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Category

Limits on government power

• 03.16.09
  Horse trading
  Limits on government power, Stimulus spending, Sustainability (3)

  Horses may be going hungry, but here's some food for thought. It's inspired by a front page story in Sunday's Kalamazoo Gazette. The article explains that people can't afford to take care of their horses, but they're required to anyway, even if they've lost their jobs and incomes. There is no longer a market for the animals, so they can't be sold. And the other alternatives (such as euthanasia) are even more expensive or non-existent. Kalamazoo County's Animal Services and Enforcement director explains: Winter time is tough, with people being laid off and home foreclosures. ...
  
  
• 03.02.09
  The political dominance of capital cities
  Limits on government power, Stimulus spending (0)

  The Democrats seem determined to give Congressional voting representation to the District of Columbia, whether it's legal or not. I suppose it's bound to happen sooner or later. It's just another step in the process of giving a greater role to those who govern, whose center is in the capital city. The Hatch Act, which had been a check on the political power of the governing class, was gutted during the Clinton administration. But it started long before that. King Banion, in an article titled, "It's good to be the king's castle," points out that ...
  
  
• 01.23.09
  The question we ask
  Limits on government power (0)

  I found something to disagree with in Obama's inaugural speech: The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works — whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end. At least he didn't say the important question was whether the government makes the trains run on time. And he didn't say the government had to do a good job at these things. It's ...
  
  
• 10.05.08
  Stop Obama: Defeat McCain
  Limits on government power, electoral politics (0)

  For a few weeks I thought I might vote for John McCain despite McCain-Feingold. But his behavior on the Big Bailout makes that unlikely. One thing I've never liked about McCain is his adoption of Theodore Roosevelt as a role model. I consider Roosevelt an attractive personality but a terrible president. I've read several biographies of TR and have some of them on my bookshelf. But George Will tells a few things about him that I hadn't known before. Somehow I had not known that his ideology was so collectivist. ...
  
  
• 09.06.08
  Not a matter of know-how
  Limits on government power (0)

  It's quite a coincidence that Hillary Clinton said this, because I have heard nothing that suggests that Democrats know how to do these things, either. "I heard nothing that suggests the Republican team knows how to fix the economy for middle class families, how to provide high-quality affordable health care for all Americans, how even to guarantee equal pay for equal work for women." Could it be that these are not things that can be "provided" or "guaranteed" or "fixed" by any government? Could it be that that's not the way to go about getting them?
  
  
• 07.14.08
  Dancing with the wrong partner
  Limits on government power (0)

  Debra Saunders is just one of many conservatives saying stuff like this: And the average voter certainly isn't going to lose sleep if the price of that security is that the ACLU does not have carte blanche to sue AT&T for cooperating with the government. It boggles the mind that conservatives think it good to have private companies cooperating with the government. They ought to be at each others' throats, not ganging up on us.
  
  
• 06.10.08
  Policymakers, bleah
  Limits on government power (0)

  I've long detested the term "policymaker" as used in this sentence that I found by googling for the term: The User Liaison Program disseminates health services research findings for State and local health policymakers in easily understandable and usable formats through interactive onsite workshops, teleconferences, distance learning programs, and research syntheses. Bleah. I understand the need for legislators, judges, and executives in our system of government.   I am not particularly fond of government bureaucrats, but I accept the fact that we need them.   But how did these beings called "policymakers" ever weasel their way into our society?    Why can't we ...
  
  
• 06.08.08
  Escaping a cult
  Limits on government power (0)

  Shawn Macomber reviews Gene Healy's book, The Cult of the Presidency. I came of political age in the '90s, with the conservative critique of Waco, and during a time when conservatives often opposed foreign adventurism. Though I identified myself as a libertarian, I always associated conservatism with a realistic view of human nature and, accordingly, skepticism toward unchecked power. And the conservatives I knew best had spent the '90s trying to convince the country that the executive branch had been seized by an utterly corrupt bunch of people who could not be trusted with power. Yet here they were in ...
  
  
• 03.08.08
  Let Leviathan finance the defeat of Leviathan
  Limits on government power (0)

  Here's how to get Leviathan to finance the defeat of Leviathan. (I'm reminded by the Couch Potato Entitlement editorial in today's Wall Street Journal.) When you convert your analog TVs to digital, don't turn down your $40 coupon(s) on the principle that the government has no business subsidizing private entertainment. You'll never beat the welfare-police state that way. No, you should use those coupons. But money is fungible. Immediately send an equivalent $40 (or $80) to defeat the members of Congress who voted for this program. You could give the money to the ...
  
  
• 02.09.08
  The Stasi and tax rates
  Clinton scandals, Human rights, Limits on government power (0)

  Wired magazine tells about a $30 million project to piece together a billion pieces of paper records that were torn up by the East German Stasi, but which they hadn't gotten around to destroying. And the destroyed records amount to only about five percent of its files: the agency had generated perhaps more paper than any other bureaucracy in history — possibly a billion pages of surveillance records, informant accounting, reports on espionage, analyses of foreign press, personnel records, and useless minutiae. There's a record for every time anyone drove across the border. The main reason we need lower ...
  
  

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