Here once again...

I'm going to pose a question.

Name one thing that our state or Federal government does well. Take a moment and really think. If your answer is anything other than spend our money, please by all means tell me what it is. I have to see this miracle of legislation.

Notice, I said "spend our money". I didn't say spend our money well, or spend it efficiently, or wisely. I simply said spend our money. Think about that. We happily pay the salaries of everyone in those giant buildings in DC, or your state capital. And what do we get back? Can the money you ever spend in taxes, ever get you anything other than a negative return?

Think about that, I said a negative return. You wouldn't happily pay on average 20% of your income to someone to invest if you had to pay a 20-30% commission would you?

You pay tax on everything. Gas, food, death, your house, and then fees for everything else. Your tax dollars go from local to state to federal coffers. Only to have a watered down portion maybe return to your state to fund whatever project is deemed critical. So just to use an example, New york in total pays 10 Billion dollars a year in taxes. This is not a real number.....so don't start bitching about facts. Out of that 10 billion, how much comes back? Right off the bat take out all of the overhead at the federal level. Whatever program gave New York the money has people that are getting paid, so they get their cut. Don't forget about oversight. Somewhere in the vast federal ranks exists a group of people who get paid to ensure that money is wisely spent. Now go down to the state and repeat the process. Now lets say congress was extra generous and set aside 2 billion dollars for New York. Out of that 2 billion how much actually gets spent on what it is intended for?

Could we not save a few bucks by keeping as much money as possible at the state level? That would mean we would have more money to go around. And it would ensure that when New York pays that 10 Billion, part of it doesn't get siphoned off to another state due to that state having a more powerful senator.

Our country was founded with strong state governments for just that purpose. The federal government should not be taking money under the guise of responsibility for something the state is set up to handle in the first place. All it becomes is an excuse to create more federal jobs and more red tape.

Medicare is the best example of this that I can see. Every state doesn't even pay the same. I think New York pays almost twice as much for medicare as most other states. How is that equitable? If all of the money that New Yorkers paid for Medicare stayed in the state, we wouldn't have these medicare balloon payments that pop up every so often forcing the state to shaft the local governments to make it up.

You may seem to get from this post that I am no fan of government. I am not, never have been, and never will be. And neither should you. You should never, ever say your government is doing a good job. They use that as a license to steal. The call it"public mandate".

My vision of government is simple. It should be run like a business. Sure it should not try to profit off the taxpayers. But a business runs smart, it seeks the best product for its dollar, and seeks to provide the best service at the lowest cost. Our government operates for profit. Don't believe me? So how come the government can vote itself a pay raise? You know, just like a board of directors? They profit from our taxes, because we pay their salary. And if you don't think they profit in other ways, then you explain to me how someone with a salary of $174,000 for what amounts to essentially a part time job (Congress gets a lot of breaks), are millionaires. Not just like 2-3 million, but 15 million and up. Lets assume that they made $174,000 a year for 20 years and paid no taxes whatsoever out of that. That amounts to 3.4 million. Where did the rest come from? They started businesses to profit from their influence, they take money from special interests, leftover money from election campaigns, they right books, get t.v appearances. All of this money is generated and made possible by the salary that we pay them.

If you don't think they do this, you are the dumbest person alive. We should pay them almost nothing, except a stipend to pay their staffs. They all like to preach about how they enjoy public service. So, serve the public. They make enough money y virtue of the advantage their position provides. If your steel mill is having problems with the EPA, are you gong to hire a lawyer down the street? Or would you hire the firm that has a partner who sits on the Senate Committee that oversees the Superfund?

In 1885 we paid congress $3,000 a year. Adjust that for inflation and see where you stand. They weren't the equivalent of millionaires back then.