The audio file is too large to upload here, but we’ve made the show available on our YouTube Channel in two segments.  Listen to the whole show by clicking on parts 1 and 2.

Our sincerest thanks to Kevin for having us on the show.  There was one point that came out in the interview that I want to repeat for complete understanding.

I did some research recently and most of my data comes from the Tax Foundation, a great organization that does amazing work cataloging who pays taxes in America and how much.  There are roughly 141 million federal income tax filers in the United States.  Of this figure, 35 million taxpayers comprise the top 25% of adjusted gross income (earning approximately $67,000 a year puts you in the top 25% of all earners).  These 35 million families and individuals pay 87% of all federal income taxes – essentially these folks are the engine that keeps America running.

If you take our current year’s deficit of roughly $1.3 or $1.4 trillion and add it to our historical (again, roughly) $12 trillion debt, and then divide that by the 35 million taxpayers, you must generate an invoice for each taxpayer (individual or family) of roughly $380,000.

Let that sink in for a minute.

Naturally, some taxpayers pay more than others in that top 25% bracket.  The point in illustrating an equal share like that is that our immediate problem is best described as system-failure risk.  By applying the principles of balanced government, we may be able to reign in current and future spending, but we’ve got a legacy of irresponsibility that must eventually be addressed, and we’re on the clock.

It’s a beautiful state, rich in history and resources, and, it appears, full of many dissatisfied citizens.

Beautiful, but with an undercurrent of anger

It has been said that this is an anti-incumbent election we’re approaching, and if that is so, it is a result of a couple of simple things.

First, the most important take-aways from the poll: an astounding 65% are angry at the policies of the federal government, and 60% think most members of Congress don’t care about what their constituents think.

Why?  To answer the 65% response, I think it is because people have had control taken away from them from too many matters that properly belong to them.  In other words, Washington has rendered most Americans spectators in the things that matter to them and their everyday lives, and this is embittering more and more people.  This is a result of imbalanced government.

That 60% believe their representatives don’t care what they think goes hand-in-hand with this.  If domestic matters which should be made locally are now being made by distant over-reaching government, one could expect that the percentage in an environment of political parity would be 50% or so.  That the actual figure is 60% says something about the mood of the people and their tolerance for distant external government.

It’s against this backdrop that we’re looking for your help and involvement.  Until we insist that the matters that relate to the ordinary course of our lives (things other than national defense, borders, foreign treaties and objects which properly belong to the government in Washington D.C.) are under our local influence, we’ll continue to see disaffection, lack of trust, and anger.  Once we begin demanding proper balance between the units of government, we’ll get representatives who govern by those principles, and begin the renewal so sorely needed of American government.

The petitioners contend that lead shot is ingested by birds (who eat it from the remains of animals that are dressed in the field), who become poisoned and die.  Perhaps there is science on their side, despite claims from the opposition that predatory bird populations are on the rise due to the efforts of wildlife agencies.

However, the principle remains that there is a proper venue for the petitioners to pursue if they are serious about making real and lasting change.  I say as much in my letter to the EPA.

Please feel free to review the petitioner’s claims at this link.  Simply click on the pdf to read the entire petition.

To read my appeal to the EPA to reject this petition on grounds that it violates the federal principle, click on the following link:  2010-08-27-epa-letter.

If, like me, you object to using a federal regulatory department in the manner contemplated by the petitioners, please contact the EPA as well.

A great question came from the audience which highlights the difference between the candidates in this race, but also is a larger example of the problem that we have in America.  At the end of the debate, a woman stood up expressing concern that Rutherford would consider cutting functions in the Treasurer’s office.  What he actually said was that he would do a performance audit of all programs to make that decision, but was adamantly against growing services.

But back to the woman’s question/statement.  She expressed concern that cutting programs like financial education would be harmful for young people, who need to learn about credit, debt, and savings.

Financial education is... well, education.

Learning about money – credit, debt, savings, investments, budgeting, really anything one needs to learn to be a responsible and functioning member of society – is truly important.  But it is not the job of the State of Illinois to teach that.  It is the job of the most intimate unit of government: the family.

While this doesn’t exactly qualify as a faithful reductio ad absurdum example, we can wonder if government is indeed responsible for educating young people on money matters, where does government’s responsibility end?  Shall government be responsible for educating young people on matters of diet?  How about on matters of God?  Perhaps matters of personal relationships – should they be friends with the people they are friends with?  Or more immediately, should you get up out of that chair or not?  Shall we have a state Department of Everything, wherein you can get answers for anything at all you choose not to figure out for yourself?

Rutherford made a good point in his answer to this question.  We can think up a hundred great-sounding programs and legislate them all into perpetual existence.  But Illinois is $13 billion in the hole.  As a parent, we teach our children to tie their shoes, brush their teeth, and bathe themselves at some point.  We don’t expect that we’ll be helping them with this when they are 16 or 17 years old.  As it relates to our national responsibility problem, we need to stop expecting someone else to do the things we are supposed to do.  In time, this will reorder responsibilities among units of government and create a lasting and more free society.

Here’s the video:

The Daily Show, June 8, 2010

I’m not really a fan, but I have been thinking lately about how complicated things are, and discussed it in my last post.  Complexity of itself isn’t the problem at all, however.  The problem is that our government in Washington is operating a little like the circus performer who spins plates on poles.  Spinning a couple of plates isn’t such a challenge.  But as more and more plates are added, the performer trying to keep track of all of those spinning plates just can’t keep up.  Before long, plates start hitting the ground.

As I’ve noted before, we have a responsibility problem, just like the fellow spinning the plates.  People and units of government have allowed too much consolidation in distant spheres of government.  A Republic simply can’t do as much as ours is trying to do.  It can try, but it will fail, and sometimes fail spectacularly.

There’s a solution to the mess in the Gulf, but it’s not complicated in a big-picture sense.  The engineering, the physics, perhaps those things are complicated.  The answer may be that, indeed, the government in Washington is the proper place for the oversight of deep-water drilling and all the risks that accompany that business.  It’s entirely possible that the communities most affected by drilling activities (both positive and negative) should instead be the ones with oversight responsibility, perhaps even jointly in some sort of cooperative consortium.  Surely, as the benefits (in the form of economic activity) and the risks (in the form of consequences of errors) inure to these communities, their interest must be greater than that of any bureaucracy in Washington.

After all, the current paradigm is failing time and again.  Consider the Securities and Exchange Commission, whose mission is to “protect investors, maintain fair, orderly, and efficient markets, and facilitate capital formation.”  Consider the offices of the Securities and Exchange Commission while you’re at it:

The gleaming headquarters of the SEC

Pretty impressive, but it hasn’t stopped markets from being volatile, stopped fraud, or helped a business in need of capital to make a payroll.  The 11 district offices, the staff of 3,500 (all at a cost of roughly $1 billion per year) and the cooperation of other federal departments and agencies – none of these things has made it any easier to protect investors, or maintain fair, orderly and efficient markets.  At some point, don’t we have to ask?  Isn’t this the elephant in the room that no one has mentioned until now?  Which is to say: if an organization can’t do its job, why does it exist at all?  When is it fair to make a decision to close the shop based upon an extraordinarily bad return on investment?