The Cancercrats of Texas

This article was sent to 25 mainstream daily newspapers in Texas.

The Article:

The politicians who run Texas government want you to hand over three billion of your hard-earned taxbucks so they can create yet another state bureaucracy.

It's called Proposition 15 and it will be on the November 6 statewide ballot. A yes vote will change the Texas Constitution, which will authorize taxpayer funded cancer research.

It won't cure cancer. It will only create a bureaucracy.

Like a dog that can't pass a tree without giving it a hind-legged salute, government can't do anything without creating a bureaucracy. A career bureaucrat with ruling-party connections will be appointed to the top spot of this so-called "cancer research" bureaucracy and receive the six figure salary and all the taxpayer-funded perks and bennies that the rest of us mere mortals can only dream of. The Bureaucrat will then appoint all of his or her cronies and hangers-on and toadies to executive positions. Career civil servants, whose jobs will primarily consist of shuffling papers from inbox to outbox, will be set for life.

So you have to ask yourself, do you really want state apparatchiks spending your money for you? When you think "bureaucracy," think New Orleans. Think Hurricane Katrina. Think FEMA response.

What's worse, "Cancer research" is an open-ended concept. It can go on forever. In 1898 the federal government enacted a "temporary" telephone tax to help fund The Spanish-American War. The war lasted four months. The tax lasted 108 years.

As libertarian activist Sy Leon observed, "You can hardly expect a politician to give up power, any more than you can expect a baboon to give up bananas."

Put another way, the Iron Rule of Bureaucracy states that virtually all bureaucracies exist primarily to benefit the people who run them.

People with cancer or those with loved-ones suffering from this devastating scourge will understandably want to vote for this bill. But using coercive taxation against others to fund your personal cause is not an act of compassion. The tax-taking cancercrats will be siphoning money from the bank account of your neighbor with the autistic daughter, picking the pockets of that family up the street desperately trying to deal with their parent's Alzheimer's disease, cutting into the incomes of disabled war vets largely ignored by yet another failed bureaucracy, the Veteran's Administration.

What right do you have to decide that your tragedy takes precedence over theirs?

Feeding ever more money to ever more bureaucrats will never solve a problem. Bureaucrats still haven't brought relief to New Orleans, haven't ended poverty, haven't won the drug war, and won't cure cancer.

If you sincerely care about curing cancer, quit funding coercive bureaucracies that can only help your cause by harming everyone else. Instead, do the responsible thing by going out and finding a good non-governmental organization (NGO) to help. Churches, charitable institutions, humanitarian agencies, private welfare groups, nonprofit societies, grassroots organizations, national and local foundations, mutual help activities. They're in your community and all over the internet.

Give them your support, your money, your time. They won't spend half of their resources on bureaucrats, they'll spend it on research.

As Texas Libertarian Party State Chair Pat Dixon put it, "The history of government bureaucracies like this is that you are lucky if half of the money is spent on what was promised."

The other half, of course, will be spent on the salaries and perks of the professional cancercrats.

It's medical researchers, not bureaucrats, who will find the cure for cancer.

On November 6, for the sake of your wallets, yourselves, your loved-ones, and for the sake of supporting real cancer research, vote "NO" on Proposition 15.

The result:

Not surprisingly, none of the 15 newspapers that function as the mainstream media in Texas published the article, although they did publish other lip service opposition pieces.

The Moneygrab Prop won the hearts and minds of Texans by 61%.

Now that Texascrats know how easy it is to separate taxbucks from suckers simply by manipulating emotions, expect more amendments in the future:

Vote YES on Proposition 32 so the Great State of Texas can spend five billion taxbucks on research to perfect Mom's Apple Pie.

Vote YES on Proposition 47 and give nine billion taxbucks to the loving and caring governmental officials of the Revered Lone Star State for never-ending and unspecified funding for doing something nice and heartwarming for puppies and kitties beloved by little blonde-haired baby daughters.

Vote YES on Blank Check 119.