1484 – But Who’s Counting?

Posted on February 19th, 2009

The table below is a breakdown of the number of positions added to the state government since the session started. I will try to keep the table updated as more bills pass this session, but hand coding html tables to make it look pretty is somewhat of a pain. It may end up comma delimited as we go along and I will clean it up as I have time.

David Kinkaide: Stop reading here, the rest of the article is just “something, something, blah, blah, something, something.”

Max Brantley: Skip to the bottom, all you need to know for a proper ArkTimes article is that “Mark Martin (R-Twilight Zone) said that we all know the Earth is flat.”

Jason Tolbert: Trust me, this won’t be more interesting even if you capture it on that fancy flip video thingy.

For you budget hawks out there, I have to admit to having voted for all of these. In the current legislative culture, I really don’t know the proper way to confront this problem. A smattering of grouchy “no” votes without a public outcry to fix the problem is not productive. The large minority, Republican and Democrat, who would otherwise desire to take a stand simply do not have the political capital to do so for more than a couple of budget bills. Even to do that brings about undesirable and unintended consequences. I am not talking about the public outcry and discord from leftists. The consequences of which I speak is that fraction of the group who legitimately need the service and perhaps more of it. Which of those budget bills below don’t have at least a portion of people, however small, that would truly be hurt and have nowhere else to turn?

The solution is probably more fundamental. Rather than debating and creating hate and discontent about this particular bill or that, we should be taking a more long-term view. We should be asking long term questions and forging long term consensus on commitments to hard-set long term solutions.

I suggest the following questions: Can we agree on a hard and fast maximum percentage of income / wealth that government cannot cross in the involuntary tranfer from one person to social welfare programs? Can we agree on preset declines in this percentage if certain benchmarks are met by societal voluntary giving? Will we have to grant a compromise to our liberal friends that a hard and fast minimum also be established?

You see, most conservatives are not anarchists and most liberals are not totalitarians, but each side lives in fear of being dragged over the cliff at the other extreme. If we could build a fence around our playground, neither side would experience the panic that results when the natural oscillations of political dynamics drag us to the other edge of what we all know is a flat Earth.

Finally, here is the table I promised with the count up to totalitarianism.

Tags: government growth
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