March 1998
Talking Points: Those well paid federal workers and tax-funded music for babies
Marc Beauchamp, Editor
The rich get richer
If you wonder why the government has such a hard time cutting spending, take a look at the new car in the driveway of the bureaucrat down the street. While private workers have seen their average annual earnings grow slowly but steadily over the past two decades, pay for government workers has skyrocketed.Economist Wendell Cox has discovered that since 1980, for every inflation-adjusted dollar of extra compensation (wages and benefits) the average private sector employee has earned, the average state and local government employee has received an extra $3.00.
Over the same period, the average federal employee has taken home five times more in additional compensation than his private sector counterpart.
The average state and local government worker now earns over 30% more than the average private sector worker, while the average federal non-military employee earns 50% more.
-- Adrian T. Moore, Reason, February 1998
Collective child care
The New Deal collectivized retirement and disability. Postwar presidents and Congresses collectivized medical care for the elderly and the poor. Now Bill and Hillary [Clinton] and the Republican Congress are going to collectivize child care.It is astonishing. No American would think of collectivizing agriculture. But here we are about to collectivize child care. With the collectivization of child care, the family will have no social responsibility left. As collectivization advances, the family and the individual shrink.
The question before us is: How can a people, who are not responsible for their retirement incomes, their medical bills, and the education and care of their children, hold on to self-rule?
-- Paul Craig Roberts, Washington Times, January 16, 1998
Sour note
Citing research on classical music listening and college students' IQ scores, Georgia Governor Zell Miller proposed that the state provide parents of every Georgia newborn with a classical music cassette or CD in order to boost the infant's intelligence later in life.Asked by Miller to help select music for the recordings, Atlanta Symphony conductor Yoel Levi proposed Beethoven's Ode to Joy.
-- USA Today, January 14, 1998
The Great Denver Smoke-In
Colorado has some of the toughest smoking regulations in the nation, but that didn't stop world leaders attending the June "Summit of Eight" meeting in Denver from lighting up. No-smoking rules were suspended during the Saturday session when the heads of state of the world's greatest industrial powers met in the Denver Public Library. The little people weren't afforded such generous treatment, and now the rules are back in force.-- Competitive Enterprise Institute Newsletter, December 1997
D.A.R.E. to fail
The most comprehensive collection of scientific evidence to date suggests that "zero tolerance" drug prevention programs such as D.A.R.E. fail to prevent drug use among America's youth, states the February issue of the national research journal Evaluation Review. Research published in the issue also indicates that "misleading or inadequate evaluation methods [are] being used to justify these programs' widespread application."Five new studies provide evidence that "current programs and their conceptually flawed underpinnings cannot consistently prevent youth from using or abusing substances," said Dr. Joel Brown of the Center for Educational Research and Development.
The federal government currently spends about $2.4 billion annually on youth drug prevention programs, according to General Accounting Office (GAO) 1997 estimates.
-- NORML Foundation, February 5, 1998
Big government is back!
From a Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll taken on January 7 and 8: "In President Clinton's 1996 State of the Union address he said that the era of big government is over. Do you think the era of big government is really over?"By a landslide of 85% to 6%, the respondents said no. Nine percent were unsure. -- www.foxnews.com
Not a bad idea, but...
We were excited at first when we learned NASA was going to send Senator John Glenn into outer space. Shooting Congressmen into space -- finally a use of our tax dollars we can appreciate! Then we learned they're going to bring him back.Speaking of outer space... Put end to end, the amount of paperwork generated by the IRS in one year would stretch around the Earth 28 times.
-- The Liberator Online, January 22, 1998
Steal -- it's easy!
A convicted felon says a lax screening process made it easy for him to steal $32 million from Medicare."I know of no other business where I could make the same money without any risk," said the witness, called "Mr. Smith," during anonymous testimony before the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. "The government actually made it easy for me to steal."
A Miami nightclub owner with no health care experience, the witness told lawmakers he was able to get a Medicare provider number over the phone for his bogus medical supply company. He then cheated Medicare out of as much as $500,000 a month between 1988 and 1994 by conning more than 2,000 senior citizens into giving him their insurance numbers and using the numbers to submit false bills to the government for nutritional supplements he never delivered.
-- The Associated Press, January 30, 1998
Taxing taxes
Taxes are now nearly at a historical high, more than 19% of the Gross Domestic Product. That's as high as they've been since 1969, [during] LBJ's Vietnam surcharge. The Tax Foundation, aggregating taxes at all levels, calculates that the median, two-earner family, with a 1996 income of $53,000, is now paying 38.4% of that in taxes.-- Wall Street Journal, January 16, 1998
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