Scavenger Hunt

On May 15, 2009, TheFundamentals proposed a plan for helping the party out of power (poop) get back into power. It involved a commitment tied to improved representation numbers in congress to start reducing the burdensome debt of the US federal government. Let’s hope someone is listening. (Again these ideas are offered without expectation of compensation to all you high paid political consultants out there.) This plan is a work in process. Here’s more (no charge.)

Poop will make a commitment that if a business or a bank or an insurance company or an automobile company or a state or city or union or pension fund or any organization gets in financial trouble we’re just not going to even consider bailing it out. We will let the federal bankruptcy laws and the federal bankruptcy courts and their thousands of employees and established laws and precedents and rules and procedures and processes do what they have been doing for 200 plus years and that is taking care of business. By the way, bankruptcy is one of the defined “enumerated powers” (see TheFundamentals June 8, 2009 for the list of these powers) extended to the congress in the US Constitution. For some strange reason, “bailouts” are not enumerated in the US Constitution. Once again, without benefit of the Internet, Harvard Law Review or the fabulous leadership of the Austrian weight lifter, the folks who had the job of forming a nation and limiting government powers from the very start got it right.

What a novel idea - using established government processes to do what they do best – creating and cleaning up messes. A form of garbage pickup. Refuse disposal. The new congress could order up an extra large garbage can from a Chinese vendor (or WalMart but that’s redundant), put it down by the curb and in it, place the following damaged and no longer salvageable goods: GM, Chrysler, AIG, Citibank and the states of California, Michigan, Illinois and New York. The bankruptcy courts will probably try to auction the assets of those four states. Hmmnnn. The Fundamentals wonders what are lengthy welfare rolls and bloated public sector union payrolls and pension obligations worth in an open marketplace? Cuba might be interested. We could donate California to the Mexicans but that reverse diaspora may require a modicum of negotiation talent. We could ask Canada to take over Michigan and Illinois and, maybe, even New York. Do you think they could be enticed if we threw in Al Franken and the states of MN and WI? Eh?

By the way, TheFundmentals could care less if the party out of power (poop) makes the commitment to do this and therefore gets back into power or if the party in power makes the commitment to do this and therefore stays in power. The appeal to poop is only logical because the party in power could already be doing this but they seem to be intent on becoming the new poop which is what the previous party in power succeeded in doing with its misguided actions and therefore became poop.

Warning: Do not read the preceding paragraph during or after cocktail hour. In times like these, do not skip cocktail hour. Poop should also endorse cocktail bailouts as an alternative to monetary bailouts. The former USSR has embraced the cocktail culture with a degree of success and has simultaneously solved its old age benefit problem. Now that’s change we can all accept.