Effective and Efficient: Two Words Our Government Has Demonstrated It Doesn’t Understand
From “Front and Center”, by Bud Burrell
We face impending legislative actions by our elected representatives that would potentially nationalize our health care systems, and a new taxation policy on energy being called euphemistically a “Cap and Trade” program, intended to have the US to try and unilaterally control Greenhouse Gases, while the rest of the World changes nothing. This comes on the heels of moves to effectively nationalize our banking system under the control of an entity which has never been audited or examined except “In Camera”, and a move to negate more than a century of property rights of bondholders as expressed in our bankruptcy laws by the national unionization of our automotive industry.
The expressed goals of any organization must ultimately be linked to operating effectively, meaning getting the job in front it done, and operating efficiently, meaning to operate in a manner that clearly treats all assets consumed in such activities as limited scarce resources which must be conserved with a conscience. Objective standards for measurement of the performance of any organization by necessity and practicality cannot come from within the organization in question, but must be based on third party, arms length research and review. This element is sorely lacking in our Government and its agencies today.
Our Government has done simply done an appalling job of controlling itself, if measured by the operating outcomes of the organizations it has been responsible for most directly. Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare and more have been or shortly will be bankrupted. Indeed, if future losses were to be applied to assessing the net present value of these programs, they are unfiled bankruptcies. Most beneficiaries would agree that Social Security, Medicaid and Medicaid provide real benefits valued by US citizens legally and other than legal immigrants illegally. So how can this country solve these problems?
Operating effectively and efficiently are words seemingly not in the lexicon of our Government except as credited by lip service, and not by conduct. The American public has become jaded beyond any level in history about the apparent willingness of its politicians to tell the Big Lie, not about select topics, but about almost anything. How can this be controlled?
It is very clear that the purse strings of our Government must have a hard choke collar put on them. We cannot allow our Government to continue to spend money that it not only doesn’t have, but won’t ever have. We cannot allow our Government officials to control our currency, nor can we allow them to grant this contract to a private agency such as the Federal Reserve, who contends it is above accountability. We have a formula for catastrophe if this continues unchecked.
I would suggest that every Government program other than the waging of War be paid for from dedicated and inviolate “Trust Funds” established from actual revenues of the Government, rather than being allowed to simply monetize forward obligations by diluting the value and meaning of our national currency. The term we have relied on for decades to back our expenditures, “The Full Faith and Credit of the United States” has been bastardized so severely, we have now threatened our status the World’ Reserve Currency.
These trust funds cannot be administered by anyone other than an independent fiduciary, one most certainly not subject to the whims of our Congress beyond their initial establishment. We are a hair’s breadth from our Government needing more income than taxes can generate for irresponsible commitments made to social welfare plans that our economy cannot begin to cover the costs of. I believe in generosity, but it must be limited to the practical level of not exceeding tangible and rational scarce resources from which it can be funded.
This can only be handled privately, and not by our Government, which has shown itself to be incapable of behaving responsibly by insuring their political survival by spending others money as if it were anyone other than theirs. If there are fatal flaws of a Democracy which can crush a Republic, we are now on that cusp. Our Government officials, elected and appointed, have gone beyond being guilty of a failure of rational oversight, to the level of being irresponsible and dangerous to our way of life.
I wrote earlier of the key words “Valid” and “Reliable” addressing the ability of our Government that could demonstrate they can monitor and control themselves like adults. We have had it repeatedly demonstrated that they don’t have the intellectual capacity, the personal character, nor the political will to stand up and say “We can’t do it because we don’t have the money”.
They have forgotten that they don’t exist except by the will of the people and their ability to pay the taxes that make their jobs possible. They have had signals from huge numbers of Americans that they are near a breaking point. What do they think 1.7 Million moderate and responsible Americans standing in the Capital with signs should tell them? What should they take from Americans who want capitalism and a democratic republic who have turned out in “Tea Parties” all over this nation?
Have they become so tone deaf to these messages that they now think they are above all other Americans? How do they think they will vote themselves the largesse of a Health Plan that would cut service to everyone but them, without personal repercussions? Maybe they talk to much to each other and not enough to the people they work for. There had better be one health plan mechanism for all, or it better be for none.
Our Political Class has become one which believes itself to be above citizen/inferiors from whom their very existence flows. They need to be reminded of this every day, lest they relapse into this state of condescending arrogance. Our Government has become the tail wagging the dog in the case of our needs. They believe we are too inferior to know what is best for us, and that ALL will have to accept their “change” irrespective of whether or not that structure of “change” is what the majority wants or needs. They choose to address their needs and wants first, before considering the price paid by our citizens.
There is a concept called terrorism by the minority. It is where we stand now. Even if that doesn’t ring your bell, each of us must speak up, show up, and get involved. It has to happen before the system breaks, or the price of re-mounting our national systems will be one nobody is prepared to pay.
There is an old golden rule of business that you get what you pay for. Well, we are paying the most for what is rapidly on its way to becoming the least, not the most. If we don’t wake up, we will be spending Amero’s rather than dollars, with a value less than Pesos. Maybe that is what the North American Union was all about in the first place. If you don’t ask these kinds of questions now, it will be too late the day after this happens.
Private jobs creation must be our first priority. Their rewards are the fount from which all largesse flows. No one can prove otherwise, not anywhere in the world. Practicality must rule first. As I like to say, this isn’t quantum physics. The complexity of national politics may be approaching that, but the political game isn’t played by rocket scientists except with one another’s funding. This must stop, or the best job in this economy will be a short order cook in a fast food restaurant owned by a foreign enterprise. Other nations have discovered our secrets, at the very time we would seem to be hell bent on abandoning them.