Logical Conclusions

Essays on America: 1998-2013: Volume 1

James E. Dustin

• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781098047184
• Topic: Bildung
• Subtopic: Essays im Bildungswesen

Chapters in this volume include: Chapter 1: American Government 101 Schools are supposed to teach this subject, but schools never teach what actually goes on at the local, state, and national levels. If they did, students would be mightily entertained Chapter 2: Our Weird, Weird World You would not believe how the behavior police want you to act while backpacking in the wilderness and other weirdness. Chapter 3: We Muse on the News So why don't rich people pay more in taxes, how to sell air, and other interesting stuff. Chapter 4: Sports There are only two sports that remain where one can drink while one is playing the sport and other observations. Chapter 5: Dog Tales I live in a town where dogs are so admired that we may give them the right to vote. Chapter 6: Space and Science The next gold rush will occur in outer space, where a single asteroid could be worth $100 trillion. Chapter 7: The Gopher Relays I can't help it. This happens every spring. You almost have to witness this activity to appreciate it. Chapter 8: Useful History What did they do about pirates back in the eighteenth century? Who actually won the Crusades? And honestly, a school forgot about Christmas? Chapter 9: Government Finances If this chapter doesn't frost your eyebrows, you probably don't pay taxes. Chapter 10: We Get Mail A big part of the fun of owning a newspaper is opening the mail. I mean, really. Chapter 11: Diving Us Crazy The days of Route 66 may be ending, and why I don't go abroad. Ever.

Chapter 9

Government Finances

Among the many pellets of wisdom Nancy Pelosi has left along her rabbit trail of quotes is this one in response to suggestions for further cuts in federal spending: “The cupboard is bare. There are no more cuts to make. It’s really important that people understand that.”

That is so patently untrue that I was able to make this one of the longest chapters in this book. All that you will read here is true, all of it comes from reliable and reasonable sources, such as the national press or original reports, and all of it, in my opinion, should be a conversation subject at every dinner table in the nation.

I would be surprised if you don’t read this chapter and immediately say to one of your friends, “You probably never heard this before, but…”

How to Reduce Federal Spending Now

May 31, 2012

Cut something.

Here’s a bumper sticker we should all be carrying on our cars as our message to the president and Congress: Cut something, anything, just to show us you can actually reduce spending somewhere.

I’m tired of congresspeople telling me how they favor trimming federal expenditures, then turning around and voting for $34 billion to bail out the US Postal Service. Is there any failing business that Congress won’t bail out?

Well, Jim, what would you cut?

Let’s make it easy. Let’s start right at the top. Let’s eliminate the pension for ex-presidents. The five living ex-presidents get nearly $200,000 each in pension and expense benefits. That’s not counting secret service protection, health insurance, and other sundries such as free postage for life.

They don’t need it. Former president Bill Clinton got on the lecture circuit and immediately started making from $40,000 to $500,000 per speech. He once delivered 352 speeches in one year. Plus, he got a $12 million book deal to write a tome that even The New York Times panned as being “eye-crossingly dull.”

Former President George W. Bush got a book deal. Former President Jimmy Carter got several book deals. President Obama got $2.5 million in book royalties last year. They don’t need a stipend from the American taxpayer.

And while we’re at it, cut the $400,000 per year the president gets while in office. They don’t need that either. Sitting presidents can fly anywhere they want, stay anywhere they want, eat anything they want, spend any amount they want and either charge it to the American taxpayer or to their political campaign committees.

They get free room and board in a pretty nice house (or actually houses), get health insurance coverage that is better than yours or mine, free transportation with driver or pilot, quite a few servants, cooks, secretaries, and assistants. For what do they need a salary?

If they would follow my advice, I’d have saved the taxpayers about $1.2 million a year already. Not much in Washington terms, but quite a lot of money for those of us living in not-Washington.

Want more? Cut Congressional salaries, expenses, and pensions. Few in the work force qualify for a full pension after five years on the job, but congresspeople do. They can start collecting $50,000 per year at age sixty-two after only five years on the job…no matter what kind of job they did.

Congressional salary (at this writing) is $174,000 per year with an expense budget of $900,000 per year to hire up to eighteen staff people. They get $250,000 for office expenses and travel. They get free postage up to 8,200 square feet of office space paid for by you, the taxpayer. They get a $40,000 furniture allowance. They get access to federal health insurance and life insurance programs plus a 401(k) opportunity.

Cut it. If we cut $100,000 per year in perks for every member of Congress, we save $43.5 million per year.

Do you want to talk about real money? Stop buying land. An example: the federal government uses offshore drilling fees to finance the purchase of land for recreational use, as if we didn’t already have enough. In Colorado, over 36 percent of the land area is federal land open to the public. Nationally, the number is nearly 30 percent, or about 650 million acres. That doesn’t count land open to the public administered by state and local governments.

This year, the feds would like to spend $41.6 million to add to national forest lands in fifteen states. That will be twenty thousand more acres that come off the private property tax rolls and end up in federal hands, and those federal hands will have to pay more than once for the land—once to buy it, and again and again in Payments in Lieu of Taxes (PILT) annually to local governments.

So we have the feds once again addressing a monetary dilemma by reducing income and raising expenses. It’s just maddening. Is there a single solitary soul in Washington DC, who is aware that we continue to spend $1.3 trillion more in a single year than we are taking in?

Addendum: Let’s tax millionaires at a minimum 30 percent rate. That will bring in an extra $4.6 billion per year. That $4.6 billion would pay for 1.5 days of the borrowing by the US, or cut the annual deficit to about $1.295 trillion instead of $1.3 trillion.

Recommended Reading: The Pig Book

July 13, 2006

The US House of Representatives last week declared their independence from fiscal sanity once again by overwhelmingly defeating a proposal to cut 1 percent from a major appropriation bill. A single percentage point represents very little in terms of money. The proposal was a symbolic move on the part of fiscal conservatives to make a point. The motion failed by a huge margin.

Although the proposal comes up regularly, I noted this one because it came up about the same time as the latest Congressional Pig Book has come out. The Congressional Pig Book is published annually by Citizens Against Government Waste. It details specific appropriations by Congress that it considers pure pork. This year’s edition identifies about $29 billion in federal spending that we probably could have done without. Some examples:

• $13.5 million for the International Fund for Ireland, money that helped finance the World Toilet Summit
• $500,000 for the Sparta Teapot Museum in North Carolina
• $1 million for the Waterfree Urinal Conservation Initiative
• $500,000 for the Arctic Winter Games
• $5.6 million for the Gallo Center to study basic neuroscience and the effects of alcohol and drug abuse on the brain. I could actually handle this question—alcohol and drug abuse is not good for the brain. However, this appropriation and an additional $8.2 million appropriation for blood alcohol testing equipment came in under a Department of Defense appropriation bill. Are they having a problem in the Pentagon?
• $1 million for the Gaming Technology Software Initiative.
• $300,000 for the Oquirrh Institute—founded in Utah “to shine early light on public policy initiatives and establish innovative solutions.” That sounds like stuff I used to insert in my term papers when I had nothing of relevance to say, but according to the Congressional Pig Book, this institute is supposed to be financed by government and private grants. As of the book’s printing, private entities had contributed $500.
• $3 million to the Animal Waste Management Laboratory in Kentucky, and $690,000 to a similar effort in West Virginia.
• $234,000 for the National Wild Turkey Federation (who knew that turkeys were a constituency for congresspeople?).
• $6.4 million for wood utilization research in seven states, bringing the total to $86 million spent for that purpose in the last several years.
• $4 million for the Center for Excellence for Disaster Management and Humanitarian Assistance given the response to Hurricane Katrina. One wonders where this money went.

All this would seem to be a fertile field for investigative reporters.

The Pig Book notes that many of these projects and studies that get funds have been the recipient of government grants for many years. One assumes that the people who do these studies are supposed to produce something at some point in time, but they don’t. The Oquirrh Institute, for instance, has no completion date or deadline to complete whatever it is doing.

The top pork producer again this year was US Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, who scored the $500,000 for the Arctic Winter Games. Alaska got $489 per capita to rank No. 1 again. This is also the state that got $229 million to build a bridge from the mainland to an island inhabited by fifty people.

To put all this in perspective, a Forest Service employee said recently that the appropriation for spraying against beetles in the Medicine Bow—Routt National Forest got cut to $200,000 from $800,000 for this fiscal year.

See the above reference to $86 million for wood util...