The Obama administration has made it abundantly clear that some people are more equal than others. What began as “hope” and “change” has turned into despair and stagnation as average citizens like Yours Truly watch our tax money fall into the hands of preferred political interests.
Where are you in the federal government's pyramid? And, where are our children and grandchildren? Perhaps in the impossibly unsustainable level? Awesome!
What sent Ken Lay and his Enron minions to prison pales in comparison to the fraud regularly being perpetrated on the American people by our public servants. Yet instead of languishing in prison, the politicians and the preferred political interests who defraud the taxpayer in the name of “green jobs,” “affordable housing,” “social justice” and whatnot are handsomely rewarded.
President Obama likes to talk about crumbling bridges and a deteriorating infrastructure to justify more drunken, crack-smoking sailor spending. These days, the problem is that when the federal government gets involved with building bridges and other infrastructure, every project is forced through the intestines of a vast regulatory, money-skimming bureaucracy that puts the completion date somewhere in the far-distant future at a price tag umpteen times higher than if the locals got together and made it themselves.
Never mind Social Security, big government as a whole has become a vast Ponzi scheme. It has been set up to reward itself on the backs of the average citizen. It is sold to us as an “investment in the future,” but whose future, exactly? Certainly not mine nor my kids’ future, nor any future generations that will follow me. As Mark Steyn puts it, we’re looting the future to bribe the present.
And that’s essentially what these various so-called jobs, stimulus, health care, financial reform and other bills are all about: bribing specific constituencies to build political power. These constituencies are given preference over others, violating one of the bedrock ideas of America’s founding philosophy, equality before the law. Those who are being treated unequally – the average hard-working American who wants nor expects anything from the federal government – sees much of what they pay in taxes go into the black hole of political favoritism.
Black holes are formed from stars that collapse from their own weight, and that is the future of America as so vividly illustrated by solar-collapsing Solyandra. We said goodbye to half a billion of our taxpayer dollars and yet in today’s surreal, hyper-inflated atmosphere it seems a mere drop in the bucket when your average “stimulus” bill is reckoned in the trillions.
Just as we’ve become used to buying gas for more than $3 a gallon, the political class has desensitized us to the concept of trillions of dollars as a reasonable amount for the government to regularly outlay to those whom it favors. And you better believe that politicians and bureaucrats tend to favor themselves over any others, followed closely by those who help them ensure they stay in office so they can continue to favor themselves.
James Madison wrote that “power is of an encroaching nature and that it ought to be restrained from passing the limits assigned to it.” Unfortunately, we have strayed quite far from that philosophy, and have allowed a remote central government to operate almost completely unrestrained. One need only read the Constitution to see how far astray we’ve really gone.
What do Americans really want? Is it a nation of do-nothing slackers who expect that all of their problems will be solved by Sugar Daddy Uncle Sam? Or, is it a nation of independent innovators who welcome risk and the consequences of failure?
I’m afraid the answer is increasingly the former, and as Americans purposely shackle themselves to this dependent model they will find they have fewer real liberties as their political betters grow in wealth and power. The pyramid in the world’s largest pyramid scheme ever is being assembled as we speak, write and read. Where are you in the pyramid?
“We are simultaneously supposed to gasp in awe at teachers’ raw dedication and forced to listen to their incessant caterwauling about how they don’t make enough money. Well, which is it? Are they dedicated to teaching or are they in it for the money? After all the carping about how little teachers are paid, if someone enters the teaching profession for the big bucks, aren’t they too stupid to be teaching our kids?”
Ann Coulter, Godless
Since we’re randomly lobbing missiles for “humanitarian” purposes, why stop at Libya? How about Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and the Ivory Coast? At least when we blow up missiles someone has to make more missiles, which is a lot more productive than supporting the fat-ass government bureaucracy that produces nothing but regulations and kids who can’t read.
Do you really want to help teachers? Do you love teachers? Then let’s get rid of make-work BS six-figure government jobs like Climate Change Program Manager, pay teachers based on merit, fire those that need to be fired and make schools compete. In the process, you’ll help the children as well.
When faced with a choice of having to pay a little more for their own pensions and health care, public employees in Wisconsin basically rioted. Instead of doing the right and rational thing they chose to force Governor Walker to institute layoffs to help bring a modicum of sanity to the state’s budgetary Armageddon.
So let’s get this straight… When asked to fly a little closer to the reality the rest of us live in, teachers and their unions said, “Hell no, we won’t go.” I’d love to have a sweetheart deal like that, one that guarantees I can’t get fired for incompetence or laziness (or just about anything else), that pays more than most other professionals earn (you can look it up), basically free health care and pension plans, and about a third of the year off for vacation. It once again begs the question posed by Ann Coulter above, that given that, “aren’t they too stupid to be teaching our kids?”
Unfortunately, I live in a reality called the private sector, a sector being abandoned by more and more people as they realize that the crime of big, corrupt and crony government surely does pay. I discussed this problem earlier after reading a job description on one of the job boards for a Climate Change Program Manager at the National Park Service. I won’t rehash the whole thing, but this pointless make-work job brings in anywhere from $103,000 to $155,000.
When progressives protest budget cuts and clamor for more and more government, they cite the saints of public service – teachers, fire fighters and cops (the only time they like cops). I’m actually well and good with paying all of the above handsomely, though I must add that it should be merit based and they should be able to be fired.
The problem is that you can’t pay those who are actually rendering a public service handsomely when some Schmoe is pulling in six figures at a BS National Park Service job. The bigger problem is that there are literally thousands of the Schmoes at all levels of government with BS jobs raking in the dough at the taxpayer’s, and teacher’s, expense.
The following excerpt from the Dec. 11, 2009 edition of USA Today bears repeating here:
Federal employees making salaries of $100,000 or more jumped from 14% to 19% of civil servants during the recession’s first 18 months — and that’s before overtime pay and bonuses are counted. Federal workers are enjoying an extraordinary boom time — in pay and hiring — during a recession that has cost 7.3 million jobs in the private sector… When the recession started, the Transportation Department had only one person earning a salary of $170,000 or more. Eighteen months later, 1,690 employees had salaries above $170,000.
These disgusting statistics are merely the tip of an iceberg, with state and local governments aboard a federal Titanic steaming full speed ahead that isn’t equipped with enough lifeboats. And yet, progressives fight any budget cuts and limits on government tooth and nail, despite the fact that doing both would benefit their beloved teachers, fire fighters and cops.
Progressives are notoriously ignorant of economics. I don’t think progressives are stupid, by and large, but willfully ignorant. They are generally economically illiterate because any cursory knowledge of economics would explode their entire ideology and they’d have to become conservatives, or at least libertarians.
Progressives fail to realize that government monopolies are, by their very nature, resistant to any type of positive reform or innovation. Thus they ossify, becoming inflexible and of no practical good to anyone but those who work for the system. Modern liberalism is, in fact, illiberal and has become the worst kind of conservatism you could possibly imagine.
People try to put us down… Yeah, that’s because you screwed future generations with your My Generation crap, dumbasses. And, by the way, you didn’t die before you got old like you were supposed to.
Reform education? Hell no! It’s all about “the children,” so we must not improve it or allow any of the unwashed masses a choice. Rather, we should pour more money into it, most of which goes to the adults and their precious paychecks, pensions and health care. Reform entitlements? Hell no! They’re headed for a massive implosion, but I’ll have mine for my retirement and I’ll be dead by then, so let them drive clown cars!
My children are quite thankful for these selfless adults. Still, they wonder why the Worthless Generation didn’t take Roger Daltrey’s advice in My Generation to heart.
One of the consequences of pouring more manpower and money into government work and jealously guarding government monopolies in certain areas, like education, is either a negative or flat return on investment. But start providing data and evidence and a liberal’s eyes will start glazing over because there’s no emotion in numbers or logic. Stephen Moore laid it out in a recent Wall Street Journal editorial:
The employment trends described here are explained in part by hugely beneficial productivity improvements in such traditional industries as farming, manufacturing, financial services and telecommunications. These produce far more output per worker than in the past. The typical farmer, for example, is today at least three times more productive than in 1950.
Where are the productivity gains in government? Consider a core function of state and local governments: schools. Over the period 1970-2005, school spending per pupil, adjusted for inflation, doubled, while standardized achievement test scores were flat. Over roughly that same time period, public-school employment doubled per student, according to a study by researchers at the University of Washington. That is what economists call negative productivity.
Americans are spoiled. We lack the courage to do anything. Change our tiny routines and we’ll bitch and complain. The power went out and the DVR didn’t record Two and a Half Men. “Alas, my week is ruined!” The average problems facing the typical American is nothing compared to those faced by our ancestors.
The AARP sponsors Jeff Gordan’s NASCAR ride. It costs millions to sponsor a NASCAR team. What is the AARP advertising? The drive to end senior hunger. According to the socialist AARP six million seniors face the threat of hunger – meaning they are forced to skip meals or buy poor quality food. How can we help? I’m sure the AARP has a simple solution: don’t change entitlements.
The AARP is an enemy of the state. The sole purpose of the AARP is to maintain the status quo. What’s the status quo? I pay nearly 14% of my income for Social Security and apparently that’s not enough to keep the elderly from being hungry. How the hell is the possible? I’m not sure it is possible. Let’s abolish Social Security and levy a 5 percent tax on income to keep the elderly from being hungry. That sounds like a worthy cause.
The American path to bankruptcy is real and it’s inevitable. American’s say they want to cut spending, but a majority want to maintain or increase spending on education, veteran’s benefits, college grants, social security, and health care. The list goes on and on… the only thing Americans agree to cut spending on is foreign aid to needy nations.
This isn’t a left vs. right issue. It’s a spoiled population vs. those of us living in reality. Many Democrats live in a fantasy reality where the only thing we need to do is decrease spending on the military and increase taxes and our problems will be solved. That’s not going to work. Americans need to wake up. It’s time to take a chainsaw to entitlements and the Federal budget as a whole.
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