July 18, 2011Dear Sir,How do you hide a billion dollars? Well you use fancy rhetoric and a whole lot of polish, your aggressive and argumentative. You use red-herring or diversionary tactics, smoke and mirrors anything to detract the public's attention away from the fact that the country is in serious financial difficulty created by your own mismanagement of the economy. The PLP have become masters at spin doctoring but of course their last trump that they are waiting to unveil at the call of the election is the racecard. Just watch the run up to the next election: “Well, the UBP did it”, “A leopard doesn't change its spots” etc etc. All these nonsensical arguments used to attempt to muddy the water to hide the true and glaring fact that the country is more than $1 billion in debt. Now admittedly the UBP were no angels, but they did not assault or rape the public purse as we have seen over the PLP's term in office; besides if I had thought that the PLP would just get there and follow the lead and do even worse than their predecessors I wouldn't have voted for them. Any blind man, not a deceived one, can see that the money that was set aside for a rainy day was squandered and when the rainy day came the Bermuda Government had no surplus to fall back on.Listen to the wise counsel of one of the greatest political scientist in the history of mankind, Thomas Jefferson said: “I place economy among the first and most important virtues, and the public debt as the greatest of dangers. If we can prevent the government from wasting the labours of the people under the pretence of caring for them, they will be happy”. Of course the reverse of this is also true that if a government consumes the public treasury and destroys the people's freedom through oppressive taxation, the people will be sad. In his book entitled “When a nation dies”, author Jim Nelson Black points out “Whenever the state has been allowed to become all-powerful, to grow out of control, dwarfing the interest of the community and consuming the productivity of the nation, the consequences have been disastrous”. He points out that, “the duty of government is not simply to manage its financial affairs professionally, and responsibility but most importantly to live frugally”.Another argument you will hear advanced is that “government debt isn't a bad thing”, “all governments must take on debt”. Perhaps, to some extent, but let's put Bermuda's $1 billion-plus debt into perspective. Presently every man, women and child in Bermuda is in debt to the tune of at least $14,000, conservative estimate, by contrast every American is in debt $27, 000. Tiny, minuscule, little Bermuda has in just eight or so years taken on roughly fifty percent of the American debt per capita and our economy is a pinprick in comparison to the US economy. Where has all the money gone? Truly the PLP have spent money like drunken sailors but if they are successful at winning the next election that will pull off a feat greater than Harry Houdini, they will simply have made a billion dollars disappear.PUBLIUSWarwick