How I Love the Government

Every year for the past few years we have come to the end of September with the two parties struggling to get a federal budget approved before there is a threat to shut down the government. The last time the threat was real was 17 years ago, but it doesn't look promising that we will avoid it this year. All this because the people in Washington cannot act like responsible adults.

Here is one of the latest reports from USA Today on the squabbling and impasses that are mucking up the process. In all of the rhetoric, there is little that is about the welfare of the country and the common man, it is all a power struggle between the two leading parties.

I was curious as to what will happen if the powers that be fail to come to agreement,  and I found this on CBS News online:

If the government shuts down, programs deemed "essential" -- traffic control, airport security, Medicare and food inspections, for example -- will continue to run. But as many as 800,000 federal employees considered "non-essential," including about half of the Defense Department's civilian employees, will be furloughed, with no guarantee of back-pay.

About 20 of the 1,600 national Head Start programs would feel the impact instantly: Grants expiring Oct. 1 would not be renewed, and over time, more programs could be affected. And the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC), which provides food and health care referrals to pregnant women and mothers, could be shut down.

Social Security checks and veterans' benefits would likely be held up, since there would be fewer workers to process them. Passport and visa applications could be put on hold, as well as small business and home mortgage lending programs. National parks around the country and Smithsonian museums would be closed.

While monuments in Washington, D.C., would also be closed, the U.S. Capitol building would remain open. Congress is exempted from the furloughs, though some lawmakers have threatened to protest that rule.

 Emphasis mine, as I think it is deplorable that the people who got us into this mess will continue to get paid.

Monday Morning Musings

I read a good editorial in The Dallas Morning News the other day. Titled: Trimming Government, Message to Obama and Congress: Get on with it, it listed a number of ways to balance the budget. The top two suggestions:

• Eliminate duplicate programs
• Consolidate related programs

Good ideas. Do you think if enough of us say this, someone in Washington will listen?

There are a number of programs available to help returning soldiers deal with PTSD and other combat-related issues as they assimilate back into civilian life. One of them is Horses for Heroes which has a facility in Keller, Texas called Rocky Top Therapy Center. There, men and women can spend some time grooming a horse and doing some ground work.

On the surface, you may wonder what that could do to help a traumatized veteran, but one vet has said working with a big chestnut gelding has reduced his stress level a great deal. The soldier said the horse is a good listener. "There's no negative feedback. There's nobody saying you need to do this and this and this."

Working with the horse also helps in controlling anger and frustration. There is no way you can lead a horse if you have a lot of strong negative feelings churning inside. I know that from personal experience. A horse has to trust you to let you groom him, pick up his feet, and lead him around. Horses are very intuitive and react to your feelings. If I approach him in anything but a calm manner, my horse shies away from me because he is afraid and his instinct is to run from whatever is scaring him.

Learning to be calm around a horse, can surely help a veteran learn how to be calm with his or her family, as well as in other social settings. Kudos to the people who are helping the soldiers learn that.

A new book out, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain, deals with the benefits of people who work alone. According to Cain, great inventions and great art come from people working in solitude, not committees, and she cites the example of Steve Wozniak, who built the first Apple computer alone in his garage. It took people like Steve Jobs to launch the business and work with committees to market the product, but the initial invention came from one man, working alone.

Susan Cain advises against relying on Groupthink in business and education, and has plenty of data to support her belief that people are more productive when they work alone with few interruptions. The book is well worth a read, as is the article she recently had published in the New York Times.

Speaking of good books, I have a review of Louise Penny's wonderful new book, A Trick of The 
Light over at The Blood Red Pencil blog. If you have a minute to check it out, you might find another good book to add to a list of those you want to read.

Friday's Odds and Ends

Since I resigned as Managing Editor for WinnsboroToday.com, I am not as connected to the news as I used to be. Part of my daily updates at the online magazine included the latest news blurbs from several sources. Now I don't check those sources daily, and I don't watch very much broadcast news, either. In some ways it's nice to be disconnected, but that also means I am not finding those absurd news bits I like to comment on every Friday.

I did hear that the Federal Government is on the verge of shutting down because the elephants and the donkeys can't agree on a budget. Apparently on the pachyderm side it is the newly elected representatives that won with Tea Party support. And here I thought they had promised to put partisan politics aside if they got into office.

I guess you can't trust an elephant.

Doing a quick Internet search for bizarre news, I came across this from  Bizarre News.org . A 13-year-old Norwegian boy avoided being attacked by wolves by playing a heavy metal song on his mobile phone. I knew there had to be one good use for heavy metal music.

I also found this on NewsBizarre.com  The new official worlds tallest man is Sultan Kosen of Turkey. Standing at a giant 8ft 1 or 2.5 meters, Sultan Kosen is the newly crowned Guinness World Records worlds tallest man. With money he can make with special appearances, he hopes to be able to buy a car. “The first thing I want is a car I can fit into,” Sultan Kosen said. “More than that, I want to get married. It’s really difficult to find a girlfriend. They are usually scared of me.”

I'm reading The General and Monaville Texas by Joe G. Bax. So far, it is a good read and last night this line had me cracking up: "It was so quiet you could hear a mouse piss on a cotton ball."

Too bad my husband was already asleep when I started laughing.

That's it for me today. Did you run across any absurd or funny news stories this week?

Friday's Odds and Ends

Before we get to the regularly scheduled program, I have a guest piece on Elizabeth Spann Craig's Mystery Writing is Murder blog. We are talking about jigsaw puzzles and writing and what they have in common. Stop on by if you have a minute.

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Dennis Montgomery, who owns a California computer company, sold fake technology that was supposed to assist in tracking terrorists to the military. It took two years for the Air Force to cancel the contract after the fraud was brought to light. The extent of the fraud may never be known because the Justice Department believes that releasing the details would be a threat to national security. More details HERE

What is wrong with that picture? Is the bureaucracy of the military so over loaded that someone could not have pulled the plug in, say, a week and saved millions?  Do we have a right to know the details of this fraud?

Obama's 2012 budget cuts calls for reduction of the charitable donation tax deduction. Rick Dunham, CEO of a company that assists non-profits wrote and op-ed piece in which he stated, "Our charitable deduction ensures that the wealthy have an incentive to share their financial blessings with the less fortunate."

While I agree that the deduction should stay in place, the idealist in me wishes the wealthy could donate because it is a good thing to do. Why does everything have to include a personal benefit? Have we totally succumbed to the the "What's in it for me?" mentality?

The latest trend in gardening for the busy family. There are now expert gardeners, who, for a fee, will come to your home and create a garden. They bring tools, compost, mulch, hoses, seeds and starter plants and will build raised beds, then plant your garden. If you are too busy to tend to the garden, they will come out regularly to pull weeds and take care of any other gardening chores. They'll even come out and harvest. According to an article in The Dallas Morning News, this approach to gardening has become popular in Dallas, Austin, and Seattle, but I wouldn't be surprised if it is not springing up in other places.

I'll admit that I have been tempted in recent years to hire someone to dig my garden, I don't think I would go so far as to hire a company to do it all. Some of the physiological benefits of gardening are lost if you are not putting your own hands in the dirt to plant the seeds and nurturing the plants until you are ready to pick that first juicy tomato.

What about you? Would you hire folks to do a garden?

Doesn't anyone get it?

I just read this brief news item on CNN online:

California may need a quick $7 billion loan from the federal government to pay for “teachers’ salaries, nursing homes, law enforcement and every other State-funded service” this month, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger warned in a letter sent Thursday to the U.S. Treasury secretary. The letter, posted on the Los Angeles Times Web site Friday, echoes a statement issued a day earlier by California State Treasurer Bill Lockyer, saying the state has been locked out of credit markets for the past 10 days because of the national financial crisis.

I sure wish someone would tell me why borrowing more money is the way out of this financial crisis.

The Federal government, state governments, and even school districts across the country are experiencing budget overruns and their response is to borrow money to pay for it. Isn't excessive borrowing what got us into the mortgage crisis, the national deficit, and the banking crisis?

Here's a novel idea. One taken from the budget plans of so many Americans who don't run up excessive debt. Don't spend any more money than you take in.

Let me repeat that, just in case someone missed it. Don't spend any more money that you take in.

And to borrow another approach from a family budget, pay for the necessities first, then consider luxuries.

To cover the shortfall in California, I suggest that they cut excess government. Don't pay salaries for top government officials for six months. Stop all travel and entertainment expenses for six months. Stop all advertising for six months. Maybe then they would have enough money to pay the teachers and police officers.

As to the Federal deficit. Instead of cutting taxes, cut out the obscene retirement packages that legislators receive. Freeze all pay for top government officials for six months. Freeze overseas aid for six months. Freeze all nonessential travel for six months.

Then when we can all breath a little easier, I challenge the leaders of our country to go through government and trim, trim, trim. I'm sure there would then be enough money to support our troops, support social security, and offer aid to the most needy in our country.