How to Rid the World of Lobbyists

Considering:

Equality and Envy
The Proper Role of Government
By: Kim Moreland|Published: November 15, 2011

This is today’s Breakpoint, today not by Chuck Colson, but by Kim Moreland.  This column is generally good, pointing out that the kind of social/political equality that should interest Christians is not the current “income equality” that is currently so incessantly demanded.  Rather, it is equality before the law and within the political process.  From this Moreland goes on to say, “But the Christian tradition also puts limits on the size and scope of government.”

Amen, and amen.

Later, Moreland makes this comment:

But we should work to make sure that the law doesn’t treat them [those with larger incomes] more favorably than other, lesser-paid, people. That’s why, for example, lessening the influence of lobbyists is so desperately needed today. Their entire purpose is to shape the rules so that one group benefits at the expense of everybody else.

What needs to be said here, and was not in this column, is that if the proper limits are placed on government, the influence of lobbyists will approach zero.  If the state carefully avoided the matters of taxing to redistribute, of social engineering, of subsidizing businesses, of providing benefits to individuals, and all such manner of things, there would be nothing for lobbyists to do!!!!

Lobbyists today typically spend their time either trying to keep the government out of their business – in the broadest sense of that term - so that business is able to continue (can’t blame them for that) OR trying to get some favor from the government to give them a one-up on everyone else (can and should blame them for this).  But if governments simply stayed out of those areas, lobbying would soon become a thing of the past.

There is one possible exception here.  If governments removed themselves from these areas, people might employ lobbyists to try to persuade governments to re-enter these areas.  My only suggestion to help prevent this involves a liberal application of tar, feathers, and rock salt to such lobbyists, those who hire them, and any legislators who listen to them.

Unjust Charges of Injustice

Charles Colson has a recent Breakpoint titled “Predators at Large.”  At first glance this conjures up pictures of pedophiles or perhaps those who mug helpless old ladies on walkers.  Perhaps that is the effect Colson wanted as he begins a discussion of so-called “payday lenders.”

These lenders make short-term loans at very high interest rates.  Why does anyone use these lenders?  As Colson points out, it is almost always because they are people whose credit history is so bad that no one else will lend to them.

Colson calls this “predatory lending” and says that those who take out such loans have “fallen victim to human greed.”  Colson condemns this whole practice in no uncertain terms, and this has been the attitude of much of Christendom for a long time.  It sounds horrible to talk about 390% APR loans, doesn’t it?

As is too often the case, we have here an example of Christians failing to do proper economic analysis.  Is there greed involved in these kinds of loans?  Most likely.  Sometimes it might be on the part of borrowers who refuse to delay their gratification until they have the cash in hand.  But more often, I am sure it is simply people who fall into hard economic times.

Are these lenders really “predatory”?  Colson gives a tear-jerking example of a lady who borrowed $500 to pay her car insurance and ended up paying much more than that in interest on her loan.  (As an aside, perhaps we should not be content to concede that everyone has some inalienable right to own a car – but that’s another matter.)

Suppose YOU decided to gather all your available cash:  your retirement savings, your bank accounts, and any other funds you could generate.  With these funds you decide to start a small, personal loan business.  When customers come to you with a credit history that indicates there is only a one-in-five probability that they will pay back the principle of their loan and they have no collateral to secure this loan, what kind of interest rate will you have to charge to keep your little company in business?  These aren’t your friends.  These are strangers with a shaky loan-repayment history.

The answer is, unless you are willing to lose your life savings that you have put into your little company, you are going to have to charge rates high enough to cover the likely default rates on the loans you make.  Since these people cannot even get a loan anywhere else, you are doing them a service by making one available to them.  And remember, they come to you and agree to the terms of the loan.

Colson says of these supposed victims that they “didn’t have any other options.”  But that is simply not true.  They had the options of continuing to shop for a better loan, or not borrowing at all.

To his credit, Colson does not call for the government to shut down such lenders.  He instead points to a church in Pittsburg that has set up program that offers $500 loans with thirteen days interest-free.  This program also encourages those who use it to become savers.

That is a wonderful idea, but it is a charity, not a business.  It is an admirable charity at that, but it’s still a charity.  And as Colson admits, “Not that there aren’t risks, but who ever said that fighting against injustice wouldn’t be costly?”  What is implicit here is this:  unless the clientele of this church’s charity program are somehow self-selecting better credit risks, the church will have a significant number of these loans that will never be repaid.

There is nothing wrong with this.  Clearly, this church is aware of that, and is willing to lose some of its money as part of this charitable endeavor.

But your little loan business is not a charity.  You have to make a profit, and that profit has to be in place even after many of your customers fail to repay all or part of the principle of their loans.  Your loan company, contra Colson, is not “unjust.”  It’s just not a charity.  

Cut, Ricky, Cut

From ABC News:

GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry’s memory lapse at Wednesday night’s CNBC debate will go down as one of the worst debate flubs in history, but it may not mean the campaign kiss of death that the Twitterverse quickly proclaimed it to be.

Kent comments:

Here is the sort of garbage that has become the subject of political discussions.  I do not endorse Rick Perry.  But I also do not endorse the output of the stupid babblers who worry about a candidate having a bit of memory lapse during a so-called debate.  Two points need to be made here.

First, these side-shows of candidates answering idiotic questions from dimwitted news people are not debates.  I usually pay no attention to these displays of inanity.  Debates would be interesting and informative.  In a debate there are propositions that are affirmed or denied.  Participants give reasoned speeches in support of their contentions.

I don’t expect to see any debates because they are televised by networks that feature idiotic talking heads, and real debates do not require the presence of idiotic talking news heads.  I doubt if most network talking heads would understand a real debate.

As for Mr. Perry’s memory lapse – it does not cause me any concern.  What he could not remember was the name of the third government agency he wants to eliminate.  The reason it does not concern me is because no matter which agency name he recalls, it will be one that needs to be eliminated.  And there are so many that who could expect a candidate to remember them all?

Earlier I said that I did not endorse Rick Perry.  Mr. Perry, you say that if you are elected three executive branch agencies will be gone?  If you will add about a dozen more to your list (and feel free to write it down so you won’t forget), you can count on my vote.

It’s the Socialism, Stupid!

Here is an interesting post from The Heritage Foundation.  The key part is as follows:

But a new paper by Jason Richwine, Ph.D. and Andrew Biggs addresses the question of teacher pay head on and asks whether teachers today receive the right level of pay. They find that when benefits such as tenure, health care, and pensions are considered, the typical public-school teacher is well-paid: “We conclude that public-school-teacher salaries are comparable to those paid to similarly skilled private-sector workers, but that more generous fringe benefits for public-school teachers, including greater job security, make total compensation 52 percent greater than fair market levels, equivalent to more than $120 billion overcharged to taxpayers each year.”

The same study goes on to say:

While union contracts help secure overcompensation for the average teacher, they may still leave the most valuable teachers underpaid. School administrators need to be able to hire and fire teachers as needed, basing personnel decisions on rigorous value-added evaluations and setting pay based on prevailing market rates.

But why should this surprise anyone?  It could be predicted without a study.  With government school teachers we have what is perhaps the worst of all possible situations:  socialism in bed with a union.  The devilish children of such a mating will always be horrible inefficiency and great cost to taxpayers.

We sometimes forget that governments owning schools – which they very directly do in most k-12 schooling – is the classic definition of ‘socialism.’

I have always wondered about the mentality of the person demanding more.  If teaching at a government school doesn’t pay as much as you want, why not try something else?  The study reveals the answer:  you are more likely to get more by lobbying the socialist state than by anything else you might do.

I am often amused by the constant calls of well-meaning people to ‘reform’ various school systems.  Hints of that appear in the second quote from the study above.

But you can’t ‘reform’ your way out of socialism.  Giving new power to officials in a socialist school system will not cure the problem.  The problem is socialism.  The ills of government schools are very predictable, and will be persistent, as long as we insist on using the socialist model.

To expect otherwise borders on insanity.

Praying and Governments

I recently noticed this comment in a Christian periodical:

"I urge . . . that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone—for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness" (1 Timothy 2:1, 2). Do we pray for our government leaders—even those with whom we disagree?

This oft-made comment seems to miss the point here.  In fact, even in this short quotation, this is rather obvious.

Paul is not telling us to ask God to help government officials lead easier lives, or anything like that at all.  And our agreement or disagreement with such officials has nothing to do with what Paul is talking about.

Paul very straightforwardly tells us that we should pray for governing officials so that we may live in peace.  Paul knew that the default would tend toward governing officials behaving in ways that would not allow people, especially Christians, to live in peace.  That would require divine intervention.

When governing officials do the job that Paul describes elsewhere (Rom. 13:1-7) they help make a peaceful life possible for those who wish to follow the ways of peace.  But as history has repeatedly shown, the power bestowed on governing officials tends to be misused.

So we need to pray for God, via His providence, to control governing officials.  In fact, God seems to be the only one who can control an out-of-control government.

Have you seen any of those around lately?  It’s not too late for some prayer time.

Democracy: Not all it’s cracked up to be

In today’s Breakpoint Charles Colson, in discussing events in the Middle East, says this:

There’s no reason, as writer Rod Dreher reminds us, to assume that democracy and religious tolerance go hand-in-hand. On the contrary, recent history suggests that what the so-called “people” often want is to mistreat the “others” in their midst.

It is a very good point, and needs to be taken far beyond the context of the Middle East.  We need to bring this point back home, too.

Here in the good old USofA we have the almost demented tendency to think that, once something has been approved by a majority, it is prudent, wise, and even just.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

In fact, the real problem in the political world is not who rules, or the mechanisms by which that rule is carried out.  Rather, the real problem is to avoid tyranny and injustice.  A benevolent dictator could easily have a more just rule than many so-called democracies do today.

Of course, the problem is that you never know when a good dictator might go bad, or who might come to power when the good dictator dies.  But again, we experience most of the same uncertainties under situations where we vote.  That is why it is very hollow indeed for western politicians to run around heralding the establishment of “democracies” in the Middle East, or any where else for that matter.

It was for this reason that our Founders did not establish an unqualified democracy.  Part of the reason for the division of powers, and the intentional pitting of one power against another, was to insure that no one, including even supermajorities, could become tyrannous.

Most of the modifications that have been made to the Founders’ original system have had the effect of making tyranny easier to implement.  We live with the sadly successful results of that today.

The Place of Religion in Political Evaluation

At today’s edition of Breakpoint Charles Colson makes this statement:

First, there is no religious test for public office. If you don’t believe me, check out the Constitution of the United States, Article VI, Paragraph 3. The public statements of some evangelicals that they wouldn’t vote for Romney because of his Mormonism would cause the Founding Fathers to spin in their graves.

Surely Colson knows that the section of the Constitution to which he refers has no reference to why people might decide to vote as they do for President.  The “no religious tests” for office means that a person must not be prohibited from running for, or serving in, an office under the Constitution, based on that person’s religious views.

So the fact that someone might decide not to vote for a candidate because of the candidate’s religion would not cause any Founding Fathers to rotate in their repose.  Some of them would have agreed that religion is not important when considering a candidate; others, I am fairly sure, would not agree.  But we can’t sort that out here.

The rest of what Colson says makes the point that religion can be a distraction when considering people for political office.  While I agree that religion can be a distraction when evaluating candidates, I do not think that it always is, or must be.

Any religion, when taken seriously, implies a worldview.  Chuck Colson should be aware of this, since he devotes much effort to helping people think through their worldviews.

The worldviews implied by some religious views could be a very reasonable consideration when evaluating candidates for political offices.  For example, the oath of office carries much less force if there is no transcendent being to which we must answer for our deeds.

An animistic worldview, in which spirits inhabit what we think of as inanimate objects, could have a profound effect on policy decisions.  The list of such possibilities here is very long.

If a candidate does not take his religious views very seriously, he might work out fairly well in spite of them.  But if office-holders don’t take their religious views seriously, are they really people we should trust in public office?  What does that kind of inconsistency say about a person?

But, assuming that candidates do take their religious views seriously, what might Mormonism imply for political office?  Mormonism is not Christianity.  But I am not convinced that only Christians could be good office-holders.  However, Mormonism holds to some very weird – and that is putting it rather mildly – views that go far beyond simply not being Christian.

For example, Mormonism teaches that God was once an ordinary human being, and that ordinary humans beings like us can, if we do enough Mormon-defined good deeds, someday become divine and rule our own universes.  What bearing does this have on political views?

I am not completely sure at this point.  But religious views that freakish are enough to at least make me think about all this more carefully.

If you think religious views are simply meaningless for the rest of your view of life and reality, then they are not politically important.  But Chuck Colson does not think that.  So it is especially strange to see him dismiss them as he does here.