Oh yeah, it just came to me.
It's handing all that money over to the local, state and federal governments when you know darned well it's not going to be spent wisely.
It happens every day. A hundred times a day. Politicians spend our money in ways they know won't serve taxpayer interests. They spend it as though they think the money was growing on trees in their backyards, rather than as the result of taxpayers' hard work.
And they don't care much if it makes us happy or not.
Sometimes the spending is downright wasteful.
Sometimes it's ill-advised.
And sometimes it's criminal.
Too many times, it makes the blood vessels in my head bulge to the point of bursting.
Which was the case last week when I learned -- at about the same time most of the rest of Pennsylvania learned -- that a dozen public servants in the state Capitol were charged with using public funds (tax dollars) to finance political campaigns and pay bonuses to employees who did the work.
If true, this is the sort of thing that should never happen. Never. Because it's wrong. Because it's a shameful use of taxpayer dollars. Because if it happened, it's criminal.
The state attorney general clearly believes it happened. A grand jury heard all sorts of testimony over many months, and it believes it
The bottom line is that 12 members of the state House Democratic caucus, including a state representative and a former caucus whip, Mike Veon, are accused of spending millions of taxpayer dollars to fund political activities or campaigns in 2004, 2005 and 2006.
The work allegedly was done on taxpayer time, often using taxpayer-paid computers and equipment, and lucrative contracts were made for partisan purposes. If true, that's all illegal.
To make matters worse, people already on the payroll as staffers for state lawmakers and/or the Democratic caucus were allegedly paid bonuses -- at least 43 of which were for more than $10,000 -- for their extra-duty campaign work.
No York County lawmakers were charged in this scandal. Not yet, at least. One local Democrat, Cameron Texter, was named twice in the grand jury presentment as having been paid a $12,000 bonus in 2006 for campaign work he'd done, but he was not charged.
It's a sad tale because it's so unnecessary. The state Democrats know the rules. They also have more than enough money available to them to finance their political campaigns legally.
These are not stupid people we're talking about here. They all earn a decent salary, plus very good benefits.
If these things actually happened, there must have been some sense of entitlement and arrogance involved. Never mind the law. Never mind the rules.
Never mind the potential loss of citizen confidence in state government. Never mind that they work for the people of this state, not the other way around.
Politics can be a sleazy business, it's true. But this is hitting taxpayers below the belt.
Once again, politicians allegedly playing fast and loose with tax dollars put their own interests ahead of taxpayers' interests. Only this time some of them got caught.
And you wonder why your taxes keep going up? Wonder no more.
No doubt about it, this is a sad day in Pennsylvania politics.
Columns by Larry A. Hicks, Dispatch columnist, run Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. E-mail: lhicks@yorkdispatch.com.
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