Tag: government
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Government is a Tool
LaVarr Webb asks Utah Policy readers if they think government is always a necessary evil or if it can be a force for good. Since my answer to that question goes directly to the heart of what my blog is about I thought I’d share my answer here. Government is not always necessary (an isolated…
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Spinning Our Wheels
I have been expressing my frustration in comments about the way the federal government seems to be doing little or nothing useful in the way of increasing our homeland security. At the same time, our president is demanding more leeway to ignore the protections guaranteed by the Constitution. I found a very good statement of…
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A Reasonable Proposition
I think Tim Lynch has outlined a good idea for moving forward from the FLDS Texas Nightmare.
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Messed Up and Out of Touch
Okay, so the “messed up” and “out of touch” refer to two different things, but I think they both point to the kind of systemic problems that exist in our political system. In response to a post about the Bush tax cuts an anonymous comment reveals this: I made about $47,000 and I paid $1700…
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Initiative vs Policy
It’s easy to find people describing the moral argument against government run social programs (forced charity encourages selfishness) but I don’t think I’ve ever heard a more compelling logical argument for the negative consequences of substituting an institutional approach to a problem for a solution based on individual initiative than this one. With no hint…
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Personal Political Perspectives
I’ve posted a couple of stories where people have given personal perspectives about politics that I thought were well considered. I recently discovered that NPR has a project called Get My Vote that is meant to allow people to share exactly these kinds o f personal perspectives. NPR and public media want to hear about…
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Remarkable Consensus
I was pleased to read from Phil Kerpen on Earmarks: An amendment to the budget sponsored by Sen. Jim DeMint (R., S.C.) and presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain has been collecting some unlikely cosponsors over the past couple of days, including both Democratic presidential hopefuls, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. The amendment would establish…
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Liberal No More
What happens when a lifetime of experience gets processed in a period of introspection and begins to overwhelm a long held youthful idealism? David Mamet comes up with this: What about the role of government? Well, in the abstract, coming from my time and background, I thought it was a rather good thing, but tallying…
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Another City Overrulled
Why did State lawmakers mandate a FrontRunner stop for Bluffdale? In some ways this sounds like the decision by UDOT to toss the Lehi City proposal for the Mountain View Corridor. SB286, sponsored by Sen. Sheldon Killpack, R-Syracuse, exempts UTA from complying with city ordinances – as long as that city lies in a first-class…
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Oh (Big) Brother
Here’s another victory for big brother sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong. Our apparently bored legislature just changed the booster seat law. Don’t get me wrong – I’m all for child safety and I would welcome any effort by any group to encourag, educate, or invite parents to keep their children in car seats…