Irreconcilable Differences

Time for the Easter bunny again; he winters with Santa Claus ‘cause the old man is otherwise occupied. But these two quasi-governmental figures do bring to mind how legislators pass bills they don’t (and often can’t – blame it on complexity or length) read or are based on assumptions everyone should know are kind of… er… wrong. Like using 2008 income numbers, where one quarter of the year was mired in a meltdown, to project 2009-2010 revenues that governments might use as a tax base… years in which the number of jobs generating revenues will have sunk to record lows along with corporate profits and income from assets sales at below their original value. Duh!

California is busy refiguring its budget that now shows an $8 billion tax revenue shortfall, and Congressional Democrats are slicing and dicing their own President’s “honest” budget (where stuff like the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are no longer special bills, disaster relief is actually anticipated and the annual rush to amend Medicare to keep from running out of money is reflected) when they saw that $2.3 trillion additional and unexpected long term deficit his budget would generate.

Funny, Congress is playing with numbers, even though they are aware that in the long term, they are going to put a whole lot of this back. And we wonder why Wall Street has no potholes… just loopholes that got us into this mess. We love to “change the assumptions,” alter the language, and hope that this will fix it all. The national pastime has long since ceased being baseball (was it that strike?) – it’s playing with numbers to make stuff look good, even if it isn’t.

Running governments is tough, behemoths that defy simplistic analysis, particularly when you are married to outworn slogans (lowering taxes will solve everything – money will “trickle down” and make us all better) or pledges made when times were different. Or how about voting for the sole purpose of being reelected, ready to sway to follow the “voter sentiment du jour” rather than lead (which is why they were elected?). And yet, year after year, the trend only gets worse because the media keep running polls on just about every subject, polls which legislators check before casting a crucial vote.

Or a trend that we are watching as our Congress splits along party lines on almost every issue… Why? Because if you are a Republican and you support the President, you don’t get in any credit for new ideas and you raise the value of the other party’s issues! But if you vote against everything proposed and something goes wrong, you can always say, “I told you so,” and ride the coattails of negativity to victory in the next election. Not that the Democrats didn’t do the same thing when they were an minority across the board.

As we track global solutions to global issues, we’ve already seen how the U.S. and much of the world are split between emphasizing stiff new financial regulations and de-emphasizing more stimulus packages, that old, “why can’t everybody just get along” refrain echoes in my aching head. Doctrines and assumptions seem to kill more people than bullets in this modern era. They justify those folks we call “terrorists,” just as they justify our governmental representatives’ actions that deeply impact our lives. In my own country, I wonder how a Congressman or woman would vote without polls, without doctrinaire mandates, with real experts providing real numbers, doing pragmatically what’s best for America? Looks like I’ll never find out.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I approve this message.