Posted by Kamal Jain on 05/03/09
Last updated 05/04/09

Before anyone invokes any of the usual pejorative remarks about statistics let me finish: Numbers don't lie, unless...people lie about the numbers.  And, sadly, there are many ways to lie.

Politicians have everyone believing there is nearly always a budget "shortfall" or "deficit" or "gap", when in fact there is no such thing.  They threaten to begin cuts to programs that people actually care about and get everyone riled-up about the coming of Armageddon if they don't find a way to get more money.

Thomas Pynchon wrote: "If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers."

Simple and obvious as that may seem, it's one of the fundamental tactics and strategies of the establishment -- of the politicians, lobbyists, bureaucrats and the fat cats who feed from the public trough and have ever-greater control over our lives.

Misleadingly-named groups like the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation claim to represent taxpayers and businesses, and feign support for greater levels of taxation and spending.  They claim the state will fall into utter chaos and anarchy if any cuts are made, and that cuts would actually be BAD for people and businesses.  These groups hide the fact that they directly and indirectly benefit from government largess.  They don't like to talk about the fact that their members and their companies receive a lot of dollars from government with very little visibility.

Why so little visibility?  Because while state and local governments publish audited financial reports, they make them very long, boring and complicated.  The data is hidden in plain sight through its sheer size and complexity.  And if someone is intent on reading these reports, they begin to get very fuzzy picture that is hard to learn anything from other than a few vague characteristics.  Worse yet, because the reports are so big and scare non-financial people away, no one realizes that there are giant portions of government which are not covered in the reports; in many cases they are not even mentioned, let alone audited.

The Massachusetts State government outlines only about 55% of total general government  spending ($28BN) in what they call "the budget".  Roughly 45% (another $22BN) is "non-budget", "expendible trust", and a variety of "other" categories which vary year to year.  But that does not even cover the financial operations of most of the independent bodies like the MBTA, Turnpike Authority, MWRA, or most of the dozens of others.

And that, my friend, is why transparency is so important, and why we must have an independent State Auditor driving toward total state and local government transparency.  Because the politicians are lying and have been lying about the size, scope and COST of government.

It does not matter if the spending is called "budget", "non-budget", "expendable trust" or "simple magical good stuff" -- it's all spending, and without transparency, there can be no accountability.  Instead, we have near-complete opacity and politicians telling us to "get used to it".

This has been going on and getting worse for decades.  The good news is that the data is available and could be exposed, but only by a willing and able leader interested in the good of all of the people rather than special interests.  The numbers don't lie, but they are locked away and hidden inside the government that is supposed to serve we the people.

For the past year I have been obsessed with trying to find the numbers, only to be blocked and ignored by the government.  Rather than begin what could become a long, drawn-out and expensive court battle with the state which would accomplish very little, I have decided to run for Massachusetts State Auditor.

In Massachusetts, with one of the highest in the nation per capita tax burdens and commensurate levels of government spending, here in one of the high-tech centers of the world, we have no transparency or accountability into state government spending.  This is an outrage.

According to the most recent data available from the state Finance and Administration site, the State Auditor's office employs more than 290 people, and the State Comptroller's office another 121 or more.  There are over 400 state government employees working in the two offices which are responsible for auditing and reporting all the state's financial data, and they have no interest in transparency.

I am looking for good people to be part of my campaign committee across the entire state.  It is 18 months to the election.  With a lot of hard work, meeting people and getting the word out about the politicians lying about the numbers -- this race is very winnable.

Total government spending is where the rubber meets the road.  Transparency and accountability down to each and every transaction, adding up to total spending is the key.

The numbers don't lie.  Now let's go find those numbers!

Posted 05/03/09 Haystacks Calhoun NEW YORK, NY

Good luck with your campaign run.

Posted by Kamal Jain on 04/23/09

Campaign for Liberty member Bob A. recently posted a link to the Boston Herald's Massachusetts state employee salary listing.  That's a great resource, but it's worth pointing out that the link went specifically to a view sorted in descending order and only for the DMR division of the state government.

The main page for the Herald's MA state salary project:

http://www.bostonherald.com/projects/payroll/massachusetts/

They also have a companion state pension page:

http://www.bostonherald.com/projects/pensions/

Anyone here remember Billy Bulger?  You know, the infamous, corrupt, scandalous Speaker of the Massachusetts House and President of UMass who resigned in disgrace amid subpoenas and charges of unethical/illegal behavior?

Meanwhile, I have been trying to get state expenditure transactional data from the Comptroller's Office for 8-9 months and have gotten nowhere.  It is an ongoing project of mine where I plan to create a web-based, searchable, sortable view into total state spending ($50 BILLION+).