Obama Seeking Less Competent Bureaucrats

Here’s some grim news I saw linked on NRO. Obama wants to lower the bar and reduce the competency of people working in the federal bureaucracy. To be sure, I doubt the “knowledge skills and ability essays” actually produced quality bureaucrats, but I nonetheless suspect this new step will make the bureaucracy an even bigger burden on the American economy:

Tuesday, President Obama ordered the biggest federal hiring overhaul in three decades. ..Now every other federal agency will follow suit. Tuesday, a presidential memo ordered the largest federal hiring reform in 30 years. For the first time in history, applicants will be able to submit resumes and cover letters and will not be required to complete knowledge skills and ability essays.

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Should the United Nations Get to Tax the Internet, ATM Withdrawals, and Air Travel?

Here’s a very disturbing report from Foxnews.com about a scheme at the United Nations to impose global taxes. This has been a long-time dream of the bureaucrats, who (naturally) are exempt from paying tax themselves. Here’s a link to a study I wrote on a separate UN tax threat nearly 10 years ago, and here’s an excerpt from the Foxnews.com story:

The World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations’ public health arm, is moving full speed ahead with a controversial plan to impose global consumer taxes on such things as Internet activity and everyday financial transactions like paying bills online — while its spending soars and its own financial house is in disarray. The aim of its taxing plans is to raise “tens of billions” of dollars for WHO that would be used to radically reorganize the research, development, production and distribution of medicines around the world, with greater emphasis on drugs for communicable diseases in poor countries. The irony is that the WHO push to take a huge bite out of global consumers comes as the organization is having a management crisis of its own, juggling finances, failing to use its current resources efficiently, or keep its costs under control — and it doesn’t expect to show positive results in managing those challenges until a year from now, at the earliest. …the proposals are headed for the four-day annual meeting of the 193-member World Health Assembly, WHO’s chief legislative organ, which begins in Geneva on May 17. …What truly concerns the experts, however, is how to get the wealth transfers that will make the R and D transfers possible — on a permanent basis. The panel offers up a specific number of possibilities. Chief among them: • a “digital” or “bit” tax on Internet activity, which could raise “tens of billions of U.S. dollars”; • a 10 percent tax on international arms deals, “worth about $5 billion per annum”; • a financial transaction tax, citing a Brazilian levy that was raising some $20 billion per year until it was canceled (for unspecified reasons); • an airline tax that already exists in 13 countries and has raised some $1 billion. Almost casually, the panel’s report notes that the fundraising effort would involve global changes in legal structures — and policing. As the report puts it: “Introducing a new tax or expanding an existing tax may require legal changes, nationally and internationally and ongoing regulation to ensure compliance.”

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The Next Ronald Reagan?

Very rarely does one find a politician with the moral clarity to provide the blunt and necessary truth about a controversial issue, but that has finally happened. But this is a good news/bad news situation for American taxpayers. The good news is that a politician has proposed to slash both bureaucrat pay and public pensions and publicly stated that, “The state sector is like a fat man of 200kg sitting on the back of a 50kg little man who is the real economy.” The bad news is that this politician is the President of Romania. A caveat is probably appropriate at this stage. I have no idea whether Presdident Basescu actually is a genuine small-government proponent. Perhaps he is just an ordinary politician forced to do the right thing by extraordinary circumstances. Nonetheless, I have a hard time imagining we will see a better quote from an elected official this year. Here’s an excerpt from a story in the Irish Times:

President Traian Basescu said officials had decided…to reduce the pay of state employees by 25 per cent from next month and pensions and unemployment benefits by 15 per cent this year. …He said the cutbacks would also help reinvigorate an economy that is being crushed by a bloated and inefficient state sector, and allow Romania to avoid steep tax hikes that could hamper investment and destroy hopes of a swift recovery from recession. “This plan was inevitable. The state sector is like a fat man of 200kg sitting on the back of a 50kg little man who is the real economy,” said Mr Basescu, who narrowly won re-election at the end of last year.

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