Your Tax Dollars at Work

Daily News alum Patrick McGreevey has a fine piece in today's times about the biggest special interest in all of Sacramento. Who is it, you ask? Who spends more on lobbying than unions or big business?

Answer: Government, at all levels. As McGreevey explains:

The budget dust-up was only the latest for an army of hired guns fielded by more than 150 local governments throughout California, which spend tens of millions of dollars each year pressing state officials to do their bidding. They typically spend more on state lobbying than unions, manufacturing interests or the oil industry -- nearly $40 million last year.

So think about it: We taxpayers money to Sacramento, then locally hire political operatives to go there and try to get some portion of it back. We hire soothsayers to try woo our own legislators and bureaucrats -- who ostensibly work for us.

Does any of this make sense?

Notice, too, that government has become its own biggest client. The bureaucracy and its various appendages all clamor for their own protection. No wonder that, no matter what happens in Sacramento, the insiders always seem to fair far better than those paying for and/or receiving dismal government services.