Ohio man leaves $3 million to Archbold community college for student scholarships

See, not all rich people are evil. Here we have a multi-millionare who gave a bunch of money to his local community college. I've talked to some liberals who flat out scoff at the idea that rich people are generous and can provide a lot of benefits to their community.

Some even claim that libertarians would rely too much on this charity. As evidenced yet again, I really don't think that is the case. There is actually a long tradition of philantropy in the USA. Kind of a shame that this idea is almost lost in our modern world.

Government, on the other hand, is not charity. It is force. Every government fails to provide even the most basic promises to the people. The sooner we stop believing in the fantasy of the State, the better. Charity and voluntary trade are the best tools we have to make society a better place.

ISOH/IMPACT

This is my favorite local charity. They are located right down the street from my house and spend $.97 out of ever dollar on the people they help. This is huge, and I would highly recommend that everyone look into them. They do a lot of disaster relief all over the world.

Their mission statement:

to Reach Out & Serve Others in the name of Christ through disaster relief and development projects at home, across the United States, and around world.

This may turn off some critics of religion. But, from what I can tell, they really do help a lot of people and are well known in the Toledo area. That is more important to me than what religion they are. I am a huge believer in Charity and giving back what you can to the community. A lot of people are hurting out there, and the more I can help the better. Take a look at their page and please donate if you can.

My only rule is that I try to find out whether the charity takes money from the government. If they do, like the Red Cross and others, they will never get a dime from me. Otherwise, I only donate to small charities or individuals in need.

The public school cash cow

A former TPS administrator has been accused of stealing a staggering $660,000 from Toledo and $181,000 from Cleveland Public Schools. Not only that, but newer revelations tell us that he ordered investigations and background checks of board members and school critics. With public money of course.

Will anyone ever be held responsible for not doing their job and checking up on where all this cash was going? Doubtful. I wonder how many requests for new school taxes will be put through next year.

The government kills your dogs

The Toledo Blade ran a story about a recent pit bull party held at SylvaniaVET animal hospital. As usual, the government's callous disregard for life (this time animal life) shines through. It's sad that the 35 people who showed up found it necessary to even be in this situation. The Toledo city council recently decided that so-called "pit bulls" are inherently vicious. People are now allowed to own only one. Ohio is the only state that deems pit bulls as inherently vicious. Gee, thanks for protecting me from these horrible animals.

There has recently been a lot of controversy about the number of dogs that Toledo and Lucas County have been killing. They even killed one family's dog and lied to them and tried to cover it up. It's amazing that we still trust government with responsibility over animals. I am completely disgusted that my tax dollars are used for things like this.

The paradox of city services

City governments are involved in all sorts of industries that people claim are essential to our well being and can only be provided by government. Furthermore, it is argued that poor people wouldn't normally be able to afford services that are provided by tax dollars from those who are relatively well off. Ultimately, these arguments don't convince me. If you're really worried about poor people, why aren't they the only recipients of these services? Why are the rest of us forced to use city trash, when we could afford to pay for a private, more competitive service?

Another huge problem is that as the economy worsens, cities are forced to cut back on these services. Thus, at times when there are more poor people than normal and they are needed the most, government is busy cutting back or eliminating them all together. Trash collection is a great example of this. Last year, city officials were considering moving to a shifting trash collection schedule. Which ultimately means less and more complicated service. This is a classic case of what happens when you only have one trash collection provider by force to choose from.

Trash is now being looked at again, as Toledo unsurprisingly still has not solved its financial problems.

With a projected 2009 deficit of at least $22 million, Bill Franklin, the city's public service director, acknowledged that the city could no longer afford its $12.7 million trash collection operation.

There are only a limited number of ways the city can address this problem. According to this new Blade article, they are looking at hiring a private company to save money, or shelling out another large sum of money to buy automated trucks.This only goes to show that, once again, city services are behind the curve when it comes to what they offer, compared to what is typically available in the marketplace. Otherwise, the city still went ahead with its plan of raising trash collection fees and reducing the number of trash collection days it provides.

Another great example is how the city of Columbus suspended its yard waste pickup program. While their taxes previously went to pay for it, there will now be a $49.50 subscription fee when the service is reinstated. Clearly, the government provided service there has not been adequate to provide the people's needs. Once again, classic monopolistic behavior: cut services and raise fees. Yet another reason we shouldn't be forced to rely on them in the first place. Do I think people would suffer if the government didn't engage in monopolistic trash pickup? Not really. Nor do I think allowing personal choice in trash service would make the city become a giant garbage heap.

Excessive pay for government employees

At a time when most local government are facing budget problems, the overtime pay for government employees rose to ridiculous lofty heights. Ohio paid out more than $124 million in overtime last year. This only serves to underscore the terrible mismanagement of resources caused by government power. In related news, Toledo's city council failed to increase the taxes of 19,000 people who live in Toledo and work outside the city. So now, the combative mayor is laying off 75 city policeman instead. Just a couple years ago, Toledo policemen were paid over 3.5 million in overtime money. I'm sure it's a lot more now, probably at least $5 million. See this.

Perhaps what we should do is limit all government pay to the median local income. There is absolutely no reason why government employees should make a dime more than those they are supposed to serve. If there are so many people who believe that government is good, there should still be plenty of volunteers who would take the job. It is well known that they enjoy generous compensation and benefits, and getting rid of these would save millions of dollars locally and statewide.

Toledo's mayor Finkbeiner is paid $136,000. Toledo's median income for males as of the year 2000 was $35,407. Dropping the mayor's income to this level would save city taxpayers about $100,000. The average annual salary for a three year Toledo Police officer is $53,657 not including overtime pay or benefits. There are currently 628 police officers employed by the city. At these levels, which are probably pretty low, cutting their salary to the city's average would save taxpayers at least $11,461,000 per year... and a LOT more once their overtime is taken away.

We can no longer afford to sit by while government bureaucrats waste our money on thier own inflated salaries. The benefits we get from having a government (if any) are far less than what these people earn. Important resources are taken from the productive class and siphoned off to the political class, extremely hampering our economic well being. Things will only get worse unless we are successful in taking back our freedom. This would also make existing budget problems disappear.

The police are cracking down

Various media are carrying a small Associated Press report on a 2008 Metro Initiative which supposedly reduced fatal crashes in Ohio's big cities. As usual in the media, it's pretty thin on details and big on how successful the government is. If the government says they succeed at whatever they do, I guess that's good enough...

The 2008 Metro Report on their web site tries to justify these claims. It seems faulty at best, misleading at worst. It compares average serious crash levels from 2005-2007 with crash levels during the 2008 enforcement period. Why average? Why not compare each year individually? If there were tons of crashes in 2005, less in 2006, more in 2007, and less in 2008, the averages quoted in this report wouldn't really tell us anything at all. Sadly, it doesn't look like they thought about that.

When you look at the serious metro crash totals in Table 5 on p.11, it indicates 34,997 in 2005, 33,619 in 2006, and 31,907 in 2007. This corresponds to a steady 4% and 5% reduction between years. However, when you get down to the serious metro crash totals in Table 17 on p. 23, there were 775 in 2008 and an average of 906 from 2005 to 2007. These numbers don't make any sense at all. If anyone sees where I'm going wrong, please let me know.

Table 14 on p. 21 contains traffic stop totals per month in 2008. If they really wanted me to believe their claims, they would include traffic enforcement totals and serious crash totals for each month between 2005 and 2007, and then compare these with each month of 2008. I suspect that if this was done, there would be a lot more variance than what we see here. Which would in turn lead us to conclude that aggressive police enforcement of the metro highways does not necessarily reduce serious crashes.

Putting out such flawed reports like this only hurts the credibility of the highway patrol. If the reports were just a little more detailed, it would probably hurt their cause even more. The media seems like a willing propaganda tool in reporting their claims but not really even bothering to look at the report to see if they are true.