Tax Day

No long rant about today. I don’t complain about the idea of taxes because I understand that government is necessary and it’s not free. I don’t like the way our taxes are currently structured, but I don’t expect government without taxes any more than I expect to walk out of the supermarket with a cart full of groceries without paying.

Predictions, cont.

Just a note to say that I have no follow-up on the budget speech because I want to see the details first. There were some good comments and some of the right words were said, but I will wait for action before forming any firm opinion on the thing.

Predictions

The next budget speech will mention letting the tax cuts for the wealthy expire in two years and also cutting funding and benefits for Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

When the budget is finished, the compromise will be to keep the tax cuts but cut funding to social services.

I hope that I am wrong.

Deficits

I'll say it again - Social Security does not, will not and by law can not increase the deficit. Not by a single cent.

Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying.

Same as it ever was

The first test of what would become the Internet was a networked login from one computer in California to another Computer in California – at two different labs, not in the same building.

There was a slight communication snag just after the login began after the first two characters were typed in. So they tried again and it worked. Because of that little blip, they had to try the login twice, so the first three characters sent over the fledgling Internet were: LOL

Avoiding the issue

Is the budget too big?

There’s a lot of talk about cutting government spending but there’s no talk of why. There is no argument made other than the belief that government is too big and we should spend less. That is ideology not explanation.

How do we know if we’re spending too much money? I’m not talking about the deficit. A deficit can be eliminated easily by raising taxes. The question is about how much is being spent.

Are we spending too much?

I’m also not talking about waste. That’s a matter of where and how the money is spent. If there is waste fix the problems, but waste in one area does not mean that we are not spending too much. We might be spending too little elsewhere and we should shift the spending there.

Are we spending too much?

Maybe $2 trillion isn’t enough to run our government the way it should be run. It’s a lot of money to me, but maybe to run this country the way it should be our budget needs to be $6.5 trillion. No one is talking about how much is enough to maintain the standards that we expect of this country. How much is enough to serve the citizens the way we should be? No one is explaining anything, they just say what they want to spend, not why it is what should be spent.

So, are we spending too much, or not enough?

Snakes in a glade

Everglades, that is. There is a problem in Florida, and elsewhere, with non-native species. In the Florida Everglades there are thousands of pythons that are thought to be the descendants of pet snakes that were dumped by their owners when they got too big. There are also some who escape from shipments and pet stores. Regardless, they are there and they endanger the local environment because they are big, there are no natural predators that can handle a really big python – even alligators – and they eat the local wildlife including endangered species.

They also present a danger for pets, small children, adults – people and their families in general.

There are efforts to control the problem, but they mostly involve trapping them and work on limiting the prey. Why not try birth control?

If you can trap a snake, trap it and, male or female, neuter the snake. Then keep it in captivity until it is a nice big snake. Then release it back into the wild. There, the snake will compete with the other snakes for food and for mates. The big snakes may even kill smaller snakes. In other words, let the snakes take care of the problem.

It’s not a perfect solution and there are plenty of ways that it could fail, but in this case I don’t see failure causing more problems. Eventually, wouldn’t there be fewer snakes? It seems like a good plan to me.