Tuesday, April 19, 2011

It's never enough, is it?

Although seven agencies within the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Justice devoted $11.9 million in grants for elder justice activities in fiscal year 2009, it's not enough. [This is just federal money, not state.] The GAO report of March 21 (corrected) says we need more federal action (aka tax dollars). With so many agencies and so much money, there's a lot of incentive to double count or over count, to empire build, and to expand your critical staffing levels.

You'll find the usual "abuse" participles--not of people, but grants. Soft, squishy words like facilitating, promoting, establishing and conducting. That should bump up government employment a few points.

A sketchy history of Title VII of the Older Americans Act which seems to be charged with handing out the money. Some of these grants, like the $10,000 ones, seem to be handed out like candy, but for the life of me I can't figure out what you could do with them other than buy stamps, envelopes and maybe get a new computer for the office. But collectively, passed around to hundreds of "collaborations" at the local level, they add up to read money.

Does GAO ever report on the federal government abuse of citizens through taxation, over regulation, disincentives, porous borders, poor energy policies which raise prices of everything, and other "fixes?"

2 comments:

ColoComment said...

I recommend William Voegeli's book, "Never Enough." In a nutshell: If you ask a liberal how much is enough for xyz program, what is the amount of money that will achieve the goal and is the point at which they won't ask for more, they have no answer.
No matter how much is appropriated, it is never enough.

Norma said...

This is what I realized after 40 years as a Democrat. No amount of money is ever enough because the program has to be sustained and expanded. Too many empires have been created. I think this is true of non-profits also.