This Man Might Just Be Willing to Pay His Share of National Debt

So, we're Facebooking along tonight, when one person offers to lay down $52,000 to help pay down the national debt!

Say, Whoa!

"I would like to stop all this sophomoric talk about the national debt," he writes. "I intend to do that by offering to pay off my share per capita which is $52,000. Are any of you whiners willing to join me?"

?!!!?!!! 

At first, I don't think he is serious, just jesting, just joking. I tell him if a person were to actually pay $52,000 to help pay down the debt, that would be news. And, what news it would be! I would guess it would be national news. Surely, he is just jesting, though. But, as as we write back and forth, he says he is serious, provided others join him. I offer to help organize a movement, to find others. Well, he doesn't respond to that, and I conclude he is only offering to make this small, little $52,000 donation if others on the FB site will join in right there and then.

'Course, that isn't going to happen.

Still, I wonder. I add him as a friend, tell him I would be honored to have him as a friend. And, well, who knows but what he might be half serious about paying his share of the national debt. 

What if States Rejected Federal Funding?

Would it Mean They Were Rejecting Federal Spending?

So, what if states do, already, have a say in whether we continue to grow that $16.5 trillion debt, and whether the nation's budget is balanced each year? A fair share of all the federal spending is administered by the states, and it just might be that the states vote on whether they will accept the funding. Case in point: Tuesday, the Utah Legislature's Natural Resources, Agriculture, and Environmental Quality Appropriations Subcommittee initially voted to reject $71 million in federal funding. They did re-vote, and in the re-vote, the federal funding was accepted. But, what if they had stuck to their original vote to reject the federal funds? Would it mean they were saying the money should not be spent at all, that it should go right back in the taxpayers' pockets?

http://utahpoliticalcapitol.com/2013/02/27/panic-in-committee-as-dems-call-gops-anti-federal-bluff/

How Can This Be?

How is it, then, that when they lowered the United States' credit rating, and when the deficit ceiling was the crisis, we could see something had to be done about the national deficit, and we set a Congressional committee to work, and they came back unable to agree, other than to say, "If we don't come to an agreement by March 2013, then these cuts will automatically take place," and, then, when March 2013 rolled around, we said, "Wait, this is too much." Never mind that the cuts were not reductions in overall spending, but just reductions in how fast our spending was increasing. We are not even reducing our spending, just reducing the rate at which our spending is increasing. If we can not even curb our rate of increase, what hope have we of ever dealing with the national deficit?

How Unwise are We on Food Stamps and Such Other Welfare?

Thought some more on welfare fraud, on how clerks at stores often let Food Stamps be used for coffee or cigarettes, or used for other things it was not intended for.

I don't know how much it happens, but I know it happens. Nor, do I like it that we set up a system where it can happen. We give them a debt card, send them down to the grocer with a debt card that is suppose to only be used for food, but with no way to say whether it will only be used for food. I wonder if all the clerks at all the stores are even trained to know that Food Stamps are for food only. If they are not, why ever do we suppose they will not stop someone from using the Food Stamps for non-food items?

It is, you must admit, not very wise of us to create a system with such obvious holes in it. Tsk, tsk.

Ask the Defense Contractors to Cut Their Profits

Once upon a time, a company fell into financial trouble. Realizing its trouble, it went back to those it did business with, asking them to reduce how much they were charging for their services.

Actually, I'm thinking that is a normal-enough business practice. I've seen it done.

And, somehow, it seems this might be the time for the federal government to try this idea. Take our defense contractors. Would it be so wrong to ask them if their chief executives would consider taking pay cuts? Would it be so wrong to suggest they give up some dividends? Would it be wrong to ask the company officials to go back to their stockholders, asking them if they would be willing to hold onto their shares even though the company was planning to reduce the profits?

I do not know that that is even legal, asking stockholders such a question. But, if it is, I don't know why it would be wrong to introduce legislation making it legal.

Yes, you are hearing me right. I'm saying, Go to General Dynamics, and Halliburton, and Rockwell Collins, and Boeing, and Teledyne, and Navistar, and Lockheed, and Kellogg, Brown and Root  . . . Go to them all, asking each of them to cut their profit margin and cut their executives pay in the name of helping their country out a little.

Don't know how much, but, yes, it does seem a savings could be made. If this is the way businesses do business and if the U.S. is the biggest business of all and if it has the biggest debt of all . . . well, maybe we should try it.

Obama Stimulus Calls for Stimulus into 2019

I cough (okay, figuratively) as I just learn that last stimulus calls for spending way into 2019. Now, if you are trying to jump start the economy in 2009, why ever would wait until 2019 to spend the money?

I would doubt much of the money waits that long to be spent. Still, I do not understand, unless the logic is, if you inject the money into the economy, then take it out the very next year, the loss will cause the economy to turn down. In other words, the injection was very much like the injection of an addictive drug.

Chances for Crime Increase When Tools for the Crime are Present

Leave the Second Amendment alone, and let us have no additional gun controls. But, I do wish we as a nation and state weren't so set on everyone owning a gun. There are dangers. Why did some of the wildest towns in the Old West (like Dodge City) require you to check your gun in at the marshal's office when you rode into town? They knew folks having guns meant folks having gun fights. Why does the military not allow guns to be brought on base? They know if guns are there, someone is apt to use them. It's common sense: the chances for the crime increase when the tools for the crime are present.