George Rebane

Some national thought leaders argue that health insurance is a broad social problem since your neighbors’ health ultimately also impacts your own Quality of Life.  Then their logical short step is for government’s entry into the health insurance business.  Thomas Frank (2sep09 WSJ here) sees it as no biggie since “we already pay for other people’s health care” when we buy private health insurance.  But we pay for other people’s anything whenever we insure anything – it is the way we choose to express our aversion to risk within our own personal utility for money.  Extending this logic, we recognize that our neighbors’ education, income, shelter, food, … also affects our own QoL.  Should we then form a collective to equalize and provide for all those needs?

What the man doesn’t understand is that today we have the choice to buy insurance if we want it and from where we want it.  Choice is a major component of liberty.  To the extent that our choices are limited by government, so is our liberty.  The original goal of our Union was to provide people a form of governance that expanded our liberties while we still enjoyed the benefits of society.  Sadly, this goal has not been in sight for generations.

California’s governator let slip his principles some years ago and now has been the latest ineffective leader to preside over our state’s decline.  Today Schwarzenegger claims to be doing all he can to turn on the water pumps, so that our Central Valley’s agriculture can survive the government-augmented drought that has killed tens of thousands of jobs.  But the forked-tongue politician will not do the right thing for California citizens, tilting instead for fish and the sanctity of mind-boggling EPA rulings.  The 2sep09 WSJ reports

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has said that he “doesn’t have the authority to turn on the pumps” that would supply the delta with water, or “otherwise, they would be on.” He did, however, have the ability to request intervention from the Department of Interior. Under a provision added to the Endangered Species Act in 1978 after the snail darter fiasco, a panel of seven cabinet officials known as a “God Squad” is able to intercede in economic emergencies, such as the one now parching California farmers. Despite a petition with more than 12,000 signers, Mr. Schwarzenegger has refused that remedy.

RR readers are familiar with my commentary (here and in The Union) on public employees and their pensions, especially those managed by CalPERS.  Well that ponzi-prone bureaucracy is now in the process of electing its new Board of Directors.  Keeping tabs on this quasi-public agency is a full time job that is undertaken by PersWatch (http://perswatch.net/).  I draw your attention to the candidates for the CalPERS board whose revealing non/responses to a questionnaire are available for inspection on the PersWatch site.  Why should you care?  Because you are responsible for making up the underfunded public pensions as they come due, CalPERS is not.  Hat tip to Russ Steele for the heads up on this election.

[update] A correspondent just emailed me a recent article on the Chapter 9 bankruptcy travails of Vallejo that is really the unfunded liabilities canary for all of California’s jurisdictions.  Take a read and become an early user of “burden to the general fund” which is bound to become a popular term of art as other cities and counties begin to feel and disclose their own burdens.