High Taxes, Low Value - Part 1

In most aspects of life, a person usually wants to pay low prices and get high value. Whether buying a new car, mutual fund shares, a steak dinner, etc., a rational person always seeks out the best deal to maximize their pleasure and value and minimize the cost and expense of getting that value and pleasure. Unfortunately, when it comes to the political class, we almost always get just the opposite: high costs (i.e. high taxes) and low value (government programs that do not work). I thought of this disconnect between rationality and government after reviewing the recent stories of political behavior and government misbehavior:

• As we all know now, a terrorist almost blew up an airliner coming in for a landing at Detroit on December 25 and was not successful only because passengers interceded to stop him. The next day, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano had the gall to say the entire anti-terror system worked as planned. We questioned at the time how that could be true if only through the efforts of the passengers was a tragedy averted. Seems a rational person would want the system to work before the terrorist actually lit the fuse and that the billions of tax dollars spent on security would have done a better job and given us more value for our taxes.


• Continuing with Homeland Security, an Associated Press report out of Madison, Wisconsin yesterday reported that an airline passenger inadvertently carried live shotgun shells onto an airplane in his carry-on luggage. Two problems here. Despite heightened security as a result of the December 25 incident, the TSA screeners still did not see the live ammunition when they screened the carry-on luggage at the gate. Second, if the passenger had not turned himself in, TSA and Homeland Security would have never known the live ammo was on the plane. Seems a rational person would have wanted the screeners to find the live ammo before it got onto the plane and that the billions of tax dollars spent on security would have done a better job and given us more value for our taxes.


• Several years ago it was discovered, after the fact, that many toys being imported from overseas, specifically China, had high levels of lead in the paint used to decorate the toys. Lead is a very dangerous substance when ingested, likely to cause brain damage to those who ingest it. Since the lead was on toys, the concern is that many small children might become sick if they put the toys in their mouth. The government and political class found out after the country had already been covered in millions of lead based toys. Thus, one would hope that the lead situation would have been a wake up call. Unfortunately, that is not the case. According to another Associated Press article yesterday, when the U.S. barred lead from being used in children's toys and jewelry, Chinese manufacturers switched to heavy metal cadmium. According to the article, some children's toy jewelry weighed in at over 80% pure cadmium. Cadmium is known to cause cancer and is similar to lead in that it can cause brain damage if ingested. Of the 275 most hazardous substances that the government tracks, cadmium comes in at number seven, i.e. it is the seventh most hazardous substance in the environment. According to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, the "agency is opening an investigation" and "will take action as quickly as possible to protect the safety of children." Seems a rational person would have wanted the government watchdogs to protect our children before the cadmium infested toys and jewelry got wide distribution in the country, especially after the similar lead scare a few years ago, and that the billions of tax dollars spent on product safety would have given us more value for our taxes.


• We have already discussed the potentially racist comments that Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid had made about President Obama, namely that he was light skinned and did not speak like a Negro. As expected, the Republicans are up in arms, probably rightly so, given the Trent Lott debacle several years ago, while the Democrats are circling the wagons and trying to pass the comments off as nothing to be concerned about. As we predicted, this issue is taking up a lot of valuable time and accomplishing nothing but posturing. Seems a rational person would want the politicians to discuss more substantive issues that are affecting the lives of regular Americans and give us more value for our taxes.


• Continuing along the racist line, according to another Associated Press article from yesterday (seems the political class keeps the AP in business!), former governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich apologized today for stating: "I'm blacker than Barack Obama. I shined shoes. I grew up in a five room apartment." These are the types of people we are electing. One would hope, for the ridiculously high amount of taxes we pay, that we would get better value and standards for our money than these types of people. Besides the potentially racist comments of Reid and Blagojevich, consider a small subset of the other politicians who are spending or have spent our tax dollars:

1. Former Governor of New York, Eliot Sptizer resigns from office as a result of having an affair with a prostitute.


2. Senator John Edwards has an affair and a child out of wedlock as his wife continues to fight a battle with cancer.


3. Ex-Congressman William Jefferson is convicted of bribery after the bribe money was found frozen in his freezer.


4. Governor Stanford of South Carolina flies off to Rio to continue his adulteress affair with another woman.


5. Former Governor of New Jersey, Jim McGreevey resigns after admitting to an adulteress affair.


6. Former President Bill Clinton.... don't get me started.


7. Former Cabinet head under Clinton, Henry Cisneros, was convicted for perjury.


8. Former U.S. Congressman Dan Rostenkowski was convicted for misuse of public funds.


9. Former Mayor Of D.C. Marion Barry was convicted for using cocaine.


10. Many former Illinois governors have served prison time, are serving time, or might serve time i.e. Blagojevich).

These are just a few of the politicians I could remember off the top of my head. You can go to the website, http://www.politicalgraveyard.com/, and see the thousands of members of the political class the website has gathered and documented their transgressions. These people should have been focused on serving their constituents, not wasting time and energy executing and covering up their transgressions. Seems a rational person would want a higher standard of values, integrity, and moral gumption, give us some better levels of behavior and give us more value for our taxes.



Unfortunately, we could probably go on forever on this low value/high cost the government and the ruling political class impose on us, reducing our freedom and wallets. Many steps outlined in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" would help reverse this low value proposition. Term limits, Congressional accountability, campaign finance reform and other steps outlined in the book are necessary to get to a high value/low cost proposition, much like any rational person would want.



Tomorrow we will look at a major low value/high tax situation as reported in another Associated Press report, namely how the Obama/Democratic stimulus package has cost billions of dollars and has done nothing to stimulate job growth.





Visit our website at www.loathemygovernment.com to order an autographed copy of the book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government -Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom and Destroying The American Political Class" and to sign up for the cause. The book is also available online at Amazon and Barnes And Noble.