From: thomasd@tps.COM (Thomas W. Day)
Subject: Re: A followup to Amendment 1
Organization: TPS
Date: Wed, 23 Dec 1992 16:48:36 GMT

In article <1992Dec23.073233@eklektix.com> rcd@raven.eklektix.com (Dick Dunn) writes:

>>>      For better or worse the legislature and local city councils
>>>      spend months studying budgets trying to decide how to allocate
>>>      resources.  
>>And rightly so.  Wise allocation of resources is their job.  They
>>still get to divvy the pie, they just can't make it bigger.

>"rightly so"???  The time spent "studying budgets" is pure overhead!  It is
>time/cost with zero direct output.  Yes, they have to study the problem to
>figure out how to do the best job, but they don't need any obstacles or
>tricks to make it harder.

Apparently, government is allowed luxuries that are not available to 
business.  Companies "study budgets" and it is "pure overhead" to them 
also.  But customers don't necessarily respect those budgets.  If what the 
business is selling isn't what customers want, those budgets go out the 
window.  I see no reason why government should have the luxury to claim 
funds just because they planned for them. 

>>>                  I wonder how long the average voter will study the
>>>      needs of the various state and local agencies and departments
>>>      before voting.
>...
>>Let's see if I can sum your article:  voters are stupid; government
>>is wise and has done well.

>Let's see if I can fill in with something relatively innocuous while you
>go borrow a clue:  Legislators and councils put in large amounts of time;
>voters aren't likely to spend as much time.  Mayer didn't argue stupid vs
>wise; he argued on amount of time spent.

If the Jeffco "Taj Mahal" is an example of the result of "time spent" by 
government agencies, why waste the effort?  This also relates to an earlier 
posting that described Jefferson County's reduction in educational services 
due to funding shortfalls.  When government officials lavish facilities and 
benefits on themselves, eventually, the public is going to say "enough!"  
That is the origin of Amendment 1.

>Knowledge and understanding are cumulative; 100,000 people spending one
>minute to understand expenditures does not equal 100 legislators and staff
>spending a couple of days apiece, any more than 9 women can deliver a baby
>in one month.

On the other hand, it wouldn't take most people more than one minute to 
understand that the results of many government actions are poorly thought 
out or the result of vested interests.  I really don't believe the best 
local governments will be faced with any 'obstacles" greater than what 
business always faces.  The worst governments will find themselves with no 
funding to work with.  

>The United States is not a direct democracy; it is a representative demo-
>cracy for a damned good reason.

The "damned good reason" was a lack of communication and a lack of faith in 
the competence of the voters.  Communications is a dead issue today, at 
least the technology part of communications.  Bureaucrats seem to have a 
greater communication gap than voters, especially in their ability to 
understand and care about issues that are important to voters.  Try to 
remember that the constitution was written by men who had great, but not 
infinite, foresight.  There was no way they could project today's 
communication technology into the constitution.  

>If you don't like the way decisions are made on expenditures, think before
>you vote.

Think about what?  How can voters see into the minds of the people they 
elect?  How can anyone?  Did the "conservative" voters who elected Bath know 
what kind of person he was?  Did his wife and family?  Did the voters in 
California know that their benchmark of honest government, Cranston, was in 
the investment bankers' pockets?  Unless we are going to perform public lie 
detector tests on every government official, or really inforce the true
definition of treason, representative government is not going to produce 
good government.
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