Go Free Yourself

You may have noticed I’ve added an Illinois Debt Counter widget to my sidebar—that’s a big chunk of change, is it not?

The Debt Counter is provided by For the Good of Illinois, a not-for-profit Illinois corporation comprised of regular people stepping forward to change how politics is practiced in Illinois state government.

Their mission: to rekindle the spirit of public service among our elected officials. They believe that there’s a role for common sense in Illinois government, and an absence of common sense has led to a lack of state leadership and accountability. By forming a network of average citizens who demand from their elected officials honest dealing and sound decision making, they will strive to create a state government that is transparent and well managed.

In short, they want to make Illinois right again—for regular people.

Visit their website for more, and check back here often to see the status of the debt. I’ll be keeping the counter at the top of my sidebar from now on.

If there’s anything that really ticks me off, it’s the obscene way in which our government overtaxes us and then wastes the money.

That’s why I’m so glad there are groups doing something about it. One of them is Sheila Weinberg and the Institute for Truth in Accounting, who recently made front-page, above-the-fold news in USA Today. Here’s an excerpt:

The federal government’s long-term financial obligations grew by $2.5 trillion last year, a reflection of the mushrooming cost of Medicare and Social Security benefits as more baby boomers reach retirement.

That’s double the red ink of a year earlier.

Taxpayers are on the hook for a record $57.3 trillion in federal liabilities to cover the lifetime benefits of everyone eligible for Medicare, Social Security and other government programs, a USA TODAY analysis found. That’s nearly $500,000 per household.

When obligations of state and local governments are added, the total rises to $61.7 trillion, or $531,472 per household. That is more than four times what Americans owe in personal debt such as mortgages.

“We’re running deficits in the trillions of dollars, not the hundreds of billions of dollars we’re being told,” says Sheila Weinberg, chief executive of the Institute for Truth in Accounting of Chicago.

Sheila and the Institute are doing important work with their Truth in 2008 project, which aims to make Americans aware of our country’s true financial situation—and force our elected leaders to face the music and deal with this sobering problem.

Read the whole USA Today piece here, and learn more about Sheila’s work here and here.

And—I’m sorry, I can’t resist—I can’t help but think how dear old Dwight Schrute might respond to a financial crisis such as this one. I mean, this is a man who brought up downsizing in his Dunder Mifflin job interview, and tried to eliminate company health care because “in the wild, there is no health care. In the wild, health care is, ‘Ow, I hurt my leg. I can’t run. A lion eats me. I’m dead.’ ” (I couldn’t find a YouTube video of this, so quoting will have to suffice.) Good stuff. We could use a little Dwight Schrute when it comes to government spending.

Happy Friday!

One of my colleagues at SAA circulated an interesting article today about “The Ron Paul Evolution.” Written by David McCarthy, Paul’s chief blogger for the Daily Dose, the piece appears in the American Conservative and states that while “the campaign dies down, the movement is just beginning.”

“Ron Paul owns the future,” influential evangelical Doug Wead concluded in an early April post on his personal blog. Wead makes an unlikely Paul enthusiast: his religious background might seem a better fit for Mike Huckabee. And his personal history—as an adviser to both Presidents Bush—might have inclined him toward the triumphant establishment candidate, John McCain. But in Ron Paul and the movement that championed him, Wead saw something remarkable: “His is a campaign of ideas. … His army was left unchallenged on the battlefield. Now their ideas have taken root and they will grow.”

Read the whole thing here.

And if you haven’t already heard about it, check out the plans for the Revolution March on D.C. July 12.

Who wants to go?!

I posted awhile back about FreedomWork’s new website, AngryRenter.com, which seeks to gather signatures of Americans unhappy with government housing bailouts.

42,000 signatures later, a key committee in the U.S. House of Representatives voted 46-21 to advance another housing bailout. This bill, the Dodd-Frank plan, would force taxpayers to guarantee over $300 billion in mortgage refinancing and extend taxpayer financing to people with bad credit who have stopped making mortgage payments.

Awesome. If you haven’t already, sign the petition!