by Tina Grazier
A news item from the Garden State generated a steamy internal response in me and I just had to share. I’m talking cartoon time…actual steam escaping from my ears and nostrils! Ya see, I have long held that it’s the lawmakers not the businessmen that need regulating. Most of our lawmakers have never met a payroll and haven’t a clue about creating wealth. Most have clearly demonstrated through the years that spending our money is the only reason we sent them to Washington. In fact they spend our money so freely, with nary a concern for what it has taken to send it there, that the national debt has become irrelevant to them. It’s only monopoly money. The budget numbers are big, the people have an endless supply of cash, and we are charged to buy boardwalk, Park Place…and so much more! They are worse than teenagers.
Meanwhile, promises to put greater restrictions on business is a laugh. they do it for show, they do it to garner favor from special interests. It’s nothing but a slap in the face for the over regulated money machine that funds their game. More regulation is meaningless coming from these incompetent, fiscally challenged boobs. Rarely do new rules have anything to do with protecting the public at large. As we saw in the housing melt down, lending regulation for the housing market was designed to create a certain social effect. As we are seeing in the Gulf spill, regulation has trumped common sense and caused greater harm. The regulation now in place to supposedly protect the environment is partially responsible for the depth and breadth of the disaster and speaks to the absolute incompetence of the regulatory bureaucracy. Who regulates the regulators? Why can’t we regulate oput of control politicians? Arghhhhh!
Here’s the story that set me off…talk about bad business practices! The politicians of New Jersey have been criminal in what they have done with public funds. As a citizen of Californian I can only shudder:
“America’s Municipal Debt Racket,” by Steven Malanga – The Wall Street Journal
Nearly 40 years ago the Garden State borrowed $302 million to begin constructing the Meadowlands. The goal was to pay off the bonds in 25 years. Although the project initially went according to plan, politicians couldn’t resist continually refinancing the bonds, siphoning revenues from the complex into the state budget, and using the good credit rating of the New Jersey Sports and Exposition authority to borrow for other, unsuccessful building schemes. ** Today, the authority that runs the Meadowlands is in hock for $830 million, which it can’t pay back. The state, facing its own cavernous budget deficits, has had to assume interest payments–about $100 million this year on bonds that still stretch for decades.
This is exactly the kind of thing that has Tea Partiers across the nation up in arms. If anyone can defend this blatantly irresponsible behavior by elected officials let it be known that YOU are the fringe nut. I can imagine millions of similar scenario’s taking place all across this nation with zero real accountability. Who will regualte the politicians?
Yes government needs regulating! We need to regulate politicians! Let them stand at attention for quarterly inspections and big fines for noncompliance! Let them fill out meaningless reports that nobody reads. Let them pay the fees just for the rpiviledge!
Elections are coming up again in November. Remember this New Jersey story as you mark your ballots. And since it’s highly unlikely that we can actually find a way to regulate these bozos, let us at least be smart enough to rid ourselves of practiced conniving spenders.