My weariness for party politics came about midway through my time working for Republican Congressman Bill Sali.
Back when gasoline was $4 a gallon, I remember House Republicans issuing a treatise on high gasoline prices. The fault, the House Republicans said at the time, was those darned Democrats for failing to allow oil drilling offshore and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Less than a month ago, the U.S. debt clock, which tracks the federal government's accumulated red ink, struck $13 trillion dollars. As I write this column, the clock has added another $100 billion. That doesn't even count our broken entitlement programs -- Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Needless to say, Congressman Walt Minnick is 100 percent correct when he says deficit spending does matter.
I challenge conventional thinking because too many people believe efforts to restrict freedom are appropriate, necessary and natural. I got a good dose of that last week after I had the temerity to tell people that police shouldn’t be running dragnets to catch Idahoans not wearing their seat belts.
“But it saves lives!” well-meaning Idahoans e-mailed me.
For months, we freedom lovers have been bemoaning the socialistic atrocity that is Obamacare. But keep in mind where Obamacare originated: In general, it is from the belief of politicians that they can make you do things under the altruistic notion that a law is in your or society’s best interests. That’s a notion that is as old as many other state and federal laws.
Walter Williams pointed out five years ago that the Pledge of Allegiance doesn’t say, “and to the democracy for which it stands.” We don’t sing the “Battle Hymn of the Democracy.” And for good reason. This is not a democracy. It is, in fact, a Republic. But if you attended public school anywhere in America, you might not know that. It’s that kind of subtle intellectual dishonesty that has been sneaked into school textbooks, is destroying our nation and rewriting its history.
Increasingly, and in ways big and small, the government is treating us like children.
What we seem to be hearing from some (not all) of our elected leaders is that we’re not smart enough to make our own decisions. Like children, we need to be coddled and controlled, directed and managed.
Enter the government, the Nanny State, which then passes legislation to compel us to perform in a certain way, for our own good. And, says the Nanny Government, if we don’t do what we’re told, we will be punished, be it with a penalty or citation.
This morning, the Idaho Freedom Foundation filed a complaint with the Bannock County prosecutor alleging that the Pocatello/Chubbuck School Board met illegally to discuss budget cuts. While the cuts in question -- reducing administrator pay -- may be appropriate, the law requires certain discussions to take place in public so that taxpayers can understand and weigh what's going on.
All across the state, local school districts are holding meetings, hearings and work sessions to figure out how they’ll come to terms with $128 million in cuts approved by the Legislature and Gov. Butch Otter.
There are a lot of good people who work in government. Police officers. Teachers. Social Workers. Inspectors. They have jobs to do, and many of them do their jobs exceedingly well. The problem is government takes from the private sector in order to fund its operations, and today, it seems government has a say in just about every aspect of our lives. It extends beyond the proper role of government. We could use a good deal fewer people working in government and a good deal fewer government programs.
The Congressional Budget Office released new data Thursday estimating that by 2016, some 4 million Americans will face penalties for failing to buy health insurance as mandated under Obamacare. Additionally, the CBO estimated that 25 percent of those facing the penalty will be at the low end of the income scale; the penalty is expected to apply to about 400,000 Americans living below the federal poverty level (projected for 2016 to be $11,800 for a single person and $24,000 for a family of four).
