The Federal Government “Shutdown”, the Headless Horseman and Women with cooties.
I’m sitting in front of the television, eyes red from sobbing uncontrollably, waste can filled with tissues, Reese’s wrappers, Keurig cups and sections of the Wall Street Journal (Weekend Edition). My life is a living hell. My federal government is shut down. SHUT DOWN!!!! Stop laughing! It’s not funny. I’m sure hundreds of pe…No…..THOUSANDS!! of people are dying every hour due to this.
How did we become so dependent on the Federal Government for everything in our lives? When did this start? And when I say “we” I actually mean just “you”. Not me. As I watch the breathless bloviating coverage on all the “news” channels (when you think news channels, translate that as advertising sales outlets), I feel my blood pressure going up. It’s like watching a train full of nitro glycerine derail and run through a petting zoo of puppies and baby deer. This has to stop! And I don’t mean the government “shutdown” I mean the “news” coverage. (By the way, do you think my use of quotation marks is ok, a little extreme or over the top?)
I use the word shutdown in quotations (except for right back there), because as all thinking people know, the Federal government isn’t shutdown, anymore than Dr. Martin Luther King was a Democratic icon, Lebron James is white or Bradley “Chelsea” Manning is a woman. It just ain’t so. Estimates are between 15% -19% of the federal government is temporarily closed. This is because all federal workers are sorted into two piles: essential (Constitutional) and non-essential (graft and corruption). Non-essential workers have the best deal in town. They are furloughed, meaning they don’t have to show up for work, but when they do return to their jobs, they get paid for the days they didn’t work as if they were working. To put it another way, think of federal furlough as “paid vacation”.
And why did all of this happen. Congress (idiots that you and I keep voting for) refuse to do their job, which is to come up with a “budget”. I’m using quotes again because the word budget, with regard to the Federal government, isn’t used in the true meaning of the word. It would be similar to calling an illegal alien (someone who came into this country illegally)an “undocumented worker”. Or a deep-fried Twinkie “food”. All are terms designed (no accident) to disguise the true nature of the situation.
Only in Washington DC is a set of accounting that is hundreds of billions of dollars in the hole a budget. Congress is supposed to come up with a yearly budget, but over the last few years, they’ve been doing what is euphemistically called a “continuing resolution” whereby they vote to spend money for a short period of time (until they can come up with a “real” “budget”). It used to be for months, now it’s down to just weeks. At this rate, it will be down to just the weekend by the middle of this year.
Congress’ biggest fear is that you and I will wake up and realize that our lives aren’t dependent on the Federal Government on a daily or even weekly or monthly basis. In our minds “non-essential” will come to mean “optional”. If we delve into the optional things the Federal Government does, we’ll soon see the stupid stuff. This is like a fairy tale, something that doesn’t actually exist. Like the Headless Horseman or women with cooties. I’ve touch women plenty of times and never gotten cooties. Not once.
All of this is kept in motion by the 4 Horsemen Of The Apocalypse: 1. Politicians 2.Media outlets that make their money selling advertising 3. Social Media and 4.Lobbyists. They all make their money selling us on the idea that we must watch the latest disaster which, in this case, is our Federal government. But it’s really not a disaster. That’s my whole point. None of this is a big deal. What we should really be concerned with is the Federal Deficit. That’s gonna kill us. Really.