A billion here, a billion there

     Uncle Jack has been reading a lot lately about how the new Republican members of the House of Representatives are determined to reduce the federal deficit by cutting or eliminating many government programs.  They want to eliminate all funding for National Public Radio, for example, which would mean that Uncle Jack would have to get along without Morning Edition and All Things Considered and all the other good programs he listens to on NPR which is just about the only station an intelligent person can listen to any more without suffering severe brain damage.
      Even worse, though, is how they want to cut back or eliminate many programs that are aimed at helping poor people and especially the 25% of American children who are growing up in poverty.  These Republicans seem to have signed on to Social Darwinism as their guiding philosophy when it comes to what to do about the least fortunate members of our society.  It's sink or swim for them.
       The military budget, of course, is off limits.  The Defense Department eats up half our wealth every year and we are fighting two wars simultaneously "off the books".  No room for cuts or savings there according to our politicians---and not just Republicans.  If a Democrat has a defense-related industry in his district it's untouchable no matter whether it's expendable or not.
       Anyway Uncle Jack must have been thinking about this many years ago when he was still writing columns for the Outer Banks Current because he ran across this one deep in the archives:


                      No, Virginia  

   Uncle Jack came mighty close to cancelling his subscription
to the Norfolk paper last week. There was so much bad news in
the front section on Wednesday that he could hardly pull himself
together enough to read Hints from Heloise.
  On the front page it said that the state senators in Virginia
are going to raise the tax on spiritual beverages by 33%. Uncle
Jack isn't good enough at arithmetic to figure out exactly how
much that is but he knows it's a lot.
   The higher prices in the Virginia ABC stores are not going
to hurt Uncle Jack personally because he never goes up to
Virginia if he can help it, but he does feel sorry for all the
people who live up there. For one thing those legislators call
this a "luxury tax" which means that the citizens of Virginia
are being led down the trail to oblivion by people who don't
know the difference between a luxury and a necessity.
   Senators who think bourbon belongs in the same category as
perfume and jewelry need to be watched very carefully. They
are obviously not to be trusted.
   Also in that same paper last week Uncle Jack read that the
big U.S. Navy warehouse in Norfolk is missing about $l80 million
worth of stuff that is either lost or stolen. Nobody knows how
much is lost and how much is stolen because they only have 3500
people keeping track of it and that isn't nearly enough people
according to the admiral who runs the place.
   This admiral doesn't think it was all stolen because he had
one of his lieutenant commanders figure out that each one of
those 3500 employees would have had to steal $50,000 worth of
stuff before it could add up to $l80 million and he thought
that was unlikely even though the government seems to pay twice
as much for everything as anybody else does.
   Some congressmen came down from Washington to do one of those
televised "investigations" that congressmen love to do during
election years. You can add the cost of the investigation to
the losses they had at the warehouse last year.
    One good thing came out of the investigation, though, that
might save some money over the long haul. One of the congressmen
was surprised to learn that the employees' parking lot was right
next to the warehouse and he wondered if that didn't make it
pretty easy for dishonest employees to steal things like
lightbulbs and typewriters and small ships and other stuff they
could hide in their cars.
   The admiral said he never thought of that but he would
certainly have one of his lieutenant commanders look into the
matter and find out if it would be a good idea to build a fence
around the warehouse and make the employees park on the other
side of it. Uncle Jack can remember the old days when you had
to be fairly smart to be an admiral.
   About a year from now Uncle Jack will probably read in the
paper that the Navy has given a contract to somebody for $l0
million to build a picket fence around the warehouse. The next
thing he will read is that somebody stole half the pickets before
the fence got built so the Navy had to give the contractor
another $5 million to finish the job. If anybody asks you how
the Pentagon can manage to spend over $300 billion every year
on "defense", that's how they do it.