Getting rid of certain politicians won’t be truly effective in generating real change, until the bureaucrats are thinned out as well…..
A job tougher than the politicians……
May 11, 2017 at 10:45 pm
Delilah T.
“… couldn’t find their…” Heeheehee! No, and not their brains, either.
Those who think they are the most indispensable are generally actually the most useless.
They are also the ones who can depend on “progressives” to defend them like rabid rats. Because all they really do is do the left’s dirty work, on the taxpayers’ nickel.
“The graveyards are full of indispensable men.”
Just not enough of them. Need to add a few more.
And some indispensable women as well, ’cause diversity is a wonderful thing.
May 12, 2017 at 12:03 am
Deplorable B Woodman
Do they need a map and compass? But then again, that means that there would have to be additional purchases, additional instruction time and another manual. FM 21-26 should do it.
May 12, 2017 at 12:05 am
Deplorable B Woodman
“They couldn’t pour water out of their boot if’n the instructions were wrote on the heel. Bless their hearts.”
May 12, 2017 at 1:01 am
TJ
To paraphrase John Ringo in The Last Centurion, a truly essential book if you can still find a copy, “the secret to this office is finding the one or two guys who have a clue and working them to death.” That was speaking of the military, but it also applies to a lot of the civil service: there are the few who really work competently and effectively; the rest are placeholders.
That said, some number of the competent ones are still progressives, with all that implies.
Unfortunately, the competent ones are resented by the placeholders, which often results in the competents being the first, last, and only ones out the door in the rare instances when things get tight.
May 12, 2017 at 4:59 am
Halley
So true, in many fields of endeavor..
May 12, 2017 at 2:23 am
Old Codger
Rhetorical question (maybe 😉 ) How many “civil Servants” have you ever encountered who were either?
Please note that my recent encounters with Veterans Administration bureaucrats have been uniformly excellent. Other than that, most bureaucrats I have encountered were not worth enough powder to make a good sneeze – much blow their heads off.
Question: What do you call 500 bureaucrats scheduled for termination?
Answer: Too little, too late.
Question: what do you call 1,000 bureaucrats scheduled for termination?
Answer: A start. Not a terribly GOOD start, mind you,; but a start.
Some VA ‘crats had the mission in mind and were always good; some of the rest just got a wakeup notice and are running scared enough to behave, for now.
I’m looking SO forward to doing my taxes on a postcard. Take your wages (x), minus whatever the base amount (y), whatever the rate ends up being on the balance. Boom. Now, if they’ll just exempt military pay/retirement… https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/make-military-pay-tax-exempt
Go, sign.
I prefer to get rid of all taxes, and only have a sales tax. No hidden taxes, and the government wouldn’t know how much I’ve earned. But we would know to the penny how much they’re taking from us.
May 12, 2017 at 11:31 am
cfm56dash7
No sales tax.
While I understand the appeal of having an equitable consumption tax, especially one that intrinsically rewards investors/savers, and while I’d like to have a tax where everyone has skin in the game, sales taxes tend toward the ‘invisible’ and just get factored into purchases. Legislatures monkey with the rates and ratchet up their own revenues. Revenues are the problem, and denying revenue to the state is the best way to reduce its scope.
I’d much rather see a very simple, post-card sized form that dispensed with most, if not all, deductions. I’d like to see payroll withholding go away. Getting nickeled and dimed every two weeks fails to get the eire up. I’d like to see everyone have to write a cheque, preferably one of those big novelty sized cheques like they give Lottery winners, once a year, so they know how much they’re being fleeced.
Further, I’d like tax payment day to be the last Tuesday in October. I want those taxpayers hopping mad when they go to the polls a week later.
May 12, 2017 at 1:00 pm
Christopher Cole
“Taxes are not levied for the benefit of the taxed.” Lazarus Long, TIME ENOUGH FOR LOVE & NOTEBOOKS OF LAZARUS LONG by Robert Heinlein.
Flat tax al’a Reagan, a “tithe”. Ten percent off the top of every single dollar earned by every single entitly. No exemptions, not for churches, not for military, not for poor folks, and certainly not for rich folks who pay accountants and tax lawyers millions so that won’t have to pay any taxes at all. It would be suffiecient to replace ALL taxes, fed, state, and local, period.
And sure as hell no “sales” tax, making merchants the effing tax collector. Not only is business already being strangled into oblivion by gov red tape and requirements, but it would open the door to black and gray markets, cash transactions, and barter abuse like nothing we’ve ever seen, and put the beleaguered business man on the bullseye of enforcement for any perceived abuse…can you imagine the gestapo tactics that would entail. Sales tax, consumption tax, whatever you call it, NO EFFIN’ WAY.
May 12, 2017 at 5:07 pm
John
We have to remember that no matter what method of taxation is adopted, someone will find a way to game the system.
Our only salvation is to radically change the game periodically to consign the corrupted tax law to total oblivion.
Switching to a national sales tax will burn 26,000 pages of tax law and force hordes of lawyers and accountants to find honest work.
When that gets corrupted we switch to something else.
It is much like the reason we have genetic diversity and sexual recombination. It presents a moving target to the parasites.
May 12, 2017 at 11:59 am
Alan
You don’t get postcard tax returns if you break the model by having any exemptions, even worthy ones (e.g. mil retirement). Better to increase the retirement pay and be able to say “if our soldiers can pay, then so can you” to every other special interest.
May 12, 2017 at 3:48 am
Neil Frandsen
Folks, the olde saw, hereabouts, goes like this:
“He couldn’t find his ass with both hands, and a flashlight!”
:
Someone always says: “Who holds the flashlight?”
:
“The _flashlight_ is laying flat on the outhouse seat, eh?”, is the answer.
:
We south Albertans, born before electricity got poled & wired out across the countryside, even know how to fill a kerosene lamp (or lantern), trim the wick, and clean the chimney. The brighter Coleman Lantern, burning White Gas, has mantles which carry the job of burning the white gas brightly, but are very delicate when cold. Replacing a Mantle is quite a trying task, for we folk able to pick up a basketball one handed, from the top… Grin.
May 12, 2017 at 1:17 pm
Pamela
I prefer the old railroad style lanterns with a lead free wick even though I am City Girl. And I always check for spiders under the rim of the outhouse seat and other critters.
May 12, 2017 at 6:18 am
Bill G
The incompetence of the Beltway Boys is stunning; they can’t find their a**es with both hands regardless of the fact that their heads are buried in them.
May 12, 2017 at 10:38 am
PaulS
We could give them a hint: “COVER YOUR EARS !!!”
May 12, 2017 at 6:21 am
Bill G
Just a second thought…we do have gummint workers who do necessary work. We need to get rid of those who are merely employees.
And old joke talks about a line down the center of halls in gummint office buildings. It claims the reason for it is so that the people coming in late don’t run into the one’s leaving early.
May 12, 2017 at 7:11 am
Mort
Most Govt. workers as soon as achieving their position,
know to hire as many underlings as possible, so as to
have choices as to who to blame mistakes on.
Instructions for government workers trying to find their asses:
Place both hands on neck.
Slide up until you “Achieve Beautiful Contact”.
Squeeze hard.
Wonder if anyone will recognize the “ABC” reference?
May 12, 2017 at 9:31 am
Spin Drift
I like that the last panel is of the IRS. I would also like The Big D to pink slip first all the IRS agents hired to enforce O’care. Then have everybody line up and count off by sixes, including management. Then publicly roll the die and whatever number comes up they get a box to clean out their desk.
Do this at every govt agency every April 15th for rest of the administration’s term. The smart ones will leave first of their own accord and then getting rid of the dumb ones for cause will be easier.
Spin
Draining the swamp for you and yours posterity
War Damn Screaming Eagle
True that on the regiments of IRS drones on the O-Care enforcement squad.
Can you imagine how much WORSE the jack-booted gestapo would be in trying to enforce a “national sales tax”? To quote DT: “Terrible, horrible idea”.
Give me that postcard, let me honestly report every dollar I made. Send in 10 %. Keep the rest for my labor and my family. Done. And every single American from burger flipper to tycoon should and would be glad to support our country and our freedom with that “tithe”.
May 12, 2017 at 10:43 am
PaulS
Not sure I want government thinking they are god, it hasn’t worked out well. How about 9%?
May 12, 2017 at 2:51 pm
JTC
Heh, maybe more appropriately 6.66%?
May 12, 2017 at 9:34 am
Pamela
I know they have experience kissing the asses of others, but the thought of, let alone act of kissing their own goodbye sounds kind of fun to watch.
I wonder what section of the manual is the code being referenced?
May 12, 2017 at 9:56 am
Phil Snyder
Borrow – a hole in the ground
Burro – an ass
Bureau – a building filled withe people who don’t know the difference between the first two
May 12, 2017 at 10:47 am
PaulS
Did you mean “Burrow”?
May 12, 2017 at 1:51 pm
armedandsafe
PaulS, in Gov’t speak, the two are synonymous. What Gov’t borrows goes into a hole, never to be seen again.
May 12, 2017 at 11:20 am
WayneM
But… government is supposed to be everything for everyone from the cradle to the grave, isn’t it? Sunny ways, my friends, sunny ways….
May 12, 2017 at 11:37 am
Erik
They need to stop toying with the evil beast and just cut its head off. Repeal the income tax. The country has spent more than half of its existence without one. We still had roads and armies and schools and shit. What we didn’t have was a New Deal and absurd levels of administrative bloat. I can live without that.
May 12, 2017 at 3:35 pm
Sierra6
A quick look at 2016 fed government budget was 6 trillion dollars. Personal income for 2016 was $16,011 billion. {That does not include much for payments for the Trillions of Deficit Spending and interest we have already incurred}
Figuring that business taxes will pay for half of the Government spending that means a flat tax of 20% would be needed to pay the $3 Trillion. Then the States need to be paid….
46 Comments
Getting rid of certain politicians won’t be truly effective in generating real change, until the bureaucrats are thinned out as well…..
A job tougher than the politicians……
“… couldn’t find their…” Heeheehee! No, and not their brains, either.
Ass with both hands? Yeah, seems right.
…and a roadmap (GPS?)
Zar Belk!
Not sticky notes. A horse’s head.
Park a guillotine on the senate and house steps and see if they get the hint….
Just have a computer cross reference the employee list with the email database and send out mass emails with two words “You’re fired”
Start at the top and work your way down. That way those fired will have no supervisors to check with to make sure and chaos will ensue!
Just need to make sure they come from somewhere reasonable like whitehouse.com 😛
I’ve heard that is NSFW.
Nobody said draining the swamp when up to your ass in alligators would be easy.
Dude. Stole my line.
Those who think they are the most indispensable are generally actually the most useless.
They are also the ones who can depend on “progressives” to defend them like rabid rats. Because all they really do is do the left’s dirty work, on the taxpayers’ nickel.
clear ether
eon
“The graveyards are full of indispensable men.”
Just not enough of them. Need to add a few more.
And some indispensable women as well, ’cause diversity is a wonderful thing.
Do they need a map and compass? But then again, that means that there would have to be additional purchases, additional instruction time and another manual. FM 21-26 should do it.
“They couldn’t pour water out of their boot if’n the instructions were wrote on the heel. Bless their hearts.”
To paraphrase John Ringo in The Last Centurion, a truly essential book if you can still find a copy, “the secret to this office is finding the one or two guys who have a clue and working them to death.” That was speaking of the military, but it also applies to a lot of the civil service: there are the few who really work competently and effectively; the rest are placeholders.
That said, some number of the competent ones are still progressives, with all that implies.
Unfortunately, the competent ones are resented by the placeholders, which often results in the competents being the first, last, and only ones out the door in the rare instances when things get tight.
So true, in many fields of endeavor..
Rhetorical question (maybe 😉 ) How many “civil Servants” have you ever encountered who were either?
Please note that my recent encounters with Veterans Administration bureaucrats have been uniformly excellent. Other than that, most bureaucrats I have encountered were not worth enough powder to make a good sneeze – much blow their heads off.
Question: What do you call 500 bureaucrats scheduled for termination?
Answer: Too little, too late.
Question: what do you call 1,000 bureaucrats scheduled for termination?
Answer: A start. Not a terribly GOOD start, mind you,; but a start.
Where’s that “thumbs up” emoji when you need it?
Some VA ‘crats had the mission in mind and were always good; some of the rest just got a wakeup notice and are running scared enough to behave, for now.
I’m looking SO forward to doing my taxes on a postcard. Take your wages (x), minus whatever the base amount (y), whatever the rate ends up being on the balance. Boom. Now, if they’ll just exempt military pay/retirement…
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/make-military-pay-tax-exempt
Go, sign.
I did; I was the fourth.
I prefer to get rid of all taxes, and only have a sales tax. No hidden taxes, and the government wouldn’t know how much I’ve earned. But we would know to the penny how much they’re taking from us.
No sales tax.
While I understand the appeal of having an equitable consumption tax, especially one that intrinsically rewards investors/savers, and while I’d like to have a tax where everyone has skin in the game, sales taxes tend toward the ‘invisible’ and just get factored into purchases. Legislatures monkey with the rates and ratchet up their own revenues. Revenues are the problem, and denying revenue to the state is the best way to reduce its scope.
I’d much rather see a very simple, post-card sized form that dispensed with most, if not all, deductions. I’d like to see payroll withholding go away. Getting nickeled and dimed every two weeks fails to get the eire up. I’d like to see everyone have to write a cheque, preferably one of those big novelty sized cheques like they give Lottery winners, once a year, so they know how much they’re being fleeced.
Further, I’d like tax payment day to be the last Tuesday in October. I want those taxpayers hopping mad when they go to the polls a week later.
“Taxes are not levied for the benefit of the taxed.” Lazarus Long, TIME ENOUGH FOR LOVE & NOTEBOOKS OF LAZARUS LONG by Robert Heinlein.
Flat tax al’a Reagan, a “tithe”. Ten percent off the top of every single dollar earned by every single entitly. No exemptions, not for churches, not for military, not for poor folks, and certainly not for rich folks who pay accountants and tax lawyers millions so that won’t have to pay any taxes at all. It would be suffiecient to replace ALL taxes, fed, state, and local, period.
And sure as hell no “sales” tax, making merchants the effing tax collector. Not only is business already being strangled into oblivion by gov red tape and requirements, but it would open the door to black and gray markets, cash transactions, and barter abuse like nothing we’ve ever seen, and put the beleaguered business man on the bullseye of enforcement for any perceived abuse…can you imagine the gestapo tactics that would entail. Sales tax, consumption tax, whatever you call it, NO EFFIN’ WAY.
We have to remember that no matter what method of taxation is adopted, someone will find a way to game the system.
Our only salvation is to radically change the game periodically to consign the corrupted tax law to total oblivion.
Switching to a national sales tax will burn 26,000 pages of tax law and force hordes of lawyers and accountants to find honest work.
When that gets corrupted we switch to something else.
It is much like the reason we have genetic diversity and sexual recombination. It presents a moving target to the parasites.
You don’t get postcard tax returns if you break the model by having any exemptions, even worthy ones (e.g. mil retirement). Better to increase the retirement pay and be able to say “if our soldiers can pay, then so can you” to every other special interest.
Folks, the olde saw, hereabouts, goes like this:
“He couldn’t find his ass with both hands, and a flashlight!”
:
Someone always says: “Who holds the flashlight?”
:
“The _flashlight_ is laying flat on the outhouse seat, eh?”, is the answer.
:
We south Albertans, born before electricity got poled & wired out across the countryside, even know how to fill a kerosene lamp (or lantern), trim the wick, and clean the chimney. The brighter Coleman Lantern, burning White Gas, has mantles which carry the job of burning the white gas brightly, but are very delicate when cold. Replacing a Mantle is quite a trying task, for we folk able to pick up a basketball one handed, from the top… Grin.
I prefer the old railroad style lanterns with a lead free wick even though I am City Girl. And I always check for spiders under the rim of the outhouse seat and other critters.
The incompetence of the Beltway Boys is stunning; they can’t find their a**es with both hands regardless of the fact that their heads are buried in them.
We could give them a hint: “COVER YOUR EARS !!!”
Just a second thought…we do have gummint workers who do necessary work. We need to get rid of those who are merely employees.
And old joke talks about a line down the center of halls in gummint office buildings. It claims the reason for it is so that the people coming in late don’t run into the one’s leaving early.
Most Govt. workers as soon as achieving their position,
know to hire as many underlings as possible, so as to
have choices as to who to blame mistakes on.
Instructions for government workers trying to find their asses:
Place both hands on neck.
Slide up until you “Achieve Beautiful Contact”.
Squeeze hard.
Wonder if anyone will recognize the “ABC” reference?
I like that the last panel is of the IRS. I would also like The Big D to pink slip first all the IRS agents hired to enforce O’care. Then have everybody line up and count off by sixes, including management. Then publicly roll the die and whatever number comes up they get a box to clean out their desk.
Do this at every govt agency every April 15th for rest of the administration’s term. The smart ones will leave first of their own accord and then getting rid of the dumb ones for cause will be easier.
Spin
Draining the swamp for you and yours posterity
War Damn Screaming Eagle
True that on the regiments of IRS drones on the O-Care enforcement squad.
Can you imagine how much WORSE the jack-booted gestapo would be in trying to enforce a “national sales tax”? To quote DT: “Terrible, horrible idea”.
Give me that postcard, let me honestly report every dollar I made. Send in 10 %. Keep the rest for my labor and my family. Done. And every single American from burger flipper to tycoon should and would be glad to support our country and our freedom with that “tithe”.
Not sure I want government thinking they are god, it hasn’t worked out well. How about 9%?
Heh, maybe more appropriately 6.66%?
I know they have experience kissing the asses of others, but the thought of, let alone act of kissing their own goodbye sounds kind of fun to watch.
I wonder what section of the manual is the code being referenced?
Borrow – a hole in the ground
Burro – an ass
Bureau – a building filled withe people who don’t know the difference between the first two
Did you mean “Burrow”?
PaulS, in Gov’t speak, the two are synonymous. What Gov’t borrows goes into a hole, never to be seen again.
But… government is supposed to be everything for everyone from the cradle to the grave, isn’t it? Sunny ways, my friends, sunny ways….
They need to stop toying with the evil beast and just cut its head off. Repeal the income tax. The country has spent more than half of its existence without one. We still had roads and armies and schools and shit. What we didn’t have was a New Deal and absurd levels of administrative bloat. I can live without that.
A quick look at 2016 fed government budget was 6 trillion dollars. Personal income for 2016 was $16,011 billion. {That does not include much for payments for the Trillions of Deficit Spending and interest we have already incurred}
Figuring that business taxes will pay for half of the Government spending that means a flat tax of 20% would be needed to pay the $3 Trillion. Then the States need to be paid….