Trends in Government Services-Less for More

User fees and service fees are becoming a wide spread trend in the delivery model for government services. While there was a time that I advocated for such fees, now I am recanting based upon two points of objection. The first is the notion that government is a not for profit enterprise. The second is that whatever government does should provide a general benefit and be paid by general taxes.

Taking the second point, first, for discussion. Without delving into an arguement to parse each and every function for its proper inclusion as a general benefit suitable to be a be government service, let's stipulate that what we do receive all qualify. I don't agree that they all do. Its just that this discussion goes to methods of paying for them.

Very quickly and simply, if a government service is provided on a fee for use basis this means that the taxpayers pay to staff and equip the agency providing the service but, without the fee the service wouldn't be delivered. This makes little sense except as an admission that the service isn't provided as a general service but targets a specific group. Take toll roads and courts, for instance. While both are open to the public, only users pay fees to use them. The prevailing wisdom is that these services benefit all, even those who do not directly use them. Who wants criminals untried or their goods undelivered. or unable to commute to work?

Going to the first objection, that government should not be involved in for profit endeavors.
Whether or not the purpose of a fee is to make a profit or to subsidize a department, if the service is considered properly delivered by a government agency, the unstated premise is that the service somehow is connected to the general welfare and not a subsidization of a special interest group. If, OTOH, the government imposes fees in order to subsidize the taxpayer at the expense of the user, this gives rise to a challenge that the staffing and equipping of the delivering agency is a taxpayer subsidy to a special interest group. If this is the argument the government wants to make, then the proper mechanism for delivery of the service is through a competitive, private, for profit endeavor.

One way governments have recognized this dichotomy of function (general welfare service) and recipient (subsidized special interest) is to contract out the service to a private company. This is a close proximation to what they ought to be doing. I take exception to long term, monopolistic contracts, though. The benefits of competition are lost when the ink dries. Contracts should be short term and/or divided along some lines like geographical areas.

Parks are a good example. Open to the public. Purchased, equipped, staffed and maintained by general taxes, they are often accessible by fee. Additionally, some users and locations are fee exempt, others pay a hefty amount.

This scheme of delivering government services is Naut Right.

Explaining more at the well means less at the pump - for gasoline.

First, another link telling more positive news coming from U.S. energy production: US Oil Shale Seen Rising Fast

The Saudis have used production to control prices since 1973, when we had our first oil embargo, courtesy of them and Henry Kissinger. They know this game. It's too obvious that increased supply puts downward pressure on price. What is not so obvious is the vicious circle this can catch the market into riding. If the Saudis feel compelled to maintain revenues large enough to generate near same gross profits that they have for so long, before this new competitor arrived, they have to pump more to make up for lost margins when new supply drops prices. That additional quantity in the market further presses down on prices, leading to another decision to live with less profit or increase supply again until revenues generate profits equal with the past. This could continue until the market becomes saturated and no increases in supply can be bought up. This is a classic equilibrium sequence for any market.

The flip side is that the Saudis could elect to withdraw production in order to keep prices where the margins for profit are maintained. The risk for the Saudis is that the lost gross profits might not sustain their hold on their kingdom, which is now that of a benevolent king. Well, in a few regards. They can be brutal when it suits them. They could choose a chancy road of supression of their subjects, but then spring might come to Saudi Arabia. They don't want that. One other choice they would have would be to cash in their holdings of American assets, until that runs out. Lastly, thet can choose a more frugal lifestyle, which if that were in them, one might think they would have already done so in order to quiet criticisms of their lifestyles juxtaposed against that of their tent bound, camel ridden subjects.

Its going to be interesting.

Fixing the TSA - Congress whittles with the wrong end of the knife

Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn introduced H.R. 3608, the STRIP ACT as reported in The Hill .
All it does is strip the title of officer from TSA employees who have not taken LE training.

My congressman got an earful from me. Summing my complaint, I wrote that the TSA is the congressionally coreographed victory dance for Al Queda and the Taliban. All H.R. 3608 does is rename a character in the playbill. Its an insult, a waste of time and not worthy of my opinion on the merits of its passage.

Abolish the TSA. Put the duty, responsibility and liability for the traveling public onto the transport company.

When you whittle with the wrong end of the knife you won't cut much wood, you will bleed and people will laugh at your stupidity; no matter you thought you were whittling a gift for your hecklers.

Exasperated Europe turns to crowdsourcing for answers

Found this interesting at the 17:21 mark.
See also the link in the first comment to locate the text about this.


It is very oddly reassuring that the European money changers have gone hi-tech with an iPad app to invite a crowd-sourcing solution to the eurozone economic crisis. But there you have it. I have more faith in the people working through a faux free market exercise than I do central planners. I admit there are going to be a huge number of central planning, commie, socialistic, and aristocratic solutions profered. The market solutions will shine through.

New find of natural gas And oil in eastern U.S.

I will let the link lay out the facts. First, are we really awash in carbon based energy? Second, should there be renewed emphasis on Abiogenesis as the theory for oil formation?

The link from the greatest site:

Dems abandon Obama on Gunwalker- Obama has a way out!

Dems abandoning ship on Gunwalker linked to

Issa and Grassley should invoke the Truman doctrine, "The Buck Stops Here." They do that by asking the president how he failed to know that an operation of this magnitude and consequence went on right under his nose without his knowledge. While it is plausible that such a thing could happen, it opens the question, what else goes on under the auspices of presidential authority that he is unaware of.

Further, if he didn't know about this, how could he know what else goes on unbeknownst to him. Should we be able to trust that the president has the reigns of the executive branch firmly in his own grasp? It would seem not. This thing goes farther than itself, then. It implicates the whole authority and command of the president.

Indeed, this is the manifestation of a failed Truman doctrine; a doctrine that acts as the pinking shears on the drapes of plausible deniability. The Truman doctrine cuts away the veil the presidents always try to use to protect themselves. The only protection faithful to his oath and duties is to vigorously expose and prosecute anyone who has abused his trust in the name of his office. There's no other way out.

How local governments force you to waste gas.

The by-pass. It is one of my pet peeves. Drive down a busy thoroughfare and every big box store, every chain restaurant and every corner gas station has to have it's own traffic light. Our town calls their main commercial thru street the by-pass. It's nothing of the sort. All that remains of the street moniker is a nod to good intentions of a day long gone by. Hoping to decongest downtown traffic by rerouting thru traffic, they built a new road; the by-pass. Every Soul with an ounce of commerce sense wanted to capture that traffic. Today, downtown is dead and by-passing the town has become an energy gulping, exhaust belching, traffic nightmare. The town next over to the west, Kokomo, IN is adding a by-pass around their by-pass. Do local government officials take the blue pill, ala The Matrix, with their oath of office. Do they not know they are creating a new venue for commerce and consequently traffic lights, congestion and wasted gas? How do they think they're going to stop it? It will just cause the business on the old by-pass to struggle, just like downtown.

Freeways- the oxymoron of fast auto travel in the U.S. Put one near a city and every town street that can see the freeway with 35X binoculars wants an exit ramp to lure traffic. If that's not half bad, what is bad is that local traffic climbs on the freeway and uses it as a local thoroughfare w/o speed limits or traffic lights. That is how rush hour got invented. Wasting your gas sitting still on a freeway with a 70 mph speed limit because everyone going from one end of town to the other wants to get on the "freeway". Thru traffic should be stopped or shunted from an hour either side of the rush hour. It's too late to stop local traffic. I kid. It's a nightmare. Indianapolis and Chicago are bent on creating more of them. Of course, having taken the blue pill they're oblivious.

Leading me to, freeway construction. In the summer gas prices go way up to capture the increased demand due to summer vacation travel. So what do the blue pill eaters do? Dig up miles and miles of good freeway to put down miles and miles of good freeway when everyone in the country is on them. At least the color and the stripes look nice for the winter driving crowd, which are the locals, who it wasn't meant for in the first place. We get to squeeze in, slow down, sometimes to a crawl for hours so that my taxes can go to a paving construction company who causes me to spend more on gas so he can recycle some of my taxes to a campaign kitty for the blue pill eaters in Washington, D.C. Makes perfect sense.

Country lanes- I try to get around downtown and the by-pass by taking the county lanes. The blue pill people at county government have me covered. It seems like every intersection has become a four way stop. Nine times out of ten, no one meets me at the country lane intersection. Obeying the law demands I stop, wasting precious time and gasoline. For what? One excuse is to deter speeding. When I was a teen, the race was the quarter mile. You'd be stopped by the half mile. Stop signs every mile do nothing to deter that. If one wanted to go many miles that fast they could go to the freeway. Oh, wait. Scratch that.

I have read this excuse after an accident suffering a tragic death, usually a pretty teen girl or young mom, never for a geezer. The extra two stop signs are to prevent another tragic accident. Actually the fact that this logic doesn't disqualify a person from ending out their term as an elected official or employ as a street maintenance person signifies we are, none of us, too smart for allowing it to go on. The two stop signs that were already there when the accident happened didn't prevent the accident. A person didn't look who was stopped or was supposed to stop. Another sign won't prevent that from happening again. Four way stops and traffic light corners have accidents all the time. People being stupid, distracted or plain old not paying attention cause accidents. Not a lack of a four way stop.

Commercial traffic in thoroughfares should be routed to frontages that dump out on the by-pass at fewer locations, giving thru traffic a freer reign and less wasting of gas. Freeways should have every other exit ramp in city jurisdictions shut down to keep local traffic off. Country lanes should allow the naturally used thru streets to travel in relative unobstructed flow except where a naturally used cross roads or State highways intersects it.

We waste tons of gas and money with traffic flow plans that have nothing to do with traffic flow or safety. They are about commerce and feel good responses to grieving relatives of dead drivers. The future governments should eat the red pill. Get real. They should modify these wasteful patterns. Roads should be repaired when they need it, not on a schedule or when the budget can be plumped up. STOP signs should enhance flow. Exit ramps should only be for intersecting major State highways and a few select city accesses.

The government considers energy self-sufficiency a national security priority. They can help us help them achieve it by designing traffic flow patterns that accomplish that objective.

The TSA had pled incompetence once too many

Again and again TSA employees use their tin badges to sexually molest , intimidate and threaten citizens. Each and every time, without exception the TSA issues statements to the effect that proper procedures and policies were not observed by the TSA employee. They promise that these policies and procedures will be reviewed with the employees to prevent any further mistakes. Sometimes they even might apologize.

The question needs to change. We citizens have been asking for compassion, restraint, changes. Sometimes the TSA changes, sometimes they don't. Now is the time to ask how long the citizens are expected to tolerate incidents like this one: humiliating Pat Down of Breast Cancer Survivor before we can assert with a minimum of certainty that the TSA is unable, unwilling and resisting making changes in response to the criticisms and, quite frankly, indecent treatment of citizens exercising a right to travel.

The justification for this quagmire of bureaucratic lewdness isn't supported by the facts or their success at making the airways safer.

If the government really wanted to make the airways safer they would encourage certain people to conceal carry. Law enforcement, military and ex-military, citizens with exemplary records. This show has to have a curtain call.

Peak Oil: An ideas whose Time has not come

From my favorite blog, Instapundit

An oil boom in North American radically changes the future. Whereas just two years ago the term peak oil had gained acceptance as the present condition and heretofore had laid our dismal future before us now seems so ahead of it's time. Way too far ahead.

Read this short blog post: North American Oil Boom

Does Fast and Furious Put Impeachment on the Table?

The following was my own comment made in the comments ection of the article.

Here is the trap Obama has made for himself. Plausible deniability fails as a defense when the administration obstructs senate oversight. If no one can be identified by a showing of evidence, then the Truman doctrine goes into effect. The one that says the buck stops here. He is ultimately responsible. When Obama figures that out, subsequently flinging the doors open to a search of the record he will then have offered proof in open view of obstruction of justice. P.s. Watch Solyndra turn out to be a money laundering scheme for F&F.

There Ought to be a Law

This is another story of a DEA drug bust, gone half bad. Once again Leviathan intimidates an innocent couple while executing a raid based on false or incorrect information.
There is a rare and happy ending. No dogs were shot. No children abducted. No woman humiliated. No husband beaten or shot through and through. The owners answered the knock. What? They can do this now? Answered the questions put by the agents, declaring the sought suspect was not there and no acquaintenvpce of theirs. Here is the kicker. The refused the DEA entry without a warrant.
Again, what? You mean they organized a raid without a warrant? Is this passé now?
There ought to be a law. Whenever a persons liberty, property, health or life is taken during a preplanned government action the citizen must prevail in any suit against said agency and all the actors involved. As it stands the law excuses the agency for logical but arcane reasons and often excuses the agents directly involved because there were doing a duty. These excuses and defenses ought not be in our legal system when an act is preplanned.
So if a citizen, his dog or his front door get the weight of government authority pressed upon them improperly the citizen is entitled to every defense including the castle doctrine, though most of the time that is going to get the citizen killed.
Here is the story that prompted this post: