Money Blues; Thinking of Politics

Nope, I wasn't able to make it to Ushicon. Ain't got no money.

With my move into a new apartment, my finances changed pretty dramatically:

1. My rent went from $500 a month to $545.
   
2. My new apartment complex takes care of all utilities except for phone and electricity, tossing in extended cable TV for free.
   
3. I dropped my DSL service.
   
4. I got a raise, roughly equal to $200 extra a month.
   
5. I dropped USAA as my automobile insurance carrier and picked up LiberyMutual instead, opting for automatic paycheck reductions to pay for it.
   
6. And I broke up with my girlfriend.

All of these things have combined into a suddenly tight financial atmosphere. I've got to pay closer attention to what my money gets spent on so I don't actually go broke and into debt. The consequences of seriously screwing up aren't good. I left my parents' home years ago to live on my own and I don't intend on moving back.

It really is a simple equation. If I don't make enough money to cover what I want to buy, then I have to lower my buying expectations and alter my habits. I'll be buying Zeigen Bock rather than Fat Tire...grocery brand foods rather than national brands...stay home rather than go out...reluctantly not buy new music and see new movies...and almost religiously turn my lights and electric devices off when I don't need them.

It doesn't work that way with government, of course. Obviously, some jurisdictions do a better job with their balance books than others and when crunch time comes, they cut government jobs and reduce spending. I don't want to lump everyone together.

But the feeling I've gotten over the years regarding the federal government and state governments in general is that it is simply not even up for discussion to cut payrolls by any significant degree and almost anathema to cut social programs. Everyone pays lipservice to "reducing waste" and "cutting the fat" from budgets, but those are problems of a systemic nature to all organizations. Eliminating costly departments and the programs they oversee are my preferred methods of reducing government red ink.

Perhaps that's why I'm hesitant to ever run for office. I'm too much of a fundamentalist to get any serious level of voter support. Cloaking my ideas in digestible rhetoric might work, but that is deception and any opponents could just point to this very blog and reveal what I truely feel about the issues. There'd be no point in trying to hide my intentions: I'd do my best to put Grover Norquist's famous quote of "get [government] down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub" into actual practice.

In Austin, such a political stance is guaranteed to get you dead-on-arrival status.

Anyway, just pondering some things on this very nice Saturday afternoon.

Posted by Drizzten at January 31, 2004 04:14 PM