Category Archives: Government & Politics

Federal, State, and Local Government… Taxes, Social Programs, and International Affairs.

Communist News Network…

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Last week I was watching CNN, which is not something I usually do, but the hospital is too cheap to get a decent cable package apparently, although they do charge $10/day for using the TV. Lou Dobbs, who once upon a time was their financial guru, has been running a series of “special reports” under the headline “War on the Middle Class.” Now aside from the obvious political slant of the headline (Fox isn’t the only news channel with an agenda, people), the issue that I have with this particular episode was that it was decrying the lack of a federal response to the “home loan crisis” and calling for a government bailout of people about to go into foreclosure.

As someone who did my homework, read every page of my loan origination documents, asked questions, and bought a house that I could actually afford to make payments on, I am absolutely livid at the suggestion that the US government should subsidize people who either through stupidity or negligence saddled themselves with a mortgage that they could not afford. I used logic and financial analysis to make my decisions on how, when, and where to buy, so I am having a hard time digesting the idea that because I made good decisions, money should come out of my pocket to pick up the tab for those who made bad ones.

This isn’t a war on the middle class in America. This isn’t even the government offering aid to people who found themselves in harm’s way during a natural disaster or terrorist event. This is about people being kicked in the teeth by the free market because they chose poorly. It’s not my responsibility or yours to compensate them for their own bad decisions. Government interference in the market always has unintended consequences and the inevitable bailout of these people sets a dangerous and damning precedent.

A kind of morality play…

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THE SITUATION: You are in Miami, Florida. There is chaos all around you caused by a hurricane with severe flooding. This is a flood of biblical proportions. You are photo-journalist working for a major newspaper, caught in the middle of this epic disaster. The situation is nearly hopeless. You’re trying to shoot career-making photos. There are houses and people swirling around you, some disappearing under the water.

THE TEST: Suddenly you see a woman in the water. She is fighting for her life, trying not to be taken down with the debris. You move closer and she looks familiar.

You suddenly realize it’s Hillary Clinton! At the same time you notice that the raging waters are about to take her under forever.

You have two options:

1) You can save the life of Hillary Clinton, or…
2) You can shoot a dramatic Pulitzer Prize winning photo, documenting the death of one of the world’s most powerful women.

THE QUESTION: “Would you select high contrast color film, or would you go with the classic simplicity of black and white?”

The sounds of freedom…

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There is no more telling sound of freedom than jet noise… particularly the noise from blue and yellow F/A-18 Hornets executing a perfect missing man formation. The Blue Angels are in town for an airshow this weekend and one of the perks of working on base is that we get a 2-day free show as they practice. Hey, it beats queuing up with thousands of West Tennessians on Saturday, so I’m enjoying it. I haven’t decided if I’m going up this weekend to test the stop motion feature on the old camera. It’s a hellish battle between being a hermit and a growing interest in photography. Changes are, being a hermit is going to win.

Requiem…

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I wandered out the front doors of the hotel this morning and looked across Pennsylvania Ave at the flags flying in front of the Wilson Building. It was early, I was nursing my first cup of coffee and cigarette for the day (damn Marriott anyway) and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why the flags were flying at half staff. It didn’t occur to me until 15 minutes later, over a bagel, that today was actually September 11th. Yeah, I actually had to do that math on that one… It doesn’t seem possible that it’s been six years.

It’s only on reflection that I realized the real weight of the day – What it’s come to mean in our history; The blood and treasure that we’ve poured out on the days from then until now; the schism that it has left on our politics in our collective effort to decide what September 11th really means. More painful, perhaps, is the indifference that most now feel towards those who waged unholy war on us on a clear morning that seems both cavernously distant and painfully close. We were not the aggressor, but the victim of a ruthless attack carried out by cowardly men on an innocent population. We’re quick to forget those minutes and hours that seemed to stretch out forever.

I went to see Lincoln tonight. It just seemed fitting somehow. But the words that stuck in my head weren’t those written to bind up our nation’s wounds. They’re still too fresh for that. All along my long walk tonight, I was recalling Churchill’s words from the frosted depths of the Cold War… “We have surmounted all the perils and endured all the agonies of the past. We shall provide against and thus prevail over the dangers and problems of the future, withhold no sacrifice, grudge no toil, seek no sordid gain, fear no foe. All will be well. We have, I believe, within us the life-strength and guiding light by which the tormented world around us may find the harbour of safety, after a storm-beaten voyage.”

Winston would have understood the 21st Century. Sure, we have different clothes and different music, but it’s the same old world. He’d tell us to never give in and to stay the course. He knew that the only way to defeat evil was to pummel it into unquestioned submission. Winston would have understood.

The Glorious Fourth…

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We live in troubled times. Love of country is seen as the exclusive province of the closed-minded and Patriots are derided as jingoistic bombasts. The good that America has done and continues to do in the world is swept under the rug in favor of discussions on where our steps have faltered. The long list of our national accomplishments are pushed aside and only our mistakes are held up to the light of public scrutiny.

Two hundred thirty one years ago, 55 patriots, working under conditions of secrecy and in contravention of the instructions that had brought them together, voted for independence from Great Britain. Those colonials, mistreated and abused by the king’s government, launched the world’s greatest experiment in representative democracy. We fought a great civil war to determine if such a nation could endure. In the century just passed, we fought two world wars to ensure that this legacy of freedom did not perish and a long cold war that pitted America against the forces of an evil empire. Now, America’s bravest sons and daughters stand post in places with names like Kabul and Tikrit, just as their predecessors held the line in the la Drang Valley, at the Chosin Reservoir, in the snows of Bastogne, and the muddy trenches of the Marne.

Today is Independence Day and I remain committed to the proposition that our country, warts and all, remains the last, best hope of earth; that, as it was at the beginning, it is a shining city upon a hill.

The lies we tell ourselves…

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I’m a bit of an oddity in the ranks of the civil service; a fiscal conservative who rails against high taxation and the increased growth of government. This isn’t the first time I have realized the disconnect between thought and action that I live on a weekly basis. I’ve often thought about jumping ship to seek out greener pastures in the private sector, but the reality is even with new pay scales and pay-for-performance initiatives, the federal government is a gravy train for employees. Although similar work in the private sector comes with higher pay, companies that provide a comparable insurance, leave, and retirement package are few and far between. As an employee with nearly 5 years under my belt, I have nearly 4 weeks of annual leave each year (not including time earned by traveling during non-business hours), 10 paid holidays each year, 2 ½ weeks of sick leave per year (that rolls over each year). My health insurance runs around $100/month and the government matches the first 5% of the salary I roll into my retirement plan. Add to that the simple fact that federal employees are nearly impossible to fire as long as they are meeting very minimal standards. Why on earth would anyone leave that kind of benefits package to work for a company that can terminate them at will due to a downturn in the economy or for nearly any other reason (or for no reason at all)?

The federal budget process forces government employees to spend their entire budget by the time the books close in September. There is no reward for an office or an organization that saves money or executes its mission more cost-effectively. In fact, we must spend our entire budget or risk not receiving as much money the following year. We justify the mad dash to spend the “leftover” budget at the end of the fiscal year under the mantra “use it or lose it.” The bureaucracy couches its purchases in terms of being able to meet mission requirements and suddenly the entire office receives new 19-inch flat screen monitors. I’m no less guilty than others. I’ve enjoyed the fruits of this misguided process and cheerfully submit my end-of-year wish list each Fall. From flash drives to cell phones, laptops to desk chairs, anything is fair game in the frenzy of last minute binging.

I’ll confess that I want my new computer every three years. I want the newest cell phone. I want to knock down walls and increase the size of our inner-office empire. The question “do we need these things” never really comes up at the end of the year. The only question on the lips of employees, is “How can we spend it?”

I believe in small, but responsive government. I believe that the bureaucracy is bloated and wasteful. I also believe that the budget process used by the United States government is utterly broken. In the end, the Congress calls the tune when it appropriates the dollars. And the lie I tell myself to make it acceptable is that if I don’t spend it, someone else will.

The heart of the empire…

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It has been years since I have flown directly into Washington. Living in Baltimore, it was always more convenient for me to use BWI. This afternoon was one of those moments that gives even the cynical and jaded bastards among us a moment of pause… following the Potomac north the City spreads out from the Jefferson and Lincoln Memorials in the West (ever stopped to think that the two presidents most identified with “the west” have their memorials on the west end of the Mall?) to the dome of the Capitol in the east. It’s later afternoon and the marble of the official city of Washington is catching the last orange rays of the day’s sun. It absolutely glows. Working here for the better part of four years, you grow a little immune to the charms of this place. You never really stop to look because you’re on a mad dash to the next meeting or trying to get home before the rush hour really gets fired up.

It’s good to be back here, in this place, in the beating heart of the American empire. Of course it’s even better to know that all I have to do is walk downstairs and hail a cab in the morning and someone else will drive me to work, too.

Appropriate areas of federal responsibility… or not so much.

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Beginning this year, the evacuation of pets during declared emergencies will be a national priority for the United States government. That’s right, ladies and gentlemen, Fluffy, Fido, and Aunt Gurtie’s pet python Stretch will be evacuated right along with Ma and Pa Dipshit who were too stubborn to get out of the way of the next hurricane.

Evacuating people, of course, I’ll buy off on that as a legitimate responsibility of government. Preservation of life is precisely one of the major tenants of the social contract that makes government legitimate. And while I know Fluffy, Fido, and Stretch are “like members of the family,” a quick review of your high school biology (that’s right, the good old kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus and species definitions), you’ll quickly be able to determine that they are not, in fact, a member of your family. They are pets and some of them are even downright loveable, but getting them out of harm’s ways is not a legitimate responsibility of the federal government (i.e. your fellow citizens). Ensuring the safety of your family (and your pets) is by in large a personal responsibility. I’m not entirely sure where we lost the thread of individualism in this country, but those of you sitting back, waiting for big daddy government to drive with a horse trailer and travel kennels to do what you should have done are appalling… and downright un-American.