The giant scissors of destiny are clicking and clacking their way to
our national credit card. If we don't raise the debt limit, so we can
borrow more money to pay the interest on the money we borrowed before,
the scissors will snip and snap like economic armageddon.
And then the big shiny
credit card that pays for everything gets cut up in two pieces. But
never fear. If worst comes to worst, we still have options.
Our government is big. Really big. So big that the nearly 3 million government
employees should be their own state.
The population of government
employees is already larger than the populations of Rhode Island,
Wyoming, Delaware, Alaska, Montana, North and South Dakota, New
Hampshire, Maine, Hawaii, Idaho, West Virginia, Nebraska and New Mexico. It's so big that if government employees formed their own state, it would be
the 36th largest state in the union.
So why not go for it?
Call
it Bureaucratia, its state flag will be a stapler on a manilla
background, its nickname will be 'The Inaction State', its state bird
will be the Ostrich, its state flower will be made of plastic and its entire
population will spend all their time in committee meetings to determine a
suitably inoffensive state motto, pending that its motto will be, "I'm
On Break".
Under this arrangement, all government
employees would be folded into a single state with two senators and the
correct number of congressmen, and no more clout than that. And the
other 50 states will finally have senators and congressmen working to
create jobs for them, instead of jobs for government workers.
The
citizens of Bureaucratia will enjoy Universal Free Everything with a 10
year waiting list and 100 percent taxation. And the rest of the country
will enjoy keeping their paychecks and living in a place that isn't
bleeding itself dry to subsidize the 36th unknown state in the union.
Of
course that's a long shot. But we still have options. If the debt limit
is too stifling for Washington --let's do what so many schools,
churches and libraries do when money is tight.
Let's have a government
sale.
The federal government may have run up a 16.75 trillion dollar debt, but it also has some mighty appealing assets. Like 30 percent of the total territory of the United States.
That's 85 percent of Nevada, 70 percent of Alaska, 60 percent of Utah and
50 percent of Oregon, Idaho, Arizona and California might be worth
something on the open market. And some of that 70 percent of Alaska just
might have energy reserves that could lower gas prices, which would do
more to raise the economy than every stimulus package known to man.
And
we don't have to stop there. Do we really need two Air Force One's? The
Space Shuttle has been scrapped and F-35's are being cut-- but there's a
whole new fleet of Air Force One planes
being designed with all the amenities including onboard pharmacies,
soft serve yogurt machines and gyms.
The cost of flying Air Force One,
181,000 dollars an hour. Jet Blue offers a $499 'All You Can Jet' pass.
For only 500 bucks, the One can fly anywhere he wants to for a whole
month.
What about not just saving money, but raising money? We can do that too. Yes we can.
They say Obama is a great speaker. It's time to put him to the test. Bill Clinton made 10 million dollars
delivering speeches in a single year. If Slick Willy got paid an
average of $187,000 a night to pack them in, Obama should be able to top
him. The country elected a celebrity and it's time for it to get a
cut of the profits.
We can take out an ad in the back pages of the UN
Observer offering O speeches at a quarter of a million each. From
Berkley to Bangkok, Cairo to Caracas, and Berlin to Brussels, if you've
got a board meeting, bar mitzvah, 70's themed disco dance party,
memorial, wake or revolution -- he will be there to say a
few words in style. Have your picture taken with him for only a little
extra.
Will
it be embarrassing and degrading to the United States to hire out its
elected leader for children's birthday parties? Yes it will. But less so
than if Obama skips the party to go negotiate a treaty with Russia or
start another war with Libya. He's much safer pretending to ride the
pony while making scary faces when his teleprompter tells him to. And
while his stock isn't what it used to be, we stand a good chance of
clearing a 100 million in a year. That won't do much to dent the 10
billion he's already spending a day. But it's a start.
And
there's no reason to stop there. Obama loves to golf. Let's enter him
in a celebrity golf tournament. What about Biden? He may not have much
gravitas, but he could kill in the right comedy club. And let's not rule
out the occasional drinking contest. So many other members of the
administration are also going around giving it away for free. Sure the
crowds won't line up around the block to hear Secretary of Education
Arne Duncan juggle pies, but there's got to be somebody out
there who'll pay for it. And that's exactly what classified ads in the
back of newspapers are for.
Liberals have been complaining that 33 congressmen are sleeping in
their offices. And that's a good start. But when all 535 congressmen
and senators are sleeping in their offices-- then we'll be getting
somewhere. And can someone ask Obama to please turn the thermostat down below Hawaii level temperatures. We're paying for him to sleep there, not sunbathe there. And while we're at it, what about charging him rent?
Liberals
say we should squeeze the rich. And the average Senator is a
millionaire. The top 10 richest Senators (7 out of 10 Democrats) have a
combined net worth of over a billion dollars. Why the hell are we paying
them to be in the Senate? They should be paying us.
The Romans
auctioned off offices. Maybe we should start doing the same thing.
Campaigns already cost millions of dollars, but the proceeds to go ad
agencies, pollsters and television networks. This way the proceeds would
go directly toward paying off the national debt. And to forestall the
risk of incompetents in government, every Senator would be forced to buy
a 1 trillion dollar malpractice insurance policy that would cover such
eventualities as passing bills they haven't read, assaulting other
congressmen and bankrupting the government.
We would end up with the
same government we have now-- but at least the United States would be
insured for the damages.
Every dollar begins with a
dime and so does a government sale. Under the Federal Property and
Service Administration Act of 1949, the Federal Surplus Property Program
gives away items that federal employees have through some unnatural
event declared surplus to requirements. Items being given away include
jet engines, copy machines and backhoes. Has anyone ever heard of an
auction? And why stop at auctioning off backhoes, when we can auction
off bills.
Right now if a company or lobby wants a law
passed, they have to go through a complicated process of exchanging
favors. And the government doesn't see a dime of that money. Why not
just put a direct price tag on laws derived from their cost of enforcement
and total expense.
Want a government grant for your crony capitalist green energy boondoggle or humanitarian project to educate tribesmen on how to use
dishwashers? Just pay 110 percent off the cost of the grant and it's
yours. Doesn't sound like such a good deal anymore. How do you think the
taxpayers who funded your grants used to feel? Welcome to the new
Capitalist America.
For a decade we've been paying a billion dollars
to 250,000 dead people. And that's fine. As a cost saving measure, from
now on you have to be dead to collect subsidies. To pick them up, just
show up at any government office in beautiful Bureaucratia with proof of
your own death in hand. (Please note that lack of a conscience, soul or
manners does not equate to being legally dead.) This should be good news
to cowboy poets everywhere, who can rest easy knowing that they will be
able to haunt the living with their poems from beyond the grave. "I
dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night alive as you or me. Says I, "But Joe
you're ten years dead". "I never died," says he, "I've been waiting in a
government line."
The government has fifty-six programs across 20 agencies dealing
with financial literacy. That's all well and good, but they're woefully
misdirected at the general public. There's an urgent need for financial
literacy programs aimed at Washington D.C. If we could just teach them
how to cut down from 10 billion a day to a piddling 1 billion a day,
maybe the great scissors wouldn't have to cut after all. Forget the
fifty-six programs.
This isn't a problem that can be solved by
bureaucrats. It's up to all of us to adopt a senator or representative
and mentor him or her in financial literacy. It won't be a rewarding
job, but it's important work that needs doing.
In the
meantime, there's pork pies to be baked and red tape lemonade to serve.
There's no need to raise the debt limit. If we have a really successful
government sale, we might even have enough left over for a one way
ticket to Harry Reid's choice of cowboy poetry festivals.
Monday, October 07, 2013
Let's Have a Government Sale

About Daniel Greenfield
Daniel Greenfield is a journalist investigating Islamic terrorism and the Left. He is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center
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You and John Stossel should be in the next administration!
ReplyDeleteAnd Bill Clinton ALREADY set the precendent of renting out the Lincoln Bedroom. Turn the White House into a Hotel!!1
ReplyDeleteThe best idea I have ever heard. Brilliant!
ReplyDeleteDennis: I agree with you.
Elaine
I love the malpractice insurance idea but who would bring suit? Unfortunately too many people believe balancing the budget, keeping our country militarily strong and not falling for and funding corrupt green energy scams is malpractice. Can we write a prosperity exclusion into the policy?
ReplyDeleteLiberals have been complaining that 33 congressmen are sleeping in their offices. And that's a good start. But when all 535 congressmen and senators are sleeping in their offices-- then we'll be getting somewhere.
ReplyDeleteI beg to differ. When all 535 congressmen and senators are sleeping in refrigerator cartons next to steam grates, then we'll be getting somewhere.
Let's Have a Government Sale
ReplyDeleteAnother slight nitpick: Our government is already for sale—and has repeatedly been sold—to the highest special interest bidder.
Carry on.
. I wouldn't be adverse to buying a ticket to fly on AF1 to my next vacation venue.
ReplyDeleteWe have a family wedding coming up in the near future, could we rent one of the ballrooms at the WhiteHouse? What a 'destination' wedding that would be!
You can mentor them til the cows come home but when money appears they follow it, not values. It is their pockets that have the most influence on politicians I suspect.
ReplyDeletei got em figured to sell off every last ounce of mineral ore and fracked gallon of oil to the chicoms and never mind the waste.... that'll be your grandchildrens job/expense, nomatter how many college degrees they have..
ReplyDelete