Interesting topic came up....

[Stosh]

What one must always remember about the rules, someone makes them up, whether it be the Legislature or a School Board or even some sports federation and as long as everyone lives by the rule of law, everyone SHOULD be happy, but there are always a few on the extreme fringe out there that can't accept it and are basically blind to the anarchy and chaos they somehow feel they need to impose on others.

 

Well if these people get in there and mess around, there's consequences.  On the sports playing field it is generally benign and those that want to play by the rules just have to take their ball and go home to find a place where the nay-sayers won't find them for a while.  But there are more serious situations that must be followed and we have some serious rules to control the situation with.  At best there are those that drive consistently 5 mph over the limit thinking there's nothing wrong with that.  These people are blind and arrogant in their attitude towards the law and the safety of others.  Others are self righteous perfectionists that at worst are probably just annoying.

 

But then there's what I call the blind hypocrites.  They protest and complain about a certain issue while participating in its perpetuation!?!  For example, the company I used to work for was international in nature.  I met people, literally, from all over the world.  I looked at that as a nice perk  About 1/3 of my family is bi-lingual from Korean to Chinese, to Norwegian to Australian.  Sure wish my Australian nephew would work on his English, though.  Nice guy, but c'mon, can't understand a word of English!    Racially we are a mix from white, to black-Korean, to Korean, to Chinese, to mixed, etc. And yet there are those out there that call me racist.  I have no idea what criteria they are using to come to that conclusion.  If I don't hold the door for a black person, I'm a racist.  If I do hold the door for them, I"m a patronizing racist.  Go figure.  Christians who don't serve homosexuals in their bakery are chastised, demonized and criminalized.  Yet rock stars and sports federations think nothing of not serving the entire state of North Carolina who is protecting it's citizens and no one points out the hypocrisy.  What's with that?  

 

Hypocrisy flourishes in a polarized society.  People only see one side of the issues and are deaf and blind to the other side.  They are the enemy.  Is this not the same dynamic we faced 150 years ago?  Slavery had been around since the dawn of time,  Now all of a sudden it became a demonic, immoral evil that needed to be removed.  So, they discussed it for many years before taking up arms at which time millions of lives in this country were forever marked with sadness and sorrow.  But now that's settled.

 

Oh, wait, 100 years later they had to address the racial issue and make all sorts of noise, parade around with their signs and demonize the bigots of the world.  We made massive law changes to address the issue.  Now that's settled

 

 Oh, wait, we didn't really fix anything and we're going to drag out the old play-book and run this whole issue out into the public again and demonize our enemies yet once again.

 

Intolerance, bigotry and hypocrisy are running rampant in a polarized society.  Heck, we can't even get our own self-dedicated Scouts and Scouters to follow the Oath and Law.  If we all believe in the values of Scouting as a good and positive thing for our people, why is it we continue to promote polarization, hypocrisy, bigotry, and intolerance of other Scouts and Scouters?

 

What am I "seeing" that others aren't or am I just fooling myself by "seeing things" out there that really don't exist.

 

What rule-book are we using today and what game is it we're supposed to be playing?

[Beavah]

Over the course of the history of the US, what was once a small Federal government established by our Constitution has now exploded into a bloated bureaucracy that can't control itself let alone it's citizenry.  It used to be the creators, the manufacturers, the builders, the visionaries that build upon the previous generations, now it is only the destructive forces of litigation and fear of litigation that dominate the countryside.

 

One cannot legislate morality, There's supposed to be a separation between church and state, but the Christian-Judeo code of morality still dominates and Sharia with it's totally different code has a valid argument.  So why is the government in the religion business?  Because it likes to stick it's nose into everything a millimeter at a time.  Kinda like the frog and kettle of water thingy.

 

It's going to take a miracle to reverse the process because one has to stop doing what's being done and go in the opposite direction.  With the continued loss of freedom, in order for the progression into more loss, the current processes have to be stopped. If the people want more freedom, the processes have to be reversed. 

 

Lincoln may be correct, the experiment set forth by our Founding fathers may not be able to sustain itself.  Nothing at the hands of people lasts very long and the process of change is majorly faster than it has been at any time in history.

 

If it hurts to keep banging one's head against the brick wall, .... stop doing it. 

 

Yah, hmmm....

 

Not to put too fine a point on it @@Stosh, but yeh do know that da number of folks employed by da federal government has not been goin' up, right?   In fact, as a percentage of da employed population of the country, the number of federal workers is near an all-time low.  Not sure where all these bloated bureaucrats are hidin'.  Are you? (http://www.businessinsider.com/how-big-is-our-government-2012-7?op=1)

 

Try this as an exercise, eh?  Name who you would cut.   Da Pentagon has perhaps our biggest bureaucracy.  Are yeh cuttin' them? Goin' to go back to our pre-Civil War small government and disband da federal army?  State militias will handle our worldwide defense like da good ol' days?

 

Goin' to cut da FAA and leave airline safety up to da corporations who would profit off of makin' it less safe?   Goin' to leave food and water safety up to da locals who try to save a few bucks and deliver leaded water to all their constituents?   Goin' to trust da bankers to self-regulate?  Do yeh want to trust da Chinese manufacturer to self-police their product safety? 

 

The only substantive increases in federal spending (but not workers) have been in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.   Can yeh explain to me how those have curtailed our freedoms?   Seems like they've mostly kept elderly folks healthier and out of poverty.

 

Now I'm a conservative fellow by nature, eh?  So I reckon we do have some problems with a dysfunctional Congress that can't pass a balanced budget even in good times.  Started with da notion of goin' off to war while cuttin' taxes.  As a conservative fellow and a patriot, that never made any sense to me.  If we're goin' off to war, that's when we increase taxes to pay for the war and for care of our veterans.  We all pitch in and sacrifice together, eh?    Had we done that with a fuel tax way back in 2001, America and the world would be far more secure.... and more energy independent to boot.

 

Yah, yah,  I'll also grant yeh that sometimes federal regulations look a bit like da G2SS or da G2A, eh?  Takin' hundreds of pages to say stuff that's mostly obvious but to curtail freedom in some odd ways.   But if we can't run a kids' program without many hundreds of pages of "rules" and an occasional squirt gun ban, I reckon it's a bit unfair to blame da FAA for takin' hundreds of pages to set da rules for all of domestic air travel.

 

Beavah

[Stosh]

Yah, hmmm....

 

Not to put too fine a point on it @@Stosh, but yeh do know that da number of folks employed by da federal government has not been goin' up, right?   In fact, as a percentage of da employed population of the country, the number of federal workers is near an all-time low.  Not sure where all these bloated bureaucrats are hidin'.  Are you? (http://www.businessinsider.com/how-big-is-our-government-2012-7?op=1)

 

I guess I'm not myopic enough to measure the "size of the government" only in terms of payroll.  A better measurement is the amount of intrusion and influence power the government wields in society.  The number of Gestapo agents and SS troops in Germany were quite small in comparison to the rest of the German government, but one can easily see the influence and impact their control they had over the general populace at the time.  One can't help but notice the number of EPA regulations, Presidential Executive Orders and IRS rulings steadily emitting from DC that have nothing to do with elected presented efforts of the Legislature where rules and laws are supposed to be created.  These efforts are far more destructive to the citizens than adding a government worker here or there on the payroll.

 

Try this as an exercise, eh?  Name who you would cut.   Da Pentagon has perhaps our biggest bureaucracy.  Are yeh cuttin' them?

 

The armed protection of this country and it's citizens is explicitly mandated in the US Constitution.  That would be pretty hard to justify.

 

Goin' to go back to our pre-Civil War small government and disband da federal army? 

 

At the beginning of the war there were 14,000 US Federal soldiers.  Within days of the call of the president, there were well over 75,000 men in arms headed off to war.  

 

State militias will handle our worldwide defense like da good ol' days?

 

The Big Red One (National Guard from Wisconsin) fought from North Africa all the way to the heartland of Germany in WW II.  They were also called up back in the 1960's during the Cold War.  We aren't talking "the good ol' days".  The Wisconsin State National Guard still gets deployed to the Middle East on a regular basis.  So I would have to answer your question yes, the state militias continue to handle our worldwide defense yet today.

 

Goin' to cut da FAA and leave airline safety up to da corporations who would profit off of makin' it less safe?  

 

How many people we talking here? 

 

Goin' to leave food and water safety up to da locals who try to save a few bucks and deliver leaded water to all their constituents?  

 

Aren't these the same people who want to outlaw church potlucks?  And if someone is dying of cancer, why does the government have to approve the drug before the citizen has the choice of taking it?  We have a history of people going to foreign countries for drugs and medical treatments because if they were to take the drugs without the government's blessing they would be criminals.  And why are drugs in Canada half the price of those in America for the same drug?  Why aren't citizen officials regulating these things and instead are sitting around doing nothing waiting for the federal government to do their job?  They have been stripped of their powers by the bureaucratic federal government, that's why.  It used to be school boards that regulated the school systems, now it's the federal government which Constitutionally they are not mandated to do, but have taken over anyway.

 

Goin' to trust da bankers to self-regulate? 

 

If the people don't trust bankers they shouldn't be doing business with them. 

 

Do yeh want to trust da Chinese manufacturer to self-police their product safety? 

 

No one's twisting anyone's arm to buy the Chinese products, people do, they take their chances to save a buck or two.

 

The only substantive increases in federal spending (but not workers) have been in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.   Can yeh explain to me how those have curtailed our freedoms?   Seems like they've mostly kept elderly folks healthier and out of poverty.

 

The nanny state has taken money away from the people because they can't be trusted with their savings, their insurance and their welfare so the government mandates they do it for them.  That is the removal of choice and the freedom to run ones own life for good or bad.  If all these things were optional, they would not be the big bloated bureaucracies they are today.  So why is the government in competition with the free market?  Oh, because they took it over, made it a monopoly and run the competition out of business by government decree. 

 

When you get to 66 years of age and get your Social Security check, remember that for every dollar you put into that government program, you will be getting 25-cents back.  If one were to have been required by law to invest in a personal 401-k/503-b everyone would have retired a millionaire, It would have required no government bureaucracy, only a legislative law and a our elderly people wouldn't be living on the pittance handed out by the government of the money they took.

 

Medical insurance?  EVERYONE is now paying higher premiums than before the debacle of Obama"care".  Those that couldn't afford it before still can't, but are now fined by the government for not having it.  How does this make sense.  All the government needed to do is establish a small department that would handle the insurance premium assistance for the 14% of the population that couldn't afford healthcare or didn't qualify for it.  Leave the other 86% alone!  They were doing fine!  The government's socialist goal of having everyone the same is great, now we all suffer together.

 

You want an example?  Try a National Sales Tax or a Flat Rate Income Tax..... Rich people buy more, they pay more sales tax.  Who handles the process, the government?  No the business does.  They already are doing that for local, county and state tax.  Poor people don't pay as much taxes, but they will and already do on a state level and no one's complaining one bit!  Flat rate?  Everyone that works has 4% taken out of their wages, no loopholes, no exceptions. Need a big bureaucracy to handle that?  No, the business payroll departments are already doing that with the medical and SS crappola already.  The IRS could be shrunk down to a handful of auditors in a heartbeat!

 

Now I'm a conservative fellow by nature, eh?  So I reckon we do have some problems with a dysfunctional Congress that can't pass a balanced budget even in good times. 

 

Maybe the budget is out of control!

 

Started with da notion of goin' off to war while cuttin' taxes. 

 

Which goes hand in hand with cutting government bureaucracy and waste.

 

As a conservative fellow and a patriot, that never made any sense to me.  If we're goin' off to war, that's when we increase taxes to pay for the war and for care of our veterans.  We all pitch in and sacrifice together, eh?   

 

And what is the percentage of expenditure of the Federal budget is the armed forces?  And why in war time does the other percentage need more money?

 

Had we done that with a fuel tax way back in 2001, America and the world would be far more secure.... and more energy independent to boot.

 

If the government would get out of competition with private business, private business would have the funds to R&D new energy sources at a cheaper price.  They are always looking for a profit, but then again, so is the government, yet they don't do anything to earn it, they just take it.

 

Yah, yah,  I'll also grant yeh that sometimes federal regulations look a bit like da G2SS or da G2A, eh?  Takin' hundreds of pages to say stuff that's mostly obvious but to curtail freedom in some odd ways.   But if we can't run a kids' program without many hundreds of pages of "rules" and an occasional squirt gun ban, I reckon it's a bit unfair to blame da FAA for takin' hundreds of pages to set da rules for all of domestic air travel.

 

And where does one ward off these G2SS and G2A? and all the other regulations?  Probably wouldn't need them if it wasn't for the lucrative governmental court systems with bloated case loads of frivolous law suits making the system quite profitable for the judges and lawyers alike.

 

But that woudn't be fair to some people.  Well long before I was even born life wasn't fair and long after I'm gone, it still isn't going to be fair.  That's kinda the way life is.  Learn to live with it or be miserable.  Remember freedom always boils down to a choice.

 

Beavah

[Beavah]

Yah, hmmm....

 

A lot of stuff there, eh?  

 

I'm an old fellow, but I'm not one of da doom-and-gloom, the-country-is-dyin' critters.   I think yeh make some fine points, @@Stosh, but there are other fine points to be made as well.  All things in balance.

 

For example, da Constitution does not really allow for a standing army, eh?  To quote James Madison "The means of defence against foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home."  That's why appropriations for the Army are limited to two years, unlike any other appropriation.   Small-government anti-Federalists like Jefferson were always opposed to havin' a standing army.  While we have used da National Guard overseas for the Middle East Wars, anybody who's been around the last 15 years knows we pretty much abused da guard and reserves.   God bless those servicemen and women, but we were awfully unfair to 'em in many ways.  Lots of families suffered who disproportionately bore the burden for our defense.

 

There is a bit of caveat emptor when it comes to bankin' or buyin' food or jumpin' on an airline, eh?   At the same time, I don't reckon da average citizen has the time or expertise to evaluate da derivative investments of their bank or the bacterial count in their salad or da maintenance operation of the airline servin' their town.    Even if they did, they wouldn't have any time left over to work their own business, eh?   That's why We the People and our representatives over the years have voted to hire experts in bankin' or food production or aviation to set rules and monitor those industries.   That enables all of us to worry less about it, eh?  Which in turn makes us economically more productive.   We can ship our stuff by air or fly to a business meeting without worryin' that da engine will fall off, and that's a good thing.  It makes us more free, not less. 

 

In fact, when we deregulate we find out that da bankers have been gamblin' our money in da markets,  eh?  Private individuals and private ratings agencies didn't catch 'em.  We want to see 'em punished.   Rightly so, I reckon.  We want the laws back.  We don't really want to have to spend our time and money suing the bank for years in da hope of gettin' a bit of our cash back.  We really don't want to have to bail 'em out to prevent a financial meltdown.  That's not "freedom".  That is "private business" though, eh?  Private business is often driven by short-term profits.

 

So I'm really curious about what yeh would choose to cut, eh?  Where's the "bureaucracy and waste"?

 

Here are the big ticket items:

 

Medicare/Medicaid: 28%

Social Security: 25%

Defense: 16%

Veterans:  4%

Transportation: 4%

Food & Agriculture: 4%

 

That's over 80% of federal expenditures, eh?   Da U.S. government is essentially an insurance company with an Army.  

 

Yah, there's a bit of waste here and there, and there are some goofy lawsuits here and there, eh?   People bein' people, they're sometimes not perfectly efficient and they sometimes get into disagreements over silly stuff.   When yeh get right down to it, though, I reckon we want folks to take their silly disputes to court, though, rather than take 'em into their own hands.  I reckon we want da bank inspector to be out there, too.

 

Beavah

[Cambridgeskip]

The joy of zero tolerance.

 

Here in the UK we have some draconian knife laws that were brought in as a result of some nasty incidents in the 1990s. In short they say that it is illegal to have a knife about your person in a public place (which includes scout campsites for these purposes) unless you have a good reason for doing so. An exception is made for knives of 3 inches or less, that don’t lock and that fold away.

 

So if I take my knife (which locks) to scouts on a Thursday night and forget to take it out of my bag before going to work on Friday morning I am committing a criminal offence. End of story. I work in an office, I have no reason to have a knife with me. I can end up with a jail sentence.

 

Hence when scouts get knives one of the first things they end up getting told is not how to use it safely or keep it sharp but how to not get arrested. It’s absurd.

[NJCubScouter]

By the way, @@Beavah in other forms of government, the duties have checks and balances to regulate and keep everyone on the reservation.  School Boards don't seem to have that system applied to them.  They make the rules, they have the administration and employees execute those rules and they adjudicate them when they wish.  That is NOT a Constitutional system in America.  It's something someone made up along the way.

I guess I should first acknowledge that the school board I was a member of was not in the state where Stosh lives, it is in the state where I live. So the laws might be different. But in my experience, the school board probably had more "checks and balances" applied to it than any other level of government. State law covered most of the "decisions" we were asked to make, and even in areas like student discipline all of our decisions could be appealed to the state Commissioner of Education. And that is not an "empty" right; I would say somewhere around half the decisions involving students (including special education matters and disciplinary matters) do get appealed.

 

And I don't even want to start on how many people were looking over our shoulders on financial and budgeting matters. Not that I'm complaining, of course. This is the public's money we're talking about and the public has a right to make sure it is spent wisely. But the scrutiny was not consistent, meaning we had MORE levels of government messing around with our budget than any other level of government. There were more than enough "checks and balances."

[TAHAWK]

"Not to put too fine a point on it @Stosh, but yeh do know that da number of folks employed by da federal government has not been goin' up, right?   In fact, as a percentage of da employed population of the country, the number of federal workers is near an all-time low.  Not sure where all these bloated bureaucrats are hidin'.  Are you? (http://www.businessi...ent-2012-7?op=1)"

 

I know what you mean by "all time low."  At about 22,000,000, it's the all time low since 2008.   (The article you cite has numbers that do not agree with the numbers published currently by the Office of Personnel and Management.. https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/data-analysis-documentation/federal-employment-reports/historical-tables/total-government-employment-since-1962/ )   Must be "New Math."

 

"Try this as an exercise, eh?  Name who you would cut.."

 

The Department of Education.  A good start.

 

"State militias will handle our worldwide defense like da good ol' days? "

 

In part, it's what we are trying by using the National Guard (FKA the "militia") as front-line forces.

 

"Goin' to leave food and water safety up to da locals who try to save a few bucks and deliver leaded water to all their constituents? "

 

That is what the USEPA did for months:  http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2016/01/12/epa-stayed-silent-flints-tainted-water/78719620/

We need someone to keep an eye on all the bureaucrats, but real journalism is dying out.

 

"Goin' to trust da bankers to self-regulate? "

 

No, we trust them to cheat - and to buy almost every politician in sight regardless of party.  The feds have been doing a great job right?  The really prevented the scams right?  And not one indictment by the feds of the leaders of the mortgage loan fraud after the facts came out.  Fines to be paid by stockholders of the offending companies and the big sorts rock on.

 

"The only substantive increases in federal spending (but not workers) have been in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.   Can yeh explain to me how those have curtailed our freedoms?   Seems like they've mostly kept elderly folks healthier and out of poverty."

 

Sure.  Federal dollars always come with strings attached.  Go along with nonlegislated regulations or no money.  More money = less freedom.

 

"Now I'm a conservative fellow by nature, eh?  So I reckon we do have some problems with a dysfunctional Congress that can't pass a balanced budget even in good times."

 

Pretty sad, is it not?   But the Executive Branch (or is it the Monarchy) should not be left out of the story of this mess.  Both sides need to give.

 

"As a conservative fellow and a patriot, that never made any sense to me.  If we're goin' off to war, that's when we increase taxes to pay for the war and for care of our veterans.  We all pitch in and sacrifice together, eh? "

 

Hitler, IIRC, called it "guns and butter "  Lyndon called it "The great Society" - one that could fight a war and greatly increase social welfare spending.  

 

"Had we done that with a fuel tax way back in 2001, America and the world would be far more secure.... and more energy independent to boot.."

 

​That would be an increased fuel tax, right?  It's  18.4 cents per gallon for gasoline and 24.4 cents per gallon for diesel and brings in far less money than it did when last raised decades ago when 15 mpg was good.

 

 

As for the thousands of pages of new federal rules each year, the feds do about as well as others bureaucracies when it comes to the rules being well understood by those that pass them.  Remember Obama Care - "We'll have to see what the legislation provides after we pass it."  We rely too much on the unelected bureaucrats, not the supposed law-makers.

[CalicoPenn]

 

So I'm really curious about what yeh would choose to cut, eh?  Where's the "bureaucracy and waste"?

 

Here are the big ticket items:

 

Medicare/Medicaid: 28%

Social Security: 25%

Defense: 16%

Veterans:  4%

Transportation: 4%

Food & Agriculture: 4%

 

That's over 80% of federal expenditures, eh?   Da U.S. government is essentially an insurance company with an Army.  

 

Yah, there's a bit of waste here and there, and there are some goofy lawsuits here and there, eh?   People bein' people, they're sometimes not perfectly efficient and they sometimes get into disagreements over silly stuff.   When yeh get right down to it, though, I reckon we want folks to take their silly disputes to court, though, rather than take 'em into their own hands.  I reckon we want da bank inspector to be out there, too.

 

Beavah

 

I think folks already know I'm not a politically conservative creature - run more towards centrism and moderate though since classical conservatism seems to have given way to far right conservatism, I'm probably considered a liberal leftist (though I prefer Moderate Socialist Libertarian Conservative Progressive Communist Liberal Centrist myself).

 

So just getting that out of the way.

 

Let's remember that when it comes to that list of big ticket items - the two largest - Social Security and Medicare also have their own separate taxes to fund them so if we cut them, we also cut those taxes, and we'll certainly cut the debt by a few trillion (about 4 1/2 trillion of our debt is actually our Social Security and Medicare savings - they're in the form of non-tradable government securities - both programs are funded out a couple of decades give or take a few years - and the US Government doesn't open up savings accounts) But it doesn't really affect the budget.  So cutting those programs doesn't really affect the deficit (except by cutting interest payments which are currently about 2.3% for a 30-year security).

 

So that leads to cutting elsewhere - so where would I cut?

 

I would start by cutting the US Marine Corps (I'll wait a sec while you all catch your breath after that big gasp, or clean your screen and keyboard from the liquid you just spit up).  No don't get me wrong - I have nothing against the US Marine Corps.  They're a fine organization - they're historical - they've been a great part of the history of the US.  They are also redundant.  We have a ground force - the US Army.  Do we really need a second one?  We have an Air Force - and there are also pilots in the Army, Navy and Coast Guard.  Do we need Marine Corps pilots too?  We have special operations units in the Army and Navy.  I know a lot of folks like to say all Marines are special forces but even the Marine Corps has a special operation force.  This is not about disliking the Marine Corps - it's about removing an unnecessary redundancy.  Don't want it to be the Marine Corps?  Fine - make it the US Army.  Either one will do.

 

Next, I would cut most of the TSA.  It's security theater and most of the functions should be privatized, the way it used to be.  I would, however, keep a much smaller Inspector General type group for TSA - the private sector can do all the actual work (paid for by the airports and airlines) but regulated by a TSA group that works a bit like the FAA or the FCC.  The TSA makes the regs and creates the requirements - the private companies have to follow them - or lose their licenses to work in airports, etc.  As part of that, though - I would require all commercial planes to be re-fitted with heavy duty security doors for the flight deck.

 

Next, I'm cutting the Bureau of Indian Affairs - it's time we grew up and started accepting that Indian Tribes are sovereign, that Reservations are sovereign, and that they don't need to be overseen by BIA agents.  Most functions of the BIA can be handled by other agencies that are already set up to provide those functions.  Any function that can't be transferred probably isn't needed.

 

My last initial action would be to change the Department of Energy to the Department of Science and Technology.  Moved to this new department would be NASA, the CDC, the National Institute for Science, NOAA,  - anything to do with Science and Technology would be moved here - with a mandate that they share resources to reduce costs. 

 

That is how I at least would get started.

[Beavah]

Hiya @@TAHAWK,

 

I think da article meant that it's close to an all time low as number of federal employees per number of employed Americans.  Not absolute number.  Da number of folks in government should be expected to increase in proportion to da general population, eh?   More people means yeh need more police; more air travel means yeh need more sky marshals and FAA inspectors, etc.

 

The federal Department of Education wasn't on my list because it's an even smaller slice of da pie, eh?   Much of the DOE funding is for Pell Grants for college, plus the student loan program.   With China and Russia and Europe happily paying full tuition for its qualified students to go to college (and often to come to da U.S. for their degree), you want to cut our very limited funding?   Da Chinese are already eatin' our lunch.  How much farther behind to yeh want da U.S. to get?   The only other moderately significant items are for special education.   Do yeh want to cut all the education' funding for disabled and special needs kids in da country?

 

I certainly agree with yeh that da financial regulators were bought off or underfunded, and that da bankers and other lobbyists love huge legislation like Dodd-Frank and the ACA because with 2000+ pages of legislation there are lots and lots of loopholes.  That was Congress, though, not the "bureaucrats".   It's hard to work for da people when you're bein' paid by the lobbyists.   Simple laws and regulation like the old Glass-Steagall Act work a lot better.  

 

At the same time, I don't understand what you're proposin' for the Big Three:  Social Security, Medicare/aid, and Defense.   Yeh can't get to a balanced budget without restructurin' those, eh?   So what's the plan?

 

Yah, I'm all in favor of an increased fuel tax.   It mystifies me why we let the Saudis and other enemies periodically destroy our domestic production and conservation efforts by drivin' the cost of gas down.  It also mystifies me why we try to tell car companies what to build with CAFE regulations instead of just increasin' the tax on fuel and lettin' the market decide.  Maybe people will buy more fuel-efficient cars, or maybe they'll move closer to work and buy a bike, or maybe they'll telecommute more and buy a big honking truck.      We could increase da fuel tax and in one blow we'd help the environment, help domestic manufacturing by makin' fuel prices more stable and relieving 'em of regulation, pay for infrastructure and our war costs, and drive our various petro-dictator enemies (Russia, Iran, etc.) into bankruptcy.

 

Seems simple.

 

Congress has to act for that, eh?  As close as I can tell, Congress is no longer interested in governin'.   Just winning the lobbyist gravy-train.

 

Beavah

Edited April 22, 2016 by Beavah

[NJCubScouter]

While I am obviously well aware that many of our threads veer off-topic, I think it is especially remarkable that this thread started out being about what reasons justify expelling a Scout from a troop, and is now about... whatever multiple topics it is now about.

[Sentinel947]

While I am obviously well aware that many of our threads veer off-topic, I think it is especially remarkable that this thread started out being about what reasons justify expelling a Scout from a troop, and is now about... whatever multiple topics it is now about.

 

You think that's bad? @@Stosh, @@Krampus, @@Beavah, and I are having the same discussion across like 3 threads, and we've been having it for almost a week!!!! 

[qwazse]

.... Do we need Marine Corps pilots too?  We have special operations units in the Army and Navy.  I know a lot of folks like to say all Marines are special forces but even the Marine Corps has a special operation force. ...

Boots on the ground tell me they would not get resupplied if it weren't for Marine pilots willing to fly craft where Army and Navy pilots won't.

Maybe there is a way to consolidate, but there is no reason to suspect it will be budget reducing.

 

@@Beavah, remember when Clinton was first running, he floated a BTU tax that would replace income? Couldn't convince middle America that it would save them money or paperwork.

 

@@NJCubScouter -- fun with tangents.

Edited April 22, 2016 by qwazse

[Stosh]

While I am obviously well aware that many of our threads veer off-topic, I think it is especially remarkable that this thread started out being about what reasons justify expelling a Scout from a troop, and is now about... whatever multiple topics it is now about.

 

Oh contrare, mon ami @@NJCubScouter, As the OP of the thread, I titled it, "Interesting topic came up.....", I purposely put it in the I&P section, and behold!  TA DAAAA! out of 132 posts every single one of them has been on topic, unlike many of the other threads.   

[Krampus]

How about we leave the military ideas to those who've been involved in those institutions, shall we?

 

I don't want someone who has never been involved in military Ops telling me who will resupply me or cover my tuckas when I need it.

 

Different branches run different missions. I wouldn't call on one group for strategic air support and I would call the other for S&R. Same as you wouldn't call a brain surgeon to remove your prostate, and you don't want your Urologist doing brain surgery. Sure they all went to medical school and they all deal with your body, but...

[TAHAWK]

The whole A-10 vs. F-35 vs, A-??  mess is the military arguing to civilians who control the spending, although fortunately some of the civilians were military at one time (to the Air Force's dismay).