- When people argue for or against some new government
program, a lot of what's said is based on assumptions about government
that just aren't so.
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- Direct from the home office in the slums of Washington,
D.C., here are the top 10 misconceptions commonly peddled about government
today. ...
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- The budget and Social Security
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- Misconception No. 10: "The federal budget has been
in surplus since 1998."
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- Not so. The federal debt increased by $109 billion in
1998, by $127 billion in 1999, and by $23 billion in 2000.
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- The politicians are taking excess Social Security receipts
and using them to cover spending on foreign aid, corporate welfare, and
thousands of other boondoggles. Lumping Social Security in with the general
budget transforms a budget deficit into a surplus ñ but the federal
debt continues to get larger and will have to be repaid someday.
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- Misconception No. 9: "The politicians are keeping
Social Security funds separate and safe."
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- See Misconception No. 10. Even as politicians posture
that they're protecting Social Security, they're stealing from it in order
to hide the budget deficits. So long as Republicans and Democrats continue
to peddle this lie, they're demonstrating that you shouldn't believe anything
they say.
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- Federal programs
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- Misconception No. 8: "The Republicans prevented
a takeover of health care by the federal government in 1994."
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- The Republican Congress has already enacted a large part
of HillaryCare. Today half of all health-care dollars in America are spent
by government, and another 20 percent by health-care plans that might not
exist if it weren't for the income tax code.
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- HillaryCare is a bogeyman raised by one party to persuade
you it isn't as bad as the other party.
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- Misconception No. 7: "The federal highway system
allows poor states to have roads as good as those of the richer states."
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- The truth is just the opposite. The federal highway program
allows the richer, more powerful states to plunder the poor states.
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- A main recipient of highway funds is Pennsylvania. Why
Pennsylvania? Because the chairman of the House Transportation Committee
is Bud Shuster of Pennsylvania.
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- The people in states like Alabama or Montana are taxed
so that congressmen and senators can reward friends with contracts for
a $2-billion subway system in Miami that doesn't work, a "People Mover"
in Detroit that hardly anyone uses because it goes hardly anywhere, a billion-dollar
airport in Denver that no one but the Denver mayor wanted. These are "your
highway dollars at work."
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- Intruding on your life
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- Misconception No. 6: "The defeat of the 'Know Your
Customer' program in 1999 stopped banks from spying on you."
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- Not so. Banks have been required to report large or suspicious
transactions since 1970. And the definition of "suspicious" has
included more transactions every year.
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- Now the government has expanded the reporting to include
private financial companies. And the Post Office has a surveillance program
called "Under the Eagle's Eye." Big Brother is watching you.
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- Misconception No. 5: "The problems created by the
drug war are necessary to hold down drug use."
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- To believe that, you have to believe that only the drug
laws keep you and me and everyone you know from shooting up heroin. Otherwise,
how could drug use be much greater than it is now?
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- Any teen-ager can get drugs just by asking around at
school. Since 1972 the U.S. government's National Institute on Drug Abuse
has surveyed teen-age drug use ñ which in every major category has
doubled, tripled, or quadrupled.
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- We have lost the Constitution and its Bill of Rights,
innocent people have been sentenced to life imprisonment on the say-so
of admitted drug dealers seeking reduced sentences, the drug business has
been taken from legitimate pharmaceutical companies and turned over to
criminal gangs, the politicians have played with hundreds of billions of
dollars of our money. And all this has led to greater drug use ñ
not less.
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- Protection
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- Misconception No. 4: "The government keeps the environment
clean."
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- A 1999 Boston Globe investigation concluded that the
U.S. government is the worst polluter in America. And most of the rest
of pollution occurs on government property ñ in government lakes
and rivers, and on government land.
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- Private owners worry about the future value of their
property, so they're careful not to pollute their own assets. But the future
is of no concern when they use government property. So there's tremendous
pollution on government property, where bureaucrats have no personal stake
in protecting it.
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- The best answer for pollution is to get as much property
out of the hands of government as possible. Then the remaining pollution
problems shouldn't require the oppressive regulatory nightmare being imposed
today by politicians, bureaucrats and social reformers.
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- Misconception No. 3: "Government regulation saves
lives by making medicines safe."
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- The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has routinely
kept life-saving medicines off the market for years until its administrators
were positive they couldn't be held responsible for a single death.
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- Robert Goldberg of Brandeis University has estimated
that FDA delays in approving drugs already used safely in other countries
have cost at least 200,000 American lives over the past 30 years. These
delays killed Alzheimer patients who weren't allowed to take THA, people
with high blood pressure who couldn't get beta-blockers, kidney-cancer
patients deprived of Interleukin-2, and AIDS patients who died waiting
for AZT.
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- For true safety, we rely on doctors, research labs, insurance
companies and other private agencies to determine what's appropriate for
each individual, not what is politically safe for the regulators. Doctors
sometimes make mistakes, but they don't make decisions on a political basis.
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- Why we tolerate government
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- Misconception No. 2: "We have to tolerate the bad
things government does in exchange for the protection it provides against
violence ñ domestic and foreign."
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- Far from protecting us from violence, the government
seems to be the foremost cause of it. Its drug war has spawned inner-city
chaos and gang warfare, and its SWAT teams kill innocent people during
mistaken drug raids. Government doesn't protect our children in the schools,
it doesn't protect adults on the streets, and depending on 911 for protection
makes as much sense as relying on the lottery for your income.
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- Overseas it is our government that's roaming the world
stirring up trouble. It has killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi adults
and children by forcibly preventing them from getting food and medicines.
It subsidized the Afghan "freedom fighters" in the 1980s, but
now claims those same "freedom fighters" are a main source of
terrorism in the world. It bombed innocent people in Serbia to aid the
Albanians ñ the same Albanians it now wants NATO to attack.
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- Some protection. No wonder the U.S. is the main target
of terrorists.
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- Here it comes ...
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- And by far the No. 1 misconception about government issssss
...
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- Misconception No. 1: "The next government program
will work the way its sponsors promise."
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- The government's war on poverty has transformed poverty
from a short-term misfortune into a career choice. Its war on drugs has
escalated drug use. Medicare has made health care more expensive and less
accessible for senior citizens. Nothing the politicians have enacted has
turned out as promised, and most programs have made matters worse.
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- So do you really believe George Bush's voucher program
will make education better ñ or his "faith-based" charity
plan will make welfare work? Do you think the Democrats' prescription-drug
program will make medicines easier to obtain? Or John McCain's campaign-finance
bill will make politics cleaner?
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- If you believe any of that, consider buying a marvelous
bridge I own in Brooklyn.
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- The solution to today's problems isn't to pass more government
programs ñ or to reform government programs ñ or to get better
people to manage them. The answer is to end completely all these government
programs that have caused so much misery, waste, corruption and tyranny.
Get government entirely out of health care, education, welfare, drugs,
policing the world, and anything else not specifically authorized in the
Constitution.
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- The worst misconception of all is the idea that government
will give you what you want. ___
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- Harry Browne was the 2000 Libertarian presidential candidate.
More of his articles can be read at HarryBrowne.org, and his books are
available at HBBooks.com.
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