Maybe we could demand less representation. If there were fewer spenders in our government maybe we would trash less cash. We don’t really need two senators per state or hundreds of reps crowding into the house.
It’s the one thing we need but will never get.
“I’d favor redefining “tax breaks” to the wealthy as what it really is…”
I disagree. The real money is entitlements: Medicare, Medicaid, social security, and soon a more general health care for everyone. You might throw the Department of Defense in, too, but entitlements is where it’s at. If you want to cut the federal budget in a meaningful way, cut the entitlement programs. Otherwise, there is just not much money to be saved. Yes, I agree that more taxes should be collected. But not just from those nasty rich folks. We all need to pay for the services we demand for a change.
The really important conversation concerns what services do we really want and how do we structure a tax system that pays for it. I don’t believe it includes silly junk like removing funding for public media. And most public media gets very little funding from the federal government. The radio and television outlets that will be most affected will be rural outlets, not those liberal bastions in the big city.
“NPR should not receive one dime of Federal (a la tazpayer) money, along with PBS, National Endowment for the Arts, and thousands of other sinkholes.”
They get almost no public funding. Rural radio and television stations get most of their funding from the feds. Your public stations might shut down without public funding. Mine will still be around since I live in the big city. And the syndicated shows that many people call the liberal media get funding from stations that buy their shows. They do not directly receive federal funds.
There is a no-fly zone and the only issues remaining are those that deal with how the services are divided up (radar, jamming, planes, etc.).
“The two main “bullets” that affect your chance for advancement is the size of your budget and the number of people under you”.
What needs to happen is that managers should be paid more if they have fewer people answering to them. This means that the manager is doing more work himself/herself and deserves more compensation.
I saw a system put in at the university where I teach for the adminsitrators. An administrator is paid according to the number of people who report to him/her. This really promotes empire building. Before the system was installed, the dean’s office in my college had a dean and an assistant to the dean. Now there is a dean, three associate deans, a business manager and an assistant business manager and of course a greatly increased secretarial staff.
A bit of a rant here but the worst year of my entire life was spent as a city alderman after being asked to fill a spot being vacated by someone moving out of state.
I could write an entire, and lengthy, book about the massive and utter stupidity and crookedness that was going on.
This involved not only city money but Federal and state funding also. It all comes from the same place, your pocket.
Pay massive bills without even questioning or worse, even wanting to know what it’s for? Don’t care.
Fire chief nicking about 8 grand a year for himself? Don’t care.
Cost overrun on a sewage project of around 450%? Don’t care.
Twenty years, 3 grants for water line replacements and the water lines never actually replaced? Don’t care.
New sewage lagoon broken down and raw sewage being dumped purposely down the creek within 6 months of completion? Don’t care. (Neither does the EPA and state DEQ and this all winds up in the Gulf of Mexico thanks to the tributary system.)
Political affiliation is not the issue. Stupidity and crookedness is universal. After being sworn in I started digging through records and found enough to start keeping me awake all night while seething over idiotic, improper, and illegal actions. Example.
During the sewage project the city was required to maintain a reserve fund on hand. The populace was told this money was sitting in an account accruing interest of about 2% while it sat there. Ducky.
My rummaging turned up a loan note where these fools had borrowed the money at 8% from a bank located about 70 miles away and TA DA!; the consultant on the sewage project also sat on the bank’s Board of Directors.
(Note that it is illegal under the state constitution for a public body to borrow money. They can only issue bonds or have a municipal election.)
Leave it to governmental thinking that one can draw 2% while paying 8% and consider it a money-maker.
Regarding all of the above:
Attorney General, District Attorney, EPA, DEQ, State Health Dept. etc, etc? Don’t care.
Just like the raw sewage, taxpayer dollars are being washed down every creek, river, and cubbyhole in existence. I promise anyone that if you get involved with government entities and really start to do some homework you will find that you’re being screwed beyond belief.
A year of this and I was on the verge of a heart attack 24/7 and had to quit. In the last 20 years only one other person has made an effort to get to the bottom of some dishonest dealings involving the water line debacle and 6 years of pushing and demanding answers got him nowhere.
This means that all of this grant money was either harvested from a gov. grant farm or it came out of the pockets of everyone reading this. My feeling is the latter.
Chelsea, in Maine sounds just like the town you mention. The FBI came in on the case. Businesses and city councilors tried every trick related to roads. They have a terrible road running through their town that looks like nobody has fixed it in thirty, years.
Multiply The Wasted Tax Money That You Describe By The Number Of Other Similar Government Entities, Times Federal, State And Local, And Multiply That By The Number Of Layers Of Bureaucracy At Each Level . . .
. . . And pretty soon you’re talking real money.
If you can’t beat them, join them. However, as you found out, an honest individual trying to do what’s right, is given no place in this circus of wasteful spending of other people’s money.
CSA