Guest Post: Bunner's 2 cents

The following doesn't vary much from the way I feel about our slide into national insolvency. So rather than write a post myself, here y'go, y'all:

Money started out as a convenient form of exchange. It's become an adversarial construct, a tin deity and the scoreboard for our existence. We can pretend it's still working for us, but it's become a lever that - as the length and stiffness of that lever expands for the haves - is used to pry us from what little hard wealth we have. 14,000,000,000,000.00 in debt notes is a stupid thing to trade anything for.

You can harrumph and wave your made in China flag and wait for Michelle Bachmann to lead you to the promised land of loonies and pray to Bill O'Reilly and keep crushing those aluminum cans but the pooch has been hosed and we're holding the bag for these junk notes.

We need a concise game plan that includes a lot of hard and fast changes to how we allow businesses to function, who gets to do what and to whom and for how long or the hard and fast change will come via a molotov cocktail when there's no more malarkey to sell and the curtain is pulled back from the man in the booth. This - shit - isn't - working - anymore. Pretending it is has put us in this sack.

This is cut point for America, y'all. With or without me or you and recess is over. So if anybody has some useful ideas that don't include guillotines or mathematically gymnastic bar graphs that add up to "shut up and don't pester the wealthy", I'm all ears. Cause I don't want to see riots in the streets, either. But this shit is way past band aids and if we don't waylay the getaway car, we're gonna be left with ashes and whatever we can grow in that corner lot where those small shops used to be. I got nothing against wealth. How you got it and what you do with it matters, not the wealth itself. I got a huge problem with pirates and thugs. Don't you? .02 USD.

- by that Internet entity known as "Bunner."

Incentives, who needs 'em?

As the self-destructive spiral masterminded by our elected representatives continues, now the Pentagon, in a masterful display of military intelligence, wants to move the military pension system to a defined-contribution plan.

Like certain other professions, such as teaching, one of the major incentives has always been a good, secure defined-benefit pension system. Now it is proposed to sweep the military pension system into the great dustbin of history to save $250 billion over 20 years. And in 20 years, what will our military look like in consequence? I suspect that the only thing that is holding up enlistment rates at this point is the recession that our leadership doesn't even like to mention.....and it may be that only if our economic malaise continues will sufficient numbers of high-quality recruits enter our Armed Forces.

And- are we to wait 20 years to see what the impact of all those savings have been on our national defense? I'd rather not.

Signs of the times....

The House of Representatives applauding themselves for their tardy actions in dealing with the growing economic mare's nest, a situation that they themselves are as responsible as any for helping to worsen. I would wish that they reap the full consequences of their corruption, stupidity and incompetence, except for the fact that those consequences will be visited on the rest of us with at least as much force.