The Growing Budget Crisis

By Author: Aaron Spetner
Total Articles: 14
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The country has a budget crisis. But in perspective, there are many more problems that are much worse.
WASHINGTON, DC (Spetnik.com) - Today I would like to discuss the nation's budget crisis. It is time that we, the uneducated voter, decided to take a look at the way the government is spending money and try to understand it. For example, the government runs the postal service. The postal service is more than just stamps and mail carriers. Postal union regulations require that the government provide all sorts of items to employees, such as automatic assault weapons for when they snap (which reminds me that it's been a while since that has happened, so if you must enter a post office, wear a bulletproof vest - odds are that a shooting will occur within the next week). You know, it seems that the safety of Americans who go to the post office is a bit more important than the budget, so let's leave the budget for a minute. Why is it always the postal workers that go postal? I think that instead of showing us numbers and tax proposals, political candidates should tell us how they plan to implement post office reform. ...
... In case any politicians are reading this article, let me give you my plan (you are free to use it, provided that you mention me in your inaugural speech). I propose that before a postal worker is hired, he be required to serve a mandatory jail sentence, half the term usually sentenced to convicted postal workers. This way, if a postal worker does go on a rampage, he already has half of his rehabilitation out of the way, thereby giving him a quicker return to normal society. In addition, should he finish his postal career without killing anybody, government scientists would add additional years to his life, equal to the prison term served before his employment. I believe that this way, postal workers would have extra incentive to stay sane. In the event that government scientists do not yet have a method to extend an individual's lifetime (I think they do - haven't you seen Strom Thurmond?), I have a second method of postal reform. This one involves labor union laws. You see, I did some research into the U.S. Postal Service, and I discovered some interesting facts. One major discovery was that postal union regulations require employees to work in slow-motion. This is why it takes them half-an-hour to sell you a stamp (if you wouldn't specify your favorite stupid designer stamp, it would only take twenty minutes and save time for the other customers on line). They are required to do this in order so that the government will have to hire more employees and the union bosses will thereby make more money. Now, when you work in slow-motion, you have time to think. You have time to focus on who you hate. You have time to think about how many people you can shoot in the allotted time for postal rampages. All a politician wishing to implement postal reform would have to do would be to abolish this slow-motion union rule. This way, less employees will be needed and they will be to busy working to think about killing people. For this plan to work, you may also need to pay off the union bosses to make up for the money they will lose now that the postal service no longer needs so many workers. Now, I know this plan is not perfect. You may ask, Well, it's great that the postal workers will be too busy to kill people, but what about all the employees that will now be laid off as a result of the increased performance? They will have nothing to do and will have even more time to think about killing people. It is because of questions like this that you will never make a good politician. You must realize that you must draw the line somewhere. A good politician draws lots of lines. Sometimes the lines are straight, sometimes they are not. Sometimes they get intertwined and result in attractive drawings. These people are usually drawing the wrong type of lines. I am talking about abstract lines, not physical lines. Lines that say things. Lines that do things and make things happen. But this is not about lines, it is about policy. And about the budget crisis. Maybe we'll get to that next time. About the Author Aaron currently works as a software/web developer and writes in his free time. He also runs a growing web-based discussion forum at http://www.chitchatforums.com. His personal work is on display at http://www.spetnik.com.