An Unscientific Look at American Politics

(Or, how’s it look from there, with your head up your keester?)

As most of you have heard by now, the sky is falling.  Again. Yup, the old fiscal cliff routine is being rehashed as the Budget Sequester.  It’s awful, just ask any politician. If you ask the Democrats they’ll tell you the Republicans are killing this country, and if you ask the Republicans, well you know the drill. 

I just figure we are all adults, at least those of us who vote,

and we should perhaps take a look ourselves.

The sequester, which is supposed to be the nuclear option

to balance our budget, is going to trim spending over the next

nine years.  The amount we’ll see cut this year is about eighty

five billion dollars, half from defense and half from non-defense

spending.  That reduces the budget for defense by about eight percent

and the non-defense spending gets cut five or six percent.

Wow.  Read that again.  Eight percent and six percent.  I know a lot

of people who have seen their incomes reduced by more than eight

percent since the big crash in 2008.  A lot of Americans are working

less hours, and/or at jobs with lower pay.  Some haven’t found work

yet.  I wonder how come they haven’t just curled up and died, you know,

the way the politicians say that our country will, if we have to have these

horrible budget cuts.

If my budget were cut by eight percent, I’d have to go without popcorn

when I took my wife to the movies.  You know, that doesn’t sound like

Armageddon to me, how about you? 

There are a lot of things Americans would like their representatives to cut.

Whenever you write to your rep asking for something like this, you usually

get a reply that runs along the lines of, “Dear John, Foreign Aid is actually

less than one percent of the federal  budget, so even though no one likes

foreign aid, cutting it won’t help anything.”   OK, raise your hand if you’ve

heard that before.  Uh huh, thought so. 

Well, eight percent minus one percent is seven percent, and if we could find

half a dozen more of those unimportant things that won’t make any difference,

because they’re less than one percent, well, you do the math.  I know, this is one

of those times when “you do the math” actually involves math.

But you should be OK with that, because remember, you are an adult.  You vote.

Right?  I don’t know how you vote, but I’ll tell you, one really smart cat once said

“Never re-elect anyone.”  I don’t know his name, but I think I’m going to listen

to him at the next election.