Rooting out corruption can be tough, especially when laws have been put in place to keep the regular schmoes in line while giving a pass to fearless leaders.
For instance, under the guise of protecting Americans from evil securities exchanges and the insidious accounting practices of corporations, our representatives in 2002 enacted the Sarbanes-Oxley act, requiring publicly traded companies to enact internal accounting controls and certify financial statements for the government, all under the penalty of law.
Then eight years later, cause what happened before needed more tweaking, came Dodd-Frank, which kept track of the “financial stability” of large corporations while regulating mortgage and finance companies and setting up the “too big to fail” idea, just to make sure our finances aren’t subject to nefarious acts.
It also set up the puzzling, but good for us, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, essentially the government’s bully to stop us poor folk from being bullied.
Mixed in with all of that is the IRS rule that to protect the country from “money laundering” or whatever, a requirement was set up to report transactions of $10,000 or more, so the feds can make sure we’re all not members of a drug cartel.
There also is a bill under consideration that will allow the “enhancement of competition in the credit card network market,” which authors of the bill claim is dominated by Visa and Mastercard.
All of this really gives government control of how our money, either from personal or corporate funds, is spent — again, all for our own protection. So I’m extremely curious why our vaunted and apparently untouchable leadership is supremely scared of President Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, which is uncovering rampant fraud, waste and abuse throughout Washington, D.C.
There is reports of one contractor who has been paid for more than 20 years on a contract of three months. Then another contractor was paid $1.5 million to observe — not help, not advise, just observe — operations at a mail center.
Of course, lawsuits have been filed, restraining orders have been granted, protests have been held and tons of ink and hours of airtime have been spent on how the government will collapse and the Constitution is in crisis. The leaders, particularly on the left, are threatening to write stern emails and letters and whatnot, all because Elon Musk, an unelected person, has asked to get payment data to search for fraud, such as people getting Social Security payments without having a Social Security number.
The scrambling in the halls of government has been as telling as it has been amusing. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., pretty much encapsulated the fears of the government by saying, “We don’t know what they have on us!”
But why is there any pushback? Didn’t we elect these people to represent our interests? And if so, doesn’t that include fiscal responsibility?
Of course, we have known for some time that there is no such thing as fiscal responsibility, what with $2 trillion deficits and a $36 trillion debt looming over the country.
However, when a government believes that the money we send them through our taxes is their own private pool to swim in, like those Scrooge McDuck cartoons, without any recourse, while regular citizens are made to account for every penny, then there is something very rotten in Denmark.
Time for a full-on accounting, and definitely change.
<i>Tony Farkas is editor of the Trinity County News-Standard and the San Jacinto News-Times. He can be reached at <a href="mailto:tony@polkcountypublishing.com">tony@polkcountypublishing.com</a>.</i>
