“From city halls to county courthouses, from the State house to the White House – bureaucrats control our lives. Public servants who often try to become our masters. People whose salaries we pay, but what goods and services do we get? On Sierra Wave’s Bureaucrat Beat, we’ll report what they’re up to.” That’s the Bureaucrat Beat declaration of dissatisfaction, but as you may know, Bureaucrat Beat talks about so much more.
How about that Los Angeles mayoral election? Seems candidate Wendy Greuel lost her edge when her opponent, now Mayor Eric Garcetti, started to call her DWP’s Mayor in his TV ads. Ouch. Even in LA, that doesn’t fly. She conceded. Do people in LA really care? You have to think not since only a 19% voter turn-out elected the Mayor. Will Garcetti look more askance at DWP and more favorably at the Owens Valley? Who knows. We hear Garcetti may plan to replace City department heads and commissioners. Look for some LA heads to roll.
The LA rumor mill says Garcetti might even bring back David Freeman to head LADWP!!! He was the one who helped craft the Dry Lake clean-up.
Head rolling should grow to new heights in other places. According to a recent New York Times opinion piece, corporate America spends very little and gets huge breaks from Congress. According to the article, a campaign finance reform organization called United Republic compiled statistics that show the presription drug industry spent $116 million lobbying for legislation to prevent Medicare from bargaining down drug prices and the legislation that resulted allowed drug companies to make an additional $90 billion per year. Great return on investment!!!!
Companies with cadres of lobbyists can jump on sudden opportunities. They mostly manage to tack on tax code concessions to any bill that comes along. And, then, of course legislative staff members often become lobbyists since they’re connected. If only we in the Bureaucrat Beat Newsroom and all of you out there were so connected!
In a recent article by Bill Moyers, he says Congress barely squeezes out a 15% approval rating from the public. He called Congress “as cranky and inert as an obnoxious old uncle who refuses to move from his easy chair.” Moyers says corporate tax breaks have “more than doubled in the last 25 years.” How nice for them.
Back to small town Inyo-Mono. Supervisor Tim Alpers celebrated his birthday May 31. He came on board in Mono just when things had turned sour with the closure of June Mountain and lots of other issues. Alpers forges on. Stay tuned for more news.
Inyo County Administrator Kevin Carunchio called website blogs a “dumbing down of democracy.” That’s assuming it was ever very smart. We like the open forum of Sierrawave.net and the airing of views that goes on there. Super nasty remarks go to the trash. Many news tips have turned up on the blog – tips that helped with understanding
issues.
Did you see the video and hear the story about the IRS spending nearly (choke, gag) $50 million on some 220 conferences!!!! They spent $135,000 on “a happiness expert”, a session called “Leadership Through Art” and more such absurdities. They shot videos of IRS employees line dancing, pretending to be Star Trek and Gilligan’s Island characters. What!!???
Okay. We in the Bureaucrat Beat Newsroom have decided that the Tax Code, roughly 74,000 pages ( Come on, already!!) , has driven the IRS workers insane. After all, what they did in those conferences and how they spent money equals deep insanity. It was like a poke in the eye to the government. They hired no-bid conference speakers and participants, flew them first class, gave them expensive gifts.
It all adds up to proof that the U.S. seriously needs to throw out the tax code and adopt a five-page replacement. Maybe a flat tax with some exceptions. Get American companies back in the U.S. where they will pay taxes. Get rid of stupid loop holes. The IRS employees are telling us something – Insanity rules in the IRS!!
IRS Drama? Freedom? Smmehhh! We are only as free as our purchasing power allows us to be! And now it’s okay for our gov’t to waste resources on spying on us through Verizon?? Freedom?? We live in a illusion of freedom! I refuse to keep feeding the illusion, eventually the… Read more »
Good show Bennet! Here’s a “tax” you may not be aware of: I worked for the County for 15 years, earning a CalPers retirement of $2000/month. The IRS would have taken 40% of that had I not paid into Social Security for 30 years at the required minimum income…. US… Read more »
You need to explain yourself a little better. Public employees who pay into certain public employee pension funds do not pay into Social Security. They instead see the equivalent amount deducted from their pay and put into their pension fund. The caveat is that such employees do not earn quarters… Read more »
Benett sumed it up with this From city halls to county courthouses, from the State house to the White House – bureaucrats control our lives. Public servants who often try to become our masters. People whose salaries we pay, but what goods and services do we get? —————- I’m not… Read more »
You got to love the “tea party” for trying to game the system they say we should get rid of.
IRS drama? I thought this was going to be about the IRS targeting conservative groups. Did you hear about that one?
Sure.
BK
You go girl! I like the leap and have been saying it for decades! Flat tax, flat tax, flat tax
Wishing you all the best,
Ruth
Read what Adam Smith and David Ricardo had to say about trying to tax those who make the lowest incomes. Doing so is always self defeating. When you are at the bottom of the heap income wise, you live a subsistance life, meaning you enjoy the lowest standard of living… Read more »
During tough economic times, the richest of the rich always manipulate the system to their advantage. They don’t like it when others (those that are doing quite well) invade their “turf.” Today we have one political party whose philosophy is to never tax the rich and have duped their ignorant… Read more »
Website blogs are a dumbing down of democracy? If anything, they could help to educate voters before they vote. I was surprised that the initiative to label GMO failed. Why would a public servant say that?
Uh, what? Benett, how does this prove “that the U.S. seriously needs to throw out the tax code and adopt a five-page replacement.”? That’s quite an unjustified leap.
In Bureaucrat Beat we take the leaps we want to. Benett
Who’s “we” ?
The Bureaucrat Beat Newsroom staff.
BK
Not a “leap” at all. The government has lost credibility, the IRS has become a tool of Torquemada-like inquisition, and only groups with money (corporations and unions) or with loud grievance lobbies have the ability to leverage the code for their benefit, owing to the Byzantine complexity of the insanity.… Read more »
Good Grief! If you read the details of your ” Torquemada-like inquisition” it becomes rather banal. No right wing organizations were ever denied 501 tax exempt status. And isn’t it the duty of the IRS to look for tax cheats? The concern about the “IRS Scandal” is typical media vapor.… Read more »
You might regard a politicized, bullying, taking-the-Fifth IRS as “banal”, but then you are often alone in your opinion. As for “looking for tax cheats”, that duty is supposed to be independent of political considerations. Like so many other easy to comprehend facts, this inconvenient truth has escaped you. As… Read more »
Don’t expect a great deal of simplicity when banks, the finance industry and corporations create ever more complex financial instruments. Dumbing down the IRS in the face of what is really a very savvy and aggressive opponent, meaning banking, finance and corporations, guarantees that the opponent wins. A “simple” tax… Read more »
Congress is totally to blame. They’re the ones who respond to the lobbyists looking for more tax breaks for their clients. I’m willing to give up 73,000 pages of tax code for the sake of most citizens. Corporations aren’t paying what they’re supposed to anyway. They have lawyers and lobbyists… Read more »
Loving your comment Benett! They say every year corporations dodge about 90 billion dollars a year in taxes thanks to the offshore loopholes and other tax havens, in turn costs the average citizen over 1,000.00 to make up that loss. Now please justify why some of you passionately voted for… Read more »
Well said Tourbillon