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Monica Smith
Number of posts: 146
Email address: email
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Posts by Monica Smith:
Full Faith & Credit
The Fiscal Kerfuffle
We are agitating over figments of the imagination.
We already know Obama loves him a kerfuffle. The real issue is how to get Congress to realize that their job is to spend or dispense money. Managing the currency is one of their prime responsibilities. Scrimping and hoarding is not managing. The Congress hoarding dollars is not only unseemly, but detrimental because the federal government is the only source and without money to mediate transactions, we are left with taking things on faith.
Resolution:
Take a Hike
America’s State Parks Association is sponsoring a first day hike in which all fifty states will participate. Texas, being a big state, has forty five venues on offer, while Georgia is promoting twenty sites and Missouri is offering programs at thirteen parks. Meanwhile, poor Louisiana seems able to manage guided hikes at just two of its parks. But, they are free.
Rationing
Like Frogs
It really doesn’t matter, from an economic perspective, what useful endeavor people are engaged in, as long as they are compensated sufficiently with currency (money) to enable them to compensate others, who do the things they don’t have talent and time for, in turn.
What really undermines efficient trade and exchange of goods and services is the rationing or sequestration of the currency (money) we use to mediate those transactions. Rationing currency is comparable to restricting access to reading and writing skills in order to hobble the ability to communicate.
Ass-Backwards
Outstanding
The spouse, a now-retired professor of film studies, who was certainly entitled to be considered “outstanding in his field,” addressing movies from a literary and communications media perspective and having authored a couple of biographies of Nevil Shute Norway and Charlie Chaplin, as well as the totally original study of movies about war, “Looking Away; Hollywood and Vietnam”, is not really a studious person. Indeed, it’s quite likely that he moved from the study of novels and poems to film because movies made it possible for him to be somewhere else, even as he had to sit still in a room.
Empty Calories
The Fiscal Frappé
Yes, that’s a flippant title. I could call it the fiscal scam, but “scam” is getting to be a hackneyed term. Besides, it is hard to take the most recent fiscal kerfuffle seriously. That the President’s spokesperson enunciates according to news reports:
“We should address the drivers of the deficit and Social Security currently is not a driver of the deficit,” Carney told reporters today. The senior retirement program is solvent for another 21 years, at which time recipients could see a reduction in benefits.
Button, Button
Anatomy of a Hostage Taking
If people aren’t obligated to pay taxes on their income in the first place, what difference does the rate make?
If your car is electric, what difference does the price of a gallon of gas make to you? Yes, there may be some psychic pleasure in seeing your neighbor having to shell out more and more dollars at the pump, but that’s not nice.
This whole kerfuffle is starting to look like the campaign finance scam in which Congress put restrictions on individual contributors and no limits on what incumbents could collect and even distribute to their cronies — all to insure their continuance and power in office.
Were It Used For Good
The Six Billion Dollar Stimulus
It’s peanuts compared to the trillions we spend annually on medical procedures and pills, but the psychic rewards of participating in the most expensive U.S. election ever are much greater.
While the billionaire donors who opened their trust funds and expense accounts so generously deserve a hearty thank you and some pretty notes, everybody who chipped in a buck or an hour or a month or a year is entitled to a good gloat and a hearty pat on the back. Truer words were never spoken than the President’s “I couldn’t have done it without you.”
