Comments on: Why the Government Fails to Maintain Anything

By: Teelltync

Teelltync — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 03:36:11 +0000

By: John, Sartell, MN, USA

John, Sartell, MN, USA — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 22:39:48 +0000

One of the problems is the bidding system, it concentrates on giving the contract to the lowest bidder which guarentees that the materials are of the lowest quality. (“Mafia Concrete” anyone?)
Perhaps we should look at the Italian bidding system where they discard the lowest bid (as nothing but shody junk)and the highest bidder (too much gold plating) and average the other bids, then give the contract to the bidder closest to the average.

Chrome plated die cast zinc faucets may be cheap and look good for a few years but they corrode away in ten or so years- look in a fast food restroom.
Chromed brass is expensive and may be stolen by the winos.
Anyone know how to die cast stainless steel?

Always remember that the simplest ideas for saving money may cost in the long run.
But there are good ideas out there: The Philipine rice terraces have thier water regulated by the man or family with the field at the bottom that gets the water after it goes through everyone elses fields, thus no one can hog the water.
Perhaps the answer to better public housing is to make the Mayor, City Councilmen, School Board and Chief of Police live in the projects? The Junior Gangsters might find that when that happened their style was cramped and the PeeWees would find that crime meant unpleasnt consequences.

By: Road Maintenance Fund Reduced by 25 Percent « The Palmetto Insider

Road Maintenance Fund Reduced by 25 Percent « The Palmetto Insider — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 18:19:32 +0000

[...] current approach – which seems to de-emphasize maintenance in order to obtain short-term savings – has proven costly to [...]

By: Snow Job Summit : The Freeman | Ideas On Liberty

Snow Job Summit : The Freeman | Ideas On Liberty — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 11:28:22 +0000

[...] to get the politicians thinking about roads and bridges? They’ve shown themselves to be bad stewards. Better to transfer these assets to the private sector, where business, not political, judgments [...]

By: Big Government Projects (Spend, Brag and Ignore….Off to the Next Urgent Project) « Zipline Conservative

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 01:55:42 +0000

[...] “Government cannot be counted on to maintain anything well because there’s no political glory in maintenance. Those who sign major laws, who launch new government programs, and who cut the ribbons for new government buildings can brag about their exploits during reelection campaigns. But politicians don’t seem to gain any credit with voters when they maintain programs that somebody else started.” Freeman [...]

By: jorod

jorod — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 17:39:47 +0000

Why should you maintain something when you live in a socialist paradise?

By: Jacob Steelman

Jacob Steelman — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 21:49:42 +0000

Government’s around the world do not maintain assets for which they have assumed responsibility. This is one reason privatization has become popular. Government owned enterprises deteriorate and when the cost of the failed maintenance comes due governments do not have the funds or the desire to find the funds to perform the deferred maintenance. Why? What everyone owns no one owns. Government owned enterprises are schemes to provide special favors to those politically well connected such as labor union. As a political favor for the votes of the unions the politicians fund enterprises that have excessive labor costs. In order to give the enterprise the appearance of “making money” they defer maintenance. The buildings, equipment and assets owned by the government enterprise are not well connected and cast no votes in an election so they are ignored. Eventually the deferred maintenance becomes so enormous that it cannot be ignored any longer. The enterprise becomes woefully behind the times in comparison to benchmarks in the private sector and is simply unable to meet consumer demands such as happened with many third world telecommunications companies. Or the equipment deteriorated to such an extent that proper functioning (if not safety and health concerns) became a major issue. I once participated in a due diligence review of the natural gas pipeline system in Bolivia that my client was considering acquiring through a privatization program in the late 1990s. The system was literally being held together with baling wire in many cases and leaking natural gas throughout the entire system. Unfortunately privatization is not really a transfer of ownership to private entreprenuers, investors or businesses. In many cases it is merely a lease of the facilities and business the possession of which the government intends to take back at some future time once the necessary investment has been made to return the enterprise to world class standards and make a profit.

By: Donald M. Coder

Donald M. Coder — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 03:22:58 +0000

The problem with public housing is the same problem that destroyed the Soviet Union. People do not care for their homes if they do not own them. I knew the Chicago housing projects very well and I lived in Eastern Europe for six years. Same problem both places. Marxism causes destruction of the very people that it claims it wants to “help.” It doesn’t work, and America will learn this again when their current rush into Marxism blossoms fully.

By: James Madison Fan

James Madison Fan — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 16:30:25 +0000

Mr. Johnson,

The Civil War ended states rights. Everything since then has been illusion. In this age we cannot even get the Feds to enforce our National Sovereignty by controling our boarders much less accept the concept of State’s rights. Maybe if we manage to get Congress to acknowledge that we have a right to exist as an independent nation they might also remember that we are supposed to be a unity of independent states as well.

By: B. Johnson

B. Johnson — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 23:04:14 +0000

With all due respect to Mr. Powell and posters, regarding “deferred” maintenance by the federal government, please consider the following.

US citizens have evidently not been teaching the Constitution and its history to their children for many generations, particularly the enumerated constitutional principle of state sovereignty evidenced by the 10th Amendment. So citizens no longer understand that the Founders made the 10th Amendment to reserve the lion’s share of government power to the states, not the Oval Office and Congress. And the greater power of the states to serve the people is very important where state and federal taxes are concerned.

More specifically, Chief Justice Marshall had established the following case precedent, now wrongly ignored, which appropriately limits the power of the federal government to lay taxes.

“Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States.” –Chief Justice Marshall, GIBBONS V. OGDEN (1824) http://supreme.justia.com/us/22/1/case.html

So given the greater power of the states to serve the people, state treasuries should be a whole lot richer than they are now (right California?) while the US Treasury should be much poorer. (I know, it’s hard to think of the feds as poor.)

The problem that we’re experiencing as evidenced by a corrupt, tax-hungry federal Congress is this. State sovereignty-ignorant crooks don’t understand that the US Treasury is filled with illegal federal taxes, dollars that should never have left the states, dollars stolen from the states by a corrupt, Constitution-ignoring Congress. But instead of digging a tunnel under the prized US Treasury, crooks know that all they have to do to access the Treasury is the following. All that they need to do is to tell the voters anything the voters want to hear in order to get elected to Congress. Then once they are a member of Congress, all they have to do is brainstorm any excuse to raise taxes, state sovereignty be damned, filling the US Treasury with even more constitutionally unauthorized federal taxes. Such illegal taxes ultimately wind up in the hands of friends, including special-interest groups who financed their campaign, in the form of “nonexistent” earmarks hidden in legislation claimed to cure society’s ills.

Again, corrupt lawmakers have been getting away with this form of “running the government,” aka “deferred” maintenance, because the people who elected them to office are as oblivious to state sovereignty as the elected crooks are.

The bottom line is that federal government-style maintenance is a consequence of the people electing to office lawmakers who have criminal minds and consequently couldn’t care less about maintaining anything, except the US Treasury, in the first place.

Finally, the following link should help give people an idea as to how state sovereignty-ignorant voters have shot themselves in the foot with big, corrupt federal government as a consequence of the ill-conceived, anti-state sovereignty 16th and 17th Amendments.

http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?t=199792