Stuck in Wonderland

The new budget has a 3.83 trillion dollar price tag. Telling lawmakers to tone it down but be sure to pass cap and trade, health care and the stimulus two package --I'm sorry, job recovery package so as to save 1/2 of one percent of the budget through a 3 year discretionary spending freeze that won't happen until 2011 doesn't just smack of chutzpah, it mock turtle dances in the streets of sheer Alice in Wonderland madness. "It's all her fancy that: they never executes nobody, you know. Come on!"

As Americans, we've been down this rabbit hole before. We followed and found the loans that said drink me and eat me and made ourselves balloon up and out and every which way but right. It was only after we'd discovered our errors and dropped the fan crushing much of the housing market that we thought our way back to a safe size. It was a narrow escape.

To excoriate the prior administration for its fiscal irresponsibility and compound it with one's own is to pretend that your wrongs are irrelevant because you've been wronged first; well, Alice, surprised by her own courage, speaks truth to the President. "No, No!" Said the Queen. "Sentence first --verdict afterward."

His new tone of being a fiscal hawk rings hollow.

"Cheshire Cat would you tell me please, which way I ought to go from here?" "That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat. We've been told, we can't save our way out of this economic problem, we can only spend to prosperity. Between the Mad Hatter, (Congress) March Hare, (press) and Sleepy Door Mouse (Republicans) and the Tea Party, nothing will get done except badly. They'll just keep changing chairs and cups and repeating the same sob stories of the Mock Turtle and when they were unjustly accused.

To our commander in chief who asks us to believe he means business about the deficit, I would say, "This is all nonsense." The budget is filled with imaginary numbers. You have not slain the Jabberwocky with your vorpal blade. Meanwhile, all the nobles gather to play croquet. "I don't think they play at all fairly." "And they quarrel so dreadfully, one can't hear one's self speak."

But the Democrats march merrily along, painting the white roses red and red roses white. All these promises, all these programs are just a bunch of cards. If we speak up, we shall be told, "Off with her head!" because "Nothing could be clearer than that. Let the jury consider their verdict."

Here's hoping we wake up soon.

Apologies to Lewis Caroll, but when you spend 16 years reading children's literature, it's what you know.

No one is Forcing You to Change

I know the President has said on many occasions that "If we like our current insurance policy, the government will not make us abandon it." He's said this in various ways and I believe he is sincere when he says this.

I also think about the fact that he has never run a business.

Most businesses are in the business of making money and most families are about turning out healthy happy capable adults. For the sake of this discussion, let's think of businesses as being like families, wanting to churn out happy customers and have a profit margin and succeed without being strung out by too many obligations or too many activities or too much overhead.

A business has operating costs. So does a family. A business will add to operating costs only if it is necessary to improve the business. It's called investment. Families add burdens of classes or an extra car to make the business of running a family easier, trading money for time or convenience or enrichment that will pay off both now in enjoyment and possibly later with a life skill.

There are some families who opt to put their children in Catholic schools and thus make an investment. They do not get to opt out of property taxes which pay for public schools. They do not re-coop on their investment of tax money fiscally, but believe the pay out of the extra cash for tuition,is worth it. After all, it's their kids.

Very very few businesses are going to say, "I want to pay taxes to finance the public option on top of paying for my own plan. While I was happy with the plan before there was a public option, now I must decide. Do I want to pay taxes for one health care policy I don't use in addition to offering one which I pay out of pocket pre-tax?" Very few businesses will want to pay double tuition as it were, taxes and private school even if they liked their plans before. Businesses, being about making money, will opt for the public option and only pay the tax once. With an additional tax if the plans they offered were premium, the businesses will say "No thank you." They're not going to say, "After all, it's my employees."

While no one is forcing them NOT to pay more, most of them will when given the option of not paying, will out of merely a sense of good business, opt for the public option.

While we may have liked our prior plans better, there will be no take it or leave it in this scenario. Businesses, being businesses, will opt for the public option that helps the bottom line, and so there will be no take it or leave it option, just "Take it."

Marie Antoinette's Legislative Tips for the Current Congress

Feeling darn firey lately, I put that energy to use and called my congressmen to tell them not to vote for the Cap and Trade bill currently being whipped to fruition by Nancy Pelosi et. al.

Why did I call?

Because I'm frankly tired of a congress spending money hand over fist without ever bothering to read the damn things they are voting on. Is it too much to ask that they read before they rubber stamp via their party affiliation?

When I was a kid, I loved making cakes from boxes but I didn't want to bother with the stinkin' directions, I wanted the cake. For me it was all about the end result, but I was impatient and unwilling to do what it took to get there, so there were a lot of cakes that 1) lacked structure 2) lacked significant ingredients and 3) got fed to the dog. Until I took the time to examine the directions --at my Mother's insistence (thanks Mom!), I continued to churn out crumble cake after flat cake after inedible reported to be cake. It wasted money. It wasted time. It wasted cake.

Here's an idea, make passage of every bill dependent upon everyone who votes, having listened to it be read aloud --it would slow legislation to a crawl but we'd spend a lot less, or at least, we'd know what we were spending the money on, because the bills would be smaller and more discreet but fully disclosed. And then,maybe we can have our cake and maybe eat it too.

Otherwise, we'll be left with something that isn't even healthy for dogs.

Call your representatives. Stomp up and down. Let them know at least, we require reflection and discernment before they spend more of our future earnings. They work for us, at least for now.

Sound and Fury of a Noisy Gong Show, A.K.A. the White House Press Core Q& A

If you follow the news and there are times when I truely think I shouldn't, you know about the planted Nico Pitney of Huffington Post at the President's press conference the other day asking about a pre-arranged topic of Iran and its people.

My real question is, "Why?"

Did the President not think that he could have asked anyone other than Fox News to ask a question about what the people in Iran were thinking and hoping for? While it's true that there's been no evidence up to now that the White House Press Core were unwilling water carriers, the regulars at such meetings might have been somewhat timerous about broaching such a relevant topic.

However, I'm pretty sure if Rham Emanuel or Robert Gibbs had said it would further the dialogue and agenda set by the administration and handed out the milk bones, there would have been willing closed rank complicity behind the scenes and we'd have never known about the planted blog reporter except as some vast right wing conspiracy.

Instead, we're treated to a bad version of "the play's the thing" where the reporters get to be outraged that someone is playing with them, and that someone lobbed a pre-planned softball. What they're really mad about is, they didn't get picked to throw the ball.

Of course, when the catcher tells the batter what pitch is coming next, one should expect the swing to send it out of the park, but in this case, it was just a pitch and a bunt of a reply, designed to allow all to say, the President addressed this serious issue and the Iranian people with sincerity and thoughtfulness. Anyone not moved probably needs government health care doctors to examine them for possibly missing a heart, a brain, or a soul. Next question. "Who's going to ask me again about that fly?"

Given the level of toadiness of the media, it's hard to understand how a fly got onto the White House grounds. But then the fly did a better job of invoking a genuine response from the President than the whole Press Corp combined.

So I can't think that the President's people didn't have a reason for putting the Huffington Post so prominently in the spotlight in such a blatant way.

Maybe Rham Emanuel won a bet in a late night poker game, or Adrianna needed more traffic on her web site.

Maybe the President is flexing his political muscles to see just how much the American public will swallow to continue believing what they wish to believe. Maybe he's testing the capacity of the bowing devotees with blackberries in hand, to ignore with their own eyes and their own ears, what is presented before them, for what they wish to see.

We just don't know, and given the level of inquisitiveness remaining in the media in general about (not merely this President but all policies proposed), this is likely to be papered over with thousands of glossy overlays of the scandal involving the South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford and his South American honey.

Was it a big deal to plant a question? Yes and no. The question wasn't even a real biggie. The answer meant even less. But the reason behind it, well that's a real question. Wish we had a real answer.

Everybody Luau!

Hey Brother, can you spare 13 bucks a week?

So Congress has agreed to a 789,000,000,000.00 package deal to stimulate the economy, which most experts have indicated shall make a 13$ a week for those who qualify for the tax cuts. How much does 13$ buy?

And is it after taxes? At the local store, thirteen bucks gets you a gallon of milk, a box of name brand cereal, a loaf of good bread and a jar of whatever peanut butter is on sale. If you use coupons or scrimp a bit, you can add a jar of jelly. That, or order one large pizza with just cheese and have it delivered. Maybe if I caught the special, there'd be bread sticks too.

Personally, I’d feel better if we handed out a bag of those groceries, taking care of a week of breakfast and lunch for everyone. If it's not after taxes, people can look forward to a mere 8 bucks per week. We'd better take the generic cereal in bags, the cheapest bread and skip the jelly....and we might need to switch to powdered milk too.

We don’t expect perfection, but is this the best we could do?

The Senate and House leader announce an agreement on the bill...huzzah!

Let’s light the tikki torches, cue the hula girls and start the luau. Roast pork for everyone! It will only cost $2,254.28 a plate. (That’s 789 billion divided by 3.5 million).

They can say there’s no pork. (It’s all necessary even if they don’t know what’s in the bill). They can say, there are no earmarks. (If it’s not a line item, it’s not an earmark). They can say all spending is stimulus. If that’s the case, then please please, let us keep our $2,254.28 per person.
I promise to go out and spend it.

But if this is going to pass, as all claim it will, I still have a few questions.

If the bill is so big, no one knows what all is in it as some Senators attacking questions about what is in the stimulus package have claimed, how can we have a dollar figure?

If the millions here and millions there that the "chattering classes" of opposition object to, are so snatteringly small as to be statistically insignificant, why not cut them out to silence the criticisms? Or are they so vital that if we cut everything else, these still would have to stay?

If there is a 30% chance of getting it wrong as stated by Biden, shouldn't we try to fix that first?

If there is no pork or earmarks, then why are there so many oddball programs and policies and special projects that seem unique to specific geographical areas of the country representened by prominent leaders in the House and Senate?

If everything here is vital and was before the conference, why was the bill reduced from 920 billion to 789?

Using the monkeys typing Shakespeare theory, could we just take out every other page of the bill and maybe have a more reasonable stimulus package?

If I pay my bills and my mortgage and live within my means and don't own a corporate jet, already bought a house and don't have anyone in college, and file my taxes accurately, how am I not a chump?

Could we at least have pepperoni on the damn pizza?