A billion here, a billion there; sooner or later you're talking real money. And now with the Democrats in charge of the House, Senate, and White House, we've morfed the federal budget into the trillions. I think Nancy Pelosi discovered the power of zero—add a couple of zeroes here and a couple of zeroes there, and viola! Congress has more of our money to spend..
The concept of numbers has increased exponentially since I was a kid. Back then, two bits was a quarter; a buck could buy three gallons of gas; and if I ever got my hands on a fiver, I was rich indeed. All I knew about millions was that the sun was 93 million miles from the earth, just far enough away to keep us warm without burning us up.
Congress has taken full advantage of the fact that the computer has conditioned us into thinking in terms of billions and trillions—even my old G5 Mac can store over 10 million bytes of information and is cable of processing 80 billion units of info at two billion cycles per second. Compare that to my first Apple II, which came equipped with 64K of memory. Wasn't it Bill Gates who said that was all anybody would ever need?
The new bailout package, or Christmas wish list, is just another example of why it's getting harder and harder to support the government in the style to which it has become accustomed. They should change your zip code out there in D.C. to 00000, since nothing there adds up anyway.
Think about it—a billion is a thousand millions; a trillion is a million millions. With the national debt already in the trillions of dollars and our total population around 250 million, how much does each of us owe? You do the math; my brain stopped several gigabytes back.
What makes this even more of a crime is that most of what's in this "stimulus" bill will do nothing to stimulate the economy. Take the halthcare provisions. There's money for more diagnostics, vaccines, etc., but there's no requirement that they be made in America. Most of our drugs are not made in this country.
ReplyDeleteOn the bright side, even though the stimulus bill was basically earmarks in a thinly veiled disguise, none of the House Republicans voted for it. And 11 Democrats had the courage to stand up to Nancy Pelosi and vote no. Now, the president is recognizing that this bill is bad news. Let's hope the voters remember this and pin the blame on the donkey in two years!