by Tina Grazier
Most of us work hard every day with the expectation that our work will sustain and benefit our families. We usually manage to put a little money aside for emergencies and future needs like college for our kids, our retirement years, and charities we support. We also pay taxes and fees…a lot of them. Will the rich pay for the problems we now face as our politicians have indicated or will we all pay more…and are we getting our monies worth?
Government has become an enormous unsustainable cash-eating monster. Politicians keep promising to give us more services, protections, and perks. The result is mass dependency with fewer people to pay the bill. The Social Security and Medicare plans are on a course for meltdown within ten to fifteen years and politicians, presumably oblivious to the future crisis (not!), are asking us to accept an even bigger medical plan. They are also asking us to fund green projects, bailouts, subsidies, housing perks, and on and on. More is the operative word of the current administration. More taxes, more sacrifice, more dependence, more subsidies and favors for selected groups, more pain for a targeted few.
I maintain the quality of the government’s product will prove to be less than adequate as time goes on with little hope for improvement. How long will it be until our once strong government becomes the ultimate Crysler or GM failure with nobody left to do the “bail out”? (I think we are there now) The federal government is in trouble, state governments are in big trouble. Those of us who live in California know firsthand the trouble with BIG government.
What does any BIG government do when it’s in trouble? It uses a big hammer and reaches into whatever pockets it can find. It becomes manipulative and looks for ways to bend the law and squeeze the people:
<strong."California Cities Face Bankruptcy Curbs," by Bobby White – WSJ
** As California seeks more funds from its cash-strapped cities and counties to close a $21 billion budget deficit, some state legislators are pushing a plan that could compound municipalities’ pain by making it tougher for them to file for bankruptcy. *** The bill would require a California municipality seeking Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection to first obtain approval from a state commission. That contrasts with the state’s current bankruptcy process, which allows municipalities to speedily declare bankruptcy without any state oversight so that they can quickly restructure their finances. The bill, introduced in January, has passed one committee vote and could reach a final vote by mid-July. *** The bill was sparked by the bankruptcy filing last year of Vallejo, Calif., just north of San Francisco. Vallejo’s city leaders partly blamed work contracts with police and firefighters for pushing the city into bankruptcy, and won permission from a bankruptcy court in March to scrap its contract with the firefighters’ union. *** That spurred the California Professional Firefighters to push for statewide legislation to curtail bankruptcy, said Carroll Willis, the group’s communications director. *** If the bill passes, it could hurt cities and counties by lengthening the time before they can declare bankruptcy. That creates a legal limbo during which a municipality is more vulnerable to creditors. *** Assemblyman Tony Mendoza, a Democrat who introduced the bankruptcy bill, said the initiative is needed to protect the credit rating of California and its ability to borrow and sell bonds. **
Police and fire are the first priorities for local governments. Union greed has helped to make budgets unsustainable but using this hammer, along with school closings, to convince voters that more money, more regulation, and more government control is all that is required to right the big ship is a BIG lie. The problem is that government has promised to do much more than it can deliver. It’s time for government to trim its sails and get out of some of the “business” it’s promised to deliver. Putting prisons in the hands of private entities would be one example…there are many others.
Big government does not work! It is a slow growing stealth cancer undetectable until the day comes when the prognosis is a few weeks or months left to live.
Freedom, supported by the rule of law, creates an environment of opportunity for every individual. This is the basis for the success and strength of our nation and is the paradigm that has the power to sustain us all if we are simply willing to embrace it. We must reverse the victim and dependency mentality that permeates our society and we must demand small, unobtrusive government that supports and rewards individual enterprise and success. The pain will be great whatever we choose but freedom is the only sustainable choice. The next few elections will mark the beginning of renewal for America with reliance on ourselves and the expectation that others will do the same or they will mark the total destruction of America. The second choice will ensure the continuing slow decline into third world realities: deep poverty, inadequate medical care, dirty water, rampant disease, dilapidated buildings and roads and bands of roving gangs.
When business is destroyed, when people hand over responsibility for their needs to government, who is left to provide opportunity and pay the taxes that sustain government? Nobody, that’s who.