It's all your fault!!!
We love our sports here in the United States. We spend a lot of money and time watching sports, attending sports, reading about sports and talking about sports. We also participate in sports, and the most wildly popular sport this year is ‘Blaming Politicians for Everything.’
Our politicians can’t balance the budget! They can’t solve the immigration mess! They can’t end unemployment! They can’t provide us with unlimited cheap energy without pollution! They’ve let the infrastructure go to pot and they have not yet found us a cure for cancer, heart disease, arthritis, colds, acne or heartbreak!!
So why can’t they solve all these problems? Why do they keep dithering and nibbling around the edges without ever getting to the heart of the problem? Is it the intransigence of one party or another? Is it talk radio, ranting cable TV hosts, tea party crazies, socialist-liberal-communist-fascist presidents, militia members or soccer moms?
Nope; none of the above. After exhaustive research, countless studies, statistical analyses and hundreds of interviews spanning the country and the globe the investigative staff here at Lost On The Shore headquarters (buried in a secret chamber deep below Ocean Pines) has discovered the real culprit.
It’s you!
Yes, you are responsible for the mess we’re in. You and your neighbors, friends, relatives, the folks at the gym and the people in the office are all responsible as are your dry cleaner, the workers who built your car and those who built your house, your banker, your dog groomer and your lawyer. It’s all of these people…and me.
You see, we either want things that are opposite of each other, or things that are impossible or we don’t know what we want. Let me give you some examples.
A little over a year ago, a survey showed that some 59% of Americans liked the stimulus plan. A similar majority, a few months later, told us that Obama is spending too much on stimulus. A large majority of Americans want stricter regulation of financial institutions, stiffer quality requirements for our food, stronger regulation of safety in automobiles and stronger regulation of safety in coal mines and (recently) offshore oil drilling. A similar majority think that business is over-regulated. We want to cut taxes, balance the budget but not cut any programs.
Americans recently elected Scott Brown to the Senate. One of his major campaign pledges was to cut taxes, substantially reduce the deficit but not make any cuts to Social Security or Medicare. Let’s take a look at this. For 2011, the president’s budget proposes receipts of $2,567 billion, outlays of $3,834 billion and a deficit of $1,267 billion (there are a couple of adjustments in there). A ten percent reduction in receipts (basically taxes) would bring the receipts down to about $2,250 billion.
Now let’s look at outlays. Social Security is $736 billion. Medicare is $497 billion. Interest payments are $251 billion. That brings us to a total of $1,484 billion so far. Now National Defense is budgeted at $750 billion, the vast majority being spent on operations and maintenance, military personnel and procurement. If we include the $750 billion that brings us to $2,234.
Do we want to continue to take care of our veterans? Veterans Benefits and Services, mostly military pensions and medical care, will amount to $125 billion. That brings our total to $2,359 – we’re already in a deficit.
What have we left out? Well, there’s criminal justice including all the federal prosecutors, the FBI, federal prisons, etc. That’s another $57 billion. And the list goes on, International Affairs, General Science including NASA, Energy, Natural Resources including our parks, environmental protection and water management, Agriculture, Transportation including roads and the FAA, etc.
So, are Scott Brown, and all the other politicians of both parties who promise they can balance the budget without cutting anything or raising taxes really naive idiots or are they treating us like naive idiots. I vote for the latter.
And they can get away with it because we don’t bother to learn enough about our problems to challenge them when they say stupid things to us. We spend way more time watching American Idol, ESPN and Survivor than we do trying to understand our problems and figuring out who can best solve them.
Our politicians can’t solve our problems for us because we want it both ways and we don’t want to compromise. If we can’t understand better the choices that we face and find some way to compromise on the issues that are important to us we are doomed to eternal gridlock. Look at California where the voters have mandated reductions in taxes at the same time they mandated spending floors on many state functions. California’s bonds now have the same safety rating as Libya’s.
So now you know. It’s your fault; do something about it!