Monday, August 30, 2010

$400 K For State Employee That Never Showed for Work For 12 Years
  Government piece by Warner Todd Huston

CNN reports(1) that an employee contracted with the state of Virginia for 12 years seems to have never actually done any work for the agency she was attached to, Norfolk officials say.

This employee was discovered by the new director of the Norfolk Community Services Board who was looking through the office’s records finding the no-show job. Once the new director found this freeloader she was terminated and charges may be filed over the more than $400,000 she was paid for her “work” these last 12 years.

Apparently this woman “worked” for some sort of community program that isn’t run directly by the city that supplies some of its funding. These politically created “jobs” are mandated by law and seem to have little or no oversight.

The mayor said state law requires cities, towns and counties throughout Virginia to host the boards, but each city has little involvement beyond providing some of the funding for the offices.

So how did this happen?

It’s do-gooder politicians creating fake “jobs” for friends, contributors, and lobbyists and then getting the state legislature to codify it all as “law.“ It’s little else but big governmentism and nanny-state graft.

Who doesn’t think, though, that this is one freeloader in a field of thousands of such ripoff artists across the country? Who doesn’t understand that there are people like this in nearly every local, county, state and federal office throughout the land?

So many of these sorts of government programs have little transparency, almost no oversight, and the organization governing them are so labyrinthine that no one can track down who is doing what for whom and with what amount of money. But we do know who is paying for all this: the taxpayers.

This situation is just another example of government that has gotten wholly out of control. Is it possible that these quasi-government programs have done some good here and there? Sure, is it more likely that these sorts of agencies have simply been a gigantic money pit, a black hole into which tax money has disappeared for years, a monstrous boondoggle? You bet.

This is the sort of wasteful government spending that can easily be eliminated with little harm done to anyone. But to do so would endanger the source of power of government not to mention cutoff the favors to supporters and “community organizer” buddies all of whom donate a portion of their ill-gotten gain back to the politicians that pass the laws to invent these needless jobs.

Because of that, tax money is funneled into that black hole of the budget at every stage of our government.

Sometimes we can only laugh.

Warner Todd Huston

1)  reports

Posted by Warner Todd Huston on 8/30/10

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