Imagine a train

A very long train, with the United States on board. Call it the Gravy Train, for a name.

This train has been speeding down the tracks for many, many years. It has been a great party for most on board, though not for all.

At the end of the track it is running on there is an abyss. Nobody knows where the end is, but it is there.

It might be one mile away, ten miles, 100 miles; nobody can know for sure. We only know that the train must be stopped before it reaches the abyss, or there will be a terrible train wreck.

We also know that the train takes a long distance to be stopped, so there can be no waiting until the last moment to apply the brakes.

The only way to stop the train is to stop the party. Everyone will have to give up some of their gravy. It cannot be stopped any other way.

Meanwhile, the Engineer is opening the throttle. The train is picking up speed rapidly.

The rest of the crew is dithering, doing little at all to stop the train.

Some of the passengers are getting worried, many are just ignoring the speed and are enjoying all the gravy.

Very little is being done because nobody on the train wants to give up any of their gravy.

So the train keeps speeding toward the abyss. Will it be stopped in time?

It doesn't look much like it.

This little story should seem familiar. Our government has a huge and growing budget deficit and huge and growing entitlement commitments that cannot be paid for under any scenario.

The President has offered a budget proposal that will increase the deficit considerably. His party which controls the Senate is fighting to preserve current levels of spending.

The other party, which controls the House of Representatives are engaging in tokenism so far, and were split on a vote this week that would cut a mere $22 billion from the $1.5 trillion deficit.

The only conclusion that I can reach about this is that we are governed by morons.

Who will lead the political revolution that is needed?

The Real Problem With the Health Care Debate

The real problem with health care is that they have done it in a way that nobody can really be informed. Clearly the Congress is not, and clearly the folks on both sides are not.


This is the crux of the matter: the whole issue has been presented in such a poor way that nobody really knows or appreciates what is actually in the various bills, and the attempt to rush it through with no debate, like the stimulus and the cap and trade bill, leaves the public to assume that the health care bill is as bad as the others.

This is just real poor politics by Obama and the Congressional leaders. Camille Paglia had it right.

People fear the unknown. The bill's provisions are unknown....deliberately. The Democrats are losing the fight for that reason, and should.

What needs to be done is that Obama needs to lay out the bill he wants, and then the various committees in Congress should hold public hearings and hear everyone's views.

After hearings and a fair markup debate, what comes out should be freely debated on the House floor (or the Senate, as the case may be) and voted up or down after any amendments. In other words, they should follow their own procedures.

Instead, the Democrat leadership in the House tried to rush something through without debate and without really informing the public what was in it.

This is not how a Democratic Republic like ours is supposed to work. It is a violation of all the tenets of fairness.

For that reason all of the bills should be voted down, and a new start made.

We were promised bi-partisanship by Obama. Instead, we have gotten worse partisanship than even Tom DeLay caused.

Shame on them all.