Democratic Ideals

This morning I was watching "Face the Nation" when a Democrat from West Virginia was the first guest.   I was just blown away that I found myself listening to someone that made sense.  He blamed a lot of the problems on the fact that they don't have a clear stated set of values in Congress.  Without a road map of what they need to spend the money on, they just spend money.

He went on to say that the Democrats say we don't have a spending problem, we don't have enough revenue.  The Republicans say it is a spending problem and they want to fix it by stopping our spending.  Then he surprised the heck out of me when he said that in a lot of ways both are right.  He offered the following proposal.  We need to cut spending and increase revenue.  His plan would go on to have 70 cents of every new dollar go to pay off the National Debt and only 30 cents go to what he called the core values we should have.  He and I agree that no matter what happens in the short term, the large deficit will just create bigger problems down the road.  It is a lot like drawing cash advances from your credit cards while at a Casino.  Few people win when you gamble.  They don't build those Casinos from the winners.

I read in the paper that our local school district has a program that offers each student an I-pad.  They have also put together a $50 insurance program that guarantees that if the I-pad is damaged or lost, it will be replaced by the school rather than put that burden on the parents.  In the article, one of the science teachers being interviewed had he class taking a test with their I-pads.  The results were graded and tallied by the teacher's machine and available very quickly.  I do wish they had talked about the on-line help available from the automation. 

The weather here in the Heartland is near perfect right now.  It is nice to get out and putter around in the yard.  My grandmother Bessie would call it piddling around.  At her house there was only a rotary manual push lawn mower and she had two great big yards back to back.  I described a trip to Eldorado, Kansas as a lot of work with a great meal thrown in. 

I guess I am going to have to ask Dave to stop by and see what the hell I have done now.  I bought a new HP printer and it prints well but won't scan well.    It will copy a piece of paper as out put but don't try to send anything back to the computer.  Oh well, if anyone can figure it out, it will be Dave.

Better get moving and see if there is a better way to spend the morning.

MUD