No End to Government Excess

So I am finally going to tackle at least part of government excess.  There are so many different areas where government is wasteful that I could not physically or for that matter psychologically cover them all in one post.  For one, the post would probably be about 15 pages long and bore anyone reading it to death, and after contemplating the enormous amount of money that is wasted each year, my head might just literally fall off.  So to start off with, lets just tackle pork barrel spending, the process by which our elected representatives circumvent the normal budgetary process to squeeze extra money into the budget for their own wasteful projects.  Where does this extra money come from?  Our pockets.  All the information I am about to list here can be found on the following website:  Citizens Agains Government Waste.  For last year, 2010, there were 9,129 projects porked through at the taxpayers expense of $16.5 billion dollars.  Now, believe it or not, this is around a 10% decrease from 2009.  A couple of the most ridiculous projects are as follows:  Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia requested and received $7 million for the (you guessed it) Robert C. Byrd Institute of Advanced Flexible Manufacturing Systems.   Really?  Another project that $3.5 million was requested for and received funding from 3 senators in Kansas was for the National Institute for Aviation Research.  There are 9,129 of these projects spread out across the country.  Yet no taxpayer ever hears of it because it is never technically part of the budget, it is simply a byline that is added in after the fact to make sure the funding is received.  (I am dead serious, all of this information can be viewed on the aforementioned website in detail)  Since I am from Connecticut, I will share just a few statistics from this state.  Luckily, we are stuck at number 25 on the list recieving $115,613,800 dollars from our taxpayers.  One of the projects that blew my mind was the $800,000 that was requested and received for Hemostatic Combat Gauze.  Where is our representative's accountability.  If they actually held a job at a corporation that could fire them, they wouldn't last a freaking day.  Yet through our process, they remain in office for the given time and only come election time do they actually start making their promises again.  They claim that all of this money goes to creat jobs and fund important research.  ($800,000 for hemostatic combat gauze? Come on.)  The reality of the situation is, the state is already receiving money to fund the creation of jobs in the normal budget, these are excesses above and beyond what is normally appropriated.  The unfortunate part of this whole problem is, that in order to get these pork spenders out of office, you need to get enough people to vote them out.  And unfortunately, the majority of the population is apathetic when it comes to voting so these politicians remain in office, often times far longer than they should be.  In order to truly make a difference, we all need to get out and vote, make these politicians realize that they will answer for whatever actions they take on behalf of their constituents.  As it is right now, we only complain around election time.  If we voiced our complaints continuously throughout their term, then maybe they would start to listen.  The Tea Party started this process, but many of the politicians they put into office are carelessly cutting.  There needs to be a balance.  There does need to be excessive cutting, but more thought needs to go into the overall impact of what is actually being cut.  Is it an easy process?  No, but with enough constituent oversight and intervention, maybe We the People, could actually take back our government and reign in their extensive power and spending.  Well, the overall issue is really getting people out to vote.  The movement has started, but is not gone nearly far enough.  We need to continue headstrong until we see results that we are truly happy with, not results that we can live with, because I guarantee that if we just deal or live with the concessions, as soon as we turn our backs, the spending will jump right up again.  So the next time you have the opportunity to vote, get up off your arse and into a voting booth or don't complain when the government takes more money out of your pocket.  Next time on the blog, the scary divorce rate in this country.  You know what though, despite all of this, I had a great day.