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Cato Policy Report, January/February 1995

To Be Governed...

It's an entitlement

A [Buffalo] city official who admitted stealing at least $200,000 in public funds resigned, then asked to be paid $8,500 for 50 days of unused time off.

--Washington Post, Oct. 27, 1994

Not to mention a point of extortion

Mayor Sharon Pratt Kelly yesterday proposed building a $300 million tourist center, shopping area and bus inspection station...that would be a mandatory gateway for tour buses visiting the city.

The Internodal Transportation and Commercial Center...would generate $70 million annually, according to the city figures.

It would do so by tapping into the thousands of buses that visit the city each year, each of which would be required to stop at the center for a $95 safety inspection.

"All buses coming into the city will have a point of reference," Kelly said yesterday.

--Washington Post, Oct. 27, 1994

Whoops! Wrong sound bite

Australia's Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating on Wednesday again succeeded in splitting the country's opposition when a number of conservatives defied their leader and voted against . . . the Keating government's sexual privacy legislation, which prevents the prosecution of adults engaging in consenting . . . sex in their own home. . . .

Australia's conservative politicians have opposed the new laws, citing traditional commitments to personal freedoms.

--Reuter, Oct. 19, 1994

Spending other people's money isn't the best thing about government, it's the only thing

[Republican candidate for governor of Maryland Ellen Sauerbrey said] that she would return the money from her budget cuts to taxpayers, while [Democratic candidate Parris Glendening] would spend his savings on new programs.

"If you're not going to invest in education, public safety and jobs, why would anyone want to be governor?" Glendening replied.

--Washington Post, Nov. 9, 1994

Good questions

Why is the [National Endowment for the Arts] necessary? Why can't the arts make it on their own?

[NEA head Jane Alexander] sighed. She'd heard the question many times. . . .

"There are a lot of things the government supports that one group or another doesn't like," she went on, with energy. "Some city people don't know why they should be taxed to subsidize wheat farmers when they don't live in a rural state. Why should childless people be taxed for public schools? Why should nonmotorists be taxed for highways, or middle-class people to pay for health care for the poor? Or people be taxed to support the arts? Because it is in the good of the whole nation."

-- Parade Magazine, Oct. 30, 1994

It's sort of a preindustrial prembience

In Boston, Van Nuys, Calif., and Kansas City, Mo., . . . the U.S. Postal Service has removed clocks and other "non-user-friendly items" such as bulletin boards and calendars from 30 lobbies. . . . This is not about keeping customers from watching their lives tick away while buying stamps, says Postal Service spokesperson Sandra Harding. "Clocks look bureaucratic," she says. "They are not an imperative part of the post-office experience."

--Newsweek, Oct. 31, 1994

An advance so strong that even the Post has noticed

Call it windy rhetoric, call it mere symbolism, but the pledge issued today for "free trade in the Asia Pacific" is a sign of capitalism's continuing advance worldwide following the collapse of the Berlin Wall.

--Washington Post, Nov. 16, 1994

At least he knows how the books are kept

[D.C. mayor-elect Marion Barry] is devoting long hours to examining the District's budget, for which deficit projections have worsened dramatically in recent weeks.

Taking the lead in that effort are former city administrator Elijah B. Rogers and former deputy mayor Ivanhoe Donaldson, who pleaded guilty in 1985 to stealing $190,000 in city funds.

--Washington Post, Nov. 17, 1994

This article originally appeared in the January/February 1995 edition of Cato Policy Report.