The Obama Administration probably wishes they didn’t spend $18 million to build a website that is making a mockery of their vaunted stimulus package that if not passed might result in an economic calamity from which we might never recover. Well, here is a random sampling of six beneficiaries of stimulus money:
- Maine — Fish River Rural Health: $491,222. Jobs created — zero
- New Jersey — Southern Regional High School Board of Education: $119,622. Jobs created — zero
- Michigan — West Branch Rose City Area School District: $879,258. Jobs created — zero
- Georgia — Georgia Crisis Family Center: $16,425. Jobs created — zero
- Minnesota — Regents of the University of Minnesota: $294,200. Jobs created — zero
- Texas — Port Aransas Independent School District: $143,241. Jobs created — zero
Enough already, I think you get the picture. Lest you think my sampling was biased you can play along. Go to the website, pick a dot at random and see for yourself. The media seem to be starting to wake up and do their job. ABC News reported on data from non-existent Congressional Districts. The New York Times reported on a $1,000 grant that created 50 jobs and upon further investigation found out the $1,000 went to purchase a lawn mower. But don’t worry, President Obama put that pit bull Joe Biden in charge of making sure the money was spent carefully. President Obama: \”Nobody Messes with Joe\” Joe Biden, call your office.
We are on an express train to financial ruin. This is not just a financial problem but a national security problem as well. We won the Cold War, not with weapons, but with our economy. President Reagan ramped up our military and the teetering Soviet economy could not keep up and communism collapsed. China is becoming more capitalist every day as we chase the ghost of Karl Marx. I ask a simple question, “Do you trust this administration to spend your tax dollars wisely?” Do you believe any administration, Republican, Democrat, Independent, can effectively manage the federal government as it exists today?
A phrase we often heard in the midst of the financial crisis as justification for bailouts was “too big to fail.” One response to that was “make them smaller.” If the federal government is too big to manage and is growing without bound, then we, who are the government of the people, must make the government smaller. It is a fundamental truth of government that programs once started do not end, they just find other things to do. Here is a case in point.
When I worked for one of the phone company spin offs after the break up of AT&T, I came across a regulatory agency called the Rural Electrification Administration. Strange I thought, most of America has electricity, and I am not working for the electric company. It turns out, that agency was created to help bring electricity to rural America. Okay, that sounds like a good idea. However, once its mission was completed, instead of going out of business, it found a new mission: bringing phone service to rural America, and it will go on and on. One of the key problems is how the mission is defined. In this example, as long as one farm doesn’t have electricity, the agency will still have a reason to exist. As long as a log cabin in the woods doesn’t have a phone land line, the agency must soldier on. As any economist will tell you, the cost of serving each additional rural property, will eventually skyrocket.
If we were to take these functions and drive them down to the state and local level, eventually someone will stand up and say, “We’re done, it’s not worth the increase in taxes to prolong the life of this agency.” But ensconced in Washington, it costs more to fight it than let it go on. But we have reached a tipping point where if we don’t cut the beast down to size, the beast will have us for dinner. Chinese anyone?
