Introduction
One of the most serious threats to a “government of the people” on both the federal and state government levels is the combining of several pieces of legislation into single bills, rather than voting on one item at a time. The Founding Fathers were very concerned about this and tried to prevent it, but over the years this is a constitutional process that has been ignored increasingly blatantly. Combining several items into a single bill enables special interests to “buy” the vote of legislators by combining the issue of concern to the legislator with the issues of concern to special interests.
The 2008 TARP bailout is a good example; middle-class voters around the country wrote letters to their congressmen not to vote for the bailout, but to let corrupt financial giants fall and return the economy to those practicing sound financial principles. The bailout bill failed on its own merit. The citizen had spoken. Therefore, “sweeteners” were added to the bill to get it passed over the will of the people. The bill that eventually passed included a host of tax breaks, an increase in the size of bank accounts insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, a requirement that health insurance companies provide more coverage for mental health services, a tax benefit for victims of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, and even a tax exemption for makers of children’s wooden arrows. Each one of these measures was added to sway the vote of one or a few legislators to whom obtaining those sweeteners was more important than voting “No” on the bailout.
Continue reading The Single-Subject Rule and Omnibus Legislation
Gordon L. Anderson
Government agencies can be a useful tool to carry out the will of the people. They can manage water, sewers, roads, borders, and provide many other public services. Some type of bureaucracy is essential when an agency is charged with a mission that serves thousands or millions of people. Government agencies are created for the public good. But, too often bureaucracies are a symptom of personal irresponsibility and the desire to let someone else solve our problems. They can grow uncontrollably and spend tax dollars foolishly. Once they have served their purpose, they are hard to terminate. They are hard to hold accountable.
Continue reading Introduction to Battling Bureaucracy
Erick G. Kaardal
©Erick Kaardal, 2010
Preface
I am a messenger of bad news: death.
Rationalism’s enlightened search for objective truth is dead.
The government’s enlightened search for the truth in every area of our lives is dead.
Continue reading Battling Bureaucracy
Keynote Address given by Dr. Alfred Pekarek, Associate Professor of Geology at St. Cloud State University at the 2008 Award Dinner.
Dr. Alfred Pekarek, Keynote Presentation on "Climate Change & Energy"
Climate Change and Energy
INTRODUCTION
About 20 years ago, a small, but vocal group of scientists raised the issue of supposed anthropogenic global warming. A willing media picked up the cry and popularized it into a media event. About 15 years ago, the rest of the scientific community started to react, exclaiming, “wait a minute”, “you don’t have all the data”, “there are other explanations”.
In the last 5-10 years, we have heard ad nauseam that there is a scientific consensus— that anthropogenic global warming is real, that man is causing the earth to warm at an alarming rate by the burning of fossils fuels, that we are nearing a tipping point after which we are doomed. That consensus arose out of the UN’s IPPC group of 2500. However, in that group there are only about 300 qualified scientists. At the same time, dissenting groups of scientists numbering 100′s to 1000′s, and in one case, lOs of 1000s have disagreed.
Continue reading Climate Change and Energy
by Gordon L. Anderson, Ph.D.
Many writers confuse a free market with a laissez-faire (or leave alone) approach to the market. This is a serious mistake. A free market only functions with a level playing field, or “planned competition” as Friedrich Hayek, referred to it in The Road to Serfdom. Laissez-faire is what Thomas Hobbes called “the state of nature.” This is a state in which the strongest take what they can from the weak. In the state of nature there is no legal order. In the United States we might think of the Wild West in the nineteenth century or some inner city areas where gangs freely roamed in the twentieth century. Or, we might think of the formation of the Russian mafia after the collapse of communism.
The goal of a free market is to allow everyone to compete in order to provide the most desirable goods and services at the lowest prices. Continue reading A Free Market is neither a Laissez-Faire nor Regulated Market
