Amidst the brouhaha over Juan Williams getting fired from his job at National Public Radio, and subsequent calls by conservatives to defund NPR, the broader issue of how government-funded media influences the American discourse needs to come into sharper focus. As a glaring example of how the taxpayers are forced to subsidize political propaganda, there [...]

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Seventy-seven years after the end of prohibition the battle of the “wets” versus the “drys” is alive and well in those states considering ending their government monopolies over the sale of liquor. Though not as colorful as the epic battles between Al Capone and Elliot Ness, the underlining debate continues over whether government control of liquor sales has measurable societal benefits.

As one of 18 monopoly control states (only government sale of liquor allowed), this question is front and center in Washington State where not one, but two ballot measures are being considered on whether to end the state’s liquor monopoly. 

A similar debate is occurring in the control states of Virginia and Pennsylvania.

Proponents of government control over liquor sales argue a state monopoly serves numerous social goals, such as preventing under-age drinking and reducing alcohol related deaths. 

A central argument against private liquor sales is that ending government monopolies would lead to drastic social costs. For example, the National Alcohol Beverage Control Association argues that privatization of liquor sales would increase binge drinking and decrease road safety.

But a recent Commonwealth Foundation study looking at national per-capita alcohol consumption questioned the supposed link between state control and achieving social goals. The study examined rates of underage drinking, underage binge drinking, alcohol related road fatalities and DUI arrests.

Were the Commonwealth findings supportive of NABCA and other’s claims, then serious consideration should be given to slowing the privatization process. But the data paints quite a different story.

The study finds that while alcohol consumption in privately operated license states is slightly higher than in controlled states, “among controlled states, greater levels of control are actually associated with increased consumption rates.” Similarly, the rates of underage drinking and underage binge drinking “are virtually identical in license and control states.”

The study also found that states with private liquor sales don’t have any more alcohol-related traffic deaths than control states. However, “among control states, states with the most controls also exhibit the highest rates of alcohol-related traffic deaths – even after adjusting for differences in enforcement of DUI laws.”

Our own review of the data reveals that societal effects of drinking, such as the percentage of binge drinkers by state, is more closely correlated to regions of the country, rather than control versus private sales. 

Essentially, the evidence suggests that state run monopolies do not result in any better social restraint than states with private liquor sales.

Another argument against ending government monopolies, particularly prevalent in the Washington State debate, is that treating liquor sales the same as beer and wine will lead to increased societal harm.

However, a 2007 study on binge drinking published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine provides some sobering evidence against those claims.

According to the researchers: “Overall, 74.4% of binge drinkers consumed beer exclusively or predominantly, and those who consumed at least some beer accounted for 80.5% of all binge alcohol consumption.” B

Breaking down the numbers by beverage type, beer accounts for 67.1% of binge drinks consumed, compared to liquor at 21.9%, and wine only10.9%. The study concluded that beer accounted for the “most alcohol consumed by those at greatest risk of causing or incurring alcohol-related harm.”

This means that unless those arguing for government monopoly control of sales want to include beer and wine with the hard liquor restrictions, their arguments over societal costs ring hollow.

The “Great Recession” is forcing states across the country to reset their programs and focus on their core functions. The question for citizens in the 18 liquor monopoly states is whether selling liquor is a core government function or whether it is an outdated holdover from the prohibition era. Regardless of whether you fill your glass with private or government-supplied liquor, the answer is unlikely to alter alcohol’s impact on society.

Anthony Randazzo is Director of Economic Research for the Reason Foundation based in D.C. Jason Mercier is Director of the Center for Government Reform at the Washington Policy Center based in Seattle.

This column originally appeared at FoxNews.com.

The City of San Diego continues to face significant budget shortfalls, mostly due to years of granting unaffordable public pensions and then compounding things by intentionally underfunding the pension system. The city has placed a measure, Proposition D, on Tuesday’s ballot that would authorize a half-sent sales tax increase for five years, provided that the city first satisfies a number of conditions such as agreeing with its labor unions on a management competition guide, which spells out the process by which private firms may compete with city agencies for contracts to provide various government services (note that the city is not required to actually conduct managed competition, just to complete the guide), and implementing several pension reforms.

But, as I noted in a press conference with Councilman Carl DeMaio last month about the Managed Competition Guide that the city and labor unions finally agreed upon recently, the Guide describes a process that is so bureaucratic and slanted toward the unions winning any “competitions” that it would be so costly and time-consuming for private companies to bid for contracts that they probably have no realistic chance of winning anyway, given provisions like a 10% cost advantage to the unions, that few are likely to participate, that it defeats the whole purpose of managed compeition. It has been four years since voters approved the implementation of a managed cometition program, and still the city has failed to deliver a fair and transparent means of achieving the cost savings and other benefits of competition for government services. (See my comments on the Managed Competition Guide here.)

And the pension reforms, while welcome and an improvement over the status quo (although still probably short of what is really needed), should have been made years ago. They should not be a bargaining chip for squeezing taxpayers for more money.

In a recent San Diego Union-Tribune letter to the editor, former councilman Larry Stirling outlines why he and three other former councilman oppose the tax increase measure.

Former San Diego city councilmen Fred Schnaubelt, Bruce Henderson, Bill Mitchell and I are voting “no” on Proposition D. Threats by city staff to cut services if we don’t give them more money is the lingo of street muggers, not responsible public officials. We’ve heard it all before, and we know it’s not necessary.

The city does not need higher taxes. It just needs to do a better job with the millions it is already receiving.

Instead of “cutting” police, fire, libraries, etc., the city has literally scores of efficiency options available. It just takes political backbone – something currently lacking in the City Council majority.

When the voters reject Proposition D, we will be providing the adult supervision so desperately needed at City Hall.

Larry Stirling

In the comments section of the Web page that contains Stirling’s letter, libertarian activist and San Diego Tax Fighters chairman Richard Rider likewise describes how the city’s political leadership has acted like petulant children and extortionists.

Here’s the question I don’t believe anyone has posed: After Prop D fails, will our politicians go ahead and aggressively implement the ten “reforms” anyway?

After all, NONE of these conditions need the sales tax revenue to be completed. Indeed, since the sales tax boost would kick in only AFTER the conditions were met, the sales tax money CAN’T be used to complete the conditions. Of course, these conditions SHOULD have been done years ago, but the proponents don’t like to talk about that.

So back to my question: After Prop D fails, will our politicians go ahead and aggressively implement the ten “reforms” anyway?

Two possible answers:

1. Yes, the reforms will be aggressively completed anyway, because the city council and mayor care enough to do the right thing. IF they do it right, they would largely eliminate the “need” for their sales tax increase.

2. No, the city council will stop the reforms in a petulant fit — or more likely, they enact tepid reforms that in total save only a few million a year at most. IF that is the case, then this measure was simple extortion.

Sadly we know how much we can rely on the word of extortionists. And we certainly don’t want to pay off extortionists. To do so would only invite more of the same.

By largely burrying their heads in the sand and neglecting their duties to deliver fiscally responsible budgets, the mayor and the majority of the City Council can now hold these reforms over the heads of taxpayers, demanding that they hand over several hundreds of millions of dollars more and trying to scare voters by threatening significant cuts to the most improtant priorities, such as public safety, if they do not get their way.

I suspect that political leaders in state and local governments across the nation are engaging in similar tactics and trying to present this choice to voters in this election (and will do so in future elections as fiscal conditions continue to deteriorate): suck it up and give us more tax money or we’ll cut the things most important to you. It is the old Washington Monument syndrome all over again. Hopefully, taxpayers will stand up to these bullies and offer a dose of needed tough love by saying “No!” to tax increases and forcing their elected leaders to deliver responsible budgets appropriate for existing economic conditions.

The Observers

Tibor R. Machan

Many
contemporary intellectuals have a problem.  They are theoretically
committed to the idea that they can be no more than observers of human
life and make no value judgments about it.  This is because the
philosophical basis for evaluating people, their conduct, and their
institutions has been destroyed by the view that all that we can do is
observe, say what is the case based on what our senses tell us;
evaluations, beliefs and statements about what is good and bad, right
and wrong are unavailable to us since they cannot be derived from
observations alone.  They amount to little more than how we feel about
something, or how the community to which we belong does.  The
disciplines in which human affairs are studied have no place for
evaluation, only for description.  And if there is more, it must come
from religion.  But religion rests mostly on faith and the faiths of
people are too varied to put them on the same page with their judgments
and, in any case, who can argue about faith?  

Of
course, all of this has exceptions but those are not what dominate
among our culture’s thinkers.  The dominant view is that only
observations are intellectually, philosophically respectable.  Nothing
else is well grounded, nothing else warrants our allegiance. It is this
outlook about how our minds work that carries conviction with most
academics and those who have studied with them.  

This
is so even though no one can really stick to the position for very
long.  Most people, even those who profess to be nothing other than
observers–such as university researchers, news reporters or
analysts–do have values, often quite pronounced ones, and they rarely
can hold them back, keep them out of what they think, say, or write
about human affairs. This is especially so with the elite media, be it
print or broadcast.  On the Internet, too, people–though not all–tend
mainly to vent and emote instead of argue for their values because,
well, values cannot be defended logically, rationally, or so many have
been taught at our institutions of higher learning.

So
how do these people then go about trying to apply their felt values?
What do they do to influence the world, especially political trends?
 Mostly by imply and intimate that they are superior observers to those
with whom they disagree.  And why would this be so?  Because they have
superior upbringing, education, occupations, and, of course, culture.

You
want to have your value judgments taken seriously? Well, then, get go
to Harvard or Princeton and get a job at The New York Times or The
Washington Post or The Atlantic or NPR, PBS and some other snooty
outfit.  You will then be able to skip having to argue for your
views–your gravitas
will do it for you.  And all those with whom you disagree, whose values
you dislike or disdain, will simply have to slouch away sheepishly as
not up to snuff.  No one will need to demonstrate that his or her ideas
about how we should act and what policies should be pursued are better
than the ideas of those who they find objectionable.  That will not be
necessary.  You will simply need to make sure that you are in the
company of the elite.  Why are they the elite?  Never mind that, it
cannot be known since that would mean that one could know about which
values are superior and which are inferior, just the stuff that is off
limits in the contemporary philosophical, intellectual climate.

At
one time this outlook tended to engender tolerance for all viewpoints
and there was some hope in that so long as the really obnoxious
viewpoints were held by just a few in one’s community.  And those abroad
could be ignored, except, of course, when they grew into large masses
of disagreeable folks like Nazis and Communists.  But even then, they
were mostly kept at arms length, so arguing with them wasn’t necessary.

Now,
however, the very disagreeable folks are close up and personal, quite
often.  Not only do they bring their hostile attitudes to our
universities and communities but they actually lash out at us,
physically, fatally at times.  And that is difficult to deal with by
just ignoring it all, sticking one’s head in the sand.  So the preferred
response, again, is a kind of effeteness, a posture of
superciliousness.  Spread the idea that the elites will figure it out,
they will be able to manage it all, so long as they are in power.  And
for that to happen their critics must be fended off, marginalized.  

The
best way to do this when one cannot demonstrate that one’s position is
right, that one’s values are indeed sound and should therefore prevail,
is to pretend that these opponents are inferior human beings, small and
narrow minded.   

The
observers, they do hold values but they will not argue for them, only
insist that their stature and social rank must be honored more than the
views of those who are not of their type.  

And
people are surprised when there is no respectful political discourse in
the air during political campaigns!  How can there be when the
observers have read all others out of the arena and have reserved for
themselves the position of, well, observers, with just some refined
feelings to spread around that they need not stand up for and justify.

A recent study by the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment claims that public-sector workers are actually undercompensated compared to their private-sector counterparts.  This is not the first such study from a pro-union think tank to argue this, and I addressed such claims made by a similar study earlier this year (see my criticisms and response here).

The conclusions about the supposedly undercompensated government employees are reached despite data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Bureau of Economic Analysis that illustrate a wide gap in favor of public-sector workers (see here, here, and here), the fact that the City of Vallejo, CA was forced to declare bankruptcy because of its unaffordable public pensions and many other local governments around the nation are in danger of a similar fate, and the prevalence of public pensions in state and local governments throughout California that allow public safety employees with 30 years of experience to retire with 90% (or more) of their final salaries and get free health care for life.

In an article for the San Francisco Examiner, Steven Greenhut noted some of the study’s shortcomings.

The argument that government employees tend to be more highly-educated, and thus deserve higher salaries than those in the private sector, is an interesting one, but I think it falls short.  As I noted in my criticism of the public versus private sector compensation study from earlier this year,

It would be interesting to take a closer look at the education statistics.  Knowing the percentage of workers with a college degree, for example, is helpful, but not all college degrees are equal.  Some fields of study are more rigorous than others, and some universities and colleges are more prestigious than others.  One who earns a degree in a more rigorous field, or who attends a more prestigious (and usually a more costly) university, would expect to earn a higher salary after college than one who did not.  While data with this level of detail do not seem to be available, it would be interesting to see if there are any differences in these more specific educational categories between public and private sector employees.

It is also worth asking whether higher education levels are actually required to perform many government jobs.  The Bender and Heywood study presumes that we should expect public employees to be paid more because they tend to be better educated than comparable private sector employees, but is this additional education necessary?

It may be that state and local governments hire more educated people not because job duties demand more education, but rather simply because they can, as they have access to the public’s money and, as such, government budgets are not so constrained as private firms’ budgets.  In the private sector, firms have strong incentives to keep costs down and pay no more for labor than they need to.  The public sector, by contrast, is infamous for its lack of efficiency, and budgets are determined by political means, resulting in budgets that are usually much different-and more wasteful-than those determined by economic means (see the discussion of public-sector versus private-sector productivity below).  This is why governments typically achieve significant cost savings by outsourcing the provision of services to the private sector.  Thus, it may be that governments are paying higher wages to better-educated employees not because those employees’ educational skills are required to perform their job duties, but rather because they are overqualified for their jobs.

Such studies also tend to neglect to place any value on the virtually ironclad job security that public employees enjoy which cannot be found in the private sector.  They also ignore that private-sector workers, on average, are significantly more productive than public-sector workers, and work more hours per year.

Even taking the study’s analysis as given, this does not mean that the value of an average government worker’s labor is equal to that of an average private sector worker with similar education and work experience.  This is because private sector workers tend to be more productive.  As Cato Institute Director of Tax Policy Studies Chris Edwards notes in a recent paper, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) National Compensation Survey, private-sector employees worked an average of 2,050 hours in 2008, 12 percent more than the 1,825 hours worked by the average public-sector employee.

Even on an hour-for-hour basis, one would expect private sector workers to be more productive due to the lack of competitive forces in government.  Private sector businesses face constant pressures of competition to innovate and improve their goods and services, lest they lose business to their competitors.  Government agencies, by contrast, are typically monopolies protected by law, and thus are not subject to such competitive incentives and pressures.  (There is a reason for all those jokes and complaints about the efficiency of post office and DMV workers.)

The fact is that the average government employee typically earns a greater salary, in additional to substantially better benefits, than similar private-sector workers. This is because public-sector employees’ compensation is determined through the political process, rather than by economic realities. The power of public-sector labor unions, and the politicians who are beholden to them, largely insulates them from economic contractions. Thus, it should not have been surprising that governments at all levels were actually hiring hundreds of thousands of workers even as the private sector lost millions of jobs during the recession. The sooner we recognize this fact, that public-sector unions are using their political power to enrich themselves at the expense of taxpayers, the sooner governments may be brought back to some measure of fiscal responsibility.

But will there be a major change in DC after the elections? Of course not.

12 stats that underscore the need to be armed and ready.

A history, from Peter Dale Scott and Robert Parry.

Here’s what Marc Faber sees coming. Article by Dian L. Chu.

Paul Gottfried on a chaotic and ultimately useless movement.

Economic law dooms the dictatorship. Article by Gary North.

What’s next? Article by Raven Clabough.