Recent stories have been coming out just this week about fake daycares owned by Somali immigrants that are taking in grants and not caring for any children. Grift and graft collection and dispersement to certain political groups are their sole known purpose. As I sit here writing to you today, I am thinking of hearing a pundit claim that Americans are unfairly paying for grift and graft with taxpayer dollars. I have to scratch my head at that taxpayer payment claim.

I suppose that taxes have been high in Minnesota. Tim Walz, governor of Minnesota, has been recently called before Congress to answer for some of this impropriety. I’m guessing that there isn’t any real taxpayer payment that can be shown at all to cover the daycare funding. Referring to the taxpayers being duped into payment is merely an allusion that has roots in a more prosperous past when the government kept a more balanced budget and accounted for its spending with more honesty. It is far from today’s reality where we see out of control spending, direct thefts from the treasury, and a lack of prosecution for same.

The United States is carrying a huge amount of debt. An end of our once observed prosperity and the death of our nation’s powerbase because of too much debt may be the goal of this ever expanding promise to pay later. Greedy insiders or external enemies may be behind it. It may be just the way that money circulates without proper oversight.

If I were illustrating a picture of the the riches in the treasury, I wouldn’t be able to claim riches are present in the form of gold. In fact it’s quite a trick to keep up an appearance of solvency when the only thing we do is pretend that eventually we can pay when we haven’t been paying off the debt for a long while now.

News reports that lamented the recent shutdown of government made it seem that we are paying. They say that certain bills can’t be paid when the government is shut down. But really, with 38.5 trillion dollars in debt, there’s a lot not being paid. Is our nation solvent at all? I have heard other news stories in the past that claim that the bills of the U.S. are being paid because they have been expenditures for things in the budget. The news story ignored the deficit. Isn’t it true that anything spent after the government is in deficit is not being paid for except with a promise to pay later?

As we continue overspending as a nation, inflation’s threat grows more serious. Certainly many of us can remember less inflation in the past. Sometimes it seems that there’s a free-for-all attitude among certain political groups that have gotten USAID money or some other grant money. Getting money outside of ordinary economic channels seems commonplace among certain political recipients. Real economic production isn’t necessary when political strings can be pulled to supply whatever funds are needed by certain annointed individuals or groups. How special that would make them feel.

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More dysfunction with regard to spending by the US government includes many examples. It would be too tedious to elaborate. Suffice it to say the US federal government no longer reports its spending to Americans. And Congress refuses to balance or plan a budget. I can’t imagine good faith in government without a budget, and without a clear accounting. This is only one of many problems facing our nation.