I've argued in the distant and recent past for the principle of subsidiarity. (HT to Jon Schindler for giving me the word for what I was arguing for). I also firmly believe that Illinois is the worst-governed state that I've lived in. Honesty requires me to acknowledge that a recently acquired fact puts these two principles, both near and dear to me, in seeming contradiction.Apparently, the voters of Illinois are asked every twenty years whether they want to have a brand new constitutional convention. Jesse White, Illinois Secretary of State, recently sent me a pamphlet explaining the proposed call for a convention, along with arguments for and against the call.
Exhibit A, your honor. This ain't a campaign site, kids; it's where you go for all your licensing needs in the big Ill.
Ah, the bitter taste of cognitive dissonance. I would have thought that multiple small units of government would make for more responsive government than a few gigantic ones. But my experiences/uninformed prejudices tell me that Illinois does this badly. What to believe?
And what to vote? I like the idea of voting for the convention just to shake things up, but I don't have any confidence that the delegates would get right what the legislature gets wrong.
Lastly, I can't resist linking to this. My internal Gollum agrees entirely with Barney Frank on this one. Actually, Gollum doesn't give a fig for patriotism, precious. He just has a very shallow well of pity for people who make millions of dollars screwing things up.
6 comments:
Worst sentence ever:
"Paulson last week called for the creation of a massive government war chest to take illiquid assets off the books of banks and other firms in the hope of unclogging credit markets choking on mortgage-related debt."
(from the Barney Frank article).
Also, there is an "s" in Illinois, just one more thing wrong with the state.
Also, regarding the statement: "Illinois has over 6,900 units of government far more than any other state in the nation. Delegates to a constitutional convention could propose ideas to consolidate state and local governments to provide citizens with a more responsive and cost-effective government services."
Just because a pamphlet says it, doesn't make it true.
I think it all depends on how you look at it. Is it better for fewer entities or smaller entities?
It kind of reminds me of object-oriented programming, actually. I think a programmer would be a bomb-ass political advisor. A lot of what we do is make complicated systems work together all day long. We have to decide which object holds which information, controls which variables, outputs what information, inputs what information, is owned by whom, etc. So in that sense it relates to drawing legislative boundaries pretty damn well.
I wonder if programming would be harder if the controls had lobbyists and voters . . .
My superiors can vote to fire me more often than every 2, 4, or 6 years, and my lobbyists are the customers.
True. But my point is that your controls are inanimate. Your customers may have interests, but your controls don't. So you can do whatever you please with the controls--get rid of them entirely if you find a better way to do things.
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