Fool on the Hill sees politics 2016

I get older and, as they say, when you are young you are romantic and when you are old you are rheumatic.   But mostly I just observe stuff that nobody else seems to see or wants to admit.  Either I am dumb and dumber” or “the fool on the hill” Beatles: “But the fool on the hill / sees the sun going down/ and the eyes in his head/ see the world spinning ‘round.”

Take for example the oft-quoted opinion that Obama is a socialist. Or Bernie is socialist.  They may be, but they have defaulted to fascism.  Here’s proof.  Communism is government ownership of everything.  Capitalism is private ownership. Fascism, “National Socialsim”, lets private ownership occur but seeks to control enough vital industries to exert effective control of everyone. Obama doesn’t want pure socialism because if something went wrong, he owns it.  He’d get the blame.  Instead he lets the system continue while doubling the number of federal regulations in 7 years.  Then if something goes wrong (Obamacare), he can blame obstructionist Republicans, Bush, corporate interests or our past intolerance of Muslims.   If things go right, he takes credit. It’s a clever technique invented by the world's first teenager. You say, well, isn’t fascism anti-semitic?  No.  That was Nazism, a warped version of fascism in Germany.  Mussolini, inventor of fascism had a cabinet full of Jews.  The word fasci means group or bundle in Italian.  The practice of fascist politics is to divide people into groups and appeal to or blame each group. Sounds like Democrats to me.

Am I the only guy who likes SCOTUS balanced 4-4?  Seems wise and prudent that unless some law or case is overwhelmingly at odds with our constitution, then the Supremes should not change things.  Limited government.  Why do we have to have a strong, politically charged, and active Supreme Court?

I get so sick of people griping about how the campaign is negative and down in the gutter. Blame yourself. PACs do that because they know that is what the public loves and listens to.  Nobody can remember what Romney proposed for defense spending or what Obama preferred.  But everyone can tell you about how Romney put his dingy dog on top of the car and how Obama’s ears are big and he looked just like Satan in that movie about Jesus.  The guy who really understands this gutter sniping and how to use it is Donald Trump.  He reportedly won’t read anything longer than a page, hates issues, and would rather make up a derogatory name for you.  But it really sells, doesn’t it?

Here in Oklahoma we hear a constant rant about how there is no leadership in the state legislature concerning our massive budget hole.  I want to tell them, “It’s a legislature, Stupid.”  Lawmakers don’t run the agencies, they make new laws.  And so they posture and vote and give speeches to express a viewpoint.  Often that viewpoint is against change because that’s the viewpoint of most voters.  This is especially true of voters who are only half tuned in.  “Why can’t things be wonderful, like the way we dreamed about when we voted.”  Meanwhile, politicians are humans with a talent to keep people satisfied.  If I ran for office, I’d tick everyone off with my confrontational style and get only 10% of the vote.  You’d be indecisive or you’d cuss and have bad habits or you’d not be able to express yourself well and you wouldn’t’ win 50% either.  Let the people run who can garner a majority.  It’s called democracy.  Eventually what happens is the Governor and leadership caucus present a budget for a vote.  If it doesn’t pass, we have special session. You hear people bitch about how we need much more time to debate the budget.  Then we’d never get a budget.  The House and Senate have been nixing each other’s budget work all spring, and the opposition party votes everything down just so they can say the other guys don’t have any leadership on the budget.  But when the sine die deadline arrives, we will have an adult, responsible balanced budget.

One of the guys who really loves to rant about state spending is our school superintendent.  Due to the international price of oil and commodities, our energy industry is on the ropes and farm income is half what it was in 2014. This adds up to a large tax revenue shortfall for the state.  We try to protect our schools from the 15% shortfall so they get 4%.  You ought to hear our Superintendent howl.  We are going to have to slash sports and have the janitor teach shop! Someone asked if that meant a cut in administration and he received a hot answer about how Oklahoma has No Admin Expenses problems.  Really!  None in the entire state? So I do a little head math.  School spends $9000 per student.  A teacher makes $44,000 median income and has say, 22 students. That’s $2000 per student spent on teaching.  Where does the other $7000 go?  Bus tires? Football field chalk? Perhaps I should point out to our Super that if he had 149 teachers in the legislaure, we'd still have the massive budget problem due to international markets.

I’m just the fool on the hill talking to himself.