11-25-24

Ok, so I’m about to make you mad…..those of you that consider yourselves fiscal

conservatives that is….last week I did a monologue about the Pentagon failing its

7 th audit in a row with an inability to account for over $824 Billion in materiel,

equipment and funds…..epic failure!.....so if you care where your tax dollars go

and what they go for….stand by…..because for the next few minutes I want to talk

about liberal big government views on money…...your money to be

exact….money that taxpayers have contributed to the cause…..money that on one

hand is held against us and used sometimes to coerce enforcement of an agenda,

while at the same time our tax dollars are used and abused without accountability

by the same ones who just tried to coerce our behavior with it….its an odd measure

of fiscal hypocrisy…. but first let me set the stage by telling a story…..actually it’s

a memory, and one that maybe some of ya’ll can relate to….

When I was a kid….roughly middle-school age….my Dad was an Army Officer

and we were stationed in London, England…..One Summer it was worked out that

I could come back to the states to visit family and stay for the summer…..sounds

good right?.....so as a 12 or 13 year old kid I boarded a plane by myself, and flew

from London’s Heathrow International to La Guardia and from there to

Birmingham, Alabama….. I have had enough adventures as a well-traveled adult

moving around crowded airports…. but I look back now and can’t believe that I

was set loose a middle-schooler to find my way across international waters with

changeovers in major airports…..All I knew to do was get off in La Guardia and

find an information booth and ask how to get to my next gate…..anyway, there I

was, probably looking lost as a coot, walking the terminals staring up at signs,

when all of a sudden someone grabbed my arm…..I looked over and there was this

booth full of well, basically hippies wearing robes…..back then it was actually

common for the airports to allow special interest groups to set up shop in small

booths and try to solicit travelers….I kid you not, it was a four sided waist high

square about 10x10 and there were about a half dozen Moonies…..for those who

don’t remember that’s a cult led by the Rev. Sung Myung Moon….they were all

the rage back in the late 60’s and 70’s…..and one of them had this unsuspecting

teenager traveling alone by the arm…..I didn’t know what she wanted….but man

she was into it….telling me all the amazing things their cult did, and could she sell

me some of their beautifully decorated books……this went on, for a good ten

minutes, with me knowing that I had to get to a gate somewhere on the back side

of Egypt….here’s the end result, as a kid, this grown woman who should have

known better finally let go of my arm when I handed her a $20 bill…..me thinking

at the time that I was just glad to be free of her, that maybe I had done a good thing

because I gave to some charity, and also knowing that I didn’t have time to

understand it and no one was there to explain it……to say that my parents were

upset later (not at me) is an understatement…..

Well, let me tell you….what I just described is what liberal politicians try to do to

us every day….. it’s as if we are all the unwitting traveler and the liberals in DC

are a bunch of money-grubbing moonies with an agenda….if you’ll do what we

say then we’ll let go of your arm…..we give them our money….they make

promises….but in the end what they’ve really done is injected themselves further

into our lives…..several stories from the headlines over the past few years give me

specific cause to say these things…. I see specific evidence of arm-grabbing

So here’s the thing…..we all saw how the Biden administration doubled down on

their efforts to remake society….its as if they had a sense of desperation and they

knew that they have to get it all done before the first term ran out……and in the

course of doing so they looked around for any place in which the unwitting

taxpayer may feel trapped and have no choice but to yield to their agenda……kind

of like a kid traveling by himself dealing with money-grubbing Moonies….

Case in point #1: Did you know that the federal funds for free and reduced lunches

to underprivileged children in public schools were held hostage to a woke

agenda…..you heard me….the Biden Dept. of Agriculture….knowing full well that

the states have become dependent on funding to help feed children who might not

otherwise get a full meal at home…..those children targeted by the Biden

administration for the loss of the funds…..funds for those meals that kids relied

on….. unless states would adopt the Biden admins rules and policies related to

sexual orientation and gender identity…..it was all a part of the effort to force a

redirection on the gender wars….. In new policy guidance the USDA which is the

agency more responsible for food security than any other…..announced that

schools must accept this new policy of mandating that transgender use of

bathrooms and other such nonsense be accepted…..if not then the withholding of

funds to any entity that distributes food aid, like baby formula, school lunches, and

community food banks would follow…..Fox News called it “food security

blackmail”….

Case in point #2: the Heritage Foundation identified a new regulation buried deep

in the 1036-page renewed Medicare regulations promulgated by the Centers for

Medicare and Medicaid Services in 2022 (CMS)…..apparently what is being

referred to as the new “anti-racism” rule is a requirement that any medical provider

who treats Medicare patients….which is many of them….. must “create and

implement an anti-racism plan”….a plan that must include target goals and

milestones to prevent and address racism and provide ongoing anti-racism training

in order to best identify the implicit biases that the Biden administration is sure

must exist in the healthcare arena….so what we have now is the government

inserting itself into the actual business practices of medical providers and

demanding that they acquiesce to their systemic bias and privileges….holding

doctors by the arm until they give in…..

Case in point #3: do you remember the massive infrastructure spending bill $1.2

Trillion dollars….taxpayer dollars…… Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg

announced the strongarming of states and local governments to spend those

infrastructure dollars on progressive pet projects…..things like climate-resilient

public transit and bike paths…..mandating that old roads be repaired before new

ones are built regardless of the actual needs of the locals…..Buttigieg’s leadership

has even resulted most recently in threats to state governments of the loss of

transportation dollars unless they prioritize matters related to pedestrians and

bicyclists…..All of this despite the fact that the express language of the spending

bill prevents such monetary coercion…..

What we have been seeing is the most advanced case of the weaponization of

money in perhaps…..well, ever. Most folks never see it…..and those that do are

too often fearful that if they don’t comply then they will be at a loss……The

Federal government is known for adding stringers….but rarely have we seen it at

such a blatant progressive agenda driven level…..Elected officials and bureaucrats

who would stoop to this level of revenue based coercion are no better than

Moonies in an airport grubbing money off of unsuspecting travelers….

It's the weaponization of money…..and it is just plain wrong…..but is the federal

government as careful with our tax dollars when they conduct business…..I mean,

if you’re going to mandate behaviors and place regulatory burdens it must mean

that’s because you’re a really responsible entity who leads by

example…right?....well, as a matter of unmitigated fiscal hypocrisy the same

government that demands we conform to a liberal agenda or lose the use of

funds…..they don’t have accountability of many of the funds we send them….

We cannot have a two-tiered layer of accountability where the little guy takes it on

the chin while the big guy laughs on C-Span and earns a big retirement bonus…..

there is an old saying that you cannot expect what you don’t inspect…..the

Pentagon should expect to be inspected in the next few years to come….

The bottom line is this….the weaponization of money is wrong…..coercion is

coercion whether it is committed by organized crime or the government….and if

the government is going to grab us by the arm and take our dollars unless we

comply with their agenda…..well, shouldn’t we be allowed some reciprocal ability

to call for accountability for their spending…..it’s only right….

But unfortunately…..it’s too often more about fiscal hypocrisy….and less about

good government….

And that’s a wrap for the Rightside Way