Michelle Obama, Class-Warfare, and Clueless Hypocrisy

August 22, 2024 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

I used to think the world’s biggest hypocrites were the bureaucrats at international bureaucracies such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the International Monetary Fund.

They jet around the world at our expense (in business class, of course) urging governments to increase tax burdens, yet their salaries are tax free.

I’m not joking. Bureaucrats who pay no tax (on very generous salaries) have a mission of encouraging higher taxes on the rest of us.

As far as I’m concerned, this hypocrisy is even worse than the politicians who oppose school choice while sending their own kids to private school. And worse than the elitists who lecture us about global warming while living in 10,000-square foot homes and flying in private jets.

But we may have an example of hypocrisy that beats all alternatives. At the Democratic Convention this week, Michelle Obama demonstrated a remarkable absence of self-awareness, as captured by this tweet.

Ms. Obama’s intention was to promote class warfare by implying that it is unseemly to be successful.

Does she not know she’s part of the top 1 percent? Maybe the top 0.1 percent?

Here are some details from Business Insider, including the fact that the three homes mentioned in the tweet have a combined value of more than $22 million.

…the Obamas’ life after the White House has been full and highly lucrative. …These endeavors — along with the six-figure pension all former presidents receive — have significantly contributed to the Obamas’ net worth, which is at least $70 million, according to International Business Times. The New York Post pegged their fortune much higher, at $135 million. …

All things considered, the Obamas could stand to earn as much as $242.5 million in their post-presidency life, American University estimated in 2017. …they purchased an 8,200-square-foot mansion in Washington, DC, for $8.1 million… In addition to their residence in Washington, DC, the Obamas still own their home in Chicago… It’s valued at about $2.5 million. …In 2019, the Obamas reportedly purchased a house in Martha’s Vineyard for $11.75 million.

Have the Obama’s taken “more than they needed”?

For what it’s worth, Ms. Obama’s class warfare would not have been grotesquely hypocritical if she had simply said something like “those of us with a lot should be willing to pay a lot” or “people like me should be pay more to help those with less.”

That’s the message of lefty groups like the so-called Patriotic Millionaires. They don’t hide their wealth. They just have a masochistic desire for higher taxes.

That’s bad tax policy, but it’s not hypocritical. Ms. Obama should learn from them.

P.S. Even better, Ms. Obama should learn about good tax policy so she can then support reforms that would enable other people to get rich like her.

P.P.S. There’s another reason that I don’t like what Ms Obama said. She should have said that her mother was suspicious of people who “earned more than they needed” rather than “took more than they needed.”

In a free-market system, you only get money by providing value to someone else. Transactions are voluntary and based on mutual benefit.

To be fair, her statement would have been accurate if she was referring to government bureaucrats, subsidy recipients, and others who obtain unearned wealth because of government coercion. Given the big-government views of her husband, which she seems to share, I’m completely confident she was referring to people who earn money honestly.

P.P.P.S. The Patriotic Millionaires are hypocrites, but in a different way than Ms. Obama.

P.P.P.P.S. There’s a test that supposedly determines whether libertarians are hypocrites.

The Entitlement Disaster that Kamala Harris and Donald Trump Are Ignoring, Part II

August 12, 2024 by Dan Mitchell @ Internatiional Liberty

In Part I of this series, I groused that Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are both very irresponsible about Social Security. Instead of proposing good reforms (or even bad reforms!), they want to kick the can down the road and pretend the problem doesn’t exist.

Even though that will create an even bigger crisis in the future.

Today, let’s broaden the discussion by also considering Medicare. And we’ll start with these grim numbers from Brian Riedl’s Chart Book.

The obvious takeaway from this chart is that 100 percent of the problem is on the spending side of the budget.

Revenues going into the programs are stable, but spending burdens are soaring.

And here’s another one of Brian’s charts. This one shows that nearly 100 percent of America’s long-run fiscal problem is just Social Security and Medicare.

As far as Trump and Harris are concerned, this is just fine.

To the extent they want to make change, they want to dig the hole deeper.

Fortunately, not every person in politics is equally short-sighted. Former Vice President Mike Pence’s group, Advancing American Freedom, has just released a report that correctly argues that we need to control entitlement spending.

After decades of ignoring the significance of profligate federal spending, the consequences are finally starting to catch up to us. As has been the case, the problem is not a lack of revenue, but rather a lack of willingness to make hard choices to rein in spending and have the courage to say ‘no’ to wasteful programs.

Federal revenue has experienced strong growth…but spending continues to grow at a faster pace. A sustainable federal budget is impossible to achieve without addressing the root cause of our spiraling debt and deficit: unchecked spending. America faces a bleak future as…our economy stagnates under the drag of an unsustainable burden… Those problems will only compound on themselves the longer we fail to address the drivers of our debt and cut spending… The vast majority of federal government spending is on autopilot. … there is no restriction on the unchecked growth of these programs. This funding category includes the biggest government programs like Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare, Social Security, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Federal civilian retirement, and unemployment compensation.

For what it’s worth, I don’t think this report is perfect. For instance, it does not call for some of the reforms (such as block-granting Medicaid and modernizing Medicare to be a choice-based, premium-support system) that made the Ryan budgets so impressive.

And I also am troubled that the report identified some very bad tax loopholes, but failed to specify that any revenues gained by shutting down those special preferences should be used to lower tax rates and/or reduce double taxation.

But let’s not make the perfect the enemy of the good. It’s refreshing to have a politician, even just a former one, correctly identify the problem and actually propose some long-overdue spending restraint.

The Correct Rate for a State Income Tax Is Zero

November 26, 2022 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

Looking at reforms at the state level, the past two years have produced very good news on education policy and tax policy.

 

Regarding the latter, many states have lowered tax rates and several of them have junked so-called progressive tax systems and replaced them with simple and fair flat taxes.

But I’m greedy for even bigger improvements.

I want to see some states move not just to Column 2 in my ranking of state tax policy. I want them to be in Column 1.

And that means they need to get rid of income taxes.

The good news is that some states are having that discussion.

Here are some excerpts from an Associated Press report from Mississippi, written by Michael Goldberg.

Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves promised to push for a full elimination of the state’s income tax during the 2023 legislative session. The move would make Mississippi the 10th state with no income tax. …Mississippi’s Republican-controlled legislature passed legislation in 2022 that will eliminate the state’s 4% income tax bracket starting in 2023. In the following three years, the 5% bracket will be reduced to 4%. …Supporters of the 2022 Mississippi tax cut said it would spur economic growth and attract new residents to Mississippi. …Republican House speaker Philip Gunn has said full elimination of the state income tax is “achievable,” though he hasn’t committed to doing so in the 2023 session. …Tax-cut proposals are a direct effort to compete with states that don’t tax earnings, including Texas, Florida and Tennessee.

And here are portions of an article in National Review about Colorado, authored by Ben Murrey, which also notes that the TABOR spending limit will need to be strengthened if lawmakers are serious about getting rid of the state’s income tax.

When an interviewer recently asked Colorado’s Democratic governor Jared Polis what the state’s income-tax rate should be, he answered without hesitation: “It should be zero.” …The effort to chisel away at the income tax has already gained steam in the state. Last year, voters reduced the tax with Proposition 116 — a ballot initiative that brought the rate from 4.63 percent to 4.55 percent. …Eliminating the tax would provide an enormous direct windfall to Colorado households. …every reduction in income tax will allow Coloradans to keep more of every dollar they earn, and it invites more jobs and opportunities for residents. …To eliminate the income tax entirely, the state would probably need to begin lowering the revenue limit along with the rate reductions in the future. …these two reforms would put the state on a road to zero.

By the way, Colorado voters once again just cut the state’s flat tax in a referendum earlier this month.

Would Mississippi and Colorado be doing the right thing if they joined the zero-income-tax club?

Yes. I cited some evidence on this issue about 10 years ago.

Here’s some updated analysis from Chris Edwards.

The nine states without an individual income tax are Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, and Wyoming. …What they have in common is providing needed state‐​local services to their residents without complex, anti‐​freedom, and anti‐​growth individual income taxes. Most of the nine run leaner and more efficient governments than most other states. They only partly make up for the income tax revenue gap with other revenues. In terms of overall tax burdens, eight of the nine states are toward the bottom of the 50 states and Washington is in the middle. …Total taxes in the seven states average 8.1 percent of income. The average in the 40 other states is 9.6 percent. Thus, the lack of individual income tax restrains the overall tax burden. …Repealing state individual income taxes is a good goal. …Residents get the state‐​local services they need, but at lower cost. 

Here’s the chart that accompanied Chris’ article. He separates Alaska and Wyoming because they get so much money from energy taxes and are not realistic role models for other states.

The bottom line is that states without an income tax tend to have smaller government.

This is especially true for Florida, Tennessee, South Dakota, and New Hampshire. And Texas may join those states now that it has strengthened its spending cap.

One should-be-obvious conclusion from this data is that states with no income taxes should not make the mistake of adopting that punitive levy. Unless, of course, they want to repeat Connecticut’s unhappy experience.

Posted by Rich Kozlovich at 4:10 AM No comments:

 

Republican Warfare, Part III: National Conservatism and Massive Tax Increases

 

November 11, 2022 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

In yesterday’s column, I explained Republicans are not credible advocates of lower tax rates if they don’t also push for spending restraint.

And, as I explained to the Adam Smith Institute, they will be de facto advocates of higher taxes if they embrace the wrong version of national conservatism.

To understand why I’m concerned, look at the most-recent edition of the Congressional Budget Office’s long-run fiscal forecast.

It shows that the burden of government spending is going to substantially increase over the next three decades – largely due to the unchecked growth of entitlement programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.

Failure to control spending will mean two bad things – either huge tax increases or staggering levels of debt. Probably both.

And if politicians add more spending (as Biden has already done), then those long-run trend lines will get even worse.

My concern is that some national conservatives are unwilling to confront this problem and/or they support policies to make matters worse.

But first, in the interest of fairness, bigger government is not an inherent part of the national conservatism platform. At least based on the statement of principles published by The American Conservative.

That document, signed by the key advocates of national conservatism, lists 10 concepts, most of which are good from a libertarian perspective and only one of which is overtly troubling.

1. National independence (I cheer for anyone opposed to global governance)
2. Rejection of imperialism and globalism (they’re opposed to the bad form of globalism)
3. National government (very akin to “state capacity libertarianism“)
4. God and public religion (not a role for government, but they’re not pushing bad ideas)
5. The rule of law (good idea)
6. Free enterprise (they have a few unnecessary caveats)
7. Public research (I’m skeptical of this one)
8. Family and children (not a role for government, but they’re not pushing bad ideas)
9. Immigration (I’m more sympathetic than they are, but agree on the importance of assimilation)
10. Race (they want neutrality rather than preferences)

Unfortunately, some national conservatives go beyond this statement of principles and push for bigger government.

• Such as industrial policy.
• Such as per-child handouts.

But don’t believe me. Bill McGurn of the Wall Street Journal makes similar points.

Mr. Cass’s movement insists (rightly) that purely economic and material measures are limited. But whenever they move beyond rhetoric to specifics, their preferred solutions almost always turn out to be economic interventions, from child tax credits to industrial policy. …Even a cursory glance at the record of the past half-century shows government often doing the most harm to people precisely when it is trying to help them. Federal efforts to promote homeownership ended up encouraging banks to lend people more than they could afford and feeding a housing bubble. Federal college loans helped drive up tuition while leaving Americans $1.6 trillion in debt. As we ought to have learned from the Great Society, well-intentioned government policies can do immense damage to families and communities. Unfortunately, when it comes to getting the toothpaste back in the tube, government has shown much less success.

The bottom line is that national conservatives always seem to advocate bigger government when they develop or endorse specific policies.

And, to the best of my knowledge, none of them have put forth any agenda to deal with the spending problem that already exists.

That’s an agenda that guarantees future tax increases. And, for what it’s worth, one of the advocates already has embraced a tax-the-rich agenda to help finance the national conservative agenda.

If Republicans go down that path, it won’t end well (just as it didn’t end well when they embraced other fads such as compassionate conservatism, kinder-and-gentler conservatism, common-good capitalism, reform conservatism, etc).

As I’ve previously noted, there no alternative to Reaganism.

Augmenting the Case for Spending Restraint

November 14, 2022 by Dan Mitchell

I explained last week that excessive government spending is responsible for about 97 percent of America’s fiscal deterioration in the 21st century.

 

I followed that column with two post-election pieces that explained how huge tax increases will be inevitable if there is no effort to deal with the spending problem.

Simply stated, lawmakers need to copy the fiscal restraint of the Reagan years and Clinton years.

Why? To help people enjoy better lives thanks to faster growth and more opportunity.

In the Wall Street Journal, Andy Kessler explains that smaller government is the recipe for more growth.

Winston Churchill…said: “We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.” The U.S. should heed that advice… economic growth is going to come from efficient supply chains and productivity in manufacturing in the U.S. Tax and spending cuts are the cure. …Republicans must resist the urge to subsidize higher energy costs and instead help slay inflation and bring back a strong, productive economy.

Let’s look at some new academic research bolstering Kessler’s argument.

Megha Jain Aishwarya Nagpal, and Abhay Jain published a study last year in the South Asia Journal of Macroeconomics and Public Finance.

The key findings deal with the Armey-Rahn Curve and can be found in the abstract.

The current study attempts to examine the linkage between government (public) spending and economic growth in the broader framework of selected South Asian Nations (SANs), BRICS and other emerging nations by using two sets of empirical modelling over the period 2007–2016 by using inverted U-shaped hypothesis, propounded by Armey curve (1995). …The key findings signify the existence of an inverted U-shaped relationship for the selected data set of emerging nations and, therefore, support the Armey curve hypothesis. The projected threshold (tipping) levels (as a percentage of GDP) are 24.31% for the government total expenditures (GTotExp), 12.92% for consumption spending (GConExp) and 7.11% for investment spending (GInvExp). It has been observed that a rise in the public spending (size) resulted in a substantial…decrease…in the growth rate when the public spending was…after…the optimal threshold level, indicating a non-monotonic association.

For what it’s worth, I think the study is wrong and that the growth-maximizing level of government spending is much lower than 24.3 percent of economic output.

But since total government spending in the United States now consumes about 40 percent of GDP, at least we can all agree that there will be more prosperity if America’s fiscal burden is dramatically reduced.

If we ever bring the spending burden back down to 24.3 percent of economic output, we can then figure out whether the ultimate goal is even lower (as it was for much of America’s history).

There is one point from the study that merits further attention. The authors estimated not only the growth-maximizing level of total spending, but also how much the government should spend on “consumption” and “investment” outlays (an issue I addressed last month).

Here’s a chart from the study showing that consumption outlays should be less than 13 percent of economic output.

P.S. If you want to watch videos that address the growth-maximizing size of government, click here, here, here, here, and here.

P.P.S. Ironically, the case for smaller government is bolstered by research from normally left-leaning international bureaucracies such as the OECD, World Bank, ECB, and IMF.

 

The World’s Most Depressing Tweet

December 7, 2018 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

I periodically will make use of “most depressing” in the title of a column when sharing bad news.

 

And new data from the Census Bureau definitely qualifies as bad news. It confirms what I’ve written about how the Washington region has become the richest part of America.

 

But the D.C. area didn’t become wealthy by producing value. Instead, it’s rolling in money because of overpaid bureaucrats, fat-cat lobbyists, sleazy politicians, beltway-bandit contractors, and other grifters who have figured out how to hitch a ride on the federal gravy train.

 

Anyhow, here’s a tweet with the bad news (at least if you’re a serf elsewhere in America who is paying taxes to keep Washington fat and happy).

Most of my friends who work for the federal government privately will admit that they are very fortunate.

 

But when I run into someone who denies that bureaucrats get above-market compensation, I simply share this data from the Labor Department. That usually shuts them up.

 

By the way, there’s strong evidence from the European Central Bank that overpaid bureaucrats have a negative impact on macroeconomic performance.

 

And the World Bank has produced a study showing how bureaucrats manipulate the political process.

…public sector workers are not just simply implementers of policies designed by the politicians in charge of supervising them — so called agents and principals, respectively. Public sector workers can have the power to influence whether politicians are elected, thereby influencing whether policies to improve service delivery are adopted and how they are implemented, if at all. This has implications for the quality of public services: if the main purpose of the relationship between politicians and public servants is not to deliver quality public services, but rather to share rents accruing from public office, then service delivery outcomes are likely to be poor.

Here’s my video explaining how bureaucrats are overpaid. It was filmed in 2010, so many of the numbers are now out-dated, but the arguments are just as strong today as they were back then.

 

 

But keep in mind that the bureaucracy is only one piece of the puzzle.

 

The D.C. metropolitan region is unjustly rich because of everyone else who has figured out how to divert taxpayer money into their pockets. That includes disgusting examples of Democrat sleaze and Republican sleaze.

 

Simply stated, Washington is riddled with rampant corruption as insiders get rich at our expense. No wonder many of them object to my license plate!

 

P.S. Here’s some data comparing the size and cost of bureaucracy in various nations.

Maybe the Collectivists Will (Un)Breed Themselves Out of Existence

September 10, 2009 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

(Editor's Note:  Although this is a "Blast From the Past", nothing has changed.  The thoughts and concepts are still the same nine years later.  If I'm still alive in nine years and republish this article all the thoughts and concepts would still be applicable.  RK)

The UK-based Telegraph reports that some outfit called the Optimal Population Trust is suggesting that people should have fewer babies to fight supposed global warming (or climate change, or whatever they’re calling it now). This is a reflection of the people-are-bad mentality that seems disturbingly common among enviro-statists:

The report, Fewer Emitter, Lower Emissions, Less Cost, concludes that family planning should be seen as one of the primary methods of emissions reduction. The UN estimates that 40 per cent of all pregnancies worldwide are unintended. …Roger Martin, chairman of the Optimum Population Trust at the LSE, said: “It’s always been obviously that total emissions depend on the number of emitters as well as their individual emissions.

 

Reading this article, though, reminded me of another article from a British paper. As this story from the Daily Mail explains, some radical environmentalists are deliberately choosing to sterlilize themselves to avoid having kids:

Had Toni Vernelli gone ahead with her pregnancy ten years ago, she would know at first hand what it is like to cradle her own baby, to have a pair of innocent eyes gazing up at her with unconditional love, to feel a little hand slipping into hers – and a voice calling her Mummy. But the very thought makes her shudder with horror. Because when Toni terminated her pregnancy, she did so in the firm belief she was helping to save the planet. …Incredibly, so determined was she that the terrible “mistake” of pregnancy should never happen again, that she begged the doctor who performed the abortion to sterilise her at the same time. He refused, but Toni – who works for an environmental charity – “relentlessly hunted down a doctor who would perform the irreversible surgery. …”Having children is selfish. It’s all about maintaining your genetic line at the expense of the planet,” says Toni, 35. “Every person who is born uses more food, more water, more land, more fossil fuels, more trees and produces more rubbish, more pollution, more greenhouse gases, and adds to the problem of over-population.” …Toni is far from alone. When Sarah Irving, 31, was a teenager she sat down and wrote a wish-list for the future. …Most young girls dream of marriage and babies. But Sarah dreamed of helping the environment – and as she agonised over the perils of climate change, the loss of animal species and destruction of wilderness, she came to the extraordinary decision never to have a child. “I realised then that a baby would pollute the planet – and that never having a child was the most environmentally friendly thing I could do.” …Mark adds: “Sarah and I live as green a life a possible. We don’t have a car, cycle everywhere instead, and we never fly. “We recycle, use low-energy light bulbs and eat only organic, locally produced food. “In short, we do everything we can to reduce our carbon footprint. But all this would be undone if we had a child.”

 

Think about what this means. If the nut-job environmentalists persist in not having kids, that almost surely means the world’s population will gradually become more sensible about these issue since mommy and daddy enviro-statist won’t be raising little interventionists to plague future generations.

Sounds like a win-win situation for everyone.
 

Virtue Signaling, Plastic Straws, and Political Humor

August 4, 2018 by Dan Mitchell

 

Since I focus on public finance, I think California is crazy because of punitive taxes and reckless spending policies.  But I can understand why other people think California is crazy, period.  This is a state, after all, where politicians come up with bizarre ideas such as regulating babysitting and banning Happy Meals.

Not to mention banning other things as well.

So you won’t be surprised to learn that the Golden State is leading the way in attacking the horrible scourge of plastic straws.

Plastic straws are quickly becoming a takeout taboo. Starbucks has vowed to get its iconic green sippers completely off store shelves by 2020, while Seattle banned all plastic utensils, including straws, from bars and businesses city-wide earlier this month. San Francisco quickly followed suit this week and passed an ordinance that, once approved, will ban plastic straws beginning in July of 2019… It may seem as though the quarter-of-an-inch diameter drinking straw is the least of our worries. But environmentalists say the fight’s got to start somewhere. “We look at straws as one of the gateway issues to help people start thinking about the global plastic pollution problem,” Plastic Pollution Coalition CEO Dianna Cohen told Business Insider.

If I’m willing to claim earmarks are the gateway drug for big spending, then I can’t complain when other people come up with imaginative claims about other types of “gateways.”

In any event, there is a legitimate reason to be concerned about plastic.

Some straws drift out to sea, becoming just one more piece of the 79 thousand-ton colossal floating iceberg of trash called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Scientists who’ve studied the patch, a trash heap wider than two whole Texases that bobs somewhere between Hawaii and California, have discovered it’s essentially a watery pit of litter and illegal dumps that’s trapped in the ocean currents, and it is basically all plastic. …The anti-straw movement may have first picked up steam because…Texas A&M graduate student Christine Figgener…noticed something encrusted in the nose of one of the male turtles. …The team soon figured out it was actually a “plastic straw stuck in his nose,” and removed it, hoping the extraction might help give him some more breathing time on Earth.

But the people on the left side of the country are not actually solving this problem.

Plastic pollution is basically a problem caused by developing countries.

So the politicians in Seattle and San Francisco are making the Nanny State more intrusive without achieving anything.

A classic case of virtue signaling.

But look at the bright side. It’s already generated some great political satire.
Starting with this little girl.

I imagine the plastic straw will be a gateway for operating an unlicensed lemonade stand!

And if SWAT teams run out of harmless pot smokers to harass, they now have new target to justify their budgets. (Editor's Note: Libertarians are opposed to laws against illegal drugs. It's impossible to classify Libertarians as liberal or conservative since they're playing both sides of the ping pong table.  They remind me of Everett Dirksen who was "fiscally conservative and socially liberal", which I find counterintuitive.  RK)

 

And the gun grabbers will appreciate the importance of dealing with high-capacity straw dispensers.

Though it’s unclear how the left will deal with the danger of concealed straws.

Especially since some of those straw nuts will become dealers.

I’ve saved the best for last. For those old enough to remember OJ Simpson and the white Bronco, this image of a renegade toddler will bring back memories.

Remember, if you outlaw straws, only outlaws will have straws.

Next thing you know, they’ll try to outlaw tanks.

It’s a slippery slope!

Bureaucrats Behaving Badly

February 18, 2018 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty
 

Time for a confession.

I routinely mock bureaucrats, but I don’t really think they are any worse than other people. Indeed, I have plenty of friends and acquaintances who work for various levels of government and they are fundamentally decent people.

The real problem is that bureaucracies create bad incentives. So even people who are generally good will be tempted to exploit rules that reward bad behavior.

And some of these folks, operating in systems with bad incentives, will morph into bad people. Heck, some of them are so awful that I elect them to the Bureaucrat Hall of Fame.

But it’s also important to recognize other bureaucrats – as well as the perverse rules that encourage their bad actions.

Let’s start with a cop in New Jersey who went above and beyond the call of duty, at least if the call of duty involves ripping off taxpayers.

…former Police Chief Philip Zacche…could spend the first decade of his retirement in federal prison after he admitted to stealing $31,713 from an agency that serves the city’s neediest families. Federal prosecutors said Friday that Zacche filled out phony time sheets to get paid for security work that he never performed for the Jersey City Housing Authority. …As a member of the department’s brass, Zacche pulled a six-figure salary before overtime. He earned even more by working an off-duty part-time gig as a security officer for the Authority’s Marion Gardens housing development. When he retired in June, city taxpayers had to cut Zacche a check for $512,620 to compensate him for 450 unused comp and vacation days. The 61-year-old Manalapan resident is now set to collect a pension of at least $11,946 every month for the rest of his life.

That’s a pension of more than $140,000 per year. And he gets it well before age 65. No wonder New Jersey is a fiscal mess.

Let’s also highlight a senior federal bureaucrat who specialized in exploiting immigrants to steal money.

A chief counsel at US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has admitted stealing immigrants’ identities to defraud banks. Raphael Sanchez, 44, forged identity documents on his government computer to open bank accounts and credit cards in the names of seven immigrants. He racked up more than $190,000 (£135,000) in personal loans, transferred funds and card-spending during the four-year scam. …He claimed three were dependent relatives on his tax returns for 2014 to 2016. …He resigned from his role at the ICE’s Office of the Principal Legal Advisor after his crimes came to light.

I’m almost impressed by this guy’s depravity. Not only did he steal identities, but he even listed some of the victims as dependents on his tax return. That’s real chutzpah!

And notice that theft and fraud apparently are not enough to get a bureaucrat fired. Instead, he resigned.

And since we’re on the topic of bureaucrats doing bad things and not getting fired, we may as well note that the guy who sent the false alert in Hawaii is still getting checks from the taxpayers he terrified.

The worker who sent a false missile alert to Hawaiian residents on Saturday has reportedly been reassigned. The civil defence employee has been moved to another role, but not fired, according to multiplemedia reports. In a press conference on Saturday, the head of Hawaii’s Emergency Management Agency, Vern Miyagi, said the worker “feels terrible.” …The Post also confirmed that there are no plans to fire the employee.

Here’s a fourth example, dealing with a former Obama appointee who was unmasked for screwing taxpayers.

Vikrum Aiyer liked to commute to his government job by taxi. On at least 130 occasions over two years — the majority during a four-month stretch in 2016 — the then-chief of staff for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office called a taxi to pick him up near his home in the District. He was chauffeured across the Potomac River 10 miles or so to the agency’s headquarters in downtown Alexandria. And then…Aiyer billed the government for each ride. To escape notice, Aiyer impersonated current and former high-level agency officials, writing their names on cab receipts and vouchers he submitted to the taxi company, which then billed the government, investigators found. …Aiyer…released a statement saying he had a “misunderstanding of agency taxi rules.”

Hmmm…, I think I’ll go to the grocery store later today and slip a couple of steaks into my jacket. If I get caught leaving the store, I’ll say I had a “misunderstanding of store rules.”
The good news, at least if we’re grading on a curve, is that it only took about two years for the government to realize what was happening.

Aiyer’s unauthorized rides apparently went unnoticed for at least two years by budget officials who reviewed the invoices from Alexandria Yellow Cab, which has a contract to provide authorized taxi services for agency officials. The patent office paid the taxi company more than $4,000 for Aiyer’s rides, the report says. …For most of the cab rides, Aiyer was picked up on a street corner a tenth of a mile from his home, according to the report. But he wrote on the invoice that he was leaving from Commerce Department headquarters in downtown Washington. …investigators found…that he “used the Agency’s Cab Company account to facilitate his weekend social activity… Aiyer also racked up $15,000 in expenses on his government-issued credit card, charging for food and drink at local bars, clubs, coffee shops, restaurants, grocery stores, dry cleaners and at least one liquor store, the report said. …The report says he also misstated his educational credentials on résumés he submitted to the Obama administration, claiming to have a postgraduate degree that he did not receive.

By the way, the article mentioned that Aiyer was a technology adviser for the White House. Did he advise on how to lie on your resume and how to get taxpayers to finance one’s social life?
A common problem in most of these stories is that politicians and bureaucrats conspire together to create rules that enable bad behavior.
Government employee unions, for instance, give lots of money to politicians and then sit down with those lawmakers to “negotiate” pay and benefit packages.

Needless to say, the interests of taxpayers don’t get represented. And that’s why many state and local governments are careening toward bankruptcy.

What’s especially discouraging is how these deals often include loopholes that are designed to be exploited.

For instance, the Los Angeles Times has a very depressing exposé showing how senior bureaucrats in the police and fire departments benefited from a scam allowing them to double dip. But not just double dip. They get extra compensation and oftentimes then don’t do any work.

When Capt. Tia Morris turned 50, after about three decades in the Los Angeles Police Department, she became eligible to retire with nearly 90% of her salary. But like many cops and firefighters in her position, the decision to keep working was a financial no-brainer, thanks to a program that allowed her to nearly double her pay by keeping her salary while also collecting her pension. A month after Morris entered the program, her husband, a detective, joined too. Their combined income for four years in the Deferred Retirement Option Plan was just shy of $2 million, city payroll records show. But the city didn’t benefit much from the Morrises’ experience: They both filed claims for carpal tunnel syndrome and other cumulative ailments about halfway through the program. She spent nearly two years on disability and sick leave; he missed more than two years… The couple spent at least some of their paid time off recovering at their condo in Cabo San Lucas.

Yes, I’m sure they were “recovering” at their luxurious place on the beach.
Just like the other bureaucrats who exploited the system.

The Morrises are far from alone. In fact, they’re among hundreds of Los Angeles police and firefighters who have turned the DROP program — which has doled out more than $1.6 billion in extra pension payments since its inception in 2002 — into an extended leave at nearly twice the pay… Former Police Capt. Daryl Russell, who collected $1.5 million over five years in the program, missed nearly three of those years because of pain from a bad knee, carpal tunnel and multiple injuries he claimed he suffered after falling out of an office chair. …Former firefighter Thomas Futterer, an avid runner who lives in Long Beach, hurt a knee “misstepping off the fire truck,” three weeks after entering DROP, according to city records. The injury kept him off the job for almost a full year.Less than two months after the knee injury, a Tom Futterer from Long Beach crossed the finish line of a half-marathon in Portland, Ore.

Yes, you read correctly. His knee supposedly was so damaged that he couldn’t work, but he nonetheless runs long-distance races.

I’m beginning to think that firefighters in big cities are the most cossetted of all bureaucrats. I now understand the hostility in this video.

Here’s some background on the DROP scam.

The idea of allowing retirement-age public employees to collect their pensions while working and receiving paychecks originated more than three decades ago in tiny East Baton Rouge, La. …the goal was the opposite: to discourage older employees from staying so long that they limited upward mobility for younger workers. And it had a two-year time limit. Since then, versions of the program have been adopted by dozens of states, counties and cities across the country. The details vary — some have short terms to encourage early retirement, others have long terms to retain experience — but the central appeal for employees is constant: two large checks instead of one. …former Mayor Richard Riordan…said: “Oh, yeah, that was a mistake…it’s total fraud.” …in recent years, a growing number of jurisdictions have abandoned or drastically scaled back DROP programs because the math doesn’t work. …Instead of saving money, or remaining “cost-neutral,” the programs lead to ballooning pension costs and accusations that employees are simply double-dipping.

Needless to say, the taxpayers who finance all this aren’t treated nearly as well as government insiders.

When most Los Angeles taxpayers reach the standard retirement age, 65, they face a stark choice: keep working and collecting their paychecks or quit and start collecting Social Security, which replaces only a small fraction of annual wages for most people.When city firefighters or police officers reach their retirement age, 50, the choices are far better. They can keep working for a paycheck, they can retire with up to 90% of their salary in pension and city-subsidized health insurance for life, or they can enter DROP. For many, the choice is easy. …they keep working and collecting their paychecks for up to five years while their pension checks are deposited into a special account. …the city guarantees 5% interest on the money in the account. The city also adds annual cost-of-living raises to the pension checks to make sure they keep pace with inflation.

Disgusting.

Let’s close by speculating whether Trump will do anything to fix this mess, at least the part that occurs on the federal level.

Some pro-Trump readers sent me this story from the Washington Post and suggested it shows that the President is making progress.

…a year into his takeover of Washington, President Trump has made a significant down payment on his campaign pledge to shrink the federal bureaucracy… By the end of September, all Cabinet departments except Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs and Interior had fewer permanent staff than when Trump took office in January — with most shedding many hundreds of employees, according to an analysis of federal personnel data… The falloff has been driven by an exodus of civil servants, a diminished corps of political appointees and an effective hiring freeze. …Federal workers fret that their jobs could be zeroed out amid buyouts and early retirement offers that already have prompted hundreds of their colleagues to leave, according to interviews with three dozen employees across the government. Many chafed as supervisors laid down new rules they said are aimed at holding poor performers and problem workers to account. …“Morale has never been lower,” said Tony Reardon, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents 150,000 federal workers at more than 30 agencies. “Government is making itself a lot less attractive as an employer.”……Agencies have told employees that they should no longer count on getting glowing reviews in their performance appraisals, according to staff in multiple offices, as has been the case for years. Housing and Urban Development managers, for example, are being evaluated for the first time on how effectively they address poor performers.

If I was planning to die in the next month, I would probably agree with readers that Trump made progress in this area.

But as I wrote last year, the only way to successfully shrink bureaucracy in the long run is to shrink government.

Yet Trump just capitulated to a budget deal that increases spending.

I’m willing to praise this President when he does good things, but his weak record on spending almost surely is going to translate into a bigger bureaucracy over time. Though I hope I’m wrong.
Here are two final additional passages from the story that deserve some attention. Starting with an honest bureaucrat.

…some civil servants said they welcome the focus on rooting out waste and holding federal workers to high standards. “Oftentimes we run on autopilot and continue to fund programs that don’t produce the results that were intended,” said Stephanie Valentine, a program analyst at the Education Department. “You can’t keep blindly spending because that’s what we’ve always done.”

And since I’ve previously contrasted Bill Clinton’s good record and Obama’s bad record, this passage is added confirmation of my findings.

Trump already has begun to reverse the growth of the Obama era, when the government added a total of 188,000 permanent employees, according to Office of Personnel Management data. …The last time federal employment dropped during a president’s first year, President Bill Clinton was in the White House.

It’s also worth noting that the bureaucracy didn’t contract during the big-government Bush years.
I’ll conclude by circling back to my original point. Most bureaucrats are no better or no worse than the rest of us. Given the perverse “public choice” incentives inherent in government, however, the good bureaucrats often are lured into bad behavior and the bad bureaucrats frequently become scam artists and crooks.

P.S. If my conclusion was too grim and pessimistic, you can cheer yourself up with another example of bureaucrat humor.

The Much-Deserved End of Obama’s Operation Choke Point

Dan Mitchell

Trump has been President for more than 200 days and those of us who want more economic liberty don't have many reasons to be happy. Obamacare hasn't been repealed, the tax code hasn't been reformed, and wasteful spending hasn't been cut. The only glimmer of hope is that Trump has eased up on the regulatory burden. More should be happening, of course, but we are seeing some small steps in the right direction. Let's share one positive development. Professor Tony Lima of California State University opined back in January in the Wall Street Journal that Trump could unilaterally boost growth by ending a reprehensible policy known as "Operation Choke Point.".........Keep in mind, by the way, that Congress didn't pass a law mandating discrimination against and harassment of these merchants.  The Washington bureaucracy, along with ideologues in the Obama Administration, simply decided to impose an onerous new policy......To Read More.....

Because Protecting the Environment Is Important, Capitalism Should Play a Bigger Role

August 16, 2017 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty
 

Over the years, I’ve had fun mocking the silly extremism of the environmental movement.

 

All you really need to know is that it’s supposedly bad to be a red country.

• Some environmentalists don’t believe in bathing,
• How about the environmentalists who sterilize themselves to avoid carbon-producing children,
• Or consider the environmentalists who produce/use hand-cranked vibrators to reduce their carbon footprint.
• There are also environmentalist who claim that climate change causes AIDS.
• Environmentalists assert that you’re racist if you oppose their agenda.
• And environmentalists put together a ranking implying that Cuba is better than the United States.
• The environmentalists who choose death to lower their carbon footprints.

That being said, protecting the environment is a worthy and important goal.

And that’s why some of us want to give the private sector a bigger role.

John Stossel, for instance, has a must-watch video on how capitalism can save endangered rhinos.



Professor Philip Booth expands on the lesson in the video and urges broad application of market forces to preserve the environment.

Especially well-enforced property rights.

…what is needed for better husbandry of ecological resources is more widespread and deeper establishment of property rights together with their enforcement. The cause of environmentalism is often associated with the Left. This is despite the fact that some of the worst environmental outcomes in the history of our planet have been associated with Communist governments. …a great deal of serious work has been produced by those who believe in market or community-based solutions to environmental problems, and a relatively small role for government. For example, Ronald Coase and Elinor Ostrom are two Nobel Prize winners in economics who have made profound contributions to our understanding of how markets and communities can promote environmental conservation. Indeed, the intellectual and moral high ground when it comes to environmentalism ought to be taken by those who believe in private property, strong community institutions and a free economy.

Philip explains why private ownership produces conservation.

If things are owned, they will tend to be looked after. The owner of a lake will not fish it to near extinction (or even over-fish the lake to a small degree) because the breeding potential of the fish would be reduced.

He then explains the downside of public ownership.

On the other hand, if the lake is not owned by anybody, or if it is owned by the government and fishing is unregulated, the lake will be fished to extinction because nobody has any benefit from holding back. Local businesses may well also pollute the lake if there are no well-defined ownership rights. The much-cited work here is Hardin’s Tragedy of the Commons (1968), though, in fact, Hardin was simply referring back to a pamphlet by William Forster Lloyd which was written in 1833. In that pamphlet, a situation was described whereby common land was open to grazing by all. The land would then be over-grazed because a person would get the benefit of putting additional cattle on the land without the cost that arises from over-grazing which would be shared by all users.

He points out that one advantage of Brexit is that the U.K. can implement a fisheries system based on property rights.

Now that fishing policy has been repatriated, the UK should establish property rights in sea fisheries. Few would seriously question private property when it comes to the land. For example, it is rare these days to find people who would suggest that farms should be nationalised or collectivised or returned to an unregulated commons where anybody can graze their animals without restriction. It would be understood that this would lead to chaos, inefficiency and environmental catastrophe.

And since we have real-world evidence that fisheries based on property rights are very successful, hopefully the U.K. government will implement this reform.

So what’s the bottom line on capitalism and the environment?

If we want sustainable environmental outcomes, the answer almost never lies with government control, but with the establishment and enforcement of property rights over environmental resources. This provides the incentive to nurture and conserve. Where the government does intervene it should try to mimic markets. When it comes to the environment, misguided government intervention can lead to conflict and poor environmental outcomes. The best thing the government can do is put its own house in order and ensure that property rights are enforced through proper policing and courts systems. That is certainly the experience of forested areas in South America.

Let’s close by noting one other reason to give the market a bigger role. Simply stated, environmentalists seem to have no sense of cost-benefit analysis. Instead, we get bizarre policies that seem motivated primarily by virtue signalling.

• The environmentalist-driven war on high-quality light bulbs.
• The environmentalist-driven rule against working toilets.
• The environmentalist-driven prohibition against washing machines that actually clean.
• The environmentalist-driven campaign to eliminate effective showerheads.
• The environmentalist-driven pointless recycling mandates.

And don’t forget green energy programs, which impose heavy costs on consumers and also are a combination of virtue signalling and cronyism.

No wonder many of us don’t trust the left on global warming, even if we recognize it may be a real issue.

P.S. There is at least one employee at the Environmental Protection Agency who deserves serious consideration for the Bureaucrat Hall of Fame.