The Road to Destruction

Remember, always, our founding principle:  deficits = debt = destruction.

The sub theme of today’s essay is – there are many signs along the way of the road to destruction.  You can ignore them until you reach your destination – or you can heed them and take evasive/corrective action.

The city of Detroit is 100 yards or less from the end of the road to destruction.  Yet, even with the clear visibility of their destination terminus, the very same fools who drove the city to this spot have the accelerator pushed to the maximum, with no intent to brake.  (For a brief update, please go to:  http://www.freep.com/article/20130708/COL06/307080118/ )

The question for you, dear reader, is who is driving your municipal car?  Can you wrest control from them before you find yourself looking at the same destination as the remaining, very much reduced and border line, indigent population of the city of Detroit?  Do you have leaders in place who know to stand up to public employee union bosses (thugs) – who know to balance the budget – to live within our means – to pay down debt, not just keep rolling it over and adding to it? Do you have defined contribution pension plans for all public employees or the old fashioned, guaranteed to bring your municipality to the same destination as Detroit now faces, defined benefit plans?

If you are a passenger in that car following the formula described so simply, yet elegantly above, you are an accomplice before the fact – yes, you are responsible for the end destination just as much as the promiscuous officials, employees and union thugs who are behind the wheel.

Take this essay to your next city/village/town meeting or the next school board meeting and ask these questions:

1.    What is the debt of this body?  What was the debt 5 years ago?  10 years ago?

2.    Will the debt be paid down in the next 3 years – lower than it is today?  Or even higher?

3.    What is the design of the pensions plan(s) for this body and its employees?

4.    If it is a defined benefit plan, what are you doing to stop that plan and move to a defined contribution plan?  When will you implement this move?

As adults, none of us, unless we are immature or stupid or both, would sit as a passenger in a vehicle being driven by a drunk person.  Yet, that is exactly what we are doing today in our towns and cities where financial responsibility and fiscal sensibility have been discarded in favor of keeping our public employees happy and their union masters mollified.  They work for us – in theory; in practice, we work for them.

Are you just sitting in that passenger seat?  Waiting?  Hoping?  That you will get home safe?  Not a good plan.  Stop the car.  Stop it now.  Don’t be an accessory to this crime.