Progressives have convinced millions that limitless government spending translates into prosperity. They are either unaware or blind to the fact that the government can only take money from the producers and redistribute it to others after taking a hefty slice for themselves. No knowledgeable person would believe otherwise. Government spending is the reverse of a perpetual motion machine; it is more akin to a black hole where money and dreams go to die.

I’ll start with a riddle: What never dies, never sees layoffs, is constantly growing and is rarely held out to be a model of efficiency, inventiveness and thrift? You knew the answer already: our federal government. When I was growing up, my Father told me the government was the employer of last recourse. It is probably not 100% fair, but he was making a point I believe is just as true today as it was then: Working for the government pays better, demands less of your effort and time, and almost guarantees you a cushy job for life. A regimented system draws those who like to feel as if they are protected from the vagaries of life their non-government friends must contend with. You frequently gain a certain arrogance when you work for the government!  For instance:

• The government has grown during good times and bad, with a compound growth rate of 11% over the last 10 years, with continued growth increases projected by the Congressional Budget Office out to infinity and beyond!
• Working for the federal government puts you at the top of the heap financially, with the average employee, including benefits, making a staggering $146,643 a year.
• Those federal government benefits are the best anywhere, averaging over $44,000 yearly compared to the private sector at $13,486.
• Compare the number of days private-sector workers work per year to the federal government, which averages 50 days a year off compared to the private sector at 16 days!
• When federal employees perform services that the private sector can provide, the cost frequently doubles, triples, or more, and the time to complete is three times longer, according to accredited studies.
• The term patronage, political, presidential and within government agencies, was invented for government workers. Moving up the ladder and the kind of reviews you receive depend less on performance and more on your connections and acquiescence to the politics (almost exclusively Democrat) that drive the strategy, decisions and implementation of government policy. Statistics reveal that federal employees’ donations to political candidates and unions (as high as 99% sometimes) mostly go to Democrats!
• Try firing a federal employee. It is frequently difficult, if not impossible, with innumerable third-party reviews and appeals.
• Ineptitude on display promotes a narrative of incompetence. Harvard Business Review tries to make sense of the negative culture and insular views involved in federal government workplaces.
• DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) is the newest wrinkle in government efficiency. Now, it threatens our national security. Harvard Business Review takes a dim view of “The Failure of the DEI Industrial Complex.” Is the government willing to back down and mend its ways? No way; who’s going to make them?
• Why does the government pay more for everything than the private sector? Read what the CATO Institute has to say on this subject.
• Why do inspectors general stay busy with backlogs stretching into the years, but few employees get fired or go to jail? I spoke with two individuals in both the SBA and State Department Inspector General’s Offices who acknowledged that it takes an average of five years or more for internal investigations and that every case has a political element, especially if the person is of from a protected class, one frustrated individual shared with me.
• Why do many government programs fail, get canceled, or can’t be accomplished within time and budget constraints? While the degree of failure varies by department and the relative size or duration of a particular acquisition program or purchase contract, the waste in terms of time, money, overhead and opportunity cost are monumental. The Defense Department stands out for special mention, with tens of billions of dollars of waste each year. There are many reasons for this, but overall, the tension between the Defense Department and Congress comes in for the lion’s share of the problems, with program oversight not too far behind. Again, accountability frequently means someone gets transferred or kicked up the ladder, almost never fired. At least, I’ve never heard of anyone getting fired for lack of success or effectiveness.

The answer to the above should give us all the willies and remind us that the government has gotten too big and intrusive. The sheer volume of government employees seeking to justify their existence leads them to intrude profoundly into our everyday lives. How many layers of management exist in government? That’s a tricky issue to nail down. But, read this article, and you will begin to understand that complexity and opaqueness may be a feature and not a defect. When no one knows what’s happening, no one is held accountable, either!

There’s at least one more elephant in the room. Congress knows that not everyone can be a federal employee and that the cost for federal employees is too great. Government efficiency is so poor that they need many more hands and minds than exist on the 2 million-strong federal payroll. So what do they do? They hire contractors by the hundreds of thousands. At least 500,000 people, maybe as many as another million, work for various government departments under contract.

Presidents Biden and Obama have encouraged the rise of government hiring to the nation’s detriment. Never believe that massive government growth is an accident, either. In no way should working for the government be compared to individuals actually delivering services or making things. The government is a drag on our economy and a threat to our safety and security, just as surely as Russia or China. Government diverts scarce resources that could be better used to invest in our economy and to make people less dependent on charity and the whims and vagaries of government policy. At the end of the day, the government only seeks to enrich itself; make no mistake about it.

Eventually, there won’t be enough money to go around. When that day comes, our choices will be stark and unappealing. Getting a handle on the cost of government is something we must do sooner than later.

God bless America.

Allan J. Feifer

All these people who say they will flee the country if Trump wins in November …

Seriously?

They fear dictatorship, they say.

They don’t fear dictatorship. They’re just fine with the dictatorship we already have, run by a cabal of billionaire leftists, RINOs plus Obama.

If it was truly dictatorship they feared, they would have run already. It’s not dictatorship they fear.

It’s the prospect of NOT being permanent dictators they find terrifying.

Follow Dr. Hurd on Facebook. Search under “Michael Hurd” (Charleston SC). Get up-to-the-minute postings, recommended articles and links, and engage in back-and-forth discussion with Dr. Hurd on topics of interest. Also follow Dr. Hurd on Twitter at @MichaelJHurd1, drmichaelhurd on Instagram, Michael Hurd Ph.D. on LinkedIn, @DrHurd on TruthSocial

Will she be the VP pick?

Share this:

• X
• Facebook
• Email
• Telegram
• Twitter

Published 5 seconds ago 

on February 22, 2024

By Vigilant Fox

“Our democracy is under attack. The perpetrators of this attack are those who, in the name of saving our democracy, are destroying it. I don’t use these words lightly. Every one of us who loves this country and who cherishes peace and freedom should be very alarmed by those who, driven by their insatiable hunger for power, are actively undermining all that we stand for.

“And almost every single day, if you’re paying attention to the news and the headlines, there is some new assault and some new attack. Now, it’s the Democrat elite and the swamp creatures in Washington who are doing all that they possibly can to keep us, the American people, from a very simple thing, having the freedom to choose who we want to be our next president. And it is clear through their actions they have no respect for us, and they have no respect for our rights as citizens of this democratic republic.

“They are so terrified that we may make what they think is the wrong choice that in the name of protecting democracy and saving us from ourselves, they’re actually destroying our democracy and taking away our freedom.

“Now, we look throughout history, and we can see many examples of evildoers who find some justification, who believe that they are doing the right thing. And so, today, we see the Democrat elite say with great concern in their voice, that if the American people elect Donald Trump, again, they warn us he will destroy our democracy. They say he will be the dictator in chief, that if he’s elected, it will be the last election this country sees.

“It’s laughable. It is so crazy. It’s laughable. But they’re justifying their actions by telling themselves that they need to destroy our democracy in order to save it. It’s lunacy, and it’s the mindset and mentality of dictators. They are waging a multi-front battle, and they will stop at nothing until they’re successful.

…

“The Democrat elite and their cronies, they’re using our criminal justice system to prosecute and distract the Republican presidential candidate in the midst of his campaign. As we know, Donald Trump currently faces 91 charges in four criminal cases, 44 on the federal side, 47 on the state side. All felonies.

“This most recent ruling in New York with the real estate case — charging him a $355,000,000 fine, plus nearly $100 million in interest for a business transaction where there was no victim or complaint, where all parties made money so egregious that even people who are not fans of Donald Trump are standing up and saying, this is crazy, and criticizing this judge’s decision that from the very beginning, has been a very clearly politically-motivated hit job.

“This is the truth. They’re hoping and doing all that they can, that they can convict Donald Trump of some crime, any crime, to try to undermine his support and therefore prevent what they fear most, a second Trump presidency. And there’s a reason why they’re so afraid of him. Because he poses a threat to this establishment, where they draw their power from.”

The Intelligence Community of the United States of America has been weaponized against the incumbent leader’s political opposition, having even turned the spy agencies of our closest allies against the leading Republican candidate.

This is the inescapable conclusion to be drawn if a bombshell report released last week is accurate.

Relying on “multiple credible witnesses,” independent journalists Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, and Alex Gutentag revealed that in the lead-up to the 2016 election, the CIA enlisted the help of foreign nations to surveil associates of Donald Trump in a plot to frame him as a Russian asset.

Released by Public, the report alleges that, before Trump took office, Obama-appointed CIA Director John Brennan identified 26 of Trump’s contacts and misleadingly presented them as espionage targets to the spy agencies of the U.S., the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand (also known as the “Five Eyes” alliance).

According to the report, the CIA then used the intelligence gathered by its Five Eyes allies to convince the FBI to open its infamous “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation into Donald Trump.

Though since discredited by the Mueller Report and the subsequent Durham Report, Crossfire Hurricane was a thorn in Trump’s side throughout his time in the Oval Office.

Agents working on the investigation leaked key details to a Trump-hostile press, prompting wall-to-wall accusations from the media that Trump had colluded with Russia to win the White House.

When Trump denied these accusations and voiced suspicions that his campaign had been spied on, the corporate press doubled down, framing him as paranoid and dishonest.

But he was right all along.

According to CNN, one of the biggest “lies” that Trump told was that his campaign was spied on.

Imagine how many times they added this to their official “Trump Lie Count.” pic.twitter.com/H8cXxeLYLY

— MAZE (@mazemoore) February 14, 2024

That Trump’s campaign was spied on was already well known. What Shellenberger, Taibbi and Gutenberg uncovered was the trickery allegedly employed by the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) to circumvent United States law.

“US law prohibits such intelligence gathering unless authorized by a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant,” the authors explain. Moreover, “the weaponization of the IC for political purposes constitutes election interference.”

But if foreign spies could gather dirt on Trump on behalf of the IC, the problem would be solved—and that is apparently just what they did.

“They were making contacts and bumping Trump people going back to March 2016,” one of the sources cited in the report explains.

(In spy talk, “bumping” means to make contact with a target in a way that appears casual or coincidental when the real purpose is to gather intelligence without raising the target’s suspicion).

These revelations stand in stark contrast to persistent claims by the U.S. government that Crossfire Hurricane was triggered by unsolicited intel from an Australian diplomat.

According to the report, the reverse is the case: The Australian diplomat’s allegations were only made possible by the CIA first enlisting help from Australian spy agencies to “bump” Trump’s associates ahead of 2016.

In a subsequent Fox News interview, Michael Shellenberger even suggested that the FBI’s raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in August 2022 was executed in an effort to recover a binder that contained details of the IC’s illegal espionage against Trump from the American pubic.

“There has been widespread speculation that this binder was the reason or a reason for the FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago,” he explained.

Report: Deep state is scrambling to find a missing top-secret binder that shows how Obama’s CIA set up the Russia hoax @shellenberger @mtaibbi pic.twitter.com/oBvKRrqkkp

— Jesse Watters (@JesseBWatters) February 14, 2024

For anyone following these events, it is clear that the scandal unravelling this week towers over Watergate—and may in fact represent the single greatest abuse of power by American intelligence in the history of the Union.

Events unfolding in Washington, D.C. can feel very distant and intangible, but their implications must not be lost on everyday Americans.

If the U.S. government can weaponize its spy apparatus and manipulate foreign allies against a man as powerful and popular as Donald Trump, what can it do to regular citizens who disapprove of the incumbent leader?

What is it already doing?

The voices of ordinary people have never been more important in ensuring that this republic remains one of the people, by the people and for the people.

Jack Clancy