Just give it a try

What kills me is the people who say that the USA ought to just give Obama's budget and social programs a try.

"How do you know what's going to happen? We haven't tried it yet," they say.

So someone hands you a can of a brand new synthetic gasoline and suggests you try it out by pouring it all over your house and lighting a match. Hey, it might not work.

What if it does?

I'm not afraid of socialism failing; I'm afraid of it succeeding.

Here are two things:

1.) You know how ticked you are -- and me, too -- about giving Citibank 18 thousand-kazillion dollars, and then they use it for a party in Vegas? OK, suppose your neighbor pays your mortgage or takes care of your health care expenses. And then you don't mow your lawn often enough or you smoke cigarettes or pig out on fudge brownies. Isn't that a slap in their faces? After all, they've given you all that money, at a huge sacrifice to themselves, and you just don't seem to appreciate it, and even do things to make a mockery of it.

That's one chief way you lose your freedom via socialism. You give your neighbors control over your life. After all, they're paying for it.

We see that in health care already. First, there's the one-size-fits-all mind-set that says doctors can do only treatments A, B, and C for certain ailments, and the government is only going to pay $.45 for each procedure. That tends to seriously limit your and your doctor's options, as well as driving you both into bankruptcy. But the government has a duty and obligation to control it, right? Because after all, the taxpayers are paying for it.

Of course, then the government has to launch the Bureau of Spying on Every Citizen All the Time, and that, too, costs money. But, on the plus side, they'll be hiring!

2.) If the USA as a nation decides to saddle the next three or four generations with an apparently unlimited amount of debt, and with tools to rack up more and more debt every second.... There's no looking back. The house has burned down. Too late to do much about it now. When was the last time you ever heard about the government actually shutting down a government agency?

Trouble is, the prez or congress or someone says, Yeah, let's create a bureau to analyze the causes for why panty hose only seem to last six hours. Well, whoever's running that agency (no doubt a heavy donor to the party in power) has to hire a staff, and they have to set up satellite offices all over the country and hire more staff. Pretty soon, they've got 3,000 people on the payroll.

Has to do with the budget process. Suppose you run The Panty Hose Unexplained Early Death Syndrome Agency. You go before congress every year to ask for your budget. Are you going to say, "Well, we pretty much sat on our butts all last year and played computer games." No, you'll write an exhaustive and unintelligible report about all the hard work you're doing, and end by asking for a bigger budget and more staff. Maybe even a lab. After all, your own job is at stake here.

So the next president or congress comes in and says, "What the hell is this? An agency to study the causes of rapid death among panty hose? I think we could eliminate this."

But, my God, you'll be putting 3,000 people out of work -- and by this time, they may be unionized, so just try to fire them, just try.... So, bury this agency and all of its expenses in the budget for the National Park Service or maybe FEMA.

Maybe the only thing the feds can do at this point is to force the states to fund this agency and all its satellite offices. And very often the states will happily take it on, because the agency is a place where the states can find jobs for their useless brother- and sisters-in-laws and all the halfwit kids of their wealthy campaign contributors. They can all drive around in government cars and act important. The thrill of it all. Maybe they'll even get badges or some kind of complicated ID they can hang around their necks on lanyards.

You never get rid of the deadwood. You never do. Every president promises he's going to do something about it, but they can't do it.

Every stupid, useless government agency has a constituency. They flourish like crab grass. You can't get rid of them, or their stupid and useless and actually detrimental regulations. It's impossible.

So, why not give all this garbage a try?

The easy answer: Why should we? If it works, we're all screwed. If it fails, we're stuck with it forever anyway.

Enough for now. And next time I'm really going to try to write something positive and hopeful. I'll make something up if I have to.