Ever wonder why your tax bill goes up all the time?
Well, consider this story from sfgate.com about a project at San Francisco city hall for a simple wheelchair ramp:
By the time the final tab comes in, the cost of designing and installing a ramp to the president's chair at the Board of Supervisors – a project now under way – is expected to top out at $699,413. Why so much for a 10-foot ramp? First, it took two companies, at a total cost of $132,205, to come up with a design that passed architectural muster for a designated historic landmark. The cost in city staff time to oversee the planning hit $38,434. That's $170,639.
…Then came the job itself. To install the ramp, the board's majestic podium is being taken apart, raised five steps above the chamber's floor, then put back together. Costs include $25,200 for materials, $201,678 for labor and $49,000 for a set of historically accurate brass handrails. Outside historic experts to keep an eye on the work are getting $48,824. Miscellaneous costs bring the construction job's total to $477,000 and change. Also, because the job could take 10 weeks, the supervisors have set aside $51,042 to pay for relocating board meetings.’
And on and on. This happens everywhere in bureaucratic Democrat America. And this is a classic example of how government works. Since they are spending Other People’s Money, the sky’s the limit. And there are dozens of hands in every pie, if not hundreds or thousands of hands. And each wants a big piece of the pie.
If this were a private company, the ramp would cost $10,000. And this episode should explain clearly why the Democrat party always, always, always wants to ‘build things’ on the taxpayer dime and fund new public schools or school renovations, parks and other government buildings and projects.
Because those funds come from the taxpayer and they are generally spent without any oversight or accountability. And they empower and enrich Democrats politicians and their cronies along with other liberal and union operatives that approve, plan and build these buildings, ramps, parks etc. It is a direct transfer of wealth from the taxpayer to the unions and others involved in these projects and then straight back to the Democrat party in campaign contributions.
Speaking of unions, look at that figure… ‘Costs include $25,200 for materials, $201,678 for labor…’
Which means “union labor” at, who knows, $200 an hour for ten union carpenters (all Democrats, rest assured) to stand around and look at the plans and discuss them… between coffee breaks. It is called “featherbedding”. It is pure unadulterated corruption and theft.
And guess who runs the ‘two companies, at a total cost of $132,205, to come up with a design that passed architectural muster for a designated historic landmark’.
Must be evangelical Christians. Or Republicans. Or Tea Partiers. Or gun owners. Right?
No, it is all part of a network of corrupt Democrat-party insider deals to control government cash as the taxpayer gets poorer and poorer and the private sector shrinks for lack of investment capital.
And this is not ‘anecdotal evidence’. This happens every day, particularly in urban America that Democrats control.
Remember the Big Dig in Boston, Massachusetts, the highway project that was supposed to cost $2 billion and ended up costing $15 billion? Guess where that money went in overwhelmingly Democrat Massachusetts?
Answer: To unions working hand in glove with Democrat-owned or Democrat-friendly businesses, organized crime and Democrat party politicians and bosses. (Three recent Democrat speakers of the Massachusetts House of Representatives have gone to jail for corruption.) They were all stealing a piece of the pie. And this goes on every day in every city. Multiply by tens of thousands of cases every year and you have fiscal armageddon.
The California solar firm Solyndra went belly-up just one year after Obama praised it, and after it got $535 million in federal money. And where did all that money end up?
Few know. But rest assured that it ended up in someone’s bank account. Someone closely associated with the Democrat party. That is how the company got the subsidy to start with; from its insider connections with the Obama administration. The Center for Public Integrity reported that:
One of the lead private investors in Solyndra was an Oklahoma billionaire who served as an Obama "bundler," raising money during the 2008 presidential campaign, and who is a frequent visitor to the White House.
And we will never will find out where that money went because that fact is buried under mountains of paperwork. And the FBI raid on Solyndra simply gathered up the evidence and hauled it away so as to protect Obama.
This is why the Founders of America warned us against a powerful socialistic government. Because socialism represents the appropriation of money from the populace by the government and its distribution to a coterie of favored people linked to the government and the Democrat party.
Forget the nonsense you hear about socialism “helping the poor” and “redistributing the wealth” for the betterment of all.
The way that wealth really is redistributed by socialism is from people in the workforce to powerful people in or allied with the government. And the longer the socialists are in power, the more control they have and the more corruption that exists. Just look at that wheelchair ramp. That is a result of very entrenched interests that care not a whit about the taxpayers of San Francisco or the city’s fiscal needs.
So how does this whole deal work?
Think about it: If you were a Democrat and had no talent, no brains and no initiative but were very greedy and wanted to have a lot of money and power, what would you do?
Run for office and become part of government! Of course! After all, the federal, state and local governments are combined spending more than $6 trillion. That’s slightly more than the $16,000 a year the average Democrat might be making in his job at McDonald’s if he were not a US congressman or state senator or city council member.
Indeed Democrat politicians are all in it for the money. This is what socialism always morphs into. They literally think of getting elected as being their “job”. And they see taxpayer money as their source of income, their paycheck.
Of course we are all supposed to think that elected positions don’t pay that well. But the devil is in the details. Because the payoff is in the power to hand out trillions on the federal level and billions on the state level and millions on the local level.
And then these politicians become powerful and that is how they make their money back, by staying in office for long periods and getting in tight with moneyed interests, often retiring and getting jobs with those interests as a payback. Using your money as bait.
And that is how socialism gets richer and richer and richer as everyone else gets poorer and poorer with crushing tax bills to build $700,000 wheelchair ramps.
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