Beyond Venture Socialism

It’s a safe assumption that American citizens, no matter their party affiliation, believe government is wasteful. Government programs never come in on budget, as the recent and predictable example of the Affordable Care Act demonstrates. The American people were told that the ACA would cost $900 billion in ten years, but the latest estimates by the CBO indicate that it will cost a staggering $2.6 trillion in its first in that same time period. This does not even begin to include the multitudes of anecdotal stories we have all heard about government agencies spending hundreds of dollars on relatively inexpensive items such as hammers. We hear these accounts and accept them as, perhaps, exaggerations of actual government waste.

Recently, I was approached by an individual with a similar story about a particularly metastatic case of waste. This person has asked not to be named, but what she has allowed me to share is that she was an employee of the Washington State Department of Licensing. For the purposes of this discussion, let’s call her Julia. Julia, having renounced her government handout-chasing ways, came to me with a story about a chair. Allegedly, upon being hired at the DOL, a desk chair was purchased for her. Wondering why the chair she was currently using was insufficient, she paid special attention tothe new one when it arrived. Finding the chair unremarkable, Julia set about trying to find out how much it had cost. After discovering the outrageously high price of $500.00, she then learned that it was made by inmates in Washington State’s prisons.

As it turns out, this story is not anecdotal, but based in reality. There is, in fact, a government owned company in Washington State called Correctional Industries wherein prisoners are allowed to work making various products. According to RCW (Revised Code of Washington) 72.09.00, Correctional Industries was set up in an attempt to “offset tax & public support costs” of running the prisons in the State. When one continues reading the RCW’s and WAC’s (Washington Administrative Code) concerning Correctional Industries, several disturbing facts come to light.