Idiots Who Can't Count

First, as a nation, we raise some money. You know: taxes.
Income taxes. Sales taxes. Taxes on shoes and new cars.
All those people we elected to Congress figured that out.

Then, we spend some money. You know, roads and Medicare.
Maybe a nice little war in the Middle East. Congress said
it would rather not pay cash for that, but it was a nice war.

Whoops! We spent more than we had, and we have a law
that says if you want to borrow the difference, you have to
raise the Debt Limit, which is how far you were in debt
the last time you figured out how we were doing.

"No!", Congress says, "We aren't in favor of being in debt.
We think it is crazy to raise the Debt Limit. People should not
spend more than they have. The nation has to learn austerity!"

The debt limit isn't the cause of anything. It is just the calculation
that we have already decided to raise a trillion dollars, and that
we have already approved the expenditure of a trillion-and-a-half.

"Nope!", our elected officials say, "Somebody around here has to
learn how to balance the budget! We will not raise the debt limit!"

Tim Pawlenty, for instance, who left Minnesota five or six
billion dollars in debt, says we should not raise the national debt limit.
No, Sir!, Tim says, We should not allow arithmetic to be taught!
We have to stand for something! Maybe imaginary numbers!
You know: the square root of minus how far we are in debt.

Raise some money. Spend more. Say the problem is arithmetic.

The real problem is that voters elect idiots who can't count.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Friends-- My step-father of 35 years died this morning. His name was Conrad Royksund. He was 86 years old. He was born into poverty on a farm near Puyallup, WA. He was the first member of his family to attend college and earned a PhD from the University of Chicago. He paid his way through all of that by fishing in Alaska. He spent his professional career as a college professor. I met him when I was just 3 years old and don't actually have any memories of my life befor e he was in it. He was intimidatingly smart, funny as hell, and worked his ass off. He taught me to meet people with kindness and decency until I was certain they could not be trusted. He taught me to meet ideas with carving knives until I was certain they could. I will remember him as one of the bravest, most curious, and funniest people I have ever met. He left this world with a satisfied mind. We are so grateful. Dan Hubbard

Caliche Busters and Government Work

When I was young and both stronger and smarter than I am now, I put my might and brain to work doing nothing useful, unless it might be thought that hand/foot/eye coordination might come in handy. Those were skills to be learned and practiced. I found an iron bar our grandfather had shaped in his blacksmith shop. He took old car, truck, or wagon axles, and made tools from them for digging post holes. He sharpened one end to a tip, and the other to a blade. Washington State, like many places, had a hard layer of soil, probably created by water and limestone, or some such materials, that made digging holes a miserable chore. The bar chipped through the natural concrete so that a shovel could take it up. I found Grandpa's iron bar, and since I was young and dumb and strong--or so I thought--decided to punch a hole down to hardpan and ultimate truth. I knew how to do that. Raise the bar vertically with both hands, and then slam in straight down. On the second try, aimi

The Sea is Rising

Let us just step back: two hundred and fifty years ago, or so, the ships of England and Spain had drifted onto a whole new continent, as they saw it, from far north to a savagely cold south; pole to pole, as if there were such things. Millions of people already lived here, some of them still hunters and gatherers; some of them very wealthy, indeed! Gold and silver stolen from the southern Americas funded Spanish and English dreams. There was land, lots of land, under starry skies above, rich land, and oil and coal and iron ore. The whole western world learned how to build industries not on simple muscle power, but on steam and oil. We farmed, too, of course. All we needed was cheap labor--slave labor from Africa, mostly, so the ships came with slave labor. Chinese labor built railroad beds where there had been rock cliffs. Europeans, long used to killing each other for good, religious reasons, brought their religious savagery with them. Even when all they wanted to do w

SmokeSound

Search This Blog