Our government comes after us with armed men if we make don’t pay our taxes
Yet that same government is indifferent to the rampant theft and fraud
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I wonder if those who read my stuff here regularly get the impression I’m a dark person. I’m not. I’m actually pretty joyful and smiley… like most Americans. I am aware that my last few articles have been angry. I do get angry especially when things don’t have to be thus.
So much of what is expensive, cumbersome, or an infringement on my rights (and yours), so much of what makes life difficult, is due to people with a self-serving agenda. We have too many people whose life entails butting into the lives of others. Leave people alone and they tend to be OK. And happy.
My work takes me to the most rural parts of the nation from the north slope of Alaska to small towns in Louisiana, and something I see in every state I’ve been to (46 of 50): Americans are quite happy. Yeah, they’ll complain about gas prices and taxes and the rain or lack thereof, but they are very grounded, stable, kind, normal. I’d even say Americans are simple, but not “simple” as an insult.
Simple in the way a great cheeseburger is simple.
Simple in the way Beethoven’s 5th is just a few notes.
Simple is good.
Watch a show on TV called “My Lottery Dream House”. It’s about people who won the lottery and go hunting for a dream home… you probably figured that out from the title. I marvel at what constitutes their dream. 1800 square feet in Toledo for $245,000. A split level in Chattanooga near a park. A powder room. A deck off the kitchen. A screened porch.
This is not “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous”. Champagne wishes and caviar dreams? No. Americans are simple.
I can’t watch the show too often. The host is so in-your-face uncomfortably, aggressively, flamboyantly gay that it exceeds my capacity. I wonder if I should be wearing protection. It’s frustrating the producers thrust so much upon us. He’s probably a likable enough guy if the show weren’t so desperate to turn him into a cause or a caricature. I am admittedly not tolerant. Tolerance is not a virtue, FYI, but look at me starting a whole nother article…
Back to simple.
The show is an insight into how average we Americans are. Here are people who won six and seven figure sums, and they are not looking for heated driveways and limestone wine vaults. They are excited, giddy even, to own a very average home.
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Simple is good.
This beautiful quality in Americans is what makes the ongoing fraud investigations happening nationwide so much more egregious. It does not have to be this way, but bad people with an agenda make it so. Oh boy… here comes my angry side.
A White House official recently posted something online which makes one want to grab the torch and pitchfork. In one state, 14,000 people driving luxury vehicles all on government food stamps. Lamborghinis. Bentleys. Porches. Maseratis. Billions of dollars stolen every year from good Americans, under the guise of “helping the poor” when the fraud is overwhelming. The fraud offsets any good the program itself pretends to do.
Tens of billions in daycare center fraud in Minnesota and hospice fraud in California. One guy in Columbus, Ohio operates 288 Medicaid companies and bills the government for $250 million a year, and the whole thing is a fraud. The whole thing.
The total failure of government at such an offensive level makes one look into Ted Kaczynski. OK, that’s a joke, but you get the point. How can our government be so criminally negligent and / or complicit? Who looked at the application and does due diligence? Who confirmed the billing and the invoices? Who wrote the checks?
And how are they not tarred and feathered at this point?
Because you and I both know that our same government comes after us with armed men if we make don’t pay our taxes. I was audited once (for political reasons). It is not fun. IRS agents and their scrutiny with implications of malfeasance and allusions to criminal prosecution. And yet, that same government, is indifferent to the rampant theft.
It is the stuff of manifestos. Again, a joke. My jokes are dark.
Maybe I am dark. Maybe I am angry. Or maybe I’m just eager for justice to be served to those who use my tax dollars as their ATM. I want the same oversight of check-writing bureaucrats as the County Sheriff who watches traffic on I-81. I want Medicaid facilities to get the same routine inspection as the greasy spoon in town. I want those getting government checks to jump through the same hoops as the guy trying to put up a shed in his yard.
Man, you build a fence improperly and you got three or four inspectors with badges and clipboards coming up your driveway, but you run a fraudulent government-funded business, and no one seems to be perturbed.
I am perturbed, because this is all so very simple, and simple is good.
All this fraud does not hurt some fictional Jay Gatsby. It hurts the lottery dream house couple who thanks Jesus for an attached garage. It’s the average Americans, the regular Americans, the good and kind Americans, who are being fleeced by scumbags who use “hospice” and “autistic children daycare” and “healthcare for the poor” to enrich themselves discovering those good and kind people are also gullible. You tell those great Americans the aids is for the needy, for the sick, and they’ll look away, grateful, like the TV lottery winners who upgraded to a kitchen with a pantry.
It’s also so preventable and yet so deliberate while the couple who I watched on a TV real estate show, squirming at the host, is thrilled to have a half-finished basement is being taxed while the Somali “refugee” on food stamps drives a Ferrari.
How could I not be angry? Guess that’s why I wrote this manifesto.
That wasn’t a joke.
Honor and courage.
Daniel Turner is the founder and executive director of Power The Future, a national nonprofit organization that advocates for American energy jobs. He also runs a sheep and cattle farm in rural Virginia. Contact him at daniel@powerthefuture.com and follow him on Twitter @DanielTurnerPTF
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