Monday, May 21, 2012

How Republican Candidates Can Connect With People

Republican candidates often mention their objections to Democrat Party style government policies which include excessive regulations, excessive Government control over markets, "nanny state" mandates to states and individuals, plus intrusion into private matters. However, no candidate ever seems to translate these fundamental ideas into an example that an individual can relate to. Small business owners, line of business managers, even state governments and a select few other groups of people can relate to these issues since they are directly impacted by policies, but to the vast majority of people in the USA these issues are just an abstract thought that has no direct meaning or impact in their lives - and are thus automatically and subconsciously ignored when these fundamental governing points are heard in any speech.
 
What a candidate needs to present in any speech is a local example of these ideas and the impacts the Democrat mindset of policies has on their lives. Unless someone can hear and understand the hidden costs of a Democrat government policies imposed onto them no one will ever consider voting for a Republican who is JUST articulating an abstract idea.
 
There are many ways to work real-world examples of the policy ideas into a speech. For example: the regulations of building houses to meet environmental, transportation and density of housing goals. These policies are often implemented via application fees, inspection fees, environmental fees, sustainability fees, transportation impact fees, specific subsidies (taxing others in order to achieve a policy goal; a common example is subsidies / credits given for solar panel installations) living density goals (mandates) all of which CAN be quantified. If a builder has to pay fees for ANYTHING they are passed along to the ultimate owner of the house. If a builder has to pay for application to build, pay all those building inspection fees (and since the inspectors are either local government or state inspectors which by law take NO responsibility for any mistakes for items they inspect and they approve, the BUILDER is held responsible for the errors even if an inspector TOLD him to do something which was then found to be wrong!) it could add up to tens of thousands of dollars. THAT is a "cost" of government regulation that people are shielded from - but it exists.
 
Another example is when a business wants to change a zoning plat so they can start, or change a business. In Portland Oregon JUST to apply to have zoning change is $28,650 (October 2011, http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2011/10/a_huge_cost_of_doing_small_bus.html) and there is NO refund if the application is denied! That is a cost that is easily quantifiable! The state makes the rules, imposes the costs, and then states that they are not hindering business at all but protecting people. By imposing a fee on many such items they are, in effect, blocking by a monetary policy what they do NOT want to happen. It is like a nightclub charging a cover charge. If nightclub charged $50 cover charge per person how many people are they going to discourage from going in? By imposing a high "exclusivity" fee they eliminate low income people from going into their club and thus directly regulate who gets in - only those people with money. Government does the same thing when they impose high fees to businesses. Unlike the nightclub example a business that has to pay these fees are going to be pass that unavoidable cost onto people using their services by charging their customers a higher price than they otherwise would.
 
The policies and goals of the Democrat party are often highlighted in their speeches but the cost to SUPPORT them are always hidden -- assigned - from the people getting the benefits of the  policies by assigning the COSTS to support their policies to businesses. Businesses are a small voting block, so taking popular ideas, getting them passed then putting the costs onto businesses is a classic way to "buy" votes. Again, in Portland, the Regional Government METRO supports through payroll taxes many general public items - but the money to support them ONLY comes from businesses through mandated employment payroll taxes. The benefits of services they provide go to individuals - and the services they perform are NEVER for businesses at all. No individual is ever directly taxed by METRO. If they did, people would see how much money they actually spend on their behalf but get no benefits at all. But a business, in order to even operate, MUST PAY the payroll tax to METRO or else the government will shut them down. Legalized extortion. This is normal operating process of most government programs throughout the USA. Tax people who have a low or little block of votes to stop a policy and give the benefits to everyone else. It is "tax the rich" mantra that the Democrat party endorses. It is how Measures 66 & 67 got passed in Oregon. The people who will NOT pay additional taxes voted to tax the people who make more than them.
 
The Democrat Party's has always spoke of general policies of giving subsidies to people for social or economic goals and always ignores in their presentations where the subsidy COMES from. In order to provide a $7,500 subsidy to buy an electric car that $7,500 comes from someone else in the form of higher taxes. In order to actually balance the books by giving someone a tax credit it requires taxes on everyone else to be raised to give the subsidy to that person. Scale that up for every subsidy that the Democrat Party wants to give every middle-income and below person/family, that means either businesses or individuals above that "middle income" level HAS to pay more in taxes. If every time a college subsidy, fuel, solar, transportation, or similar idea is floated or implemented the cost is passed along to an income earning individual equal to the amount to be given away to those pre-defined set of people (legalized discrimination) they want to benefit from their policy. If the cost was assigned to each individual in the USA who, like a business, HAD to pay that cost regardless if they got that "benefit", people would soon see the true cost of these giveaways and policy decisions made on their behalf by Democrat candidates.
 
Policies which are created to help individuals should be accessed to every person equally. If something is supposed to help INDIVDUALS then each INDIVIDUAL should pay equally in the costs and not hide these costs by assigning the taxes to businesses. People would start to object to these "benefits" if the money directly came from them. To use a popular phrase if each person in the USA had "skin in the game" they would tell their elected people NOT to do those policies anymore. If every taxpayer had to pay their part of every subsidy – and pay it as a mandatory item and no payment could be waived or other income type workarounds - for every single subsidy the government grants they would not like it! It could easily add up to $1500 to $10,000 extra ABOVE the normal taxes they currently pay (likely even more) even if the fees were scaled by gross income. If people actually SEE the effects of subsidies, by money being taken away from them at tax time by all these subsidies that was voted on their behalf by their elected officials. Some of these subsides can often done by NON-ELECTED officials under the guise of polices that they can just impose via publishing regulations, then things would change.
 
Government imposed mandates, from the Federal level on down, all impose hidden costs onto people. A simple reporting mandate from the Federal Government to show numbers and types of people in schools can tie up 25,000 people throughout a year throughout the USA JUST to do the testing, reporting, and to generate that report to the Federal Government (on average around 500 people years per year per state are effectively devoted to perform mandated items). True, as more and more mandated reports the costs goes up slowly, but it WILL go up and it actually adds no value to the education of the people in school. It is just a wasted cost. That means around 1.25 BILLION dollars a year in education money USA wide always has to be spend on just doing a single Federal report by the states to the Federal government. Since the Federal, state, and local governments have their own unique reports that they want created the actual cost of doing reports is likely $11 billion a year. This is spent on equipment, time to get the data, and time required to create reports. This does not even take into account the time wasted by the person the report is about. This is a good example of hidden costs of mandated tasks.
 
In order for a republican candidate to connect with people on the policy ideas of the Republican Party they MUST work into any speech a local example of the hidden costs that the Democrat Party implements with real hard facts and how their policies are hurting each individual person.