A Brief History of Stupid

Sometimes I feel like other countries wouldn't believe us if we tried to tell them how stupid our government is.  Let's pretend that you, dear reader, are Germany for a minute.  You don't want to be Germany?  A little too aggressive for you?  OK, France then.  No?  A little too surrendery?  OK let's say Australia.  Everyone likes Australia.

Hey Australia, you'll never guess what happened.  In the summer of 2011, our government reached our debt limit (again, this happens constantly now).  That's stupid thing numero uno, by the way.  Why would we work under a self-imposed debt limit?  I can understand trying it once to see if it actually helps us be more fiscally responsible, but that doesn't really seem to be working, does it?  Now it's just an arbitrary number that we have to raise every once in a while so we don't default on our debt.  Except when the President is black, then we have to fight about it first.

So we reached our debt limit and then, because Republicans don't actually understand how debt works, they demanded that spending cuts accompany any deal to raise the debt ceiling.  Actually, it may be that Republicans don't understand how time works, because they seem to be missing the part where cutting future spending won't really help with the debt we owe for past spending.  To be fair, time is pretty complicated and Republicans hate science, so, I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

The Democrats though, they don't want to cut spending.  They say they do, because it sounds good and it's always good politics to be for general spending cuts, but they don't really want to.  They don't want to cut social programs because they, ya know, believe in those things.  And they don't want to cut defense because if they do someone will call them weak and they'll lose an election and have to get a real job.

And don't tell me about how the President has offered $2, or $2.50 or whatever of spending cuts for every dollar of revenue.  I'll give you two and a half unicorns for every one of your horses.  What unicorns?  Don't worry, I've got unicorns.  And I've got traumatized workers who helped me make half unicorns.  You can have the workers for free.  They mostly just sit and cry now.

And the Republicans, they do want to cut spending, except not really.  Republicans don't want to cut defense spending, because if we don't have at least a million times more tanks than every other country in the world then we're all going to die.  And they don't really want to cut social security or medicare either.  They say they do, but they know if they actually did the very old people who vote for them would march on Washington...slowly.  That's why Mitt Romney's plan was to start cutting entitlements ten years from now, two years after it conveniently wouldn't have been his problem anymore.  I wonder if the 2023 Congress would have actually gone ahead with Mitt's plan.  I'm thinking no.

So everybody really wanted to cut spending, except that nobody actually wanted to cut spending.  Then they came up with a big, fool-proof plan to cut spending.  It was called...drumroll...the sequester (ohhhhh).  They came up with all the worst spending cuts they could think of and put them all into one big package of cuts that would take effect at the beginning of 2013 unless some people could, somehow, reach a deal on spending cuts that everyone would like better. 

I guess I should talk about why this particular move was so insanely stupid, but I feel like I really shouldn't have to explain to you why an economic suicide pact is a bad idea for our government.

But who would work together to reach such a deal?  Well, get ready for another stupid thing.  Instead of trying something innovative or smart, they just put together a smaller group made up of people from the bigger group that already couldn't agree on anything.  Even though this was a super smart plan, and even though they were called the Super Committee (ohhhhh again), they somehow failed to agree on anything. 

"Then what happened?"  Good question, Australia.  Well, then they all forgot about it and went to run for office for a year.  It was another excellent plan.  I mean, who has time to worry about the impending economic disaster when the gays are still trying to marry each other and Mitt Romney is being mean to poor people?  Not me, and not any of the people who are paid to worry about stuff like that either.

After the election was over and everyone had a good cry, they all suddenly realized they hadn't bothered doing their jobs for a year and this sequester thing was still happening.  "Ohh noooos!" said John Boehner.  They had until the end of December to reach a deal, but they had a much better and much stupider idea.  Instead of actually doing something, they just raised some taxes that never should have been lowered in the first place and then put everything else off for two months. 

Then, and I swear this happened, they sort of forgot about it again for like a month while the Republicans spent time bitching about Benghazi and the Democrats ran around talking about raising taxes on millionaires and billionaires even though they had literally just done that shit.

By the way, I'm not saying taxes couldn't be higher, because they absolutely could and should be.  I'm saying Democrats spent a year whining about how all they were asking for was a return to the Clinton era tax rates, and as soon as they got it, without even blinking, they immediately started acting like it never happened.

Then everyone remembered the impending crisis that they had just created, and then they fought about it without agreeing on anything until finally it was March 1st.  This is where the President overplayed his hand a little.  The White House spent a week making it sound like the sequester was the end of the economic world, when everyone knew it really wasn't.  I heard people on TV talking about how long airport lines would have people immediately demanding a budget deal.  Really?  You know who doesn't give a shit about airport lines?  Everybody who isn't at the fucking airport right now.  And screw those people anyway.  I don't have time to fly around the country all willy nilly, let them wait on line.

Meanwhile, all this economic crisising left Congress with no time to deal with things like gun control and infrastructure and immigration.  Oh man!  They really wanted to do those things too, there's just no time.  If only there was time!

And so here we are.  Minimal spending cuts that won't really help that much with deficit reduction in the long run, done the stupidest way possible, which is to say the government basically closed their eyes and threw darts at the discretionary budget while telling themselves that none of those cuts were actually going to happen so don't worry about where the darts are landing.  At least now that we have this problem, our leaders are working tirelessly to fix it instead of just trying to go on TV and blame each other.  Oh wait.  Nevermind.

10 Ways to Reduce Our Debt

Our giant national debt is a huge issue. Huge! It has to be, because it's all our Congress talked about all summer. Even the magic of tax cuts hasn't solved our debt issue. We cut taxes all the way back in 2001, and ten years later, for some strange reason, our debt just keeps getting larger. This is a HUGE issue. If there's a problem that can't be solved by tax cuts, Republicans are pretty much out of ideas (no, Rick Perry, praying doesn't count as an idea, I'm only interested in reality based solutions).

Sidenote: Debt wasn't quite such a huge problem when we had white Presidents. It's a good thing the tea party came along when it did. They know that if we don't control the black President's spending, he'll just blow all of our money on grape soda and Tyler Perry DVD's.

Anyway, huge debt or not, I'm not convinced we should be slashing the federal budget. And even if I was convinced, America's intelligence profile indicates that we're too "stupid" to stick to a budget. So, like Homer Simpson, we need more money, and I have ideas.

Bake Sale: Everyone in America bakes a pie. If you can't bake a pie (let's say you don't have access to pie ingredients, or you don't have an oven, or let's say you're an infant), someone else will bake your pie for you. We sell all the pies to Europe, Japan and Australia at a huge mark-up, like $15 a pie. I figure that's at least $10 of profit per pie, times 300 million people (give or take), and that's 3 trillion dollars. Did I mention that any country that refuses to buy our $15 pies gets invaded?

Sloth: We all take month long vacations. That's what Congress is doing, so it has to work. One member of Congress recently explained it on TV by basically saying that's what they always do in August. Oh, OK. Where did we find these people? Is being in Congress so awful that only the craziest, most irrational, least useful people in the country want to do it. I know I've said we get the government we deserve, but holy crap. Who else could cap off two months of gross incompetence with one month of "well deserved" vacation.

Roulette: We take whatever we currently have in the treasury to Vegas and bet it on black. Or red. Whatever. Either way, that's just short of a 50/50 chance of doubling our money right there. After watching Congress take two months to raise our imaginary debt ceiling, wouldn't you take 50/50 odds over whatever our current odds are of solving this problem?

Anarchy: This is what the tea people want, right? If there's no government, there's no debt. Just freedom, horrible freedom. And zombies. I don't know how, but anarchy seems to lead to zombies most of the time. Or maybe zombies lead to anarchy. I guess we'll find out.

Real Estate: How much do you think Canada would give us for Alaska? What if we were willing to throw in Montana, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and the top part of Maine? OK, all of Maine. You drive a hard bargain Canada. If they won't buy our land, we go to plan B, holding Justin Bieber for ransom.

New Currency: We could convince the world to switch to a new global currency based on something we already have in abundance. Can you base a currency on fat people? How about abandoned factories? We have tons of those. I explored the downside of cheese based money in an earlier post, but if we encased the cheese in some kind of impenetrable, inedible substance, that could still work.

Robot Hilter: I recently saw Virginia Congressman Jim Moran giving a quick summary of how we got out of the Great Depression. First, there was the New Deal. Then, in 1937, Republicans tried to ruin the New Deal for some reason (it seems stupidity was part of the Republican platform long before the tea people came along, who knew?). Then, along came Hitler and we fought our way out of our economic troubles by killing nazis.

Well, Hitler's already dead, nothing we can do about that. But, Robot Hitler can be alive and kicking just as soon as someone invents him. Of course, there's roughly a 75% chance Robot Hitler takes over the world, becomes Skynet and kills us all. But, if we win, it's mostly smooth economic sailing for like 30 years until Robot Reagan comes along and ruins it all again.

Sidenote #2: Extra benefit of the Robot Hitler plan. We finally have someone who pundits and politicians can fairly compare to actual Hitler.

Ocean's 11: Step 1: We put together an elite team of thieves to go rob all the countries that still have money. Step 2: We use the stolen money to pay those same countries back what we owe them. They'll be especially happy to take it, seeing as all their money just mysteriously went missing. "Gee Japan, I'm sorry all your money disappeared, we'll be sure to keep an eye out for it. On an unrelated note, we just found all these yen at the bottom of the grand canyon. Here you go."

Heel Turn: I loved wrestling when I was a kid. If you didn't, here's how the heel turn works. We invite China out to the ring to "talk" about that little sum of money we owe them. We're the good guys, so China doesn't suspect anything. China's music hits and they stroll on down with a big smile. As China is preening for the crowd...BANG! Chair shot to the back of the head...heel turn!

As Always: Guns n Roses reunion concert. We hold it in America and charge the world to see it. We'd easily make 14 trillion dollars with plenty to spare to pay the boys.