The United States is now engaged in the biggest coverup in history. We are trying to hide 50 years of stupid personal and political decisions. Every case of incompetence, irresponsibility and outright thievery is now blamed on the worldwide economic crisis and the consequences are being buried under a pile of stimulus money. The so-called stimulus package is designed to spread the fragrance of forgetfulness and dampen the public's justifiable anger as much as cure any economic ills.
The problem with this strategy is that it encourages the political leaders and populace to keep making the same mistakes, which everyone knows, generates the same results. Eventually, government at all levels will claim credit for the recovery while never acknowledging that they caused much, perhaps most, of the problem.
Look at today's agenda for the San Benito County Board of Supervisors meeting. One item is a $200,000 augmentation from the General Fund to conduct a Special Statewide Election on May 19. The county will be reimbursed by the state, but the election will cost the state between $60 million and $100 million total. As my dear mother used to say, we need a $100 million election right now "like we need a hole in the head." All this proves is that the lobbyists never quit working and the state's politicians refuse to use their brains.
With a little planning, everything on the ballot could wait until the next regular election. Anyone who argues that the state constitution requires the election should be laughed out of town - the state only observes the constitution when it benefits them, at other times they just ignore it. Only a few weeks ago, there was serious consideration of renaming taxes as fees so the Legislature could avoid the constitutional required voter approvals; the mere discussion of this ploy was an insult. Now, the same people claim they can't wait to do the right thing.
The other election-related item is the $58,625 expense to buy a used vote-counting machine. It's needed to back up the one that failed during last November's election and caused an unacceptable delay in obtaining results; but why are we still using these ancient systems?
Electronic voting machines worth $450 million and supporting infrastructure are sitting idle in warehouses across the state. Politicians and activists fear-mongered electronic voting until a gullible public was stampeded into rejecting the system, now we are paying for our unreasoning fear. With hard-copy backup and easily applied scientific sampling, it would be almost impossible to commit massive voter fraud. As we see from the never-ending Senate race in Minnesota, humans, not machines, are the weakest link in voting systems.
Many millions of Americans put their lives in the hands of electronic systems every day from airplanes to cars to medical devices, they are good enough to keep us alive, but we are supposed to believe that they not good enough to count votes?If the decision not to use the electronic voting machines was right - then the decision to buy them was wrong; either way it was easily a waste of at least half a billion dollars.
Those are just two examples affecting us locally, multiply that by the waste, fraud and abuse at all levels and the scope of the problems is obvious, but that's not our focus right now. Now it's all about spending the free money that's on the way, please don't ask too many questions. I keep reading that once we are out of this jam, we'll change our ways, but I think that they would just as soon we forget the past, that's why they are burying it.
Marty Richman Got a question or a comment? Send us an email.
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