When a few years ago as a non -American scholar admired the free reference to “American corruption”, my chauvinistic pride was injured. After all, this is not Mexico, and even Italy, where bribes are a normal lubricant. Despite this, not a sentimental study of government dollars at work seems to confirm my friend’s observation.
A miniature example: the US government has announced plans to spend $ 340 million on an advertising campaign promoting the census, including $ 2.5 million for advertising during the Super Bowl. Although the nation has been collecting this data for 220 years, it seems that we now need commercial jingians to complete the forms. Can there be another program? The government informs Gazeta Hill, will focus $ 80 million of these dollars to racial and ethnic minorities, as well as non-English speakers-gaps that vote disproportionately democratic. Democrats will also not make efforts to limit the number of people here legally. The effort of Senator David Vitter, R-la. In order to exclude illegal aliens from the count, he did not go anywhere.
Of course, illegal aliens do not vote. But when they are calculated in the list, they affect the representation in Congress. So some of the money you pay in taxes will be intended to escalate the legislative force of one side.
The same party also saw its own consolidation in other ways. Consider a $ 787 billion stimulus account. Veronique de Rugy and Jerry Brito from George Mason University report that “a total of 56,399 contracts and subsidies in total 157 028 362 536 were awarded in the first quarter for which they recover in the first quarter. Gov are available. The number of jobs that is created or saved is 638 826.54 USD – an average of USD 245.807 for the task. ”
But it gets more intriguing. “There are 177 districts represented by Republicans and 259 represented by Democrats,” they write. “On average, democratic districts have received 1.6 times more awards than Republican. The average number of prizes to the republican district is 94, while the average number of prizes to the Democratic District is 152. ” Democratic districts also received the value of funds in dollars as Republican almost twice.
While the stimulus was sold as an unemployment solution (it was supposed to stop the rate from exceeding 8 percent, remember?), Unemployment has been growing since the passage. This is not surprising when you take into account that the immense majority of funds (116,625 subsidies) went to governments, not the private sector (13 080 subsidies).
It also seems that the allocation of stimulus funds has no connection with the levels of unemployment. Northern Dakota, with an unemployment rate of 4.2 percent, gives 356 jobs “saved or created” thanks to stimulatory funds, more than in many states with high rates of unemployment. I mean, if we can trust data. It should be remembered when discussing these numbers, that a gigantic number of scholarship holders listed on the recovery.org administration website (10 congress districts in Ohio, one in Connecticut, several in Iowa and South Carolina) turned out to be non -existent.
However, some private contractors did it well. Mark Penn, a democratic interviewer, received a contract worth $ 5.97 million for work on the Public Relations campaign to promote the national transition from analogue to digital television. His company worked for 39 days to “strengthen the range, penetration and impact of DTV FCC readiness messages in selected markets, especially among groups that were considered the most threatened.” It saved three works!
Yes, everyone is doing it, and the Republicans are not spotless either. But this is not the whole story. Conservative voters, unlike many democrats, do not consider the government to fight for loot. When Senator Ben Nelson, D-neb., Mentioned his vote on healthcare for a contract that would release Nebrask from increasing Medicaid, only 17 percent of voters in this conservative state. Nelson, who won with 64 percent votes in 2004, is now following his likely opponent by 30 points. The Republican Governor David Heineman spoke about his condition when he said Politico: “Over the past few days of nebrascan, it is so bad that it is now a matter of principle. The federal government can stop this money. ”
There is no way to make decisions by the government something other than political. As James Madison reminded us, governments would not be necessary if people were angels. The best course is what Democrats strive to thwart – limiting the scope of the state and its prompting trends.
We are not Mexico, but we have corruption, okay.