Your tax dollars at work

Like I need some politician telling me that paying taxes is patriotic. Aside from the fact that his highly ranked colleagues don’t pay theirs, when did patriotic become synonymous with wasteful?

Let’s take just one edition of the daily newspaper as a microcosm. Yesterday’s is sitting on my desk.

The headline deals with the supervisor of the city’s pension plan. He has his own financial problems and in spite of a salary of $98.000, has declared bankruptcy twice. Who better to manage a $2 billion fund?

He’s made loans to himself and others in violation of regulations, has failed to retrieve funds issued to dead people, left uncashed checks pile up around the office and frittered away more than half his work hours surfing the web.

But, his supervisor assures us he is confident no theft has occurred. Oh, that makes us feel better. Your employee has had his hand in the till for years when he wasn't mousing the internet while on the payroll right under your nose, so you’d know about any theft. Right.

Further back in the newspaper, the county auditor criticizes other public officials for authorizing funding of a riverfront project, which he characterizes as spending our money on government bureaucracy as opposed to competing economically, accelerating our slide into financial ruin. You mean the $91 million could be even less effective than the $42 million to move the Davidson Fountain a few feet?

In the statement he just issued, he says he’s compelled by law to sign the certification. He doesn’t say where all his fervent protests of wasted funds have been for the years since the plan was drawn up. A watchdog is useless after the robbery, so spare us the defender of the faith act.

Back in the second section, we have the article about a federal fraud indictment of a man who was granted money to do construction projects for victims of Hurricane Katrina through his company, Built by Brothers. He ran the funds through a leasing company and back to his personal accounts, with the projects never completed.

However, they did find their way into other things, including his opening a bar here called D’Zire Ultra Lounge. He’s got a flair for names, I’ll give him that. But, here are the kickers.

The years of rerouting of the funding weren’t detected by the feds. The leasing company caught it in their audit. Where was the government oversight? You give a guy a couple million to do construction projects and they don’t get done. How diligent does your stewardship of public money have to be in order to detect that?

Even better, the perp was already on parole from a prior fraud conviction in which he was ordered to pay back $900,000 in restitution. That was ordered around the same time he was issued the $1.7 million.

Help me follow the logic tree here. Hey, this guy was just convicted of fraud and ordered to pay restitution of $900,000. Why don’t we double the amount he gets this time and not bother to see what he does with it?

Bear in mind, that’s just one day and a fraction of what transpired in those 24 hours. I don’t mind paying taxes to finance the competent management of the country. However, I do find it objectionable for assets to be confiscated to flush down the toilet.