Skip to main content

How To Have Your Cake And Eat It Too – Join the GOP

Who said, “. . . more spending is not what California or this country needs,” and “. . .congressional Democrats and the administration continue to insist that we can spend our way out of this recession and create jobs, but the numbers just don't add up?" A Republican? Right.
And who said, "We don't spend money on defense to create jobs. But defense cuts are certainly a path to job loss, especially among our high-skilled workforces. There is no private sector alternative to compensate for the government's investment?" A Democrat? Wrong! Both comments were made by the same person – Rep. Buck McKeon, R-Calif!
In the first case, Rep. McKeon was speaking about President Obama's $825B stimulus package in 2009. In the second instance, McKeon, now Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, was speaking about the military budget, which faces spending cuts of up to $600B if the bipartisan deficit cutting panel can't find a compromise within the next 18 days. I wonder if he would say the same thing if one of the largest government contractors, Boeing, were not located in his home state.
This also brings up the question: Given that Pentagon spending is as large as that of the next twenty nations combined, how much do we need to spend in order to be safe from such dangerous predators as Kim Jong II of North Korea or Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe?
And getting back to the 2009 stimulus, this past August the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that in the second quarter of this year alone, the spending package increased the number of people employed by between 1 million and 2.9 million.
It seems to me that if either the Federal or state government decides to hire someone to repair a highway, dam, post office, whatever, that person has a job that did not exist before.
But not according to the GOP. Apparently if the government wants to build a war plane, the workers have a job. If the government wants to repair a highway, the workers have a . . . what?
******
My books, “There Are Only Seven Jokes” and “The Spirit Runs Through It” are available in paperback, 

or at the Kindle Store.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

There Are Only Seven Jokes - Introduction

      The statement “There are only seven jokes – all the rest are variations,” has been around for a long time, but no one ever seems to know what the original seven are. I think I have found the solution to the mystery.       The answer is to be found in an article published in the New York Times on May 2, 1909. Entitled “New Jokes? There Are No New Jokes, There Is Only One Joke,” it goes on to say that all jokes are a distortion, and lists seven categories of distortion. Supposedly every joke will fit into one of the categories. I believe that repetition changed the seven categories into the seven jokes.       Each of my next seven blogs will be devoted to exploring one of the categories. In addition, I shall attempt to give an example or two of jokes which I think fit the category.       You must realize that this article appeared over one hundred years ago, so most of the jokes a...
Post a Comment
Read more
The Future of Work This is for folks who don't mind stretching their imagination a bit. Let me review some of the things that are happening in today's world. A recent news article stated that in spite of the decreasing jobless rate, the number of retail jobs has been dropping rapidly. An article in Business Insider calls it a retail apocalypse. According to the article, in the retail industry, "Since October about 89,000 workers in general merchandise stores have lost their jobs, which is more than the number of people employed in the entire US coal industry." ( http://www.businessinsider.com/retail-job-losses-are-hurting-the-economy-2017-4 ). This loss is due to the rapid expansion of online merchandising. But this is only one example of the point I want to make. According to an article in Scientific American, two professors at Oxford University published a study estimating the probability that "702 occupations would soon be computerized out of exist...
1 comment
Read more

Men Never Outgrow Their Love of Toys

     I guess I am no different from most other men – I like gadgets. I know there are some wonderful toys that I am missing, but if I am sure I have no use for an iPhone, xBox, and the like, I don't buy them. And I decided that even though the ultimate toy, my car, is 10 model years old, it's in good shape, and I don't need a new one. However, we are driving from Pennsylvania to Texas next week, so I did spring for a GPS, and it's really fascinating.      I downloaded the owner's manual and after perusing it, sort of (owners' manuals are to use when you can't figure it out otherwise), I entered my home address into the instrument. I had to test that, so I drove a couple of miles, turned around, and hit the “Home” button.      I was a bit disappointed in the results: it got me home OK, but it didn't take the shortcuts I would have taken. It did keep saying “recalculating” a few times, and when I got within a block or two of t...
Post a Comment
Read more