E. Thomas ChesworthStatic & CrosstalkI know how to save several billion dollars in the national budget. Let’s just get rid of all those freeloaders in NASA. I mean, who gives a damn if we go to Mars or back to the Moon. When I went to college I took up space and look at the good it did me. Here I am sitting at this screwy excuse for a typewriter, a PC, and I’m still just taking up space. Of course, PBS would take care of funding the sort of expensive and very risky research that gives us things like PC computers, improved refractory materials, very efficient heat insulating materials, ballpoint pens that write in zero gravity and food in toothpaste tubes. We can’t afford to stop giving foreign aid to every deadbeat nation in the world. Those poor slobs need us so badly. Just think how terrible it would be for these people, who by and large hate us, if they had to go hungry. And who would pay for their recreational drugs? Without free food they might not grow up big and strong and then they would be at a serious disadvantage when they were trying to kill our Marines who were only trying to keep them from beating the crap out of their women and stoning them for sport - a sort of game they call dodge boulder. By the way, most of this money finds its way into the pocket of some dictator. And there is no way we can afford not to bail out moronic companies who continue to build stretch-limos called SUVs. These things are so big that the community in which I live had to re-paint the lines in the parking spaces so that their vehicles would fit in the parking spaces. Of course, every other one of these vehicles is an open bed truck filled with so much manure that everyone needs one to decorate the front of their yard. Both these oversized, overweight monstrosities get at least five miles to the gallon of gasoline but not more than ten. They are, of course, okay because they are part of the green movement - green money for the Detroit dingbats and green to line the pockets of the oil companies. Half this important stimulus money finds its way into the pocket of some CEO. And we can’t touch the Antisocial Insecurity program. Even to think about it or rethink the way it should be run is sudden death for any politician. The slob might have to work for a living, God forbid. By the way, who can live on $2k a month? It costs more than that to have a beer at the local bar every day of the month. Why, poor mom and pop would have to eat cat and dog food. And worse, the nasty capitalist pet food manufacturers would wind up with the money. Well, that might not be too bad - the Nasty pet food guys are in Asia and they make the stuff out of spare yak parts. We might be able to decrease their foreign aid subsidies - every dark cloud has a silver spoon in its mouth. In fact, we can solve this whole budget thing by using the tried and true method used on us by the rest of the world. We could nationalize everything in the country belonging to foreign nationals. The real estate on Manhattan Island would be back in American hands. That alone would cancel the national debt. The fruited plain and the purple mountains’ majesty would be ours again. And what about sending a bill to the nations whose fat we pulled out of the fire with the blood of our troops? The French owe us for liberating Paris. At least one oil-rich country in the Middle East owes us for returning their conquered lands to them. We could also put a big dent in our national debt by confiscating all the promissory notes held in Bullmanure. These notes, once in government hands, could be extorted from the American public to pay for junkets to Sandals on St. Lucia for fact finding. The only interest to our dedicated public servants is: does St.Lucia have a nude beach? Better yet, we can just read the immortal words of that sage in Mad Magazine, Alfred E. Neuman: "What, me worry?" Or the council of that unsung and unknown hero who uttered the admonition: “Party on, dudes.” |