Homer for President

I know this one was supposed to be about oil, but once again, I have been redirected by President Obama.Yesterday, the president announced the details of his groundbreaking plan to reduce the $14 trillion deficit substantially in only 12 years!  How substantially?  (Use your Dr. Evil voice here)  By 4 triiillion dollars.  Wow.  $4 triiiiillion is a lot of money.  Coincidentally approximately the same amount that has been added to the deficit in only two and a half years under Obama.  So, he can add $4 trillion to the deficit in two and a half years.  But cutting the same amount in any less than ten years is irresponsible and cruel.  Anyway, the president that everyone in the mainstream media agrees is the most intelligent president in our history (Thomas Jefferson, what community did he ever organize?) announced his plan yesterday.  He never bothered to introduce a budget for fiscal year 2011, so the extra time he took on this budget really paid off, huh?  It was a riveting speech.  Well, riveting for everyone, except Vice President Joe Biden. Or the lady behind him.  Or pretty much anyone with a brain. 

Upon hearing his speech, I thought immediately of Homer Simpson.  In a flashback episode showing the arrival of his youngest daughter, Maggie, Homer had just left his job at the nuclear plant.  He and Marge had just paid off their debt (ironic, huh?) and he was able to pursue his dream of being a bowling alley pin monkey, even though the salary was lower than he was receiving from Mr. Burns at the nuclear plant.  Of course, Homer excelled at the job and was happier than he had ever been in his life.  When learning about the upcoming birth of Maggie, Homer realized that he couldn't support his growing family on the pin monkey salary.  He first asked his boss at the bowling alley for a raise.  The business couldn't afford to pay a higher salary.  Homer said he was sure he could triple the revenue at the bowling alley, so the owner agreed to a raise if Homer could deliver on the increase in sales.  Homer immediately goes home, puts on his reading glasses and starts studying a copy of Advanced Marketing.  Soon that text is in the trashcan and Homer is studying Basic Marketing.  That book quickly lands in the trashcan as well and our hero is reading the dictionary.  Then the eureka moment hits Homer.  The next scene shows him in the bowling alley parking lot, firing a shotgun into the air, shouting "come bowl here, come bowl here."  Predictably, there was no increase in revenue for the bowling alley, although his promotion did draw a record number of law enforcement officials. Homer was soon back at the dreadful nuclear plant.

Which brings us to our brilliant president.  As presidential adviser and Regulatory Czar, Cass Sunstein said, "there's a little Homer Simpson in all of us."  So President Obama studies and listens to his advisers, and formulates his brilliant plan.  He goes to George Washington University to announce his plan, and all America waits breathlessly to be amazed.  Sort of an economic version of Shock and Awe.  This is going to be brilliantly amazing, if not amazingly brilliant.  So what does the presidential teleprompter announce?  Tax the rich.  The wealthy should pay more.  Tax the rich.  No wonder the VP is snoozing.  We've heard it all before.  Over and over and over and over.

Brilliant.  Maybe President Obama should've been firing a shotgun into the air while chanting his mantra.

Budget Cutting for Idiots, i.e. Congress

Our country is too large to have all its affairs directed by a single government. Public servants at such a distance and from under the eye of their constituents . . . will invite the public agents to corruption, plunder, and waste. . . . What an augmentation of  the field for jobbing, speculating, plundering, office-building, and office-hunting would be produced by an assumption of all the state powers into the hands of the federal government!
                                                         ---Thomas Jefferson

Did you know that  representative Shaddegg from Arizona has introduced the Enumerated Powers Act each year that he has been in the House of Representatives.  The Act would require congress to define exactly which of the 18 enumerated powers the Constitution gives the federal government justifies any law passed.  If nothing else, the act would force congressmen to study the Constitution.  Even after being introduced 15 times, each year since 1995, the Act has yet to make it out of committee.  I'll pause while you get up off the floor.  I know you are shocked.


Hopefully you are recovered now.  Another Texas representative has introduced a resolution that on September 17, Constitution Day; when every school receiving federal funds is required to spend at least part of the day studying the Constitution, Congress do the same.  To repeat, on September 17, all schools receiving federal funds are required to spend at least part of the day studying the Constitution.  Representative Conaway is suggesting that Congress also study the document, you know the one they swore to uphold and defend, on that one day as well.  His committee chairman said that was "the stupidest idea I've ever heard."  And do you know of any school that observes Constitution Day?  Or even knows of its existence?  It's been around since Robert Byrd (Democrat) introduced it in 2004 and it was passed as part of the Omnibus Spending Bill.  


Article I Section 8 of the Constitution lists the 18 enumerated powers.  The 10th Amendment states:  The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

There's the easiest way to cut the federal budget.  Each line of the budget should have a reference to which of the Enumerated Powers justifies the spending.  No Enumerated Power, no funds.  Pretty simple.