Folks, our government is incompetent, or lying to our faces

March 19, 2009 scruffd0g 2 comments

It’s time to promote bi-partisanship today. There’s no way around it, but our government is incompetent. You don’t have to look hard to see that there’s a big commotion going on about the AIG bonuses. And let’s take this issue as exhibit number 1 on why our government is incompetent, and why the US government is supposed to move slowly and not rush to act on every issue of the day.

I’m not going to get into whether or not you think the AIG bonuses were a good thing, or if you think they should be paid back, or if you agree with the new proposed legislation to tax these, and other potential bonuses at a 90% tax rate. In fact, I’d ask that you leave your comments on these out of the comment thread, because this issue is much bigger than these petty amounts (compared to the amounts currently being spent by government, and compared to the total amounts we’ve already spent).

But the issue rests in the fact that we were told that we must ask swiftly and boldly to send a message to the world and our economy. We could not wait to really sift through what we needed to do, or get bogged down in the details. We needed a big number, we needed people to give money to, and we needed to try and repair the economy.

But, what we, as Americans, assumed, was that the people drafting these bills knew what they were doing, and that the people who were voting on them actually knew what they contained. And, folks, we were wrong!

How do I know? Almost every politician you see that’s clamoring about these bonuses cast their vote towards making them possible. They drafted and passed TARP, they drafted and passed the big stimulus bill, and they drafted and passed the omnibus spending bill.

But, they didn’t read them! They didn’t realize that the money they were spending didn’t have adequate provisions to guide how the money would be spent. They didn’t realize that they set up a system that removed the knowledge of where the money went and how it would be spent or accounted for from the public (i.e. no one knows exactly who’s getting all this money, why, and how they’re spending it!!).

There’s a nifty little provision in the stimulus bill that says all bonuses approved prior to Feb should be paid to people in firms getting TARP/stimulus money. Yup, it’s in there. It’s in the bill they voted for and passed. Yet, no one remembers this? Did they not read it? Heck, even the guy that WROTE THE DAMN AMENDMENT didn’t even remember doing it until questioned about it.

So outrage be outrage. It’s all either fake since they knew what they were doing, or incompetence since they didn’t even pay attention to what they were doing.

And, folks, this isn’t a Republican or Democrat thing, either. This mess started with Bush, and continues with Obama. Blame Bush and his congress for starting this, and Obama and his congress for keeping it going. NONE OF THESE PEOPLE paid any attention to it.

In the age of “do it fast, make a big splash” politics, we’ve lost the idea of due diligence. The concept that you look closely at what you’re about to do before you actually do it. To say that we had no idea that these bonuses existed is to say that we didn’t due our due diligence when deciding we were going to get our government in bed with AIG. These bonuses were set up over a year ago.

Folks, our government is supposed to act slowly, in a series of checks and balances. It’s not supposed to react to every flash-in-the-pan issue as it arrives. By taking its time, it can fully assess the situation, and act accordingly. Not in haste, but in a manner that is thought-through and will hopefully actually address the issue. We have departed from this, and it has become blatantly apparent over the past 9 months. We’re acting so fast that we’re not adequately defining these bills as soundly as we should. We’re not doing our homework as a government, and it’s showing.

So ignore the hype. See through the bull sh*t. If you beleive that these guys are actually upset about what’s going on, you can only conclude that they’re incompetent at their jobs, and don’t pay any attention to the laws they right and vote for. The only other alternative is that they’re lying to our faces. Which is an issue we should definitely address next time we vote. Either way, it’s not a good day to be an American.