Ok…I hear what you are saying. But it is worthwhile distinguishing between small town politics and the rest. All politics are not practiced as you discribed all the time. But, there is an element of every thing you say everywhere, even in many businesses., families and relationships.
The people we have problems with often exhibited the same characteristics throughout their lives. The problem is, in politics, we can’t avoid them ! It’s also worth noting that one man’s honesty is another man’s deceit. Make no mistake, they may have problems with our ideas too ( figuratively speaking of course)
I think the problems here are far more widespread than it would appear on the surface. Much of the money used in various grants and so on come from the state or from the Feds via the state.
During my time in office I made trips and phone calls to other towns and discovered they were going through the same thing. In fact, many of the problems related to waste and fraud was being done by the same people; the same people meaning consultants, engineers, lawyers, amd so on. A conversation with the mayor in an adjoining town revealed for instance that the same bunch of engineers and consultants who screwed us over on a sewage project also screwed them over. In their case it became a matter of push comes to shove and the engineering firm told the town, “so, sue us”. When weighing the cost of litigation against doing the repairs themselves the town went with a DIY fix.
In our case, the sewage system was redone so as to conform with EPA regs and prevent raw sewage from overflowing into a neighboring creek. Within a month of completion this lagoon was broken down and guess what; raw sewage down the creek. This continues to this day.
Regarding the sewage project here there was a slight cost overrun to the tune of about 420%. The bulk of this overrun was and is being paid for by taxpayers all across the country.
Bad potable water mains? Same thing. Over the last 20 something years there has been 4 separate grants issued to replace those mains and after Grant 2 about 15 years ago it was stated that the old mains are dead. Within a month those old mains were leaking again. After Grant 4 was completed just a few years ago I might add that one of the old mains burst through the surface of Main St. just a few months ago. No doubt Grant 5 is in the works right now…
I will point out that all of that grant money is courtesy of the taxpayers and while everyone’s tax money is washing down the creek here the point could be made that our tax money is washing down the creek somewhere else. The surface of the fraud and stupidity behind these things has not even been scratched.
For what it’s worth, when I took office the first problem I discovered was in the Reserve Fund for that sewage project. Everyone was told that this fund was sitting in the bank drawing 2% interest as it was parked there. That was true enough. What everyone was not told was that the town borrowed the money (against state law to do this) and was paying 8.5% interest. Somehow that is typical of how government works.
This led me to the consultant on the project being a board member of the bank that fronted the money…etc, etc, etc.
A lot of featherbedding goes on at all levels. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it graft, though. The Pentagon wants to cut numerous programs and save a lot of money, but our esteemed Congress insists that they keep those programs going so that the home folks (private industry contractors) keep working. As you can see, making those cuts is not easy. If my job was on the line, I’d be pulling for Friends in High Places to save my job, too. Wouldn’t you do the same? A very difficult problem, yet we must deal with it.
I’ll have to agree that lobbyists and consultants cause more than a few problems, especially the large ones in concert with the large corps. I especially was interested in seeing Anderson Consulting go down the tubes. We had them once on a multi-million computer project some years ago. They sent kids just out of school for $125 an hour. Got the deer in the headlights look anytime anyone brought anything up that didn’t fit their pre-programmed analysis, and just pretty much discounted it. It was a disaster that is finally being replaced. Of course it was the high level jerks that brought them in in the first place instead of using $25-30 p/hr experienced in-house professionals, that were the real problem. Friends in high places remain friends in high places and butter each others bread. Of course just IMHO.
The first thing I did after being sworn in was to read the handbook for elected officials and from what I gathered, I’m the only one that ever read this or even cared. This provided an overview in condensed simple English with no legalese about the straight and narrow and the foreword was written by the dean of the University of Oklahoma School of Law. The foreword was very enlightening and 2 things really stood out.
One was that an official should always go out of their way to not just avoid breaking the law but to avoid even the appearance of impropriety. (Ha! on that one.)
The other was (Caps are as written in the foreword; “NEVER, EVER, trust a consultant.”
I just don’t agree with screwing the taxpayers over repeatedly; and especially so when it violates the law.
There was a big issue here some years ago for which a municipal election was called. After a few weeks some council members were getting the feeling that this issue (which I led the fight against) was going to lose in an election.
What was their cure? To send out mailers to people who did not even live in town and asking them to come in and vote. Some of those invitees lived 10 miles away.
In a nutshell, they were going to bring in ringers and these ringers were actually allowed to vote in a city election where none of them lived.
Luckily, the issue went down in flames anyway with 87% on my side…
Several polling station workers (who wanted this deal to go through) were yelling at some elderly people in an attempt to coerce their vote into a YES but that’s yet another matter.
No.25,would be no more lobbyists.No.26,would be a reduction in bureaucracy.No.27 would be acessibility and accountibility on all levels of bureaucracy.No.28 would be an instilling of respect ,tact,courtesey and true History in the educational system starting at pre-K and running through college(the “Golden Rule” is my Mantra)-Kevin
In the eyes of many corporations, public money is there for the taking. We have had a similar situation for years where a major contractor never had to bid on road maintenance as he sat on the town council. It all boils down to electing the right people to office. Small towns often have candidates in short supple which often spells corruption.
One simple solution both on the local and state levels which has been implemented by at a few states is run off elections. Then you don’t get people winning with 37% of the vote. More qualified independents and alternate party might not be lost in the shuffle as happened in our last gubernatorial election, losing by one percent when a head to head would have been a totally different story. Corruption starts and ends at the ballot box. This is why so often you get a Govenor of one party while the entire state actually swings the other way.
In the eyes of many corporations, public money is there for the taking.
I worked on our towns budget committee for several years. It’s NOT the people on the town board who’s trying to screw the public. The only problems we had over the years were the companies we contract out. One budget item that was taken away about 5 years ago was an inspector of roads. This was a part time job to oversee the contractors doing the paving and road repair. Well once that position was taken away…those companies started taking advantage of the situation. New roads they’re suppose to put down a total of 6" of asphalt. Inspector-leaves…and we’re now seeing roads needing repair in less then 2 years… Sure enough…only 3" of asphalt was put down. We tried another company…same thing. Finally had to add the inspector back into the budget. We were saving HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS a year by keeping these companies in check.
Re-write all the “Free Trade” agreements so that any imported manufactured products must be made with labor that is paid a living wage and under decent working conditions. A global standard of wages and working conditions, a level playing field for trading partners must be established…By worshiping the God of 'Free Trade" we have allowed our manufacturing base to be destroyed, millions of decent jobs, and it’s not coming back…
There are only three ways to create Wealth. You can grow it, you can mine it or you can manufacture it. Everything else is just transferring existing wealth from one pocket to another. Government jobs and “Service Sector” jobs produce nothing, they create no new wealth…
Candidate Romney realizes the credit card has reached it’s safe upper limit ($16 Trillion dollars) but he offers a painless solution that includes full employment, huge tax cuts and drastically reduced government spending…Those three things cannot possibly occur at the same time…Since he is leaving jobs creation up to the private sector while he cuts taxes and slashes government spending, I suspect his promise of full employment will not be realized and in fact the unemployment trend will be reversed and climb once more as we wait for his policies to “kick in”…
While President Obama has done a decent job over the last 4 years of halting our plunge into depression and bringing our troops home and greatly improving our health-care system, he too realizes the National Debt is approaching its upper limit and will have to be addressed. But ever since inauguration day he has faced a hostile Republican party who instead of helping repair the damage they have created, they circled their wagons and took oaths and pledges to devote 100% of their time and effort to derail Obama’s policies and insure he will not be re-elected…A four year hate-filled propaganda campaign was mounted against him, every e-mail mailbox filled everyday with vile slander and garbage. By the looks of the polls, this hate campaign will be successful…
Reminds me of a bunch of kids name calling,insteading of comprimising and working together,pouting and saying thier way or no way(Why? this is not a contest,this is peoples way of life on the line)-Kevin
Boy this topic has sure gone different directions. Suspect it’ll be closed soon. At any rate, just a few thoughts. Mittens should ask the folks in the UK how their economic program is going since they did what he’s talking about with some pretty miserable results so far.
As far as war goes, with McGovern dying, I started thinking back to that period with Nixon my Commander in Chief. A lot of us were against the war but still would go if drafted. I was in the first lottery for the draft and pulled a #5, so ended up in the Reserves. At any rate we thought with the end of the draft as we knew it, that would reduce the propensity for war by limiting the available labor. It seems like now it has just had the opposite effect. The ones recruited now are far more gung ho than we were and seems like more accepting of going off to Iraq, Afganistan, you name it, than we would have been. Seems like by keeping the draft, we would have been less likely to get into these conflicts.
Candidate Romney offers exactly the same economic plan that Bush enacted. Tax cuts as the main stay then let the congress, whose sole purpose is to take home the bacon(pork) to their constituents, do the rest. Good strategy if you care nothing for the debt and only want to buy support for the wars. Under Reagan we went from the biggest lending nation in the world to the biggest debtor. You know what Bush did for the debt…and still, conservatives have the false reputation of being fiscally responsible. When you actually count the war debt under Bush, Obama’s budget has actually reduced the yearly debt from Bush greater then any modern administration. But, I’m a math major and my logic means nothing. They are just numbers with little meaning. It’s really more important who can tell the most lies to the most listeners and look presidential…
I guess you can trust a party whose biggest advantage occurs when they can get the fewest people to the polls. The end justifys the means…I hear you Caddyman.
I think recruiters are more responsible for the gung ho attitude for people joining the army, especially younger ones. The promise of college funding, skill building, job training, and whatnot, kids are more eager to sign up. Then they get into boot camp…
Several years ago I considered joining the army and talked to a recruiter at a local office. The recruiter was telling me I’d never see any wartime fighting, that the conflict would be over before I got out of boot camp, blah blah blah. That was 9 years ago, before I got my current job in '03; never looked back
@bscar I dunno, I don’t think its the recruiters-just a different group of people. In 1970 our Army Reserve company was 90% people just like me that had joined instead of being drafted. Most of the leadership had prior service. Not that we were bad but we were certainly not career military. Last year though I went to the decommissioning ceremony for the unit and saw the current crop along with a bunch of us from back in the 70’s. Totally different crop of people. Tatoos, hair cut short, serious about the work, etc. Just plain professionals, not weekenders at all. Even the wives were a different class. We just didn’t fit in at all. I don’t know who would have been better getting shot at but I would have been a lot more comfortable going to war with the old bunch than the new. I think we were more of a normal cross section of the population and could separate the gung ho BS from the rest of it.
No. 31-no more diplomatic immunity(ignorance of the law is no excuse-didnt save my ass)No.32-truly “candid” talk shows(per 5th admendment rights)No.33-Non de plumes will be encouraged in letters to the Editor or whomever,so we can find out what is really on peoples minds,without fear of reprisal.No.34-the all volunteer military will be encouraged and left alone(thanks for the service folks) and the funding will be transparent and the people in charge,will be in charge-Kevin
“Both political parties are guilty of causing the problems they argue over constantly.”
Ron Paul said that during the Republican debates. It was the only time during any debates this election cycle when I jumped up and screamed “Hell Yeah!”.
