Weekly Comments Archive
Archived Issue
Sunday, February 17, 2013
ISSUE #747
Horse sense is missing in Washington

Britain is in an uproar over horse meat sold as hamburger. Poland and other parts of Europe look favorably on butchering an old horse the same as a cow. The English, however, prefer beef with their Beefeater gin.

Oklahoma introduced a bill in the state Legislature that would make it legal to process horse meat, not to eat the meat in Oklahoma, but to ship it overseas. Just not to England.

Have you noticed gasoline prices are the highest ever for this time of year and there’s no relief in sight. If they keep going up, we may need to get a couple more years out of our saddle horses before we let anybody eat ‘em.

In the State of the Union speech the main thing the President said about jobs is he wants to raise the minimum wage to $9.00. Yep, that’s a sure-fire way to get businesses to hire more people. He says he will start or expand some federal programs, but he won’t increase the deficit one dime. The deficit is already a Trillion dollars, so he’s gotta bring in some dough to cover the extra costs. He may be planing to auction off empty buildings and a lot of land out West. Of course, he’ll retain the mineral rights; he don’t want anyone drilling and adding to our supply of oil and gas.

Congress has a habit of doing dumb things. Individually, they’re pretty sharp, but together, not so bright. With this Sequestration hanging over the country again, they went on vacation for a week. And the President ain’t any better; he flew to Florida for golf lessons. Maybe he should have stayed in Washington and invited a few business folks to teach him a lesson in “cutting costs so you don’t go broke.” Congressional leaders need the same lesson. A negative score is good in golf, but not in government.

Why does this seem like December all over again? Very little work is getting done because federal workers are spending most of their time making plans to adjust to the cuts. At least they are figuring out how to cut 3% with the least damage to the public. Meanwhile the White House appears to be preparing cuts where it will do the most damage to the Republicans. Which of these choices makes the most sense to you: layoff 10,000 early-childhood teachers, or 25,000 Dept. of Education employees in Washington? Cancel food stamps for the poorest 5 million, or for the 5 million at the top income of the eligibility range?  Approve the Keystone oil pipeline, or cut 5,000 EPA employees? Oh, wait, that last one was a trick question.

The Post Office wants to reduce their deficit by eliminating Saturday mail (and cutting employees), but Congress won’t let ‘em.

Does anyone in DC have some common horse sense?

Historic quotes by Will Rogers:
“I love horses and I only ask–don’t let me know which one we are eating today.” DT#2052, March 2, 1933
 (Comments on the depression-era  possibility that his family may be forced to eat horses because that was all he raised on his ranch.)
“They used to take your horse and if they was caught they got hung for it; now they take your car and if they are caught it’s a miracle.” WA #507, Sept. 11,1932
“The British Post Office showed a profit at the end of the year of $70 million. Last year $57 million…  When you say, ‘a government can’t run a business,’ you mean OUR government can’t run it.”  DT #2380, March 20, 1934
“President Hoover (wants) to give all the lands belonging to the United States back to the individual states. But he recommends that the Federal Government hold all the Oil and Mineral rights. Well that’s just like offering a hungry man a meal and reserving the rights to issue him no food.”
 WA #352, Sept. 22, 1929

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