Listening to the media and to our political leaders one would think it is impossible to straighten out our nation’s fiscal mess, and that we, our children, and our grandchildren are doomed to mediocrity for decades to come. Oh, they want to help us, they “feel our pain”, but the task is just too difficult.
Hogwash.
If our federal government really wanted to cut spending and reduce the debt and deficits, they would immediately:
- Sell all of the excess, obsolete and unused federal property, including land, buildings, military bases and equipment. Where does our constitution authorize the federal government to buy up all this private land, anyway?
- Compensate federal employees similarly to comparable private sector employees – reasonable pay rates, raise the retirement age, replace defined benefit pensions with 401(k) plans, require full forty-hour weeks, and implement the same social security and health care treatment as taxpayers have. Government-sector unions must be eliminated because the pay-for-play election scam is irretrievably corrupt and imperils democracy.
- Pay senators and representatives each $1 million per year, and make them responsible for all of their own costs – staffing, transportation, office expenses, mailing, etc. If they want to take a “fact-finding” junket to Tahiti, have a girlfriend in Brazil, or travel home every weekend, they can pay for it themselves. Term limits might not hurt either.
- Outsource most of the costs of government to co-ops made up of top private companies. Social security and welfare fraud would be zero if administered by IBM and Visa. Defense contractors have proved they work better together than they do in competition. With co-ops, the winning private companies will regulate each other.
- Establish a real, non-partisan budget and cost management department, led by private-sector experts and technicians instead of political lackeys and cronies. Pay commissions to those who find corruption, and prosecute the offenders.
- Implement zero-based or priority-based budgeting. Start every department and program at zero and require true cost justification for all expenditures every annual or bi-annual cycle. Same process for entitlements – disability and unemployment must be verified. Eliminate unnecessary, duplicative and obsolete departments.
- Replace unemployment compensation and most direct welfare payments with honest work projects. No work, no money.
- Tie all foreign aid and investment to our own national interests. Not one dollar to nations or despots whose actions are damaging to the US. That includes the United Nations.
- Simplify the tax code and work with businesses instead of against them.
- Eliminate the EPA and make the United States the energy provider to the world – aggressively develop natural gas and liquefied natural gas as an alternative to oil. Abandon the infaturation with ridiculously inefficient wind and solar energy and pour our efforts and investments into the efficient use of proven energy sources.
I could go on. Maybe some of these ideas have holes, or need development. Surely there are many more opportunities – bigger and better ones. But if you and I can discuss many methods of improving our government’s performance, why can’t our leaders talk about it?
Do they really want to solve the problem? Are they actually interested in reducing the drag of bloated government on our economy? Obviously, no. Otherwise they would be doing it.
So the only remaining solution is to replace all the self-serving charlatans with motivated leaders who ARE interested. And the only way that will happen is if we can educate and win the majority of Americans who currently don’t get it or don’t care – our neighbors, our friends, and any stranger on the street whom we can engage.
Time is of the essence.
Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side
Whatever happened
To all the good times we used to have
The times we cried and laughed
I wanna know, I wanna know
Don’t You Care? – the Buckinhams
You might think our free-spending government does not have a priority list. From all appearances, once they have spent on an item or a program, they will continue to spend on that item or program forever – adding new items and programs to the list, but never removing any.
When I was little, my dream was to have one of those battery-powered kiddie cars that I could sit in and drive around the neighborhood, waving and showing off to my friends. Whenever we got a new Sears catalog, I would flip right to the kiddie cars. The brightly-painted toy cars were always on one of the full-color pages, and looked just like a real car! I could only imagine what it would be like to be a rich kid.
“While some wanted to write off America’s auto industry, we said no. We knew that we needed to do something different – in Delaware and all across the nation,” said Vice President Biden. “We understood a new chapter had to be written, a new chapter in which we strengthen American manufacturing by investing in innovation. Thanks to a real commitment by this Administration, loans from the Department of Energy, the creativity of U.S. companies and the tenacity of great state partners like Delaware – we’re on our way to helping America’s auto industry reclaim its top position in the global market.”
Macroeconomics makes sense as long as we have a medium of exchange that we can trade back and forth with each other, and we all agree on its relative value. Here in the United States we use dollars.
In 2001 the IMF bailed out Argentina, preventing bloody revolution. In exchange, there were strings attached: you will manage your economy conservatively, and you will hold inflation to sane levels. 
Why do Detroit parents allow their teachers to take instruction days off to protest union matters when only
I spent a good part of my early career working for one of America’s greatest businesses – Beatrice Companies. For most of us in Montana and the western U.S., the face of Beatrice was Meadow Gold Dairies. While the Meadow Gold brand still exists in some areas, Beatrice is long gone.
Tom Balek - Rockin' On The Right Side 