Meltup Update Video
via youtube.com
Strategic Marketing Dude. Aging guitar hacker. I have been known to howl at the moon on occasion.
Currently working on my Social Media Strategy chops at Consensio.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed huge cuts to a host of state services Friday to close a $19 billion hole in California’s two-year budget, including the elimination of a financial assistance program for poor families.
How long before the US needs to "rescue" California the way that the EU had to rescue Greece?
This is a very good video. It requires an investment of an hour of your time - but it is worth it. There are some core concepts here that I wish everyone would understand.
The bill, however, would add $1.7 billion for an extra destroyer the Defense Department did not request and $2.5 billion for 10 C-17 cargo planes it did not want, at the behest of lawmakers representing the states where those items would be built. Although the White House said the administration "strongly objects" to the extra C-17s and to the Senate's proposed shift of more than $3 billion from operations and maintenance accounts to projects the Pentagon did not request, no veto was threatened over those provisions.
The destroyer and the 10 cargo planes are not earmarks. These are incremental spending - totaling more than $4 billion - that was not requested by Defense.
I guess when you are running a $1.5 trillion deficit this seems like monopoly money. There is an old saying: "No one manages someone else's money as carefully as they manage their own."
Stop the madness.
The bill also increases the budgets for lawmakers’ offices by more than 8 percent.
Huh?! What was that? In the same bill that essentially acknowledges that the Federal Government needs to dip into the credit card to pay the bills, the Congress INCREASES its overhead by 8%. 8%!! Are you increasing the overhead in your household by 8% this year? In your business? In your church or synagogue or mosque?
This is the simplest example of why central planning does not work. It is divorced from financial reality and lives in some netherworld of privilege and hubris. Life is easy when you don't have to balance your checkbook.
