In a recent survey by the Federal Reserve, 47% of those surveyed said they would have to borrow money, pawn or sell something to come up with $400 for an unexpected emergency. Now I’m not a moneybags, but even most of the people I know can come up with $400 for an emergency situation out of a checkbook or savings, and if you can’t, you might want to closely examine how your money is spent.

It is true, more people are making less in terms of money to use as discretionary cash to either use to make purchases or save. But most of the changes in the past 20 years in tax code, tax burden and lower purchasing power because the government waste and debt makes your money worth less.

This is not hard to understand once you look at the overall debt and unfunded mandates the government must fund (Medicare, welfare, subsidies to businesses/agriculture, etc.). The most recent overall debt, as calculated recently by Laurence Kotlikoff, esteemed professor of economics at Boston University, was $212,000,000,000,000 (212 trillion dollars) in 2014 and now estimated in 2015 to be at $220,000,000,000,000 (220 trillion dollars). In essence, we are broke and will remain so until what prescient experts predict: collapse of either the currency or the economy.

The Ponzi schemes perpetrated by those (Bernie Madoff comes to mind) preying on the willing but unsuspecting, persuade people to give them money to “invest.” The people “investing” first are paid interest from money by those joining the Ponzi scheme later in an ongoing investment chain, with Bernie taking out a slice to live on. The government is doing the same exact thing, except they call it in the accounting ledgers “debt” or “expenses”, they allow the Treasury to print more money, and “investments” are paid out in the forms of federal retirement accounts, federal salaries, wages, and benefits, payments to subsidize industry, agriculture, welfare and all others dining at the federal trough.

If we were a “Bernie Madoff” and discovered to be running a Ponzi scheme, we’d be arrested, tried, and sent to prison for our actions. There is no punishment for the federal government doing the same thing. The only problem is, it isn’t elected officials or bureaucrats to pony up the shortfall, even though they caused it. It is up to the person in the mirror – yup, YOU. Citizens are on the hook for the cash.

So 400 bucks shouldn’t bother you too much when you’re in hock the way the government is, you owe a lot more than $400.

A reply to assertions by the editor of this ‘rag’

On a completely different subject: If you viewed the author comments of this “rag” last week about Bill Clinton in “Yes It Is, It’s True: Bill Clinton didn’t lie”, like so many believe and Bill’s truth avoidance about drugs or sex, sad to say, Mr. Young is correct about the smoking of dope and not inhaling and “real”sex (using Mr. Young’s definition of “real (vaginal) sex”) with a young, impressionable, and easily manipulated clerk was not really sex at all. Bill was telling the truth with his fingers crossed behind his back, so it didn’t count.

It may be true about his story about not inhaling pot, but brother Roger used to say Bill’s nose was “like a vacuum cleaner” when there was cocaine around, but since Roger is only following in his older half-brother’s footsteps in the lying department, I guess his comments can’t be truthful and must be discounted.

And I’m sure if any husband reading this now was serviced with oral sex by a young lady such as Ms. Lewinsky, he was 25 years older than her at the time, she was in his employ and a subordinate, I’m sure his wife would understand his explanation if he was caught lying and had to confess. If he worked for a company, he would be fired for coercion and/or workplace sexual harassment. She would forgive him, like Hillary has Bill countless times, over and over and over — right? Not in the universe normal, common folks live in.

Bill never could keep his hands off other women in the Arkansas governor’s office, the presidency, and it is reported by others close to him he can’t control himself now either (and he allegedly had “real sex” multiple times according to Mr. Young’s definition).

I guess Hillary better get the “Bimbo Patrol” assembled again so Bill can’t derail her campaign with his disgusting and destructive behavior. But Hillary is just as much a lying creature as is her husband and needs his coattails to hang onto to have entered and able to stay in the presidential race.

The major media will never pursue any improprieties either with Bill, the Clinton campaign, Secretary of State Clinton’s poor performance while in office of no accomplishments, and the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation money making machine is just a non-profit, benevolent charity worth billions. The implication of pay for favors reeks with this crowd and the media yawns, nothing to see or investigate, move along.

How much of this farce is the public willing to swallow? Evidently quite a bit, since we are too busy trying to make a living; pay our taxes (to support those unwilling or unable to do so), raise families, and create meaningful, productive lives and are unwilling to work overtime to examine our elected officials for their performance (or lack of). It is the perfect environment for evil, fiscal theft and malfeasance to prosper by those wishing to do so.

And before my Democrat liberal friends get their dander all up and start casting aspersions my way, I don’t think the establishment Republicans (Remocrats – “democrat light”) are much better in the values department. I look at most politicians like the Mehgan Trainor song “Lips Are Moving” – how do you know they are lying – their lips are moving! Lighten up and listen to that song, you’ll get a laugh.

Democrats and Remocrats are both in agreement about crony capitalism – they both love it and benefit greatly because of it in subsidizing their re-election campaigns and allegedly their personal accounts (notice how they are poor when entering politics and they all come out millionaires several times over?). How does that happen? It’s a miracle!