The President thinks you are an idiot

Just this week, the president went before a crowd of reporters and stated that unless the sequester process was stopped, disaster would ensue. He said, among other things, that first responders would not be as responsive, that teachers and educators (apparently, there is a difference) would lose their jobs, requiring tens of thousands of parents to scramble to try to find child care for their children. Thousands would lose their jobs because of the sequester.

The sequester is $44 billion dollars. We are going to spend 3.4 trillion dollars this year. The sequester is 1% of this year's spending. In other words, $1.00 out of $100.00. If you went to the grocery store and had only $99.00 to spend instead of $100.00, what would you have to give up? Maybe 1/2 pound of apples? You could get everything on your list, but leave the York peppermint patty behind. That's the difference.

We are going to spend 3.4 trillion dollars this years, but if we spend 44 billion dollars less, everything that you depend on the federal government to do for you will be compromised. Airline travel will be much less safe because air traffic controllers will be let go. Federal prosecutors will have to close cases and criminals will go free. Outgoing Secretary of Defense Panetta said that the Defense Department will furlough 800,000 civilian employees 1 day a week because of the sequester.

All of this is nonsense, and all of it is within the complete control of the president. Have you noticed that every time there is a discussion about reducing the size of government - regardless of whether it's the federal, state, or local government - the president, governor, or mayor immediately tells you that your very lives will be in danger because of these reductions, most of which are so small that they are rounding errors.

We are going to spend $15 billion more this year than last year, after the $44 billion is taken into account. Yet, the only services and programs that can possibly be affected are ones that involve safety - federal criminal prosecutions, food inspections, air safety, etc.

If you had less money to spend this year than last, would you first make your life a bit miserable by turning off all the electricity to your home one week a month, regardless of the weather; or would you spend less at Starbucks? You'd spend less at Starbucks. In other words, you would reduce your spending on the nice little things first, until your expenses matched your income.

Apparently, this is not the way things are done in Washington. The president never mentioned that perhaps the thousands of useless bureaucrats in the EPA might have to be furloughed for a day. Are there no regional offices of the Department of Housing and Urban Development that could possibly be closed one day a week? Is the Federal Maritime Commission so essential that none of its activities could possibly be curtailed a little to save some money? Nope. Air traffic controllers, food inspectors..they need to be furloughed.

When the president spoke, he spoke in front of several police officers and other first responders. These people are paid by cities and counties, not by the federal government. The teachers that he declared would lose their jobs are not paid by the federal government.



The sole purpose of his speech was to scare the pants off you.The president thinks you are an idiot. Is he correct?

Idioms and other expressions I can do without

Few, if any, expressions in common use today are more vile than "giving back to the community". There is no logic to demand that people who have worked hard and made something of themselves be somehow compelled to give back to an amorphous group of people who have not done the same. There is, however, plenty of emotionalism and "feeling", and it makes me ill.

First of all, what is this community? The word necessarily means a pretty large group of people, doesn't it? If the giver is doing something for a narrow and identifiable group, like a church congregation, wouldn't it be appropriate to say that he is giving back to his church (or better yet, that he is sharing his good fortune with his church)? By using this nondescript word "community", the effect is diluted. Community could easily be replaced with society, so the implication of the expression is that the giver is giving back to society, because society made it possible for him or her to achieve success.

That's just garbage. Society, or the community, didn't do squat. The achiever achieved, and he or she may certainly have had assistance along the way. For the achiever to then thank those who gave him or her tangible or intangible support on the way up is noble and thoughtful. But to intimate the achiever owes a duty to repay a "community" or society is sickening. The ones who should repay society are those who take from it - the leeches.

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I'm a dad, a husband, a veteran, and a lawyer. I have opinions and I'm going to share them with you here. I'd like it if you shared yours with me and the rest of the folks who read this blog.