2012-02-18: Tax Breaks For The Rich?
In the last couple of months, there has been a real push to repeal Bush-era tax cuts under the pretense that only the upper income benefitted from them. The funny thing is that I clearly remember that time. I was making about ten grand per year, which means that I ran out of money and food every pay period. Suddenly, the amount of money deducted from my paychecks changed. I could eat all month!
If you hear someone talking about "tax breaks for the rich", ignore them. They have just shown their ignorance of economic issues.
Does the US need to increase its tax revenue? Yes, certainly. But even more, we need to recognize that the continued expansion of federal agencies into areas that properly belong (via the plain meaning of the text in the Constitution) is the primary reason why state and local governments across the country are struggling to stave off bankruptcy (except in California and a few other big states, where a similar concentration of tax revenues and power is at the root of their troubles).
How would one raise taxes? There are some simple things that could be done to raise tax revenues.
Eliminate deductions and tax credits. Does anyone really believe that we should make people who are not married pay extra, so that married people can pay less? In a nation with a 50% divorce rate, do we really want people to marry for financial reasons, rather than for deeper reasons of personal commitment? Do we want people to have children or buy a home because they expect to receive a tax benefit? Because it seems pretty obvious to me that we want people to make most of their decisions without being tempted by tax benefits.
Make corporate loan repayments come out of their after-tax revenue. Currently, if a business want to raise funds to buy a piece of equipment, it has two main choices. It can raise equity, which means that the current owner have to contribute funds to the company or have their interest diluted by additional investors. Returns on equity are paid after taxes have been taken out. Or it can take on loans and pay interest. The interest is paid out of pre-tax income, meaning that the revenue used to pay interest on loans is deducted from the company's taxable income. Another way to describe this is taxpayers subsidize business loan repayment.
We should also institute a unary tax system for corporation-like entities. This is where the total pre-tax revenue of all of the company's affiliates & subsidiaries world-wide is used in calculating tax liability, based on the percentage of that revenue that is related to US activities. So that way, selling products to the US subsidiary at inflated prices will no longer result in lower US taxes.
But that is not nearly enough. The US was, until very recently, involved in three (3) wars. One of them, Afghanistan, was justifiable by the 9/11 terror attacks, but Iraq and Libya? Why are we sending our young to die in foreign lands where a sizable majority of the local citizenry was not already, prior to our arrival, engaged in fighting for their own freedom? Is it that we have too many young and wish to "cull" the ranks? Or is it that we wish to emulate the Soviet Union's model of imposing by force a system of government and politico-military alliance on nations too weak to protect themselves from us?
Secondly, we need to get the federal government out of K-12 schooling. Schools need to be funded and controlled as close to the local level as possible. Does it surprise anyone that the more we centralize funding and control of our schools, the less they are able to respond to the needs of the communities and the society they serve? Do you really believe that a pack of politicians and bureaucrats in Washington know more about what your kids should learn and how they should learn it and how much it should cost than local parents and teachers?
Thirdly, there are a number of other federal agencies that unnecessarily reproduce state-level functions exactly the way that the Department of Education does. We can trim such agencies. We have spent a lot of money on equipment to scan people's scrotums at airports in the name of security. We have spent a lot of money creating and publicizing the "rainbow of doom" terror alert level system and doing similar "security theater" activities. Isn't it time we stop wasting money on them?
Arizona state politicians will introduce model legislation this week to encourage states to prevent children of illegal immigrants from being granted citizenship under the 14th Amendment.
Lawmakers in at least 14 states have said they are committed to passing the legislation targeting birthright citizenship.
This is why I am certain that a lot of the anti-immigrant rhetoric is motivated more by race than by desire to see our laws obeyed and enforced. Those children are not violating any laws by being born here. Attempting to punish them (by preventing them from becoming citizens) because of their parents' citizenship is something that we've not done or even tried before.
Here's the deep, dark secret of the anti-immigrant bunch: we could stop nearly all illegal immigration pretty quickly if we'd aggressively arrest and prosecute those who employ illegals. This would mean jail time for owners and managers of businesses which use undocumented laborers to avoid paying US-standard wages. It would also mean that those who are wealthy enough to pay someone else to clean their homes or maintain their yards would also be held responsible for their choice to hire illegal immigrants. So if illegal immigration is what this is about, let us lock up those who refuse to obey the law because they want to pocket the additional wages that would be due.
What? You don't want to arrest employers for hiring illegal aliens? So it isn't really about breaking the law, is it? It is about their ancestry being different from yours. Aw, shucks. Did I just find that klansman robe in your closet?
But what about "anchor babies", you may ask. We have had anchor babies at least since the amendment was passed, and possibly before. If the parents are ineligible for public assistance and no one will hire them, that anchor baby will return to its parents' home nation pretty quickly.
It really gets me that we hear all of this about illegal immigration, when illegal immigration is possible because someone (farmers, hotels and motels, restaurants, plant nurseries, construction contractors, wealthy families, organizations focused around certain ethnic backgrounds) benefits from it. Illegal immigrants help to increase someone's profits. Americans will operate garbage trucks, wash dishes, and change sheets?if and only if the pay is high enough?so that old saying about "Americans won't do the work" is a lie.
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2010-12-20: What A Mess!
This is a predictable consequence of schemes such as "cap and trade," in which the natural rewards and consequences of production are substituted by bureaucratic fiat. Essentially, these are the kinds of schemes that destroyed the Soviet Union.
Don't believe me? Read the article. Go ahead. I'll wait.
In the article, destruction of a "greenhouse gas" by-product of the production of another product gains reimbursements that exceed the value of what was originally the primary intended output of production. It was an entirely predictable (but obviously not foreseen by policymakers) consequence of a mistaken political mandate.
In the USSR, production targets were not set based on how much company leaders thought they could sell profitably. They were based on five-year plans that were issued by political leaders. As with the gases mentioned in the article, these mandates were based more on political goals than on economic ones, and as with the gases, there were unforeseen consequences. The USSR's consequences shattered their empire (the USSR was little more than a collection of states which had been conquered by Russia and consolidated into a single "nation" following the Second World War).
California is now embarking on the same course that these European nations have already been following. I expect a few predictable consequences:
- power plants move out of state to avoid the regulatory regime, forcing California utilities to pay for interstate transmission
- utilities, using "smart meters" begin imposing various fees for "excess consumption" and "peak hours consumption"; the highest fees will be directed to consumers, including renters who live in under-insulated buildings
- as utility rates soar, many employers will likely pack up and leave
- California, already headed for bankruptcy court, will have a substantially higher unemployment rate than most other US states.
Already, the jackals of the futures trading industry are gathering to open exchanges to trade carbon dioxide emission credits, like a magic currency created at a wave of the CARB's hand.
Among the problems I see:
- The whole overheating earth idea is based on poorly understood statistical models that are already known to be inaccurate representations of the earth and its processes. We do not yet know what impact human activities are having on global temperatures, and we may not know for hundreds of years into the future.
- Because we don't know, we may find that carbon dioxide released due to human activities has little or no impact on global temperature averages. However, once locked into such a regulatory regime, it could take decades to tear down that structure.
- Some companies may quickly move operations out of state and escape the regulations, leaving others to bear disproportionate shares of the costs.
- Some companies may quickly switch to unreliable solar and wind generation, at the expense of causing blackouts, brownouts, and price spikes whenever their chosen sources aren't producing.
- If the price for emissions credits rises high enough, companies may idle factories in order to claim credits that may be sold for higher profits than those factories' output might produce.
- This scheme will cause massive increases in utility rates for residents who are already having their taxes increased each year to counteract the effect of the ongoing economic contraction.
- These exchanges are the fruit of Enron's efforts going back a decade or more. Like the futures and securities industries, I expect a few insiders to make billions trading otherwise-worthless paper. Those billions of dollars will come out of the pockets of residents and taxpayers in this state.
California is a mess right now. It looks like things will continue to get worse, until one day beleaguered residents seek to hold a 100% recall election (recalling 100% of the state's elected officials and judges in one election), which will probably happen after the bankruptcy-induced tax-increases and program cuts hit.
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In the early 1980s, British prime minister Margaret Thatcher emerged victorious from a war with Argentina over the Falkland Islands that propelled her to a landslide victory in the 1983 general election. On July 19, 1984, she gave a speech to the assembled legislators of her Conservative party, in which she said that she had defeated ?the enemy without,? but that ?the enemy within . . . is much more difficult to fight and more dangerous to liberty.? She was referring to government-sector unions, and specifically the mineworkers? union, which was then attempting to hold Britain hostage. (In Britain, the mines had been nationalized, hence their workers had a government-sector union.)
The union was able to attempt that because generations of socialist governments ? including nominally Conservative ones ? had increased the size and scope of the state and allowed the unions to acquire privileges that put them beyond the law. Today, with America?s prosperity already hobbled under the weight of bigger and more expansive government, we see that pattern replicating itself here. We must confront this enemy within before it crushes us.
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However, instead of lecturing about polynomials and exponents during class time ? and then giving his young charges 30 problems to work on at home ? Fisch has flipped the sequence. He?s recorded his lectures on video and uploaded them to YouTube for his 28 students to watch at home. Then, in class, he works with students as they solve problems and experiment with the concepts.
Lectures at night, ?homework? during the day. Call it the Fisch Flip.
?When you do a standard lecture in class, and then the students go home to do the problems, some of them are lost. They spend a whole lot of time being frustrated and, even worse, doing it wrong,? Fisch told me.
I am glad to see some imagination in the education space. However, I am going to have to mark this with the hashtag #disturbing. Not because of the use of YouTube to teach lessons at home, but because this turns the home into the classroom without reducing or eliminating sit-in-class time. In the case of this math class, I have no doubt that keeping the time is beneficial. But as a whole, sitting in class is an exercise in letting your imagination go without betraying your lack of attention. It was true in the 1960s and 1970s, it is true today.
Where I'm coming from:
When MJ was younger, I'd pick him up from school, bring him home, and sit there going over homework until bedtime. He and one of my nephews were sometimes the only two in the house that didn't get to run around and kick soccer balls, toss footballs, and swing at softballs. I actually regret making him endure that, knowing that it contributed little or nothing to his learning process (and prevented him from having the unstructured time that we all need to depressurize, which is necessary for improved--and sustained--performance).
Once I was working 100 miles away, where I was out of the area 15+ hours per day, MJ (wisely) stopped doing much homework. The late-reader suddenly had time for recreational reading, and soon zoomed ahead of where his instructors thought he could be. As a college student, he is already years ahead of the place his fifth-grade teacher expected him to get. He is interested, involved, and focused on the task at hand (except when the phone rings and he says, "My roommate just ...").
So, I rejoice with @MikeGrace that the instructor is trying new things. I even think that's the thing to do, but unless home instruction (even over YouTube) is accompanied by reduced or eliminated "jail time," it isn't constructive or beneficial. Here's why:
Our school system was mostly constructed during the late 1800s and early 1900s, when the most pressing economic purpose was giving factories a standard "input" with which to forge their workforces. The reason so many people complain now about school performance is that society and the economy both changed, and the schools did not. To get a job in today's economy, graduates need to have some kind of specialization that sets them apart from most of their peers. Eventually, we're going to have to break up the campus into much smaller, office-sized spaces, dispersed throughout the community, and even dispense with it entirely in exchange for cafeteria-style, online-based learn-at-home programs.
This is going to be tremendously expensive, but school administrators will fight it hardest of all, because many of their high-salary positions will become mostly unnecessary. Teachers may also fight it, even though I think the net effect will be a boom in positions for teaching, instruction, training, counselors, and learning facilitators. At some level, we're going to have to once again let families be the central education point and recognize that schooling is merely there to assist families in educating their offspring.
I think Mr. Fisch's innovation is a step in the right direction, but I also think that school administrators will grab onto it as a way to shoehorn more instructional hours into students' already crowded days. If that can be prevented, and the best, most dynamic, most interested and interesting instructors get to make the videos, this will be an absolutely wonderful forward step.
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2010-06-19: National Debt: Too Big And Getting Bigger
A Sacramento judge ruled Tuesday that the state can raid more than $30 million from Victor Valley redevelopment agencies ? a move city officials have said could stall local road and building projects and hamper efforts to attract new businesses.
This is going to have some impact. Local governments sold bonds--borrowed money--based on state law, which allowed them to dedicate a tax increment to the redevelopment agency, to help with repayment. Many cities are already shuffling funds from one agency to another in order to stave off layoffs, defaults, and bankruptcy. This foolhardy move by uncaring spendthrifts in Sacramento could result in one or more California cities or counties being forced into bankruptcy under the bankruptcy code.
Other possible effects:
- New or existing projects will be delayed, resulting in higher interest and other carrying charges to the local agency.
- Because the state can seize revenues from local agencies at any time, making revenue streams uncertain, local governments throughout California will face higher risk premiums and fewer willing investors whenever they seek outside financing.
- The State of California will once again avoid the kind of deep restructuring that it has needed for at least ten years. It isn't just layoffs that are needed. There are all sorts of independent commissions that should be consolidated into fewer and smaller executive agencies. There should be one person--the Governor--responsible for all executive actions in the state. The current mishmash of separately-elected department heads and so-called "independent" agencies whose governing boards are appointed under the state's cumbersome one-for-you-one-for-me process has got to go. California can get rid of highly compensated agency heads, commissioners, and managers, and then cut back on the number of subordinates it keeps.
- Many local governments may default on their bonds and go through bankruptcy restructuring. Like the state itself, local governments tend to rely upon debt financing for most construction. It is politically infeasible to cut current expenditures in order to pay for a building or maintenance program. It is far easier to pay off a bond than it is to raise taxes or cut spending enough to prepay the project.
- Affected projects could include road repairs, congestion-relief projects, "blight" cleanup, sewer repairs, water pipelines, and other infrastructure.
- Local government agencies may raise fees and set up "trap" financing. An example of trap financing is Los Angeles' move to fine banks $1,000 per day for refusing to maintain repossessed properties, many of whom have residents who refuse to allow maintenance crews in because they are undergoing an eviction process. Once the residents refuse access, the banks can no longer send maintenance crews to the properties, hence they are 'trapped' in a fine-paying situation.
- Local governments are more likely to look at other ways to raise funds at the expense of their residents. For example, there may be special assessment districts formed to re-raise funds for infrastructure. Traffic-light camera systems are likely to be expanded, and yellow-light grace periods shortened, as a way to raise money for cities' general funds.
- School districts are probably also going to join the hunt for funds, charging parents for their students' bus rides, requiring parents to purchase more of the supplies used in the classroom, and charging for extracurricular activities such as sports teams and drama clubs. Look for attempts to sneak in commercial advertisements in exchange for zero-price supplies and content, or perhaps exclusive franchise deals, such as requiring all student athletes to wear a particular brand of athletic gear.
This decision was so bone-headed that I wonder how the judge could justify it. California law allows local entities to set up redevelopment agencies, which borrow funds in their own names, secured against the increased tax revenues of properties within the redevelopment district. In reliance on the assurances of that law, local agencies formed such districts, borrowed funds, and incurred obligations. By allowing the state to seize those redevelopment funds, the judge broke faith with everyone involved in the local governments which formed such redevelopment agencies, as well as breaking with every bondholder or lender for those redevelopment agencies.
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2010-04-30: Statement On The DISCLOSE Act
The White House
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release
April 29, 2010
Statement by the President on the DISCLOSE Act
"I welcome the introduction of this strong bi-partisan legislation to control the flood of special interest money into America?s elections. Powerful special interests and their lobbyists should not be able to drown out the voices of the American people. Yet they work ceaselessly toward that goal: they claim the protection of the Constitution in extending this power, and they exploit every loophole in the law to escape limits on their activities. The legislation introduced today would establish the toughest-ever disclosure requirements for election-related spending by big oil corporations, Wall Street and other special interests, so the American people can follow the money and see clearly which special interests are funding political campaign activity and trying to buy representation in our government. I have long believed that sunlight is the best disinfectant, and this legislation will shine an unprecedented light on corporate spending in political campaigns. This bill will also prohibit foreign entities from manipulating the outcomes of American elections and help close other special interest loopholes. I hope that Congress will give this legislation the swift consideration it deserves, which is especially urgent now in the aftermath of the Supreme Court?s Citizens United decision. Passing the legislation is a critical step in restoring our government to its rightful owners: the American people."
I'm glad for some action on disclosure of corporate campaign contributions and electioneering, but it doesn't go far enough. What the US needs is a constitutional amendment which strikes down "corporate personhood". Once we no longer give corporations special rights that aren't available to individuals, much of the corrosive influence they've had on our government will go away. Now, I have to be clear that a corporation is not just a profit-seeking entity, but that corporations include non-profits, unions, and advocacy groups as well. So, for example, Citibank, Sears, Wal-mart, and General Motors are corporations, but so are the ACLU, Greenpeace, the NRA, the Catholic church, and the United Auto Workers. There is no reason why an organization should have a greater say in forming policy than the individuals that comprise it.
As for the bill, do its reporting requirements apply to these other corporations, too? If not, it is fatally flawed.
Whether the bill passes in its current for or not, let us work together to restore the influence of individuals by eliminating the influence of corporations [and corp-alike entities] entirely.
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2010-04-29: California Budget A Job Killer?
Pedro Nava: Governor Schwarzenegger's Budget Is a California Job Killer
Republicans say their number one priority is jobs. What about the jobs of the people who teach our children and care for the sick and elderly? How come their jobs don't matter? What about our classroom sizes? What about the seniors who are currently receiving health care that keeps them out of nursing homes? What about keeping our schools safe and clean? What about the children who will be left without health insurance? What about caring for the disabled?
It may be easy for conservatives to win political points by beating up on California's workers and talking about cuts, cuts, cuts, but it is important to remember that California's employees provide valuable services that benefit all of us. The reality is that California's workers are scientists, teachers, school bus drivers, firefighters, game wardens, and nurses among other things. They teach and protect our children, enforce the law, preserve the environment, care for the disabled, treat the sick, and provide other valuable services. A "cuts only" budget will hurt all Californians. In addition to looking for ways to save money, the Legislature and the Governor must look at possible revenue sources.
Mr. Nava, the problem, as I see it, is that California's public employees have been spared from the wrenching job cuts that workers in private industry take for granted. California has a chronic budget deficit, in violation of its own constitution, yet refuses to take the necessary steps to get its financial house in order. The current financial crunch merely intensifies an already-existing over-reliance on financial gimmicks and borrowing in order to avoid the real cuts that are needed.
Now, the foundation of California's financial problem is Proposition XIII, which caps property tax revenues for local governments and schools, making them all dependent upon statewide revenues. By pushing schools to complete dependence upon state funding, true local control is impossible, so schools cannot react to the situations "on the ground" in their local communities. Cities and counties eagerly pursue low-paying retail businesses, because they generate sales tax revenues, even though higher-paying extraction, transportation, and production businesses would be more helpful to area residents. Another effect of Prop. 13 is that newly-built and recently-purchased properties receive a higher valuation for tax purposes than older properties that have been held by the same owner for several years. This means that localities have an incentive to seek rapid and unchecked development, even at the expense of lowering the quality of life for their residents.
What California needs is to completely rewrite parts of the state constitution that deal with taxation, so that local governments have an incentive to make life better for their local residents, school districts are controlled and funded by local parents and other local residents, and the state government's structure is streamlined. I imagine that the effect will be higher taxes to support schools, parks, and city / county programs and services. Meanwhile, residents will probably send less money to Sacramento. This matters, because our schools need more and better teachers (but fewer administrators, each of whom draws a reduced salary). Our colleges (University of California, California State University, and California Community Colleges) need stable funding patterns that eliminate "fee increase" landmines that shipwreck our next generation's future. Colleges also need to have sufficient funding for grants, so that most students can graduate "loan free" and able to pursue whatever they wish.
The article quoted also goes on to describe a proposed "extraction tax" on oil production. This might be a good idea, particularly if it also applied to other extraction activities, such as mining. However, without cutting California's prodigious appetite for spending and borrowing, new and higher taxes will never be enough.
In this state, we have enough independent commissions to wallpaper the governor's mansion with. Why is there a "Board of Equalization" and a "Franchise Tax Board"? Why aren't they all consolidated into a "division of revenue" within the state treasury department? Why isn't the California Coastal Commission under the direct authority of the Governor?
The truth is, California's politics and budgets have been "job killers" for twenty years. Don't confuse the microcomputer (PC), semiconductor, software, and Internet booms with real, long term job growth. In each of these fields, one after another, companies find out that they can save money by moving their production offshore, and they do so, leaving only a remnant of jobs here in California.
Politics, because we lack the willpower to create a consistent framework for economic policies. Everything seems to be ad hoc, spur-of-the-moment, because we can't look far enough ahead, nor can we follow an already approved policy, because of political infighting. Budgets because we focus so much on short term, spend-all-you-got-and-ignore-the-future policies that we're always caught flat-footed by the next minor downturn. California borrows up to its nose, then screams in fear when the ground underneath it sinks, leaving it underwater. Any way you look at it, California is a mess, and not likely to get better soon.
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2010-03-30: Secret Treaty May Threaten Constitution
The goal of the trade pact is to tighten enforcement of global intellectual property rules. The leaked draft, though incomplete in many respects, makes clear that negotiators are considering ideas and principles not reflected in U.S. law.
ACTA could, for example, pressure Internet service providers -- such as Comcast and Verizon -- to kick users offline when they (or their children) have been accused of repeated copyright infringement because of content uploaded to sites such as YouTube. It also might oblige the United States to impose criminal liability on those who "incite" copyright violation. The draft more generally addresses "IP infringement" and thus could extend some of its rules to trademark and possibly patent law in ways that, after inevitable international compromises, will depart from U.S. law. It also contemplates creating an international "oversight council" to supervise (and possibly amend) aspects of the agreement.
This is a frightening expansion of Presidential power. Reading the article (yes, please go read it and come back). The proposed treaty itself already raises fundamental constitutional questions. To augment that by routing around Congress is not a good thing. You see, unless Congress or the Supreme Court stands up to the Executive Branch, this means that the copyright abuse industries (movie industry, record industry, software industry, publishing industry) will dictate government policy without any recourse by citizens.
For those who believed that this administration would be different from the previous administration, this should put all such thoughts to rest. In either case, the power of the federal government expands, and that of the executive branch in particular, while the rights of citizens wither and are ignored.
The "three strikes" provision alluded to above would require ISPs (e.g., Verizon) to permanently cancel a customer's Internet access in response to accusations of copyright infringement--not convictions, accusations--with little or no "due process" required. If the user uploads a video of his or her small child dancing to a copyrighted song,
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This is a very interesting article, and is likely even somewhat true. I'd suggest you go to the site, read the article, and then return. But the article misses the point. The problem with public-sector unions and their members profiting at the expense of ordinary taxpayers is nothing more than a limited version of the "corporate personhood" problem. That is, union organizations, like large corporations and trade associations?and groups like MoveOn.org, GreenPeace, and Swift Boat Veterans for Truth?enable a small number of individuals to wield outsize power and influence in the political process. Until we deal with that, we will continue to face special issue groups that have more influence than they would ordinarily hold based on the number of members.
In the United States, we recognize that corporate-style entities have certain rights that only make sense for "persons" to hold. For example, we cannot restrict a corporation (including all the groups named above) from independently advertising and promoting the issues and candidates that organizational leadership believes will advance their agendas. So we tell political parties and candidates that they have limits on contributions they can accept and limits on what they can spend, but various organizations are able to inject essentially unlimited resources to support their favored parties and candidates.
This should not be. It is a problem for us, because it takes our political (and therefore governmental) processes out of the hands of Joe and Jane Public and puts it into the hands of T. Corporate Overlord and D. Union Boss. This process gave us the continuing econolypse?the economic collapse that is exposing the malevolent influence that corporate-style organizations had on our financial and economic regulators?and is about to squeeze the taxpayers even harder to support pensions and benefits for unionized governmental employees that they themselves will not have.
A number of for-profit corporations have already used bankruptcy laws to shed their defined-benefit pension plans, meaning that their (generally non-unionized) employees will have to depend on Social Security and their own resources to support themselves in old age. (And for most of us, there is an almost zero chance that Social Security will still be around when we retire.) But public-sector unions with tax-funded defined-benefit retirement plans will expect taxes to be increased to whatever amount it takes to fund those plans.
In other words, you will work and pay taxes the rest of your life, so that public employees can retire on your dime. This is unsustainable. Up to now, federal bailout funds have kept many of these public employees employed and their benefit packages intact. But California is heading as fast as it can toward the biggest governmental bankruptcy in US history. I would suggest that the federal government will be unable and unwilling to extend the bailouts long and far enough to dig the state and its local governments out of the hole they've dug for themselves.
The cure mentioned in the article is helpful, but not complete. The beginning of securing our economic, financial, political, and governmental future is passing a Constitutional amendment that removes most "corporate personhood" rights. When AFSCME, Microsoft, General Motors, the Chamber of Commerce, and other corporate-alike groups cannot promote their political agendas through lobbying, contributions, or advertising, they will lose their ability to hijack public policy and bend it to their ends, even when those ends are contrary to the benefit of everyone else.
DISCLOSURE: My primary employer since 2004 is a government agency. I am not unionized, and receive few or no benefits. In short, I have no health plan and no retirement plan and it is unlikely that such will be provided in the future.