American Voters Are The Guilty Parties - OpEd

Inspector General Says IRS Wasted $3.5 Million

The Internal Revenue Service paid a contractor $188,000 to provide one person to do clerical work over 11 months.

The contract was one example of financial waste contained in a government report on the tax agency’s involvement in a program ordered by President Bush in 2004 to develop more-secure identification cards for federal workers.

The Treasury Department’s inspector general for tax administration also said the IRS needlessly spent almost $2 million on a computer security system that the tax agency doesn’t plan to use.

To provide one person for a clerical support job updating contact lists, assigning and tracking equipment, and processing trip reports, a contractor was paid $128 an hour.

Of the $30 million the IRS has committed for the project, about $3.5 million was spent on acquisitions that should have been avoided, the report said.

These are your Tax Dollars! We should be handing our blood soaked money to responsible caretakers who assign funds to public services and responsible investment. Why are Emergency Responders, Firefighters, Local Law Enforcement and basic Human Services going hungry while idiots try to appease their political base and contributors? We send inadequate materials to support our warriors. We tie up services to those warriors when they come home broken. We charge them for medication while they wait forever for their cases to be processed by poorly funded and inadequate VA system that treats them like criminals trying to steal services.

Almost every government agency has mis-spent our Tax Dollars. Sadly, we only pay attention when our own lives are messed up by inadequate services.

The GAO has presented these problems to both sides of Congress. This stuff does not make MSM who waits for permission from those same politicians, to notify the public. Politicians continue to embrace fear mongering as their weapon of choice to justify even more waste. This administration has had free reign over this country’s pocket book for too long. They have squandered our resources. They have put us all in peril by skimping on the basics. They are children who have too many toys and not enough food in the pantry. Who are they? They are those politicians you elect that you don’t hold responsible for their actions. THEY are YOU the voter!

“Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote.” Americans have one of the poorest voter turnouts on the planet. Out of the 172 countries for which figures are available, The USA ranks a sad 139th - outranking only less developed nations such as Zambia where voters may have to walk 80 miles to pull the lever.

We are all guilty of allowing this to happen. We are all guilty of being irresponsible about choosing our caretakers. NO, this is not a plea for a caretaker government. This is a plea for a responsible government. Our government is responsible for enforcing law and regulations and keeping our infrastructure safe and usable.

Infrastructure is hard to define. Most Google responses point to IT infrastructure. My definition for infrastructure, in context, relates to the skeleton, the foundation of the USA, upon which we all reside and work within. Infrastructure equals all the working parts of this country. There are very many parts. These parts are breaking down. The numerous government agencies responsible for maintaining this country’s ability to function, at a level we take for granted, have imploded into self serving, money grabbing clubs. They vie for funding and scramble to spend their allocation before a deadline so they can beg for more funding for the next fiscal year. This is a bad habit that we have. The wasted funding is our hard earned Tax Dollar. Too many examples of this sickness, too little accountability is expected. The American Voter has let this country down by being too easily led by politicians who spend donor money figuring out ways to schmooze your vote. Lazy or distracted, American voters are culpable for their own suffering.