How many ways can the politicrooks consider us stupid?

By John Sykes

Trying to understand what is going on in DC these days is about impossible without understanding Washington-speak. Of course, Washington-speak is designed so that no rational person can understand it and will just throw up his hands, maybe even just throw up, and run screaming into future oblivion.

For instance: Inside the Beltway: Where an Increase Becomes a Cut makes the following points:

When someone takes a cut in pay, it could mean going from $20 per hour to $15 per hour.  Or, they’re paid $30,000 per year for a job that used to pay $35,000 per year. These are real cuts. Simply put, a reduction in what was spent, or earned, the year before.  A cut is easily understood and accepted by all until it gets to the Beltway, and then it becomes Washington-speak. How does this happen? …

Here’s an example.  Cut a credit card into little pieces.  The action in and of itself doesn’t have a financial effect, but it does stop you from using the card again.  No card, no spending, no increased debt. So we’ve cut the card, but not the debt. … However, now you can proclaim that you’ve indeed made “cuts”.

More Washington-speak:

The argument regarding budget cutting is not about actually freezing spending at a certain level and then reducing from there. Rather, it’s about slowing down the rate of growth and calling it a budget cut.  For years, the bureaucrats knew that in order to maintain their budgets, they must spend everything allocated. If they didn’t, they would have to take the proverbial cut the next year. 

For instance, a 10% annual increase would only be budgeted for a 5% increase if the full 10% had not been spent the year before.  However, it was still a real 5% increase, but for the purpose of politics it could be trumpeted as a 50% cut!

That is to say that your wife can go buy a $500 dress on sale for $250 and loudly proclaim that she has just saved you 50% on next week’s budget. In Washington-speak, this is also a $250 cut.

Then there’s the old rising base-line trap. Which of the lines below do you think our politicians use to brag about their future cuts that in fact cut nothing. For you politicians, here’s a hint. The line you are using to bamboozle We the Stupid isn’t blue.

 

We ought to be embarrassed about what we are letting these corruptocrats get away with. In the end, there’s nobody to blame but ourselves.

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