The resignation of Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber after just a little more than a month of his fourth term in office could be seen as making a case for term limits. But really, it is a classic example of the pitfalls of using big government to solve social problems.
Oregon limits governors to two consecutive four-year terms. Kitzhaber was in the governor’s mansion from 1995 to 2003. Then, Putin-like, after letting someone else be governor for a couple of terms, he ran again and won in 2010. Despite warning signs from Pulitzer-Prize-winning Willamette Week reporter Nigel Jaquiss, Kitzhaber coasted to victory (endorsed by Jaquiss’ own paper, among others) over a Republican legislator who represented one of the least-populated, and therefore politically inconsequential, parts of the state.
What brought Kitzhaber down was clear evidence that his girlfriend, Cylvia Hayes, who called herself the First Lady of Oregon and bragged that she was his “policy advisor,” aggressively used her connections to the governor to get contracts worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to lobby the state on energy policy, among other things. Rather than attempt to show that Hayes was keeping her roles as First Lady and lobbyist separate, Kitzhaber stonewalled public access to emails and even reportedly ordered his staff to destroy thousands of such emails. It was this stonewalling, more than the corruption charges, that led major Democrats in the state to turn against the governor.
Kitzhaber is a charismatic man who has a reputation with working with people on both sides of the political aisle. Yet this is far from his first major political scandal that cost taxpayer millions and involved questionable actions on the part of his friends and associates.
Perhaps best known is the Cover Oregon debacle in which the state spent well over $200 million creating a web site to allow people to sign up for health insurance that never worked. The person in charge of the project publicly resigned–then continued to earn more than $14,000 a month for months after his supposed resignation.
Better known locally was Columbia River Crossing, a $3.4-billion bridge that wasn’t needed except to allow Portland’s light-rail line to invade Vancouver, Washington. Kitzhaber was firmly behind this bridge and his 2010 campaign manager, Patricia McCaig, was working out of his office to lobby the state legislature to put up its share of the funds for this bloated megaproject. It looked like she was going to be successful until Willamette Week discovered that she had been paid more than $550,000 by the consulting firm that had in turn been paid tens of millions of dollars by the state to supposedly write the environmental impact statement for the bridge.
Going back to his first term in office, there was a scandal when the Department of Motor Vehicles spent more than $125 million trying to install a supposedly $50-million computer system that never worked. Kitzhaber argued that the project was initiated before he took office, but he let it continue despite spiraling costs.
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The striking thing about all of these scandals is that they involve programs whose intentions sound wonderful: protect the environment; save energy; provide health care for everyone; improve transportation; reduce bureaucracy. These aren’t the kind of tawdry scandals you hear about in other parts of the country, such as the mafia illegally dumping toxic waste in landfills or public officials using public funds to influence elections.
Yet at heart these are the same problem. Whether disposing of toxic waste or providing health insurance, whether building light rail or operating toll roads, whenever we decide that government, rather than the private sector, should be involved in megaprojects, we create opportunities for this kind of corruption. The progressives who run Oregon decry corruption yet remain willfully blind to the fact that their own policies generate that corruption.
The progressive ideal is that, if you put the right people in charge, they will manage resources in the public interest, saving taxpayers’ money and promoting social equity because there will be no greedy shareholders to demand that a portion of the revenues be concentrated in their grubby little hands. When scandals happen, it’s not because there was anything wrong with the ideal but because the wrong people happened to be put in charge.
Of course, since the goals are lofty, the people in charge soon start to think of themselves as indispensable. They work hard in the public interest, so $14,000-a-month salaries seem justified.
The real problem, however, is that public agencies lack the discipline and innovative pressures found in the private sector. Costs spiraling out of control? Just requisition more money from taxpayers. Are the transportation solutions being proposed obsolete? Tough; just build enough and maybe people won’t notice.
If Mark Zucherberg and a few of his college friends could build Facebook; if Larry Page and Sergey Brin could build Google; then why couldn’t Oregon build a simple web site to sell insurance? The answer, of course, is that for every Facebook and Google there are thousands of failed internet start-ups. Given that, it shouldn’t be surprising that 36 states failed to get web-based insurance exchanges going; it might be more surprising that as many as 14 managed to succeed.
Given this reality, a true progressive–someone who cared more about the end results than about the means–would consider government to be a tool of last resort rather than first. Until Oregon and other liberals figure that out, they are going to be susceptible to any conman (and conwoman) who promises to solve their problems if only the government would give them power and money.
First, if men were angels, we wouldn’t need government comprised of selfish devils. Or something like that…
“Kitzhaber coasted to victory … over a Republican legislator who represented one of the least-populated, and therefore politically inconsequential, parts of the state.”
I don’t think that’s why Richardson lost. Probably the fact that he’s a devout Mormon and very socially conservative did him in. If Oregon put up a more libertarian Republican candidate, he or she might do well. But hey, now Oregon has the first openly bi-sexual governor!
Spoken with the dewy-eyed idealism of someone who’s never worked in the private sector.
Then the health care exchanges are a very poor example. The whole concept was birthed by the Heritage Foundation and endorsed whole-heartedly by private insurance companies. It’s practically the epitome of government stepping aside and letting the private sector try and solve the problem. The cost-cutting portions of the Affordable Care Act are entirely unconcerned with the means and designed to let states experiment and compete to find the best solutions.
If that’s surprising then I suppose it must be stupefying to discover that on the whole the act is a success.
But a Democratic president backed it so I guess it must be all bad, right?
“Then the health care exchanges are a very poor example. The whole concept was birthed by the Heritage Foundation…” [Emphasis added to parts that are entirely false.]
Playing fast and loose with the facts, are we?
According to the Heritage Foundation, quoted in the Politifact article linked above, “True exchanges are simply a market mechanism to enable families to choose their health insurance. President Obama’s exchanges, by contrast, are a vehicle to introduce sweeping regulation and federal standardization on health insurance.”
“If that’s surprising then I suppose it must be stupefying to discover that on the whole the act is a success.”
Way to distract away from the fact that most states failed to get the job done. As pointed out here time and time again, a coercive monopolist tends to perform his or her service badly and inefficiently.
Weird, then, that Obamacare got exactly zero Republican votes in either house, huh?
I don’t believe the jury’s in on Obamacare. It’s consistently polled under water from its passage to present day. It will be interesting to see how people react to the non-compliance fines when they start doing their taxes this year.
Frank:
Not according to the link you yourself cited:
CapitalistRoader:
Is really it that weird? Seems to me the Republican party opposed just about everything that they thought might make Obama look good. But I never argued that ACA is good politics.
I’m not arguing that it’s popular or perfect. But by any measure of whether it has achieved its primary goal, getting more Americans insured, it has succeeded. If we had an opposition party that was interested in anything but its total destruction it might have been tweaked or improved by now to everyone’s benefit, but instead we’re stuck with something that’s both imperfect and immutable.
Ohai labours under so many misconceptions its hard to know where to start or cover them all.
Insurance companies are not the epitome of capitalism. They once were, then socialists, fools and do-gooders micro-regulated them. Then the insurers used regulatory capture to become monopolist crony capitalists, which are the exact opposite of capitalists.
Citing the NYT as proof of Obama’s success is like citing Der Stuermer as proof of Hitler’s success.
As for the dewy eyed faith in capitalism, yes, I too have worked for incompetent, inefficient idiots in the private sector. Two points: 1. They mend their ways or go bankrupt, which never happens to government until total collapse. 2. The private sector may be only very slightly more efficient than government, but even a small difference compounds over time.
I live in Canada. We have universal health care. You American lefties don’t have any faint idea what’s coming at you. You are lovely people but pig headed, insular and simply will not learn from the hideous debacles of the Brits NHS and our medicare.
As for the heritage Foundation and exchanges, yeah sure, Obama took exchanges and so perverted them that they are not exchanges anymore. It’s like saying that shit is like food because that’s how it started. Yuck to both.
And saying that what people are getting is “medical insurance” is a gross perversion of the word insurance. It is welfare, pogey*, a government handout supported by tax. Insurance allows people to pool risk by freedom of association. Obamacare pools risk by diktat of politicos and bureaucrats. Did you learn nothing from the horrors of the Soviet system of allocation by diktat of politicos and bureaucrats?
Oh wait, I forgot, Americans are special and unlike everyone else in the entire human race will react well to perverse incentives. We Canadians bleed our system dry by turning up at hospital emergency rooms every week or so for cold and allergy pills and because we’re bored or lonely, but not sick, because its Free!!! But Americans would never do anything like that for Free!!! Freee! Freeeeee!! stuff. Would they?
* A Canadian maritime expression for government handout in the form of welfare, unemployment benefits, disability payments, especially benefits falsely obtained. Hence the cane or crutch ostentatiously used by the faking recipient for his regular trips to his doctor or to report to his case worker is called a ‘pogey stick’, jovially by the crook and disdainfully by the taxpayer. It is put away as soon as prying eyes are gone, so the cripple can dance.
“Not according to the link you yourself cited:
Obama says Heritage Foundation is source of health exchange idea: Mostly True”
Yes. That was about Obama’s hedging statement, not your over the top fabrication. Way to skip to the end by the way.
“It will be interesting to see how people react to the non-compliance fines when they start doing their taxes this year.”
How about flat out lying, especially people who had insurance for part of the year, but are still being penalized for something that’s bout their fault and is out of their control?
F the IRS, who is bullying Denver area dispensaries for not paying payroll taxes using electronic methods because banks won’t serve then due to fed regs. F the IRS and f the “Affordable” Health Care Act (as if health care and health insurance are somehow the same).
Aww. It must be awful–just awful–to live in a country that spends half as much as the US per-capita and gets the same or better results. Thanks for the warning!
I thnk I see the problem here:
Just as Americans are too stupid to move into apartment buildings and ride choo choo trains to work, they are too stupid to know that Obamacare is a good thing.
“the president knows full well — or he ought to learn before he speaks — that the exchanges we and most others support are very different from those in his package. True exchanges are simply a market mechanism to enable families to choose their health insurance…”
Sorry, I call BS. A “market mechanism to enable families to choose their health insurance” is called the insurance market. So all the conservative think tanks got together, had expensive catered meetings at the Hilton and came up with “let’s do the same thing we’ve always done and call it something different.”??? No, they got together and drummed up an idea that would reduce costs by ensuring (see: coercion) the pool got larger. They had to do something because the progressive machine was starting to push hard for single payer. Is Obamacare a cut and paste of what Heritage and others discussed? No, but it’s damn close. Y’all think Obamacare is a progressive idea?!?!? Forcing poor people to pay for something resulting in windfalls for privately traded companies (http://www.wsj.com/articles/obamacare-seen-boosting-health-care-stocks-1401889025). That’s GOP 101. You guys sound like Mitt Romney, “It was great when it was my idea. Now that it’s Obama’s, I hate it.”
It was a great idea at the individual state level. Fifty laboratories of democracy, et al. And if it fails then only one state is affected vs. the entire county being screwed.
I don’t know where Fred_Z lives, but where I lived in Canada, I didn’t need to go to a hospital for care: I could show up at a neighborhood clinic in a strip mall. No appointment necessary, just walk right in.
I agree with Ohai: It must be awful–just awful–to live in a country that spends half as much as the US per-capita and gets the same or better results.
Lee Iacocca said it best: “We showed ’em how to do it and they still couldn’t get it right”.