I ran across this nifty quote in my travels today:
FiveBooks.com: Can you govern as a libertarian in America? You’ve got all these state government programs and you probably can’t get rid of a single one of them – or at least not more than one or two without a battle. Can you be a libertarian governor?
Mitch Daniels: I try to be. I mean, just to be simplistic about it, we believe that leaving the maximum number of dollars in the possession of those who earned them is an exercise in enlarging freedom.
I do this little game sometimes if I’m in a high school classroom. I walk around and ask innocently, ‘Does anyone have a dollar bill?’ – and some kid will produce one and I just stuff it in my pocket and walk on. After the consternation and the giggling stop, I say, ‘What, What?’ Then I go into a little rap and I say, ‘Oh, Jonathan wants his money back – notice that he is a dollar less free than he was a minute ago; if he had that dollar he could decide, he could choose [where and how to spend it]’.
Then I talk about how inevitably we have to coerce money out of people to do necessary and important public business. But if we believe in freedom and liberty than we ought to do that only for necessary purposes.
Then I go on to talk about competence and the fact that it becomes an equally solemn duty to never misspend a dollar. Maybe that’s not the right response but when I’m asked about governing as a libertarian, I would say that’s one way I do it.
Now, I don’t think for a minute Mitch Daniels governs like a true Libertarian, but he’s the best we’ve got. If we had it our way, you probably wouldn’t even recognize America today — particularly in the realm of healthcare, public education and mass transit. You would still have those things, in most cases, but they would be approached from the standpoint of making them affordable for everyone, not just the elite few and not just giving handouts to the poorest few, either.
Lots of exciting news coming out of Marion County on the tax-front this morning.
In short, libraries and colleges are spending way too much money on useless administrators, and then they wonder where there money went. Oh, and IndyGo broke an axel wheel. And colleges are full of “mindless cheerleaders”.
In unanimously approving its $37.9 million budget Monday, the Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library board of trustees also put in motion a shortfall appeal that — if approved — will increase some property taxes.
IndyGo, another agency dependent on property taxes, also adopted a 2011 budget Monday, and it, too, will pursue a shortfall appeal as expected.
If approved by the City-County Council, the appeals would bring in $1.8 million for the library and $1.5 million for IndyGo. But for most homeowners, the increase combined would be only a couple of bucks.
I know it’s only a couple of bucks, but these problems aren’t going away and it defeats the purpose of a cap if you can just walk back to the council and say, “More please!”. They’re already talking about doing it again next year, just because they can. I was at the Irvington Library yesterday and it was mostly kids talking in circles and adults looking at Facebook and YouTube. Abdul over at RTV6 noticed the same thing. That can happen at a Starbucks. Libraries need to be rethinking their purpose in the 21st century. And why did they cut hours and services BEFORE looking at the problem they knew they had…
With one in four library employees in management positions, Torres called for eliminating high-paying, duplicate jobs to avoid reducing the library’s customer services.
“There is a need for discussion,” he said. “It’s a mess.”
I see no need for discussion. You’re top-heavy. Cut it out.
And, in further proof why this man is my hero, Gov. Daniels told Indiana’s public universities, namely IU and Purdue, they were acting like “mindless cheerleaders“:
Gov. Mitch Daniels told a large group of college trustees Monday that the days of top-heavy campuses — where administrators get the biggest slice of the budget pie — must come to an end.
…
“You are not there to be a mindless cheerleader,” the governor said. “Administrative costs are rising rapidly, and that is a lopsided way to deliver resources.”
The study blamed the administrative bloat on subsidies from federal and state governments and suggested that reducing subsidies would force schools to operate more efficiently.
“The role of trustee has never been so critical as it is today,” Daniels said. “But I don’t want to see you at the Statehouse asking for more money.
“Please stay back at the school and find ways to be more efficient with those dollars.”
Again, like most things in life, this is not that hard. Any sane organization or company could fix these problems in an afternoon.
You know things aren’t going well in Massachusetts when supporters of RomneyCare write “there’s some evidence that the reforms signed into law by Mitt Romney in 2006 are struggling.” That’s how The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein puts it in a post defending RomneyCare. The New Republic’s Jonathan Cohn offers a similar defense.
Klein mentions only a few of the difficulties confronting Massachusetts. Here are a few more:
The Commonwealth Fund reports that even though Massachusetts already had the highest health insurance premiums in the nation, premiums rose faster post-RomneyCare than anywhere else; 21-46 percent faster than the national average.
A recent study estimates that RomneyCare has so far increased employer-sponsored health-insurance premiums by an average of 6 percent.
Contrary to Klein’s post hoc spin that RomneyCare “was never an attempt to control costs,” Romney himself promised that “the costs of health care will be reduced.”
Aaron Yelowitz and I find evidence suggesting that uninsured Massachusetts residents are responding to the individual mandate not by obtaining coverage but by concealing their insurance status. Coverage gains may therefore be less than official estimates suggest.
Evidence is mounting that, despite stiffer penalties than ObamaCare will impose, increasing numbers of people are gaming the individual mandate by only purchasing health insurance when they need medical care. Such behavior could ultimately cause the “private” insurance market to collapse.
So. Let’s recap: Massachusetts’s universal healthcare system is making healthcare more expensive, isn’t saving anyone money and people are trying to figure out ways around it because they either don’t want it or can’t afford it. And, ObamaCare was “modeled after RomneyCare”.
Super.
Obama wasn’t wrong to bring the healthcare debate to the front of the nation’s attention, but the resulting bill sure does smell like crap.
Health Care vs. the Penalty (on your federal taxes)
Joe— a single, 26 year old, Indianapolis male making $40,000/year.
Now pays approximately $131/month for health coverage.
Removal of annual & lifetime limits, no pre-existing conditions = PRICE WILL RISE.
Under PPACA [the healthcare bill], Joe will likely pay around $200/month.
Penalty for Joe to forego insurance under health care reform = Approximately $400 (greater of $95 or 1% of income in 2014).
Joe forgoes [insurance coverage] and breaks his arm—he will still receive care and be immediately enrolled.
I had this discussion with my dad yesterday. I, as a sane human being, will be looking very closely at healthcare come 2014 when I will be 27 years old. I currently pay $100 a month for insurance. If the penalties for NOT enrolling in healthcare are less than paying for insurance, you’d better believe I’ll just pay the penalties. It’s what everyone in Massachusetts does now.
I was driving yesterday and NPR did a story on a small town in western Illinois that, although hard hit by the recession, was slowly starting to bounce back now that the town’s steel mill had reopened. The issue was that FEMA is updating its flood-hazard maps across the U.S. and this town is now considered to be in a “flood hazard area”, which requires residents and businesses to purchase mandatory flood insurance. The story focused on businessmen who said that bankruptcies would soar if they had to buy flood insurance, despite the fact they haven’t had a flood in decades. I don’t buy the “soaring bankruptcies” bit — people always scream “we’re going to die!” when a new fee comes their way, but only a slight few are affected. That doesn’t diminish the point, however, that people are still forced to buy something on some random day they never were required to before and that does add strain.
Right after that, NPR did another story on a small town of a couple thousand in Texas that legalized alcohol sales and now the town has new stores, new industries and population decline has slowed.
Funny how such little government interaction, in either situation, can make a difference.
This got me thinking about the 10% tax on tanning salon services thanks to the healthcare bill. I call it the pale-people’s tax. Evidently, the argument is that having the tax will decrease the “unwanted” behavior. If that’s the case, why doesn’t the government just pass a law that says “no tanning”? Or, pass a million dollar tax on tanning services and be all passive about it and still achieve the same thing.
The reason is because taxes are only passed on things that are “undefendable”. Gambling, alcohol, cigarettes, tanning and likely soda and salt pretty soon. We could never pass a tax on books because too many people would be pissed.
The sad thing is that these taxes only hurt poor people who are more likely to use these kinds of products. You can call them uninformed people (wink wink, nudge nudge), if you want. Wealthy people don’t care about a few extra bucks on their tan. Poor people are the ones paying the added extortion money for something the government has deemed “unhealthy”.
Clearly, I fall on the side of letting people burn up to a crisp on their own dime and time if they want. I just wish the government would admit they’re only taxing these “bad” things for the extra money. At least we haven’t become so nannied that they are just coming out to say “No tanning! No salt! No fats! No soda!”
Brandon ordered a pizza this evening. He didn’t want my chili, evidently.
The delivery person was an elderly gentleman, the second of such delivery guys who have clearly been over the hill for some time to come from the Pizza Hut on Emerson Ave.
My issue with that is that this defies all logic of who I think the pizza guy should be. It should be a pizza boy, not a pizza guy. I’ll be sexist and say I don’t even want females delivering pizza. When that doorbell rings, there had better be a pimply, grotesquely greasy 18-year-old standing there holding something that is allegedly a pizza.
When an old guy answers the door, I immediately assume this man can’t afford his medication or some other vital necessity and he has to deliver pizzas to make up for it. This results in a larger tip from me, which is even more bothersome. Then, I get to watch him saunter down my driveway to his car as he hobbles along. I’m left standing there with a barking dog and wondering if that poor soul is going to fall down and break his hip.
My god, what if that man fought in a war? What if he was the guy who planted a flag in Korea, Kuwait or Vietnam!? The guy that just left could have easily been old enough to have fought in Vietnam.
The result? When I order a pizza, I go pick it up from the store. I’m not paying a guy $3 to deliver a pizza up the street from me (they could throw it out the window of the store and it’d make it halfway to my driveway). Plus, I could drive around I-465 on $3. That, and I’m afraid an old guy is going to deliver it.
So, in conclusion, America is screwed because old people are delivering pizzas.
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