Thursday, September 13, 2007
Government, Thy Name is Wastrel
With apologies to the Bard for mauling Hamlet’s wonderful line, there can be no better way to say the truth. The examples of government waste, fraud and abuse are so plenteous that unimaginable levels of egregiousness are seen almost daily. Indeed, the public is so inundated daily with stories of government waste that they have become unable to do much more than shrug and say “what else is new”? And it is this jaded inability to be outraged day after day that politicians and bureaucrats rely on to keep citizens, voters and taxpayers from storming their offices.
Now comes yet another stupefying example from the Pennsylvania Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program. A recent report by the Auditor General disclosed profound and disturbing abuses of the program and “systemic weaknesses” in the program’s administration. Weakness is a kind description. Inexcusable negligence and astonishing incompetence would be closer to the truth.
For example, according to the Audit findings, between 2000 and 2006, 429 applicants in Philadelphia received $162,000 in benefits using Social Security numbers of dead people. And that is just the tip of the iceberg. And what’s worse, the state and counties have no meaningful monitoring system in place to detect fraud: so just as nature abhors a vacuum, unprincipled individuals will be drawn to easy pickings.
By nature, governments are inherently inefficient. But there can be no excuse for forcibly extracting money from hard working, honest citizens only to have it flushed down the sewers of incompetence and fraud.
Now comes yet another stupefying example from the Pennsylvania Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program. A recent report by the Auditor General disclosed profound and disturbing abuses of the program and “systemic weaknesses” in the program’s administration. Weakness is a kind description. Inexcusable negligence and astonishing incompetence would be closer to the truth.
For example, according to the Audit findings, between 2000 and 2006, 429 applicants in Philadelphia received $162,000 in benefits using Social Security numbers of dead people. And that is just the tip of the iceberg. And what’s worse, the state and counties have no meaningful monitoring system in place to detect fraud: so just as nature abhors a vacuum, unprincipled individuals will be drawn to easy pickings.
By nature, governments are inherently inefficient. But there can be no excuse for forcibly extracting money from hard working, honest citizens only to have it flushed down the sewers of incompetence and fraud.
