Judge Gray: So Where Do We Go From Here?

The Functional Libertarian 

July 18, 2013

As all of us are aware, presently there are many things that are not going well for us and our country. So what do we do now; and where do we go from here? Well, as people sometimes say when playing bridge, let’s review the bidding.

Due to the fact that today for every dollar the federal government spends, it is borrowing or printing 20 cents. That, in effect, has put our children and grandchildren into bankruptcy. Yes, at the moment the stock market is doing fairly well, and the real estate market appears to be getting stronger, but the “other shoe” has yet to drop.

That other shoe is the fact that pensions for public employees nationwide are not adequately funded, to the degree that every city and county in California, for example, is probably bankrupt. Why? Because their future financial obligations are much higher than their potential sources of income.

Regarding healthcare, the government now says that we need tens of thousands of additional medical doctors and other healthcare professionals to serve the 30 million people who are soon programmed to be receiving health insurance. But many health professionals today are seeing fewer MediCal and Medicare patients already, because the reimbursements are continually being reduced below what will sustain their medical practices. That means that, under the so-called Affordable Care Act, these new insured people will have insurance that few competent medical professionals will accept. So what good will that do?

With regard to education, many of our public schools are failing our children, and this is occurring in spite of ever-increasing government spending.

Furthermore, the United States of America has a larger problem with drug abuse than any other country in the industrialized world. And at the same time, we lead the world in the incarceration of our people, both by sheer numbers as well as per capita.

So how did these situations of Doom and Gloom evolve? Upon analysis, the reason for all of these problems and more is government.

We can start with the fact that, by the very nature of our system, politicians seldom care about the future – and instead only care about the next election. Thus, unlike most private concerns, politicians have a strong tendency to “kick the can down the road.” In other words, “Just get me elected or re-elected, and let someone else worry about the problems in the future after I’m out of office” is a controlling factor of government. All of these spending problems were easily
foreseeable, but our elected “leaders” have simply put them off.

Another reason for the results we are seeing is that almost no one is protecting the taxpayers during the negotiations with the unions that represent public employees. How is that so? Because those unions have strong vested interests in who is elected or appointed to oversee their public agencies, so they spend a large amount of energy and money to get candidates who will be beholden to them once in office. And then those same officials are the ones who thereafter decide the “appropriate” benefits that should be awarded to the members of those unions.

As a result, for example, while very few workers today in the private sector have retirement pensions, it is a common occurrence in the public sector. As a matter of fairness and financial responsibility, this should be changed to require all public workers to have the same 401k programs that almost all private workers have. As another example, the employees in the California court system now enjoy 13 paid holidays per year, while no private company I am aware of has more than six. So all of this has made public workers, at all levels of government, a privileged class. This is irresponsible and must be changed.

Regarding the failed policy of Drug Prohibition, that is answered by two Orange County members of Congress, who, each in his own words and while still in office, told me that “Jim, most people in Washington understand that the War on Drugs is not winnable, but it is imminently fundable – and they are addicted to the drug war funding.” In other words, the reason this failed policy is still supported is money.

In many ways the same thing is true regarding the number of people that are incarcerated in our country. For example, probably the strongest political lobby groups all around the country are the prison guards’ unions, and they spend lots of money to elect politicians who vote for those ever-longer prison sentences. That has resulted today in tens of thousands of people being in prison in California alone that simply should not be there.

So, if all of this is true, where do we go from here? The answer is that we must take back our government, and make it work for us instead of for them. Whatever happened to the concepts of responsibility, work ethic, and even sacrifice? Yes, we certainly need governments to help with things like education, healthcare and general safety but, in almost all cases, governments should be the last resort instead of the first resort.

Thomas Jefferson said that when people are afraid of their government, that’s tyranny, but when the government is afraid of the People, that’s democracy. In other words, we are citizens, not subjects. But to keep it being vibrant, democracy must be a “contact sport.” So each one of us should make it a point to take at least one of these issues personally to heart, and work for it.

So the bad news is that, yes, many things are not going well for us or our country. But the good news is that each of us is going to help to change it. This can be done by bringing back more power – and responsibility – to the consumers and the private sector for things like healthcare and education. In addition, you can do things like lobbying your city government to abolish its permit requirements when you replace things like a hot water heater. A bonded installer, who can be sued for negligence if things go wrong, is perfectly capable of installing them without governmental involvement. Also, you can help us to abolish the TSA, and leave the airport screening issues to the private airlines. The airlines obviously have a vested interest in keeping their airplanes and passengers safe, and they will accomplish those results much more efficiently, and less expensively and intrusively, than the government.

These things are not hard, but they need our involvement. But with that personal involvement we can return our country to the prosperity, equal opportunity and security that are now slipping from our grasp. And we owe this both to our country, and to our children.

James P. Gray is a retired judge of the Orange County Superior Court, the author of “A Voter’s Handbook: Effective Solutions to America’s Problems” (The Forum Press, 2010) and the 2012 Libertarian candidate for vice president, along with Governor Gary Johnson as the candidate for president. Judge Gray can be contacted at [email protected].