Symptom of the Disease
Local budgets depend on state and federal grants for larger and larger portions of their funding. State budgets depend on federal hand-outs even more so. Soon, those grants become unfunded mandates. The finger is pointed at the federal government for leaving states and communities high-and-dry as politicians demand even more money to replace lost funding.
This – for lack of a better term – is our disease. Our politicians in Washington are rated on how much money they can steal from the residents of other states to be redistributed back home. This continues while most of you don’t even know the names of representatives on your town’s finance committee.
The following posts are from our Symptom of the Disease category, and these symptoms (posts) can easily referred back to our country's disease.
As far as I can tell, President Obama’s newest federal stimulus boondoggle job-killing bill relies exclusively on a 5.6 percent surtax on millionaires. Supporters and the CBO are telling us the surtax will pay for the $447 billion in spending in 10 years. These are the numbers you need to look at … these are…
Six hundred million in the past five years. The AP story claims the federal government and the Obama administration are working to clamp down on the unearned payments, but there is no mention of prosecutions or attempts to recover the cash.
When – over a period of decades – we allow the federal government to get intimately involved with contracts and government-backed loans for companies like Solyndra in an effort to push worn political and environmental agendas, we’ve got nobody to blame but ourselves.
It’s not about the designation. The Coltsville district in Hartford, Conn. was pronounced a National Historical Landmark in 2008, and there are now efforts to have the area designated a National Park. You know, similar to Yellowstone.
Teachers, school administrators and principals were directly involved with various efforts – including outright cheating and changing student answers – to increase the Atlanta school systems student performance scores. Some even held “erasure parties” on weekends to change answers.
Oh heck … only $6.5 billion? When you have a centralized federal government program designed to hand disability payments directly to individuals, it’s kind of like having the executive leadership of General Motors changing the oil in your SUV. It’s an unsuitable arrangement, and as such, a symptom of the disease.
How did the Obama administration’s response compare when reviewing the wildfire response in Texas that burned 2.5 million acres (3,900 square miles) of land as compared to a recent Mexico fire that burned about 390 square miles? How about other disasters?
Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy (D) headed to Washington, DC with many other governors not to check out the National Mall or Lincoln Memorial, rather they headed into town to beg for cash and schmooze with those who hold the purse strings hoping they can pick up $100 million here, or $50 million there, to help…
Yes, I understand the current political climate requires town finance managers to beg for money from the state, and state leaders must beg for money from the federal government, but can we agree this is a problem? Actually, it’s incrementally grown from a small issue to what any well-informed TEA Party member would refer to…
They don’t just see dead people, they give them cash, and lots of cash. During the last decade, about $1 billion has been handed out by the federal government to the dead. Subsidies, prescription drugs, wheelchairs, and payments for heating bills are just the start. Medicare even paid $92 million for treatments prescribed by dead physicians.