Can You Believe The Wasteful Spending. What Happened ???

Chapter 2

What Happened !

Now that we know how the government was formed and the function of it, let’s explore the changes that have taken place in secret behind our backs without us realizing it or showing any concern.

I am sure that everyone is aware that we are required to pay Federal taxes from our earned pay and in some states even state taxes are withheld. These taxes are supposed to be used to finance the expenses of running the government. Typical expenses like federal employee payroll, military expenses, government sponsored programs such as welfare and other programs deemed necessary by the government. But where does it give them the right to give themselves pay raises without getting the ok from us citizens paying the tax dollars? Why are they able to use our tax dollars to pay for all their travel expenses, especially those not deemed job related? Do they have the right to unlimited expenses paid for by our tax money? Why is our government allowed to spend excessive amounts on common used items without question? Who ever paid seven hundred dollars for a hammer? Why does our government send billions of dollars to foreign nations to help them when we have hundreds of homeless people right in our own country, many past tax payers and many military veterans who fought for this country? Why does the White House get completely remodeled whenever a new President takes office? Wasteful, you bet it is.

As a former government employee, at a low paying position at a VA Hospital, I witnessed a vast amount of the waste of money mentioned. I saw furniture barely a year old trashed for new furniture sometimes because the employee did not like the style. The used furniture was in most cases trashed in a trash area prohibited from being reused. I saw special made waiting room benches the cost over six hundred dollars that I could buy any where for a few hundred dollars. I was sometimes given the job of calling vendors to acquire quotes on items to purchase. I called and made mention that I was wanting to make the purchase for the government and I was told that they had to look up the price in a different list an gave a quote. I then called back inquiring about the same item to purchase for myself and found the cost to be more that half that charged to the government, but the government bought the item. This makes no sense at all. The purchasing department could have gone to a local vendor and saved the extra charge. Waste again, sure is.

I’ve seen vendors hired to do a job and the government signs off on the job only to find that the job was not done to specifications. Does the government force the vendor to return and do the job properly? No, they hire a second vendor to come in to redo the same job already paid for once. Wasteful? Yes again.. They paid twice for the same job.

Another really expensive venture costing what I overheard was seven hundred thousand dollars, was a survey to provide telephone wiring relabeling. The vendor involved sent two employees free of charge to give a pre-survey to quote on an actual survey. At this time I was employed as a contractor to do all telephone repairs and a PBX Technician. My company charged sixty-six dollars an hour for my time. For the two days that the vendors were at the VA, I was assigned to escort them around the campus for both days for eight hours a day billed to the VA at sixty-six dollars an hour. This comes to a total of one thousand and fifty-six dollars for my time for which the VA could have assigned one of their own employees already on the clock at a vast savings.

The two employees that I had the privilege of escorting for two days returned a week later only to tell me they got the job of doing the campus-wide survey. How coincidental since this was not enough time to present the survey job to other bidders. It seems that the company owned by the survey team was owned by a school friend of the government employee in the government that made the personal decision to present them with this job. This not only was an improper procedure, but prevents other bidders from quoting the job, and it is also a conflict of interest in presenting a contract to a friend by a government employee.

Once the survey was complete and paid, another company was brought in to install a new complete telephone switch. In the process of examining the necessary wiring provided for the switch, it was determined that the existing internal as well as external cabling was not able to be used. All existing cabling was abolished and all new cable had to be pulled. Because of this the previous survey was a total waste of money as it could not be used. There went several hundred thousand dollars of tax money thrown away for nothing. The cost of the new cabling job with the cost of the new telephone switch amounted to well over three and a half million dollars.

What has me very upset with the present government is the fact that this is just a drop in the bucket as far as wasteful spending goes. What other wasteful spending occurs that we don’t know about. Chances are it would not be publicly revealed unless someone like me sees it first hand. When gaining employment with the VA we were presented with a telephone hotline to report wasteful spending but we were also told never to call that number because our job would be in jeopardy. What a contradiction, or an assurance of exposure.

We, the people, need to have more strict control over what the government can and cannot do. Instead of quoting to us their decisions pertaining to our lives in closed meetings, we need to participate in these meetings and voice our opinions as to decisions they propose that affects our lives. How did the government gain such mast control? The people just don’t care and figure that’s the way it has to be or they don’t care and don’t want to get involved. But the people sure show concern after the government does make a decisions that affects them, but only after it is too late.

Chapter 3

Immigration

Why in the last few years has we been overrun by foreigners in this country. Did the government open the borders and let these people in? We have so many non-English speaking people in this country that we now have to hire interpreters in our schools, government offices and courts. Why should we have to be accountable for their communication problems? If they want to live here let them learn to speak and read English, the national language. If I plan to travel to a foreign country I am expected to learn their language if I plan to get around. I don’t expect them to change their language for my convenience. Our government is spending a lot of time and money trying to get English as the official language in our nation when this should be a natural fact. How many people get frustrated at the stores trying lo locate the English description on a box at the stores. I know I sure do. If these people want to live here then they need to learn our language and we should have no known reason to make changes for them just for their convenience. This nation was born as English as the official language and I see no reason to change that. Let them adapt to us instead of our government wasting time and money even discussing the idea of adapting to them.

Why does our government focus so much on the immigrants when we have more desperate needs with our own citizens. We have families starving, people living on the streets and under bridges that have been born and raised in this country. Why is that so? Some of these homeless people are veterans that have served in the military fighting for the freedom for this country and the government has not been focusing on helping them. To me they should have higher priority over immigrants in making changes for assistance. I saw on the news of a Mexican lady with seven kids that came into the country and got right on welfare from the government without having ever worked here. How did this happen? Is this a proper use of our tax dollars?

Why are we sending billions of dollars to overseas nations when we have our own people in desperate need of help right here in our country. There is no reason we should have a single homeless person in our country. This is the United States of America. One of the richest nations in the world. How does our having homeless people reflect to the rest of the nations in the world? To me this is a sign of poor leadership and lack of priorities to our people. We send these billions of dollars to other countries but yet we are indebted to other countries for billions on loans we have made. Where is the logic in this? I think it is about time the people of this nation to wake up and question what is going on. The people of this country have been sitting back and letting this government go out of control long enough. We have the right to know what is going on in the government but there are way too many closed doors that we can’t watch over the undertaking of politics.

I say let’s get back down to basics and get our expenditure back to where they need to be and get rid of our country debt. Stop wasting tax money on such foolishness as should English be the official language or not. Sure it is and it would be un-American to state otherwise?