Original art by Mark Valentine
Count the money and make the money count…
Every American must submit an annual accounting. Every American is susceptible to an audit with the threat of a penalty. That is our system. We talk about how it needs to be changed, but none of the proposed changes do much to alter the basic fact that we are being held accountable.
Every government program should follow the same basic rule, but they do not.
Recently, it was discovered that Washington spent $43 million of taxpayer money to build a gas station in Afghanistan. The most expensive gas station in the world is not even usable. Where was the accounting? The program is closed now. There’s nobody available to answer questions.
To put the cost in perspective, that’s the price tag for the new 300 unit green living apartment development in Kansas City’s River Market.
Can we audit The Federal Reserve? No. Can we audit The IRS? No.
Are we better at this locally?
The government program that’s hurt KC most is the Kansas City Public Schools program. In it $212.3 million taxpayer dollars are spent to educate less than 17,000 students. That comes out to $12,500 per student.
Allan Tunis is currently the Interim Superintendent. He’s No. 27 in 45 years, so basically they’ve all been “Interim Superintendents.” The last one, Stephen Green, left suddenly at the start of this school year. When James V. Shuls, director of education policy at the Show-Me Institute, started looking at questionable expenses on the district’s credit card, Green decided it was time to find another district.
In a Channel 5 news interview, Andrea Flinders, president of the Kansas City Federation of Teachers and School-Related Personnel Local 691 said, “It sends a really bad message, there have been cutbacks at the school level, cuts at the site level, but you have a superintendent dining at five-star restaurants… that’s just wrong,”
Maybe the rich aren’t paying enough, but government’s definitely not spending it responsibly.
Federal to local, government departments should submit an annual accounting and be answerable to an audit with the threat of a penalty….or else none of us should.
Thanks, Mark. Your second political piece in less than a week is much appreciated. Your 11/2 offering on Jack-O-Lanterns was a shallow and worthless effort but it at least made the important point that the political left is standing in the way of you having fun. It also gave you the oppostunity to show off your impressive artistic skills so we do have that. This effort has substantially more meat on the bone so you are moving in the right direction. You also picked a great topic as both sides of the aisle should have no problem on agreeing that the KCMo public school system is an abject failure. Funding education is the most important job of the state legislature but with shrinking dollars available, districts need to be laser focused on spending those dollars most efficiently and between the classroom, teachers, and administration, the fat appears to clearly collect at the administrative level.
That said, I can’t resist taking a few shots at your cavalier use of your facts. You say “we” can’t audit the Federal Reserve or the IRS but to me, “we” means our elected officials and Congress does have the authority to audit both agencies. Your graphic on the “IRS is preparing to imprison you” is also pretty amusing. The continuing slashing of the IRS budget in the last several years has reduced the agency to a skeletal force. Their lack of manpower has reduced their ability to audit tax returns (taxes imposed by Congress itself) to the point where it is costing the US billions in income, let alone the ability to man the phones responding to taxpayer requests for help. Thanks also for your concession that “Maybe the rich aren’t paying enough”. Guessing the RNC will be asking for the return of your membership card for that transgression.
Also liked your attention to the gas station in Afghanistan and the $43 million of taxpayer money. That expenditure falls under the Department of Defense budget which has long existed outside not only our budget process, but even any meaningful scrutiny by Congress. We certainly can’t tolerate our tax money going to things like healthcare, education, clean air/water, regulation of financial markets, or OSHA, but whatever the DOD wants, no problem.
Anyway, Mark, I do sincerely appreciate your putting this piece out there. It gives a “flaming liberal” like myself a chance to spew my poison. Don’t be a stranger.
You and I agree on a lot, but asking the rich to pay more didn’t work very well where it has been tried. Montana had the most progressive income tax structure in the nation, maxing out at 11% at 60,000, and, at the time, there were no Fortune 500 companies in Montana. The bottom line is the efficiency, from IRS sending out refunds that were illegal, to the EPA not being able to control river cleanup in Colorado. Rest assured, however, it is not politics. It’s idiocy. I fear for the country if Congress represents our best and brightest, and McConnel, Reid, Pelosi and Boehner represented the best and brightest among our best and brightest. I hold some hope for Ryan, but not really. We have already proven that not even a 100% tax rate on the rich would provide the revenue necessary to solve the budget, and picking the rich as an opponent is probably not a smart choice, as they have the money and power to avoid any tax. We seem to have grown to a point where we cannot control how our government spends money, and I think that even our government has lost control. Yes, we need to take care of those less fortunate, but we need to make sure that we do not spend $800 to buy an indigent a $40 pair of tennis shoes. We need to make sure that Congress understands that the best intentions are no longer good enough. In Missouri, MODOT needs money, threatening not to repair existing roads, even promising to ignore a two lane highway with two fatalities on it, all this after spending 2.1 million on 2/10 mile markers along all of their interstates and major highways. We can control the money they receive, but we can’t control how they spend it. Warren Buffet who called for higher taxes on the rich, was asked why he didn’t just write a bigger check. His response was that he didn’t like the way government spent it, and neither do I. You might note that it does affect small and medium sized businesses who complete their taxes on the 1040. If you raise the top tax from 39% to 50%, you are raising costs to small and medium sized businesses that provide 60% of the full time jobs. Add to that tax rate social security, unemployment, state income tax, a zoning board, increased fees from KCP&L, and providing healthcare, and you kill the incentive to hire. Most people would not understand an audit of the Federal Reserve that, by law, does not have to mark to market. The good news is that we are down to 5% unemployment. The bad news is we didn’t count 36% of the population
FYI: The IRS Imprisonment banner was not mine.
An editor has to edit, I guess.
I’ll cop to the IRS graphic…
However, that’s not so much editing as it is providing a visual garnish!
Too funny! As long as I’ve known you wildman, you have always excelled at providing visual garnish!
The Fed is a monster of unimaginable size. Out of control, populated by Liberals, unionized and impervious to the rule of law, the idea, that anyone in Government on either side of the aisle will bend the Fed to it’s will is preposterous.
Lets just look at the people who work for the Government and what they earn.
http://freebeacon.com/issues/study-government-workers-make-78-percent-more-than-private-sector/
“Employees for the federal government earn far more than their counterparts in the private sector, according to a new study by the Cato Institute.
Federal workers’ pay and benefits were 78 percent higher than private employees, who earned an average of $52,688 less than public sector workers last year.
The study found that federal government workers earned an average of $84,153 in 2014, compared to the private sector’s average of $56,350. Cato based its findings on figures from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA).
But when adding in benefits pay for federal workers, the difference becomes more dramatic. Federal employees made $119,934 in total compensation last year, while private sector workers earned $67,246, a difference of over $52,000, or 78 percent.
“Since the 1990s, federal workers have enjoyed faster compensation growth than private-sector workers,” according to the study, written by Chris Edwards, the director of tax policy studies at Cato. “In 2014 federal workers earned 78 percent more, on average, than private-sector workers. Federal workers earned 43 percent more, on average, than state and local government workers.
“The federal government has become an elite island of secure and high-paid employment, separated from the ocean of average Americans competing in the economy,” the Edwards wrote.”
The Fed, takes our money by force, then delivers it politically to the left, rewarding those Liberals who vote for more Government Programs and more Government cheese. Here is just one example.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/sep/30/labor-unions-awarded-millions-from-federal-agencie/?page=all#pagebreak
According to the Cato Insititute, not exactly the bastion of liberal thought, about 50% more money goes to corporate welfare than goes to social welfare. Pretty sure those guys aren’t voting democratic. Not saying it’s right, just that it’s not accurate to say that the Fed is taking our money by force and delivering it to the left. The right is getting plenty of government cheese.
No disagreement there.
I think our problem is the identification of Corporate welfare, whether you’re counting the tax credits to GE for buying the Volt fleet, Solyndra, or Depletion Allowance which matches Depreciation in other industries. Neither the public, nor government has shown a particularly good affinity for noticing lost revenue. When BP bought American Oil, all of American’s foreign holdings suddenly became tax exempt to the US. You also need to count state and local corporate welfare, like TIFF funding for the KC Star. Unlike the Federal government, we don’t have to add in other projects to know that 10 million is big money, at least to the city. In terms of individual welfare, we seem to be unaware of the scope of the programs, and the costs of the programs, even before they see their first recipient, from the standard deduction and the personal exemption on income tax, specifically to help raise a family, to CHIPS, school lunch, social security disability, and other programs, all of which we need, but all of which are being abused. We want to jump on the bandwagon of getting rid of corporate welfare, but we seem to scream when a corporation follows the teachings of the business professor, and moves their headquarters to Ireland, where the corporate tax rate is 10%, and their tax on intellectual property is 6%. Without corporate welfare, we can’t compete. From business school, rule 1 was to maximise profits, and rule 2 was go back and read rule 1. You maximise profits by increasing revenue and/or decreasing expenses. We need an overhaul, and we need to do it right.
Government welfare, whether it is corporate or social is simply a redistribution of wealth and redistribution of wealth is what governments do. Whether it’s redistribution to a cause you may personally like or perceive as valuable to our economy or not is your opinion. Worth the same as mine.
Absolutely nothing wrong with profits but unless you happen to own shares in the company with maximized profits, well……… Maximizing profits is the job of the private sector. Maximizing the benefit to the population as a whole, that’s the job of government. Who decides this? In the end, it’s the voters.
You can call me a Communist, if you like. From each according to their ability and to each according to their need. I can actually be a Capitalist too. The definition of being a Capitalistic Communist is that I am the one making the determination of needs and ability in my own world.
The Federal Government is a tyrannical, omnipotent organization, that operates at the whim and caprice of the tyrants on the left, who, having stuffed the ballot box with illegals, bread and circus bottom feeding, vote-for-a-living thugs and various and sundry multinational companies and organizations who manipulate legislation that benefits the few, at the expense of the middle class.
The Fed is the enforcement arm of Progressive initiatives and handouts to the privileged elite on the left and right.
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/10/americas_soft_tyranny_is_hardening.html
Read this article and know this, we are not now, nor have we been for a long time, free in a free country where there is opportunity for all. We are fettered and burdened by an out of control, pathologically sick (Yeah, sure Mr. President and Dept of Education, lets make sure those little 13 year old girls are showering with a 13 year old boy.), corrupt and necrotic Government that intrudes into our lives and forces us into a cultural paradigm that more and more, resembles the efforts of Mao and his “Cultural Revolution” sans the executions, at least, so far.
Hope and Change.
Put Johnathan Gruber on the $20.00 bill.
The last words of the First Amendment of the US Constitution are, “and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” The courts have held that that right is carried out in the voting booth, and as a result, Kansas City voters, for years, determining they weren’t getting the education for their education tax dollars, refused to vote in a levy increase, and they let it stand with just their votes, assuming that if they showed their disapproval at the ballot box, things would change. In short, they didn’t. It is still a problem of responsibility and in economic terms, efficiency. In terms of the economics of the situation, whiile dealing in debt, efficiency matters. So we spent 700 billion in stimulous money on infrastructure projects, 5% of which actually went to infrastructure, and you tell me you need more, while my tax dollars are still paying for the 700 billion and interest? To quote my brother Ron White, “I don’t think so Scooter.” The IRS, according to the Inspector General sent over 1 billion in refunds to individuals who were not supposed to receive them. My thoughts are, well if you know you sent the money, and you know where the refunds were sent, go get them, or shut your mouth about a larger appropriation. Perhaps, that was the accounting we were all looking for, but we didn’t like the results. By the way, IRS, you can keep what you collect. Even a plumber knows to shut off the free flowing water before you work on the pipes. The economic problem is efficiency. Governments spends $10 just to get $2 to the intended recipient, and the balance goes for something else, $200,000 toilet seats at langly? Yes we need a safety net, but we do not need the net to include a steak on every grill. In terms of the truely poor, we offer CHIPS for healthcare, school healthcare, three meals per day at school, unemployment for the parent, Aid for Dependent Children, Social Security Disability, job retraining, the standard deduction, the personal exemption, and Medicaid, all of which we pay for whether they serve one person or a whole flock. And don’t say it too loud, but Social Security Disability is headed for bankruptcy before the next federal election. As to responsibility, none of our founding fathers could have forseen the rise of the bureaucracy, and maybe it is time to rethink those last words of the First Amendment, especially as it applies to the EPA after the spill in Colorado, the IRS after sending improper refunds or the Department of Education as it applies to responsibility for funds spent without a better education. Perhaps we need to rethink responsibility for Kate Steinley and San Francisco violating federal law, while receiving federal funds. Perhaps, if you are in an unelected bureaucracy, in an unelected position, you need to consider your liabilities. We’re obviously not teaching math, when we spend $12000 per student foa an unstellar graduation rate, but, seven years ago we spent 700 billion, or $2333 for the 300 million in the United States. The last thing to think about is the math. 20 trillion at 2% is 400 billion in interest. If we take in 3 trillon a year in tax revenue, and we continue to grow the debt to 24 trillion, the interest on 24 trillion at 5% is 1.2 trillion. That doesn’t leave enough to pay social security, medicare, defense, education or any of the ongoing bills.
Sorry about the rant. In a year where Social Security says ther is no inflation, I just sae what my Blue Cross was going to.be next year.