Yesterday, I turned on C-Span and heard members of the SEC try to explain why, despite multiple tips and indeed multiple recommendations from within the SEC, it didn't, for eight years(!) investigate massive Ponzi-schemer Allan Stanford, despite the SEC having a multi-BILLION-dollar budget.Of course the SEC's failure to provide meaningful oversight even when tipped off shouldn't surprise me. After all, government regulatory agencies ignored multiple tips about another mega Ponzi-schemer Bernie Madoff, the tainted peanut plant, and two decades worth on the salmonella-ridden egg facility.
Then I turned to C-Span2 and heard members of a California state regulatory board try to explain how they didn't notice the $800,000 salaries paid to Bell, CA government employees.
Ah, government.
And now President Obama wants to spend more BILLIONS of our tax dollars to increase regulation and oversight--for example, to give an additional $1.1 BILLION to the SEC. And Obama has called for increased government regulation and oversight in many additional areas.
Can Mr. Obama honorably look the working- and middle-class taxpayer in the eye, the group that pays the most painful share of taxes, and say that it's a better use of their money to wrest it from them in taxes to pay for yet more government regulation and oversight than to leave it in the taxpayers' pockets?
