I'll work through this list, but I'll start with number 1.

"

1. Bad government leads to bigger, badder government. Today, only 23 percent of Americans trust government to do the right thing. At first blush, this would seem to be an encouraging statistic for those opposed to "big government." After all, the less citizens trust government, the less willing they should be to give it big new responsibilities, right?

Wrong.

An important recent academic study called "Regulation and Distrust" shows that, paradoxically, the worse government performs, the more citizens demand greater government intervention. The authors' explanation for this curious finding is that in societies where people distrust large institutions-whether government or big business-the demand for more regulation and for more government is higher, even when government is incompetent or downright corrupt."

I can't really say I disagree with this too much. We've seen this over and over again, but my point of contention with this is that its not the people within society who determine if the govenment intervenes.  We saw this with the bank bailouts.  People saw bad government, most actually wanted the government not to intervene, and they did what they want anyways.  The author is accepting the premise that democracy works.

2.

2. "To shrink government, you need to love government.  Most liberals believe deeply in government. As a result, they sit on school boards, city councils, and regional planning boards. They become expert at navigating through the bureaucracy and know which bureaucratic levers to pull to make their policy vision reality.

Many conservatives and libertarians come from the world of business. They don't particularly like government. They view it as merely a necessary evil. As a consequence, they rarely immerse themselves in the intricacies of governing, preferring to make their case from a safe distance.

Once in power,  they tend to have far more difficulty navigating the complex terrain of the public sector. The result? From Ronald Reagan's Grace Commission to the 1995 government shutdown by a GOP Congress, most high-profile attempts to shrink government fail.

Until small-government types better master the nuts and bolts of the public sector-how to design policies that work in the real world and how to execute on large public undertakings-their initiatives to downsize government will continue to disappoint."

Amazingly misleading statement.  Loving government is equated to learning how to navigate the system.  The tone rubs off as "loving the federal government".  They reference a failed attempt in congress and "large public undertakings", which is vague.  If you throw this arguement into a more dramatic situation, you can clearly see the fallicy of it.  Lets take the United States founding as an example.  In order to shrink government, you had to love King George and try to work within the English system in order to shrink government. 

I'll address number 3 in a bit, but wow, thats even more silly.  Deregulation leading to EXPLOTING DESIGN FLAWS.  I mean really?  Its like standing in a hole you are digging, then saying that digging will lead to you being in a hole.   The government is responsible for the monopolies in the first place (monopolies can exist without government). 

What made me chuckle about that piece was that it states that the deregulation of the trucking & air transit businesses was a good government policy, but err who regulated those businesses in the first place?

As Marvin Gaye used to sing: "Only love can conquer hate."  Ghandi said it before MLD and Marvin said it, but he's who I heard it from.