I’m past pretending anything government does is news, so here are some pet peeves:
(1) The Brevard City Council decided to raise property taxes 4.5 cents. That’s very selfish. They intend to, among other things, hire an engineer.
(2) Other local governments hold vacancies open as a way to bring their budgets under control. That means when the economy recovers, government can raise taxes to fill the positions.
(3) Even so, “government” was the only sector in the Asheville Metropolitan Statistical Area showing an increase in employees in the past year, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. Slide #3 in the hyperlink shows manufacturing lost about 1400 jobs; construction, 1550; and professional and business services, 1700. This, we are told, is either an increase in jobs or a slowing of the loss of jobs. If it is the latter, we are expected to pretend it is because of some greatness of the president rather than the fact that we might be running low on jobs to lose.
(4) Other local governments are still feeding at the stimulus trough to balance their budgets. Leaders don’t mind that they’re breaking oaths by expanding federal powers into more and more facets of local affairs. I suffer recurring nightmares of finding I have slowly sold my soul into slavery.
(5) Stimulus is being forced on the private sector. Almost daily, I get calls at work from robots encouraging me to get a government loan even if I have no credit or stinky credit. I’m also frequently asked to be stunned that the federal government is doing nothing for diabetics. First of all, I’ve never been diagnosed with diabetes. Even if I were, I am insulted at the way the robots just assume diabetics expect government to be the source of healing.
(6) Rather than laying off personnel, governments continue to regulate. I am of the opinion that, beyond the Ten Commandments, or the First and Greatest, all laws grant advantage to the dishonest and the wealthy. That is, election reform laws prevent the average Joe from exercising free speech, but not the dude who wants to hire a lot of window dressing to staff multiple PAC’s. Stormwater ordinances prevent people from using their brains to make good use of their property, while not affecting people with political clout. It can be said that money makes right.
(7) Tea Partiers are considered wack because they pay too much in taxes, and don’t have enough left to pay bills and eat. Looking at what unnecessary items they can jettison from their budgets, they determine government is the most useless, but rather than listening to pleas to cut fluff, government derides and threatens the struggling masses.
