Your Government: Nice Work If You Can Get It

The media wants to know why tea partiers seem so angry. Here’s a clue: It’s the spending, stupid! And it’s HOW the money is being spent.

Let’s go to New Jersey .(Yes, we have to. It’s nicer than what you’ve seen on TV. Really.) While tolls were going up, the NJ Turnpike Authority was throwing money around like Nancy Pelosi at a botox party.

Auditors say the New Jersey Turnpike Authority wasted $43 million on unneeded perks and bonuses. In one case, an employee with a base salary of $73,469 earned $321,985 when all payouts and bonuses were included…

I bet that government worker is plenty steamed that Obama wants to tax her for being one of the evil rich making more than $250,000 a year.

The audit says that toll dollars From the New Jersey Turnpike and the Garden State Parkway were spent on items ranging from an employee bowling league to employee bonuses for working on birthdays and holidays.

Hey, if you want to run for president one day learning to bowl well is very important. And what’s the point of working for the government if you have to work on your birthday or a holiday?

The biggest expense uncovered in the audit was $30 million in unjustified bonuses to employees and management in 2008 and 2009 without consideration of performance.

Where’s the pay czar when you need him?!

Then there’s Obama’s “home town” of Chicago. Illinois got $242 million in stimulus wasteful spending for the weatherized assistance program, WAP (to the taxpayer it feels more like WHAP!). Chicago received $91 million to weatherize 12,500 homes.

…a new report by the Department of Energy has found serious problems in stimulus-funded weatherization work — problems so severe that they have resulted in homes that are not only not more energy efficient but are actually dangerous for people to live in. (emphasis mine)

Department inspectors visited 15 homes that were being weatherized by CEDA and paid for by stimulus funds. “We found that 14 of the 15 homes…failed final inspection because of poor workmanship and/or inadequate initial assessments,” the report says…

And then there was fraud…

Don’t blame the contractors, they’re just working the system like community organizers taught them to.

People are struggling in this down economy, jobs are scarce and every time we open the newspaper we see how our money is being wasted. To top it off, the only city that continues to spend more is Washington D.C.

Being the center of government, Washington is used to being insulated from national economic trends. But the disconnect became particularly pronounced during the Great Recession — thanks to the federal government’s own expansionary response.

Contrary to the nonsense Chris Mathews spewed the other night, this is what the tea partiers are mad about. It’s not that they want NO taxes, NO government, NO safety net and NO healthcare. The Tea Partiers I know simply want limited government, less spending and more freedom.

They don’t want to be forced to give over their hard earned money for wasteful, and often unconstitutional, spending. However, they are very compassionate people and willingly donate their money and time to help those in need. They are great at working together to get things done. It’s how they’ve become successful. They are the mothers in the PTA, the coaches of the little league teams and the presidents of community service clubs.

They also earn their money by helping other people. They understand that the way to become a rich capitalist and get everything you want is by providing other people with everything they want.

And not by wasting other people’s money.

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