Government Incompetence | Liberty on the Rocks™ Denver

If the government does it, it will be either substandard, too expensive, or both.

The government built a school for $18.9 million. They used it one year. Now it is closed because it was built so poorly.

The money is gone. The building is useless.

… and some people want the government to take over your health care, too.

Bad eggs = more government.

“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.”

–Rahm Emanuel

Rahm wasn’t thinking big enough. A crisis doesn’t have to be serious to take advantage of it.

Obama’s Food and Drug Administration Commissioner, Margaret Hamburg, is taking advantage of some bad eggs that have made some people sick. Of course, to any statist, bad eggs means the government needs more involvement in the egg production process.

Hamburg, according to MSNBC, said Congress should pass pending legislation that would provide her agency with greater enforcement power.

Of course she did.

How is this “compassionate?”

In today’s Denver Post:

Social workers across the state say that attempts to fix the long-troubled Colorado Benefits Management System — a database that processes applications for public assistance like Medicaid, food stamps and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families — are actually making the system worse.

…

Instituted in 2004 under then-Gov. Bill Owens, the CBMS, with an initial cost of $223 million, has a long history of communications problems, crashes and failures — including overpayments and underpayments to recipients.

- State computer “fixes” faulted, Social workers say the long-troubled benefits system has become worse.

And somehow the “progressive” statists that want to force all of America into another government run program claim to be “compassionate.”

Lewis Carroll would not dare be so absurd.

The more the government fails, the more power it wants.

The Denver Post ran a front page article proclaiming “Ways to buoy the economy run thin.”

The article is not labeled “commentary,” “analysis,” or some similar designation. It should be. The basic premise of the author, Tom Raum, is that the government has done almost everything it can to “fix” the economy, but that partisan politics is blocking further government action.

It is a typical problem of the statists: when government intervention fails, they insist it is because they didn’t intervene ENOUGH. If one buys the premise, it is a win-win situation for the government. The more the government fails, the more power it needs. It is a black hole of failure.

Government interventionists, like Raum, think that continuously picking at the scab will help it heal. People that understand economics realize it is best to leave the damn thing alone and it will heal itself.

National Cemetery today, national health care tomorrow.

According to the Associated Press (See Chaos at Arlington Cemetery):

Army investigators at Arlington National Cemetery have found more than 100 unmarked graves, scores of grave sites with headstones that are not recorded on cemetery maps, and at least four burial urns that had been unearthed and dumped in an area where excess grave dirt is kept.

The investigators found that these and other blunders were the result of a “dysfunctional” and chaotic management system at the cemetery, which was poisoned by bitterness among top supervisors and hobbled by antiquated record-keeping.

And somehow it is the “compassionate” progressives that want these same government bureaucrats and political appointees to run health care.

The sanctimonious self-righteousness of the statists is completely misplaced and dangerous.

At least 250,000 people in the way of progress

According to David Gergen,

“…The Economist estimates that the federal government now employs a quarter of a million people to write and enforce regulations.”

–See “How much government?“

We would be better served if we paid those people to stay at home. At least they would not be impeding those actually producing things.

Is that yellow newsprint?

In the print edition of today’s Sunday Denver Post, a front page headline declares:

Plunge washes markets in fear

Methinks this a bit sensationalized. William Randolph Hearst would have been proud. Apparently the online editor agreed, because the electronic version of the same story has a less hysterical headline: “Fear of market instability may aid financial regulation bill.“

The thought of politicians and bureaucrats devising financial regulations brings forth an image of cavemen offering sacrifices to the weather gods so the frightening lightning will cease. They don’t understand the causes, but that doesn’t stop them from doing something.

Couldn’t we get a few more levels of government involved?

Today’s Denver Post declares in a broad headline

Feds jump aboard rail hub

The article by Mike McPhee states that “the announcement of a $304 million federal loan Friday gave the green light to the redevelopment of Union Station… .”

Further, “the loan (is) guaranteed by the City and County of Denver.”

This means that one level of government, the feds, are going to give your money to another level of government, the Regional Transportation District, and that another level of government, the City and County of Denver, has guaranteed with your money the loan of your money to you.

All of this for a project no private investor would touch.

Of course, every transaction between each level of government has a cost. You, of course, pay for that, too.

Hey, let’s put these guys in charge of EVEN MORE healthcare

According to today’s edition of the Denver Post:

A Montbello mother says her 9-year-old son’s death from severe asthma could have been prevented had Denver Human Services resolved problems with his Medicaid pharmacy benefits.

Zuton Lucero said she called Human Services every three days for months last year when she was suddenly unable to get prescription drugs for her son, Zumante.

The boy’s health deteriorated without the medication, his doctor said, and he died at Children’s Hospital in July after losing consciousness at his house after an attack.

“I don’t want anyone else to be sitting where I’m sitting,” Lucero said.

Unfortunately, “compassionate” progressives want us ALL to be sitting there, Ms. Lucero.

They want the same government run system that neglected your little boy to take care of all of us.

And somehow those of us that don’t believe the government is the answer to all problems are the “callous” and “uncaring” ones.

See “The human system fell down” in today’s paper.

But I thought the government didn’t have enough money.

From the Associated Press:

DENVER (AP) — Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter does not have a staff photographer – but he has billed taxpayers more than $200,000 to hire outside contractors and pay for photographs, videos and TV ads promoting his accomplishments since June 2008, including videos of him receiving a “Father of the Year” award and a press conference naming his friend, Michael Bennet, to a U.S. Senate seat.

Until nonsense like this goes away, statists can save their tears about a lack of government money and the need for more taxes.

The government need for more money is a lie.

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