Category: Politics

I woke up this morning to this headline from Associated Press “American Taxes Lower, Despite Anti-Tax Rhetoric.” Thankfully I had not had breakfast yet or I would have barfed. My first thought is what planet are these guys living on but then I remembered that the media is in bed with President Obama. This headline is the biggest bunch of crap I have seen since Barry signed the nationalized healthcare bill. We are paying lower taxes? No “F”ing way!

Americans have never been taxed as much as they are right now. The best that most politicians can say is” Yeah but look what we let them keep.” I made 11K less than the previous year and paid MORE in income taxes by almost $1,000. AP thinks I should be grateful? “Kiss my grits you fascist pigs” And this does not include all the other taxes, fees, and mandated stuff I have to pay that is going up every year due to more government regulations and interference with private business. Then there are all the costs passed down from the government regulating other folks.

Here in California, my vehicle fees have doubled; the child deduction has been cut for $309 each to $99; the State pension fund is upside-down by 500 billion dollars and the city and county retirement funds are just as bad; businesses are dying; and unemployment is really closer to 25% not the 12.5% that is reported in the media.

Our economy is in worse shape than the Great Depression. The cause is not the businesses of America but the government of America. We used to think “taxation without representation” was bad but now we are worse off under taxation with bad representation. President Obama and likeminded politicians are cooking the books in ways that Enron could never have imagined. The difference is that they are the ones wielding the sword and they are so arrogant that they think no one is holding them accountable.

Every elected official take an oath to protect and defend the Constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic. Unfortunately for our people, the politicians in many cases are the domestic enemies of the nation. Thank God that many people are waking up to this threat. I’m happy to join with like minded people that love our country and want government restored to its rightful boundaries. We need to restore fiscal accountability, reduce the scope and reach of government and lower the regulatory and tax burden on our people. That is why I will see you at the Tea Party today to send a message that we have had enough.

The 2010 Tea Party in Sacramento was smaller than last year. The crowd seemed older and less enthusiastic. The worst aspect of the gathering was the sound system. The audio had so much echo that it was unintelligible from the sides and hard to understand when in front of the stage. In four hours of attending the program, I never heard a single speaker. Only fragments could be understood.

It was nice to see many political folks that I know both past and present.

Signs were varied and most were homemade. Several had spelling errors that were unintentional. Some signs were clever. I wrote down a few examples of signs at the event.

Please don’t tell Obama what comes after a trillion.

November Cometh.

You can’t fix stupid, but you can vote it out of office.

Taxed Enough Already.

2010 end of an error.

Term Limits: change we can believe in.

My biggest complaint about the Tea Party is the seeming lack of focus and direction. My imaginary conversation with the Tea Party would go like this:
Me: OK, we don’t like taxes but what will we do?
TP: Vote.
ME: Good, but what else?
TP: Organize.
ME: To do what?
TP (Awkward silence followed by clearing throat): …

At Tea Parties you will hear that incumbents are bad, Republicans aren’t any better, let’s get back to the Constitution; however, at the end of the day the Tea Party mandate gets fuzzy.

Two domestic enemies of the US Constitution threw in the towel today. Congressman Bart Stupak (above), a distant relative of Judas Iscariot, and US Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens announced they were retiring at the end of their respective terms.

There is real hope that Stupak will be replaced by someone of better principles. Justice Stevens will likely be replaced by someone with more disdain for our republic and way of life.  Hopefully, many more will follow Stupak “into that good night.”

The State Controller’s Office (SCO) is once again delaying cash reimbursements to State employees for travel expenses. Whether this is a software issue or a result of budget shortfalls is not known. This is in addition to the spending freeze that is in place in parts of the government.

The CalATERS (California Automated Travel Expense Reimbursement System) program used by the Dept of Corrections and Rehabilitation has been down frequently for over six weeks now. The amount of man-hours wasted by users trying to make use of this program is incredible. Its failure is approaching that of the DMV boondoggle of several years ago and thus far the media has not gotten wind of this problem.  SCO has responded with mass approvals and deletions of unaudited claims but the problems still persists.

I can’t wait until Meg Whitman or Steve Poizner gets their hands on the waste, fraud and abuse of systems like CalATERS. This system is so contrary to GAAP that it should never have gone live; let alone been rolled-out for use by agencies of State government.

Here are some shortcomings of the program.
• CalATERS cannot check for duplicate claims for the same trip or expenses.
• Approvers do not have to be immediate supervisors or even in the chain of command for employees.
• Receipts are not required for reimbursement of many transactions.
• There is no procedure to report waste, fraud or abuse of expenses charged directly to the State.
• Auditors have no written policies or uniform standards and training to audit claims.
• Due to system shortcomings, archive data further back than about three months cannot be pulled-up on the computers of auditors. Detailed claim history should be available for at least three fiscal years including the current one.
• Since multiple Regional Accounting Offices (RAOs) are pooled together, there are no clear cut delineations of which employee reports to a particular RAO.

Today, the powers that be decreed that any claims for travel reimbursement in the Department of Corrections—that were submitted within a certain period of time—will be approved with no verification.  Unless a CalATERS claim fails the “smell test” of an auditor the claim will be approved and any supporting documents will be audited at a later date. This is supposed to be implemented on a department-wide basis.

This initiative seems to originate from the State Controller’s Office as a way to fix the fact that the CalATERS program cannot handle the load or number of users from CDCR. The number of man-hours wasted on this program would likely pay for one that could do the job.

Meanwhile the “hard freeze” on travel is still in effect.

Update 02-24-2010 free pass period seems to be primarily for January 2010. Per email today goal is shedding 3,000 claims ASAP to reduce load on system.
This seems like a Band-Aid for systemic program design failure.

“Schwarzenegger says last year’s $862 billion stimulus plan is “terrific” and has created 150,000 jobs in his state…”—AP 2/21/2010

Hey Arnold, the stimulus bill has created no new jobs in the private sector in California and we all know it. If you really want to create jobs in California, turn on the water to the Central Valley farmers and tell the federal judge to go pound sand.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation is implementing a hard freeze on spending as a temporary step to address a significant anticipated fiscal shortfall. The following areas are immediately frozen:
• Hiring
• Training
• Travel
• Contracts for discretionary services
• Purchases
• Overtime for Administration

“The hard freeze will remain in effect until such time as the Department is able to prioritize and then establish a system for authorizing expenditures.”

Union front groups have started running ads against Meg Whitman because she is being supported by big business and she opposes global warming.

The unions have 40 million to spend tampering with the Republican primary and their two biggest complaints about Meg are those! If that is their best shot, then Meg has little to fear from the Left. What a waste of money. Any business that supports a Democrat deserves to fail. Any rational person that supports AB 32 should not be allowed to vote because their IQ is negative.

The union motto should be Democrats: same old playbook, same old politicians, same old results.

Ok who is older? Jerry Brown or Robert Byrd

In other government news, I just got permission today to install Service Pack 3 on our Windows XP computers. This Service Pack was made available to the general public for download on May 6, 2008.