U.S. political figures are mismanaging taxpayers’ money and playing under different financial rules than the rest of Americans.
From Townhall Magazine's EXCLUSIVE January Free Market feature, "An Era of Incredible Rottenness":
Congress has inflicted frightful punishments on its members—now you know that. When they tried Mr. Fairoaks, and a cloud of witnesses proved him to be—well, you know what they proved him to be—and his own testimony and his own confessions gave him the same character, what did Congress do then?... Congress intimated plainly enough, that they considered him almost a stain upon their body; and without waiting ten days, hardly, to think the thing over, they rose up and hurled at him a resolution declaring that they disapproved of his conduct! Now you know that. – Colonel Beriah Sellers, The Gilded Age, by Mark Twain
No single area of public life threatens what previously was known as the American Dream more than the apathy of our public officials regarding their fiduciary responsibilities towards their citizens.
They are mismanaging our money and, worse yet, letting others mismanage it, with a wink and a nod that is, for all practical purposes, destroying the concept of personal property.
.....
Free and open markets in news and media have replaced a half-century old oligarchy.
The result has been the slow realization that we have tolerated being wedded to the political equivalent of a bunch of spousal abusers.
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For example, the Department of Energy has spent $36 billion on clean energy technology in the form of loan guarantees. And all you need to know about those guarantees, which were originally intended to create jobs, is that the Obama administration has stopped talking about how many jobs they have created, but instead, in a reprise of their bogus stimulus claims, now brag about the jobs they have saved through the program.
Count the Solyndra bankruptcy scandal as a one-time charge and be thankful it wasn’t worse. Worse is coming. Look at NRG Energy with a loan guarantee of $1.3 creating a whopping 15 permanent jobs. The explanation?According to an analysis of loans made through the Department of Energy program by Peter Schweizer, 80 percent of the loans went to political donors of Obama.
Read more of John Ransom's analysis in the January issue of Townhall Magazine.
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