The modern corrupt legislative way of doing business: Know nothing, fund everything!
It doesn’t matter how much money is in the government treasury,
our government will fill this check out anyway, to the max.
This week the Democrat-controlled legislature of the state of California passed a bill allocating $150 million dollars from which cash-strapped hospitals could obtain loans to help pay their bills.
The state will give out the $150 million in the form of interest-free loans to nonprofit or public hospitals that meet certain conditions. The state will prioritize loans for medical centers in rural areas and those that have a disproportionate number of patients on Medicaid, the joint state and federal government health insurance program for the poor and the disabled.
Loans will have to be repaid in six years, though it will be possible for the loan to be forgiven if the hospital meets certain requirements.
In another news report describing the process in which this bill was approved and passed included one particular quote that illustrated magnificently the modern manner in which almost all American legislatures now function, from small city councils to Congress in Washington, regardless of party. As stated by one state senator during preliminary hearings before the bill passed:
“We don’t know how many hospitals, we don’t know which hospitals. We don’t know which areas those hospitals are (in), we don’t know anything. And now we’re asked to approve $150 million to be doled out without access to plans, without access to the finances that would give us the evidence to feel comfortable with this,” said Sen. Maria Elena Durazo, a Los Angeles Democrat, during a Senate budget committee hearing on Tuesday. [emphasis mine]
“We don’t know anything.” The problem was that, prior to the bill’s passing, no one could tell legislators how many hospitals were in trouble nor how much cash would actually be needed. And yet, without any of these questions answered the state legislature still passed the bill two days later, where it only awaits the signature of Democratic Party governor Gavin Newsom.
Making the situation even more farcical was the fact that the only data about this so-called crisis was provided by the California Hospital Association, a trade lobbying organization working for the state’s hospitals. You think maybe this organization might have some conflict of interest, and might be exaggerating the crisis in order to get its member hospitals some free government cash? I do, and in fact, the bill that passed was woefully inadequate, according to this lobbying group.
With eyes on the upcoming fiscal year, the California Hospital Association has asked the state for $1.5 billion in one-time relief, a tough request in a deficit year. … A spokesperson…said the loan program is welcome news and promising for hospitals on the financial brink, but more state support is necessary. [emphasis mine]
As noted by the Spirit of Christmas Present in Dickens’ The Christmas
Carol, ‘This boy is ignorance, this girl is want. Beware them both,
but most of all beware this boy.’
Yet, even as these California legislators, all Democrats, questioned these numbers and admitted they were woefully ignorant about the true situation, they still went ahead and approved a $150 million, with still others proposing giving the hospitals another $400 million over the next four years.
The tragedy of this farce is that it is not the exception, it is now the rule. Across America every elected legislature, whether controlled by Democrats or Republicans, functions the same. Nothing gets cut, no programs get questioned, no new allocation of aid or money is ever denied, and budgets and debt grow endlessly.
Nor are these elected officials entirely to blame. They are simply following the desires of their voters, who always seem to rise up in arms if any program gets cut. Better to approve everything so as to look good to their greedy constituents.
“We don’t know anything.” This should be carved in stone on the tombstone of the United States when it finally goes bankrupt and dies. Our legislators now live by this motto, as do the voters who put them in office.
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‘This boy is ignorance, this girl is want. Beware them both, but most of all beware this boy.’
WOW!
The movie “Idiocracy” is a prophecy
Concerned: Darn it! The electrolyte scene would have been perfect for the opening graphic. I just forgot about it.
“. . . has asked the state for $1.5 billion in one-time relief, a tough request in a deficit year. ”
Holy Billions with a ‘B’, Batman!
“A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.”
Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen
It’s almost like noone in California, or anywhere, has ever read Road To Serfdom, the chapter on how legislatures work.
https://archive.org/details/idiocracy_movie
I was thinking the same thing, I just re-watched the movie recently.
Not to worry, when California and New York was billions in debt and were finally going to have to pay the piper… The “Santa Claus” federal government came to the rescue giving them billions more than they needed. Obviously it didn’t last long and they’re ready for another multibillion bail out from the Biden crime family as long as the “big guy” gets his 10% while shutting down every source of revenue in their states for the promised “build back better” of the great reset. The plan was to tear it all down and destroy the infrastructure to build it back better… With no infrastructure to provide building materials! (money and votes are grown on printing presses… just ask Venezuela)
California is oil rich but won’t allow any drilling, or new refineries even though their population has nearly doubled with the new immigrants. (who work the fields in need of “free” healthcare in which the invisible, undocumented are unable to pay for causing hundreds of rural hospitals to file for bankruptcy… 800,000 more are on the border getting ready to cross in the next few weeks)
There are three pipelines from Utah feeding the west coast with refined products from the great basin, and several coal fired and gas power plants making the electricity for them. (Delta Utah provides power for Disneyland!)
California confiscated 20% more of the Colorado river for its growing needs, causing Nevada, Arizona, and Utah, who owns the water, to go without or else. (The drought didn’t drain flaming gorge, Lake Powell, Lake Mead, Lake Havasu… Southern California did)
Now with the drought over in California, the farmers are told they cannot plant their crops because there might be diseases in that “wet soil” that will transfer to the plants… They can’t plant in a drought, and now they can’t plant in the rain! They can’t win and they provide an incredible amount of food for the country. (much of the fresh vegetable recalls for contaminants comes from other places where they are using untreated human sewage for fertilizer, spraying it in the fields to grow cheap produce) (remember that next time you eat a raw vegetable without washing it, or a salad without vinegar on it to sterilize it)
We all know that legislators almost never write up the laws they propose but instead have staffers and specialists who do it for them.
I bet this was written up to cover a very few specific hospitals and will eventually be written off.
Maybe to pay a few hospitals that are servicing mainly illegals.
At the end of the day I bet those hospitals already had their paperwork written up and ready to file the day this was passed. First come first served.
I bet the hospitals that get the most from it will be in the areas covered by the legislators who “wrote” this.
I listen to a lot of AM/FM radio during my 12 hour shifts, scanning all the channels for nearly 40 years now.
I remember a program on the subject giving the sob story from government media NPR.
https://www.npr.org/2023/03/16/1163911049/1a-remaking-america-what-happens-to-a-community-when-a-hospital-closes
I remember thinking “to give free healthcare you must first in slave the doctors and nurses to work for free!”
One commentor suggested rounding up the homeless in San Francisco, giving them doctors and nurses degrees, then providing room and board in exchange for health care. Similar to what they do in Cuba. (in “free healthcare Cuba” the hospitals don’t have running water or working toilets. You must bring your own bedding, bandages, and medicine because the hospitals have none and the doctors are all students or pretending to be students… you really do get what you pay for!)
Reminds me of the California bank that failed. The president of the bank, in a position of private public partnership, was also on the board of the federal reserve of California overseeing the regulating of his own bank and prevented regulation from hampering his objectives.
It was said that everyone involved were Clinton and Obama donors and were appointed to their positions without any “banking experience” (except this one guy who was over Lehman Brothers and another bank that failed…. no one lost money, everyone got to keep their bonuses and salaries… No one goes to jail, no consequences for actions… serfdom is part of the new “dark age” where the “deep state banana republic” can send people to prison for “thinking” about being patriots while actual murderers and arsonist or set free without bail)
That reminds me of another NPR show in a three part series discussing the problem of Nazi conspiracy theory “right wing” talkshows.
Their conclusion, besides removing a.m. from all car radios, was to criminalize unsanctioned free-speech, take back the airwaves because they’re owned by we (not you) the public/GOV. and the public has a right to be “safe” and free from unconventional thought. (didn’t DeSantis just sign a bill in Israel eliminating free speech in Florida?)
This is also their thought process on rockets flying through “our air space”. This explains why the FCC is trying to regulate space travel.
I find NPR to be a great source of boring propaganda having hundreds of government funded radio stations, in every state, handing out marching orders for the faithful woke… brought to you by Bill and Melinda Gates.
Robert wrote: “Nor are these elected officials entirely to blame. They are simply following the desires of their voters, who always seem to rise up in arms if any program gets cut.”
This is not entirely correct. Several cities and other places in the U.S. defunded their police forces (reduced funding), and despite the dramatic increase in crime in these areas, there has been very little uprise to complain that the police have been underfunded.
Then again, these places have voters who clearly prefer less policing so that they can get away with their criminal behaviors.
“The tragedy of this farce is that it is not the exception, it is now the rule. Across America every elected legislature, whether controlled by Democrats or Republicans, functions the same. Nothing gets cut, no programs get questioned, no new allocation of aid or money is ever denied, and budgets and debt grow endlessly.”
This is the same state that is seriously considering handing out millions of dollars, to each person, as slavery reparations to people who were never slaves, to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars that the state is unable to afford. This is a state that was never a slave state, and to own a slave in the U.S.’s California was always illegal. Innocent people in an innocent state will overpay “reparations” to people who do not deserve it for crimes that were not committed, or at least not allowed, in the state.
This state also does nothing to stem the tide of the modern slave trade of people illegally crossing the border, but these modern slaves are neither being freed nor being given reparations for actual (sex) slavery that these very same legislators and governors have failed to prevent their enslavement.
On the other hand, the national government has made it clear that the states are not even allowed to enforce these immigration laws, only the national government is allowed that purview, and it is failing spectacularly.
But then, these fearful leaders have no shame, nor are they embarrassed by their own hypocrisy.
Other California headlines:
• “California stares down $25B deficit after years of record cash”
• “California Defaults On $18.5 Billion Debt, Leaving State Businesses Holding The Bag”
• “Black Californians could receive up to $1.2 million in reparations payments, task force says”
It’s not just the government. Consumer debt also. Inflation is killing us. Outstanding credit card debt keeps hitting new highs as people, especially those on fixed incomes, run up their credit cards to make up the difference between monthly bills and monthly income.
I watch and think about the economy a lot. I don’t know how this will end. The historical reputation of the dollar has kept things afloat so far but….
Wow! I only popped into this thread to make a comment on the latest mass shooting in the US, asking if anyone thinks a spot of gun control might be appropriate yet?
But it seems I fell into a snake pit of misinformation . Here in Sweden ( and also in the UK, just not so much these days…), We pay what you guys would consider a high rate of tax. We also receive daycare for our kids, meaning we can get back out to work an keep on paying that tax, our kids get a world leading standard of education, without leaving them with a student loan around their necks for decades, and we receive medical care which is free at the point of care. We get charged up to a very low ceiling, payable within 30 days, enough to stop freeloaders from abusing the system, but affordable to almost everyone.
This is the socialist system that you guys can’t seem to get your heads around. You that can, pay a little more in tax, and the poorest in society don’t suffer as much as they would in an absolute capitalist society. Unlike many posts on this site, this concept is not rocket science… I believe the privileged have an obligation to help lift the underprivileged out of poverty and give them the chance to flourish and also give back to society.
This makes economical sense, but, as I know many of the readers here are of the religious bent, ask yourself what Jesus would recommend… I’m no believer, but he had some pretty socialist ideas.
Lee you just do not understand. At all.
Gun control is not the answer. Its the modern thug culture that your nations do not have. Up to 40 people a weekend are shot in Detroit. All by thugs and gang members.
So unless you remove ALL guns in the US your never going to stop it. And that will never happen. Law abiding citizens rarely commit stupid crimes with guns.
We have had fully automatic machine guns in civilian hands for 100 years and the amount of times that those 500,000 firearms have been used in a crime can be counted on one hand.
As for medical care in the US you still have no idea.
I can get Obama healthcare coverage for 40 dollars a month or even free with a low enough income. No one is turned away, ever.
Our real problem is we have hundreds of thousands of people with dangerous mental problems walking the streets because left wing do gooders came up with the idea that as long as they are on their meds( they NEVER stay on them) and not hurting someone they MUST be released out into the world. Just look at the amount of people that get pushed into trains by them every year. They are a huge percentage 95% of our homeless population also. Add in the fallacy of legalized hard drugs and you get HUGE problems.
Its estimated that 50% of our prisons are filled with mental health patients (that turned violent) that could have been in mental health wards years before getting treatment. They get NO mental health treatment in prison.
Now open our boarders.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/fbi-reveals-tipsters-call-led-arrest-illegal-immigrant-allegedly-killed-five-neighbors
This man is a gang thug and his “wife” lied to police and was arrested for helping to hide him after his attack on the neighbors.
They have not said were he found the semi auto gun but more than likely it was either stolen (supplied by his gang) or ‘ghost’ purchased by his wife.
America does not have a gun problem but instead a mental health care/criminal problem.
Help us to change our mental health care rules.
The Beatles
Taxman (1966)
https://youtu.be/bUim9Jv0y6Q
2:41
I remember years ago a federal grant was written up, voted on and passed.
It has something like 6 stipulations on the companies it would cover.
all rather specific.
Length of operation. number of employees, specific materials and work being done and general location and so on.
In the end the whole grant applied to only one company. Not any other company could even modify themselves to qualify.One company got the whole grant.
And it just so happened to be in the district of the legislator who proposed it.
For over 100 years our US government has been a trough that only select pigs get to eat at.
Other Swedish headlines:
• “Sweden Hundreds protest after police told women to ‘stay inside or walk in pairs’ after series of violent gang rapes”
• “Soaring asylum numbers force Sweden to cut costs, borrow more”
• “Sweden. Police Official expresses sympathy for asylum employee’s murderer”
• “Sweden bomb attacks reach unprecedented level as gangs feud”
• “60 Minutes film crew attacked by a ‘group of masked men’ in Stockholm”
• “Mass immigration is continuing to claim victims in Sweden. Murder, assaults and rape have become everyday occurrences”
There is one reason, and one reason alone that gives us the corrupt, wildly expensive government we have: THERE ARE NO CONSEQUENCES. When government is wrong…when their hair-brained ideas blow up in their, and more importantly the taxpayers’, faces the bureaucrats, the Deputy Assistant Under secretaries, the cabinet positions suffer zero consequences. When the GAO audits a cabinet department, say, Defense, and they just can’t find oh, $50 billion or so…no consequences. When the Department of Education changes basic Civics to ‘Social Studies’, when they come up with the “new math”, and test scores plummet…no consequences. Everybody still gets paid, they still collect their taxpayer funded government pensions, nobody gets fired. It’s that simple. Dream this: Congress passes a law, and the President signs it, that the mission $50 billion is never found, the federal government refunds the missing money to the taxpayers, and NOBODY in the department gets paid until it is.
I can dream, can’t I?
There is one reason, and one reason alone that gives us the corrupt, wildly expensive government we have: THERE ARE NO CONSEQUENCES. When government is wrong…when their hair-brained ideas blow up in their, and more importantly the taxpayers’, faces the bureaucrats, the Deputy Assistant Under secretaries, the cabinet positions suffer zero consequences. When the GAO audits a cabinet department, say, Defense, and they just can’t find oh, $50 billion or so…no consequences. When the Department of Education changes basic Civics to ‘Social Studies’, when they come up with the “new math”, and test scores plummet…no consequences. Everybody still gets paid, they still collect their taxpayer funded government pensions, nobody gets fired. It’s that simple. Dream this: Congress passes a law, and the President signs it, that the missing $50 billion is never found, the federal government refunds the missing money to the taxpayers, and NOBODY in the department gets paid until it is.
I can dream, can’t I?
Lee S–
Howdy.
(just a word of advice– when you come out of the gate with the “mass shooting and gun-control” trope, you can expect blowback. We get that ‘stuff’ 24/7/365 from our america hating commie news-media and our turncoat politicians. Just sayin’.)
A question please– of which Country are you a citizen?
As far as I can figure out (I read your stuff) you were originally a British citizen and eventually wound up in Sweden, is this correct? So, are you a citizen of Sweden now?
How does that work? Do you have dual citizenship?
If I wanted to, can I become a citizen of Sweden? And at what point would I start to receive all this stuff?
“Being Samuel Colt”
American Genius (2016)
https://youtu.be/xYXZ5BdAOO8
2:15
To Lee S and all of the logically scared, confused and the obfuscators:
https://mms-images.out.customink.com/mms/images/catalog/colors/116243/views/alt/front_medium_extended.png?design=tzw0-00cq-q2jx&pblegacy=1&pblegacysize=small&pblegacywm=1
If and when America and its Constitution and its enumerated Rights which include the Right for the people to bear arms goes by the wayside is the day you ALL become owned by your betters.
And they are better than you. They are smarter, they are ruthless, and they seek absolute power over ALL, CCP style.
They tell you that right to your face what they intend, but you refuse to believe them. You are but an aspirational surf.
And that combined with an ignorance of history and the nature of man related to such things will in the end bring it ALL down.
And you will deserve it, but most will not.
‘ITS THE FINGER, NOT THE TRIGGER”.
And the Liberal, Leftist Radicals among the Democrat party as dark as this fact is revel in the times when some undealt with nut case extremist on either side of the political divide or some disgruntled employee or socially isolated and mentally deficient brings a gun to a knife fight.
And that is and are the facts.
Politicians: Trust none of them by their words and only by their actions.
wayne
I do believe that members of the EU accept each others citizens as residence but not exactly as citizens.
Social costs for that person is still paid for by their originating nation.
It may also be that the whole of the EU pays for all social services together.
But to become a citizen of any Eu nation I do believe you have to learn that nations national language and take a test.
You get NO social services until your a citizen.
Unlike in the US you just need to walk in and wait. Social services are free to everyone who is living in the US.
Except Social Security which you just need ten years of work to collect. No citizenship required. You do not need to be a resident of the US to earn or collect it.