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Defunding police is the wrong answer, look at collective bargaining agreements

June 8, 2020, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement in response to calls to defund police departments nationwide:

“Everyone agrees that police brutality is wrong.  It is in fact every bit as much of an assault on the rule of law as attacking our public institutions with Molotov Cocktails. But those screaming for police accountability are missing the real problem. It is that bad cops are shielded by public employee unions like they were bureaucrats caught stealing paper clips. 

“To get police accountability, you need to break the stranglehold that police unions and the public employee contracts they negotiate have over local governments. With all the focus on the death of George Floyd, most people have no idea that the reason it took the Minneapolis City government two days to react was because the union contract stipulates a two-day cooling off period before anything can be done about a police related death.

“In that two days, many thought that they had to take to the streets to bring attention to the case, when in fact, the video had been around the world three times before the first protester hit the streets. If the Mayor of Minneapolis and the Governor of Minnesota had reacted immediately, explaining that the union contract requires time for the dust to settle in order for actions to be taken, it might have taken some of the oxygen out of the violent protests. 

“What’s more, Americans would be demanding that their local governments review their local contracts to ensure that bad cops weren’t protected by bad public employee union contracts.  If you want police accountability, that is what needs to happen, we need the unions to quit protecting the few bad apples whose actions are causing cities like Minneapolis to consider the insane act of defunding their entire police departments.”

To view online: https://getliberty.org/2020/06/defunding-police-is-the-wrong-answer-look-at-collective-bargaining-agreements/

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ALG Editor’s Note: In the following featured oped from the Washington Examiner, Myron Ebell makes the case against the Great America Outdoors Act as yet another federal land grab:

 

In supporting 'Land Grab' bill, Republicans unwittingly support socialism

By Myron Ebell  

Many Republicans in Congress made political hay by labeling the Green New Deal as "socialism." Surprisingly, too many of these same Republicans are now the leading supporters of a major piece of socialist legislation. Unlike the Green New Deal, which was defeated in the Senate with 57 votes against and none in favor (with 43 Democrats voting present), the Senate is on the verge of passing the Great America Outdoors Act with Republican support, plus almost unanimous Democratic support.

What makes the bill socialist policy? Socialism means a lot of things to people today but has historically been defined as government ownership of the means of production. Land is an indispensable means of production. The Great America Outdoors Act would socialize private land on an unprecedented scale. In the rest of this article, I'll call it the Land Grab bill.

The Land Grab bill contains two titles. The first would spend $9.5 billion over five years to reduce the backlog of maintenance and restoration on existing federal lands. That should be a clue that the federal government is not good at taking care of what it owns.

The second title is the overtly socialist part. It would dramatically increase the rate of government acquisition of private land and make it permanent. Currently, Congress makes annual appropriations for federal, state, and local acquisition under the authority of the Land and Water Conservation Fund of 1965.

Land socialism, as practiced since the Land and Water Conservation Fund became law, is a peculiar kind of socialism. Traditionally, when the means of production are socialized, production is intended to continue. For instance, when Britain nationalized steel mills and coal mines in the 1950s, they continued producing steel and coal (although in practice, production tended to go down, and then down some more). But when the four federal land agencies — the Forest Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service, and Bureau of Land Management — buy private land, the purpose is to take it out of production and "preserve" it.

In short, modern land socialism perversely locks up the means of production.

Private property is a necessary condition of freedom and limited government. Among types of private property, land ownership has always been considered the most or among the most important for maintaining freedom and limited government. The United States already has far too much socialized land. The federal government owns 640 million acres or 28% of the country's total acreage. In the 11 Western states and Alaska, the four federal land agencies control more than 50% of the land. Some rural counties are more than 90% federally owned, and many more are more than 75%.

The consequences of all this government land are just what you'd expect from socialism. The environmental condition of the vast Western, federal estate ranges from fair to poor to dismal. The economic effects are uniformly dismal. Rural counties with lots of federal land (which are exempt from property taxes) struggle as resource producers are pushed off the land.

This environmental and economic devastation will only get worse as $900 million in annual funding from the Land Grab bill eventually buys millions and millions of acres of private land. But socialists care much more about power than about the environment or the economy.

It's, therefore, no surprise that 44 of the 47 Democrats in the Senate are co-sponsors of the Land Grab bill. But it is shocking that the main sponsor and 14 co-sponsors are Republicans, including several who opposed the Green New Deal because of its socialist character.

To take only one example, Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner, the main sponsor, wrote in a March 2019 op-ed that the Green New Deal is a "thinly veiled attempt to implement the radical left’s socialist agenda."

In light of this statement, it appears that Gardner only opposes socialism when it is politically expedient. Because he and 15 other Republicans support the Land Grab bill and because it also enjoys majority support in the House, it is almost guaranteed to become law. The only hope now of stopping enactment is if some of the Senate Republican sponsors and President Trump wake up.

In his 2019 State of the Union address, Trump vowed that "America will never be a socialist country." But the president was hornswoggled at a secret White House meeting in early March into supporting the bill on the preposterous grounds that it would help several endangered senators get reelected.

At this point, the Land Grab bill is so close to Senate passage that the best strategy for Senate Republicans and the president is to support amendments that will make it less toxic. These include: a five-year sunset; requiring that state and local governments approve any future land acquisitions in their jurisdictions; a prohibition on the use of eminent domain; and a budget offset to pay for all the new spending.

To view online: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/in-supporting-land-grab-bill-republicans-unwittingly-support-socialism

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