Posted on 08/05/2007 7:51:43 PM PDT by Jim Robinson
Thanks for the ping.
I’m hoping he’ll come on to the thread to answer questions and continue the debate.
So do I.
Thanks for the ping.
As he said, can you call your senator and get him on the phone?
Ha,ha,hey Ted Kennedy and John Kerry are my Senators so what do you think the answer to your question is ???
Thanks for the ping, bumping.
Figure out what you can afford and then add a few dollars more in honor of the men in the VA hospitals and the 1,252,188 members of Disabled American Veterans who are not receiving adequate care, partly because of the bloated, inefficient, dollar consuming bureaucracy but primarily because Congress has proven itself to be the world’s most profligate spendthrift.
While both are good causes, it does not stipulate what part of your money goes for which cause.
IMHO this site needs a touch of professionalism and clarity of purpose.
?
No way we can get McCain or Kyl either - we tried. They were busy with their special interest groups.
My first thought is that I’ve never heard of anyone with power willing to support something that might restrain that power.
Gov’t should be a partner with business, not a adversary.
Any plan which depends for its success on the California Legislature doing the right thing is in deep doo-doo from the get-go. No, thank you.
The problem with top heavy organizations is that they are inherently unstable. Each year it becomes increasingly harder to add to the bloat—beyond a certain point the mess just collapses.
This is because government lives or dies based on a simple ratio. Call it “efficiency”. It is the ratio of what the government promises versus what it delivers. And oddly enough, it matters far less *what* it promises than that it delivers on those promises.
If government promises few things and delivers, it will survive and prosper. But over time the tendency is to promise more and more. At first it can grow and continue to deliver. But unless it can curtail its promises, and few can, they will, they must, outstrip the promise delivery.
And that is when the breakdown begins. Much of the breakdown is seen early on, with things such as “The Peter Principle”, and various bureaucratic Murphy’s Laws.
But then you get entire agencies of government that exist solely to perpetuate themselves, no longer performing any real service or function, though they contain an enormous machine to do so.
Other agencies have fewer and fewer people performing the “muscle”, the real work, and more people and assets devoted to “fat”. And if there is one great bureaucratic rule, it is “when asked to cut back, cut the muscle and leave the fat.” This frightens politicians who want to cut back.
An excellent example of this going on right now is the British National Health System. It has reached the point where it demands endless increases in budget, yet performs worse and worse. Now to eliminate its backlog, it has begun to create artificial rules allowing it to discriminate against smokers and the overweight, the sum total of whom, conveniently, nearly matches their backlog.
Problem solving through inefficiency.
Sooner rather than later, it will provide so little health care that people will have to leave the country to get it, or find it through illegal, back-alley private providers.
The only question is what will precipitate its collapse, and what form that collapse will take. Many people will have to unnecessarily suffer and even die before the truly obstinate believers in the NHS are overwhelmed.
So what about the US government? Well, in many parts of the government, the ratio of what is promised to what is delivered isn’t that bad—even though what is promised is improper, unconstitutional, and wasteful. But they can get away with a *lot* of that before it becomes unstable.
Absent major catastrophes. And this is an important point. When something like Katrina happens, and the “inefficiency” is exposed, the promises not delivered upon, then you will see a strong impulse for reform. But in truth, Katrina was just a small version of catastrophe.
What could be far more telling would be a major worldwide economic collapse, a terrible pandemic like Avian flu, or a major war, where there was no longer the easy resources available to support government bloat.
Ironic that such disaster might precipitate much needed reform in government, to force them to back off, and bow their collective heads after having been humbled, having paid the price for wanting to be all things to all people.
Where would you cut?
http://www.thebudgetgraph.com/poster/
Here is the federal government, slice away.
Bookmark for pondering.
Congratulations! You've just passed Politics 101.
Neither have I. What a concept, huh.
BTTT!
Geez, Jim; seems this is where I came in in 1998. Repeal the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Amendments, revise the Fourteenth to preclude citizenship to one born to immigrants, and replace the monetary standard and eliminate the Federal Reserve.
Then we might get our Republic back.
No more Senator Teddy K? :>} Repeal it. It’s only created a disaster. It would also make it more likely some of our better congressmen could get a shot at the senate. Tennessee hasn’t produced a good senator in many years.
bttt
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