Big Government

Conflicts of Interest Inside of Government

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You know, it amazes me that people never see conflicts of interest internal to government itself. The USDA guidelines are a prime example.

Think about it. The guidelines purport to be an objective assessment of what food we should all buy and consume, but what is the USDA primary mandate? Oh, yeah, to advance the interests of agricultural producers in the US. It’s the Department of Agriculture, not the Department of People Who Eat.

Like all “regulatory” agencies USDA has long ago succumbed to regulatory capture, and now exists largely as just a means for people who make their livings in agriculture to advance their economic interests using the power of the state. The USDA only has an institutional incentive to advance the welfare of food producers. The USDA has no institutional incentive to look out for the welfare of food consumers.

By sheer coincidence, the USDA recommendations for the percentage of a particular type of food we should eat always seems to roughly parallel the relative economic size of the agricultural sector that produces that food. I wonder why?

One of the biggest reforms we could make in government would be to legally separate promotional, regulatory and research powers.

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The GOP is prepping the battlefield badly.

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Senate Democrat Leader Harry Reid has yet to offer a plan and instead almost seems as though he’s hoping for a government shutdown to occur for political gain.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor

Almost?

The Obama-Reid game plan is to re-run 1995: shut down the government, blame the Republicans, have the MSM show pictures of weeping old ladies who are not getting their checks. Then undo the results of 2010. Then reelect Obama in 2012. Everything is proceeding according to schedule. Count on it.

It ain’t no almost.

Cantor should not be so polite.

The public is not yet prepared for a government showdown. Most people do not know it is coming. The GOP is not warning the public, getting the word out, and assigning blame early.

The GOP is prepping the battlefield badly.

“It’s not 1995 anymore. Things are different now.”

But are things different enough?

I don’t like the way this is shaping up.

Michael Barone weighs on the Wisconsin showdown.

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Follow the money, Washington reporters like to say. The money in this case comes from taxpayers, present and future, who are the source of every penny of dues paid to public employee unions, who in turn spend much of that money on politics, almost all of it for Democrats. In effect, public employee unions are a mechanism by which every taxpayer is forced to fund the Democratic Party.

RTWT

This is (apparently, so far) shaping up to be a political defeat for the unions, the Democrats, and Obama.

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48% Back GOP Governor in Wisconsin Spat, 38% Side With Unions.

So far, it looks that way.

If these sorts of numbers hold up, the unions, the Democrats, and Mr. Obama will have managed to turn a local setback into a major defeat by accepting battle on a ground not of their own choosing.

(I wanted poll numbers, and I went to Patrick Ruffini’s Twitter stream, knowing if there were any, he’d have them.)

That poll is a national, not a Wisconsin poll.

What are the Wisconsin-only numbers? Last week Walker was apparently behind.

The question was:

As you may know, Gov. Scott Walker has proposed a plan to limit the pay of government workers and teachers, increase their share of the cost of benefits, and strip some public-employ unions of much of their power. We’d like to know if APPROVE or DISAPPROVE of Gov. Walker’s plan.

43% approved, 53% disapproved. But that was last week, the question is slanted, events have moved on and that is only one poll. (That same poll found that by 55/36 people wanted the Democrat senators to return to the capitol.)

I don’t see any other Wisconsin-only polls. If anyone knows of one please put a link in the comments.

It is too early to say how this will all play out.

Madison Rally

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Compared to the ethnic mix of Chicago, where every race and ethnic group is visible in any crowd of any size, it is always weird to go to Wisconsin and see thousands of people who are all white on both sides of an issue. Not that there is anything wrong with that.

(Further observations and assessments of the protest / counter-protest in Madison below the fold.)

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