Change on the Cheap.  Many of us make humble attempts at giving back something to our communities by serving on committees for support organizations.  It is one of the great things about America that people try to reach out and help those that need it, without being paid to do it or directed to do it by our glorious and all-knowing government.  One of the maddening experiences in serving these organizations is when you have members on the committee that seem to want to make the cause at hand the center of their universe.  They are impassioned agents of change and want to talk the subject to death at every opportunity.  It is as if they want to fill up their empty lives with this cause and never turn it loose.  They want to plan eternally and put off doing something until the next meeting.  I place these kinds of people in a category I call “change on the cheap”.

These folks are pleasantly surprised that through a convergence of circumstance, they are suddenly empowered to speak for many and have the opportunity to influence something larger than themselves.  However, they fail to connect the dots between planning and doing.  They will sit at the table and talk until the group is exhausted.  They are deeply infected with mission creep and constantly come up with new ideas about how to do everything so much better.  Their enthusiasm is never-ending and becomes as annoying as the bubbly blonde host on the morning television or radio show.  And then (now here’s the rub), when the time comes to roll up the sleeves and actually accomplish something, they are nowhere to be found.  Either they are still consumed by the master plan or they have moved on to the next project.  They start a fire, feed it until it is flaming wide open, and then move on.   They don’t want to chop the wood, tend the fire, or clean up the ashes.  Their infinite wisdom moves them on to start the next fire before the preceding fire is even burning well.  They are talkers, not doers.  They are all hat and no cowboy.  They are as shallow as a water puddle.  They waste the time of the majority of other folks who are ready and willing to do the heavy lifting necessary to effect positive changes.  They drain the energy and resolve from organizations that are fueled by donations of time and money given by the goodness of the heart.  They are people seeking “change on the cheap”.  They never miss the photo op, but they are never around to clean up the tables, put away the chairs, and take out the trash.

Our president is such a person.  Even with his “signature” piece of legislation (Obamacare), he talked it to death, pleaded passionately for its passage, but never submitted an actual bill to Congress.  Instead he farmed its framing out to Reid and Pelosi and their fellow minions.  With a method that makes sausage making look like brain surgery, is it any wonder it has turned out to be the bureaucratic nightmare that it is?  He has spent his entire term as president either starting fires or campaigning (one and the same?), but he is never around at the front end to write the law, nor is he around at the backend to worry about the implementation.  Once he senses the sleeves being rolled up, he takes his cue to move on to the next fire; such a pity that one so capable is so very lazy.

Obama: The Sequester Jester.  What kind of a leader proposes a plan to alleviate a crisis and then later, when the same crisis re-emerges, viciously attacks his original plan as irresponsible and reprehensible?  An Obama type of leader; that’s who.

I am a retired federal employee.  While I anxiously point out that many of the popular characterizations of federal employees as lazy, uncaring, overpaid bureaucrats are blatantly false and unfounded, there is absolutely no doubt in mind that our federal government is rife with waste, inefficiency, redundancy, and small minded elected officials and administrators who feel it is their role in life to periodically “reinvent the wheel” for the betterment of all.  The vast majority of federal workers are in fact paid about what they’re worth, have benefits better than much of the private sector and worse than most union employees, and are quite simply the part of the tire that meets the road.  They are good soldiers.  It cannot be stated often enough or loud enough…..FEDERAL EMPLOYEES ARE NOT THE PROBLEM.  Now, it is true that the number of federal employees is a big part of the problem.  And it is also true that many of the programs that the federal employees administer are a big part of the problem.  And it is exceedingly accurate to say that the manner in which federal employees administer federal programs is a huge part of the problem.  In this particular argument, the old saying about not shooting the messenger is quite applicable. 

Sequestering federal program allocations is a dumb way out of our financial mess.  It is irresponsible, it is not compassionate, it is not effective nor is it efficient.  It is, however, the best and only authentic solution that anyone has come up with in years to BEGIN the massive challenge of addressing our bloated government machine.  So let us understand completely that the world will not stop spinning on March 1 if sequestration comes into effect.  Yes; we will have thrown the baby out with the bath water.  But…the baby can be recovered.  The baby will be wiser for the experience.  Our government will have demonstrated that it is indeed capable of actual cuts in spending, as comparatively small as they might be.  It will show that our government is capable of taking the dose of medicine that is being presented to them, as distasteful as it might be; medicine that will begin to move our fiscal house in the right direction.  Somehow, someway, sometime…..we as a nation must begin to understand that all debts must be serviced and the collection man will cometh.  Perhaps that day will arrive on March 1.

An Era of Shame.  Webster defines an era as “a period of time having some special characteristic”.  In this instance, I am referring to the two presidential terms of Barrack Obama.    This indictment is not meant to be a comparison to a previous President; the George W. Bush administration, along with Congress, also spent money like drunken sailors and demonstrated little, if any, fiscal sanity.  Instead, I am simply observing what our nation and our government have devolved down to during the reign of Obama.

During his terms, we have seen a complete departure from fiscal responsibility; ranging from presenting ludicrous budgets to presenting no budget.  We have seen perversions of the truth, shadings of the truth, and complete falsehoods; all in the name of pursuing an agenda of bigger government.  We have witnessed, through the use of extraordinary Congressional means, and against the clear majority opinion of Americans, the passage and implementation of Obamacare.  My issue here is not the policy (although I do have some issues with that), but rather the arrogant and dictatorial fashion in which it was foisted upon the nation.  We have seen our government take sides in the emotional and explosive issue of abortion, to the point of forcing those who have sincere reservations about abortion to support it with their tax dollars and their business operations.  We have seen a President, blinded by his own ego and narcissism,  repeatedly refuse to work in a bipartisan fashion and instead play “win or lose” politics when the opportunity for “win/win” is clearly present.  We have seen our President diminish the office in which he serves by using children as political props, by savagely attacking those who have legitimate policy disagreements with him, and by consistently treating the American people in a patronizing, dishonest,  and condescending manner.

I predict that Obama, unless he becomes the bipartisan leader that he has the unique opportunity to be, will end up his two terms as one of the most unpopular presidents in our nation’s history.  That is on him.  Unfortunately, the ruin that he and his minions will leave on this nation will be on all of us, and our children, and our children’s children.