FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED OCT. 31, 1997
The brilliant if short-lived nineteenth century economist Frederic Bastiat once wrote an essay called "What is Seen and What is Not Seen."
Msr. Bastiat pointed out that government interventions generally benefit an easily-identified minority, whose members can be counted on the express their gratitude with votes, political contributions, or whatever.
Of course (since government produces nothing), when government uses its power to redistribute assets, an equal amount of loss must be assigned somewhere. But because the burdens are generally spread over a much larger group than the "benefits," they tend to be invisible.
It's easy to find the dairy farmer who appreciates the good living he and his family are guaranteed by tax-funded "milk price supports." It's harder to demonstrate that each and every poor family in America has slightly less to feed its children, due to the price of each gallon of milk thus being artificially raised by a few nickels.
Who can say when the cumulative burden of many such little "straws on the camel's back" causes a struggling father to give up, turn to drink, and leave home. No one can say, though we certainly know that it happens more now, than it did back when taxes were less than 5 percent of gross pay.
And this effect is even more pernicious when government doesn't even play by its own rules.
Most Las Vegans would probably be willing to tolerate slightly higher prices for coffee at McCarran Airport, slightly less efficient service, slightly higher "landing fees" which may discourage first one, then a dozen, then a few thousand tourists from choosing this as their vacation destination ... all in the interest of seeing "disadvantaged" folks get a hand up.
Such taxpayers are rightly outraged to find out that airport contracts "set aside" for the "disadvantaged" instead went to personal friends of the county commissioners -- including a wealthy woman who organized six-figure campaign fund-raisers for county Commissioners Myrna Williams and Yvonne Atkinson Gates, in return for which new airport concessionaire Judy Klein enjoyed the presence of County Commissioner Williams as matron of honor at her wedding last month. (It was the event of the season, splashed all over the Society pages. Also in the "disadvantaged" wedding party, County Commissioner Gates' daughter Kamina served as flower girl, while County Commissioner Lorraine Hunt sang "When Somebody Loves You.")
The outrage will understandably grow as "those who are not seen" start to inconveniently step forward ... folks like Katheleen Fernandez, hard-working owner of The Old Coffee Mill coffeehouse, who applied to expand her successful four-year-old business into McCarran Airport's new terminal, but was shunted aside in favor of Ms. Klein, who has no similar experience.
(Review-Journal reporter Susan Greene tracked down Ms. Fernandez and interviewed her for the front page Oct. 19. Ms. Fernandez says she was told if she wanted to succeed next year, she's better start improving the class of people she hangs out with. I doubt they meant the police officers who now seem pretty interested in her story.)
The first instinct is to say this process needs to be "fixed."
But that would be wrong.
This scandal is not the exception; it's the rule. The airport's guidelines say the recipient of a contract set aside for the "disadvantaged" must have grossed at least $500,000 per year for the past three years.
County Commissioner Mary Kincaid (one of the few not implicated) was shocked to realize that, although she is generally regarded as a successful small businesswoman, her flower shop in North Las Vegas fails to gross the required amount.
In other words, County Commissioner Mary Kincaid, herself, is too poor to qualify as "disadvantaged"!
This is the way such government programs nearly always end up. Taxpayers are talked into creating some tax-paid handouts for "the arts," imagining small sums will be disbursed to struggling artists and composers starving in drafty attics.
Instead, such unkempt "losers" are quickly shown the door by supercilious government bureaucrats sitting at desks that cost more than the artist seeks, too busy to be bothered with requests for less than $100,000. "Go hire yourself a professional grant writer," the misfits are told, as the lion's share goes to established ballets and symphonies.
The "disadvantaged set-aside" program cannot be "fixed," because it's working precisely as the politicians want it to.
The solution is to let contracts on the basis of competitive sealed bids. If some "outreach" is judged appropriate to encourage more firms owned by women or racial minorities to submit bids, fine. But the "disadvantaged set-aside" program must be taken out behind the barn and shot.
Vin Suprynowicz is the assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. The column is syndicated in the United States and Canada via Mountain Media Syndications, P.O. Box 4422, Las Vegas Nev. 89127.
-- Samuel Adams