It's Hard to Dance with Your Back to the Wall!

It's time to leak the budget. The talking heads are pointing fingers, the media reports whatever they think will enrage the public and there is more condemnation of the Tea Party than ever before. (Gee! Do you think they might be doing something right?)

What's under discussion? Social Security, that which was paid for by working Americans since they first got a job, is said to be 66% of the budget. Military 40%, Medicare 28% and the Government is working for nothing, being only in it for the honor of serving the American people. Can that be true? No, it cannot! That would be 134% and we haven't even gone into the Department of Education!

There are at at least two major companies offering to finance a car “regardless of your credit.” When I worked in the credit repair industry, I learned that such things are a sign that there is a lot of bad credit out there. The new and used car industries are suffering because few people can pass a credit check anymore.

Unemployment figures are not an indicator because it does not show those who are not working in their industry, have gone past their benefits and are therefore no longer being counted, or those who have just given up and are doing something else – retired, left the country or changed their name to Gonzalez so they could qualify for government aid.

One politician said that every day people come into his office telling him to make cuts, but not their program. Yes, folks, there are programs – and they need to be cut.

Senators and Congressmen no longer in office still receive pay and medical benefits. Thousands of special interest projects funded by the US government are still operating, though they serve no useful purpose. The amount of money going to psychiatric and pharmaceutical research is staggering. Yet these programs are not even mentioned.

Foreign aide to countries that actively hate us – such as Afghanistan – are in the billions. We pay our enemies. What sane country does that?

How about foreign aide to people within our borders? I'm not talking about Americans, I'm talking about Mexicans living illegally in the US, and some living legally here, thanks to legal loopholes, and still receiving subsidies. Mexicans aren't the only foreigners we support; Armenians and other cultures get a huge cut. I have lived in Glendale and have seen Armenians, dripping in gold and leather, step out of a BMW, walk into a grocery and pay with food stamps.

And there are tax breaks. G.E., Exxon and the other power-producing companies are wracking up the highest profits in the history of the world and are not paying taxes on it. Wall Street bankers received trillions in bail-out money and are still crying the blues. AIG is still throwing parties and giving bonuses; Fannie Mae and Freddie Mack are doing just great, thank you very much. While those companies and executives are first in line (with the politicians) for the money, they are last in line to pay taxes. But I digress.

But all the press can talk about is cutting Medicare, Social Security and Military pay. Yet the US government is 30% larger than it was at the last presidential election. Is that the only way to go? To cut our throats to save on food?

I suggest we cut at the top, not the bottom. Instead of letting a couple of thousand teachers go, let the people who run the Department of Education go. Instead of not paying the military, don't pay Congress or the President, or the guys who are at the top at the Pentagon.

If that doesn't work, leak the budget, give it to us and we'll figure it out – but our decisions would be final. Where are my scissors?

Same Old Song

My wife woke me up for Face the Nation this morning. She does that. She knows I like the show. I hate that it is on at the same time as Meet the Press, as I'd like to see both shows. Getting a fair and balanced view of what is happening in my state, my country, my world, is near impossible, with so many opposing sound bites out there.
By the time I had a cup of coffee and was focused on the guest speaker, Harry Reid, D – Nev, Senate Majority Leader, the question on the table was “Will the government shut down at the end of the week?” It was a question he did not answer. Instead he sang the same old song: Oh, the poor children! Oh, the poor vets! Oh, all our favorite causes!
The senator hit the high notes right on cue: “We're going to have to cut Helping Hand, all the aid to orphaned children and homeless veterans.” Every time someone brings up actually running the government on a budget, out come the widows and orphans, the homeless vets. Next comes the police, fire and education. (See my earlier blog on balancing the budget.)
What, does Senator Reid say, is causing the difficulty? It's the Republicans and the Tea Party causing all the trouble. Congress is afraid of the Tea Party, when there aren't any members around. Sn. Reid says that at the last rally, “there weren't thousands, there weren't hundreds, there were tens...”
We're talking about 12% of the budget, right? So what about the hundreds of redundant government agencies and top heavy bureaucracy? There are more people in the Department of Agriculture than there are farmers. If you go in with a paring knife and carve out some of the fat and waste in the government, you will find that we can run the country on a budget.
Going for the heart, lungs and brain as the first to go when cutting out fat is insane. Let's get rid of the crazy people and put someone sane in the government.
Then came Lindsey Graham, R – South Carolina, who brought up another ghastly waste of government funds, the proposed State Department Army.
Our choices seem to be, in Libya and other countries, 1) putting soldiers there for years and years, 2) arming the rebels or 3) putting a State Department Army there for years and years (see option 1 – only more expensive.)
Remember that we poured money into Libya for the current regime to stay in power. Now we should pour more in to oust him and put in another government? The rebels we arm today will be the enemy we fight tomorrow – and they will be armed with our guns. We have squandered American taxpayers' money giving it to other countries and now we are throwing good money after bad in expensive “Police Actions” which will be followed by expensive rebuilding. The United States is the only country in the history of the world that rebuilds a country after it destroys it. How stupid are we?
Teddy Roosevelt, a Democrat, gave us the Big Stick. We should , as Senator Graham has suggested, take the fight to the leaders, sitting fat and happy in their stronghold, and end this thing. Then let them rebuild without us. It will be a lesson to the rest of the world: “Mess with us and we leave you broken.”
Arm the rebels? No! Build a State Department Army to hemorrhage money onto foreign soil? No! Take the fight to Gadhafi and his crew? Yes – and then stop sending our money overseas, we have need of it here. You want to rebuild something? Rebuild New Orleans.
When there is a bully in the neighborhood, you take him out and then you go home. You do not then become the next bully. And when there is a household budget to trim, to make it fit within your income, you do not cut the buying of food, clothing and shelter first.
It has been a song heard too long by government voices, all chanting in unison: if you want to cut the budget, the first things to go will be the fire department, police department and education – then all your favorite charitable agencies. Oh, weep for the widows, orphans and homeless vets. They are the chorus of the old familiar song. What is missing from the song is the billions showered on the Middle East and countries that want us dead.

How to Cut the Budget

Great idea! A diet wherein the first things to be sacrificed are your lungs, heart and brain. Sound good?
It's called the Politicians' Budget Cutting Diet. It has been in use for decades and hasn't worked yet. No wonder it keeps getting implemented.
Here's how it goes in real life: You demand the budget get cut, everyone agrees, so those you trust (giggle!) to represent (giggle!) you go to work (giggle!) and start cutting expenses. The first things they cut are the Fire Department, Police Department and School System. Before you know it, you are screaming for the budget cuts to stop before we are completely stupid and defenseless. Of course, by then, you have no library system left, though no one knows (giggle!) where the money went.
It goes back to Proposition 13. The voting public told the California legislature that they demanded lower spending and the Police, Fire and Education cuts were the first, last and only cuts made. In North Carolina, education is 2% of the budget, yet it is the first thing mentioned by our governor when budget cuts are brought up.
There are redundant reports, useless studies (like the US study to discover why men in prison are depressed) and stupid projects galore in the budget, yet these remain in place while Fire and Police Departments go begging. We don't need another million dollar paper on the North American Blue Bird. We need a balanced budget.
Remember the ex-governor of North Carolina, Mike Easley? It took two years to investigate his abuses, financial and otherwise. He made millions illegally while in office, yet was charged $1000 in fines and $153 in court costs. So the taxpayers paid millions to investigate him and yet he is charged $1153? Give me a break! How do you balance the budget? Make him give all the stuff back and pay the money, covering the costs of investigating him and prosecuting him. Dock his pay. Wherever he goes to work, take it out of his weekly until the state is even again. Maybe that will be a deterrent to future criminals who want to make crime pay by going into public office.
It goes for state budgets and for the Federal budget. The President keeps talking about cutting domestic spending. Domestic Spending – does that bring up a question? What about International Spending?
For years we have heard about billions (Billions!) given to countries that hate us. It is not talked about a lot on national television, but we are still giving billions to countries with whom we are at war. We support them while fighting them, destroy them, then rebuild them – and they never give us anything back for all that. The only country ever to repay a war loan is Finland.
What if we stop giving our money to other countries, maybe we won't be in financial ka-ka ourselves. Let's start with countries we are at war with, then go to countries that merely hate us, then we can take the weekly allowance from countries that just don't care for us. Eventually, we will balance the budget.
See, I didn't even mention the politicians that served one or two terms and we are still paying them for it. Gee, if we just hired them like we do everyone else, we wouldn't have to pay them forever. But I didn't mention it. That's another blog.