Libertarians call federal worker pay gap 'appalling'

WASHINGTON - Recent data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis show that federal government workers get compensation, on average, more than twice as high as private-sector workers. That gap has expanded dramatically over the last decade. Libertarian Party Chair Mark Hinkle released the following statement today:

"The numbers are appalling. In 2009, the average private-sector worker received $61,051 in total compensation, but the average federal government worker received $123,049. There is no excuse for this enormous, and growing, compensation gap.

"I guess you just can't beat a federal job. Very high pay, unbelievable benefits, extremely generous retirement plans, and near-perfect job security.

"And those retirement plans are often unfunded pensions, which will have to be paid by taxing our children and grandchildren, who never had the opportunity to vote when they were created.

"Apparently wishing to add insult to injury, government employee union reps have claimed that federal workers are entitled to their sky-high compensation because they are more educated and skilled than the rest of us. I have had many personal experiences with federal employees that indicate the exact opposite.

"The problem is that federal worker compensation is not set by the free market -- it's set by government fiat, which causes it to be artificially generous. Another factor is the monopoly government employee unions, which are able to extort that compensation up to even higher levels.

"One sure sign that federal employees are overpaid is that they never quit. Tad DeHaven of the Cato Institute has noted, '...in 2009, private sector employees quit at a rate that was more than eight times higher than federal employees.... This indicates that federal employees recognize that the generous combination of wages, benefits, and job security is hard to match in the private sector, so they stay put.'

"Libertarians support minimum government and maximum freedom. Unfortunately, federal employees have incentives to make government bigger, which makes us less free. With government employment paying more than the private sector, the rational self-interest of many workers will drive them to seek employment with the federal government.

"That's a formula for disaster.

"Libertarians want productive people working in the private sector to build our economy, not working for the government and hurting our economy.

"I would like to see an across-the-board pay cut for all federal workers. That would reduce federal spending, reduce the deficit, and reduce the insult to American private-sector workers. It also just might encourage some federal government employees to quit their jobs and seek more productive work in the private sector."

For more information, or to arrange an interview, call LP Executive Director Wes Benedict at 202-333-0008 ext. 222.

The LP is America's third-largest political party, founded in 1971. The Libertarian Party stands for free markets and civil liberties. You can find more information on the Libertarian Party at our website.

Obama and the oil spill

Libertarian Quotes

"It's illegal to say to a voter "Here's $100, vote for me." So what do the politicians do? They offer the $100 in the form of Health Care, Social Security, Unemployment Insurance, Food Stamps, tobacco subsidies, grain payments, NEA payments, and jobs programs."

– Don Farrar - average guy, age 51

Libertarian Quotes

"One of the things the government can't do is run anything. The only things our government runs are the post office and the railroads, and both of them are bankrupt."

– Lee Iacocca

The Lion of Liberty Award

I would like to present the first ever Lion of Liberty Award.  This is bestowed upon those individuals who stand on the fronline in the war between statism and freedom.  Those who, despite constant criticism, threats, and willingness to put their names on the line, stand firm in their principles and fight for Liberty regardless of political affiliation. 

Based on those qualifications Mike and Julie Brewington are presented with the Lion of Liberty Award and shall forever be known as Lions of Liberty.

In June Mike decided to run Wicomico County Council At-Large.  He hails as a conservative Democrat and often uses the phrase "raise chickens not taxes."  His wife Julie decided run for Maryland House of Delegates in District 38A.  Both have been deeply involved in the Tea Party movement and the Americans for Prosperity. 

Establishment politicians and their attack machine have launched some of the nastiest personal attacks on them for their political stances and willingness to fight to make difference.  I for one applaud them and thank them for their work.

Thoughts from Jefferson

"Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none."

    –Thomas Jefferson

Libertarian Quotes

"A nation that expects the government to prevent churches from burning, to control the price of bread or gasoline, to secure every job, and to find some villain for every dramatic accident risks an even larger loss of life and liberty."

– William A. Niskanen, For a Less Responsive Government, Cato Policy Report,

Q&A: Do we need government regulation to keep consumer products safe?

Q&A: Do we need government regulation to keep consumer products safe?

Date: Mon, 08/09/2010
Author: Mark Grannis

Government regulations are so pervasive that many people assume without question both that the regulations are helpful and that they are necessary. However, once we challenge these assumptions, we see that government regulation is frequently not only unnecessary, but futile or even counterproductive. Rather than pretending that government always knows what’s good for us and what’s not, Libertarians prefer to let individual consumers decide which products they trust. Not every product on the market is safe—but that’s true even of products the government has declared to be safe, and we’re better off knowing that the responsibility rests with us.

A recent question I received about expanding the FDA’s role in regulating cosmetics illustrates the point. The question came with a link to this video, which argues that there are too many toxins in personal care products like shampoos and deodorants, and that the FDA should be given new authority to ban the use of toxic ingredients in these products. The video is well done, and I really encourage people to watch it and consider the “toxics in, toxics out” message when they’re buying consumer products. But the video claims that additional FDA regulation will be more effective than relying on consumers to do the right thing. That argument just doesn’t wash.

First, the makers of the video assume that FDA regulation will make our shampoos safer, even though we’re talking about regulations that have yet to be written, sometime in the future. But wait a minute: Didn't the same video tell us a moment earlier that the cosmetics makers had captured the government regulatory process and had subverted it so that everything was now allowed in? Yes! So why should we expect regulation to work better the second time? We shouldn’t.

It doesn’t even matter why the manufacturers escaped regulation the first time around. Maybe industry produced scientific evidence that genuinely convinced Congress or the FDA’s experts that there was no need for regulation. Or maybe the case for regulation was pretty strong, but government listened to the industry and its lobbyists because they were paying close attention to the rulemaking process while the rest of us were off living our lives. Either way, there is good reason to expect the same result the second time around.

Second, the makers of the video assert that we cannot address this problem without FDA regulation. But here the video contradicts itself by pointing out that “green chemistry” for consumer products is already a flourishing field. Why is it flourishing? Because there's a market for non-toxic consumer products! Tom's of Maine, Seventh Generation, Kiss My Face—there are lots of brands on the market that attempt to make us clean and shiny without using toxic chemicals. What government agency should we thank for that? None. It was private enterprise.

The video suggests private enterprise won’t work here because a single consumer can’t affect what P&G puts into its shampoo. But when the video turns to the lawmaking process, suddenly the narrator is one of many people who all want the same thing. Where were all these people when P&G was figuring out what to put in the shampoo? Why wouldn’t a group of consumers big enough to get Congress's attention be big enough to get P&G's? Shouldn’t it be easier to get P&G's attention, since P&G makes lots of shampoos without requiring any one of them to be favored by more than 50% of all voters?

The answer is that the government doesn’t require the assent of 50% of all voters either; it responds to small groups of people who are zealous enough and influential enough to pull the right legislative and regulatory levers – the infamous “special interests.” Thus, the real case for government regulation of your deodorant is not that you and I and all our neighbors can join hands and rein in P&G; the real case is that a relatively small group of people who focus on the toxicity of consumer products think they can choose your deodorant better than you can. Libertarians don’t think that’s good enough.

Third, we can never eliminate the risk of mistake, so individuals should have the freedom to balance risks as they see fit. Governments may approve unsafe products, or ban safe products, or conduct decades of tests that fail to produce complete consensus. Statists argue that this uncertainty makes it necessary for government to take the decision away from us because we have imperfect information. But that ignores the existence of videos like the one I’m critiquing—which in fact does an excellent job of informing us about potential risks. It’s true that I can’t evaluate toxicity on my own, but it’s not true that government is the only source I can turn to for help.

Moreover, this problem of imperfect information is not limited to the decisions we make as consumers. If ’m not smart enough to know which shampoo ingredients are toxic, then I’m also not smart enough to know whether an FDA action permitting these chemicals is a good decision or a bad one. That means I have to rely on others for my information either way; the only difference is that with the free market I end up with the ability to weigh the information, make my own decision, and live with the consequences. I may be left with an uncertain and somewhat dissatisfying tradeoff, with pros and cons for each choice, but that’s a lousy excuse for asking the government to take the choice away from me.

Finally, some argue that leaving the market unregulated will mean that rich people can buy more expensive "green" products that not everyone can afford. But wait: If price is the only reason someone is currently not buying a green shaving cream, how is government regulation going to help? Government regulation will not make the green product cheaper; on the contrary, it will make the green product more expensive, both by adding new costs of doing business and by removing marketplace alternatives that the FDA doesn’t like. Thus, the real effect of regulation here is to make the average joe spend more on green shaving cream whether he wants to or not. Folks who want FDA regulations are saying the average joe is a fool not to spend his money on green shaving cream now, so they’re going to remove other shaving creams from the market to protect him from his own folly.

But what if the average joe is not a fool? What if he just thinks other items in his budget (more food, a nicer apartment, cholesterol medication) are more important? What if the right shaving cream for Joe to buy depends on what’s important to Joe? Libertarians think we ought to let Joe sort that out.

Kick starting the green economy

Libertarian Quotes

"The government was set to protect man from criminals – and the Constitution was written to protect man from the government."

– Ayn Rand

Libertarians oppose record federal spending levels

WASHINGTON - The White House's Office of Management and Budget (OMB) recently released its Mid-Session Review. On reviewing the report, Libertarian Party Chair Mark Hinkle called the report's spending projections "disappointing and troubling."

According to the report, federal spending was 24.7% of GDP in 2009, and is expected to be 24.6% this year, rising to 25.1% in 2011. (All years are fiscal years.)

Hinkle commented, "The federal government is commanding a larger percentage of our economy than it has at any time in American history, except a few years during World War II. Instead of free citizens making our own economic decisions, the federal government is making those decisions for us."

Hinkle added, "At the beginning of the twentieth century, the federal government spent less than five percent of GDP."

The report projects that federal spending will still be over 23% of GDP in the year 2020. "In other words," said Hinkle, "the White House is admitting that its spending will be at record-high levels as far as the eye can see. That's great for special interests who get their money from the federal government, but it's very bad news for the rest of us.

"I'm seeing visions of low economic growth and high dependence on government. Future generations are facing economic hardship instead of prosperity.

"The current crop of politicians in Washington simply don't have what it takes to reverse this damage. Democrats and Republicans have proven decade after decade that they are incapable of doing anything but grow government. In just the last ten years, they have worked together to give us two costly wars, a giant Medicare expansion, and the TARP bailouts, among many other massive new expenses.

"It's time for American voters to start thinking outside the box, and electing Libertarians to office."

For more information, or to arrange an interview, call LP Executive Director Wes Benedict at 202-333-0008 ext. 222.

The LP is America's third-largest political party, founded in 1971. The Libertarian Party stands for free markets and civil liberties. You can find more information on the Libertarian Party at our website.

Once in a while Patrick Buchanan is right

"With all that IMF money, the Thailand's and Mexico's are spared the consequences of their fiscal incompetence, and Wall Street's heavy hitters are spared the consequences of their stupid investments. The global economy is a rigged game, rigged so Third World politicians, rich investors and global corporations win – and U.S. taxpayers lose."


– Patrick J. Buchanan

Libertarian Quotes

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

– C. S. Lewis

Revitalizing Downtown Salisbury needs to go to the next level

The revitalization of Downtown Salisbury has gone through numerous studies by various groups over the years. There are a variety of opinions on what will work, what has failed, and how to go about it. In my opinion there are several factors that are key in successfully accomplishing this goal.

First, there needs to be an anchor business that will draw people there such as a Trader Joes, Whole Foods or another nationally recognized business. These are two businesses that could really bring people there. Also, secondary anchors such as an Apple Store or Pottery Barn are businesses that will bring people from all over Delmarva here.

Secondly, closing downtown Salisbury to traffic is another key component. This will create an atmosphere such as Santa Monica's Promenade. As a part of this the city should allow restaurants to have more space for outdoor dining and allow food stands in peak traffic time.

Third, create an enterprise zone and tax benefits through the county and city to entice these businesses to come here. It is small price to pay when you are able to help create jobs and boost the economic condition of this area of town. This will also help make it even more desirable to live downtown and help create a strong customer base.

Fourth, I encourage Mayor Ireton to personally contact these companies and invite them to our city with open arms. The Mayor needs to be the economic champion for our city and aggressively approach companies to do business here.

Lastly, bring back the movie theater but make it a multipurpose center. Whether it is independent films, classic movies, concerts, we need entertainment downtown on a consistent basis.

We all recognize the importance of creating a unique image for Downtown Salisbury that will retain her classic charm. Third Fridays is good start and I applaud Mayor Ireton for championing that. It is time we take the next step.

Dr. Richard Davis August Letter to the Editor

Albert Einstein reportedly said that doing the things you've always done the way you've always done them while expecting different results is the definition of insanity.

For a long time we've focused on candidates' ability to raise campaign funds and use those funds to advertise to get name recognition as a way to judge their strength as candidates. They raise and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions from other people. Then, when they are elected and go to Washington, we expect them to be careful with our tax dollars, which the IRS collects for them at minimal (if any) effort to themselves.

If you really expect a candidate to be careful with your money, maybe you should look at how he treats it during a campaign. I don't want your money for ads and campaign literature because I think that's wasteful, especially in an economy where money is tight for so many people. If you want to contribute, give money to a local cause of your choice in honor of my campaign, so it will do some good locally in any case.

If elected, I will do my best to take the same approach -- making every effort to limit what money goes to Washington to begin with, keeping money for local and state projects in those areas where it needs to be used. Meanwhile, for name recognition I depend on those who read this and agree with me to spread the word.


Dr. Richard J. Davis

Michael Calpino Letter to the Editor

Benjamin Franklin said that no matter what, only two things in life were certain -- death and taxes. There is usually little we can do when our number comes up, but with our taxes, particularly in a representative republic, we should have some say. We all know that at some level, we pay taxes to receive certain benefits from our government: a judicial system, police presence and basic infrastructure.

Of course, we also get an army of overpaid bureaucrats, bridges to nowhere and redundant programs that generate more waste and problems than they solve. We hate to see our money squandered, but it becomes doubly offensive if we are forced to pay "more than our fair share."

The municipal tax differential has come up again, and again, municipal residents are being forced to pay extra for redundant services. The county's excuse to deny them? Any extra money they pay goes into the school district. Why should city residents pay more for the schools than others? Can't our county officials see the inequity of taking more than is required from some taxpayers for any reason?

If the cashier at McDonald's kept your change, wouldn't you be upset? The tax differential is just and right; it should not be dismissed by the county out of hand. We do not exist to serve the insatiable appetite of government and it is wrong to require some to sacrifice more of their flesh to the beast than others.

Michael Calpino

LP Monday Message: If Libertarians save one life

July 26, 2010

Dear Friend of Liberty,

The War in Afghanistan has dragged on for almost nine years. According to the Washington Post, there have been 1,189 American military deaths, which is more than two per week.

And of course, today's big news about WikiLeaks raises a lot of questions about whether we've been honestly told how badly the war is going.

I'm often asked how Libertarian candidates make a difference in cases where they don't win their election. We have over 150 candidates running for U.S. Representative, and over 20 for U.S. Senator.

Here's how: ending the war sooner will save both lives and money. I'm also convinced that ending the war sooner will reduce terrorism, although I understand some others disagree.

I'm not attempting to put a dollar value on a life saved, but I've seen reports that some environmental and safety regulations cost anywhere from millions to billions per life saved. The cost of training and equipping replacement military personnel is also very high.

The entire national Libertarian Party budget, plus all of the funds raised by Libertarian candidates and affiliates, is a few million dollars at most.

I don't know when this war will end. But if our party and our candidates help end this war just one week faster, that alone could save two American soldiers' lives, plus contractors, and many more civilians. And with just a few million dollars in spending, Libertarians could save lives at a far lower cost than what the government spends on its attempts to save lives.

I think we can do even better than that, but I'm just trying to make the point that even a small improvement makes the whole effort worthwhile.

Libertarian candidates for Congress can help end this war by putting pressure on incumbents, particularly Democrats, who voted to authorize Afghanistan and Iraq. Simply mentioning it in a voter survey or media appearance makes a difference.

Any Libertarian volunteer can write a letter to the editor reminding people that Libertarians support a non-interventionist foreign policy. I often think that short letters work better. You could try, "I thought President Obama and the Democrats would end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and bring our troops home quickly, but I was wrong. Congressman ___ voted to authorize the wars and keeps voting for additional war spending. That's why I'm voting
Libertarian."

You can check here to see if there's a Libertarian running for Congress in your district.

Sincerely,

Wes Benedict
Executive Director
Libertarian National Committee

The possible dynamics of the Tea Party

NOTE:  I posted this because Michael Swartz is a very fair writer and a member of what I call the "Liberty Movement" here on the shore.  He always presents an interesting observation of the issues at hand.   --- Muir Boda

by Michael Swartz

In terms of sheer numbers, it can be argued that the local Tea Party movement is in decline. The original Tea Party in April 2009 drew about 400 people in a pouring rain, while a subsequent July 4th gathering later that year draw a good crowd on a holiday. But this year, despite beautiful April weather, the crowd at the Tea Party was noticeably slimmer and there was no local July 4th gathering.

Yet the movement may simply be in a state of maturation, with a number of those who participated early on in the protests taking the step forward into electoral politics. On Saturday night a number of Tea Party candidates gathered for a fundraiser at the Westside Community Center, one organized by District 2 County Council aspirant Mike Calpino. While I did not attend that event, this blog post at Right Coast can give you an idea on how it went. (Worthy of noting is that Right Coast author Julie Brewington is a candidate for Delegate herself.)

Read the rest at his Examiner.com page

Congress fiddles while the economy burns

Date: Fri, 07/23/2010
Author: Mark Grannis
This afternoon the White House once again availed itself of the rather sophomoric tactic of scheduling the release of really important but really bad news on a Friday afternoon so that fewer people would notice it. What was the bad news? That budget deficits for this year and next are likely to be even higher than the $1.4 trillion we had to borrow to keep the lights on last year.

Let me write that again, because I fear that our use of the word "trillion" is beginning to hide the magnitude of our budget problems. The bad news is that budget deficits for this year and next are likely to be even higher than the $1,400,000,000,000 we had to borrow to keep the lights on last year.

It's hard for me to write anything about this because it's hard for me to believe I have to. Isn't it obvious that we simply can't continue this way? Wasn't it already obvious when the deficits were less than half as large as they are now? All that has happened in the interim is that the change we so obviously need has become harder, and we have less time to effect it.

But since the point has so far been lost on my own senators and congressman, and on most others, let me offer four brief observations, all inspired by the Washington Post's Friday afternoon dispatch on this disturbing development.

First, note how large these deficits are in percentage terms. It's not just that we're borrowing $1,400,000,000,000 per year; it's that we're borrowing 41 cents out of every dollar we spend. For every three dollars the federal government takes in, Congress has spent not just an extra nickel or even an extra quarter, but an extra two bucks. In other words, they're not even close!

Why does this matter? Partly because it tells us that no one's really trying very hard to balance the budget; it is as if no one really remembers that ideally the expenditures should be lower than the revenues. No one in Congress seems to remember what zero means anymore. (It means, "Stop spending.") Obviously, the correct response to this on our part is to fire Congress.

But perhaps more importantly, it also tells us that it's ludicrous for people to approach our budget problems by talking about how to save money here and there on existing programs. The only way to limit the size and cost of government is to limit the number of things we ask government to do. The only way to cut our government back down to a size we can live with is to eliminate all the extraneous programs that our founders never intended for a national government to do in the first place. The road to fiscal responsibility in 2011 and beyond runs right through Article I of our Constitution.

My second brief observation is that it's no mere coincidence that the deficit failed to improve in a year in which Congress decided not to bother passing a budget. If your budget were this out of whack -- and if one spouse is out of work, it may be -- then surely the first thing you would do is sit down and make a plan. Somehow expenditures need to be brought into balance with revenues, and there's no budget fairy that will do that for us while we're sleeping (or passing expensive entitlements, or even trashing the first amendment by passing new regulations of campaign speech). Saving money -- big money -- did I mention that we're talking about $1,400,000,000,000? -- takes thought; it takes effort. Without a blueprint for saving money, is it any wonder that no money was saved?

Remember this in November: In the face of a looming fiscal disaster capable of shaking the very foundations of our national government, our current representatives have done nothing. They didn't even take a shot at it. Again, obviously, the correct response to this on our part is to fire Congress.

Third, cutting the deficit in half is an idiotic goal. I've never met budget director Peter Orszag (who apparently wants credit for still being "on track" to achieve this goal), but I refuse on principle to believe that he is dumb enough to think that cutting our deficit in half by the final year of President Obama's term counts as any kind of policy success. We have got to stop thinking of budget deficits like annual scorecards that don't have continuing long-term consequences. Last year's deficit is not like last night's baseball score. Every year in which any deficit exists raises the national debt, and it's the national debt that determines how much of next year's budget gets soaked up in interest payments we can't do anything about. Even in the unlikely event that we remain "on track" to have a deficit of "only" $700,000,000,000 during the President's last year in office, that will be really, really bad. This is not a good-news-bad-news story. There is no silver lining.

Finally, it is nothing short of contemptible for our elected representatives to try to excuse their malfeasance by pointing to the creation of a bipartisan commission to balance the budget. We already had a bipartisan group that's supposed to balance the budget every year. It's called Congress, and we pay an awful lot to keep it in session. If the people we've been sending to Congress for years and years, Democrats and Republicans alike, are collectively too timid, too lazy, or too incompetent to even try to tackle the single biggest problem we face as a nation, then it's high time for us to send different people to Congress.

People sometimes debate hypothetical questions about how far we would go to make a terrorist tell us the location of a ticking time bomb. But for Pete's sake, there's a time bomb ticking loudly right inside the Capitol and no one in the Congressional leadership seems to care! How much time do they think we have?

This is not complicated. We need to spend less. Much less. Starting right now.

NAACP Forum and the Candidates that were not there

For the record, I spoke with several of the candidates listed as "No Shows" on another blog and none of them received an official invitation. Mike Calpino, Mike Brewington and Chris Lewis never received an official invitation, phone call or email to come to the forum.

It is stated that Bob Caldwell was not invited, learned of the forum and got in contact to inform them he could not make it. In 2009 Bob had a car accident on the way to the NAACP forum when he ran for Mayor. He made it but he was a little late.

I do recall that when I ran for City Council in 2009 I received an official invitation from the NAACP for the forum. I enjoyed the forum very much and it was a very good experience.

This again shows a side of politics where creating an impression of something that is not there serves no good purpose. Neither of the candidates listed were contacted before that post was made to see if they received an invitation or had been contacted about the forum. Insinuating that certain candidates are racist or do not care about the African-American community is extremely irresponsible.

As someone who supports these candidates, I refuse to sit by and allow insinuations and lies to be spread without a response in their defense. Especially on an issue that is this sensitive and inflammatory, this deserves a response.