PENNY WISE, POUND FOOLISH

The Logical View ^ | 8/19/03 | Mark A Sity

[logic101.net]

PENNY WISE, POUND FOOLISH MARK A SITY 8/19/03

WI, like many states has a budget problem. Unlike normal people those at the state level seem to feel no need to trim expenses when faced with this situation. Rather than cut back on spending there is now a proposal to spend more money on a “study” to look into turning our freeways into toll ways. Our “representatives” want to spend millions of dollars to “study” something they know will never happen.

Why do our “representatives” find it so difficult to cut spending? In fact, if we immediately de-funded all “studies” and placed a ban on new “studies” I’m willing to bet that we’d be half way to closing the budget gap. If we then fired all the “consulting firms” we are paying and required state employees to do their jobs rather then farming them out to “consultants” I’ll bet we wouldn’t have any budget shortfall at all. Yet, such ideas rarely occur in government. If my wife and I ran our household finances like most levels of government run theirs we would have declared bankruptcy many years ago. Perhaps I mis-titled this; upon further thought it seems that our elected officials are both penny and pound foolish.

MARK A SITY http://www.logic101.net/

[logic101.net]

This will probably appear in the local Milwaukee rag this week. I hate the 200 word limit, I'd have loved to bring up the IL troll road and it's refusal to die off despite going past its charter. I'd have loved to bring up the extra payroll and infrastructure costs caused by the need for trolls to collect tolls. Yes, I did mean to spell it TROLLS; in the fairy tales what does a troll do? He sits at a roadblock and demands money to let you pass, right?

I'd have loved to bring up the never ending light rail "study" here. It seems they will "study" light rail until they wear us down with the costs of the study and decide it will be cheaper to just build it. Of course they will lie about how much it will cost. Saddly, the local rag won't publish my big articles, so I am forced to condense to less then 200 words.

MARK A SITY

[.cnI redruM]

You've done well. All of these studies are done by people w/ friends in the government who commission them. It's a rip-off. Fight them on this.

[xzins]

Why should anyone pay to drive on a road they've already paid taxes to have built?

[IYAS9YAS]

Got to maintain them somehow. Just getting them built isn't enough. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying tolls are the answer. I live in Idaho, toll roads are non-existent. We get $0.25/gallon for gasoline and diesel to go toward highways. Fuel tax is (as long as the rate is realistic and reasonable) my prefered method as toll routes can be circumvented.

[quietolong]

I have yet to see any real cuts. Thing that need or could be cut go happily on.
And what is cut are the things that don’t need to be.
But need to show “ See we need more money”

[logic101.net]

On rare occasions you will get someone in office who really wants to make cuts. A case in point is our new County Exec in Milw, Scott Walker. Then cuts are made w/o cutting out needed services; the fat is removed.

In most cases you are right, and I have been saying the same thing for years (usually screaming at the radio news). The first thing most politicians say when they are asked to cut back is that police and fire will be layed off. Teacher will get pink slips. The gargabe will only be picked up monthly. All the criminals in the prisons will have to be released, etc.

However, does each school need the most high tech, state of the art copy machine every year? Does each branch of the legislature really need their own chaplin? Does the Dept of Ag really need to advertise to get people to sign up for food stamps? In each case no. Yet these items cannot be cut; ever!

Yet the sheeple buy into the scare tactics every time. It is so sad that there is so little critical thought in the general population.

MARK A SITY