Endless Debt – A Better Way To Fund Government

Some time ago, under the topic A Different Way To Fund Streets, we broached an alternative to funding streets.  Normally streets, roads, highways and such are funded by taxes.  These taxes have no limit, which, over time, become a burden to the people who use the roads, streets or highways.

In our alternative we suggested that we come up with a method of self-taxing.  This method entails a saving account and then splitting the interest three ways.   On third of the interest would be interned to build the principal, one third of the interest would be used for the road project, and one third would be returned to the people as a direct payment.

The program would look a lot like the war bond program that the United States of America Federal government used to pay for World War II.  In which the war was paid for by 1948.  However, in our case we think that the program would be an on going thing.  For example, the purpose of the program would be to maintain roadways.  Not building new ones, and the cost could be kept down by stipulating that at no time would salaries be more than 1% of the amount used in the maintenance.  This would ensure that most of the money spent would be used for material, end the idea that getting more money for a street project via raising taxes, and provide the best bang for the buck.

This ideas is not limited to roads in fact, it could be applied to off set sewer rates, cost of government, maintaining bike paths, the list could be endless.  In that this is money that people buy a stamp for at a non-fixed rate, it does not place a burden on any group or single individual.  They buy what they can afford, one dollar or one hundred million dollars.

We mention this now because, in the United States of America, there is a Pall Mall stampede to go into long-term debt, which is to be paid for by raising taxes and feed.  As an elected office holder you need to remember that just because you can afford a tax, not everyone can.  In addition it is also good to remember that extracting money by taxes and fees places a limit on the money that can be invested into your community. 

 Sherman Lackey

Choice, The Evilness of Restrictions

The United States of America was founded on the theory that human beings do not need Kings.  That there are, in fact, ways for the common people to govern themselves.  One key element of this idea, self-governance, is the notion of choice.

Choice when it comes to who the leadership is, choice in how we all interact together, choice in the opportunities available to  all of the population, choice in employment, the list is virtually endless.  And yet it is choice that elected officials are trimming back on these days.  You cannot choose, in every state, not to have gasoline for your vehicle that is devoid of alcohol. You cannot choose, in every state, not to teach evolution in science class. You cannot choose, in every state, not to pay a building permit when remodeling your house, and so it goes.

Governance in the first quarter of the twenty first century often means social engineering.   Can you driver your car and if so where can it be driven, Can you build a house in a neighborhood that is slightly out of the norm in external looks. How much does the soda or bottle water cost, due to fees on recycling driven ideas. Should you be given the choice of a plastic, paper, or cloth bag to bring your groceries home in?

Modern governance tends to demand a tax or a law forbidding the item(s) all together. People then complain about the heavy hand of government, a tax can be of any amount, and said tax may be so high as to preclude choosing the item at all.  In this case the choice is limited, and limited by the very government founded with the idea of choice.

A better method would be to allow the society in your location itself decide, voluntary, which to choose.  This can be done by calling a meeting, call it a work session, between the governed and those who govern.  This means that you, the elected official, must listen to the very people that placed you in office.  Your business community can be taped to provide ideas on how this would work without driving up their costs or affecting their retail prices for the goods that they sell

What you can accomplish is a method that makes the use of; lets say cloth bags, a better choice than paper bags and then plastic bags a really poor choice.  And doing so with out either a tax, which may cost you your elected job, or an ordnance outright forbidding the use of one kind of bag over another.

Voluntary compliance will work, and indeed it can work well, for other ideas as well.  Friday Harbor has a historical district in which compliance is voluntary.  It works to keep the look and feel of new buildings built around older buildings in sync with their surroundings.  There is no reason that the idea of voluntary compliance will not work for other things as well. Voluntary compliance also means that your, the one who got more votes than the other person, do not add to the cost of living burden in your community.

Something to think about when you are busy crafting laws that effect everyone around you.

Sherman

Words Really do Matter – Part Two

I have mentioned this before and it seems like a good time to mention it again.  Words matter a lot in the business of politics.  Consider the stock market plunge in the light of the rhetoric coming from both the Congress and the President of the United States of America.

First the government decided to “bail out” the banks; inventors sold stock in those banks because with the government “buying in” the investment in stocks is watered down.  Investors then sold shares to take their earnings before the stock fell.

Then some members of Congress in uniform unison with the president said that some banks might need to be completely government run.  More investors sold their stock because if the government nationalizes the banks the investors loose all of their money.  The stock market fell even further

Then CTI bank decided to shed their pretense of being a public owned bank, inviting the government to have over a thirty percent share in them.  Preferred voting shares converted to non-voting shares.  Investors sold more bank stock driving the stock market down even further.

What this points to is that the drop in the price of sticks, investor confidence, and the ability of businesses to receive credit, is directly affected by the rhetoric of elected officials.  When you are in elected office, or if you are already in office, it will behoove you to be careful with what you say.  The words that come out of your mouth can cause panic and economic hard ship for your community and beyond.  As the above real life examples indicate.

Sherman

A very slight interruption

When making laws or other rules consider the effect on everyone. The fellow at the link below has some thought s about how the legislative stuff effects us all.
http://inthetrenches-egor.blogspot.com/

Get everyone on board with out creating extra fees

Government, as of late, in the United States of America is more about forcing social change than it I about governance.  Everything from limiting the places where one can smoke, to what kind of fuel is available for their automobile.

From a casual reading, of the Constitution of the United States, government should keep people from killing themselves, taking advantage of each other and provide for the common defense. Yet the people that we elect to represent us, and to make decisions based on the aforementioned constitution, seem all to ready to forcibly impose their will on others. 

It is as if they were so smart, which by deference, means that in their view we are so dumb.  Paper, plastic, cloth are all recyclable materials. Yet, in the gas that so often passes for political wisdom, plastic and paper is bad while cloth is good.

There real issue here is not the collective wisdom of society, but rather the elected person(s) not doing their job.  The job of the elected person, using the United States constitution as a guide, is to represent all citizens equally. As opposed to heavy-handed decision-making forced on the electorate, by people who have only one clam to fame, receiving more votes than the other person.

Choice becomes limited, limited choice means that freedom is limited, which is why a bag charge is a bad idea. When you are finally elected to office you need to keep in mind this one little thing.  If the rich person is allowed to do a thing, then the poor person should be allowed to do the same thing.  In short it is not governments “job” to protect businesses or run companies out of business.

 Shrman

How A United States President Can Govern Like A Dictator

We take a break to mention something that we all need to know about how to or not to govern.

It is possible for the president of the United States to govern like a dictator. These are called Executive Orders and they are not debated in the public forum. All presidents have used them, to some degree, though Democrat presidents seem to make more of them than Republican presidents.

Members of congress are not consulted; indeed, the only thing needed is the signature of a sitting president. This is how Al Gore got so many Executive Orders passed in the last months in the final year of the Clinton administration.

Obama promised us a change in how government is conducts business. After viewing his first Executive Orders it looks like governance as usual. No change from the status quos, as is evidenced from his first Executive Orders found at the link below.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing_room/executive_orders/

This should make us all a bit nervous for two reasons.

1. The closing of Getmo will place the worst terrorists in the world at large.  Thay are sociopath’s, they have only one reason to exist . . . to kill you.  These are people that no one negeoate with, either imprison them or kill them.
2. There is no real debate about the actions that the Executive Order covers.  Weather is FDR keeping his friends employed at the federal level or George Bush limiting experiments on murdered human beings. 

If the new president is going to bring change to the method of governance, then these type of orders ought not to be done.  At first glance the first 100 hours look like business as usual.

Sherman

How To Tell Where A Politician, Past and Present, Has Placed Their Money.

One of the little known, if not completely misunderstood, parts of political life is the idea of conflict of interest.  Other politicians, in other countries, are normally touted as being evil because they own a part of some business, which receives a relegation benefit from the politician.

This happens her two and not just with the elected persons in national office.  Local government and state elected officials often route trolley tracks past property that they own.  As in the MAX expansion into the Oregon town of Milwaukee, where they mayor of the own got Tri-Met to rout the Max line past businesses property that he owns.

Definite conflict of interest can be found by following the money.  Al Gore owns stock in companies that are in the alternate energy business.  He owns part of these companies, proven by stock ownership, resulting in Al Gore damming conventional energy companies while campaigning his own interest.

With the large, public push, into an ever-expanding “green” energy-manufacturing infrastructure, one can only ask this question of the next president, the current governor of Oregon, and the newly elected form Oregon democratic senator.  “How much of these “green” providers do you known?”

This is a valid question because, in order to have a fully functioning democracy (where choice abounds) that is completely constitutional, industrial regulations need to be equal for all.  As soon as the regulations defer to one industry, while being obtrusive to others, the elected officials, in the legislative and executive branches of government, have a conflict of interest.

Bringing us back to the question of where is the money going.  I submit to you that if Obama, Al Gore, and Kewngoski owned stock in steel mills or a lumber mill, then energy regulations would favor those industries.

All of this can be avoided if, as I did when I was in office, every industry or group is treated equally.  This means that membership lists in neighborhood action committees, or any other organization, be made public.  As soon as someone says that, his or her “group” is for or against something, and then their membership list is private.  At that point the person speaking on behalf of the group has a vote of one, just like anyone else.

Watch to see which businesses or industries in your area receive more favored legislation than another.  Then you will know where the politicians have placed their money.

Sherman

Happy New Year – One Year Old!

This blog is a year old, this month, I trust that your New Year’s day went well.

The Budget Process – Do Not Panic

Now that he budget process is over, for most governments in the United States of America, there is a little something we need to mention. Budgets are a mixture of a wish list and a road map of where public funds will be spent in the coming year or biennium.  Some places use a biannual process for budgeting.

News media will cause panic in the streets when the initial budget is presented to the public.  No matte if the population in a town or county is large or small, the news media shouts that the budget is out of whack.  And they are right it is.

The initial budget contains everything that the staff and the elected officials want to do.  From having been in the elected position, the real question is what to fund and what to not fund.  Not funding does not mean that whatever should not be done, it does mean that it is not a priority.

The second round will be much better, although it can still be greater than the amount of projected income, and decisions need to be made.  These decisions are two fold:

• Do without.
• Raises taxes and fees.
• A mixture of the two that is cut back a service while raising the rate for it.

The only time for the public to panic is when the budget, for the coming year, does not balance the day before adoption.

Sherman

Repairing Ailing Infrastructure

Most of the elected people that I know, and I do know a few, have no idea of how to incorporate an upgrade of their utility infrastructure by using a street repair program. Street repair is normally just the street, as opposed to street, curb, gutter, sidewalk, water main, sewer main, telecommunications and the electrical hardware

The most common complaint by people about roads is, why do they fix the road only to knife it open two to six weeks later?  The answer is, the elected officials do not have a clue as to how to make it all work together.  With most towns and citys having infrastructure that is older than fifty years, some locations are still using cast iron sewer pipe, the cost can be exorbitantly expensive to upgrade everything all at once.

There is a method, and the proper way, to get the thing done is to have a law.  This ordnance would apply equally to all city run utilities as well to all other utilities. Simply speaking the ordnance would tie infrastructure up grades to tie road repair program.  County, state and federal roads would be exempt, because they are our of your local jurisdictions.  

The road ordnance would be lined to a road repair master plan.  This plan would identify, classify, and have a date cretin when the road is to be repaired.  All utilities, every service private or public, would be notified a year in advance of the next road repair date.

In the ordnance if any utility, private or public, opens the road within fifty years of the finish of paying they get a fine. This fine would be ten thousand dollars a month, in addition to paying for the complete repaving of the entire ,just completed, road repair project. You could require all telecommunications to be placed in conduit, underground, for further expansion.

The beauty of this is that all of the aging pipes, and wires could be replaced at once.  If you your road project is a block long, then all of the utility stuff gets replaced for that block.  If it is a mine long, then a mile of new sewer and water pipe get upgraded. 
And if the utility opens the street, instead of willingly participating in the upgrading program, then they pay for the repair of the road.

This is a good deal for everyone, and real nifty method of putting fiber optics every place in your town.

Sherman