An Aggravating Reminder of Government Waste on Tax Day

Remember the Spending Quiz from 2010, which asked people to guess whether absurd examples of government waste were true or false?

Well, we have a new video on government waste, though bureaucrats and politicians have become so profligate it doesn’t even bother to trick people with fake examples.

While very well done, I do have two small complaints about the video.

First, it asks whether we should cut spending or raise taxes to deal with the national debt. I think that’s too narrow. We shouldn’t be wasting money even if the budget was balanced and there wasn’t a penny of debt.

In other words, the problem isn’t deficits. Red ink is just a symptom. The real problem is that government is too big.

Second, the video sort of acquiesces to the dishonest Washington terminology by asking whether we should cut spending or raise taxes, implying those are the only two options. I favor genuine spending cuts, of course, but the most accurate way of phrasing the question is to ask whether we should cut spending, restrain spending, or let government grow on auto-pilot.

As I explained earlier this year, we can balance the budget in just 10 years if spending grows “only” 3.4 percent per year. When people understand that detail, there’s almost no support for higher taxes.

But I’m nitpicking. Overall, a very good video.

P.S. If the examples of pork-barrel spending in the video get you angry, you’ll probably have a stroke if you also watch the waste video from the folks at Government Gone Wild.

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The United Nations and Gun Control: Two Negatives Don’t Make a Positive

Citing the analysis of America’s former Ambassador to the United Nations, I wrote last year about a treaty being concocted at the United Nations that would threaten our right to keep and bear arms.

Well, with the aid of the Obama Administration, this new treaty has been approved. Fortunately, there probably are not 67 votes in the Senate to ratify the measure.

And that’s a good thing. The Wall Street Journal has a column by John Bolton and John Yoo explaining why the new U.N . treaty is so misguided and dangerous.

…the new treaty also demands domestic regulation of “small arms and light weapons.” The treaty’s Article 5 requires nations to “establish and maintain a national control system,” including a “national control list.” …Gun-control advocates will use these provisions to argue that the U.S. must enact measures such as a national gun registry, licenses for guns and ammunition sales, universal background checks, and even a ban of certain weapons. The treaty thus provides the Obama administration with an end-run around Congress to reach these gun-control holy grails.

But doesn’t the Second Amendment protect our rights, regardless?

Unfortunately, that’s not clearly the case, as Bolton and Yoo note.

The Constitution establishes treaties in Article II (which sets out the president’s executive powers), rather than in Article I (which defines the legislature’s authority)—so treaties therefore aren’t textually subject to the limits on Congress’s power. Treaties still receive the force of law under the Supremacy Clause, which declares that “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land.” …this difference in language between laws and treaties allows the latter to sweep more broadly than the former.

One thing we can state with certainty is that opponents of individual rights will use the treaty to push an anti-gun agenda inside the United States. And since the Supreme Court has upheld the Second Amendment by only one vote, I’m not overly confident that we can rely on the judiciary anyhow.

Ultimately, our fundamental rights to protect ourselves and our families only exist because politicians are scared of getting voted out of office and losing the best job most of them will ever have.

And remember that the “slippery slope” is a very relevant concern. Many anti-gun activists think only government should have the right to possess guns, and they view incremental gun control measures as building blocks to that ultimate goal.

Even though government monopolies on gun possession have been associated with some of the world’s most brutal dictatorships!

I’m not worried that the United States is going to turn into some Venezuelan-style anti-gun totalitarian regime, so I actually disagree with the results of my poll on the biggest reason to oppose gun control.

If I was asked to give my worst-case scenario for why we need private gun ownership, it would involve fiscal and societal breakdown because of an ever-growing welfare state.

But regardless of why you believe in the Second Amendment, this U.N. treaty would be a very bad development.

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