Ours Versus Theirs
Mike Buffington, publisher of the local Barrow Journal newspaper, recently
did an editorial about how easy it seems to be that local politicians are
willing to waste money when that money isn’t “theirs”. He cites several examples of this, including
a recent one in the “city” of Nicholson (there are no towns in the
South), where their mayor used
SPLOST funds to pave a “road” that was later revealed to be his mother’s
driveway. It supposedly wasn’t his
only questionable expense this year either.
DeKalb County’s officials are tripping over themselves and their egos over
the preliminary report by former Attorney General Mike “Hypocrite
Adulterer” Bowers, who was brought in to assess the county’s corruption
problems. Mister Bowers, who once
championed the state’s blue laws in the U.S. Supreme Court, minced no words
when he said that DeKalb County government was... and I quote... “rotten
to the core”.
Reaction from the county officials?
Jaw-dropping delusional disbelief on the same level as the “Global
Warming is a hoax” and “Where’s Obama’s Birth Certificate” crowd. Interim CEO Lee May – who is still “interim”
because the convicted criminal he’s sitting in for still has his job – said that
he expected a full report and got nothing but a letter full of innuendo.
This comes after their
CEO was convicted in court for extortion, and after a former county commissioner
and her husband pled guilty in
a lengthy scheme involving embezzlement and kickbacks which is
still being sorted out as of this column.
The
hornets are still coming out of that kicked nest. Oh, and let’s not forget the former COO of
DeKalb County Schools pleading guilty to theft by taking in
a case that involved her sending millions of dollars to her ex-husband’s
construction company. And we’d be remiss
if we didn’t talk about the
head of that county’s Board of Ethics resigning after “reprimanding”
another county commissioner for
a conflict of interest.
Nothing but “innuendo” you say?
Anyway, Mister Buffington uses some of these as examples of the old
adage how easy it is to spend other people’s money, especially when that money
comes from “us”.
“It’s our money being abused,” he concludes. “And we ought to be mad as hell about it.”
But here’s the problem... it’s not really “our” money at that
point. It’s “theirs”.
Let’s get brutally honest here... every time you write a check or pay a
tax bill or fill out that tax form that allows a portion of your money to go to
the government, it stops being “your” money!
It’s “their” money... as in the government’s money. And you really don’t have a say as to how “your”
money is being spent after it leaves your hands. It’s not like you can say “Okay, I want my portion
of the tax money to only pay for police and fire services, but not for the mayor
to spend on conventions.” Reality just
does not work that way. You forfeit any
control over that money once you give it to them.
And, yes, they really do see it as “their” money. Not only that, but they firmly believe that
they are entitled to every single penny that you have and then they will decide
how much of that money they will “allow” you to keep.
The only way you can really control the money is by controlling who
gets elected into government. But even this
has limits. You’re limited to only your
vote, not that of your ignorant, apathetic, incompetent, delusional, and/or
possibly corrupt neighbors; you can only vote for the politicians in your “area”;
and you really have no control at all over those people that are not elected
but are instead appointed by other elected officials.
Yes, you can “control” some of the funds through programs like the
Special Local-Option Sales Tax, or SPLOST, which imposes a temporary
one-percent sales tax, and the proceeds of which must only be used for specific
government programs that must be announced in advance before they can be voted
on, never mind enacted. But that didn’t
stop the mayor of Nicholson from using those money to pave his momma’s driveway. And it still relies on voters being knowledgeable
enough about what they’re voting for instead of blindly voting for anything put
before them.
I know some communities like those in New Hampshire have a more
hands-on approach to local governing, in that the public actually votes on the
annual budget, line-by-line, item-by-item, and each item must be addressed in a
town hall meeting and defended by the local officials. And, yes, the people in those communities can
and have vetoed spending on segments of the local budget that otherwise would
be unthinkable. And, really, this is the only way you can have the kind of
control over the tax money that people like Mister Buffington think we should
have. But I don’t see that happening,
because that takes the power out of the local elites.
And here’s the real catch: it’s not about political parties. “D’s” and “R’s” are irrelevant here. Cons and Libs have both been caught with
their greedy hooves in the local cookie jar, and neither group can claim
superiority in ethics.
The only politically ideological competition in this case is not “conservatives
versus liberals”, but instead “libertarians versus autocrats”. We don’t just need politically-active
neighbors, but ones that understand that the only way we can stop government
from abusing its power is to stop giving it to them long before we give them
our money.
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