Checkbooks

As I sit hear reading about the federal government wanting to spend $700 billion (that's with a "B") to prop up a fractured monetary system, I thought about a joke I'd heard a few years back.

A newly wedded husband, who upon opening his bank statement, had a conniption. The account rested $970 overdrawn.

He approached his bride with the statement and asked how it could be that after only two months of matrimonial bliss, they could be approaching one thousand dollars in debt.

She pulled her checkbook out and exclaimed, "It's not my fault. I still have checks in my checkbook."

The United States still has checks in its checkbook, but the account was overdrawn decades ago. The CPR required to keep these failing companies, banks, etc. from dying today (no telling whether they'd survive through 'til tomorrow) requires a financial burden from the population of $2333 per person. No, not per adult person. Not per wage earning person. Per every person.

If I were writing checks (does anyone write checks anymore?) on money I did not have, the government would soon terminate my check-writing in favor of rock-pounding. They'd give me a nice set of clothes, three hots-and-a-cot, but it would be in a local penitentiary.

So why can the government do this? Why can they spend beyond their budget, and then go out and spend even more?

Why? Because we let them. Really, it's our fault. You know, "...of the people, by the people." How do we let them? Silence. No letters to our congressmen. No letters to the editor. Votes. Cast for same-old, same-old without a clue how same-old has voted in the last term on issues of fiscal responsibility (or any issues). Ignorance. We don't know our own Constitution. Neither nor do we hold our legislators and executives accountable to nor do we restrain them in their responsibilities

So Uncle Sam is about to pitch $2333 of your dollars at failing companies with no promise of any return on any of your dollars. And you're going to let him.

Oh, we are a cluster of fools.