the solution to our problems. Government is the problem."

America at the tipping point

Today, Daniel Henninger has a brilliant piece in the Wall Street Journal that lays bare the true significance of an Obama victory. Rather than being representative of a repudiation of "the last eight years", a victory for Obama will usher in a new and philosophically revolutionary change in the basic tenets of both the American economy and society. An Obama administration -- aided with huge Democratic majorities in the House and Senate -- will not be a "one-off" example of an over-reaction to the financial crisis that demands an immediate (but temporary) change in direction to right the ship.Rather, as Henninger so eloquently puts it, with this election the U.S. is at a "philosophical tipping point". This is spot on, and echoes the theme of many of my posts for the past several months. America is about to take a sharp 90 degree left turn, away from our history of free-market capitalism based on a risk/reward calculus, and toward a model of state-controlled system based on a no-risk/high security formula. It's a fundamental shift, as Henninger states:

The goal of Sen. Obama and the modern, "progressive" Democratic Party is to move the U.S. in the direction of Western Europe, the so-called German model and its "social market economy." Under this notion, business is highly regulated, as it would be in the next Congress under Democratic House committee chairmen Markey, Frank and Waxman. Business is allowed to create "wealth" so long as its utility is not primarily to create new jobs or economic growth but to support a deep welfare system.

This move toward "welfare capitalism" is exactly where Obama will take us over the next four years. And it is a tipping point because it is largely irreversible; the Great Society has now been with us for over 40 years, and its core elements -- Medicare and Medicaid -- are programs that make up a huge percentage of our entitlement spending. It is easy to giveth -- but it is much harder politically to "taketh away".  This is the issue we will face with Obama -- who plans an historic expansion of public-funded healthcare, energy development and welfare programs. As I've written previously, this will result not just in new taxes, but in the growth of a huge and growing dependent class that lives off government but does nothing to help fund it.The impact of this will be to move America back in the pack, to the economic alsorans of France, and Germany. As Henninger again writes:

Now comes Barack Obama, standing at the head of a progressive Democratic Party, his right hand rising to say, "Mothers, don't let your babies grow up to be for-profit cowboys. It's time to spread the wealth around."What this implies, undeniably, is that the United States would move away from running with the high GDP, high-growth nations rising today as economic and political powers and move over to retire with the low-growth economies we displaced -- old Europe.As noted in a 2006 World Bank report, spending in Europe on social-protection programs averages 19% of GDP (85% of it on social insurance programs), compared to 9% of GDP in the U.S. The Obama proposals send the U.S. inexorably and permanently toward European levels of social protection. This isn't an "agenda." It's a final temptation.

A temptation to remake America in the model of the "progressives left" -- which sees capitalism as a model that fundamentally offends them. It offends the notion that America should be about equality of outcome, not opportunity. At the heart of this is a super-charged version of those who believe that "self-esteem" matters more than keeping score, and the idea that some will win while others lose is not acceptable. Never mind that in our economy, those who win do so not because of some hereditary right that is baked in as a birthright, but rather because of their drive to succeed. The left wants to discount the winners so as not to offend those who are less able (or willing) to succeed. This is at the core of the progressive movement: don't brag, walk softly, don't make anyone else feel badly and -- most importantly -- spread your wealth around so as not to make anyone feel inferior.

What this ignores, of course, is that human nature desires independence and self-sufficiency, not dependence on others. Those who actively support this kind of system are the progressive intellectuals who live in a world of theory, rich liberals who feel guilty about their success, and students whose brains have been scrambled by the left-wing politics of the universities. But the vast middle -- who will vote for Obama on November 4 because they have been hoodwinked into thinking that he is more Bill Clinton than Jacques Chirac -- don't want a handout. They want opportunity. And opportunity is not granted by a statist model of economics, but rather by life-giving tax cuts and a light regulatory burden that will ignite the economy and create new jobs. That's the right tonic for America and those who have too little -- not a government handout in the form of a cash payment that serves only to affirm their lower lot in life.

But this is not Obama's view of the world. And if he wins on Tuesday, we will see America make a choice that will fundamentally alter the philosophical underpinnings of our great capitalist democracy.

It will be a choice we will long remember-- and long regret.