Getting better isn't easy...

I was going to write about a town that was facing bankruptcy, the problems it was facing, and basically point out that "hey, you spent yourself into a corner, be glad it's not a debtors prison".

Then our national error, President Obama, turned up on the tube in a news conference this morning, as I tried to have breakfast.

Regrettably, the depth of bullshit exceeded my ability to ignore or keep a quiet stomach.

No, Mr. President, the American people have not been sold on what you deceitfully call a "balanced" approach - better described on raising taxes on people that already can't afford it.

Your party has played the class warfare card often enough that most of us have figured out that it's a crock.

When you raise taxes, you get side effects - folks spend less (i.e., less revenue to businesses to pay employees and to pay THEIR bills, which in turn support another tier of businesses - and less sales tax revenue for for states and municipalities). At the same time, prices go up...and at the same time, folks in the bottom economic rungs spend less...distributing another hit to business and non-federal government entities.

And you hit the magic point of formal and informal tax resistance.

The best thing the Federal Government can do at this point is *get out of the way*.

Legalize drugs. Between Darwin and other forces, we'll survive it - and as the DEA goes away or is vastly reduced in size and function we save money.

Raise the age for age-related social security eligibility to 70, or even 80. I think we all recognize that the disability side of social security needs to be largely left along. But on the age-related side, I suspect that folks with a pre-tax income in excess of $200,000 can get along just fine without social security.

Similarly, repeal Obamacare. Sorry, we can't afford it.

And while we're at it, disband BATFE. We've watched this band of felonious and capricious thugs in clown shoes bumble their way through ruining and ending peoples lives for technical and arbitrarily designated violations of alleged self-generated regulations for decades. When the most gracious possible description of an agency is "tragicomic Keystone Kops", it's time for that agency to end - sadly, for some years, that has been a far kinder appellation than BATFE is worthy of...it would be an insult to bumbling fools with badges everywhere, and an even greater insult to those in law enforcement with even the vaguest hint of competency or professionalism.

We don't need a Department of Education. Shut it down. We can probably use a much smaller creature charged solely with guaranteeing privately provided student loans and maintaining a voluntary register of available scholarships. And, just a hint, they don't need armed thugs with the power of arrest. Or "company cars".

Set Amtrak free. No more subsidies. No more government-mandated union contracts. If there's to be passenger rail service - let it pay for itself.

In our condition, we don't *need* an Arctic Research Commission. Let Hilton set up a hotel/research facility and charge researchers room'n'board - but get it off the tax teat.

Abolish the hated TSA. Let local agencies and the airlines for locally appropriate solutions - all off the federal tab.

I think you get the drift. We don't need new taxes in the middle of an economic depression - at all. If anything, we need tax reductions to free up cash for consumer spending and business capital.

Mr. President, in short, quit being a small minded jerk.