Shame Shame Shame!

Been There For Days

Trojan Horse

Last year voters, the wee people, approved the referendum on HB 581 establishing a floating homestead tax exemption. In DeKalb it was a bit of a landslide garnering 52% approval. None of these voters are elected DeKalb officials or hired bureaucrats. So these folks, elected and hired, would really, really like to opt out. Which is allowed. 

But...

Opting out kicks in some procedure changes around sales taxes, of which we have a few here in DeKalb. It is really painful as the EHOST is conjoined with a SPLOST and when combined with other local sales taxes, exceeds the 2% limit that opting out would incur.

Oh, the humanity!

The county's lobbyist, yes, they have a lobbyist, is down at the gold dome trying to get a legislative loophole put in place. Nothing will deter them from getting their hands on more of your money.

Politicized

This seems to be the word of the week, at least for legacy news. They see, and say, T2 is politicizing the government, like that is a bad thing, because it checks the unchecked administrative state.

Wow.

The defense of this opaque and confusing administrative state borders on hysteria. Even members of congress aren't sure which programs in our schools are DoE or HHS, suggesting there is no meaningful oversight by the creators this alphabet soup of a government. So let's not kid ourselves, the administrative state is not a government of, by or for the American people. 

That is because it is distanced and protected from our democratically elected officeholders. Over the past 100 years, congress has created and nurtured this administrative state transferring the power and authority of the democratic republic to their creation. In so doing they have ensured that our vote doesn't matter, because in their mind, elected officials no longer matter. At least one seems to disagree, claiming that the electorate's will has authority over the administrative state.

Is this politicized, or is this democratized? Maybe this is something we should try in Dunwoody, especially if the city charter is as malleable as our little administrative state thinks it is.

The List

Now more than ever it seems folks in this country are talking past one another. This may be due to some recent events and two very different perspectives held by folks in the U.S. The dividing line seems obvious.

In the U.S. 22-23 million people are government employees, not including military personnel (soldiers), of which estimates indicate around 3 million employed directly by the federal government. The rest are state and local. This also does not include direct contractors, and certainly not grant addicted organizations funneling dollars into their payroll as this is impossible to measure. For reference there are approximately 164 million workers in the U.S., so about 13.5% of the workforce is directly employed by some government. The median pay for a government employee is $111K/yr compared to an ordinary man at $63K/yr and an ordinary woman at $53K/yr. The male/female pay disparity is not relevant to THIS diatribe, the gov/citizen IS, as the gov gets 76% more than the others. This pay disparity is one part of the great divide.

To say that these folks "work for the government" is somewhat deceptive, as we hold to the notion that we live in a democratic republic, where perhaps these employees are somehow, though somewhat indirectly, beholding to the electorate. Nothing could be further from the truth. These are employees of the administrative state, and while established by congress (by referendum for the City of Dunwoody), they operate without meaningful oversight or review. Inspectors General are not and have never been the answer, look no further than Atlanta to see what happens when one tries to do the job. The fact is, the creators of the administrative state are its fiercest defenders, having established rules making it virtually impossible to fire any government employee, under any practical circumstance, except during probation. The Musk-ovites are using this blunt tool because it is the only one the administrative statists have allowed. These job guarantees not only undermine any systemic improvements in efficacy, they ensure expansion of the state. If someone is overwhelmed by the job, the state cannot "upgrade the position" with someone more capable, they have to add personnel and associated costs. This is how Dunwoody got an Assistant City Manager. 

This brings us to The List, which in full is The Layoff List. If you work in the real world, where companies and their employees contribute to the GDP, then your name is probably somewhere on The List. Companies use this list to remove poor performers, replacing them with better hires. Jack Welch devised a scheme of stack-ranking employees, clipping off the bottom 5-10% and replacing them to improve the team. Annually. Unlike the administrative state, private employers, and their employees, must compete, the former against other businesses, and the latter against current, and future, colleagues. This competition can be a harsh mistress, with some companies shutting down entire business units, not because they aren't profitable, but because they have inadequate margins. Can you even imagine the administrative state closing a government agency because they're not getting the job done? Neither can employees of the administrative state. 

This is why ordinary, free-enterprise workers have little to no sympathy for administrative state employees, who they see as overpaid, under-productive and ineffective.They see themselves paying taxes to support government employees, and while government employees do pay taxes, everyone knows where they actually get the money to do so. What the Musk-ovites are doing might appear to the administrative state to be indiscriminate slash and burn, but to folks on The List it is standard operating procedure. Those on The List see defenders of the administrative state who advocate a "surgical approach" as employing a Deny, Defend, Depose strategy to preserve the status quo. The Musk-ovites are also foreshadowing what will come, sooner or later, to state and local levels of the administrative state. Perhaps a reduction in federal largess will precipitate some changes at that brown-beige building on Ashford Dunwoody. Don't hold your breath.

Conservative, Liberally So

The left have left the building. Intellectually at least. The Grey Lady, a reliable leftist mouthpiece, went full lunacy attempting to disparage Fork In The Road, at one point saying it was a flop because only 3% took the fork whilst the average attrition rate is 5%. Sounds like a flop doesn't it? Sentences later she weepingly declares this Fork will cause untold hardship all across America as Federal services collapse. 

Can anyone outside of the echo chamber swallow this drivel?

Then there are the boo-birds swarming around Musk and DOGE. Their criticism is priceless: "he's an unelected government employee," unaware that his mission is to eliminate all those unelected  federal employees who serve their bureaucracies but not the electorate.They work for the federal government, not for America.

On top of all this, the left, who we all know are the best educated amongst us (because they told us so), cannot seem to put together a coherent thought, let alone a logical argument. They find themselves in quite a conundrum, blindly defending the status quo of opaque bureaucracies teeming with apparatchiks. Isn't that the definition of "conservative?"

And exactly what is it they want to defend, to preserve?

A very good example is the OPM-Office of Personnel Management. Administration employees went to OPM with what one might think is a question OPM could easily answer: how many federal employees are in probationary status and where do they work? The answer? "We don't know, we'll ask around and get back to you." THAT is a prime example of the efficacy of a federal bureaucracy. The administration found the answer, and some probationers actually work at OPM, or at least did until very recently. Apparently they weren't savvy enough to join the 3%.

Water? Really?

Our new CEO is on a talking tour touting the need for water rate increases. The presentation starts out with the gloomy description of an ancient water system, recent water main breaks, and boil water advisories. Think Chamblee-Dunwoody at the Knoll. 

OK.

What's that got to do with anything, or more to the point, with that one particular something? You know, the consent decree that DeKalb will NOT meet and that will likely cost $100M in fines? Is a federal judge going to look favorably on a Water Crisis Tour when the decree covers SEWAGE? Ya think? And the CEO isn't alone calling for a water rate increase as she is being joined with local current and former politicians. 

There's a lot wrong with this.

There is the aforementioned diversion, obfuscation of the real issue: sewage. Have these politicians learned nothing from their recent spanking? We want straight talk and transparency. This leads directly to the most important issue: we need a sewage rate increase far, far more than a water increase, if we need an increase at all. Even if this is the case, this is a service, and it seems reasonable that those not using the service should not bear the burden of repairing the broken system. As it so happens, there are folks in DeKalb, even here in Dunwoody, that are not on the DeKalb sewer system. And let us not forget DeKalb's horrific history with managing these services (water and sewer) and the incredible incompetence of their billing. 

Is a rate increase the best way to handle this?

This requires asking some questions, yet to be asked, including, what would it cost to operate our water and sewer systems if they were [magically] brought up where they need to be? Is the current revenue, at the current rates, sufficient to operate such a system? If the answers are yes, then there should be no increase. If the answer is "more than sufficient," then there should be a rate decrease (don't hold your breath). If the answer is no (which will be every politician's knee-jerk response) then the rate should be increased to cover these new, ideally optimal, operating costs. 

Then we deal with how to get these systems to where they need to be: a one-time assessment.

One time assessment-one time investment. Like replacing your roof. You bite the bullet, get it done, and don't worry about it for the life of the roof. Fix the water system. Fix the sewer system. Don't bother us again until we're back in this situation, and don't expect us to pay out the nose every month from now til eternity. And yes, we will get back in this situation, because no matter what gets done, DeKalb will NOT maintain these systems. Anyone who thinks they will has been at the mushrooms.

Like A Good Neighbor?

Well, that is certainly NOT DeKalb County Schools. They have this annoyingly bright video sign at Austin.  They run this thing 7x24. Nonstop. And it flashes. Not seizure inducing, but annoying. Certainly it is nice for the kiddies to see their name/birthday out there for all to see. And it may be helpful for parents to get a clue about upcoming events while they sit, all but parked, waiting to drop kids off. Almost like there is no other way to let them know. Like maybe a web site, text message or email. 

Knowing that the school system is its own sovereign government you can be certain there is nothing the city can do, but is it possible to negotiate with the school? Maybe they could turn this thing off from about 6P to 6A when there really is no one around for them to "inform." Seriously, is that asking too much?

The Two Tales Of A City

Remember High School English class? Of course you do. Particularly Lit classes, where you'd read something that you'd never otherwise have read, and the teacher would want you to interpret the deeper meanings. Correctly. 

Well, we're back in High School, specifically in the cafeteria where there is a cool kids' table and everyone else, only now the "school" is virtual and it is actually a FeceBook group where the cool kids hang out. We'll label this group "D" which will become obvious soon. Now "D" started as an open group, anyone could see, anyone could comment. It is reported that a ghostly canine, residing at the rainbow bridge, actually commented on multiple occasions. Then "D" went private, members only, allegedly in anticipation of the chazerei around the November elections. Then came the flying monkeys led by HearNo, SeeNo, and SpeakNo and any monkey who crossed die Fuhrungsaffen were summarily excommunicated: no hear; no see; no speak. No longer allowed at, or even near, the cool kids' table.

This resulted in the obvious. The excommunicates created their own FeceBook group which we'll label "D-Prime" as it is a derivative of the group "D". Yes, we've jumped from High School Lit to High School Calc, but we will circle back. In "D-Prime" the monkeys are unleashed, saying and doing what they will, with the understanding they may be taken to task, perhaps with limited tact and no decorum. You lay out some bullshit and someone is likely to call bullshit on you. They may pile on, so you should proceed with caution and Nomex is advised, as this is the virtual world version of the playground where you learned social skills. You're gonna get some bumps and bruises, but you stand a chance getting smarter, stronger.

Inevitably "D" found out about "D-Prime" and die Fuhrungsaffen were pissed so they invaded "D-Prime" as "D-Prime" is open to all. You've just got to handle the heat. Turns out, the first interloper withered like a jellyfish on a hot beach because the excommunicates still didn't like the condescending, self-righteousness of the "D" monkeys, so they beat it back to the safety of their cushy, padded echo chamber, regaling die Fuhrungsaffen with the horrors of "D-Prime". Yet "D-Prime" saw an immediate surge in membership. Something was happening. Something the cool monkeys didn't understand. Because they're monkeys.

Let's get Lit. If this were something you had to read in that English class, what would this story really mean? Well, you'd have a poignant commentary on contemporary society and politics. There is one troop of monkeys that holds itself above all others believing they wield power over any and all others, and they freely share that belief. With all these others. They are the superior monkeys, or so they say, so they believe. Until a whole lot of the other monkeys quit believing. Then die Fuhrungsaffen could not deafen, could not blind, could not mute very many monkeys because they had driven them away. 

Today we call die Fuhrungsaffen Democrats.

Living With Inflation

First came Bidenomics. Now we look forward to T2 Tariffs. Looks like excessive inflation is about to be as normal as global warming. Except for a few folks. Who would that be? The 1 percenters? The Three Percenters? Nope, and nope. 

It is far worse: it is public schools.

That's right, the folks that brought you school closings and a generational setback for the children of America hold themselves above inflation, and you. Georgia passed a statewide law, by referendum approved by the public, to limit property appraisal increases to the rate of inflation. This means that local governments, including public schools, would see their revenue increases limited to the general rate of inflation. Your average working stiff is not guaranteed a raise to cover inflation, but the schools are. 

But that is not enough. The law offers taxing agencies a means to opt-out of these appraisal increase limits. They have to post public notice that they will do this which some might think would name and shame them. Some would be wrong as the folks running these systems have no shame. They are greed incarnate.

And it isn't as if their revenue is really capped at inflation. Not all properties are subjected to this limitation and those that are mark-to-market upon sale. But they will tolerate no restriction on their current or future revenue. They will claim they need the money to address the pandemic learning setbacks which were largely of their own making, and given free rein at the time they would have made it even worse. And no, they don't think you're stupid, they know you are. After all they probably educated you.

Just remember this the next time you vote for a school board member or an eSPLOST.