Tag: bureaucracy

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general freedom ideological culture nannyism national politics & policies too much government

Marriage Savings

Paul Jacob on how governments can save money, and clean up the marriage business, too

We’ve all seen lawmakers yammer on and on about how they want to “streamline” government, or “save the taxpayers money.”

But they rarely show us much for all the talk.

Paul Woolverton, writing this weekend in the Fayetteville Observer, noted one such lapse after the North Carolina Senate voted to create a law to let magistrates “opt out of conducting any weddings if they have a religious objection.”

The problem? “No one in the debate,” Mr. Woolverton asserts, “questioned the underlying premise that a magistrate or clergy member is necessary to seal the marriage contract.”

The involvement of the state in the marriage contract biz is unnecessarily complicated, he explains. “As fiscal conservatives,” Woolverton insists, they could have taken the opportunity to ask something more fundamental:

A man and a woman pay the government $60 to get a government-approved marriage license. Why should they then have to visit another government office and pay the government another $20, or hire a government-designated third party for a fee or “donation,” to finalize their marriage contract?

Woolverton suggests streamlining the process: “. . . [G]overnment should make its involvement the least intrusive it can be. It should record marriages when couples visit the Register of Deeds to buy their marriage licenses.”

And that’s it.

Betrothed couples can legally testify to meeting any and all state requirements — and officially inform the state of their pre-marriage and married names.

Those who want the services of a priest or rabbi or preacher or imam can hire one, or cajole one. Or two.

That’s just not state business.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights free trade & free markets government transparency national politics & policies

Your Taxes, in Small Type

The business of business is to profit by helping others. The business of government is to make sure that businesses don’t profit by cheating others.

Unfortunately, sometimes it’s the governments that cheat.

Take the airline industry. Though substantially deregulated by the early 1980s, government has not treated it in an exactly laissez faire manner since. First there are the taxes, quite heavy. And recently the Department of Transportation decided that it must regulate the way in which airlines may advertise their prices . . . and the taxes. That is, the DOT insists that the “total price” — by which it means the price-plus-tax — must be shown prominently, with the tax portion “presented in significantly smaller type than the listing of the total price.”

Talk about regulatory micromanagement!

Now, this rule isn’t something Congress cooked up. It’s the result of a bureaucracy gone wild.

And the rule has one obvious effect: It shields government from consumer criticism, showing bureaucrats at their most self-serving. About one fifth of every airline ticket goes to the government, and folks in government don’t want you to know that.

This being the case, you might think — as George Will does — that the First Amendment would apply, especially since the First Amendment is now routinely held as protecting political speech more strictly than commercial speech. But, so far, courts have ruled for the taxing and regulating bureaucrats, not the competitive airlines. Or consumers.

Frequent fliers (I’m one) should hope the Supreme Court justices take up the case, which shows why economic and political freedom go best together.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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property rights

Castle in the Hay

The haystacks, covered with tarps and old tires, were ugly.

And yet no one complained.

The people near Honeycrock Farm, Salfords, Redhill, Surrey, knew that Robert Fidler was building something behind his haystacks. But, maybe because they were, at heart, good British people, they said nothing.

But what Fidler had built behind the stacks of hay was a mock Tudor mansion, complete with cannons and turrets and such.

Tastes differ as to its beauty, but hey: it was a lot better than hay.

After building it for two years, he and his family lived in it for four. Without telling anybody.

And then came down the haystacks.

And came trouble.

Fidler thought that he had gotten around the local planning laws by living in his structure for four years without complaint. Too bad, then, that the Reigate and Banstead Council says that rule is void — because nobody had been given a chance to see it.

They had seen ugly haystacks, instead.

Now, you probably thought that zoning laws and building codes were there to protect neighbors. But the neighbors had no complaints about ugly haystacks with blue tarp. A nice house in olden style?

Why complain about that?

Well, some did. Why shouldn’t Fidler have to go through the same Kafkaesque nightmare they did?

I guess they didn’t appreciate the cleverness of the ploy.

Not so clever, however, that he’ll be allowed to keep his house. Too bad.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.