I Will Gladly Pay You Tuesday for a Hamburger Today.

Imagine going to France. Not something high on my bucket list, but it'll serve for this discussion. Even as a redneck who speaks American (how dare you claim the Queen's English) I am just conceited enough to think I could function there as a tourist in the most basic way. I could most likely get directed to a bathroom, find a restaurant, maybe even a tourist attraction or two by doing my best Marcel Marceau. As a benefit, I could simultaneously provide immense entertainment to many locals lucky enough to see the spectacle.

What I could not do is be counted upon to make informed decisions about pressing matters of the day. The lack of a common language would keep me informed at only the most basic of levels on only the most basic of matters. Right up to the point of realizing one second too late some jack wagon in a beret has directed me into the womens lavatory.

Washington politicians have developed their own language, one that the masses do not comprehend.

Baseline Budgeting is a neat little concept that allows most if not all items in the Federal Budget to increase automatically between 2% and 8% per year regardless of any action by Congress. If your department had a budget of $100K last year, you can count on a budget this year between $102K and $108K. Auto-magically. Only big bargaining chip items (like the Military) or departments in need of huge increases (pretty much all entitlements) are really looked at each year, at least in the public eye.

While that is bad enough, the real rub is this. When a politician says he's going to “cut” a budget item, he's not talking about taking it from $100K to $90K. His cut is actually a reduction in growth. Instead of going from $100K to, say, $105K automatically, he's going to “cut 60%” and this years budget will be $102K.

Now, for you and me and everyone else who has to stretch our money to the end of the month, that's still an increase over last year of 2%, certainly not a cut. But, to hear the blowhards in Washington defend their pet items, you'd think the new budget was actually $40K or something. Imagine that.

Paul Ryan introduced a measure this year that had real budget cuts in it. Across the board principles that would have made long strides in getting our budget under control. Real cuts that were called “draconian” by people in his own party. People in the opposing party accused him of killing the elderly (a tired but proven tactic that preys on dependence and senility). Short of Ryan, the people in Washington, ALL OF THEM, could not stomach real cuts of any kind.

I actually heard with my own ears O say over the last year that “out of control spending” was not something he was prepared to “kick down the road” for future generations. W's last budget deficit year was half a trillion dollars, awful in itself. O's first three years have been about one and a half trillion dollars each, triple W's last.

O sounds a lot like J. Wellington Wimpy.

Government on Skates

Do you skate? No? Smart choice.

My last time on skates was just that... my last time on skates. I had a daughter by each hand and was teetering around the rink supposedly “helping” them. Suddenly and without warning, something flew in front of me. Turned out to be my feet. Before I could be surprised, I pile drove my tailbone straight into the floor. Laying there, stiff with pain and not being able to breathe, the DJ stopped the music and yells out “Mister, are you OK?”. The pain didn't stop, but was instantly surpassed by humiliation. I was close enough to the side to roll up onto the carpet and wave him off.

It was actually one of my more graceful landings.

You see, given a chance, the human mind can make many instant decisions when it has to. Like, when someone falls in front of you skating, you instantly react. But, usually, your balance is lost and your going down. The real decision is how to do it.

Option one is to just tuck down, hit and slide to an ungracious stop.

Option two is to suddenly pull on some previously unknown master talent and “leap” the obstacle. This is instantly followed by variations of the “windmill / running on skates” motion and then a full frontal dive onto your face, possibly breaking wrists and arms.

Both end with you down. It's just one is the sane approach to a bad situation and the other attempts what you've never done successfully , prolongs the inevitable, and ends much more painfully.

Something fell in front of our economy in the closing months of W's term. Otherwise sane, conservative Congressmen were presented with some scenario so dire as to make them craft and approve TARP1. Since then, O has come along and passed Stimulus 1 and Stimulus 2 (by another name). He wanted “Bride of Stimulus” and “Son of Stimulus”, but got distracted turning one sixth of our economy over to the government with his health care law. The Senate hasn't passed a budget in over 800 days, so they just keep issuing continuing resolutions to increase their pet projects and letting baseline budgeting (see next post) work. We now even pay people 2 years NOT to work (soon to be increased). Our country ran up a debt of just over $10 trillion in 230 years. We've increased it to $15 trillion in the last 3.

Before TARP1, we had a choice to make. Tuck down, hit and slide to stop, or windmill for a few more years to a much more painful end.

We've chosen poorly.

Eating a Piano One Bite at a Time

Where to begin?

Having started this effort, now I find myself daunted by what to cover first.

I've formulated so many thoughts and opinions over the years it's hard to focus on digestible chunks. So many people that I've respected, things I've read and heard, and lots of time to drive and think have pretty much cemented what I believe so firmly that I have difficulty imagining people disagree.

I perceive myself as someone who can simplify things... make the complex easier to understand. Most of the time I try to do it with analogies. Sometimes they are trite. Other times they are offensive to some. But, if a process is too complicated to be explained simply, then it is too complicated.

I also see myself as logical. At work, we repeatedly tell management that we aren't the brightest bulbs in the pack, but, we are the most logical. When you troubleshoot equipment for a living, you can't get hung up on the seven layer OSI model (look it up) when you don't even have power to the equipment. Most of the time, the correct answers are the simplest.

I talked with a fellow today that worked with my Dad back in the early seventies. He told me how much my Dad had taught him. This was an engineer telling me he was schooled by my technician Father. He specifically said that his time with Dad was very educational because he learned what couldn't be taught in school. My Dad had shared with him his experience. His wisdom. Both are far different than knowledge.

That's my hope. To talk about the things that concern me, make them simple to understand, and hopefully you will share my concerns.

No more groundwork.  Next post will be meat.  I promise.

And so, it begins.

Facebook is great.  Facebook is cool.  Facebook is for all things whimsical, and cute, and even for bragging when it relates to your kids or your favorite sports team.  It's intended to be uplifting.

That is the conclusion I reached about a month ago when I realized nobody but me was using it as a medium to share observations and concerns of, shall we say, a more serious manner.

So, I've turned to this outlet for my venting.

Vogon poetry?  If you "get" British humor, you really need to read The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.  If you don't "get" British humor, don't bother.  Vogon poetry, among other things, brings its readers great discomfort.  The Vogons write it for that very reason.  They use it as a form of torture.  My ramblings here will most likely bring some discomfort to those that read them.  The difference is that I don't intend discomfort, it just seems to work out that way.

Most bosses that I've had have credited me with being unafraid to tell someone their baby is ugly, i.e., I will tell you quickly and upfront if your idea is bad.  What bothers them most is that I'm better than 90% right.  My current boss has coined it "brutal honesty", a clever phrase that he saw fit to penalize me over.  So, this blog is intended to be where I identify the elephant in the room, and, share my absolutely brilliant ideas about how he got here, whose fault it is, and what exactly should be done with him.

I hope someone will read these thoughts and ideas that pop into my head, but if not, I'm finding it therapeutic just to pen them.

So buckle up, read what you want when you can and peer into the darkness that are my thoughts...