{"id":6333,"date":"2010-05-03T07:35:40","date_gmt":"2010-05-03T12:35:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=6333"},"modified":"2010-05-03T07:35:40","modified_gmt":"2010-05-03T12:35:40","slug":"because-that-money-was-just-lying-around","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2010\/05\/03\/because-that-money-was-just-lying-around\/","title":{"rendered":"Because That Money Was Just Lying Around"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.jsonline.com\/news\/milwaukee\/92562709.html\" target=\"_blank\">City looks at lobbyist to grease wheels for streetcars<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Milwaukee aldermen could vote Tuesday on a no-bid $24,000 contract for a lobbyist to help speed action on a modern streetcar line downtown.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Just so we&#8217;re clear: $24,000 is an annual salary for a low-level full time staffer downtown answering citizen calls.  Or an annual salary&#8217;s worth of tax money stripped from businesses and citizens in Milwaukee.  The municipal government is spending this money in an attempt to get Federal money for its next money sinkhole&#8211;a streetcar line in Milwaukee will undoubtedly require annual subsidies to run.<\/p>\n<p>I read in an editorial that the Christian County library spent $50,000 on its recent ballot initiative for a tax increase.  That&#8217;s a couple librarians or a couple dozen computers it threw away.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t think governments should spend money on the following, ever:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Advertising for tax increases.  I mean, they&#8217;re showing profligacy and poor money management with the existing tax revenue they have if they throw it into four color mailers and neat signage.  I notice that Greene County has started putting up signs along roads it would improve if the quarter cent sales tax wasn&#8217;t sunsetting.  Please.  Spend the existing money better.<\/li>\n<li>Lobbying for more share of revenue from higher governments.  The whole game of getting &#8220;free&#8221; money from the state or Federal government is unseemly as it is.  Spending money to get that money is a bit like gambling.<\/li>\n<li>Suing other governments or taxing districts for a bigger share of money.  I hate it when the taxpayer is on the hook for all three sides of this story (two sets of attorneys plus the actual judiciary).  Win or lose, taxpayers lose.<\/li>\n<li>Advertising their services.  I listen to radio on the Internet, so I get a steady diet of PSAs advertising the services of various agencies, but I also hear them on the regular radio, too.  If you have to advertise for your service, it&#8217;s probably superfluous.  And the regional drinking-and-driving ads drive me crazy.  The state gets money from the Federal government to spend on the ads, so instead of a single PSA, you get your state highway patrol cutting its own ads.  Which takes a cop out of a car or from behind a desk for a day in addition to inefficiently spending money to let citizens know that the government will enforce a law.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The fact that the impoverished (ask them about how they don&#8217;t have enough money to do what Must Be Done) governments can spend money on these things proves that there&#8217;s too much tax money slush sloshing around in their buckets as it is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>City looks at lobbyist to grease wheels for streetcars: Milwaukee aldermen could vote Tuesday on a no-bid $24,000 contract for a lobbyist to help speed action on a modern streetcar line downtown. Just so we&#8217;re clear: $24,000 is an annual salary for a low-level full time staffer downtown answering citizen calls. Or an annual salary&#8217;s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-federal-government","category-government-overreach"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6333"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6333\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6335,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6333\/revisions\/6335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}