Government's Business

Somewhere in the universe there must surely be one government program that is a model of efficiency, delivering service that meets and exceeds customer expectation. That really isn't a fair statement because consumer expectations of government services are pretty low.
In our county, we still have ABC stores, albeit two stores. Recently it was revealed that these two stores were in arrears to their suppliers more than $100,000 and had been cut off. So far, the investigation points to mismanagement and the manager was in place for 20 years. We can only surmise that no one ever looked at a balance sheet or P/L statement or performed an audit. No one to my knowledge has been held accountable.
My position has always been that the government, at every level, should never be in any business that could be conducted by a private enterprise. Open competitive bidding with transparency would lead to better service at a lower cost because someone will keep an eye on the bottom line and customer satisfaction will be a priority. Free enterprise is the mother of innovation leading to breakthroughs in technology, efficiency, quality and lower costs.
In most instances where government has inserted itself, whether to control pricing, promote fairness, even the playing field, help the disadvantaged, and on and on, the results have been far from the promised benefits and more often damaging to society.
The examples are many and varied. They include prohibition of alcohol, the great society programs, federal Department of Education, campaign finance reform, medicare and medicaid, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the war against drugs, and the federal reserve system.
Now we are being told that the federal government can deliver better health care at lower costs than the private sector while the fact is that medicare and medicaid are rife with fraud at estimates of 60 to 80+ billion dollars per year and the fastest rising costs in health care are in government controlled programs.
Even I believe that government does have a place at times in helping promote and regulate interstate business. The interstate highway system, rural electrification, breaking up strangling monopolies and ending unfair labor practices are some instances. But it is a slippery slope and the bureaucracies created grow endlessly in size and power far beyond original intentions and are often used to control states and advance political objectives. The Department of Energy was established in 1977 to end dependence on foreign oil. It has grown to 16,000 employees in dozens of departments with an annual budget of 26 billion dollars. DOE, a complete failure at its original objective, is just another huge bureaucracy obstructing domestic energy development. The Department of Education was elevated to cabinet level in 1979. Its total funding this year is over 100 billion dollars. Despite all those dollars over all these years, quality of education in US has not improved. Teacher's unions exert unwarranted influence and any meaningful changes like alternative school choices are seldom considered.

Thoughts 7/31

It has taken a long time to get it together to start writing. I promise nothing except to say what I believe, keeping an open mind and verifying whenever I can.
To our customer Priscilla this week, folks like you keep us going.

I've spent time this week reading comments people post following various articles online. Two in particular critical of Glenn Beck. It is amazing to me how much some folks hate the man. They call him a racist, a nazi, a fascist, a conspiracy theorist and more. He is accused of inciting some deranged man to kill people of the Tides Foundation. In that case, because he was the only person in the media who was found to have actually discussed the Tides Foundation. Unlike many of these critics, we have actually watched Glenn Beck on a regular basis since he was on CNN. Yes, he has evolved over the years. Who hasn't? Yes, he has an opinion. Who doesn't? His opinion may be different from yours. But that doesn't make him an evil person.
What we have not seen Glenn Beck do is spout hate or hateful lies or anything like that. He goes to great lengths to research and back up what he says about people, their background, their beliefs and their associations . Whether it is what they did, wrote or said, where they worked, who they worked or associated with, what projects or causes they promoted or espoused. The point is, he backs it up and then states without fail, if I'm wrong, show me where I've got it wrong.
No one else on TV has even bothered to question who the current people in power are, what their beliefs and associations are, or what their political objectives are. No one else on TV has researched the links between people and groups like the Tides Foundation, the Apollo Group, Acorn, SEIU, Bill Ayers and Jeff Jones, the founders of the Weathermen Underground and what is their involvement and influence in the Obama administration.
It was Glenn Beck who came to the defense of Shirley Sherrod after she was fired without a fair investigation following the NAACP speech clip aired by Andrew Breitbart. A clip that was aired to show the hypocrisy of the NAACP calling the Tea Party groups racist. Not Ms Sherrod a racist, but the convention group whooping and clapping when they thought Ms Sherrod had said she had discriminated against a white farmer in her job.
If more journalists and media people actually did their jobs of questioning and digging to get facts rather than circling the wagons to protect their ideological favored, then those like Glenn Beck who do, would not be such a big target for the left.

Musings

It's a strange world when both Duke and NC BB teams get beat on the same night. It's also strange when a Republican candidate wins in Massachusetts. The spin on Brown's win is crazy. He ran a great campaign and his opponent didn't. I'm one of those who think that the despicable behavior of the Democratic leadership incensed the electorate to vote to stop the steamrolling. What happened to the promised transparency in government? You can take the politicians out of Chicago, but you can't take the Chicago out of the politicians. You may figure by now that I'm not a supporter of the Presidents domestic policies. We are Libertarians and we think this country has lost its way and it's not just the Democrats. The founding fathers warned us of developments that would threaten our republic. A powerful federal government topped the list. Government big enough to give you everything is big enough to take it all away.
My partner and I bid two small slams the other night - made one. Love that game.
We'll be gone for several weeks but we'll stay in touch.

I'm Ready To Go

Ocracoke has had some cold weather these last few weeks. Not so cold by other climes, 27 to 36 degrees F, but kind of brisk by local standards. Six months ago we booked four weeks in Aruba. That's the month of February.
This is the very first blog. Hang with me, I am going to post some comments every few days.
Thank you!