You Can't Teach Stupid...

... It looks like you have to elect it.

From AP:

Senate wants $5M to study financial crisis

The Senate has agreed to spend $5 million to investigate the cause of the economic crisis as it moves toward passing a $245 million bill that would substantially increase the number of FBI agents and prosecutors working mortgage fraud.

Keeping in mind that the FBI has long had a "white collar crime" division, but that many of the agents involved there were reassigned to fight the War on Indiviualism (the misnamed War on Terror) but instead of reasigning them back to their original, and probably much more effective, less invasive, directive, we are going to replace them, at great taxpayer expense, to further expand federal policing powers. So, in the end, the FBI can have its tanks and eat it too. But for a second lets go beyond that nonsensical expansion of tax-fueled MIBery in the midst of an unprecidented recession, and go back and read that AP headline again. 

"Senate wants $5M to study financial crisis"

The mind reels.

Spending money to find out why you are broke. Seriously? An eleven year old couldn't be talked into that. "Hey kid, don't you wish you had enough money to buy that game you want? Well, I'll tell you what, why don't you give me what money you do have, and I'll put together a research group to find out why you don't have enough." Give me a break. Its stupidity like this, that makes me think I've already have the problem figured out, and a quick scan of some other recent AP headlines seems to bear out my hypothesis.

Taxpayers invested another $2 billion in General Motors Corp

6 companies to get $9.9B under mortgage program

Congress gears up for $500 billion transportation bill

US to spend $6 billion on Cold War weapons cleanup

Stimulus money includes $55 million spruce-up of National Mall

And those are all from the last week or so. You got that? Demand for production has dropped, so we need to spend more money to make stuf no one wants, money that, by the way, we will get from taxing the people who still do make stuf that people did want, at least until it became so taxed no one could afford it, and mortgages aren't worth the paper they are written on, so we need to buy some, and the fuel tax revenue used to expand and improve the highway system has dropped because no one is driving on them, so we need to increase the burden elsewhere so we can have the most impressive whiz bang empty highways in the world. and we spent too much on weapons we never needed, so in order to have less of them, we have to create a new fund to pay to get rid of them (garage sales wont work i guess) and the real reason this whole economy is in the shitter is the brown grass in front of the statue of that great federal expansionist Abraham "lets kill 600,000 Americans to preserve expand the tax base" Lincoln.

So, I think I've found the problem. Its what happens when you mix Taxation and Regulation with Stupidity. We live in a country where there has never been a successful "Temporary Government Program", where everything from cheese to housing to charity to childrens toys to balloons is subject to the increased cost of government regulation, inspection and taxation.

If i have to make it any clearer, maybe an illustration or two will help.

No? How about this one:

Starting to get the picture?

Now explain to me how this is sustainable when not only does the government not produce jobs with all this wanton spending, its own sole source of income is the coerced tribute paid by those members of society that do have jobs, a number that, by the way, is rapidly shrinking, and by any historical account will continue to shrink for some time, well after all these checks are written out in their names. And so, i guess they will just have to increase those taxes again, to protect all these venerable federal programs, penalizing whatever sector or individuals are still able to make ends meet... And the cycle continues, to what end? This is just the tip of the iceburg.

Yeah, thats what I thought. At least one person in all this government-sponsored-mess (GSM) figured out who to blame. 

So, now that I have answered the 5 million dollar question, Ill just have to sit and wait for my check to show up, which is good, because today, I became one of those countless unemployed in America. I wont be looking for federal handouts of taxpayer money, but i also wont be paying much of a tribute, for a while.

Ill be looking for a job. I hope these people will do the same, very soon, or at the least, consider David Kellerman's solution. 

Faber est suae quisque fortunae