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CDOTs Game#4: Answer for: The Easter Egg Hunt

Contributed by: Francis Miller on 4/24/2006

Here is my answer for Game #4:

The orginal dots that were to be connected are as follows:

1. County Seeks Input on Community Development Grant
2. Community Development Grant a Can of Worms
3. April 23 Begins County Employee Appreciations Week
4. Franktown Subarea Plan
5. Job Growth
6. Residential and Commercial Construction
7. Sales Taxes and Property Tax Assessments
8. PERA

This week, by declaration of the Douglas County Commissioners is County Employee appreciation week. That presumptuous assertion comes simultaneous with a couple of other events that, when considered as an integrated totality, presents an astonishing picture. The County recently declared that it wanted community input on block grant funds. Over the past few months the County has used it's controlling authority over land use to quash development in Franktown and constructively infringe upon the rights of property owners. It has also released statistics that show job growth in the County is skewed towards retail, construction, health care, education and government, rather than private sector manufacturing and distribution that would further exports and long term wealth creation. The list goes on and and on and on. What are we to make of all this?

Government has gone from being a supportive function to becoming an estate with it's own free will. Almost like a computerized robot that starts out with the purpose of doing the owner's bidding that by accident morphs into a Frankenstein and irreversibly transforms from slave to master, government is now in control of us. Deeply entrenched bureaucrats and political hacks exert a petty tyranny over us like a medieval system. Douglas County's $110 million dollar budget and 1,100 employees averages $100, 000 per employee. But that is only a tiny part of the picture. There are thousands of additional employees from state government, the cities of Castle Rock, Parker, Lone Tree, the schools, hospitals and federal government that inhabit our County and participate in the redistribution of wealth from the private sector into a vast black hole.

The overhead society that feeds off the carcass of the productive sector derives its power from property tax assessments, sales taxes, and transfer payments. Therefore it is obsessed with new retail establishments, commercial and residential development and transfer payments such as community block grant monies from the feds. Monies from the fed and state government for schools, Medicaid and Medicare $$$, monies from pensions and other sources flow like rivlets from headwaters streams to create a vast river of money. These funds go to to pay the salaries and benefits of public sector employees and fund their pensions under the guise of a social contract that cannot be violated even if the private sector economy suffers from setbacks. Should a recession occur, as happened after 9/11, there is a clarion call for more taxes and referendums such as C and D to keep the river flowing full.

To call into question the wisdom of this paradigm is to suffer a stinging rebuke from the pigs who feed at the trough. But, it is not just the employees of the public sector estate. It is the contractors, the real estate developers and brokers, the retailers, the lawyers and doctors and accountants and vast legions of people who participate from the "multiplier-effect" of these monies as they circulate through the economy. And, don't forget the welfare recipients who benefit from the morsels that trickle down to fill their personal pocketbooks.

Periodically we hear the call for reform and more enlightened policy. But, one would have to be incredibly naive to believe that that is a realistic possibility, barring some crisis that unexpectantly found us at rock bottorm. We long ago passed the tipping point and there is no longer any incentive for those in control to change their self serving ways. These perpetrators are not even conscious that they are the problem and, instead, are so in denial that they see it as the 'other guy' who is creating the problem.

My guess is that we will muddle through until a severe crisis does occur. The Great Depression and two World Wars of the 20th century were a sufficient shock to transform our parent and grandparent's generations. Perhaps a pandemic, collapse of the value of the dollar on the world markets, natural disaster, or terrorism event or a 'perfect storm' convergence of events would be sufficient to catch our attention. Barring this, I foresee a continuation of the current way of life. But, the longer we continue, the greater will be the adjustment down the road. We are not exempt from the laws of nature or the principles of economics just because are ego commands it to be so.

Our forefathers would be astonished at where we are today. It was a full 100 years before the income tax system was enacted and the first 80% of the existence of this country's life kept government, education and health care contained as a small percentage of gross national product primarily devoted to national defense. Now, the inmates are running the cuckoo's nest and those of us in the so-called private sector spend 50% our work-life like peasants laboring in the fields to support the public sector estate. We spend anywhere from 25% to 40% working to satisfy our landlord, the money changers and other parasites who lord over us. Less than 10% to 15% of what we create goes to buy our food, clothing and other essentials.

As Rousseau said, we were born free and and, yet, everywhere man is enslaved. Our forefathers drew upon Rousseau and other French philosophers of the 18th century for their enlightenment to draft our Declaration of Independence and Constitution. They would have rebelled at what is occurring today. We tolerate it and act as if we do not care because it has become so pervasive, so ubiquitous. But, I suspect at some deep level we do care greatly and some day we will find a way to rebel against the evil and tyranny that lords over us.

Whether it will be like the great revolutions of Europe where we storm the ramparts, I highly doubt it. We cannot even support an army for hire to kill evil people who would, if given a chance enslave us and put our women in birkas. It will probably have to come in a way where some day we just lose our desire to participate in the secular, materialistic retail, money-changer culture that generates all those sales and property taxes. When the mass of us opt out of the system and truly become net savers instead of net consumers, and when we embrace alternative energy from the sun instead of the fossil fuel culture, then the public sector estate and its parasites will be in true crisis. We will then see how creative they can become under the restrictions of TABOR and other limits on their largesse.

Have a nice "Thank Our County Employees Week" and God Bless All the Other Little Piggies at the Trough"


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CONTRIBUTOR INFORMATION

Francis Miller

Parker , CO

Francis Miller has posted 699 stories and 9 comments since joining on 11/17/2005. Francis Miller's average story rating is 4.2.
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