Hello again. As promised, there is the other side of my house.

And now, down to business. We've chosen as this week's subject, politics. It's a dangerous subject, I know, but neither the Brit nor I can afford the air fare needed to get into a physical confrontation. Besides, I suspect that the overlap in politics between the US and Brittan is slight. However, just to be safe, I've changed my part of this to talking about politicians and why I don't trust them.

The main reason for my feeling of distrust is their constant use of sneaky language. I suspect that the root cause of this behavior stems from most of them being lawyers. That fact does little to bolster my confidence in the good faith and truthfulness of anything that comes out of their collective mouth.

What set me to thinking about this was a news item, "Budget deficit shrinks." That was a cheerful bit of information, until I got to the details. It turns out that the real news was, "US Government spends $250,000,000,000 that we don't have." The shrinking part came, not from finding some extra money stashed in Washington somewhere, but only from comparing the amount they are going to borrow to the amount they were thinking about borrowing. That, by the way, was an additional 250 billion dollars.

The information in this sneaky story came from the Congressional Budget Office, which seems reasonable. Until you go to their web site. It's not an office, it's a whole floor of offices with over 200 employees. Beyond that, they don't just do budget stuff. The two publications they're touting are, "Alternatives for Future U.S. Space Launch Capabilities" and "Recruiting, Retention, and Future Levels of Military Personnel."

Of course, many of the other Government agencies have sneaky names as well. I fail to recall the Department of Transportation ever giving me a ride, or the Department of Housing and Urban Development ever painting my house.

It's not just the department names that are sneaky. They do it with laws too. Take COBRA for example. That stands for Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act. Actually, it's a law to let people keep their existing health insurance from one job (at full price) for a period of time after their employment is terminated. Or, how about the Earned Income Tax Credit? This is a good one. Sounds like just another thing you can write off on your tax form, doesn't it? Oh no. It's a refund to low income people of taxes they didn't pay!

The best example is SSI, Social Security Insurance. I've been paying this for years, and never needed to file a claim until a few days ago. We were at a party, and I had a little too much to drink, and, apparently, according to my wife, I may have said and done a few socially unacceptable things. Later, I was thinking that we weren't going to get any free food from those people again. Then, I remembered, I have insurance for that! So I called up the local SSI office and asked to file a claim. Turns out that it doesn't have anything to do with our social life at all, it's a retirement program! Sneaky politicians.

the Grit