Who Stands Accountable For Homelessness

Today the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported on growing homelessness in the state's largest county.  The paper writes,

"Despite numerous public and private programs that spend millions of dollars confronting homelessness, some of which have had marked success, new figures show the number of people with nowhere to live continues to grow."

Adding,

"Despite the increases in homelessness, local advocates point to some positive developments, driven by a 10-year campaign to end homelessness that was launched five years ago."

In my perpetually forthcoming book, I use that very 10-year plan as Exhibit A of what is wrong with state government.  As I wrote back in March 2012,

No Man is Safe While Congress is in Session

"No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the Congress is in session."

The above quote easily could be extended to any government agency.  At no time has the sentiment been more true than today.

The venerable magazine The Economist took on the issue of America’s regulatory state early this year in an excellent cover story on “Over-regulated America.”[1]  Writing chiefly about our environmental regulations and after listing a few hilarious examples of other regulations, The Economist’s editors argue,

But red tape in America is no laughing matter.  The problem is not the rules that are self-evidently absurd.  It is the ones that sound reasonable on their own but impose a huge burden collectively.  America is meant to be the home of laissez-faire.  Unlike Europeans, whose lives have long been circumscribed by meddling governments and diktats from Brussels, Americans are supposed to be free to choose, for better or for worse.  Yet for some time America has been straying from this ideal.

More Admirals Than Ships

[Editors Note:  Late last winter, before embarking on my adventures in electoral politics, I started the process of excerpting sections of my book over at the still slumbering Private Citizen Media site.  As a public service, I will bring over those items, piece-by-piece, for temporary housing here, until a more permanent location can be found.]

Back in March, The American Interest's Walter Russell Mead took Midwestern (specifically Minnesota) Republicans to task in a blog post for failing "to turn voters’ urgent concerns...into a politically sustainable program for deep change."  Mead observed that,

"Rather than propose innovative new ideas toward a vision for the future, the Midwestern GOP is projecting a message about what they are against.  Those who want to get beyond blue need to think more creatively about the next steps."

Thus chastened, over at Private Citizen we offered this except from our perpetually forthcoming book as a partial down payment on that program for deep change.

“The nearest approach to immortality on earth is a government bureau"

--South Carolina politician James F. Brynes

Count us in favor of both government reform and reduced spending.  Simply voting less money is the easy part.  How to change business as usual is more difficult, especially when government is part of the problem.  Quoting Walter Russell Mead,

Government is inevitably going to be part of the solution for these problems—if only by correcting so many of the misguided policies that in many cases make existing conditions worse. [1]

So reform, yes, but what kind of reform?  To answer that question, we need to go back to the beginning and cover a little economic theory.

A government program, once created, develops its own constituencies—the direct recipients who want to continue getting benefits, bureaucrats whose careers depend on the program’s existence, not to mention the lobbyists and advocates who will go to bat for a program, if it were threatened.