Monday, October 15, 2012

A Fourth Branch?

Last night I pondered my frustrations with our government, and I realized that quite a few of them all boiled down to one thing: fiscal irresponsibility.  That's not all my frustrations, mind you...but a good number of them.  For example, the fact that our federal government is now operating without a budget, on continuing financing resolutions – that's completely irresponsible.  Or the accounting gimmicks that Obamacare is rife with – also completely irresponsible.  Or the near-universal underfunding of state and municipal pension funds.  But most of all, it's indefensible that we keep spending money (at all levels of government) that we simply don't have.  All these issues have one thing in common: the legislators and executives being way, way too free with the taxpayer's hard-earned dollar.

The rest of our society doesn't have this problem.  There are safeguards in place that prevent the same kinds of abuses that we see our governments perpetrating on a daily basis.  Which led me to an idea...why don't we have such safeguards in place for governments as well?

This is akin to our legal safeguards, implemented by our system of justice, culminating in the U.S. Supreme Court.  Why not have a similar system of financial safeguards, with the same power as that of our justice system?  A system of auditors, covering all levels of government: municipal, state, and federal.  A U.S. Supreme Auditors, a council of 9 auditors whose word was final.  The whole system set up to prevent the financial shenanigans currently foisted upon us by our criminal politicians (the only reason these things aren't actually crimes is because they're being committed by the same people who make the laws!).

This would require a Constitutional Amendment, and with 100% of all politicians deadset agin it, I don't think it would have a chance in hell of passing.  Dang...

Baumgartner's Technology...

A great article at ExtremeTech explaining all the high-tech stuff that allowed Felix Baumgartner to make his jump yesterday...