MY PLAN TO BALANCE THE BUDGET!

   The budget quandary continues. With straight faces, Republicans and tea baggers defend tax cuts for private jet owners while millions are unemployed, our schools suffer budget cuts, and government services are shut down.

   Once more, let us see what we could do to right these matters.

   1. Cut the budget? Cut military spending.

   About 20 percent of the budget, or over $70 billion, goes to military spending. We do not need a military operation on the scale of the Cold War. We do not need forces in Iraq or Afghanistan. We do not need new nuclear weapons or any more aircraft carriers. If we reduce the military budget by $100 billion, we make a lot of military contractors unhappy. Otherwise, we have gone a long way towards a balanced budget.

   Do we "weaken" America? We do not face any foreign foes against whom big, expensive hardware has any tactical advantage. The Taliban will not oppose us with main-line battle tanks. Osama bin Laden did not have, at his disposal, flights of jet interceptors, even Korea-era.

   However, bin Laden’s goals consisted of crippling the United States in other ways. He wanted to hurt us economically. He also wanted us to lose our freedoms. Bush helped him on both counts. If you want to assist al Quaeda, keep the Bush tax cuts and provisions of the Patriot Act. Which brings me to . . .   

   2. Ditch the Bush tax cuts for the rich and thereby increase government revenues.

   Jettison all the faulty economic analysis you have garnered from Fox. We should tax the super-wealthy, even if only on modest levels. "Trickle-down" economics never worked. The only reasons the economy was so good in the 1980s were (1) Iran and Iraq, two countries that produce a lot of the world’s supply of oil, were at war and the bottom dropped out on prices of oil, very convenient for a world-wide economy based on—you guessed it—oil; and (2) The Federal Reserve tightened controls on currency in 1979 to produce a recession to stop the stagflation that had plagued the United States since the mid-1960s. Ronald Reagan probably would have trouble spelling the word "economics," although it was his major at Eureka! College in Illinois. He did understand economic principles. He certainly was not entitled to any credit for the economic prosperity of the 1980s.

   Face it everyone, the Bush tax cuts DID NOT WORK if the dynamic—as always was advanced since Reagan was in the Oval Office—was tax cuts produce jobs. If "trickle down" economics had any validity, our economy would be running like the proverbial well-oiled machine. So, please scrap the crap. Republicans and some Democrats want to preserve these tax cuts for the rich.

   3. Keep welfare and entitlement programs in place.

    If you want money to be spent here, give it to the poor. They will buy food, clothing, housing, and other essentials that directly will benefit the national economy. If you want to invest overseas, let the rich get away with the safety nets bestowed upon them since 2001. They will place their money in companies the profits from which are greater because labor in those foreign corporations works for pennies per hour.

   Conclusion.

   If this post sounds familiar, it is because I ran it in February of this year. The three simple parts of the plan never will be adopted because too much fear has been instilled for people to accept part 1, the media owned and controlled by the rich have convinced the people part 2 is unwise, and everybody has accepted as a matter of rote that entitlement programs are bad.

   Oh well. I tried; and not once, but twice.