Video: Four Reasons Why Big Government Is Bad Government

I think I've argued about a couple of these points a time or two in the past here. Here it is again in a format most high schoolers should be able to follow along with.

If Obama Brought The Economy Back From The Cusp Of Destruction. . .

. . . Then why are food stamps at an all time high?

The number of Americans who are receiving food stamps rose to a record 40.8 million in May as the jobless rate hovered near a 27-year high, the government reported yesterday.

Recipients of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program subsidies for food purchases jumped 19 percent from a year earlier and increased 0.9 percent from April, the US Department of Agriculture said in a statement on its website.

Participation has set records for 18 straight months.

Unemployment in July may have reached 9.6 percent, according to a Bloomberg News survey of analysts in advance of the Aug. 6 release of last month’s rate. Unemployment was 9.5 percent in June, near levels last seen in 1983.

An average of 40.5 million people, more than an eighth of the population, will get food stamps each month in the year that began Oct. 1, according to White House estimates.

One thing I've noticed about this administration's policies is that they all are designed to put more and more people onto the public doll. Every. Single. One.

Obamacare will burden insurance companies to the point of bankruptcy. Ushering in the single payer public option.

Cap And Trade will drive the cost of coal and oil up. Artificially causing the need for 'Green' energy products that will be tax payer subsidized for use.

Perpetual bail outs for Freddie and Fannie. They're 'Too big to fail'.

It will drive the middle class to extinction with a slow bleed on the wallet. Higher costs will mean spending less money on other things like vacations, a nicer car or larger house.

All with an end game of a population at the behest of a government service. At that point, the real control happens.

It's all a bit of an abstraction on what I laid it out above. Much of it depends on a complacent election this November. Which might not happen after all.

Sort Of Related: Government Motors no longer wants to be known as Government Motors. But Ed Whitacre has a problem. He's trying to tell the 800 pound gorilla to get off the couch and leave.

An Interesting Proposal

The state of Utah seems to want to relieve the burden of governing from Washington DC.

We'd like to relieve some of their burden.

We don't believe that 535 members of Congress and the president can educate our children, provide health care, pave our roads and protect our environment as well as the nation's 8,000 state legislators and tens of thousands of local officials.

So please, let us help. Let's select a few programs - say, education, transportation and Medicaid - that are managed mostly by Utah's government, but with significant federal dollars and a plethora of onerous federal interventions and regulations.

Let Utah take over these programs entirely. But let us keep our portion of federal taxes Utah residents pay for these programs. The amount would not be difficult to determine. Rather than send this money through the federal bureaucracy, we would retain it and would take full responsibility for education, transportation and Medicaid - minus all federal oversight and regulation.

It's a nice thought but it will never happen. For starters, it's about control*. And the federal government will never yield back what it wrestled away to start with.

Second, it's doesn't go far enough. Instead of the state of Utah, why not leave the money in the pockets of the citizens of Utah?

I will give them credit for the push back against central planning. Even if it is mostly symbolic. More states need to follow their lead.

*By stating this claim, I'm going to put it on the line and try to do something about governmental controls over the population sometime soon.

Hat tip to Becky.

Thought Police Operating In Oz?

UPDATE II: The story was only kinda sorta true. It was blown out of proportion, if you will. Thanks to Ace who fell for it too.

UPDATED: Linked by The Daily Gator.

The Aussie government is there to help protect the children by banning porn actresses with A-Cups.

Just when you thought that extremist knee jerk fear based reactions to non existent threats were something only the Northern Hemisphere got into, Australia has banned adult material with small breasted women in it, fearing that filthy pedophiles will gain enjoyment from it.

So, if this makes sense to a government bureaucracy, why not turn your health care over to them as well?*


To Clarify: This is not a defense of pedophilia. Rather the round about thinking that lawmakers go through to help 'protect' the populace. The justification using 'For The Children' is trotted out for a case of getting a foothold in censorship.


*Granted, it's the Australian government but it's still a bureaucratic organization trying to control and regulate everything deemed 'bad'.

Via Becky.

As Thomas Jefferson Said. . .

. . ."Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have."

Whoops, link added.

From Reuters:

The attorney general for Washington D.C. has filed a lawsuit against an AT&T Inc (T.N) unit, seeking to recover consumers' unused balances on prepaid calling cards.

The suit claims that AT&T should turn over unused balances on the calling cards of consumers whose last known address was in Washington, D.C. and have not used the calling card for three years.

Governmental encroachment on calling card minutes?

Civics In Ten Minutes

It's a bit oversimplified but how much nuance can you get into studying governments throughout history in ten minutes? Stick with it for the entire length.



Donald Douglas has a bit more about the political spectrum here.

Who Needs Checks And Balances Anymore?

Matthew Yglesias doesn't think so.

I would say that this is another good reason to rely more heavily on career civil servants and less on subcabinet political appointees. The president could have a White House of his own choosing, not subject to confirmation. Then cabinet departments and major independent agencies could have their own appointed heads with the approval of the Senate. But for the “guts” of the work of implementing White House and/or Congressional mandates, doing analysis of what program changes would entail, etc. we would do well to expand the Senior Executive Service model and rely less on Assistant Secretaries brought in from the outside. That would make it a lot more viable to reduce the number of positions requiring Senate confirmation without freaking people out about abusive or corrupt staffing decisions.

The main flaw in his arguement is if this is in place, a Republican President can nominate someone without the normal checks and balances as easily as the Democrat. I doubt Yglesias would want that.