Monday, December 31, 2012

Fiscal Cliff?

I'm not a very political person.  I vote but am truly not sure what I do matters.  I live in a red state and the electoral votes are going Republican every time.  It's a fact.  I tend to lean Republican more than Democrat in that I don't want government too much in our business and I have figured out that there is nothing free in this world.   I do see that people need help and do believe in a hand up but not a hand out.  That being said, our country is in a financial mess.   The big disagreement today is how much to tax the top 2% of earning Americans.  That's not me.  But in the throw out the baby with the bathwater mentality of both partisan parties, a disagreement on something like the top 2% stops progress on the other 98% too.  These guys are willing to take more $$ out of my pocket (and I make less than $30,000 a year) to protect the Oprah's and the Waltons.  And the other thing that seems to be hanging it up is Dems want more spending cuts that the Repubs.  They can't start with some cuts and then add.  Again, the all or nothing crap.

In my humble and not worth much obviously opinion, what we need is a house cleaning.  We need some common sense elected.  What we need is my mom doing their budget.  She managed to take a cowboy's salary and manage a house, be the best stay at home mom ever and send 4 kids to college.  The country would be tough to budget but she could add a few more amazing moms and take care of it.

I heard President Obama speak on this today and he was talking about where some of the cuts had to come from and one that caught my attention was Head Start.  We have a Pre K/Head Start class at school and that entire system is interesting.  While we have a great playground that services the school, built less than 2 years ago, Pre-K is getting their own, fenced playground that only they can play in.  The will ride their tricycles that Head Start $$ bought, then have Head Start paid for snacks, while their teacher and her assistant use the Pre-K Ipads.   They had to spend the $$ provided to them by the program on stuff they did not need or they would lose the money.  How about saving some for a rainy day?  Not the government way.  Meanshile, the rest of the school was provided Smart Boards (the best teaching tool since phonics) via a bond package  but school administration has to struggle inside their budget to replace very expensive Smart Board bulbs which were apparently a surprise.  So Pre-K has money to waste while the other 6 grades in our school struggle budget wise.   It's just a rant.   So saying "cutting Head Start" is fiscally smart does not mean I think cutting the entire program is smart.   Great program, typical government irresponsibility in funding it.

Since my sweet mom is no longer with us my only suggestion won't really work.  I do remember 'Dave'  the movie where his accountant looked at the budget and asked  (paraphrasing) "Who does their books?  I'd be bankrupt if I ran my business this way."   Since mom's not available, maybe a few smart accountants could help.

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