2009 Year End Reviews - The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly From the American Political Class
Throughout 2009, while the country and its citizens were facing a terrible economy, foreign wars, greatest Congressional partisanship and sniping, no improvements in the major issues facing this country such as the soaring national debt, high unemployment, failing communal schools, wide spread drug addiction problems, rising condition care costs, and other major issues, what were the politicians worried about? seeing back on 2009, there appears to have been three inescapable categories of American political class behavior: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.
2009 Year End Reviews - The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly From the American Political Class
The Good
By all accounts, 2009 was a rough year in America. The good news is that I could categorically identify some areas where the political class did some good things. The bad news is I could only come up with three examples where the actions of the political class had taxpayers and fellow citizens in mind when they executed their actions:
1) The first example is based on personal experience. I live in Pinellas county in Florida and over the past four years my asset taxes have gone down on a year over year basis. They have gone down so much that I now pay about 40% in less in asset taxes today than I paid four years ago with a indispensable quantum of that decrease occurring in 2009. There are probably a whole of factors, both political and non-political, that have gone into this decrease but the bottom line is that they have gone down significantly. And here is the good news: I still have police protection, I still have fire protection, the schools are still open, the parks are still open, most of the libraries are still open and the roads and traffic lights are still in good shape. This is proof, that on a very local level, excess waste can be taken out of government without vast discount in indispensable safety and services. The primary word in that old sentence is essential.
2) The second example comes from the U.S. Senate and it was a hint and formal proposal to the Senate from Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee. His reasoning: since the Federal government paid about billion of U.S. Taxpayer money to acquire a 60% share of general Motors and theoretically save it from bankruptcy, should not each American taxpayer get stock certificates and partial proprietary of Gm rather than the Washington bureaucrats? After all, since government is able to function only because it takes money from taxpayers, if government acquires proprietary in a incommunicable company, doesn't that mean that the taxpayers own the firm since it was their money? Senator Alexander was the single politician this year that showed he understood the association between paying taxes and government spending. Giving personel citizens those shares of Gm would ensure more interest in how Gm performed going send since each habitancy would have had a stake in its survival, probably giving Gm a better shot at survival than it has with government ownership. Unfortunately, the Senator's hint was not approved by the Senate.
3) The final example comes from a small town in south Florida, Miami Gardens. In the past year, Miami Gardens city government took the following actions:
- The city payroll grew. Most anywhere else in the country unemployment increased.
- City employees still got cost of living raises and merit raises. Most anywhere else in the country
salaries and wages were freezing or reduced.
- The city increased its financial reserves by about 0,000. Most anywhere else in the country, local
and state governments dipped into their reserves to cover operating costs.
- The city upgraded 17 parks and 4 schools. Most other government entities were reducing or eliminating maintenance projects.
How was Miami Gardens able to do all of these inescapable things in light of a very, very deep retreat and the fact that they are not a city of wealthy residents? according to interviews with city officials:
- City employees share both personnel resources and other resources.
- The city hires only those habitancy they categorically need to do the work needed to be done.
- City officials claim they have the potential and backbone to say "No" to non-essential projects and programs, claiming that they cannot be all things to everybody.
- Thus, much like the first example above, the Miami Gardens politicians have shown that running a lean, effective government carrying out is potential if you are respectful of taxpayers' dollars. All it takes is a minuscule planning and the potential to just say No.
The Bad
In life you have to take the good with the bad so now lets present some of the less than glorious antics that the political class served us with in the second half of 2009:
- Ginny Brown-Waite, a Congresswoman from Florida, was actively investing in bank stocks at the same time she was sitting on the House banking committee to conclude which banks got what levels of bailout money and preserve from the American taxpayer through the Federal government. This is a blatant disagreement of interest. Commonplace Americans would probably have gone to jail for insider trading if they did the same thing, apparently disagreement of interest and insider trading activities do not apply to Congressional members.
- Senator Hillary Clinton apparently also does not understand disagreement of interest theory. She helped pass a bill that allowed a mall developer in New York state to get preferential tax treatment, shortly after the developer made a indispensable donation to Bill Clinton's foundation.
- Hawaiian Senator Daniel Inouye's staff helped a bank in Hawaii get bailout money from the Fdic after the the Fdic thought about the bank was not worth saving. Turns out that the Senator had invested heavily in the bank and stood to lose a load of money unless the bank was saved by the American taxpayer.
- Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut received vast campaign donations from Fannie Me and Freddie Mac. Two things wrong here. First, Dodd was chairman of the Senate banking committee responsible for overseeing the activities of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, a clear cut case of disagreement of interest. Second, how do two Federal organizations that exist now solely because of taxpayer preserve and bailout money get to use taxpayer money to preserve exact candidates for office? Shouldn not government organizations remain non-partisan and not a piggy bank for the politicians who are supposed to oversee them?
- Ex-Congressman William Jefferson of Louisiana was convicted of taking bribes and was sentenced to 13 years in prison. You may recall that Mr. Jefferson was caught with freezing bribe money in his home freezer. This continues the hall of shame tradition of the political class who recently included Congressman Randy Cunningham who was sentenced to eight years in prison for taking .4 million in bribes, Congressman Bill Ney who was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for taking bribes, Congressman James Traficant who was sentenced to seven years in prison for taking bribes, and the majority of ex-Governors of Illinois who are whether serving prison time, have served prison time, or may soon face prison time.
- 60% of the Congressional members sitting on the House Armed Services Committee received campaign contributions from the very clubs that they had previously earmarked pork barrel funds money for.
Congressman Charles Rangel of New York is being investigated for a whole of ethics violations including, but not minuscule to, non-declaration of rental income, inescapable assets, and other income.
- In the area of "who categorically cares about this bill", Congresswoman Anna Eshoo of California and her staff are working on legislation to Federally regulate the sound volume on television commercials. Never mind that Tv watchers can mute the sound, turn the channel, leave the room to get something to eat, fast send on their Dvr machines, or just ignore the Tv for 60 seconds. Why work on Iraq, Afghanistan, soaring deficits, unemployment, failing communal schools, etc. When the Tv industrial sound volume issue is so pressing?
- In the same vein as Ms. Eshoo's contribution to America, Congressman Jim Moran and his staff are investigating whether erectile dysfunction television commercials should be banned. I did not know this was so leading either. As with Ms. Eshoo, let's ignore real issues facing America and work on E.D. Commercials.
- And it never ends. Congressman Thaddeus McCotter and his staff is working on legislation to provide up to 0 a month in revenue tax deductions so that the unemployed do not have to put their pets up for adoption. Maybe if his staff and he were working on how to get America working again, there would be no need for this ridiculous agenda that would never be able to be tracked and would be rife with fraud.
Worse than personel Congress habitancy and their staffs working on trivial bills, how about an whole House subcommittee worked on legislation aimed at forcing the Ncaa to go to a playoff format to conclude the best agency One college football team? Where would this issue rank with the vast majority of Americans today? Probably not very high.
- The fence along the border between America and Mexico was the work of the whole Congress. A 2009 article documented that the building of the fence is seven years behind schedule, it will cost .4 billion to maintain the fence over the next twenty years (0,000 a day!), and there have been at least 3,000 breaches of the fence where illegal immigrants were able to enter the country despite this billion dollar fence.
- The new Washington D.C. Visitors' center was completed but only after it overran it's building funds by about 50%.
- Congressman Henry Waxman was quoted as saying: "I categorically don't claim to know all things that is in this bill" in referring to the huge cap and trade legislation that is likely to come before Congress in 2010. The troubling aspect of this statement is that Waxman is the lawful co-author and writer of the bill!
- Recently, who could forget the blatant bribes the recently passed condition care reform bill required where a handful of Democratic Senators were able to get breaks for their personel states to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars in transfer for their final vote in preserve of this bill.
If these actions were not serious and far reaching, they would be comical. Conflicts of interest, trivial projects, wastes of money, sad but true in 2009.
The Ugly
It has been said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. However, it is difficult to find much beauty in any of the following Federally funded projects since they waste Federal tax dollars on local projects that lead nothing to solving the major, national issues facing the country today. The only beauty is in the eye of incumbent politicians who waste these taxpayer dollars to preserve their re-election efforts:
- Exhibits at the Teddy Roosevelt Inaugural Site Foundation - 0,000
- resumption of the Portsmouth, New Hampshire Music Hall - ,000,000
- resumption of the uptown Theater in Philadelphia - 0,000
- building of the Monroe County (Kentucky) Farmers' shop - 0,000
- resumption of the Murphy Theater in Ohio - 0,000
- resumption of the Slater Mill in Rhode Island - 4,000
- resumption of the Pregone Theater in the Bronx - 0,000
- building of the Santa Ana River Trail in California - 0,000
- Funding for the Myrtle Beach International Trade and consulation center - 0,000
- Funding for the Washington (state) Opera - 0,000
- Funding for the Montana World Trade center - 4,000
- Funding for the Arkansas industrial Driver Training create - 0,000
- Funding to study and educate citizens about the role and point of the U.S. Senate, placed in- Massachusetts - ,900,000
- Funding for the Brown Tree Snake Program, funding that was embedded in the 2010 Defense agency funds - 0,000
- renewal of the Ritz Theater in Newburgh, New York - 0,000
- renewal of the Laredo minuscule Theater in Lardeo, Texas - 0,000
- Widening of Bristol road in Santa Ana, California - 0,000
- building of a bike path in Port Sanilax, Michigan - 0,000
- Funding for the Museum Of Aviation - 0,000
- Funding for the World Food Prize in Iowa - 0,000
- Questionable Medicare claims along with such, as an example, paying for blood glucose strips for sexual impotence - ,000,000,000
- Government waste due to improper payments over all Federal government departments - ,000,000,000
- Conversion of 21 cabooses into a caboose motel in Pennsylvania - 0,000
- Funding for a remote Pennsylvania airport that serves about twenty passengers a day - 0,000,000
- Funding for a state of the art radar principles for that remote Pennsylvania airport that has never been used - ,000,000
- Funding for a remote Montana border checkpoint at the Canadian border that handles about three travelers a day on average and less than 0 of freight a day on average - ,000,000
- Funding for the Polynesian Voyaging society in Hawaii - 8,000
- Funding for the Forage Animal yield investigate Lab in Kentucky- ,600,000
- Funding for Swine Odor and Manure supervision investigate in Iowa - ,790,000
- Funding for oyster resumption in Alabama - 0,000
- preserve of condition and economic development activities for the Arctic region - ,600,000
- A loan to a California firm to create and build an expensive hybrid sports car.... In Finland - 9,000,000
These are just a integrate dozen programs that waste hard earned taxpayer dollars. The 2010 funds bills have over 11,000 other such programs, even though President Obama campaigned to keep the whole of pork projects like these well under 2,000. The reasons we have state and local governments is to handle state and local needs. It should not be the role of the Federal government to fund local bike paths, widen local roads, renovate theaters, etc. It diverts time, money, and resources from the truly national problems like the two wars we are currently complicated in, soaring Federal deficits, high unemployment levels, communal safety and Medicare heading for insolvency, failing communal schools, high drug addiction rates and the associated crime problems, the lacking of a national strategic power plan, etc.
Then why does the political class spend/waste time and money on these clearly local issues and needs? It helps guarantee them re-election by attempting to prove to their own voters that they are adept at stealing money from other U.S. Taxpayers and funneling into their home districts and states. Remember, the government pays for nothing, it funds programs with taxpayer money taken from all American taxpayers. Thus, the bike trail in Michigan is being financed in part by taxpayers in Arizona who will never ride that trail. The Polynesian Voyaging society is being funded in part by taxpayers in Vermont who will never get any benefits from the Society.
A long time ago, the statue Of Liberty, an enduing seal of this whole country and its freedom, was in badly need of mend and renovation. The country rose up to privately donate enough funds to restore this national symbol. If the statue Of freedom did not merit Federal money several decades ago, why do farmers' markets and bike paths merit such Federal preserve today?
This pilfering of national tax dollars perhaps hides a more hazardous reality. It could be that this generation of politicians, and the ones that have come immediately before them, do not know how to solve the real national problems facing America today. In the 1960s, Nixon declared war on drugs but we still have a major drug problem in this country. In the 1970s, Carter was President when we lived through the power crises but we still no do not have a national strategic power agenda in place. In the early 1980s, the Reagan supervision identified the danger of our failing communal school systems but today many of our communal schools are still failing. In the 1990s, despite numerous wake-up calls (first World Trade center attacks, U.S. Embassy terrorist bombings in Africa, Uss Cole attack, etc.) we still do not have the terrorist threat under control, as witnessed by the practically catastrophic airline safety breakdown on the Christmas day Klm flight into Detroit.
Thus, it could be that our current politicians work on useless and wasteful local spending programs and worry about the sound volume on television commercials because they are incapable of doing anyone else. If they were, than many of our national problems would have been addressed and solved already. That is why the following steps need to be taken to start reducing "The Bad" and "The Ugly" and expanding the "The Good" from the political class:
Step 1 - start reducing Federal spending by 10% a year, for five years, in order to begin weeding out the wasteful, but politically convenient, local wastes of money.
Step 2 - allow only personel citizens to lead to political choice campaigns since many of the wasteful programs are categorically bribes, directing taxpayer dollars to companies, unions, and lobbyists in order to get reciprocal campaign donations for incumbents' re-election campaigns.
Step 3 - hold Congressional committee and subcommittee members accountable for their performance, removing them from committee posts when their efforts are unsatisfactory and wasteful.
Step 4 - create term limits for all Senators and Congressmen since allowing them to serve forever is not working. If the President, the most leading elected lawful in the world, has term limits, less leading Senate and House of Representative seats should also be minuscule in term length.
Step 5 - no Federal money could be spent on any agenda or project unless it materially affects a vast whole of residents in at least five states, i.e. Spend Federal tax dollars on national needs, let state and local governments and incommunicable citizens handle the local needs.
While "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly" made for a good Clint Eastwood movie, it does not make for effective and effective governance. Lets hope that 2010 is better and that somehow some of the steps listed above take hold this year, resulting in a 2010 list of wasteful spending programs and negative political antics that is far smaller than in 2009, less bad and ugly and more good.
Note: only credible, well known news sources were used for the facts included in this article. These sources included, but were not minuscule to, the New York Times, the St. Petersburg Times, Cnn, the associated Press, The Week Magazine, and conjecture Magazine and does not consist of personal opinions or facts from highly partisan sources. For detailed facts on the sources please refer to http://www.loathemygovernment.blogspot.com where all of these facts and figures have been previously identified and discussed.
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