by Rick Lowe
One of the headlines in The Tribune of Monday, February 5, 2007 just curled my toes. It read:
‘Challenge’ ahead in controlling public spending.
What makes the headline upsetting, and the story about uncontrolled government spending even worse, is that Mr. James Smith, Senator and Minister of State for Finance and former governor of the Central Bank of The Bahamas seems to be justifying it!
Here is some classic double speak from Mr. Smith for you:
“We’re quite comfortable with that (revenue collections against budget projections), and expenditure is under control, but from the inside that’s likely to pose a challenge in the second half.”
If one were to let their imagination wander for just a moment, you might come to the conclusion that since an election must be held by late May or early June at the latest, spending all of this money during the “second half” just might be for the sole purpose of helping win the election.
As stated in a previous blog, Mr. Smith is one of this bloggers favourite “politicians”, but as long as our “leaders” continue to justify excessive government spending, putting the country further into debt, there is less and less hope of reigning in the leviathan we know as the government of The Bahamas.
It makes we wish we had a Council for Citizens Against Government Waste to continually expose the waste and pork barrelling that takes place in government spending here in our little country. I bet it would make your head spin, much less curl your toes.
At least CCAGW gets access to available public documents to peruse, we are unable to get our “public” documents.
My Grandfather left the public treasury in the early 70’s due to impropriety in spending and bypassing of procedure.
Too many hands in the cookie jar,
and basically he didn’t want to get called before a royal commission!
Still, imagine how they have improved concealment methods by now?
“0” accountability leads to “0” recovery, but being in business we know that don’t we.
After all we have to answer to our customers, staff and investors/owners.
Oh yes, and our government.