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.
Congressional Democrats are being urged by leadership to avoid town hall meetings and other public events that offer the ability for voters to ask questions in uncontrolled settings. Last summer’s finger waving and YouTube video accounts seems just too much to handle for faltering Democrats.
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is asking Congress to put politics and ideology aside – for the good of the children – and come up with $23 billion to save education in America. What did you really expect would happen? The $100 billion in stimulus funding was just the tip of the iceberg.
Limos. Caviar. Chartered jets. Private parties. Drinks. Entertainment. The reason both Republicans and Democrats spend millions of dollars each year is directly tied to the billions of dollars flowing from the federal government to union gigs and special interest groups.
Arne Duncan – when heading the Chicago public school system – may have placed students in the school of their parents choice after taking calls from powerful business owners and political elites, including congressmen and senators. This special “appeal” process was unknown to the general public.
Democrats and union leaders assured everyone the TEA Party movement was pure astroturf and fake, funded by finance and insurance companies favoring Republicans. It was not true, and now Fox News reports a supposed grass-roots effort to bash the TEA Party movement is funded by unions.
GOP politicians have been quietly writing letters to government agencies encouraging them to fund special pork projects in their home districts or states. At the same time they join calls for ending pork barrel earmarks claiming they are a waste of tax dollars. This is nothing new.
Even though plans to ensure Nebraska residents would get $300 billion in federal health care kickbacks will not survive the next version of the Democrat’s health care legislation, plenty “carve-outs” providing billions to other states – not specifically named – will survive. The union deals may survive as well.
The most ethical Congress EVAH. After a four year investigation looking into Rep. Alan Mollohan (D-W.Va.) using his position to secure more than $250 million in federal funding for close friends running non-profits, the Department of Justice just closed the investigation with no action.
Speculation everywhere concerning why health care insurance and pharmaceutical companies are tossing money at Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley in support of her bid for Senate. When you’re a big company, you’ve got to play both sides.
I’m not at all convinced that Scott Brown – Republican candidate for the state’s special election to fill Ted Kennedy’s seat – will be successful, but this election proves to me the management of state-wide elections to national office has totally been turned on it’s head.