Despite the friendly "advice" I got from Lisa Solod Warren in my last post regarding my pronouncement that neither McCain nor Obama were going to be getting my vote — to wit, "Fine. Don't vote, Realist" — I and my entire family went early to vote (I wrote in Ron Paul as I could not support any of the 13 announced candidates, six of whom were on the ballot in California). The turnout was quite large, and according to a campaign worker, had been so since they began accepting early ballots.
But to keep the focus of this post within reasonable limits, I'm going to only focus on the two major party members, many of whom have some serious concerns about the other party's candidate. The basic complaint about "the other guy" in each case generally centers around financial issues. Democrats aren't happy about McCain's boast that he will control spending while Republicans are nearly fatally stressed about Obama's announced program plans at every level.
I have news for both sides: the money is gone. We're broke as a nation. Destitute. Insolvent. Bankrupt. Impecunious. Without sufficient funds. Busted. Crapped out. Snake-eyed.
You quickly get the idea: Obama will have no capital to do any of the things that Republican voters fear. All he will be able to do - and this is self-defeating - is to emulate his predecessor and print more money than has already been pumped out of the imaginary bottomless Federal Reserve to bail out the Wall Street banks from funding their corporate bonuses. The foreign investors upon whose largesse the economy survives will cut any such effort off faster than Sarah Palin can claim she isn't sympathetic to Alaskan nationalism or Christian terrorism.
As for McCain, cutting spending is all he can do as the foreign investors line up to be reimbursed for their investments in the failed Reaganomic economy. They will get first dibs on what assets remain in this nation, or else what's left of our sorry international credit rating will be exploded.
Article comments
1 - Cannonshop
Congressional Pensions. Get elected to one term, and you're effectively set for life, this is absurd in the extreme. A Soldier who really IS serving the entire country has to work for the Nation for over twenty years to get a pension. Lump separation pay of 1 month's wages for each month served should be sufficient, even highly-generous, so long as it is payable upon separation.
The Congressional Gym. Congressmen do not need a Gym to work out. Most people don't know who their congresscritter is, the threat is minimal at best. Let them work out at places everyone else works out, and if they really need a Gym to do it, let 'em pay at a gym where other people work out.
Limousines and Drivers for all but those that can't drive themselves (For actual REASONS) in Government.
(i.e. unless someone is actively crippled, legally forbidden, or the President, who probably shouldn't be driving given the types who run for the office and win.)
Bank Subsidies/bailouts.
This should be immediately frikking obvious.
Personal Trainers/counselors/masseurs/whatever on the staff of Elected officials-if they need 'em that bad, they can pay out of pocket like the rest of us.
"Company Car" for elected officials (except the President, who's actually subject to the threat of assassination), and Travel allowances-if your Caucus really cared, they'd pool the money for that 'fact-finding trip to Bermuda'. If you want to travel on Government dime, resign and go through the ladder-climbing in the Bureaucracy like normal people have to.
50,000 dollar toilet seats-if the bid comes in that "Low", go to Lowes.
$10,000 Hammers-again, if that's what's bid, send the supply sgt. to Lowes or Home Depot. This should be the damn Law.
No "Sole Source Suppliers" for consumables like bolts, nuts, rivets, drill-bits, lathe cutters, nails, or hammers. (except for aviation or truly system-specific parts that can't be fabbed by a bored corporal with a pair of pliers in about five minutes.) Consumables are...Consumables. If you can find the same exact item (minus the NSN number) for a thousandth (or ten-thousandth) the price on the civilian market, the practice should ENCOURAGE obtaining it at the lower cost on the civilian market for that lower price. Let the agencies keep what they don't spend instead of penalizing them for not spending it by the end of the year.
Congresscritters do NOT need a five thousand dollar haircut. Fifteen bucks, at supercuts is pushing it. Sure as death you don't need them getting any haircuts at government expense. The president should be able to make do with a twenty-dollar version of the army special (that is, the cost amortized after the background check to make sure your stylist isn't a member of some death-to-americans radical sect.)
Congressmen can afford large staffs-let the Congressmen pool their staffs to keep the chambers clean and liveable. Or make the Pages do it under the direction of (at most) TWO janitors (Day-shift, night-shift).
Why is the Capitol building air-conditioned? the only rooms with A/C should be rooms containing delicate computer equipment vital to national security (Servers). Elected officials that can't finish their business in a normal session don't need A/C, they need to get their act together.
For that matter, Congressmen and Senators should be paid by the states and districts they purport to represent, not the Nation as a whole. Likewise, their health-care should be borne directly by the citizens they purport to represent, not people in other states who may not support or hold their ideals.
Why is the IRS so large? a flat, fixed tax with no exemptions could be printed on a 3x5 index card, and understood by someone with a basic seventh-grade education. It would also likely raise more money than the "Progressive" tax system we have currently which is so full of holes that Microsoft can get away without paying a dime, but that single-mom working at Burger-king is getting screwed on every paycheque.
Billions in processing, reviews, auditors, lawyers, and the like could be saved by this, and the really worthwhile ones can be transferred over to the inspection side of EPA, or maybe to EPA's hazmat teams where they can do some damn work... with shovels.
NO agency should EVER be encouraged to "Spend it at the end of the year or we'll lose the budget next year". This is another example of asnine waste. If your agency needs new furniture, it should be because the old stuff is falling apart, not because it's out of style or looks like it came from an institution.
Government offices do NOT need motivational posters-if someone can be motivated by a poster in a frame, that someone needs to be placed on unemployment, or in a halfway house for halfwits.
Government offices do not need to be warm or inviting. They need to be dry, shielded from the weather, functional, well (and cheaply) lit, and clean. Anything beyond dry, functional and clean, is extras that aren't necessary. If the staff want to decorate their space, they can pay for it themselves.
We do not need a slush-fund for artwork. If an artist is any good, they can work their ass off to get noticed by people who'll pay for their artwork. The exception being illustrations in Manuals and publications, which usually doesn't come from the Endowment for the Arts anyway. The NEA does not justify its own existence, because it does not fund "useful" arts. (ditto for the Park Service funding sculptures that are not directly historical monuments/Memorials. If it's going to be torn out at the end of the season, it doesnt' belong there in the first place.)
Taxpayers do not need to fund "Piss Jesus", nor 'sculpture' consisting of a dirty urinal. People who like that sort of thing should feel free to commit their OWN money to it.
The U.S. Taxpayer does not need an Opera House/dancehall/theater paid for by Taxpayers. Sell the Kennedy Center.
Washington D.C. has a city council and a Mayor, People in Duluth, Detroit, etc. do not need to be paying these jokers' salaries,nor the salaries of D.C.'s "Finest". The Fire Department? sure. We don't need the Capitol going up in flames, and it's hard to get army fire-trucks through city streets. It can be argued that there's a Need for federal funds for Search-and-Rescue and emergency services nationwide, and that FEMA does an abysmal job of both. (okay, we know Louisiana would just graft the money off, but many, many other states would handle the funding from scaling FEMA back to a data-center/phone-bank/coordination system and cash machine reasonably intelligently, so fuck Louisiana and New Orleans,if they can't get their act together after twice in the same fifty year period, it's their problem.)
Scale back Federal Law enforcement and shift the burden of apprehension (that's arrest) to the States, turn the FBI into a data collection, distribution, and (limited) investigation group domestically. We don't need a "Department of Homeland Security", we already HAVE an NSA that was created to do that job. Make them do the damn job. Federal Marshalls were created to handle civilian law-enforcement in unincorporated federal territories and to handle interstate transport of fugitives (and apprehension). Make sure THEY can do that job.
TSA is a joke. Give the job to Coast Guard, or the Marshall's Service, or the NSA, and disband this pathetic excuse for an agency.
Divide NASA into two halves, and give one half to the FAA to run, and the other to the Defense Department. NASA as it stands right now is both expensive, and underfunded so badly that it can't accomplish much of...anything. We need it to FUNCTION. (when DoD decides it's serious about building something and making it work, it bloody well gets built, and it bloody well works.)
Give the State Militias back to the States. National Guardsmen shouldn't be facing deployment overseas except in dire national emergencies. They've been nationalized since world-war-two, a measure that was 'temporary' and has become permanent.
Mothballed ships: Fix it, or get rid of it. Anything that isn't ready to go should be either made so, or sold for scrap.
The National Helium collection-Airships have been out of use by all branches of the military since the nineteen thirties. If you aren't building Pebble-bed reactors, sell or dispose of the damn helium.
U.S. basing in western Europe: They don't like us. We should either move to countries that do (like Poland, for instance), or move out and take our money with us. (and if they aren't standing at our side in a conflict, they're not worth protecting and spreading money in...Germany.)
Foreign Aid: forget it. Foreign aid should be strictly quid-pro-quo, and something (of equal or greater value) should be provided for every dime spent, even if it's just sending troops when the U.S. goes to war with someone.
The U.N.-it was a nice idea early on, but this disfunctional collection of diplomatically-immune human debris is just ever-so-slightly more corrupt than the U.S. Congress itself. Involvement in The U.N. is an excercise in wasted time and wasted money. Let Britain, France, and Germany pay into the pockets of the U.N.'s muckety-mucks and provide the paycheques for rapists in africa. It's time to send it back to Geneva, and lease the offices in New York to someone who'll actually pay their parking tabs and won't sit there working up new ways to condemn their host nation.
My suggestions aren't really enough, but they're a start.
2 - Condor
This is easy.
1. Read the Constitution
2. Ax or pass off to the states all the stuff the Fed does that is not listed in the Constitution.
3. Continue to correctly follow the Constitution.
The real benefit. If you don't like a particular state's take on your "rights/privledges"... move. You will have a 1 in 50 chance of living someplace that suits you.
It's really that simple.
3 - Ruvy
Holy shit, Cannonshop!
I agreed with almost everything you wrote! You're giving Realist a real run for the money there! Having gotten my BA in Public Administration when NYC was broke, I learned to think like that too. You have definitely got the concept down.
I'll add my two cents anyway.
Get rid of all the separate services in the military and unite it the way we did years ago. This was a concept that an American Army feller, David Marcus, did in 1948 for us. The reason you guys have NASA, for example, is that the Navy and the Air Force were having turf battles over who should run the space program in the early 1950's. It was only the presence of a Russian cosmonaut in the sky that woke the Americans up to the need to actually do something other than argue over turf.
Cut all tax allowances for oil companies and the like. If they are unwilling to sell oil at $15-$20/bbl, they should have to pay every damned dime every other businessman pays. It's time the s.o.b.'s were reined in.
Force health insurance providers to sell insurance at group rates for small groups. This is not a "tax" cut, but will enable lots of American businesses to provide reasonable health insurance for workers. That will mena that if you work, you can get health insurance and not crowd the emergency rooms of hospitals.
Force hospitals to actually sanitize and re-use, thus cutting the costs of hospital stays by billions of dollars annually. In addition, it would reduce the burden on your nation's land-fills.
I would say allow workers to invest in their own pensions ratheer than in Social Security - but when the US is a debtor nation, the only way they could actually pull that off would be for the United States to go to war on its creditors (don't snicker - it's been done before) so that the dollar would resume some sense of reality as a currency.
By the way, you know all them detention camps that were built in your country. They should be renamed "golden parachute camps". I'll let you figure out who they should hold.....
Back to you, Cannonshop.
4 - Doug Hunter
I'm sure the federal government does numerous behind the scenes things that makes my life so much easier, but the only two that are apparent and seem helpful are the Interstate highway system and National Defense. I live outside a metro area which eliminates 80% of the crap government worries about (no slums, no population centers to attack, less pollution, etc, etc). I make enough money that I'll never qualify for any sort or welfare or subsidized anything and even most tax credits are phased out. I'm not big enough or well connected enough to be 'too big to fail' or to get special buddy rate multimilllion $$$ contracts to make overpriced toilet seats. Also, when the government realizes that I actually prepared for my own retirement they'll likely yank my SS benefits.
(I have still have 30+ years to go for them to come to the realization that cutting benefits for people who saved for themselves or have a pension somewhere else is the only answer for SS)
5 - Doug Hunter
So to answer your question cut our worldwide offense back to a small, technologically advanced (with nukes to back it up) national defense and leave almost everthing else to the states with the federal government acting as referee and fulfilling it's duties under the new, very limited, interstate commerce clause.
6 - Clavos
Cannon,
Great laundry list!
We should cut A/C in a whole lot more government buildings than just Congress; for starters:
Post Offices
INS offices
IRS offices
Schools (I didn't have A/C in school until college. I still managed to learn)
Courtrooms (Trials would be a lot shorter)
Prisons and jails (Winter heat is OK)
The savings in electricity alone would be enormous.
7 - Franco
Goverment agencies need to spend up to, or over their budgets to make sure they do not receive less money next year.
Change this ironic accounting and offer each agencie employees's an equil splite (in case) of 50% of what ever they shave on the budget. Have those bastards paid to save money, not spead it1
8 - Clavos
Cannon,
Just out of curiosity, what do you think of the Dems idea of "card check" union voting?
As I understand it, this idea would end the secret ballots in union elections, which sounds like a bad idea to me, but I haven't been a union member in 40 years.
9 - Glenn Contrarian
Want to help get America out of the budget mess?
1 - 'Defense'. As much as I love the Navy - and I miss being haze gray and underway - the era of aircraft carriers is past. Ten years ago carriers were costing $1B/year to operate, and I don't know how much it is now. When the carriers go away, so does the comprehensive industrial infrastructure that supports them. Between the DDX, SSGN, and MEU programs, there's little that a carrier can do that can't be done with fewer ships/subs, fewer sailors, and fewer billions of taxes.
2 - IMPLEMENT Universal Health Care. I don't care what the right wing tries to claim, the FACT is that EVERY OTHER INDUSTRIALIZED DEMOCRACY has UHC, is NOT broke, almost ALL of them have a longer national life expectancy, AND spend less than half per capita for better overall health care than America's ALREADY spending. Why does American 'health care' cost so much more? Thank your HMOs and big pharma... and the politicians in their pocket.
3 - PAY Congress VERY well. Wait a minute! WHAT did I say? PAY THE U.S. CONGRESSMEN VERY WELL - a million per year AT LEAST. And outlaw lobbyist contributions and double all penalties for any Congressmen convicted of criminal conduct. People who are paid well and strictly held to a higher standard are generally much less corrupt than those who are paid less. Just compare the police in industrialized democracies to the police in third-world countries.
4 - Penalize companies who outsource jobs overseas...and for companies that do outsource overseas but still do business with the American goverment (e.g. Halliburton), subtract the amount of taxes and domestic payroll that they previously paid stateside from the cost of all business with the American government. In other words, if you want to take your business overseas, go ahead...but it's going to cost you dearly to do so.
5 - Outlaw government borrowing from other countries. Personally I don't know if this one is workable yet...but once we pull ourselves out of the budget mess we're in, this is one way we can stop sending our tax dollars overseas.
6 - A 'Manhattan Project' for wind, solar, and nuclear power...and jack up CAFE standards to European and Japanese levels. Even the best estimates of the amount of oil in ANWAR would give America less than two years' worth of oil...and then what? I would advocate taxing the hell out of gas in order to encourage people to use mass transportation (this works as anyone in Europe and Japan can testify)...but our economy is so tied to long-distance driving that this might hurt more than help.
7 - Pay teachers a true living wage. Put Rhee - the woman who just took over the D.C. education system and is kicking butt and taking names - in as Education Secretary. There is NO reason that teachers should EVER need to get a second job...and get rid of the tenure system, too (BUT THAT'S A CONSERVATIVE TENET!). Yep - but the tenure system is hurting more than helping. This is how to fix the American education system...which will help the American economy in the long run.
That's enough for now -
10 - Les Slater
Realist,
“I have news for both sides: the money is gone. We're broke as a nation. Destitute. Insolvent. Bankrupt. Impecunious. Without sufficient funds. Busted. Crapped out. Snake-eyed.”
The ‘government’ is the government of the capitalist class. They CAN afford to do whatever they think is necessary. Their ‘budget’ is just one more tool they have in their arsenal to accomplish what they set out to do. They afford all the cops they need, the military and any amount they feel necessary to bail out their own kind. They can come up with a huge amount more.
The great depression is a good example. Neither the capitalist class nor the government ended the social misery but when they found the ‘need’ to arm to enter WWII there were no shortages of capital, government funding or labor.
The capitalist class does not have the political will to resolve the crisis we are being hit with. They literally see no profits to be made in solving the crisis. Their aim for the foreseeable future is to take it out of the hides of working people. The government budget ‘crisis’ is for their convenience, it is just a way to PRETEND they’re broke. It’s like your rich uncle telling you that he can’t lend you a few bucks.
The banks have shown that it is not for a lack of funds that they don’t lend but a lack of desire to do so. Even with industries that are going ‘broke’, like auto, doesn’t mean there is no capital. One recent departure from Ford stock explained he could make more money investing in the gaming industry.
The government is not our government. We shouldn’t be fooled by what their hired mouthpieces tell us. Working people need our own government and our own voice.
Les
11 - Dr Dreadful
Why is the Capitol building air-conditioned? the only rooms with A/C should be rooms containing delicate computer equipment vital to national security (Servers). Elected officials that can't finish their business in a normal session don't need A/C, they need to get their act together.
I don't know about this one, Cannon. Isn't there enough hot air coming out of that building already?
12 - Cannonshop
#8 Honestly, Clav, I think it's a sop to the corporations, since by eliminating the secret ballot, you're opening up members to blatant intimidation by management flunkies. I'm not keen on that.
#11 Doc, they're not hot enough to be uncomfortable, and their predecessors got on fine without it. The air-conditioned chambers are mostly empty anyway (watch C-Span, it's rather revealing!) and the room's huge.
13 - Baronius
Glenn, there's one thing a carrier can still do best, and that's send a message. We could close half our embassies and overseas military bases - and we probably should - but keep our aircraft carriers. When a carrier group shows up, you are suddenly very aware that SOMEONE IS PAYING ATTENTION.
But that's not following Realist's rules. Specific government programs that are affecting me? I've been out of school for a while, but the entire educational system is being screwed up by federal money and red tape. I practically live on I-95, but it's not substantially better maintained than the state road systems, so let's get the federal government out of that game.
The VA affects my dad. He could just as easily be cared for by nearer private hospitals. Ditch the VA. I can't think of many other ways that the federal government affects me directly.
14 - Lisa Solod Warren
You know what I think?
I think you should seriously think about all your cost cutting ideas and if they aren't just you all blowing hot air you should try and figure out a way to put your money where you mouth is. Obama said he would listen to the people, didn't he? Call him on it. Write him your ideas. Politely, please, but do it. Take charge. He says he likes bottom up democracy. He says he wants to cut spending. He says he wants new ideas. Hold him to it. Send him your best ideas, give him reasons for them. Do it. Don't just mouth off here, but actually try to get your stuff to him.
Supposedly Rahm Emanuel will be his new Chief of Staff. Surely you all know someone who knows someone who.... Well, you get the idea.
Anyway, that is my 3 cents, for now.
15 - Ruvy
I think you should seriously think about all your cost cutting ideas and if they aren't just you all blowing hot air you should try and figure out a way to put your money where you mouth is. Obama said he would listen to the people, didn't he? Call him on it.
That's actually not a bad idea, Lisa. I don't think any of that crew will want to see a postal address or email address from Judea and Samaria (yes, I did read of who Emanuel's parents were and who they fought for), so maybe I should have someone else send in my ideas.....