The Public Policy: Carville's List

...Carville says this new Labor Department program "attempts to bridge the gap between school and work for those who don't go on to college...

...Joining the program also carries a serious risk of being targeted for a special EPA investigation...

...Carville claims that Social Security is worthwhile because it "ensures that older Americans have a guaranteed source of income after a lifetime of work" —which is a lot like saying slavery was a good institution because it benefited slave owners...

...A few weeks later he asked the National Prayer Breakfast to "pray for the people in public office, that we can rid ourselves of this toxic atmosphere of cynicism...

...And America's road-building and road-repairing technology lags far behind that used in Europe—which is part of the reason why American roads fall apart twice as quickly as German roads...

...The Earned Income Tax Credit...

...But after qualifying for the credit, the extra income the credit offers partly replaces the income the worker would lose if he or she were to quit the second job...

...60 May 1997 • The American Spectator federal taxes on gasoline and diesel fuel over the last forty years have generated enough revenue to pay almost the entire cost of building and maintaining those roads...

...Clinton thus demonstrated he had overcome almost all of his 1996 re-election campaign rhetoric...

...If kids learned how to read in high school, the Schools- to-Work program would not be necessary...

...Carville writes: "The Small Business Administration reduced its [loan-processing] costs by 40 percent and cut its two inch thick loan application down to two pages...

...Understand that the EITC is an earned tax credit—as in, you have to earn something to get it...

...This is just fine with Interior Secretary Babbitt, who has called for "discarding the concept of property and trying to find a different understanding of natural landscape...

...Even the Postal Service was smart enough to recognize the problem, informing the EPA: "The cost of hazardous waste disposal may make many relamping projects cost-prohibitive...

...Paul Rubin, the agency's former chief economist, recently wrote: "There is no reliable public evidence that any of the CPSC's policies has saved any lives...

...He forgot to mention that the SBA default rate has soared as fast as its paperwork burden has shrunk...

...But portions of the system increasingly resemble Third World road conditions...

...The GAO found that the average EITC recipient worked only 1,30o hours—slightly more than half of a normal work year of 2,000 hours...

...Head Start...

...Almost half of all interstate highways are in poor or mediocre condition, according to the Federal Highway Administration...

...Even the liberal Urban Institute has concluded that the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act, which consumed over $35 billion between 1974-1983, produced "significant earnings losses for young men of all races and no significant effects for young women...

...The Clinton administration has proposed to privatize some portions of the Weather Service, effectively admitting the government's inability and incompetence...

...The EPA's Green Lights Program...

...Today its computers are still 26 years old...

...In fact, the National Biological Survey was launched by the administration—after Congress refused to approve or finance the operation—on the order of Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt...

...A major reason for the law was that the Clinton administration wanted to sign up as many grateful welfarerecipients as possible and have them vote for the Democratic Party...

...Clinton's media hit man, James Carville, has been pushing the idea of government revival under Clinton to an even wider audience...

...Brent Thompson, executive director of the Fair Government Foundation, observed after the November election: "The Motor Voter law did away with a panoply of anti-fraud mechanisms long relied on by the states to police and deter fraudulent voting...

...Herewith, a look at some of the Carville list's more questionable and laughable claims: Americorps...

...Parts are no longer in production and test equipment no longer available for these 1970-vintage computers and displays...

...Yet, despite the agency's pristine image, it has done far less for product safety than the hundreds of private standards-setting organizations, not to mention incentives in the legal code not to kill customers...

...Make no mistake, our view prevailed...

...In effect the program's main achievement is to partially subsidize the cost of more efficient light bulbs for big business—and then to deluge the media with press releases about the wonderful government-business partnership...

...Carville writes that it "was created to bring biological research at the Department of the Interior under one roof...

...The Interstate Highway System...

...Also, full-time workers may shift to part-time jobs to get the leisure time they now prefer...

...If Head Start had permanent benefits, then there would no longer be gargantuan gaps between the achievements of students in inner-city and suburban high schools...

...The law explicitly prohibits state and local government officials from requiring voter applicants from providing any proof of their citizenship...

...The Schools-to-Work program...

...It is not a handout...

...Carville's book implies that American citizens should be grateful for whatever crumbs the administration throws at them...

...According to the EPA's Inspector General, however, the program is a fraud: it routinely claims successes that never happened...

...One reporter registered his cat—three times...

...As a result, young Americans are forced to pay almost a sixth of their earnings (a 15.3 percent tax) to what amounts to a political slush fund designed to buy old people's votes for incumbent politicians...

...CPSC official Ron Medford told the Washington Post: "We don't think people should ride at night, though we realize people do...

...Since Clinton took office, the default rate for its main loan program has almost doubled, from 9 to 17 percent, and other major programs have default rates exceeding 40 percent...

...The GAO estimated that receipt of EITC benefits resulted in a decrease of more than io percent in the number of hours worked by working wives in 1988...

...Carville claims that this program, which is based on a "voluntary partnership" between the feds and corporate America, "will end up saving $53 billion" for business participants by reducing their lighting costs...

...The CPSC is always working to get dangerous products off the market," writes the caring Carville...

...The Small Business Administration...

...In his recent bestseller We're Right, They're Wrong, Carville included a list of forty "Things that Government Does Right...

...The Buffalo News JAMES BOVARD, a frequent contributor, is this year's Warren Brookes Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute...

...Nor has the Brady Law had any substantive effect on crime: a recent national survey of police chiefs found that 85 percent believed that the Brady Law has not prevented any criminal from obtaining a handgun from illegal sources in their jurisdiction...

...Most senior citizens receive four or five times more in benefits than what they contributed in taxes (counting interest...

...As a result, the agency aims to impose village-idiot standards on products that any American can buy...

...Even when convicted felons do try to buy handguns, federal attorneys almost never bother prosecuting them since, as one Justice Department official told the GAO, "Prosecutions for false statements onhandgun-purchase applications are inefficient and ineffective...

...According to the Office of Management and Budget, the average male born in 1967 will be forced to pay $207,000 more to the government in taxes during his lifetime than he receives from the government...

...Fewer than half of those rejected had felony records—and of those, fewer than ro percent had records of violent crimes...

...A Boston Globe reporter registered his cat to vote three times, but the feline acted responsibly and only cast one vote by mail in the actual election...

...This means vastly higher costs to dispose of an item that poses no realistic environmental threat...

...In fact, more than any other program, Social Security illustrates how the government can be generous to some only by defrauding others...

...What Carville doesn't mention is that the roads are collapsing in part because politicians are taking much of the money generated from gas taxes and using them for subway and other mass transit boondoggles...

...In fact, the service is routinely ignored because people need more accurate, reliable information—and competing private services are shaming the feds in forecasting as badly as they do in overnight mail delivery...

...According to Carville, this program is "designed to reward families who are working and keeping themselves above the poverty line...

...The agency's general counsel announced that the agency may seek jurisdiction over movies as "consumer products...

...The total cost of the volunteers runs to almost $20 an hour—and often the "work" they perform is trivial at best...

...The GAO noted in a report that year, "Before qualifying for the credit, a worker may view taking a second job as worth the sacrifice of foregoing leisure time...

...The proposal specifically declared that no property owner would have the right to see any biological data government found—or claimed to find—on his land...

...Schools-to-Work is but the latest of more than 16o federal training and employment programs—programs with a long record of blighting young Americans' economic prospects...

...But public schools — a $400 billion annual tax burden —do such a bang-up job that businesses who hire high-school graduates routinely have to teach them basic literacy...

...Besides letting you know whether you need an umbrella," writes Carville, "the National Weather Service provides vital information for farmers, sailors, and pilots...

...Shortly before his second inauguration, Bill Clinton reiterated his case for Big Government, telling the Washington Post that "there are some areas where government has to do less, but some areas where it can make a difference in creating the conditions and giving people the tools to make the most of their own lives...

...Clinton sought to give government agents unlimited power to trespass on private land to research whatever animal, plant, or bug species they might find...

...Carville claims that the EITC "is going only to people who are working and supporting themselves...

...Brown has even presumed to play movie critic, publicly complaining about the movie Richie Rich, which showed children riding in all-terrain vehicles in chase scenes...

...This is just what America needs: another government program to correct the fatal defects of existing government programs...

...But who will pray for the victims and tax serfs of the "people in public office...

...This program is actually welfare for part-time workers, and has become one of the biggest disincentives to full-time employment...

...Instead, government would use these secret findings to invoke the Endangered Species Act and thus prohibit the owner from making any use of his land...

...Nonsense...

...recently announced a federal grant to hire ten Americorps volunteers to dress in uniforms and hand out information and answer questions to tourists in downtown Buffalo...

...Currently, the agency is deep in the throes of concocting new rules for bicycle lights...

...Social Security...

...The original proposal set off a44 The National Weather Service launched a $5 billion modernizing program in 1980...

...The Brady Law...

...Commission chairman Ann Brown chimes in, "There can be stupid consumers and they deserve to be protected as well as smart consumers...

...A massive Department of Labor study of the Job Training Partnership Act, CETA's successor, found that young males enrolled in JTPA programs had significantly lower earnings than a control group that did not participate in JTPA...

...Those numbers are a liberal pipedream: according to the General Accounting Office, 38 percent of would-be gun buyers were rejected because of administrative reasons (primarily paperwork snafus) and another 7.6 percent were turned down because of traffic violations...

...The most comprehensive national study of Head Start concluded that almost all of the initial benefits are dis44 The motor-voter act forced states to lower standards for verifying new voters...

...THE PUBLIC POLICY by James Bovard Carville's List Au e ended the notion that government is the problem," Bill Clinton said in a January speech to the Democratic National Committee evaluating the achievements of his first term...

...Of course, bicycle lights are a second-best solution...

...firestorm all across the West...

...A National Research Council report concluded that its z6-year-old computer systems are "deteriorating and approaching the end of their useful life...

...Newsday noted in December that some SBA critics in The American Spectator May 1997 61 Washington "suspect that with the approach of the presidential election, loans were granted to less-than-qualified firms for political rather than economic reasons...

...At a time when the nation has 90 million people doing unpaid volunteer work, Clinton chose to bestow an official federal label of "volunteer" on 25,000 people and to provide them with compensation of roughly $16,000 per year—a much higher level than many of the unskilled volunteers could have gotten at a real job...

...The Consumer Product Safety Commission...

...One nonprofit organization hyping the EITC to potential beneficiaries informed them that they could qualify if they worked only one day a year...

...Clinton then added that government "should do more, in all these areas that I've been active in, especially education and the environment and public health and...helping to reduce crime and all these things that we've done, that we should do more...

...In Southern California, Americorps workers busied themselves knitting a memorial quilt for federal workers killed in the Oklahoma City bombing...

...The Los Angeles Times reported last December, "Poor weather forecasts during the 1993 Mississippi River floods, blamed in part on outdated National Weather Service technology, left some communities exposed to avoidable death and destruction...

...77 sipated within three years of a child's completion of the program...

...Its research is aimed at finding environmentally sound ways of promoting economic development...

...Most banks consider default rates of more than 2 percent a grave threat to their financial health...

...It keeps students interested in school and gives them the skills, experience and links to the job market that open the door to a good job and good future...

...Carville claims that in the first nine months after its passage alone, "41,000 fugitives, drug users, stalkers and convicted felons tried to buy a gun and were arrested or turned away...

...More than zoo studies have found that it works," Carville claims...

...EPA's Enforcement Division ruled in 1995 that businesses that dispose of a large number of used light bulbs at once must treat the bulbs as hazardous waste...

...Head Start kids are less likely to be held back in school, less likely to need special education down the road, less likely to create discipline problems, and more likely to graduate from high school...

...as a result, 1996 arguably saw more voter fraud than any election in decades...

...In Denver, Americorps troops distributed election leaflets attacking Hiawatha Davis, a City Council member who was blocking a government grant to the non-profit group where the Americorps volunteers "worked...

...The SBA ruins the lives of many borrowers who are given far more capital than they can responsibly use —and end up in bankruptcy...

...the report bluntly concluded that federal training "actually reduced the earnings of male out-ofschool youths...

...The National Weather Service...

...The Motor Voter Act...

...The Weather Service launched a $5 billion modernization program in 1980, but, according to the GAO, the program is a fiasco, far behind schedule and failing to achieve almost any of its goals...

...This act was a Clinton-congressional edict that forced many states to lower their standards for accepting and verifying new voters...

...The work disincentive of EITC is much greater now, since benefits were sharply increased in 1993...

...Though the law resulted in millions of new registered voters, their turnout was actually low—making the 1996 election the poorest turnout of registered voters since 1924...

...44 62 May x997 • The American Spectator...

...The National Biological Survey...

...And while Carville makes it sound as if the roads were a generous gift from a benevolent government, Bill Clinton's flack-in-chief, James Carville, really hopes you'll believe him when he says government is working...

...Carville invokes our interstates as proof of the goodness and competence of the federal government...