Efficient Government

This has been an oxymoron forever, but it should be what we taxpayers demand.  But US politics has built a systemic wasteful, sloppy legacy.  I’m sure, in the 1800s, politicians got their friends and relatives government jobs, not so much because they were the best suited, but because they needed a job. This happened at all levels of government and led to political “machines” that controlled cities, counties and States. It still goes on in all tax funded organizations.

But once again, we need to ask government to get “Lean”.  We have an unsustainable debt and no real plan to cut unnecessary costs.  Special interest lobbies bribe politicians to keep their special groups of expansive government employees and it’s all tied to campaign contributions and threats to replace politicians who to astray or don’t “play ball”. 

Government has a history of lagging in those productivity advances enjoyed by the Private Economy that are critical to reduce costs. But currently government does a miserable job of picking vendors and getting capital projects done competently. If they went “Lean”, they would start by identifying those government employees who “know their industry and are interested in competence and efficiency, listen to what they say and assign the best to teams to design project plans.

Government is Not a Jobs Program

Our politicians have learned to see government jobs as a “jobs program”. They fight to keep the military bases in their States because of jobs and they tend not to manage government workforce groups to reduce costs. This is sloppy management.  Politicians should not fund services that result in perpetual tax subsidies.  Public transportation is never a “break even” operation and should be privatized. The priority should be the maintenance of critical infrastructure like highways, roads, bridges, sewers and water supply. Everything else is secondary.

Government drives Costs up

When government opens operations like a military base in a small town, costs go up and rents double. Infusing taxpayer funds into local economies has long-term effects. Government has ruined Healthcare and Education by infusing cash and causing cost increases. These industries need to cost reduce and improve outcomes and the best way to do this is to remove regulations, reduce government subsidies and return these industries to local and private control. The federal government needs to get out of the Healthcare, Education, Lending, Housing, Transportation, Energy, Labor Environmental and Land Management and other unconstitutional activities that don’t comply with the “enumerated powers” allowed by the US Constitution (as written). States have agencies that should take over the evolution of these functions.

Pretending to Serve

Politicians work for campaign contributors and make sure that they are represented by pushing Bills that give them advantages.  They want to pretend that they work for the voters, but they don’t.  They pick out problems encountered by tiny minorities and make a big deal with Bills that pander to these “victims”.  This ends up becoming law and is piled on top of other laws to burden businesses.  The real purpose of these laws is to give Big Business a gift by making it harder for small businesses to survive and compete with Big Business.

Decades ago, before Germany elected a bunch of global warming UN loving nut-bags, they did some things that made sense. They declared that bakeries and breweries would be small businesses and didn’t allow Big Business to take over. Germans were delighted and so were us tourists. Unfortunately, they added other industries to protect and these products became way overpriced.  Men’s suits by the Buss Company were 4 times higher than the same suits in the US. Germans simply went to Italy and the US and other countries to buy their suits.

In the US, we support Big Business when they offer price advantages at places like WalMart and Costco. We also support Microsoft, Big cable, phone, electric and gas companies because they are monopolies. “Fern Bar” Restaurant and fast food chains have replaced mom & pop restaurants.

Returning Manufacturing

We need to return manufacturing to our smaller cities and reverse population movement to Mega-cities to improve our quality of life and give small business a chance to flourish in rural counties. We lived in Salina Kansas (population 40,000) in the 1970s and it was perfect.  We had 20 great manufacturing companies, great employees and great town leaders. 

We need to resume the mining and harvesting of materials we need to use domestically.  We need to resume manufacturing steel and other materials we use. We need to allow pipelines to be built for oil, gas and water. We need to return electronics and material science firms to return to the US.

We need to end the practice of replacing US citizens with immigrants to work in the US.  We have an excess of 30 million immigrants and need to reduce this before our 94 million working-age US citizens will be able to return to work. We need to remove welfare support for immigrants.

We need to reduce federal spending by $1 trillion a year and begin to repay the debt. Liberal policies have failed and we need to remove these policies and the departments, agencies and programs that proliferate these policies.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader