It’s late August, and California’s slide toward insolvency continues apace.
Archive for the ‘Waste and Fraud’ Category
Texas vs. California: Dog Days of August Edition
Monday, August 27th, 2012Texas Vs. California: August 16, 2012
Thursday, August 16th, 2012Looks like California has done such a good dog of screwing the pooch that I may have to start doing these roundups weekly:
How Obama Has Recalibrated My Outrage Scale
Tuesday, August 7th, 2012Back in 2008, this sort of news would probably get my dander up. The upshot is that the federal Highway Bridge Program is going to force various levels of Texas government to pay for replacing little-used bridges rather than repairing them, even if some only get 25 cars a day and there are alternate routes available, in order to keep getting federal funds.
There’s lots wrong with the program: Taxpayer money wasted for one, and the principles of Federalism violated for another; there’s absolutely no reason for the federal government to take money from taxpayers in the various states, put it in a big pot, rake off their bureaucratic maintenance fees, and then redistribute it to states, counties, etc. Let counties and states repair their own bridges, and decide which ones to repair and how to pay for them.
But even given all that, my outrage meter is barely quivering. Unlike so many Obama-era boondoggles, at least we’re getting something tangible and useful. At least it didn’t line some corrupt solar power company CEO’s pockets before his firm went bankrupt. At least it didn’t screw non-union pensioners to line the coffers of the UAW. At least it’s not a multibillion dollar high speed train boondoggle that will never be finished. At least here’s a public works project that’s actually shovel ready. And, as long as you think that there should be public roads in the first place (there’s a libertarian case for completely private roads, but that ship sailed a long, long time ago), then at least we’re getting something at least vaguely within the purvey of some government entity.
And at least the program didn’t end up killing a border patrol agent and 300+ Mexican civilians.
So corrupt, incompetent and scandal-ridden is the Obama Administration that I have a hard time working up indignation over the fact that a significant fraction of $150 million will probably be wasted on bridges we don’t really need, mainly because I’m sure Obama or his cronies will find a brand new way to waste ten times that one something completely useless sometime over the next week…
Texas vs. California: A Quick Roundup
Wednesday, July 11th, 2012Spent most of the day checking things off my list and web-surfing Creepy Pasta. So here’s a quick roundup of Texas vs. California tidbits:
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Just How Far Does The John Wiley Price Corruption Story Reach?
Monday, June 4th, 2012Sometimes you know there’s a big, juicy story swimming just under the threshold of public consciousness, but don’t have the tools, sources or knowledge to bring it to the surface. Such is the case with the FBI’s ongoing investigation of Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price, a powerful, long-serving fixture in the Dallas black political power structure. Right now the story involves current Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings and money that may have improperly made it’s way from Rawlings’ campaign chest to Price’s pocket via political consultant Kathy Nealy. The FBI raided Price’s office last year.
The lefty Dallas Observer is more blunt in what the FBI is alleging: “The affidavit claims a pay-for-play scheme existed in which businesses would pay handsome consulting fees to Nealy’s company at about the time they were seeking to win a contract with Dallas County. A portion of that money would be funneled to Price, who would steer the favored contractor through the Commissioner’s Court.”
Not living in Dallas, the first time I ran across John Wiley Price’s name was in connection to the previous mayor of Dallas, then-aspiring Senate candidate Tom Leppert. Leppert and Price seem to have cooperated in killing Richard Allen’s Inland Port project, Leppert allegedly because it competed with a similar project by backer Ross Perot, Price allegedly because Allen wouldn’t pay Price and his cronies $1 million in shakedown money. I should hasten to add that Price, who has been a fixture on the Dallas political scene long before Leppert even moved there, is to the best of my knowledge not one of Leppert’s cronies, or even particularly close to him. However, Willis Johnson, who was allegedly part of the shakedown effort, is one of Leppert’s cronies, and was (along with the late Lynn Flint Shaw) one of Leppert’s conduits into the Dallas black community.
Price has an, ahem, interesting history. He was arrested for felony assault charges, of which he was acquitted just after the Rodney King riots. And his protege Aaron McCarthy is a member of the New Black Panther Party.
But if Price committed the crimes alleged in the FBI affidavit, the question is: How deep does the corruption go? How many other Dallas political players were paying off Price, and in exchange for what? Price has been in office a long, long time. It’s quite possible he has enough skeletons in his closet to make it an ossuary.
I don’t have the answers, and I don’t even have the knowledge or connections to properly dig for those answers. But I suspect we’re going to find out in the near future anyway…
EuroDoom for a Weekend in June
Friday, June 1st, 2012How about a nice slice of EuroDoom to ease you into the weekend?
With all the post-primary news, the European Debt Crises news has been chugging along for a while now. let’s look at some, shall we?
It’s a winner-take-all world. Countries that do well have to do a few things extremely well. Germany makes the world’s best machine tools, some of the best heavy engineering equipment, not to mention autos. German manufacturing dominates innumerable key niches. The Spanish don’t do anything well. They haven’t done anything well since the Spanish Empire outsourced its manufacturing to Flanders in the 16th century.
As a journalist told me yesterday, he worries whether the money in his pocket will be worth anything a year from now. Others worry about Germany’s increasingly negative image among recession-hit southern and eastern Europeans. Americans will understand this feeling well: you pay and pay to help others, only to have them turn on you in hatred and wrath, accusing you of horrible hidden motives and denouncing your selfishness.
EuroDoom #Grexit Update: Greeks Already Printing Drachmas?
Thursday, May 24th, 2012Are the Greeks already printing Drachmas? So says a completely unverified tweet from a random Twitter user. Really, what better source could you possibly ask for?
The Internet is alive with buzz on Greece exiting the Euro (see #grexit for a sip from the firehose). Sadly, there seems to be no buzz at all on reigning in the cradle-to-grave European welfare state that caused the crises in the first place.
More Grext/European debt crises news:
“Growth” to social democrats means growth in government’s size and reach, not growth in the real economy. This approach directly contributed to our current predicament; and more of the same will only exacerbate it.
Euro Update: The Euro is “An Unbridled Doomsday Machine”
Monday, May 21st, 2012Though markets have calmed a bit, the desperate search for a lever that will actually steer Europe away from the looming wall of a EuroCrash continues. Meanwhile, certain repeating motifs are detected:
Europe now has the lowest growth of any region in the world. We have already wasted years in trying to control this sickness in the euro, and we are saving the cancer and killing the patient. We have blighted countless lives and lost countless jobs by kidding ourselves that the answer to the crisis might be “more Europe”. And all for what? To salvage the prestige of the European Project, and to spare the egos of those who were wrong and muddle-headed enough to campaign for the euro.
Johnson is right about the cancer, but slightly wrong about the cause: The European cradle-to-grave welfare state is the cancer; the Euro just made it slightly more malignant.
But with two separate commentator’s calling the Euro a Doomsday Machine, I feel a new meme coming on:
Not to mention much better chances of being linked by Jonah Goldberg and James Lileks…
Greece, Spain, Ireland, Portugal and Italy (and California). In each case, the promise of more bailouts and a steady flow of cheap money only produced more reckless behavior, excessive levels of government spending and record levels of debt.
Johan Norberg, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, summarizes the results: “From 1997 to 2007, government expenditures increased by around 6 percent annually in Spain, Portugal and Greece, while population remained mostly stable. Spending increased by 4 percent a year in Italy — even while the economy shrank.”
Consequently, “Between 2000 and 2010, Portugal increased its public debt as a share of GDP from 49 percent to 93 percent, France from 57 percent to 82 percent, Italy from 109 percent to 118 percent, and Greece from 103 percent to 145 percent,” reports Norberg.
The European crisis is as much a crisis of politics as economics. The current paralysis of the Greek political system demonstrates the point very clearly. EU policy has actively contributed to this crisis by effectively sealing off discussion of the political problems thrown up by austerity.
Budgetary policy is at the core of traditional democratic politics in Europe but the management of the euro zone is increasingly being effected not through democratic institutions but via a centralised and depoliticised form of technocratic fiat. The “stability” narrative has triumphed over the need for legitimacy as the crisis in Europe has deepened.
Ivan Krastev, the eminent political scientist, argues that we have now arrived at a point where national governments have politics but are no longer in control of policy, including budgetary policy, which is moving via the fiscal treaty and other measures to the EU level.
On the other side of this divide the European Union has policies but no politics, since decisions are increasingly being made by technocratic managers rather than directly elected representatives of the European public. The euro zone crisis has thus amplified an existing problem – the absence of both a European citizenry and a transparent European level political process.
EuroDoom Weekend Update
Saturday, May 19th, 2012Good evening. I’m not Chevy Chase, and you’re not either. (Unless the real Chevy Chase is reading this, in which case: 1. Loved you on the original SNL, and 2. Stop being such a total dick.)
The EuroZone crises has now reached the stage where European media is doing live updates.
Take a look at this update: “German Chancellor Angela Merkel has mooted the idea that Greece should hold a referendum on the euro alongside its second round of elections next month.” Well, no use even pretending that the Greeks have a say in their own future, is there?
The Zuckermutterobergroupenführer has spoken!
In other EuroDoom news:
George Will Makes the Case for Drug Legalization
Thursday, April 12th, 2012Or, to be more specific, George Will summarizes the same case made in Mark Kleiman, Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken’s Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know. It focuses on the sheer economic idiocy of continuing the War on Drugs:
A $200 transaction can cost society $100,000 for a three-year sentence. And imprisoning large numbers of dealers produces an army of people who, emerging from prison with blighted employment prospects, can only deal drugs. Which is why, although a few years ago Washington, D.C., dealers earned an average of $30 an hour, today they earn less than the federal minimum wage ($7.25).
I oppose the War on Drugs for reasons of general principles (it’s not the purpose of government to save people from themselves), the specific application of constitutional federalism (the Commerce Clause should not apply to the regulation of drugs manufactured and sold within the confines of a single state), and for reasons of budgetary philosophy (making drugs illegal has expanded the size and power of the federal government while increasing the budget deficit; legalizing, regulating and taxing drugs would reduce both the deficit and the harm to individuals and society). Frankly, I’d be for the immediate legalization of methamphetamine tomorrow if it meant we could stop ID-ing people with colds trying to buy Sudafed.
There has been slow but steady progress in the conservative movement for saner drugs laws, from William F. Buckley arguing for the decriminalization of marijuana, to National Review declaring that “The War on Drugs is Lost” in 1996, to Republican Presidential candidates like Ron Paul and Gary Johnson (who, like Paul once did, bolted for a doomed Libertarian Party run) making the same case.
Despite growing sentiment, almost no legislative headway has been made on the issue because there’s no consensus in the Republican Party (or the American people) for that change. When an initiative for the total legalization of marijuana fails in California (though poor wording helped contribute to the defeat), where can it succeed? But the lack of a consensus for legalization is no reason to avoid fighting for saner laws at the state or national level or trimming funding for the DEA.
Another question is how come we never hear anything about legalization from the supposedly pro-freedom Democratic leadership? If Obama, an admitted recreational drug user in his youth, has ever made a speech as President supporting legalization or decriminalization of any drugs, it’s evaded my attention. Indeed, not only does he not support decriminalization, he’s actively hostile to the idea.
George Will thinks more seriously and clearly than Barack Obama on the issue of drug legalization. Then again, the first ten words in the preceding sentence are pretty much true all the time,,,