Tom Sawyer’s fence-painting scam alive and well in Raleigh, DC
Mark Twain did a great job capturing American life during his time. In fact, he did such a good job that modern-day leftists have banned and censored the bejeezus out of Twain’s work. You’ll have a hard time finding a pristine copy of one of Twain’s books in a school library, but you’ll find all the books about kids having two *mommies* or two *daddies* you can stomach.
In Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, the title character masterfully demonstrates how to con people into (1) handing over their prized possessions, and (2) gleefully doing your work for you.
It appears an awful lot of elected types in Raleigh AND DC have read (and learned from) Tom Sawyer. In Raleigh, Jones Street Republicans are handing over the heavy lifting in the government waste hunt to state auditor Dave Boliek. Our Republican *leaders* in Congress — many of whom have been on The Hill for a decade or two — are standing back and applauding Elon Musk and DOGE like somewhat-interested spectators.
The General Assembly and Congress are both loaded with government oversight committees. They are also loaded with politicians who swore to be our watchdogs and root out all kinds of government waste and corruption. Many of them have served ten or twenty years and come up with nothing. Elon Musk and DOGE have been in DC for nearly four months and produced boatloads of evidence.
Where have our elected *representatives* been? They’ve HAD the power to do something about waste. But they chose instead to stand back, among us, clapping and tut-tutting about all that has been found. If they’re not going to take the lead and actually DO a major component of their job description, WHY KEEP ELECTING THEM?
(Again, THIS page proves our *electeds* have not been doing anything constructive.)
It’s so much easier to stand back and let someone else take the heat from critics. The liars in the media and their comrades on the political left are guaranteed to scream. But taking the heat is a major component of what you agreed to take on when you got elected.
Auditor Boliek better prepare himself for what’s coming. He’s being set up as a scapegoat for when the feed-from-the-government-teat crowd starts howling.
We need a lot less “Me Too!” and a lot more codifying of these cuts into law.
In Raleigh, we’ve had fifteen years of continuous government growth under a “conservative” legislative majority. THIS Page illustrates the Charlie Foxtrot in DC — which continued to rage on under GOP presidencies and congressional majorities — perfectly.
Will we keep falling for the con?
Legislative oversight in Raleigh has been a joke under GOP control. The worst example is the bloated UNC system budget which essentially funds the left-wing political movement in Norrth Carolina. There has been no GOP effort to defund leftist academic departments or exercse oversight over them. It’s just a matter of time before the UNC system turns NC deep dark blue. It won’t take long to go from purple to blue. Just look at the voting results in any county where there is a university., UNC system GOP trustees also continue to maintain the liberal status quo on the campuses. We are sealing our own doom.
The problem has been caused by the corrupt relationship between certain GOP establishment figures and the UNC bureaucracy. The most recent example is the number two RINO in the Senate, Paul Newton, also know as the chief cheerleader for our energy monopoly, Duke Energy, took a high paid job at UNC. Cabarrus County just voted Saturday on a replacement for Newton.
Peter Hans the president of UNC once served as NCGOP “chief of staff” under Chairman Jim Hastings, where he earned the nickname from the rest of the staff as “Jim’s Little Peter”. When Hastings had to resign after his indictment for tax fraud, the Central Committee gave Hans the sack.
Your perspective is that exact same one that came to my mind when Musk began exposing the mountains of waste and fraud in the federal government: what the hell have the GOP members of Congress been doing for all these years that they campaigned again and again as fiscal conservatives? With at most one or two exceptions, all they have done for decades is to pass one “continuing resolution” on the budget after another, cowering and retreating every time a reporter or a bureaucrat opened his yap. We certainly have gotten very little for our money or effort by supporting these useless phonies.
Remember Walter Jones. He complained about this crap. So, he got kicked off all his committees and faced million-dollar outside funded primaries until his death.
What a con. Washington D.C. – phony baloney. Raleigh, NC – phony baloney. Our county seats – phony freekin baloney.
Its national, state-wide and locally.
School bds and commission boards, loaded with ‘republicans’ are just as apt to be lib leaning and lib spending as not.
Our R leaders in DC are pathetic, top to bottom. Send whomever you please, to congress or senate and you will be disappointed, time after time after time.
Raleigh, same, ditto.
I don’t think we have enough of us left to explain conservatism or move anyone to conservatism. It’s a term reserved for every 2Y, 4Y or 6Y to run on and then forget what the meaning is.
This state is not very conservative in its politics or fiscal responsibility. We vote Gov, Lt Gov, AG , SOS as dems and then filter in a few repubs in the remaining COS seats. Gen Assembly is a mixed baggage of any and everything imaginable.
I agree with all the comments above, but I return to my original point that the GOP failure to bring conservaive reform to the UNC system will ultimately wreck any GOP hope for dominance in NC politics. It’s just a matter of a few years before the state turns dark blue permanently. This disaster will be led by college-educated voters in the urban and suburban areas of the state. Just look at the election returns from past elections and you can clearly see the trend. The NC GOP leadership clearly has a death wish.