A microcosm of everything that’s wrong with too much government
Bookworm on Apr 03 2009 at 2:14 pm | Filed under: Uncategorized
The Oakland police force suffered a shattering loss last week when four of its officers were killed in a single day. Not only did the shooting highlight the risks police officers take every day, it also highlighted that the Oakland Police force is singularly understaffed. Oakland is also going broke, so much so that it’s contemplating imposing on its beleaguered citizens a 10.25 percent sales tax. Wow!
But back to the force. You’re the City of Oakland. You have too few men and women in blue to keep the peace, but you have no money. What do you do? Turn to the private sector, of course:
The cost of keeping a police officer up and running on the streets of Oakland is about $250,000 a year.
The cost of employing four armed guards to provide security in commercial districts in East Oakland is about $180,000 a year.
You do the math.
The Oakland City Council decision to hire four armed guards unless officers are deployed by the third week in April is a worthy gesture but hardly sufficient to address the security needs of an area besieged by violence and robberies. In a 2003 study on blighted areas, crime rates in East Oakland were nearly 2 1/2 times higher than the rest of the city.
I don’t think any of you can honestly question my support for our police forces. I am daily grateful for their willingness to take the risks so my family and I can live safely. This post, therefore, is not intended in any way to criticize any police force. It is intended, however, to point out that, when you have government squaring off against private industry, the latter, which is responsive to market forces, is almost always cheaper.
This is a reminder that Obama’s increasingly focused effort to expand government is going to cost us lots and lots of money. This burden on taxpayers will arise, not just because a larger government, by definition, demands more money to pay for more services. The burden will also be tremendous because we’ll have to pay for the fact that government invariably runs its business less efficiently than the private sector.
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8 Responses to “A microcosm of everything that’s wrong with too much government”
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This will last only until the private security company has to shoot someone and they get sued.
Greetings:
At the risk of appearing callous, I sure would like to see a breakout of that $250 large per officer number. I’ve come across similar numbers, like $300 large per public school classroom, and I say to myself what kind of management allows this to happen. Back during my military service, the folk-wisdom was that there were 8 or nine support troops for each fighting man. When I was running printing companies, there was always an “overhead rate” but what really are our civil masters including in this number?
An armed guard isn’t the same as a police officer. Differences in training, in responsibility and in authority. I don’t want profitability to be part of law enforcement.
11B40…I’m going to guess that the $250K is the total cost of the police department divided by the number of officers. If this is indeed the case, you *could* argue that the incremental cost of adding one officer is only comprised of his direct costs: salary, overtime, benefits, car, etc…and that adding an officer doesn’t increase the salary of the police chief or the number of sergeants, etc. But what tends to happen in organizations of all types is that most of these overhead costs *do* tend to grow with direct-labor staffing…if there are 2X as many policemen, sooner or later the chief will argue that his salary should be higher now that he’s running a bigger department…etc etc
Too much and too little…
Check this out:
http://market-ticker.denninger.net/archives/932-Wheres-My-Pitchfork.html
At least we assume that the police are doing their job – it appears that the Feds are not doing theirs. It goes back to that old question we’ve asked here several time : What is the function of government? And also, we might ask, what is the point of laws if they are not enforced equally without regard for station or personal wealth? Corruption – enforcement of laws on a selective basis – will turn us into another banana republic…
Ran across this today. Thought it was interesting.
http://covertrationingblog.com/new-business-models-for-healthcare/strategies-for-the-battle-over-universal-healthcare
Slightly off topic…?
As the headline for this post of Book’s says:
Everything That’s Wrong With Too Much Government
Well, I don’t like this new info tidbit at all: Once again, Congress has abdicated its responsibilities to craft responsible law, by delegating immense power to the Executive Branch. Without any semblance of checks and balances on that power.
The Cybersecurity Act of 2009 (PDF) gives the president the ability to “declare a cybersecurity emergency” and shut down or limit Internet traffic in any “critical” information network “in the interest of national security.” The bill does not define a critical information network or a cybersecurity emergency. That definition would be left to the president.
The bill does not only add to the power of the president. It also grants the Secretary of Commerce “access to all relevant data concerning [critical] networks without regard to any provision of law, regulation, rule, or policy restricting such access.” This means he or she can monitor or access any data on private or public networks without regard to privacy laws.
Shut down internet traffic? Your browser becomes a dead zone. Add that to the “Fairness Doctrine” (by that name, or by “local control” laws…) and you have a very volatile set of powers.
Limit internet traffic? Purge our Domain Naming System of the top 1000 conservative blogs, so that, say, “www.bookwormroom.com” no longer translates to an ipaddress, and can no longer be found…
The Presidential Announcement:
“In this time of national emergency, when civil unrest threatens to tear at the fabric of society, we must demand that irresponsible actors change to protect American lives rather than put them at risk. Bloggers share in the covenant of responsibility to all Americans. This is a temporary restriction on only the most irresponsible, until we can determine that they will contribute to strengthening American democracy, rather than putting all Americans more at risk. Let me be perfectly clear: Yelling Fire in a crowded theatre is not, and has never been, an acceptable use of Freedom Of Speech. It’s time for all Americans to demand accountability.”
Take a look at the italicized description of this act again. Do you see any check or balance placed on the Executive Branch to perpetrate just about anything it wants to, in the area of “internet security”?
Government intrusion on the internet? It’s a done deal:
http://www.infowars.net/articles/march2008/310308Google.htm
As for contractors vs government employees, just look at the situation with Blackwater et al in Iraq. Once a private contractor gets its foot in the door, and the government is able to “cut back” and tout it’s savings, it is extremely difficult to root the contractor out. The costs gradually rise, there is mission creep, entrenchment, and before long the government can’t afford to give them the boot and make the initial investment to restart it’s own programs.