Category Archives: Finance

Finance, Government

What Is The Money For?

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I downloaded the text of the House $3.5 TRILLION “infrastructure” bill. There are at least 114 occurrences of $1,000,000,000.00 or MORE in the bill. The authors willy nilly toss about spending BILLION$ of DOLLAR$ with abandon. Okay, I have written many proposals for government contract work in the past and if I had submitted a proposal worded such as this, I would have lost my job.  This is a complete travesty.

The biggest issue is that there is almost no clear explanation of what the money will be used for. Most of the sections state some nebulous ill-defined task and then state many BILLION$ of DOLLAR$ will be needed to fund the task. There is NO justification for the numbers and NO historical backup to justify the expenditures.

Here’s a sample of a section:

“SEC. 80010. FUNDING FOR GENERAL SERVICES ADMINISTRATION FEDERAL CITIZEN SERVICES FUND.
In addition to amounts otherwise available, there is
appropriated to the General Services Administration for
fiscal year 2022, out of any money in the Treasury not
otherwise appropriated, $2,000,000,000, to remain available until September 30, 2031, to be deposited in the Federal Citizen Services Fund.“

That’s it. It just says that TWO BILLION DOLLAR$ must be allocated the the GSA for the FEDERAL CITIZEN SERVICES FUND (FCSF).  The FCSF spent $74 MILLION in 2020,  plans to spend $68 MILLION in 2021 and is requesting funding in 2022 to the tune of $59,200,000.00.

What does the FCSF do? From the 2022 appropriations, “The Federal Citizen Services Fund (FCSF) enables public access and engagement with the Government through an array of public and agency facing products and programs.”

Basically it’s for web based access to government information.

Now for some unknown reason, we need to allocate 34 TIMES MORE of the ANNUAL BUDGET for this one task for no apparent reason. The work statement above just says, “give TWO BILLION DOLLARS to the fund in 2022“.

What the fuck?

Most of the bill is written in a similar fashion.

I think that the HOUSE and SENATE should REQUIRE a justification with historical data for any item that costs the taxpayers over $100 MILLION. For any bill, any section that does not have proper justification for the expenses should be immediately lined out. Then they can vote on what remains in the bill.

C’mon man, do your F’ing jobs.

Business, Finance, Government, International, Politics

Throwing Your Money Away

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I don’t hear any outrage about this FACT that I’ve noticed since President Biden was elected. GAS PRICES have been going UP UP UP. In my neck of the woods fuel prices are approaching 60 cents per gallon HIGHER since the election. Seems people should be upset by this, but I haven’t heard much outcry in the news.

What does a measly 60 cents mean? Just a few pennies, right?

If a WORKER uses 10 gallons of gasoline per week to commute to a job, to take the kids to school, to buy groceries, that’s $6.00 per week flushed down the toilet, since President Biden, the most popular president in US history, was elected.

What’s $6.00 per week mean? That may seem like a small amount of money.

Let’s look at a 20 year old worker who took that 60 cents per gallon ($6.00 per week, $312 per year) and put it into a Individual Retirement Account (IRA). Let’s assume the worker’s IRA has an annual interest rate of 7% which is how the markets perform over the long term. What does that measly 60 cents mean when the worker reaches the retirement age of 65?

60 cents per gallon would turn into $95,706.55 !!!  Just shy of $100 Grand.

If there was a 1% upward variance in the return the 60 cent would become $130,548.93 !!!

President Biden’s pick for Transportation Secretary, Petey Buttigieg, has said that he wants to raise the Federal gasoline tax to take more of your money, to give to gender studies programs in Pakistan I suppose.

I guess we can all flush down the crapper $100,000.00 of OUR MONEY for Pakistanis, or to bail out mismanaged public sector retirement funds, or to give to all the new ‘CITIZENS’ once President Biden gives amnesty to people who have entered into this country illegally.

As the saying goes, “It’s only (your) money“.

Culture, Finance

Will Anyone Grieve For These Children?

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This just happened this morning in Baltimore MD. Apparently a gas leak caused an explosion that leveled five houses. The reporting is that people, including children are trapped in the rubble.

If someone wants to pour money into a fight against disparity, how about this idea? Instead of giving BILLIONS of dollars to the Marxist god Blim, how about funding a program to inspect AND correct hazardous living conditions in poor neighborhoods? You rarely hear of a gas explosion in the wealthy suburbs. How about using some of Blim’s money to put in gas leak detectors in these row houses? For that matter install fire and carbon monoxide detectors as well. They can all be tied together into either a new or existing wireless “Internet of Things”, IoT, network. Emergency and repair crews can be dispatched to remedy problems before there is such widespread damage and loss of life.

But it’s easier for Nike et al to write a check to Blim than to actually do something that will help others.