Tag Archives: Government

I Haven’t cared Less about Election Day Since I Started Voting

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I voted today, but never has it felt more like a waste of time, and I honestly don’t care who wins.  Yes, I said I don’t really care who wins.

I’ve completely lost my care because I’ve realized that it doesn’t matter.  Endless hours of cable news yapping has been spent on what’s going to happen tonight and how its going to impact the government.  Let me sum it up for you, one party is going to have more seats than the other and the only difference between one or the other is the pace at which Congress is going to accomplish nothing.

One party has a group of dithering fools for leadership and the other only cares about stopping the current administration from doing anything.

Bottom line, very, very little will be different tomorrow.  With my vote today I just bought myself another couple of years to complain about how much our politics is hurting our country.

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Words of Reason?

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I think I’ve noted several times over the last handful of months that I was spent on the landfill that our public political discourse has become.  The partisanship has gotten to a point where it sounds like grade school kids calling each other names on the playground, which we all know accomplishes absolutely nothing.

This article probably sums up what I’ve been thinking and feeling, but haven’t been articulate enough to express in a way that would make sense.  Usually, when I link to opinion pieces I try to give a little bit of a disclaimer on the author and their partisan leanings.  I did a quick look, but couldn’t figure out what John Avalon’s leanings are or what the deal with the Daily Beast is.  Read the article and see if it hits home.

I pulled two paragraphs from the article, which  are actually direct quotes from Obama’s speech that I think say it all very concisely.

“We can’t expect to solve our problems if all we do is tear each other down. You can disagree with a certain policy without demonizing the person who espouses it. You can question somebody’s views and their judgment without questioning their motives or their patriotism. Throwing around phrases like ‘socialists’ and ‘Soviet-style takeover’ and ‘fascist’ and ‘right-wing nut’ — that may grab headlines, but it also has the effect of comparing our government, our political opponents, to authoritarian, even murderous regimes.

“Now, we’ve seen this kind of politics in the past. It’s been practiced by both fringes of the ideological spectrum, by the left and the right, since our nation’s birth. But it’s starting to creep into the center of our discourse. … The problem is that this kind of vilification and over-the-top rhetoric closes the door to the possibility of compromise. It undermines democratic deliberation. … It makes it nearly impossible for people who have legitimate but bridgeable differences to sit down at the same table and hash things out. It robs us of a rational and serious debate, the one we need to have about the very real and very big challenges facing this nation. It coarsens our culture, and at its worst, it can send signals to the most extreme elements of our society that perhaps violence is a justifiable response.”

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David Rivkin is a Tool

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Some time in the middle of last year my interest in politics and government checked out.  I think I just got annoyed to the point where I just raised my white flag and gave up.  I just couldn’t take any more of the impressive combination of hollow blathering, hypocritical yapping, and fear-mongering that has become the staple of Washington discourse.

Continue reading →

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Tenant Evicted Even After Paying Rent Because Landlord Sucks

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There are some really crappy people in this world.  I truly hope that karma kicks them in the ass.

Tenant pays rent, landlord doesn’t pay mortgage, bank forecloses and tenant gets evicted.  What happens to the landlord?  Not a damn thing.  What should happen to the landlord?  I think they should be forced to house the evicted tenant until the tenant finds a place to live.  The landlord is a piece of trash.

The most infuriating thing about the whole situation is that the place was rented out while the foreclosure procedings were going on.  How can that be legal?  Its stuff like this that makes me have a negative view on society.  I’m glad that legislation is in the works to prevent this, but something should be done really fast to rectify the problem.

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Cheney on CNN

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I’m sitting in the airport waiting to fly back to DC watching Dick Cheney being interviewed about Obama’s policies on CNN and I’m wondering why. Its not like what he is going to say is going to be a shock to anyone. You can sum up what he’ll say as simply as “Whatever that Obama guy wants to do is bad.”

Its as worthwhile as having Nancy Pelosi come on and ask her about Bush policies. Every one of her responses would essentially be, “He’s bad and so are his policies. I’m not really thinking about what the policies are, but if Bush wanted it, it has to be bad.”

Now I might be exaggerating a little, but does anyone really care what these uber-partisan people have to say about policies from the opposition. Maybe you do care and you’re game for that, but it seems like a huge waste of time to me. If you’re going to trot someone out on TV, at least give me three seconds of suspense where I don’t know what they’re going to say in response to a question before the question is finished being asked.

Then again, I’m probably asking too much since there aren’t enough of those people to go around.

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Now the FDIC Needs to Borrow Money

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And this is why our economy is colossally screwed right now.  The FDIC didn’t collect any premiums from banks from 1996-2006 and not they want permission borrow $500 million to fulfill its purpose. The reason they didn’t collect premiums?  Congress wouldn’t give them the authority to b/c…

Congress believed that the fund was so well-capitalized – and that bank failures were so infrequent – that there was no need to collect the premiums for a decade, according to banking officials and analysts.

Now is it me or is the way insurance generally work a pretty simple thing?  You pay a little bit of money each month when you can reasonably afford it, and then when something really bad happens your insurance company steps in and saves your bacon by helping to cover some to all of your expenses.

Because I like analogies, let’s look at the banks like a car.  What Congress basically said is, “hey, we have a Toyota Camry (reliable car that rarely has problems) so let’s stop paying our insurance cause we never use it.”  Too bad our reliable Camry just got totaled by a texting-while-driving teenager on the way home from the football game Friday night.

There’s a reason you’re required to carry auto insurance.  You never know when you’re going to get your car totaled or your going to total another driver’s car.  And its very rare that you’re the only one that’s going to be affected in an accident.  So now we’re stuck in the desert with jalopy quality banks that were Cadillacs several years ago trying to limp to the next gas station and we’re not sure they’re going to have enough gas to save our bacon.

Credit is the devil.

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Cuba Policy Argument

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I don’t get the people in Congress and the rest of the country, for that matter, that think its a good idea to continue our current isolationist policies towards Cuba. It actually reminds me of that Far Side cartoon where the kid is trying to get into the school for the gifted by pulling on the door labeled push. Despite all of his efforts, if he keeps doing the same thing he isn’t going to get anywhere.

While I’m not advocating that we throw open the doors to the White House and invite Castro in for tea and cookies, I don’t think trying to use a little more carrot and a little less stick wouldn’t be such a bad idea. To put it simply our current policy is…how do you say…not working. I’d argue that its pretty much as useful as an utter on a bull.

Despite our half-century long program of isolation, the country is still as communist as Castro wants it to be, even though he’s not officially in power anymore. While there have been some small steps towards loosening some economic regulations, the country is still light years away from a representative government allowing for self-determination by the people.

Now, you may ask how I know that a change in policy will work to improve things in Cuba. I don’t. But I do know that our policy over the last 50 years has failed. If we try something different and it doesn’t work, we’re really no worse off than we were with the last set of policies. The basic point is that we’re currently continuing to do the exact same thing expecting a different result, and that, my friends, is one definition of crazy.

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What the Republicans Think is Waste

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After reading this article I felt compelled to share my thoughts.  Some of what they complain about I agree with.  Some of what they complain about makes me think they’re playing rubbish political games.  One basic issue I have is if the spending is only going towards propping up current operations, I don’t think its the best use of money.  I really think that if we’re spending this money, it should go towards getting tangible things that will benefit the country while giving people jobs.  The country gets something while people make money that will spend, which will help bolster the economy.

Read it and tell me how foolish I am.  My comments are in italics.

• A $246 million tax break for Hollywood movie producers to buy motion picture film.  - Agreed, this is total rediculous, crap, stupid pork spending.

• $448 million for constructing the Department of Homeland Security headquarters. – If you saw what they work out of now, you’d understand.

• $248 million for furniture at the new Homeland Security headquarters.  - Easy there tiger.  What kinda furniture you getting?

• $600 million to buy hybrid vehicles for federal employees. – Let’s see, the American auto industry is in the crapper, the federal fleet uses American automobiles, this will help reduce pollution through cleaner emissions.  Sounds like a terrible idea to me.

• $150 million for Smithsonian museum facilities. – I’m not getting the stimulus from this, but maybe I don’t follow.

• $1 billion for the 2010 Census, which has a projected cost overrun of $3 billion. – Stimulus?  Crap idea.

• $75 million for salaries of employees at the FBI. – As a civil servant (admitted bias alert) I have a serious issue with calling this waste.  The American people want to be safe and have good roads and have clean water, but they don’t want to pay for it.  Maybe doesn’t belong in a stimulus bill, but I’ll support it anyway.

• $500 million for flood reduction projects on the Mississippi River. – I think its pretty clear that we’re not exactly squared away with dealing with floods of the Mississippi River.  If we’re building things this is exactly what we need, especially b/c it will save money in the long run.

• $10 million to inspect canals in urban areas. – Huh?

• $6 billion to turn federal buildings into “green” buildings. – See similar comment about buying hybrid cars.  Plus, many of the federal buildings in DC are old and really crappy and need to be refurbished anyway.  Make them greener in the process.

• $1.2 billion for “youth activities,” including youth summer job programs. – Programs to get more people working even if for a short period of time, putting money in their hands, that they will in turn spend on consumer products, which is what poeple aren’t doing now.  Terrible idea.  Why would we do that?

• $160 million for “paid volunteers” at the Corporation for National and Community Service. – a volunteer is someone who is unpaid by definition.  If they get paid, they’re not a volunteer.

• $850 million for Amtrak. – are we building or subsidizing.  Building good, subsidizing bad.

• $75 million to construct a “security training” facility for State Department Security officers when they can be trained at existing facilities of other agencies. –  Nice try State

Just my thoughts.

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Staggering Facts About our Government and Spending

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Say whatever you want about the opinions expressed in the rest of this Bloomberg article, some of the figures about the spending of our government and our current budget shortfalls knocked the wind out of me.  Here are the highlights:

Or try this. The whole world’s military spending in 2006 totaled a little less than $1.2 trillion. So next year’s U.S. deficit [$1.7 trillion projected] could cover that and still have $500 billion left over for building bridges.

And…

Perhaps the most disturbing comparison is this one: When President George W. Bush was first elected, total federal government spending was about $1.7 trillion. In other words, the difference between federal outlays and federal revenue this year will be bigger than the entire government was as recently as 2000.

Another interesting thing the article points out regarding our governmental spending is that revenue has increased from approximately $2 trillion to projected $2.4 trillion next year, while spending has increased around %95.  In 2000, the government spent around $1.8 trillion and it is projected to spend around $3.5 trillion.

A couple of thoughts on that last tidbit.  First, almost all of that increase in spending happened under a Republican government.  So much for small government conservative leadership.  Second, it really gives one pause when considering whether the new government should be teeing up another huge spending bill and whether the bill is going to really accomplish anything.  Obviously, money spent on the wrong things isn’t going to help the economy any, and I think we’ve proven our inability to spend on the right things over the last eight years.  Despite the view of many that Obama is going to make it all better, he can’t turn the Titanic himself.

http://bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=aGgZR28hHCPk&refer=columnist_hassett

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