Tag: budget cuts

Let the Daylight In

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Supposedly October 1st is the deadline for the latest government shutdown scare.  The Democrats have said that unless Biden’s Obamacare boondoggles are extended and PBS gets funded, they won’t vote for an extension of the present budget.

Now the talking heads on the Left are split fifty/fifty on whether this is a good idea or a terrible one.  The conundrum is that if they allow the government to shut down, they will take a good chunk of the blame in the eyes of the public.  In addition, Trump has indicated that unlike in shutdowns past, he doesn’t intend to furlough federal employees.  He’s going to fire huge numbers in order to reduce the size of the federal government.  And the great majority of these employees are Democrats.  So, the feeling on the Left is that whatever blame Trump gets will not make up for the blame the Democrats themselves will get for abandoning their most loyal voters (federal bureaucrats) to the fate of unemployment and eventual starvation.  After all these aren’t rocket scientists.  Most of these people aren’t qualified to cross the street even with a traffic light.  If the government lets them go, it’s not even a sure thing they’ll make it home successfully.  Like lemmings they may all follow some confused creature into the Potomac where we can only assume they’ll all be washed out to sea.

So, I guess we have to see what Trump plans to do.  If he does plan to eliminate some enormous number of federal workers maybe this is a watershed moment for the country.  And who knows, maybe he also will ask the senate to take the nuclear option and eliminate the filibuster all together.  And if they do eliminate it, maybe they’ll go the whole way and then just enact a real honest-to-goodness budget like they used to before Obama gave up on federal budgets.

So, there is the shiny happy version of things.  What’s the other choice?  Well, firing millions of people, even useless stupid people will have economic consequences.  Bureaucrats have dependents.  Mostly they’re cats but there must be some children too.  And if all of a sudden there are millions of kids falling into poverty, this will have some consequences.  If they’re dire enough maybe it will anger Americans who hate to see poor people suffering.  Maybe this will lead to the Republicans getting pounded in the 2026 midterms.  And that would lead to divided government for the last two years of Trump’s term.

Well, you know, I think my gut tells me that the correct strategy is for Trump to “go big.”  Emptying out Washington DC is a once in a century situation.  Doing it now hurts the Left almost exclusively.  If all these people find themselves unemployed it will have a huge impact on elections.  These are the Democrats’ most loyal voters.  But if they lose those government jobs something tells me they’ll be too busy struggling to survive to bother voting at all.  In fact, firing huge numbers of bureaucrats will change the whole ecosystem around Washington.  Who knows, it might turn Virginia red again when all the carpetbaggers have to go home to mom and dad’s basement in California, Massachusetts and New York.

So go ahead DJT, start up that chainsaw.  Let the daylight in.

The Dunwich Budget

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Farmer Cthulhu in His Fields

Here in Dunwich we had our town budget meeting and the Finance Committee asked for a 10 percent increase and there was an uproar.  The Bishops and the Whateleys demanded that First Selectman Cthulhu go into closed session with them and provide an itemized list of all the increases in expenditures.  At the end of the session the First Selectman exited the chamber.  When asked by the committee if all demands had been satisfied, he belched out a dark viscous cloud and declared, “Sure, at least until dinner anyway.  I’m always hungry an hour after Whateley.”

During the next session a group of concerned Dunwichians demanded that alternative revenue raising methods be provided.  Cthulhu suggested a 0.001% head tax be levied.  This low rate excited many of the concerned group and they asked what details would still have to be worked out if this tax was provisionally approved.  The First Selectman confided, “Well we’ll have to figure out how to decide which heads to harvest.  I favor going blind fold and just biting off whatever heads come within my grasp until I’ve reached the agreed upon total.  That seems fairest.”  It was unanimously decided to shelve that proposal indefinitely in favor of the 10% tax increase.

Democracy in action in Dunwich is a frightening but somehow clarifying process.  As opposed to other less mythic New England towns Dunwich cuts through the pretense of egalitarianism and nakedly reveals the precise power dynamic between Great Old Ones and anyone small enough to be engulfed, chewed and swallowed by their cephalopodic maws.

But to be fair, it’s not as if Americans aren’t equally at the mercy of their government.  Paying taxes and not receiving services like police protection, safe drugs, secure borders and honest representation in Washington are standard operating procedure since at least the Obama administration.

Surely, no one is surprised anymore that no balanced budget is ever negotiated, approved and administered.  Since Obama’s time continuing expenditure resolutions and multi-trillion-dollar omnibus boondoggles are the new normal.  I wonder if it is even possible to get a balanced budget enacted.  Would the administrative state just shrug it off and print more money and chalk it up to the need for “clandestine intelligence programs” above the public’s pay grade to know or even question?  I have to confess I’m curious what in the world Trump will do if he gets back into the White House.  It’s rather like being one of the fifth century Westen Roman emperors.  You have to go through the motions of giving orders to the generals but outside your window you can see the Goths and the Vandals carrying off the last of the treasury.

This beyond reckless deficit spending will eventually lead to collapse.  It has to.  Really the only question I have is whether there is a plan to handle the collapse or will the rats just desert the sinking ship for greener pastures.  Will the Obamas flee Martha’s Vineyard for New Zealand or Singapore?

Well, at least locally, the budget process is carefully controlled and all due respect is provided to the voters.  First Selectman Cthulhu is also the ballot clerk at the budget vote.  Every registered voter receives one ballot and casts it proudly.  And we’re proud of our innovations in local government.  By pre-printing the yes oval already filled in we have saved hundreds of dollars over the last few years in the cost of pens and markers.  And that way Cthulhu doesn’t have to eat any “no” voters.  That’s progress!

Steel, Lead or Silly Putty

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This week has been a crazy mish-mash of unexpected occurrences.  Extra work, surprise meetings, a pleasant event on the website, some additional weather-related work around the homestead and a couple of unexpected appointments.  Nothing bad but enough interruptions to my schedule to put me off my game.  Complain, moan groan.  But the show must go on.  So, here’s hoping I get my act together going forward.

I love Dopey Joe’s vow to veto any legislation that comes to his desk.  The stupidity of that statement truly reflects the reality of his intellect and the intellect of his voters.  The Democrats control the Senate.  Any legislation that comes to his desk for signature has to be approved by the Senate.  So, if the Republican House gets the Democrat Senate to agree on a bill, then Biden will automatically veto it?  Either he’s a moron, which is true, or he believes his voters are morons, which is also true.  Come to think of it, he’s remaining true to himself and his voters.  Gosh, he’s a paragon of integrity.  He’s the moron’s moron!

I’m very anxious to see just how far the House will go to fix the budget problems.  If they were very serious, they would write a real budget bill with realistic additions and subtractions that the Democrats would hate but could live with.  Then they could dig in their heels and only respond if the Senate provided a counter proposal that they in turn could respond to.  In other words, restore the former procedure whereby an actual budget was legislated.  And as I said they could delete most of the crap that the Democrats have filled the current budget with.  And they can write in laws to prevent things like the COVID lockdowns from happening again.  That would be a revelation.

Sure, during the lead up to such an event the media slimeballs would be keeping up an hourly drum beat on all the people of color and LGBTQ people who were, possibly, dying in the streets because a budget wasn’t in place.  People like Mitt Romney and Mitch McConnell would be on the steps of the Senate weeping and flagellating themselves over the white guilt they felt over this outrageous cruelty to the most vulnerable among us.  Think of the children!

But if McCarthy and his people could just hold together their majority, eventually Dementia Joe and Chuck Schumer would come begging with hat in hand to get the budget done.  And then we could eliminate this monthly ritual of approving the non-budget that we’ve been living with since Obama and finally get some measure of fiscal responsibility happening again.  One thing they should demand is that the budget of the FBI should be reduced by twenty percent and everyone working there also take a twenty percent pay reduction to begin the process of pulling their teeth.  Sure, there would be an enormous noise and some of our congressmen would mysteriously die but that’s not too high a price to pay for making things better.  At least not to my mind.

So, let’s just see what kind of spine Kevin McCarthy has discovered.  Is it steel, lead or silly putty.  Hopefully we’ll find out soon.

Trans-Planckian Problems with Hawking Radiation in Evaporating Black Holes

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https://orionscoldfire.com/index.php/2020/02/14/behold-arrokoth-the-jeb-bush-of-the-solar-system/

 

Good golly Miss Molly!  I was reading an article about the highest possible energies that a particle accelerator could accelerate a proton to and the author started throwing around terms like the Planck energy and the Planck distance and pretty soon it was Planck this and Planck that and Planck the other thing.  Now I dimly remembered that expressing a physical measurement in terms of its Planck equivalent was a way of normalizing the units so that the fundamental constants like the speed of light; c and the gravitational constant; G were rendered as unity in these measurements and thus the Planck units were the fundamental expressions for these concepts.  But I never remembered what sizes these Planck versions came out to.

So, I looked them up in Wikipedia (of course):

 

Table 1: Modern values for Planck’s original choice of quantities
Name Dimension   Value (SI units)
Planck length length (L) 1.616255(18)×10−35 m
Planck mass mass (M) 2.176434(24)×10−8 kg
Planck time time (T) 5.391247(60)×10−44 s
Planck temperature temperature (Θ) 1.416784(16)×1032 K

Now the Planck mass is a perfectly ordinary number.  10−8 kg is quite a large number compared to the mass of a proton or a neutron.  But look at the Planck time; 10−44 s or Planck temperature; 1032 K.  What exactly does 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 degrees K even mean?  What would the velocity of the atoms at that temperature be?  Would they be traveling at 0.99999999999999999999999999999999 of the speed of light?

So, I shake off this feeling that I’ve entered the silly season and read on.  Apparently at these Planck conditions the gravitational force becomes equivalent to the stronger forces like electromagnetism and the nuclear strong force and that allows for “interesting” effects.  Reading on into this miasma of confusing ideas I gathered that these Planck units were considered the limits of these measurements.  In other words, trying to define a time period less than 10−44 seconds was meaningless in our quantum system.  And possibly temperatures above the Planck temperature would just create micro-black holes.

Pretty soon they were talking about how evaporating black holes run into problems with these “trans-Planckian” conditions and pretty soon I was experiencing full blown transphobia.  After all, when I had first read about evaporating black holes back before fake news it had sounded kind of bogus to me.  Stephen Hawking was one of those characters from the world of science that seems to approach the edges of science fiction.  A man with a super genius intellect trapped in an almost completely disabled body who can only move a couple of his fingers and can only communicate with the world via the most painfully slow interface imaginable.  If it turns out Hawking is mistaken about evaporating blackholes I’m sure the world will cut him some slack.  Other than a few physics PhD’s that might get yanked, I’m pretty sure that the practical damages from evaporating black holes getting blown out of the water will be pretty close to 10−44 dollars.

And speaking of which have we finally found the limits of US federal spending?  If Dopey Joe Biden tries to print more than 1 Planck dollars will Washington DC be ripped right out of space time and returned to Cthulhu’s dimension where the Democrats came from?  Boy I hope so.

How to Balance the Budget Without the Congress

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Congress has essentially gotten out of the budget balancing business.  The last balanced budget was under George W Bush back in the time before Obama (BO).  But the President has something called the Executive Order and darned if it isn’t every bit as good as law.  So, until such time as Congress actually performs some function again, how about this?

In 2018 the federal government employed 2,055,731 Federal Civilian Employees.  So, putting the armed forces aside we have over two million people drawing a check entirely on our dime.  Whatever the average salary is, once you add in health insurance cost and any pension or other benefits a very conservative annual cost per employee is bound to be above $100,000.  So, just in safe ballpark numbers we are paying two trillion dollars to our public masters every year.

Now you could logically make the point that if these mostly useless people didn’t work for the government they would end up as criminals and the destitute, but putting that cost calculation aside it could be reasonably stated that drastically reducing the number of federal employees is the most effective way to reduce the cost of government.  And as an added benefit it would clear out much of the riff-raff that currently vote Democrat in Virginia and Maryland.  This giant army of freeloaders would disperse across the country and change from a dagger in the heart of the republic into a low-grade fever across the whole body politic.

Think of how wonderful it would be to see building after federal building emptied of these parasites and those same buildings sold off or demolished to make room for more worthwhile endeavors like pawn shops or nail salons.  One day the IRS could be composed of one IT technician and space on a mainframe that multiplied everyone’s paycheck by six percent and sent out the link to where payment could be sent.  NASA would just be two IP address links between the President’s office and Elon Musk’s.  And the Post Office would be a website page that lists the names of companies like FedEx and UPS that have trucks.  Anyone who wants to send a letter would be reminded of the e-mail addresses that everyone in the world already has.  And even for bureaus, departments and offices of the federal government that serve some actual purpose the 80/20 rule could be put into strict application and four fifths of the denizens of the swamp could be heaved up on shore and allowed to dry out and rot in the sun.

I don’t want to claim that there won’t be consequences to something as radical as this.  For several years after the surgery these severed appendices will stagger around the landscape like extras from some zombie movie.  Their palsied limbs endlessly performing the tics of their former occupations.  Fingers hitting the reject button on applications for social security benefits and neck muscles shaking heads back and forth to signify another denial of application to delist a vernal puddle in a backyard as navigable water.  But as lack of food slowly drains them of life they will expire on the sidewalk in front of various federal buildings across the country and when they decompose, they will finally begin to serve a useful purpose.  In fact, I propose the repurposing of these former civil masters as fertilizer be given an appropriate name.  How about the “Green New Deal.”

Trump vs Slashing the Deficit

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Scene 1: February 15th 2017; White House Oval Office

Vice President Pence (VPP): Good morning Mr. President.  I just got your message.  How can I help you?

President Trump (PT): Pence, we’ve got a big problem.  I’ve been president for weeks now and I haven’t shrunk government much at all.  What the hell is the problem?

VPP: Sir, we’re following all the protocols and directives built into the law.  We’ve replaced all the political appointees and offered severance packages to the middle management aparatchiks that Obama brought in.  But many of them are dyed in the wool communists who have no private sector skills and won’t leave under any circumstances.  I’m afraid sir we’ll have to work around them.

PT: Keep paying these losers to destroy our country?  Are you crazy Pence?  That’s not gonna happen.

VPP: But sir there’s nothing that can be done.

PT: Ha!  Pence you’re hopeless.  All right, get the following things going.  I want a list of all the personnel in the Department of Education in decreasing order of salary.  Then I want a portion of the D of E headquarters to be outfitted with sound proofing, washable paint, fire hoses and floor drains.  I’ll need five of my business suits sent there and about 300 rolls of dental floss.  Oh and you better also send about 300 lbs. of alka-seltzer.

VPP: Mr. President, you can’t do that!  These are American citizens.  They’ll be missed.

PT:  I could probably debate both of those points but instead I’ll remind you that I haven’t had breakfast yet.  So what’s it gonna be?

VPP: I’ll get going on that alka-seltzer right away.

PT: There’s hope for you yet Pence.

 

Scene 2: A week later.  Oval Office.

VPP: Good morning Mr. President.  Welcome back.

PT: Not so loud Pence, I’m a little under the weather.

VPP: Something you ate sir?

PT: You’re a laugh riot Pence.  Look, I need to get all my suits let out a little.  And set up a Presidential Address with the networks tonight.  I want to get things moving.

VPP: Right away Mr. President.

 

Scene 3: That night in the Oval Office with TV crews setting up video equipment.

PT: Okay Billy, show the recording light when you’re ready……….Good evening, my fellow Americans.  As you know I have been in office a few weeks now and the news guys have been hammering me about not fulfilling my campaign promises on the budget.  Well I am here to give you all an update.  As promised I’ve fulfilled my campaign promise to close the Education department.  It is officially gone.  I finished eating the last department personnel at 3 pm yesterday.  I went as far as to include all of the temporary staff to ensure that the budget is all the way down to zero.

But this is just a first step. Numerous branches of the federal government remain untrimmed and as your Werewolf President I intend to attend to these problems one by one.  Now granted, the Department of Education is a small branch and it won’t be possible to finish off something as bloated and fatty as the EPA or the Commerce Department in a week but I’ll do my damnedest.  And it won’t be easy on me.  Already I’m experiencing symptoms of indigestion, high cholesterol and gout.  But I intend to install a treadmill in the White House and run off the extra calories that this budget program will inflict on me.

I know that many will find this budget cutting disturbing and you will hear many in the media describing these measures as brutal and possibly criminal. I will answer these charges right away.  I have sent invitations to all of my heaviest critics to join me in the press room at the White House tomorrow to put these problems to rest.  That should take care of that.

So by the end of my first hundred days in office I vow to have trimmed down the federal government to a lean weight, except of course, for me. At that point I’ll be taking a few days off to allow for a long session of liposuction.  No sacrifice is too great for your Werewolf President when it benefits the American people.  Thank you and good night.  Trump out.