ALF News

No. 68, Fall 1998

Downsizing Government — Where Do the Bureaucrats Go?

by Joan Kennedy Taylor

Libertarians are enthusiastic about any attempts to lessen the bureaucratic control that the state exercises in multitudinous areas of our lives, but do we stop being watchdogs too soon? We tend to support not only anything that’s private, but anything that’s privatized. We don’t pay enough attention to the unintended consequences of incremental changes. Yet a number of stories in the media tell us that we don’t get rid of the bureaucrats that easily.

A recent Cato Institute study, for instance, tells us that what some might think of as a good incremental step toward privatizing Social Security — having the government, rather than individual recipients, invest the fund in the stock market, is "fraught with peril." Michael Tanner, in "The Perils of Government Investing," points out that such a move could actually result in the government having "a significant, if not a controlling share of virtually every major stock company in America." Do we really want, he asks, to see a powerful bureaucrat "sitting on every corporate board"?

Well, Social Security is still under discussion. But at least the welfare reform has been an unqualified success. Hasn’t it? Yes, according to Mickey Kaus in the Wall Street Journal just before the recent election, but it may not last. If Democrats had won that election, "the 1996 reform would be subverted almost immediately." This, even though Kaus reports that reform has been a real success. At the same time that caseloads generally have fallen 31 percent, poverty has also declined, especially in the target population, black, female-headed families. In Wisconsin, the showcase state, he says that welfare rolls have fallen an astounding 71 percent. The people who are really nervous about all this are the labor leaders, according to Kaus, because workfare programs will put those who now are required to work into public service jobs (the most popular way of putting unskilled people to work) — jobs that public service union members might otherwise have. Kaus muses that "it wouldn’t take much to block workfare. You don’t need a wildly unpopular frontal assault on the ’96 legislation. All you need is a little provision, slipped in virtually unnoticed, that prohibits using federal money to employ welfare recipients at jobs that might 'partially displace’ union members, or interfere with their 'promotional opportunities,’ or be 'inconsistent with the terms of a collective bargaining agreement.’"

An October New York Times article confirms the stunning figures in Wisconsin, quoting Governor Tommy G. Thompson as saying, "We expected about 36,000 cases left on the rolls, and we’re down to 10,875." But those cases, mostly single mothers who need the child care the state has promised, are facing a big bureaucratic glitch, in which five private agencies, each with a geographical monopoly, have to share power with the county workers who used to run the system. What has happened to the public service bureaucrats? They are still there. In order to give the county workers a role and preserve their jobs, they now review the childcare arrangements made by the agencies and actually pay the providers.

The result apparently is that 60 percent of the placements made by the private agencies have been invalidated in some way by the public one. The overlapping authority results in snafus like the case of one woman, Ta-Tanisha Powell, examined by The Times. The county suddenly stopped paying for her son’s child care without explanation. With no other recourse, she left her full-time job as a security guard for part-time work as a nurse’s aide, and tried to rely on impromptu babysitting arrangements. She got authorization from her private agency to return to full-time work and get full-time child care, but the county again refused to pay for full-time child care, this time because she was now only working part-time. Unable to get any reliable child care, she finally had to leave even her part-time job. She was unemployed at the time the article was written, waiting for community service employment. Could it be that, working in a state-subsidized job with subsidized child care, Ms. Powell’s life is more controlled by bureaucrats than when she received a welfare check?

Another New York Times story written a month later says that Federal officials have started a renewed campaign to require the states to be more aggressive in their offers of food stamps and Medicaid (both still federal entitlements). Local officials who have become enthusiastic about the new state programs are said to be "ambivalent" about doing this. New York City was criticized "with its practice of delaying Medicaid and food stamp applications until a second visit to the welfare office (Federal law requires them to be handed out without delay)." Another role for the feds, who saw that food stamp applications were dropping and raised the alarm. And a contradictory role for the state bureaucrats, who now see all assistance as counterindicated, whether needed and qualified for, or not. The message was elaborated on in a New York Times Magazine story that said that Guiliani had succeeded in removing "more than 400,000" people from the welfare roles and intends to end welfare completely by the turn of the century. But, says the article, the bureaucracy will continue. "Logistically, what Guiliani vows to achieve is anything but welfare’s ‘end.’ Aid is supposed to continue, but only to those who keep pace with a 35-hour workweek designed and overseen by the Human Resources Administration, the city’s welfare agency." Welfare offices have become "job centers." And Guiliani, who was cutting down on city employees in other departments, hired 1,500 new fraud investigators and is making a determined effort to get everyone — those who are pregnant, those with heart conditions, those with emphysema — to work, most often at raking leaves or cleaning the streets.

Since welfare is an issue that particularly impinges on women, libertarian feminists in particular would do well to look at what is going on as it actually affects women’s lives. Is partial privatization making them better, or worse? Ta-Tanisha Powell, for instance, clearly had some money-earning skills that began to be utilized, but they were useless to her after she was caught between two monopolies, one public and one nominally private, but both created by the state.

The Times in its Wisconsin story interviewed John Gardner, a member of the Milwaukee County School Board who thought inefficiencies were built into that state’s program. "Each of the five private agencies that run the program gets paid a flat fee, no matter how many people they place in jobs," The Times concluded. "Each serves an exclusive territory where other agencies cannot compete. And much like a health maintenance organization, each theoretically has an incentive in withholding services. The less they spend, the more their profits rise. ‘In theory it’s a privatized model of efficiency,’ Mr. Gardner said. ‘In reality it’s a politically gerrymandered cartel.’"

Similar questions may arise with respect to school choice. As school choice and vouchers become more popular, will they too lead to more regulation, this time of the private schools? We shouldn’t forget the example of Medicare. Medicare was originally intended to be a simple transfer system, in which government money was expended as the experts in the field (doctors) decided was necessary, without any interference with their expertise. There was to be no government control of doctors, who would remain private operators, no interference in the doctor-patient relationship, and certainly no interference in medical decisions. Today, my doctor friends tell me, it is very hard to maintain a sole practice without taking Medicare patients, and if you do, you are required not only to submit mountains of paper work, but liable for refusal of payment and even fines if you treat too often, or your diagnosis is not covered, or even if you make a mistake in coding. The patients do not fare better. One patient on Medicare whose doctor is a friend of mine was bounced around by several providers when she was scheduled for a surgical biopsy of a suspected breast cancer, but needed to have a required pre-op mammogram. Hospital A wouldn’t do it because she had had a previous mammogram within six months; doctor B wouldn’t do it because his office said it was a question of law that Medicare patients could only have mammograms on one particular day of the week; and hospital C couldn’t schedule it in time for the scheduled operation. The patient’s particularly dedicated doctor was able to get it done as a personal favor to her in the hospital where she was on staff. Only the willingness to step outside the system enabled the system to work.

Can anyone foresee the possibility of private schools that accept vouchers facing regulation of a similar fashion? Class size, curriculum content, teacher pay, seniority, teacher assignment, textbook choice all decided by bureaucrats?

Don’t forget that the "smart card" that contains all your medical records which was such a touted feature of Hillary Clinton’s healthcare plan is now actually required as part of healthcare legislation, even though it has not been implemented yet. What about an electronic card with all your child’s school records, including disciplinary infractions and failing grades, that has to be given to any educator who demands it?

Perhaps we should be careful what we wish for. If we get it, do we know what it will entail?

An Exchange of E-Mail Letters on Gertrude B. Kelly

FROM: Andrea Millen Rich

TO: Wendy McElroy

Wendy: I really enjoyed reading about Gertrude B. Kelly, whose name I have never run across before. I have to admit, though, that I’m a little surprised you characterize her as a feminist. I agree with Gert that "there is, properly speaking, no woman question, as apart from the question of human right and human liberty." I know there have been and, to some extent still are, laws that particularly hamper women (among other groups). But does that make anyone who opposes those laws a feminist? Obviously Gert never considered herself a feminist. How can you label her something she disdained?

"Confused in New York."

Andrea Millen Rich

Laissez Faire Books

xxx

FROM: Wendy McElroy

TO: Andrea Millen Rich

RE: Gertrude B. Kelly

Dear Andrea:

G. Kelly fought all her life to improve the status of women, often by fighting for the repeal of laws that purportedly ‘protected’ them yet — in application — disadvantaged them as a class. This was her political thrust...working in the cause of Irish women immigrants in the latter part of her life. It was also her personal/professional thrust...working as a doctor among poverty-stricken women in New York, for which she was recognized by having the park named after her. Perhaps I define feminism more broadly than you do, as a focus upon the betterment of women as a class, either politically or culturally — by which definition she was certainly a feminist. Certainly I am not aware of *any* writing or second-hand account by contemporaries in which Kelly "disdained" (as you say) the name of feminist or any similar label. My purpose is accuracy. If I did know of such information, I would incorporate it immediately. "Confused in rural Canada."I remain, Wendy P.S. BTW, by this logic, I am not a feminist either... This is not a point meant to be contentious, merely an observation of how ‘feminism’ may be defined differently for each of us. I advocate nothing more than human rights for women and have written several pieces on how legal privileges and protections are the worst things that have happened to us. Rather like Thomas Sowell whose advocacy of black rights consists of demanding the same natural rights for that particular class as any other class of human being deserves. Unfortunately, in our society, there is a place for such advocates.

xxx

FROM: Andrea Millen Rich

TO: Wendy McElroy

RE: Gertrude B. Kelly

Yes, I guess that’s what I meant — human rights for women (indeed, for everyone). Ok, if that makes me a feminist, I guess I am one (as JKT keeps telling me), and Gertrude too.

Andrea

xxx

FROM: Wendy McElroy

TO: Andrea Millen Rich

RE: Gertrude B. Kelly

Dear Andrea:

Our brief correspondence on old Gertrude has had a valuable fall-out. I am going to include a few-paged section in the intro to the McFarland book that spells out clearly what I mean by advocating women’s rights ... that is, I mean advocating the same thing as human rights, only without either the privileges or the restrictions currently imposed. It seems to me that the onus of proof is upon me to demonstrate that a radical individualist can advocate what sounds to be ‘class rights.’ I’ve always maintained that the only reason I call myself a feminist is because of the government. By which I mean, if gov. (or an anarchist defense assoc.) acknowledged the full equal rights of women without paternalistic protection or oppression, I would stop writing about women’s issues. I understand that there is a cultural form of feminism and many women would still fight for improved prestige or status, and I wouldn’t criticism them for doing so. It just wouldn’t grip me. Guess I’m a political animal after all.

Cordially, W.

xxx

FROM: Andrea Millen Rich

TO: Wendy McElroy

RE: Gertrude B. Kelly

Guess I’m a political animal after all.

Cordially, W.

xxx

You’d better believe I’m going to hold that sentence over your head forever!

Andrea

Update

Carol Moore, whose writings have appeared in these pages from time to time, is circulating an "Abortion and Legal Stand Survey" to libertarians, asking them whether they are pro-life or pro-choice and also to respond as to whether they agree or disagree with the following statements:

1. I support the legal right of a woman to ask of and obtain from prospective adoptive parents the maximum financial cost of medical expenses, lost work income and career opportunities, health toll and risk of pregnancy.
2. I consider the above to be immoral and illegal baby selling and believe the woman is entitled only to basic medical costs related to the pregnancy.
3. I consider the above to be immoral and illegal baby selling and believe the woman should receive no financial recompense.

Anyone interested in responding can e-mail her atCarolMoore@kreative.net

ALF member Karen Michalson announces that the new album of her band, Point of Ares, will be released to radio and retail stores on January 1, 1999. Entitled "The Sorrows of Young Apollo," the album is described as an "extended Homeric rock meditation." It can be ordered through Arula Records’ website at http://www/ultranet.com/~ares/arula or by calling Arula Records at 1-800-484-5088.

Point of Ares drew nearly 200 people to their November performance at the Lizard Lounge, 1667 Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge, Mass, where "they opened an open mike poetry jam." As a result, they have been invited to play the Lizard Lounge on the first Sunday of every other month, starting Sunday, January 3 at 9 p.m.

It has just been announced that Tor Books has signed a contract with Karen for the publication of her dark fantasy trilogy Enemy Glory!

A number of ALF members are represented in a new book, Feminist Interpretations of Ayn Rand, edited by Chris Sciabarra and Mimi Gladstein, which will be published by Penn State Press on February 2, 1999 — the 94th anniversary of Ayn Rand’s birth. The book is one of a series put out by the Press called "Re-reading the Canon" that reexamines various well-known philosophers. More information about this book is available from Chris Sciabarra’s website at http://www.nyu.edu/pro-jects/sciabarra/femstart.htm