Oh For Dumb

When the state offers a contract it's not here's a million dollars how many miles of road can you pave; rather it is we need three hundred miles of road paved, how much will it cost.  Houston Texas recently passed a rule that when contracting for those kinds of services locals within 5 percent of bids below 100k  and 3  percent over 100k of a lower nonlocal contractor get the contract. They  provide the same service or miles of highway paved, it just costs slightly more on the basis of money spent to home benefits the local economy.

Always ready to expose his ignorance, Matthew Ygelsias misses the point, errs in his understanding of contracting, and seemingly has no idea what bidding for a job means:

The Houston Chronicle describes detractors of this initiative as “free market devotees” but it’s actually advocates of big government who should be upset about this. If big government advocates write a bill to launch a widget-distribution program to equip Houston’s citizens with widgets and they appropriate $1 million to the widget initiative, the “Buy Local” program will ensure that Houstonians end up with 3 percent fewer widgets. The alleged benefit here is that under the “Buy Local” scenario the $1 million is somehow trapped in the Houston Metropolitan Area. But if that’s the goal, why not simply appropriate $970,000 to buy the smaller quantity of widgets and directly disburse the $30,000 you saved by purchasing fewer widgets to the citizens of Houston? Either way, you’re reducing widget purchases in order to keep more money in the local economy. But my way the extra money is actually kept in the City of Houston rather than smearing itself all around the eight county Greater Houston area.

The state doesn't say we have a million dollars to spend who wants it, they say we need X services or whatever how much? How dumb can one man be?