Musings of One Who Found a Needle in a Haystack and Didn't Know What To Do With It

There's been much ado about immigration reform lately. While we're not privy to the discussions going in congress, what little information we can glean indicates that congress wants to avoid inconvenience to or injury to the feelings of illegal immigrants. Further, there seems to be a feeling in congress that the logistics of deporting 12 million illegal aliens (or however many there are) would be insurmountable. We think they're wrong on both counts.
If you want people to do something, you provide incentives for them to do it. (See previous musing about balancing the budget). When you want people not to do something, you establish the strongest dis-incentives that you can design. Some such dis-incentives already exist, but are not being enforced, and others could be easily established. In our opinion, if such dis-incentives were established, the illegal immigration problem would probably solve itself.

Musing of One on Crutches When Someone Offered to Help Him Put Roller Skates Under the Crutches to Help Him Go Faster

There has been a multitude of appearances by politicians on tv discussing the need to cut costs in order to balance the federal budget, but no one so far as I know has offered any specific suggestions on cutting costs. Congress should be leading in this respect, not prodding others. So I make the following suggestions:

1. Cut the pay of members of Congress and their staffs by %10. Freeze the salaries at this level until the budget is balanced. Also, freeze benefits at their current level.

2. Cut the pay of the President and all memebers of his staff by %10. Freeze pay at this level as well as benefits at this current level until the federal budget is balanced. (If this causes a ripple effect down through the ranks, so be it.)

3. Cut the other budget items of Congress by %10 until the federal budget is balanced.

This is known as an incentive. The states (especially California and New York) should follow this procedure.

4. Freeze social security payments at their current level. This will be the hit the seniors take. It's not an incentive for seniors, but it will probably cause them to vote against any handouts.

5. Freeze federal pay scales and benefits at their current levels, except for those possibly of the military. Keep this freeze in effect until (1) the federal budget is balanced and (2) the average pay and benefits for federal employees no longer exceeds those of employees in the private sector.

If this offends anybody, just remember that I belong to Krotchety Old Kurmudgeons Klub.

Musing of One Writing an Article on Why Neither Hair Nor Grass Will Grow on a Billiard Ball

One of the unpleasant side effects of the Gulf oil spill has been the oppurtunity afforded for political posturing.

A couple of examples:

1. A number of times BP executives went on television and stated they would pay all costs resulting from the spill. Even after this, the President and various members of congress continued to stand in front of the camera and declaim: "We are going to make BP pay."

2. One of the major news services interviewed a boat captain who was sitting on his boat high and dry. He stated that he had been called out one day to do some clean up work on the ocean, but had since then been sitting idle without anything to do. The news service left the story at that. Another news service contacted BP about the same captain and boat and was informed that storms in the area made it unwise to send boats of that size out to do clean up work and that as soon as weather permitted they would be called out again. Meanwhile BP had been paying captain and crew. Sounds to me like the first news service had been doing a little political posturing.

Musings of One Who Was Riding on a Truckload of Turnips When...

...the Truck Tailgate Broke and All the Turnips Fell Off.

Grandson Dan has a friend who is an electronic genius. He decided he wanted to make something totally unique so after due deliberation he built a wood-burning steam-powered music synthesizer. I think we will all admit that he succeeded in creating something totally unique. This guy, being a genius, could be very useful in the R & D department of some large company. Or, if he wanted to go in another direction, he could probably do well at the IRS or HHS.