Using State Agencies For Personal Purposes

Hot Air posted an article today about some recent actions by California Governor Jerry Brown. It seems that Governor Brown used state resources to survey his family’s ranch to see if there was any fossil fuel underground.

The article reports:

In case you missed it, Hizzoner apparently took it upon himself to direct the state’s oil and gas regulatory agency to do a survey of his extensive ranch and find out if there was anything under the ground worth tapping. This effort included satellite imaging and all the other scientific tools to estimate the potential fossil fuel reserves which might be found there. When pressed for an explanation, all the Governor’s office managed to come up with was a claim that the agency does that for regular people all the time. (That came as a surprise to the folks at the Department of Conservation.)

It seems that the Governor was unhappy about seeing this news in the headlines and a whistleblower from the regulatory agency is now crying foul, implying that some sort of retaliation toward her may be in the works. (NewsMax)

I don’t even want to think about how much it would cost a private citizen to have such a survey. The woman who filed a whistleblower’s complaint about the state’s resources being used for the survey has hired a lawyer because she fears retaliation.

The article concludes:

The GOP in California has already called for a full investigation and Brown deserves a chance to clear his name. But the statements from the Governor’s office thus far seem to be admissions that it happened, with the only quibbling being over whether or not it’s allowed business as usual. If the findings show that this was precisely what it looks like thus far, this could very well be the beginning of the end of Jerry Brown’s governorship.

As taxpayer’s become more concerned about how their tax money is being spent, we may see more scandals like this. State and federal governments include a lot of waste and a lot of pork.

Part of the spending problem in the federal budget is the concept of ‘baseline budgeting.’ This is the concept that explains how Congress can claim to cut spending while the actual amount spent increases. The way the federal government computes its budget is to begin the process at the current spending level. Then, Congress will plan to increase the spending in a department maybe 5 percent. Then, they will ‘cut’ their spending by increasing the spending in that department by only 3 percent. Despite the fact that they actually increased spending by 3 percent, they will claim that they have cut the spending in that department by 2 percent. People who are not paying close attention will believe that spending has actually been cut by 2 percent. The solution to this practice is to educate the American voters as to what is going on.

Meanwhile, let’s see how much of Governor Brown’s current problem is reported in the mainstream media.