Sue Jeffers for Minnesota Governor - People Before Politics

Sue Jeffers for Minnesota Governor - People Before Politics:

"Minnesota Needs New Leadership
For over 50 years our government spending has been out of control from both political parties. The voters have tried every combination and our government continues to have major problems.

Our Minnesota $30 billion state budget has nearly doubled in just over 10 years. Has your paycheck doubled? Have you received double the government services for your family? Has there been real improvement in our state education, economy, transportation and health care? Shouldn't the government work for the people and not the other way around?

Since you pay 47% of your income in federal, state, and local taxes (According to the U.S. Census Bureau), you have less to spend on health care, higher education, a down payment on a new home, retirement, and many other priorities for your family. It's no wonder why it's more difficult to achieve the American Dream. There is so much potential for real change and growth.

Our Republican and Democrat government is moving in the wrong direction, but we can take Minnesota back in the next election."

I'm a progressive Libertarian, or Left-Lib. I believe that there's only one real role for government, and that is to see to the real needs of the people that suffer it to exist. And as Sue Cogently points out, we get less and less benifit from our government and more taxes and more paperwork to justify our exemption from taxation as pale recompense.

But there are a lot my fellow Libs will not talk about. They fondly assume that a lack of govenment would lead to great things. Nope. If you doubt me, go look at Somalia.

Now it's true, the Rugged Individualists are making great hay their, in the glorious entreprenurial spirit of warlords everwhere, but for the average schmuck like thee or me, it sucks.

Government exists in order to distribute power. Wealth - not so much, save as it translates to power. In other words, govenment exists to safeguard rights and ensure that the benifits of civilization are reasonably well-enough distributed to prevent looting, riots and pandemic disease.

There is a reason why our health care system costs us more per taxpayer with far lower payoffs. Because in our desperate avoidance of anything appearing "socalist", we have been paying far more in order to get far less.

As a fiscally conservative Libertarian, I consider that sort of idiologically-driven idiocy to be inexcusable.

Govenement is a logical means of distribution for things we all have equal need for. And by that I mean access to health care. Now, as for how the risks are arbetraged behind the scenes - there, I think, there is a lot of room for private enterprise. But up front, neither I nor my phsyician wish to be bothered by paperwork in a time of need.

I also happen to believe that a robust social safety-net is needed, one engineered so that it doesn't trap people within it's sticky webs by means of punitive restrictions and expensive patronisations. Why? It's simply good management to have ONE mechanism to replace hundreds. It saves everyone a great deal of money, and if there is fraud - well, the fewer systems you have, and the fewer decision points in it, the less fraud there will be in an absolute sense.

Hurricane Katria showed the inability - and the obdurate unwillingness - of our federal govenment to come a'runnin' when their citizens needed them. Instead, they hid behind procedure and red tape to avoid being of any use at all - even as the money taxpayers spent towards our govenement being of use and congress appropriated for their use to that end melted away - like truckloads of ice waiting for authorization to proceed.

We need to start asking what we in common get for our 47% percent investment of our labor into this monstrosity we call government. And we have the right to demand a response.

But we cannot pretend that we can do without fair weights and measures, fair and responsive law enforcement, reliable and unbiased courts and the occasional legislative clarification of particuar areas of constitiutional intent. We need mechanisms for neghborlyness and in the worst cases, consequences for bad manners and inconsiderate behavior of the extreme sort, so that we are not forced by necessity to enforce our own rough justice for want of a better options.

All this requires govenment as able and agile as we can managed - and starkly limited in it's scope. I've found that institutions that concentrate on their core business tend to do better than those that try to manage every little thing themselves.