Destroying Democracy : How Government Funds Partisan Politics

This is a book that's been around for 20 years, but still delivers a message worth considering and debating. My caveat to this book is that represents a form of ideology that is not fully agreeable to everyone in terms of the kind of government we want or the goals we have. But we all know that our political system is showing serious signs of stress and individual liberty diminished. Why is it happening? Unfortunately, there are those who would use talk up the best parts of this book and engage simultaneously in the worst political behavior in terms of funding their politics with government money. Talk conservative or libertarian, but buy votes by spending like radical Socialist. As a moderate, I lean toward government intervention in some areas that I consider essential for the national good. Social security is too important to be replaced by a ostensibly private system that would cause still more government interventions. LIbertarians tend not to agree witth some programs I owuld support. But federal spending to whatever level there is, should be based on the national good, not which pig can fatten itself the most. So much pork has been thrown for so long at Alaska, mostly to secure Republican seats in Congress, that it has forgotten what self-reliance means. State residents contribute nothing while huge federal funding for its few people keeps pouring in. Unneeded roads and multi-billion dollar bridges to nowhere get plastered with the name of the porker who brought home a lot of extra bacon. Not everyone is happy -- including state auditors --, but the influential few profit enormously. Residents get the benefit of no income or sales tax - plus an annuual payment from the state for living there. Alaska is not alone. Many of the states that complain the most about runaway federal spending benefit the most at the expense of others. This forced transfer of wealth deprives many states of funds desperately needed for its own people, already heavily taxed for what the federal government gives to states where partisan politics are in play. Operations of the State-owned Alaska Railroad, primarily freight, was held up as a model for Amtrak, which operates in most of the lower 48 over thousands of miles on tracks it owns or shares with Freight and crowded commuter railroads. Amtrak must beg for money as its track and system deteriorate from decades of neglect. The state-owned Alaska Railroad, a federal gift to the state along with most other state assets, simply holds out its hand for federal funds and they are provided into the hundreds of millions for assets that become Railroad property and show up on P & L sheets. Alaska RR uses its revenues to fund most operations. Federal funds pay for port terminals, passenger stations, office buildings, tourist trains, railcars or track.-- anything. Federal funds also pay for preventive maintenance of all that track and buildings and the rest. Federal money also pays for considerable pension liabili

Thomas Jefferson once said something to the effect that the end of American democracy will come when people figure out they can use the system to vote themselves money out of other people's pockets. Today, that's precisely what the American political system has become, as political economists James T. Bennett and Thomas J. DiLorenzo make clear in this excellent book. The examples are, by now, somewhat out of date. But they outrages they report on have, if anything, only gotten worse.In many ways, the State has become little more than an engine for the forced redistribution of money. People vote for politicians who will give them things, hoping what they get from picking their neighbors' pockets will be greater than what someone else, in turn, takes out of their own. Politicians flog the system for all it's worth, and are rewarded according to their ability to hand out loot they have no right to in the first place.Of all the ways this is done, the most egregious, at least in Bennett and DiLorenzo's minds, is the pouring of tax dollars into organizations that then use that money to lobby for specific policy agendas. Again and again, Bennett and DiLorenzo give us chapter and verse (and dollar amounts) of how labor unions, environmental radicals, anti-market and pro-socialist, 'anti-poverty,' 'civil rights,' and other pressure groups pocket free money at taxpayer expense. Conservative, industry, and pro-business groups aren't spared their time in the spotlight either. Nor are the politicians (many of whom are still in office today) who receive hefty campaign cash from the same groups to whom they funneled those tax dollars.George Will has written that anyone who wants to understand how American government works shouldn't read the Constitution, but rather open the Washington, D.C., phone book and observe all the organizations, associations, and lobbies with the word 'National' in their name. Bennett and DiLorenzo provide an invaluable service by exposing this racket fully. Even seventeen or more years after its first publication, 'Destroying Democracy' is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand what politics and the State are really all about.