Here’s what I think our top ten political / government priorities ought to be for 2026:
1. Stop the corruption
2. Stop the corruption
3. Stop the corruption
4. Stop the corruption
5. You get the idea . . .
The corruption at every level of our government is staggering. But then, I have said for years people have no idea how hard it is to spend a trillion dollars – you literally have to bulldoze mountains of money. The complexity of the task is beyond the scope of our tiny little human brains, so I just had Grok do the math: our national debt of nearly $40 trillion would cover the entire state of California with one dollar bills!
On a daily basis we see crooked people in crooked NGOs and agencies working in cahoots with crooked paid staff and even crookeder (good word) elected officials to steal trillions of dollars from current and future taxpayers. Federal, state, county, city – every place where public money lands is getting ransacked. It’s a huge job, but somebody’s got to do it, right?
But take heart, there is a solution!
WE MUST AUDIT EVERY GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEE AND ELECTED OFFICIAL EVERY YEAR.
You wouldn’t leave your kids at a day care center where employees were not vetted would you? (Unless you live in Minneapolis.) So why would you leave your money in the hands of people who routinely steal half of it?
Everybody asks how in the world representatives have assets worth hundreds of millions of dollars after just a few years of public “service”. Democrat leader Nancy Pelosi’s “insider” stock transactions alone netted her $163 million between 2020 and 2025, only to be outdone by Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) whose stocks bloated by $251 million over the same period. Gee, do you think maybe our officials are voting for personal profits instead of doing the right thing for their constituents?
Even better, you can send OPM (other people’s money) overseas and get even bigger kickbacks because it is virtually untraceable. Nothing like a nice little war now and then where we can give weapons to one or both sides, get kickbacks to the manufacturers, and then squeeze them for campaign contributions! In 2024, Senators Roger Wicker (R-MS) and Tim Caine (D-VA) each took in almost a half billion dollars from the defense industry. But they are amateurs compared to house member Ken Calvert (R-CA) who landed a cool $835 million!
When your job is collecting and distributing bazillions of dollars of OPM there are just so many profit opportunities. It’s a fun gig if you can get it. So attractive, in fact, that even getting elected requires plenty of corruption. Our election system is a stinking cesspool.
Like I said, it’s almost impossible to actually SPEND that much money legitimately, so our officials have to get creative. NGOs to the rescue! What a great way to spend tanker loads of OPM, make it look like you care about the folks, and get kickbacks to your bank accounts and campaigns so you can keep your job! Brilliant!
Even worse, our government encourages private citizens (and non-citizens) to rape and plunder the taxpayers through corruption in medical and social services. Some staffers participate just because they are lazy, incompetent, overpaid government employees who can’t be fired; others because they have a political agenda. I feel sorry for those who would be whistleblowers but are threatened to keep their mouths shut. And the media has been complicit in the whole thing. God bless Nick Shirley, a young internet journalist who broke through the wall of silence.
Stopping corruption would solve pretty much all of our problems. If you look at any issue that keeps you up at night, it will most likely have dishonesty and corruption at the core. 2Corinthians 8:21 sums it up nicely – we should be: “providing honorable things, not only in the sight of the Lord, but also in the sight of men.”
So how could we audit all these people? Just as DOGE attracted smart folks to find and clean up stupid spending, we could start a group called DORAFIC – the Dept. of Retired Accountants Finding Incredible Corruption. Hell, I would volunteer! We would have the crooks on the run in no time, and have a blast doing it!
Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side
“Honesty” is such a lonely word
Everyone is so untrue
Honesty is hardly ever heard
And mostly what I need from you
HONESTY – Billy Joel
this is the third time I have used this song
to despair at the loss of honesty in our
culture: June 2014 – May 2017
Tom Balek - Rockin' On The Right Side 