ESSENTIALLY ESSENTIAL NON ESSENTIALS?
As of this writing our Government is in “Partial Shutdown”. We are told that this is only about a 25% shutdown as only “Non-Essential” Services will be put on hold.
All other Government spending is on “Auto-Pilot” and no budget is needed to continue spending. How comforting. Excuse the sarcasm.
Lets see. As a nation we are now some 21 Trillion (with a ‘T’) Dollars in debt. Well, Excuse me…….. I have a question, if we are only shutting down “Non-Essential” Services, which by my country-boy thinking means “we can live without them”, then why don’t we shut them down permanently, save the money and maybe, just maybe, start digging our way out of debt?
But, we are told that is not the way Government works. When the clowns, criminals and lunatics in Washington get done arguing and come to some kind of agreement, they will “Restore” all those “Non-Essential Services” and retro-actively again fund all those “Non-Essential Services” because, as you see, our Government considers them “Essential”.
In our family, and with most businesses, budgeting does not work this way. But of course we don’t have the ability to print fiat money.
Following this tirade I am again printing below an article that was sent to me back in August of 2012 and I reprinted at that time on this site because it is such a classic example of “Government Think”. I can think of no way of saying it better. It is not original with me – I merely share it.
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THE NIGHT WATCHMAN
Once upon a time the government had a vast scrap yard in the middle of a desert. Congress said, “Someone may steal from it at night”. So they created a night watchman position and hired a person for the job. Then Congress said, “how does the watchman do his job without instruction?”
So they created a planning department and hired two people. One person to write the instructions, and one person to do time studies. Then Congress said, “How will we know the night watchman is doing the tasks correctly?” So they created a Quality Control department and hired two people. One was to do the studies and one was to write the reports.
Then Congress said, “how are these people going to get paid?” So they created two positions: a time keeper and a payroll officer, then hired two people. Then Congress said, “Who will be accountable for all of these people?” So they created an administrative section and hired three people, an Administrative Officer, Assistant Administrative Officer, and a Legal Secretary.
Then Congress said, “We have had this command in operation for one year and we are $918,000 over budget, we must cut back.”
So they laid off the night watchman.
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Now slowly let it sink in. We go like sheep to the slaughter. The lunatics are in charge of the asylum.
Bob Bandy
Im thankful for the post.Really looking forward to read more.
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