When life fit in a Prius

The ONE just sent his budget to congress and it is evident that, despite the so-called spending freeze announced in the State of the Union address last week, the spending in Washington will continue unabated. The debt ceiling has been raised several times and our elected officials seem to have the "I still have checks I can't be broke" syndrome so common among recent college grads on their own with their very first bank account.

I am at a loss to understand the need for more and more consumption in an age when we are bombarded with ads to continue to conserve to "save the planet". I can only suppose government officials equate spending to power and, after all, that is the true quest of those in the elected elite in our country; acquire more power.

On the way from the airport to my hotel this evening, I saw in the lane beside me a young girl with a car piled full of packing boxes, laundry baskets and a mish mash of other receptacles so full she was either moving or a member of some new breed of homeless living in her car devotees.

I remember the days when everything I owned would fit in to a 1978 Buick LeSabre. Those belongings made several cross country trips and occupied many different residences on my way from the backwoods of Pennsylvania to the thriving metropolis of Salt Lake City. Now, were a move in order, several vans or a really big semi-tractor trailer would need to be called in to handle the accumulated crap that a natural born hoarder collects. Crap that, truly, serves no purpose other than the fact I want it.

There is nothing wrong with using one's gains gotten from legitimate means to purchase truck loads of knick knacks and pattiwacks and dog bones for the purpose of personal enjoyment or neighborhood one upmanship. After all, that is the American dream; conspicuous consumption of the highest order.

It is a different story though when our elected officials treat the public coffers like some gigantic piggy bank to be used to treat their constituents to pork barrel projects like some preteen Carnegie emptying the bank to buy pork rinds for his classmates to curry favor. If our government acted more like the young college grad and kept their consumption to that which fit, not in to the vehicle of their choice but, in to the vehicle of our economy, we wouldn't have deficit spending as far as the eye can see. It is right that we, as individuals, grow our personal fortunes and acquire wealth as we can. A government is not an individual. It needs to keep it's growth confined to what the economy can drive and no more.


S2
(Editors note: The bald man is in a hotel with pathetically slow internet and chose to write a beer fueled extemporaneous diatribe with no links and no research.)