Another Warning We Probably Won't Heed

I touched on this before, but it looks like the New Jersey state pension scandal is turning out to be a whopper. The state apparently failed to make payments into the system to the tune of $8.1 billion. In addition, it wasn't like they just, er, forgot, there was a chronic failure to contribute funds over ten years. The current funding gap could be as high as $56 billion. Turns out that the SEC is looking into it, as there may be some fraud involved in how the state represented its finances to prospective bondholders. Furthermore this is not the only public pension scandal around. If San Diego's $1.7 billion hiccup is "Enron by the Sea" how will we term NJ's $56 billion mess? This would make Enron look like a kid stealing a twinkie from the corner deli. Of course the MSM will never decry the public corruption and mismanagement of the state of NJ with the same fervor and volume as they decried the corporate cupidity ala Enron. Not only that, this will be seen as an anomaly, a strange occurence, when it is in fact the norm. This is not unusual. State pensions, city pensions, the federal budget, state budgets, Social Security, Medicare, welfare, Katrina relief, Iraq contracting, etc. All corrupted, all grossly mismanaged, and all completely foreordained - the increasing size and scope of the state will inexorably move toward greater instance of corruption (see the quote one paragraph down).

And we are dabbling with the notion of ceding our healthcare system to the government? It is an eternal mystery. Why do the majority of people demand more government?