|
Home::Entertainment
The Growing Budget Crisis
Author : Aaron Spetner
The country has a budget crisis. But in perspective, there are many more problems that are much worse.
WASHINGTON, DC (Spetnik.com) - Today I would like to discuss the nation’s budget crisis. It is time that we, the uneducated voter, decided to take a look at the way the government is spending money and try to understand it. For example, the government runs the postal service. The postal service is more than just stamps and mail carriers. Postal union regulations require that the government provide all sorts of items to employees, such as automatic assault weapons for when they snap (which reminds me that it’s been a while since that has happened, so if you must enter a post office, wear a bulletproof vest – odds are that a shooting will occur within the next week).
You know, it seems that the safety of Americans who go to the post office is a bit more important than the budget, so let’s leave the budget for a minute. Why is it always the postal workers that go “postal”? I think that instead of showing us numbers and tax proposals, political candidates should tell us how they plan to implement post office reform. In case any politicians are reading this article, let me give you my plan (you are free to use it, provided that you mention me in your inaugural speech). I propose that before a postal worker is hired, he be required to serve a mandatory jail sentence, half the term usually sentenced to convicted postal workers. This way, if a postal worker does go on a rampage, he already has half of his rehabilitation out of the way, thereby giving him a quicker return to normal society. In addition, should he finish his postal career without killing anybody, government scientists would add additional years to his life, equal to the prison term served before his employment. I believe that this way, postal workers would have extra incentive to stay sane.
In the event that government scientists do not yet have a method to extend an individual’s lifetime (I think they do – haven’t you seen Strom Thurmond?), I have a second method of postal reform. This one involves labor union laws. You see, I did some “research” into the U.S. Postal Service, and I “discovered” some interesting “facts”. One major discovery was that postal union regulations require employees to work in slow-motion. This is why it takes them half-an-hour to sell you a stamp (if you wouldn’t specify your favorite stupid designer stamp, it would only take twenty minutes and save time for the other customers on line). They are required to do this in order so that the government will have to hire more employees and the union bosses will thereby make more money. Now, when you work in slow-motion, you have time to think. You have time to focus on who you hate. You have time to think about how many people you can shoot in the allotted time for postal rampages. All a politician wishing to implement postal reform would have to do would be to abolish this slow-motion union rule. This way, less employees will be needed and they will be to busy working to think about killing people. For this plan to work, you may also need to pay off the union bosses to make up for the money they will lose now that the postal service no longer needs so many workers.
Now, I know this plan is not perfect. You may ask, “Well, it’s great that the postal workers will be too busy to kill people, but what about all the employees that will now be laid off as a result of the increased performance? They will have nothing to do and will have even more time to think about killing people.” It is because of questions like this that you will never make a good politician. You must realize that you must draw the line somewhere. A good politician draws lots of lines. Sometimes the lines are straight, sometimes they are not. Sometimes they get intertwined and result in attractive drawings. These people are usually drawing the wrong type of lines. I am talking about abstract lines, not physical lines. Lines that say things. Lines that do things and make things happen. But this is not about lines, it is about policy. And about the budget crisis. Maybe we’ll get to that next time.
About the Author
Aaron currently works as a software/web developer and writes in his free time. He also runs a growing web-based discussion forum at http://www.chitchatforums.com." target="_blank">http://www.chitchatforums.com. His personal work is on display at http://www.spetnik.com." target="_blank">http://www.spetnik.com.
Spam emails More free articles Related articles
|
More related feeds |
Malaysia`s Anwar Seeks Budget Review After Crisis Anwar, who vowed ... Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim said he will call for a review of the country's 2009 budget when parliament reconvenes on Monday, saying it had become "obsolete" in the face of the global financial crisis. ...International Traders Want Status Quo Back With 0% Lending (Bloomberg) -- The global financial crisis is turning into a bigger drain on the US federal budget than experts estimated two weeks ago, ballooning the deficit toward $2 trillion. Bailouts of American International Group, Fannie Mae and ... Weingarten, civic leaders join fight for fairness in budget cuts Weingarten described the devastating effects of the 1970s budget crisis on the city’s schools, when teachers were laid off and class sizes swelled. “It took decades to turn [the schools] around, a turnaround we’re only starting to make” ... IMF warns of world financial meltdown ... facing a government budget crisis because of the combination of the credit crunch and volatile commodity prices. Pakistan is arousing fears that it could default on its foreign loans. Fears are also growing that Ukraine, Kazakhstan, ... CAMBRIDGE FORECAST GROUP: “UNSUSTAINABLE PATTERNS OF WORLD ... A different Congress would have reached a different resolution to the budget crisis, globalization or no globalization. Thus, globalization is not an excuse for supporters of the social safety net to “throw in the towel”. ... Cost of US Crisis Action Is Growing, Along With Debt, Deficit (to ... Oct. 10 (Bloomberg) -- The global financial crisis is turning into a bigger drain on the US federal budget than experts estimated two weeks ago, increasing the deficit and the national debt. Bailouts of American International Group, ... Errors and Omissions Going back to the later years of Alan Greenspan as head of the Federal Reserve, the growing federal budget surpluses had the desirable effect of actually stripping the Fed of its ability to engage in activist monetary policy, ... So Whose Fault is it When Candidates Fudge on the Federal Budget? If we do nothing, the country's debt will be growing faster than our economy in about 15 years, which means we won't be able to keep up. By 2040, the US would need nearly every dollar it collects in taxes just to cover the costs of ... Generation Terrorists I decided not to pursue the line of discussion, but I don’t think she was talking about the CTA budget crisis. Either way, it was the first time in my life I’d ever thought of myself as a “big-city liberal,” which is fascinating, ... The Financial Crisis and the Future Cheap credit is also associated with financial innovations, and new mortgage securities were developed to widen the sale of the growing number of mortgages entering the market. The flood of money into mortgage markets also lessened the ...
|
|
|