January 8, 2007 

WRTA

 Brown Shoes Diary 

A Little Geometry

We have been reminded of yet another ridiculous use of taxpayers' hard earned money by government. The Westsylvania Heritage Corporation has decided to discontinue its magazine because the taxpayer dollars that have been subsidizing it have, for the time being, dried up.

Now, I'm pretty happy about this turn of events, but why were the readers and producers of this magazine deserving of a subsidy in the first place? As reported on its website (westsylvania.org), Westsylvania was a creation of a number people in nine counties in southwestern Pennsylvania in the 1980s. Trouble was, to achieve their objectives such as publishing a magazine, they needed money. One solution was to use their own money and another was to ask for contributions. Yet another was to produce goods and services that would generate revenues that covered their costs. But why bother asking people when, with the right person's help, you can just take what you want? And who was that person with the power of reaching into taxpayers' pockets? None other than Super Thief himself, John Murtha, Prince of Pork and poster boy for government corruption. From Westsylvania's website: "Public Law 100-698 made it possible for millions of federal dollars to flow into southwestern Pennsylvania, providing opportunities for communities to discover and tell their stories in a way that had not existed before."

I'm sure people in northern and eastern Pennsylvania and the other 49 states recognized that story-telling by people in nine counties in southwestern Pennsylvania was a priority item for America. I remember thinking myself back in 1988, when I was making a major and costly transition in my life, that maybe there were stories somewhere waiting to be told and I sure hoped somebody would use the government to force me to pay to have those stories made known. Thank heaven for Westsylvania and John Murtha, who so nobly saved the Republic by keeping me from spending my money on such trifling expenses as rent, transportation, education, and the upkeep of a family. Surely we can all agree that spending the money I earned as I saw fit was a clear threat to the common good!

Now, it turns out that Westsylvania's magazine cannot raise enough revenues to justify its existence through subscriptions, advertisement sales, and donations. Think of that. There is so little demand for this magazine that it can't raise sufficient funding from the three basic revenue generators available for any publisher. You might think that given this proof of its lack of consequence that the right thing would have been to never have published at all. But you see, the people at Westsylvania and their friends in government consider you and me to be stupid to think like that. The lack of demand for this product is not respected as free people making free decisions; but rather, our choices are disdained by these people reaching into our pockets. They know best, in their minds, how our money should be spent and shame on us if we raise a peep.

The public funding of Westsylvania aptly illustrates McGinnis's Axiom One of Public Policy: Government, at all levels, is too big. (I stole this from Thomas Jefferson who is reputed to have said, "The government that governs least, governs best.") Government does too much and it spends too much and every dollar it spends is one less for you and me to spend. What else can you conclude when you see an ongoing subsidy for the readers and publishers of a magazine that can't justify its existence in the world of voluntary action?

And here is Axiom Two: Bad government projects never occur in isolation. How did John Murtha get the rest of Congress to go along with this pork? He went along with theirs. Every bad project, every overreach of government necessarily begets hundreds more.

And now a theorem for you geometry buffs: Government spending at all levels and in all ways must be opposed. Here is the proof: Governments will always overreach (Axiom One) and their costs will always fall on the taxpayer (Axiom Two). So, if only in self-defense, each of us has a moral obligation to everywhere and always oppose government spending. Q.E.D.

The opinions and ideas expressed in this essay are those of John D McGinnis and should not be considered representative of WRTA.com, any institution with which McGinnis is associated, or anyone else.  He can be contacted at john@wrta.com.
 

Contact John D McGinnis

Back to Main Page of Brown Shoes Diary