Tuesday, February 19, 2019

Baffle Them With Bullshit


Figures don’t lie, but liars figure.

The Secure Fence Act of 2006 (H.R. 6061) authorized construction of 700 miles of fence. Passed with bi-partisan support and signed into law by 43.

Was ‘partially funded’, whatever that means.

Under 44, billions were allocated for various Homeland Security scheme involving a fence, immigration enforcement, etcetera. WSF asks the question, where did all that funding go? Damned if I am smart enough to use my limited computer skills to answer the question. Cynical me bets much of it ended up in untraceable offshore accounts.

Along comes 45 wanting to spend $5 billion and the Deep State/Democrats (hard to tell where one starts and the other ends) are aghast. Why?

Does 45 plan to actually build fence as opposed to increasing already bloated bureaucracies? Less bloat exposes the inhabitants to more accountability for their misfeasance/malfeasance and expense accounts.

 How dare he? 

No funding for juicy consultant contracts? No funding for in depth ‘studies’? No lavish conferences? Without all the ingrained kickbacks built into the current ways of government business whole sectors of the economy will suffer. Next thing you know the deplorable taxpayers might get more than a token return on their taxes.

This rant is at a macro level. Let’s go to a micro level. Living in the Seattle area 1974-1997, I was involved in politics and became friends with a cynical individual who described himself, in private conversation, as the mayor’s ‘bagman’.

 A bigger, better bridge to West Seattle had been an ongoing ‘goal’ for better than thirty years. In 1978 the drawbridge over the Duwamish was rammed by a freighter and damaged. Finally a new high rise bridge was built in 1984.

 My friend the bagman over drinks one night said,

“Now we’ve built that damned bridge, it hardly pays to be in politics”.

Is this the problem with building the wall?

4 comments:

LL said...

What about the $800 billion that Congress appropriated for "shovel ready jobs" - the big Obama employment program. All of that cheddar fell from the sky like mana. How many jobs did $800 billion actually create? I think that it was something like 125 total. The rest was absorbed amoeba like by the deep state.

What about the solar companies who contributed to the Democrat war chest? The Democrat machine saw to it that they received MASSIVE LOANS. Then they all went under, filed BK. How much did it cost the taxpayers? How many billion? During the years of ObamaNation it was pay to play. The rules were clear, the bribe levels were set, and everybody understood how it worked. Then along comes President Trump and the rules CHANGED. No more bribes. No more pay to play. No kick backs to the deep state lawyers and apparatchiks who fed on table scraps from each deal. The dog wants to return to its vomit - they want the good old days to return - when $20 billion can go to a wall and $2 million is spent on the wall. The rest goes to the leaches and parasites.

Well Seasoned Fool said...

As the Soviets would say, "Exactly so".

Old NFO said...

Probably right...As LL said, there are a LOT of 'scrape offs' in .gov...

Well Seasoned Fool said...

President Trump knows the game and isn't playing it.