Category · 33 postsGovernment
All posts in the automatic “Government” category, newest first.
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September 20, 2025
Who am I; Who are We?
The current tendency to judge and label each other is regrettable. Labeling others often says more about the labeler than the labeled.…
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April 4, 2025
DOGE Key Result Measures
The Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE for short, has one highly visible and vitally important set of Key Result Measures, federal government revenue, spending, and…
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March 29, 2025
The Regrettable One Drop Rule
In Peggy Noonan’s “A Certain Idea of America,” a sentence in an essay on the American Dream caught my attention: “The original sin of America,…
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February 20, 2025
When Nothing Matters, Everything Matters
A fundamental problem facing the United States of America is that our federal government is irresponsibly spending about ten trillion dollars per year…
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August 22, 2023
Vital Signs
Having been facing some medical issues for the past couple of years, I am very familiar with the declaration, “I’m going to check your vitals.”…
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June 12, 2020
Defunding!
Calls to “defund” police departments sound unreasonable, but I understand some are saying that they don’t really want to remove all funding and shut down…
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April 3, 2020
Now We Know Why!
Now we know why decades of deficit spending and debt accumulation, even through times of fake prosperity, storing our national wealth in ridiculously inflated stock…
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October 7, 2018
Created Equal
Here is a laughable headline on a Philip Bump October 6 Washington Post opinion piece: Senators representing less than half the U.S. are about to…
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July 29, 2018
I Liked and Like Ike
Published first a few years ago in an earlier blog. Dwight David (Ike) Eisenhower was the president of my youth, age 10 to 18 approximately,…
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July 28, 2018
Erik Larson’s In the Garden of Beasts
Originally published 4/29/2012 · republished 2018
(First published 4/29/2012) US Ambassador to Germany was not exactly a plum position in 1933, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt had to get to his…
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July 28, 2018
Excessive Presidential Power Not to Our Advantage
Originally published May 20, 2013 · republished 2018
This was originally posted May 20, 2013 under a different title in response to the worshipful attitude many citizens seemed to have toward President Obama.…
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February 12, 2018
Government Financial Data
My source for data on federal, state, and local government spending is almost always the Bureau of Economic Affairs National Income and Product Accounts. I…
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February 2, 2018
Helping the Poor and Everybody Else
The post below was published in 2010. The examples are a bit out of date, and the links don’t work, and I was wrong about…
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February 2, 2018
Pistol Creek Days
Originally published November, 2009 · republished 2018
Originally Posted November, 2009. Examples outdated, links may not work, but system unchanged. When I was growing up in Maryville, TN, I spent a lot…
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January 1, 2018
The WPA and Granny’s Little Brown Shack
In my previous Permanent Fixes Blog I posted a couple of times during the financial crisis about this family relic, using it as an example…
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August 6, 2017
Irrational Government Meddling: Stop It!
There are at least five good reasons government should not meddle in the affairs of private free enterprise.
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May 8, 2017
The Decade of Our Discontent
The announcement a few days ago of real % increase in GDP for the first quarter of only 0.7% suggested it might be time to…
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December 19, 2016
Skeptical of Government?
The December 4th Charleston SC Post and Courier included a rather lengthy story, by David Slade (Facebook), describing mismanagement of state employee pension funds over…
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October 29, 2016
I Could Have Been a Lobbyist
There is an interesting article in The State newspaper today about lobbying activity in and around the SC State House. I know the sizes of the…
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October 23, 2016
Job Growth – New Low Predicted
Both sides of the political fence like to pick and choose data points to prove either that the jobs recovery during the Obama administration is…
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October 23, 2016
You Didn’t Create That Job!
A NYT lead editorial, The Myth of Job Creation, published during the 2012 presidential campaigns, tried to make the case that both Governor Romney and President Obama erred…
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October 13, 2016
Republican Party, RIP
Since the founding of the nation, the fundamental political issue has always been size and influence of the Federal Government and the extent to which…
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October 1, 2016
Government Dairy Products, Inc. (11/7/2010)
Originally published 11/7/2010 · republished 2016
One of the things I remember about grammar school days (1950’s) was how good a slice of white bread smeared with butter tasted in the…
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September 9, 2016
Abraham Lincoln, Gary Johnson, and Libertarianism
I’m thinking of the libertarian political philosophy in connection with Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson’s failure to respond quickly and appropriately to a question about…
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August 25, 2016
Hard Times (November 30, 2011)
Originally published November 30, 2011 · republished 2016
When I started reading The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan, I did a quick search on “Dust Bowl” for a little background information on the subject…
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August 9, 2016
Buy a House to Make a Home
Over almost 52 years of marriage, my wife and I have rented eight and purchased eight residences. So we have considerable experience with both renting…
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August 7, 2016
No Satisfaction? (1/4/2013)
Originally published 1/4/2013 · republished 2016
I thought of the Rolling Stones song in connection with my probably developing reputation as a permanent malcontent, never happy with the way things are,…
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August 7, 2016
Quality, System Dynamics, Romney, Trump, and Clinton
Originally published 8/25/2012 · republished 2016
Originally Posted 8/25/2012 – Additional Introduction Added 8/7/2016) Below is a post I did during the last presidential campaign explaining why I supported Mr. Romney…
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August 4, 2016
Excise Taxes, Lobbying, and Our Future
Worrying about how we fund federal spending, I noticed that in 1960, federal excise tax revenue funded 11.6% of federal spending, but, in 2015, it…
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June 25, 2016
KRM’s (Key Result Measures) and Improvement Plan for the USA (Revised 5/15/2015 Post)
Originally published 5/15/2015 · republished 2016
We are heavily entangled with, both supporting and depending on, two very large entities that we hope and pray are too large to fail. Unfortunately,…
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June 19, 2016
TQM, Health Care, and the Federal Government
Originally published 2/13/2014 · republished 2016
(Originally Posted 2/13/2014) TQM, Total Quality Management, was a 1980’s, 1990’s buzzword that, as all buzzwords eventually do, has pretty much vanished from the language…
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June 16, 2016
War On Poverty in America Lost
Poverty is a problem in America. I’ve seen it in volunteer work and in the faces of people on the streets. With Home Works of…
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June 15, 2016
Gerrymandering By Cropping
Originally published 10/4/2013 · republished 2016
If you have experience posting photos on some websites, you know that the photos have to be a certain size and shape and have received…
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