Reforming What?

Reforming everything they ever F'ed up in the first place!

"Some of government's accomplishments cited in these books bring to mind Foundation for Economic Education president Lawrence Reed's point: "Have you ever noticed how statists are constantly 'reforming' their own handiwork? Education reform. Health-care reform. Welfare reform. Tax reform. The very fact that they're always busy 'reforming' is an implicit admission that they didn't get it right the first 50 times."  So government is hailed for ending slavery and Jim Crow, but the long government enforcement of those repressive laws is passed over. In the last chapter of To Promote the General Welfare, Paul Light of New York University identifies the federal government's greatest accomplishments from 1945 to 2000. Several actually involve lifting the burden or reducing the power of government-devolving responsibility to the states, freeing trade, limiting nuclear weapons, reforming government operations, making government more transparent, deregulating sectors of the economy, reforming welfare, cutting taxes, even restraining spending. It's hardly a triumph of big government for government to correct its longstanding errors."

http://reason.com/archives/2012/10/14/the-empty-case-for-big-government/
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