SUBLIME NATURE OF THE ESSENTIAL WELL-BEING

The United States continues to stagger along under a growing burden of national debt that grows by more than a trillion dollars every year. Year after year. We are told that all that can be done to reduce the debt is being done. Today, 800,000 federal employees were ruled to be non-essential. In other words, they don't fulfill any role in the government that gives essential service for value. Why are they on the payroll? Why do we have to borrow hundreds of billions of dollars every year from China in order to pay these people to keep coming in to sit when they don't provide essential services?

I have some problems with the entire idea of public service and public service unions. I am willing to pay and richly reward the type of civil servants that we had during the first 100 years of this country. Every single one of those jobs was patronage at its basest and most insidious level. They were sinecures provided by political officeholders and when the officeholder was voted out of office many of the sinecures changed hands.

Through the political mechanisms we allow ourselves in this country, we have once again reached one of the interesting points of democracy.  The Republican-controlled House of Representatives has no constitutional or other obligation to pass a funding bill that includes funding for Obamacare or any other government program. And with their refusal to be dictated to, they have set in motion the means to separate the wheat from the chaff. They have met all of their constitutional obligations by sending a budget to the Senate. For this they are portrayed as the worst kind of low-life scoundrels. So be it.

You would think though, that if there was some particular thing that the Senate or President wanted to be in the budget bill that must originate in the House of Representatives, that they might have tried persuasion, sweet-talk, and some kind of quid pro quo in order to get it included. You'd be wrong. In this enlightened time the Democratic Party's final solution was pretty much, "Fuck you! Pay me!"

That attitude leaves over three million American government employees and countless contractors, twisting in the political winds. Obama tells us that the Armed Forces will be paid but essential government workers are being told today that they must show up and work and they will do so without pay. 800,000 contractors and civil servants were told to go home. This always brings up the question, what do they do? Are they the ones that hound and harry us from their sinecures in the EPA? Are they IRS agents and supervisors? Are they NSA listeners like Snowden? Are they State Department workers giving billions of dollars in aid away every day in Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt and Gaza?

This is the Sequestration on steroids. I think I got that right. Steroids make the swelling go away and cope with skin outbreaks and rashes. Yes, the end is nie.

In the olden times when money got tight, people scrimped. Oh sure, some borrowed, but there was always the chance that Vinnie or Tony were going to come by and explain the meaning of failure to pay your bills to you one bone at a time. It kept people reasonably honest....up until the government decided to let anyone borrow any amount and follow the government's lead about flexible repayment schemes.

The current political struggle has to do with implementation of the 4 year old plan to force you to buy your health insurance, starting today, from government workers (and we wonder if they are essential don't we precious). They've had 3.5 years to get everything polished and shiny and beta tested.

How's that working out for you?