I was thinking again – why does the government seem to lose control over everything it touches?

Actuarial Accounting – in the real world of the private sector, the term would be “cooking the books.” Here we have politicians and bureaucrats raiding designated funds designed for a specific cause and leaving in its place an interest-bearing IOU note. Interest-bearing because it would seem like theft, if there was no advantage to the plundered fund. In this same vein, you see tax revenues pledged to collateralize borrowing or sale/leasebacks of municipal, state or federal property to generate cash. In an age when man can place a dune-buggy on Mars, you would think that the government could successfully develop accounting systems that track funds to the penny. Not so. The government’s accounting systems are deficient by design, the design being to obscure the real fund flows and the recipients of those funds. The term actuarial accounting is a pejorative. It is a cost/benefit decision-making system where it is more cost effective to knowingly put out a defective product and live with the lawsuits over the number of people maimed or killed, rather than spending a correspondingly larger sum fixing the problem. When used by governments, it loosely translates into “kick the can down the road” and it’s someone else’s problem.

Baffling Budgets – Many budgets are simply based on the expenditure of funds in the last budgeting period. There is no incentive to reduce your costs or curtail spending. By pushing to spend every last dollar, one can insure two things: one, that your next budget will be as large at the previous one, and two, that you can demonstrate that you can cut the budget if necessary for political reasons.

Crippling Cronyism – It is natural for the political party in power to want to maintain and increase that power; therefore, they attempt to enlarge their fiefdom and populate it with people just like themselves. In many times, political ideology is often overlooked at politicians and bureaucrats try to get their family members, friends and associates in on the “gravy train” – a guaranteed job with good benefits and not too challenging work.

Corrupt Conversation – In order to disguise their malevolent, malfeasant or monkey-business, politicians often use Orwellian diversion and distraction techniques by relabeling things. The government no longer collects taxes, we have inflows, revenue enhancements, and balancing activities. Tax increases are simply tagged as “new revenues.” Correspondingly, we do not appear to be challenged with cutting taxes in the acceptable sense, reducing the real dollars being spent by the government. Instead we have budget cuts based on a reduction in the “rate of spending.” Yes, they plan to spend more real dollars this next period than they spend during the last period, but the rate of spending has been “cut.” And, how can the public argue with the reasoning behind, “Oops, we spend more than we ‘projected’ because of  ‘false assumptions,’ ‘exigent circumstances,’ and unforeseen disasters (should one conveniently occur during the current budget period.” 

Malignant Metrics – Many bureaucracies need to justify their existence in a tangible way, so they look for things they can measure like cases opened, cases pending, cases resolved. If the bureacracy does not open its own cases, such as referrals from another agency, they are likely to cut deals or employ coercive tactics to close cases and improve their case closed percentage. If the bureaucracy does not receive outside referrals, they need to generate additional statistics by casting a wider-and-wider net to trap the unsuspecting. In many cases, making up nonsensical rules and regulations to trap additional people to funnel into the system. When the metric involves money, fines and penalties, this type of behavior is often seen in coercive bureaucratic shakedowns of companies where the company pays a “record fine” and goes home.

Pork Barrel Spending – Pork Barrel Spending can be differentiated from crippling cronyism and purchasing political support because it involves the necessity of a politician to bring government funding into their district or state. This is how politicians may be measured against each other. While citizens may complain about cuts in spending, they often are referring to cuts in spending that affects other districts and states. Pretty much why it is so difficult to shut down useless military bases, airports, and facilities that have long outgrown their usefulness. I think that one of the greatest examples of the nature of this perverse process can be illustrated by the intellectually dishonest Ron Paul. A politician who claimed that he never voted for pork projects while simultaneously obtaining funds for his district and loudly claiming that if he didn’t take the funds, they would be spent elsewhere for things he did not agree with. Like Ron Paul’s district needed to spend $2.14 MILLION renovating an old movie theater in Edna that closed in 1977. While Paul was extremely vocal about libertarianism and supporting the Constitution, he has nothing to say about the unconstitutionality of the federal government renovating a movie theatre.

Purchasing Political Support – Many political institutions purchase political support through patronage, jobs given to relatives, friends and supporters, or by awarding grants, contracts, subsidies or crafting custom legislation to assist the special interests who can provide campaign funding, voter support and media attention during election cycles. The thought that the average constituent can access government through their legislative representative often depends on their party affiliation, political contributions, party work, and, of course, benefit to the politician. Purchasing political support should be differentiated from crippling cronyism because cronyism implies that the recipient of government largesse was already “on-board” with the political ideology and support for the sponsor.

Bottom line …

It is all about the corruption of the political process. Where cutbacks do not serve the politician or the political class of bureaucrats, so they are resisted at all levels. Perhaps why politicians have a political-speak language of their own.

The system is broken and does not need to be reformed – as reform implies patching the broken system. The system needs to be replaced. Or, perhaps I should say, the corrupt political parties and the corrupt politicians should be replaced. Because it is not feasible to mount a third-party campaign, one must simply work within the system. Imposing term limits and tossing out corrupt politicians.

The 2014 Congressional Election Cycle is a perfect opportunity to clean-up the House and one-third of the Senate. Removing radical ideologues and outright crooks – and usually both. I cannot tell you how to vote, because you have a much better grasp of your local politics than I do. But, I can tell you that here in California, you couldn’t swing a dead cat (screw the environmentalists who have decimated out state) without hitting a corrupt politician. One need only remember our state has produced some of the most corrupt and crazy ideologues in American history.

THE REASON THE GOVERNMENT IS CORRUPT IS BECAUSE ITS SYSTEM AND LEADERSHIP IS CORRUPT! 

Not good enough. Thanks to the legacy of progressivism, we now have multiple layers of tax-feeding organizations who justify their existence by making it their business to fix families like the Grants.
Read more: http://godfatherpolitics.com/10287/falsely-named-juvenile-justice-department-terrorizes-7-year-old-gun-felon/#ixzz2Q07Pde2Z

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