Cake and bulls … Politicos and largesse

Back to the Slough

It’s just a Promise

Feeding Bulls

By Stephen L. Wilmeth

            Watching the doppler and trying to interpret where the rains are falling is an annual exercise of high drama.

            When Intellicast was extant, it was much easier. You could move the cursor and zero in on known landmarks and determine exactly where the storms were centered. That’s all gone with a merger outcome that suggests that everything is more efficient. It isn’t and the once cutting-edge weather service is no longer watched much less trusted.

            So, it was Friday night when the storm came in from the north spreading down the Uvas Valley and approached our Trail Pasture. It certainly seemed promising, but the outcome was unknown as these words became sentences on this page.

            Back to the Slough

Of course, there is another parallel.

            This week in Washington has once again disappointed us beyond what can be adequately expressed in words. It was a time when a confused old man assumed the role as spokesman for prefacing and suggesting a course of action that has huge implications for our future. We had expected leadership, but what we got was the body politic turning its back once again on a single most promise.

            No, it wasn’t the showcase of clown interpretations chaired by Alfred E. Newman’s cousin, “One Brow Up” Nadler. It certainly wasn’t their guest star performer, either. Putting that poor man on that seat under the obvious infirmities that he is ruled by was torturous. It was cruel, and “One Brow Up” and his coterie of slugs and single-minded commies need to be taken to the woodshed.

            No, the prize for low point in the week goes to the senior senator from Kentucky, “Foghorn” McConnell. Anybody who has had a major hand in leading this nation to years of successive trillion-dollar debt expansions doesn’t deserve our praise. When Foghorn has the gall to bridge the incomprehensible budget that is on the table to “nobody has lost an election by spending too much money”, we should all be horrified.

            He and the lesser cast of pampered characters collectively demonstrate they have no qualms at all about saying whatever it takes to get reelected.

The truth is revealed once again. They simply don’t get it.

            Most compatriots on my side of the tracks are beating up on San Fran Nan and her squad of Star Wars bar patrons, but the fact is we know what they are and what to expect from them. There isn’t enough money in the world to satisfy their lust for complete control.

            Her eyes must have been pulled even tighter, though, upon reviewing the budget suggestions by Treasury Secretary Mnuchin. History suggests she would have never gotten that out of her own majority, but she got it out of the republicans.

            She took it and ran. How bad is it really? The final four years of the previous fellow’s administration pushed the allowed increases of budget authority upwards $144B. The current administration will push the constraints upwards $618B.

America is now postured to have permanent trillion-dollar deficits.

Feeding Bulls

Of course, the republicans have trotted out two point men to demonstrate foundational restraint in the hopes of keeping us Indians on the reservation and out of full revolt. Kevin Brady (R-Tx) and Mike Braun (R-In) are introducing their Maximizing America’s Prosperity Act. MAP will be a plan to limit future budgets to a certain portion of the economy with automatic triggers to halt expenditures when congress fails to abide by its own mandates.

They promise it will work.

The problem is we have witnessed this kind of tomfoolery before. The most recent was the Budget Control Act of 2011 that essentially promised the same thing. The current argument about its failure to resolve overspending is that it impacted only about a third of the total budget whereas this approach will impact the entire budget.

Hmmm …

Why am I immediately reminded of feeding cake to a bunch of bulls? The first times you wade into their midst they are leery of your presence, but they are interested in your holdings. They will try to stay away from you, but they are drawn to the smell and the interest shown by their cohorts. They will taste the extruded pellets and you can see their immediate reactions.

Dang, that’s good stuff!

In successive feedings, their interest becomes more overt and usually evolves into demand to the point the most aggressive are coming to the sack you are carrying rather than the string of feed on the ground. In the dustup that occurs out there in the front of the whole bunch, you will encounter one that will boldly come to you, shake his head at you, blow snot all over you, and convince you he wants the whole sack.

If he is convincing enough, chances are you’ll give it to him hoping he can forget about your presence as you scramble to get out of harm’s way (those of you who might know Bennie will remember he didn’t have time to concede and the bull came out of the bunch and nailed him creating long lasting ramifications).

There is nothing like facing harsh reality up close and personal.

It’s just a Promise

            America is now ruled by politicos avoiding dangerous reelection tumult over fiscal deadlines. Every one of those characters has baseline hesitancy of reducing the centralized largesse that is needed to fulfill promises to the herds awaiting their cake.

            Maybe it was always that way.

            In fact, Jefferson probably was as sure of the consequences as anybody. We must not let our rulers load us with debt were his words. Think about those words. There are two that stand out, debt and rulers.  I don’t like debt, but, moreover, weren’t we supposed to have elected representatives rather than rulers?

Maybe that is the underlying problem.

Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico. “Cake and bulls … Politicos and largesse.”