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.