GOVERNMENT GOOFS

These are cases where government fouled up and made everything worse:

• What has happened:
  1. Interdepartmental smash of intents in Bloomington IN:
     • In 1989, the Indiana Dept. of Transportation put in 5-year plastic traffic arrows on College Mall Road, at the intersection with Highway 46.
     • Two weeks later, the City of Bloomington paved College Mall Road, covering up the new arrows.
     • One week after that, Indiana Gas dug up the new pavement to install bigger gas lines.

     These events were supposed to occur in the opposite order. The delays were caused by a strike that delayed the pipe shipment for the gas lines. But the contracts were written so that the road projects were required to be completed by a certain date, with penalties for noncompliance.

  2. The beauty shop pierced the baby's ears, but they couldn't legally pierce the mother's. A parent's permission is required for anyone under 18, and the mother was 17.
  3. Democrat leaders in Congress kept the vote open, and allowed vote changes. They refused to close the vote until the bill passed. That's cheating!
  4. A traffic jam happened for week, because trucks could not make the turns in the detour without backing up. The detour was the only route the city approved that would not send the trucks through areas zoned as "neighborhoods."
  5. It's illegal in Florida to make accusations that Florida citrus products are unsafe.
  6. Medicaid pays thousands to RENT a wheelchair for many months, but will not spend only $350 to BUY one for the recipient.*
  7. Government housing pays a lot more for rent on a rental unit than it costs to pay a mortgage on the same property. But government will not allow a mortgage payment to be made by people on public assistance.*
  8. It is illegal for a welfare recipient to pay for cable TV. It is legal to pay for a baby sitter. But you can't get a baby sitter if there is no cable TV.*
  9. Handgun factories and police departments waste energy undoing each other's work. Confiscated guns should be sold, not destroyed. Government should not have the power to destroy anything except government records.
  10. A shower used as a prop in a stage play was ordered to be made wheelchair accessible.
  11. Stringent testing and materials handling rules cause the military to spend huge sums on common items. Here are some specific cases:
      • The government spent $400 each for hammers, because someone marked the "test each unit" box on the requisition form, instead of the "test sampled units" box.
      • Government contractors are told to destroy surplus materials at the end of the job, so government does not have to pay for a guard to protect it from pilferage. (Why not just let the stuff be taken, or give it away - it's cheaper, and energy is saved?)*
      • An exception is that $600 toilet seat. It is for the Space Shuttle, and has to work in zero gravity, with or without a spacesuit, and in either atmosphere or the vacuum of space.
  12. Was Desert Storm Syndrome caused by experimental vaccines the army gave soldiers?
  13. The army ordered men to be exposed to atomic blasts in the 1950s, to test "the effects on troops."
  14. Scientists were allowed to experiment with radiation on poor children in orphanages.
  15. Welfare recipients are afraid to work because "cut off" income ceilings will remove all of their benefits. Thus, they are forced to either remain on welfare, or take a chance on losing everything if the job doesn't work out.*
  16. Welfare rules discourage frugality, by denying benefits if the recipient saves some money for later.*
  17. Government budgeting rules discourage frugality, by reducing the budget for the department if the recipient saves some money for later.
  18. The detour had a detour in it. Two construction projects were planned in isolation.
  19. Four construction projects planned by two different governments closed all but one road through an area. The traffic backed up for miles. Each government had planned on using the other government's roads for detours.
  20. The Federal motor-voter law passed in 1994 required all state governments to implement motor vehicle department voter registration by December 31, 1994. The Indiana Constutution forbade the Indiana legislature from meeting again until January 2, 1995.
  21. They arrest protesters for trying to save lives at abortion clinics.
  22. Tax revenue drops due to business failures after a tax hike. So what does government do about it? The legislators raise taxes again to compensate for the revenue loss. Of course, revenue drops even more, because more businesses fail. Government does not have the power to set the amount of revenue it collects in taxes.
  23. They restrict foreign imports to protect businesses paying the high taxes from competition.
  24. The Monroe County Public Library sells off its books to make room for more books.
  25. Indiana Law, 1988: "A pedestrian facing a CIRCULAR RED must enter the crosswalk."
  26. Bloomington Indiana charges $2 a bag for trash pickup, and then complains about litter.
  27. Sign placement standards make DO NOT ENTER signs and route markers block driver view of each other.
  28. Sign placement standards required the sign to be placed behind an exsisting telephone pole.
  29. The following election laws contradict:
      • New Hampshire law requires its Presidential primary to be held before any other state's primary.
      • A Maine law requires its primary to be on the same day as New Hampshire's.
      • Michigan law requires the primary to be before New Hampshire's date.
      • The Democrat Party decided that the Iowa Caucus and New Hampshire Primary shall be first, and invalidated the votes of other states holding primaries earlier.

      All of these laws are WRONG. There should either be ONE nationwide primary election, or the Independent Voting System should be adopted. Independent voting allows ALL of the candidates to run in the general election, without interaction between the candidates on the ballot. A candidate's entry into an Independent Voting race can not affect the outcome of that race, unless that candidate wins the election.

  30. After construction had already begun, politicians moved the route of Interstate 64 from Vincennes IN to near Evansville IN. This left a section of the former route already completed from Vincennes IN to Lawrenceville IL.
  31. Indiana requires immunizations, but bans enticing or forcing kids into the car to go get them. Of course, the kids will resist going to get the shots.
  32. Weapon bans punish the innocent along with the guilty.
  33. In Indiana, it's illegal to get a fish drunk. Huh???
  34. Government is costing everyone money, and creating a solid waste problem, by mandating a change to digital television. Why? To make money, by selling the frequencies freed up to cell phone companies.
  35. Martinsville IN had two conflicting laws restricting mowing to 2 specific hours a day. one law required no noise from mowing after 8 pm. The other law is a federally mandated law to prevent ozone, and prohibits mowing before 6 pm. What were people with jobs or commutes in those hours supposed to do?
  36. The chief causes of health care cost increases are Medicare, Medicaid, health insurance and AIDS precautions. So why is government trying to increase these?
  37. In many towns, it's still illegal to open an umbrella in the presence of a horse.
• What government does:
  1. What public purpose does spending tax money on a professional sports arena serve? NONE! It's an abuse of the taxpayer. Let the taxpaywers who want the sports arena form a company and donate the money to build it. Government should never own aports arenas, auditoriums, and convention centers. Those sjhould either be private enterprise, or should not exist.
  2. Too many governments waste tax money supporeting "the arts." The reason the arts "need support" is that nobody wants to pay for them. Nobody wants to pay for them, because they are obsolete media. Cameras, motion pictures, television, and sound recording have removed the economic demand for the arts governments want to preserve. So government is wasting the money spent on art.
  3. Too many government officials force their aesthetic ideas and beliefs on others. Government has no business regulating aesthetics. There is no right to a nice view.
  4. Mandatory tool safety devices prevent proper use of the tool.
  5. Congressmen, diplomats, and sports figures are somehow "exempt" from the law. Why?
  6. To prevent illegal aliens from getting jobs, they take away US citizen rights.
  7. "Vote for only one" elections have a bias that favors the candidate most different from the others.
  8. Probability favors a deficit when proposed spending before the budget vote is between 1 and 2 times the revenue.
  9. Retirees have to sell homes, because their pensions cannot cover property taxes.
  10. Graduated income taxes penalize success, and reward failure.
  11. A raise can cause a tax increase larger than the raise, not because the raise moved the recipient into the next tax bracket, but because it moved him from the top of the tax table increment into the bottom of a higher increment. Tax tables should be replaced by a continuous formula where the increment is the penny.
  12. Multiple governments with overlapping jurisdictions compete for revenue. This harms the economy, and actually reduces total government revenue. Here's how it happens:
      1. One government raises tax rates, to get more money for itself.
      2. The higher taxes cause a loss of business in that area. This can include some business failures.
      3. The business loss causes a drop in revenue for other governments.
      4. Those other governments raise their their tax rates, to revcover the lost revenue.
      5. This tax increase causes another loss of business.
      6. This causes the original government to lose revenue.
      7. The result is that all of the governments have lower revenues than they originally had.
      8. But the greedy legislators do not learn. They raise tax rates again, and the cycle repeats!

      This shows that government does not have the power to set the amount of revenue it collects. Attempts to do so danage the economy and cause job losses.

  13. Each government sets tax rates based on what it wants to spend, not what the economy can support.
  14. Spending rules cause waste as departments quickly use up money left over at the end of a fiscal year. Otherwise, department budgets for the next year will be cut by the amount left over.
  15. Tax evaders sometimes get longer prison sentences than murders. Government wrongly puts itself first.
  16. If anyone wants to live in isolation from society, the police think their "duty" is to pry them out of theiur houses by force.
  17. The minimum wage really exists to make sure workers make enough to pay taxes.
  18. Nobody can control an economy and make it work, but governments keep trying.
  19. Too often, government puts its own interests first.
  20. Government says they are "creating jobs." They just shuffle available jobs around. Nobody seems to notice the jobs destroyed by government policy.
  21. When they banned religion from public schools, they didn't remove atheism.
  22. Judges can insert their own personal whims into the law, without any vote by a legislature or an executive's signature. This is WRONG! It is cheating the due public process to gain a speciic result.
  23. Bureaucrats will always have statistics ready (and handy), to show the disaster that will happen if the budget for their department is cut.
  24. Government can create jobs only by improving roads or cutting taxes. Nothing else works.
  25. Property tax laws require people to have monetary incomes to keep their houses.
  26. Obsolete laws stay on the books through neglect.
  27. Any nut with enough money can get special rights passed into law. Government passes the rights just to get rid of his pestering.
  28. Government wastes too much money on "nice, but not necessary" projects.
• DO YOU WANT CLOWNS LIKE THESE TO EVEN KNOW ABOUT YOUR HEALTH CARE, LET ALONE RUN IT?

* This is the policy of the statists (government worshipers), who consider it a sacrelige if someone gains something personally from government money. They don't care that it saves the government money when the personal gain happens.

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