Mark Levin's catchphrase is that the Democrat Party is the party of government and not of anybody else.  And to paraphrase F. Scott Fitzgerald, federal government employees aren't like you and me.  As a group, the millions of federal bureaucrats are more properly understood as progressive kleptocrats engaging in wholesale and unchecked graft of taxpayer money.  We need only follow the money.

There are hundreds of federal government agencies (even the government doesn't know how many), most of which serve no discernible purpose.  It's the biggest Ponzi scheme in the history of global governance.  In the private sector, failing businesses cut payroll, tighten their belts, downsize, or go out of business.

Not so in the public sector.  Budgets only go up, and useless or redundant federal employees who can't be fired are said to "fail up" (get promoted).  With Himalayan-sized benefits and guaranteed salaries wholly out of proportion to any actual work they do, federal employees can never be terminated with cause.  Their federal sinecures make government employees feel entitled to wealth without work.  We see the exact same mentality with tenured university professors who cannot be fired.  OpenTheBooks.com documents some, but hardly all, of the mind-boggling waste and abuse bureaucrats who staff federal agencies commit.

Most federal civil servants are neither civil nor servants.  While posing as selfless, altruistic do-gooders piously promoting fairness, equality, and the common good, most bureaucrats are (and do) none of those things.  Yet the myth of the well intentioned, if bumbling and inefficient, government employee inexplicably continues to endure in the public's collective imagination.

In truth, most bureaucrats view you, the private-sector taxpayer, as cash cattle or an unlimited ATM card, and they will squeeze from you every last dollar they can — for themselves, for government.  No amount of money is ever enough, government is always allegedly underfunded, and so-called critical programs (think of the children!) might need to be cut unless selfish taxpayers are coerced and guilted into ponying up ever more.

Contrary to the taxpaying electorate's perceptions, government operates on the profit motive — but even the most profligate federal employees don't do results (at least not positive ones).  With little or nothing of value to contribute to the nation economically or otherwise (and when they're not targeting law-abiding taxpayers), many federal employees spend their office hours viewing online porn or social media or looking for novel ways to maximize their astronomical pensions, benefits, and perks.  All on your dollar, as you're working for them.

When bureaucrats in third-world countries steal money from the state, it is called graft.  It is not at all different in America.  Federal corruption is subsidized by the generosity of the same private-sector taxpayers whom most federal bureaucrats despise, mock, and ridicule.  It is estimated that more than 95% of federal employees' political donations go to Democrats (recall Levin's truism about the party of government).

Government "work" pays very, very well.  Glib sociopaths and pathological liars like James Comey and John Brennan were multimillionaires years ago, selling their federal offices for personal profit long before their current infamy and before they preened on CNN and wrote self-serving works of fiction that became bestsellers.

Consider just the property taxes paid on a typical 30-year home mortgage.  On average, that will probably come to at least $150,000.  For most individuals, $150,000 represents two or three years of gross income, and it all goes to government.

That's just one type of tax.  How about the gasoline tax we pay to government?  How about sales tax, and state and federal income taxes?  How about the innumerable hidden taxes that drive up the cost of consumer goods and services?  The various bond and tax increase measures sold to us as "temporary" programs to benefit us?

What are taxpayers getting in return for forking over so much of their hard-earned income, and what is government doing with all the money?  Government redistributes some of your money to its loyal constituent groups (under the phony rubric of equity and fairness) and keeps the lion's share for itself.

You're not funding your retirement or your child's nest egg or your second home; you're funding some federal employee's generous pension and very early, opulent retirement.  And it's more likely than not that the federal employee loathes and resents you for your sociopolitical beliefs and wouldn't hesitate to use his position to harm you in some way if he could.

America's jaw-dropping national debt, in the hundreds of trillions of dollars when you include unfunded liabilities like Social Security and Medicare, is money that government has forcibly expropriated from unborn future taxpayers to use for government's own pocket and priorities, not yours.  That too is graft, the hallmark of a kleptocracy.  Lois Lerner, long retired from the IRS after all their hard drives mysteriously crashed, is doing quite well these days, thank you very much.  Actually, she doesn't thank you — she's a retired federal employee who is very much on the record regarding how she feels about taxpayers like us.

Image: Non-essential Washington, D.C.  Internet meme; creator unknown.

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