Are you tired of the moronic debate about the size of government? Well, you can help change that by talking about what really matters - whether we have Fair Government. This presentation, brought to you by the Fairness Coalition, lays us some key concepts in helping to reshape the debate.

2. An Introduction The United States has spent much of the last 30 years engaged in a rather inane and meaningless debate about the merits of the size of government. While we’ve been caught up in that debate we’ve forgotten about the more important characteristics of government – the actual reasons we fought to create this nation and fought to preserve it over 200 years. We didn’t fight for a small government or a big government – we fought to install and maintain a fair government – a government “of the people” that listened to us. This presentation examines the concept of Fair Government as an overriding political principle.

3. What is Fair Government ? Fair Government is truly representative government – representative government reflects the will of all the people and not just a handful of interests. No where in the constitution of the United States is there a provision ensuring the rights of Lobbyists to manipulate our political processes. No where in the constitution is there any indication that Free Speech applies to wealth – that the wealthiest few should be allowed to outweigh everyone else. On the contrary, our nation was founded to end the tyranny of such interests which crowded out all opportunities for Americans to obtain fair representation.

4. “ Big Government” has become a negative rallying cry for many – however many of the proposed reforms driven by that rallying cry contradict the basic American perceptions of Fairness.

5. Size Doesn’t Matter Both Small Governments and Big Governments can be unfair. If we only measure our government based upon size and not on merit we will end up with nothing. The popular argument is that Big Government is inherently bad and that Small Government is inherently good. But based upon what evidence? This simplistic assumption is taken on face value today to be true despite there being no evidence. It is all based upon rhetoric. Worse, by setting up this false dichotomy we ensure that government never gets measured by the only test that should be applied to it – Fairness to its citizens. Fair Government can come in many sizes.

6. Government of the People Fair Government is Government of the people. Fair Government provides its citizens accountability and the opportunity to improve their society. This is important – no other mechanism that we have gives us the right to influence the world around us. Government listens to us because it is designed and obligated to do so. This government is ours – it is us. Without this mechanism we would be totally at the mercy of powerful forces that had no interest in our opinions or issues. We’ve been there before – that’s exactly why we created this nation – to give ordinary people power and a voice. That is the essence of Fair Government.

7. The key to Fairness and our national success over our history has been the dynamic role that all citizens play in ensuring accountability in our government. We don’t have one leader who dictates – we have leaders who listen.

8. Fairness Works One of the remarkable things about Fairness is how well it works if it is applied properly. The United States has been the most successful Democratic Republic in the history of the world – why – because we built Fairness directly into our charter. The relative size of our government has been dictated and directed by the people themselves as an expression of their will. Sometimes it is smaller, sometimes larger. It is only when the government stops adhering to that will and starts working for itself or for a handful of wealthy interests that government stops working well – that is when government becomes unfair.