Does anyone realize what the GOP just did?

[quaker bill]

64. A double standard

I have listened to these arguments for a very long time, and it seems only government can "waste" money. The private sector can "invest poorly" and "lose money", but it is never seen as a "waste" of money. Handing out billions in bonuses every year to business leaders who are laying off workers, cutting benefits, and raiding pension funds while riunning the company into bankruptcy may be seen as "stupid" by some, but the term "waste" is rarely if ever mentioned. Providing private sector management every perk imaginable, private jets, luxury resorts, you name it, is never seen as "waste".

In this recession, the private sector laid waste to perhaps 25 or 30 trillion dollars of asset values. It simply evaporated from people's home values, pension funds, 401Ks. This is still not seen as "waste", some term it as fraud, or a scam. Government in its wildest excesses has never "wasted" money the way Enron did. It has never wasted money in the way Bear Stearns did. It has never wasted money in the way AIG did, all while paying unimaginable bonuses to its staff.

Reporters look hard for Government "waste", "fraud", and "abuse". You want to know why? Because government employees are required to cooperate with their investigations. Transparency laws require that we disclose records and be generally of assistance to reporters. As a civil servant, I have been "investigated" three times by three different media outlets. Since I am fortunate not to have a budget or any access to gov't funds, they have never found any "waste" (even in gov't you must actually have money to "waste" it) . On "fraud", one look at my bank accounts and really old vehicles settles any questions. So they usually settle on the attempt to make a story of "abuse" or "incompetence". They have never found anything worth a report, and go back to the office and disappoint the editor.

Fascinatingly, the facts I reveal to them about private sector fraud and abuse during these "investigations" that I have uncovered during my work rarely merit ink. It is not the story they came to report, and they don't want to tangle with private sector lawyers over it. In short, the emphasis on government "waste" in the media is more a testament to their laziness, than a statement of a real problem. The real problem is 1000's of times larger, in the private sector, and vastly harder to report on.