You People Waste My Money - #1 7-1-09

You people waste my money!!! –




Everyone has experienced this, unless you have never used a drive through, take out or fast food.

You go to some place to get some food because it’s close or convenient. You know, it’s on the way. It may be that you have come to this place because you actually like the food so much, that you went out of the way to get there. So you wait in line, you plan what you are going to get, you finally get to the front and you place your order. You willingly pay the price and wait for your food. At last, you are given the bag with your order. But of course you are in a hurry and you have to leave and get back to do something, and you really don’t get to check out your order until you get to your destination and you finally get to open the bag.

And when you do, it’s all wrong. It has happened to everyone. I have even been with someone who got an order so wrong, that had they eaten it as prepared they would have had a very violent allergic reaction. But my whole point in this story is the idea that sometimes our time and our money is wasted. Maybe you have the time to go back to the fast food store and get your order corrected. But if you can invest this effort, nothing will return the time it takes to do so. This is the cost of an honest mistake.

Maybe your circumstance doesn’t allow the opportunity to retrace your steps. Do you throw away edible food that does not match your tastes, or change the food yourself by picking out or scraping off the offending ingredient? Not exactly satisfying but at least you get to eat, and the money you spent and the time you invested has some return. Maybe its mushrooms, melted in the cheese and steak, and just one will risk your life. You might find someone else to eat the food. In this case it’s a waste of time and money so far as your meal is considered. The worst case would be if you had to throw away the food, wasted and without fulfilling the purpose of having a meal. Wasted time, wasted money, wasted resources.

In this entire scenario, we are willing participants. We choose to go where we went. There is a chance that we can go back to the food store and inform the folks who do the work there that there was a mistake and allow them to offer a solution to this situation. We choose to be involved in this situation. We have the option to be involved in the possible solution, even and including not going back to that fast food restaurant and thereby voting with our dollars.

Of course, I have not discussed any aspect of the frustration and anger that such a scenario might just cause. And in all of this, we have assumed that there is no malice or intent on the part of the purveyor of fine fast food. That is, they did not actually mess up my order on purpose. Mistakes do happen. And the fast food joint would usually feel bad and offer some form of restitution for the mistake. I think we all understand this situation and have experienced some aspect of this story. Now, pickup the experience with all of its parts and apply it to our City, County, State and Federal Government.

Come with me as we walk through this comparison.

Begin with the idea of choice. I am constantly being bathed with the concept that we are a society of choices. In shadow of that perspective, I have no choice in my taxes, none at all. I work to earn money. My income comes from the money I earn by exchanging major portions of my life, talent and energy, with a marketplace. I can never have back the minutes I spend to create this income. I trade that part of my life. That income, the money I am paid, represents a part of my life. That time of my life that I will never have back to use in another way, to spend with friends, family or investing in my ability to possibly increase how I trade my time for income. From that income the Federal and State government takes a portion, without regard as to what I may actually “owe” in taxes for any given year.

Follow me with this for a minute. At the end of the year, I have made some total amount of money. That amount might be a modest hill or massive heap. The government then comes out, weighs the gold, and says I owe them some amount of money based on a percentage of that total amount I made. Almost everyone I know, regardless of their ‘social status’ pays something. But unlike the way I describe it here, without permission, without consideration of what that amount might be, the government “takes” your money, in advance of the debt, and holds it from 15 to 3 months before it is due. There is the first consideration.

Going beyond this first issue, look at what happens with your money, you are compelled to give to the government. We live in a Republic, a representational form of government, in the greatest country in the history of the world. However, in the midst of this greatness, stands a huge septic tank of injustice, criminal neglect and shameful waste.

We hear about the programs that waste money. We hear jokes about $50 hammers and $1000 toilets. Then we go on about our business. In our busy lives that keeps us spinning, we file these oddities away as some strange, funny and singular quirky news item. But look at it from this perspective. The news reports on a group called “Citizens Against Government Waste” where the top Tax Wasting projects are documented and discussed. The list is compiled after the submission of the 2009 Appropriations Bill, and before it was passed. They documented 19.6 Billion Dollars in wasted spending and ear marks. No one in Washington stopped the bill from passing. The current administration tried to make a big deal out of cutting 100 Million from the budget, while the 19.5 Billion that would have remained sailed out of our pockets and into the great black whole of waste. And that is just the waste that is easy to track.

If our nation’s population between the ages of 15 and 64 are eligible to pay taxes number approximately 206 Million, that is a waste from every American in this tax paying group of approximately $100.00 per person wasted. Add on to that the wasted time in investigations for political agendas (steroid use in sports for one), over seas trips to confirm that a natural disaster is bad, or our money spent on the UN who then uses the money to help the world hate the US. That $100.00 starting point is a drop in a large empty bucket that when you add it up you can out strip a nice monthly wage for most people. All on the back of your tax dollars. And the folks who are paid by those tax dollars, the leaders who are supposed to be representing us, only listen when the polls say we might just vote them out of office and make them loose their government pensions and perks, also funded by the Tax Payer!

The instances where I have a choice in how my tax dollars are spent are so removed from the decisions of how much of my income is confiscated before I even owe a dime, makes the entire discussion an ever increasing frustration of extortion approaching theft. I think of the words from the Declaration of Independence and wonder that we as citizens are, “more disposed to suffer , while evils are sufferable…” But where do the ‘evils’ become insufferable?

I am almost sick to death. I am so tiered of hearing people who are paid by me, with money taken from each and everyone of my paychecks, waste so much time doing absolutely nothing. I mean nothing at all of any value. They waste the money they take from me, without any accounting that is real, or any concern about the fact that they are living off of me and what I do to make money for my family. I am sick of paying money to people and getting nothing at all in return, except the demand for more money.

Before you jump to any conclusions, I pay my taxes every year. I learned that lesson early on. I am not a nut case who thinks that there should be no government at all. I actually read the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights and the other amendments, and believed that was how things are. I have read so much American History and Political and Economic teachings that the books fill my front room. And from that, and reality from where I sit, there is a big disconnect!

I am a nut case for thinking these documents have any meaning. I am a nut case for thinking the governments of my City, my State and my Country work for me and my fellow citizens as opposed to the other way around. In that regard I am nuts. But more than that, I am sick of these people wasting my money. Wasting my life and robbing my family of its sustenance.

I could go on with examples of the current events of the world to illustrate my point, but that can wait until my next commentary. Think of TARP, Stimulus Bill #1 and Stimulus Bill #2 and the meddling of the Federal Government in hundreds of matters where they don’t belong. But there will be time in the future to ‘discuss’ all of these and other issues.

I am not using my real name in publishing these thoughts and considerations. Consider me a Pamphleteer in the nature of our Revolutionary forefathers. Though I am not as august a person by any account, I am a citizen and I have been educated in spite of the Schooling I have received. My opinions are expressed to see if there is an echo or an answer. I am not ready to risk my family in this fight until I know others are ready to risk their sacred honors sharing the like precious faith of those that founded this Country by the Grace of God. If you agree, post back and I will answer. I do not know everything, but I know what I know.