Posted on 08/29/2006 7:52:15 PM PDT by logic101.net
GOVERNMENTAL MIND SET
Recently I read an internet article about an over population of elk in Rocky Mountain National Park. No hunting is allowed in the park and the elk are destroying the vegetation that they and other animals need. Colorado’s solution is to spend $18 million over the next 20 years to pay people to shoot 700 elk a year and pay other people to remove the elk carcasses.
This plan got me thinking about the mindset of governmental officials. It seems they would rather spend money to achieve goals than to achieve the same goals with less effort and that would allow them to instead collect money. The concept of changing the policy to allow hunting in the park never enters their minds. Allowing limited hunting would generate money from elk permits, if the permits are $100 each, that would be $70,000 per year they would be paid by people eager to help reduce the elk numbers. In addition, these hunters would be buying supplies in the local area, renting lodging, seeking entertainment, and in general help to boost the local economy. This would generate sales and other taxes for the state. However, the government mind set requires that the status quo be protected at all times; therefore allowing hunting is not an option.
In another state, LA the mayor of New Orleans rejected an offer by a TX company to pay the city $5 million for the right to come in and crush all the destroyed and abandoned cars after the hurricane and remove them. This company would then sell the crushed cars for scrap at a profit. The offered contract promised that the streets would be clear in 5 weeks. Instead, Mayor Nagin decided to pay $22 million to have another company do the same thing with no promised finish date. To the best of my knowledge the streets are still littered with abandoned cars.
There are countless other examples, $900 hammers and $200 toilet seats for the military, the House bank and Post Office scandals of the mid 1990’s; locally we had the Tom Ament pension CYD and many other scandals. Just a list of local government waste would take up many pages of this newspaper.
Government officials are not so foolish with their own money; if they were they would insist on paying taxpayers for the privilege of working rather than demanding pay rises! Yet, tax dollars do not seem to be considered real money because there is seemingly (to the officials) an unlimited supply. If more money is needed for wasteful projects they can just raise taxes. The taxpayers will grumble; but will be forced to pay the extra taxes anyway.
This mindset is the reason taxes are so high on all levels of government. There seems to be no concern about spending money wisely. When taxpayers have the audacity to complain about high taxes and threaten to put limits on them, the response is always the same sort of scare tactic. On the local level the officials threaten to cut police and fire departments. At schools they threaten to cut sports programs. At the state level they threaten to cut funding for local governments. It is always the same line; we can’t do with less money; but you can and should. Looking at the wasteful spending in government budgets is never an option to a government official. However there is never any concern about how families will have to cut back and do with less when taxes are raised.
When a politician votes against spending, he or she is labeled as a bigot or racist in many cases; as was Congressman Sensenbrenner when he voted against sending even more money to New Orleans shortly after their mayor threw away $27 million on the abandoned car removal project.
Government officials need to be brought out of this mindset that tax money is endless and can be squandered at will. Tighter controls need to be placed not on taxation; but rather on spending. Often when controls are put on taxes, the governmental body just borrows the money, hoping to force a tax increase when the loans come due.
MARK A SITY
Mark A Sity
I played golf in Estes Park and there are so many elk that you have to clear the elk duds out of your line when putting. It is crappy. Giant trophy elk hang out near the highway from Estes Park into RMNP and they cause traffic jams. They roam the streets of EP all the time. Kill em, cook em, eat em.
OLTGs Rule of Life #34 - When someone goes out of his way to look like an idiot, the truth is usually MUCH worse,
Louisiana pays folks to hunt Nutria and pays them a $3(?) bounty for each tail that is brought in.
There are probably a lot of tail-less Nutria out there breeding away.
The bureaucrats that run the National Park Service have done the country a huge disservice by not changing their ways to protect the resource we have entrusted to them. The park has already been destroyed by the elk herd, or rather by the Park Service themselves.
Mother nature will take care of the elk herd when we have a bad winter, then the park will not support elk for another 50 years until the habitat recovers.
Gail Norton is to blame. She should be fired.
LOL, but only because it's true, doubly so in Noggin's case.
If you actually have those rules written out, they'd look kewl on your FReeppage
Yes, but it seems the really stupid ones tend to work in government; that was the point of my article!
Rush has those rules written out; I think they were in his first book (I only own his 2nd one) - but that is a Rush rule.
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