Monday Morning Ramblings

A debt limit deal is announced.

As usual, it's a fake.  Why bother?  Congress wanted headlines for awhile to obfuscate their colossal failings to help the plain people.

The government is "cutting spending", but are the benefits of government workers being cut?  No.

Is the pay of the so-called "executive" class of government bureaucrats being cut? Nope.

Is the pay and benefits of Congress being cut?  Nope.

The bloviators in the Dark City love to talk about "shared sacrifice" and "accountability" yet the one class who never sacrifices and never has accountability is the "leadership" class in the Dark City.

They continue to put their snouts in the trough and slurp down everything.

I read a little article yesterday in a WSJ from last week.  Federal spending was about 25% of GDP this year, and Federal revenues was about 15%.

Uh ... from memory, long term Federal spending the "spending hawks" cite is about 20%.

Does that not tell every rational person something?

We need a 20% spending cut and a 33% increase in tax collections.  The current tax code can't do it, and without cutting Federal pay and benefit levels, affordable spending can't provide the services people expect. 

The cost of government must be reduced.  Perhaps it's time to set priorities.

By the way, Social Security is about a breakeven:  it collects about what it pays out, even with the widespread disability scams.

Word of the Day

"Congener" - noun [$10]
Congener means 1. a person or thing of the same kind or category as another, esp. animals or plants of a specified genus (the raspberry and the blackberry are congeners); 2. (esp. US) a by-product giving a distinctive character to a wine or spirit.
Sentence:  The lastest "deal" to raise the debt limit is a congener to every other one from the past four decades:  it's a fake.