TANSTAAFL

Tanstaafl is an acronym for "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch".

The sentiment comes from the sage SciFi writer Robert H. Heinlein where he explains the meaning in his novel "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress." Essentially the moon is ( in his story ) a prison colony that by its nature must be self sufficient. Nothing is free, including water and air. This tended to make the Lunies (as they styled themselves) very industrious people.

This harsh reality is not fiction but allegory.

Nothing comes free. We've heard the patriotic phrase a hundred times "Freedom isn't free, but paid for in the blood of patriots." This is true, and so is "for every profit taken someone else has to pay."

Politicians, Big Business and the People are on the this merry go round, pointing at each other saying someone else has to pay. I could go into the myriad ramifications of this you pay I profit circle but its as pointless to detail it as it is for the players to participate.

We all have to pay.

Big Business is the engine of the American economy and the People are its backbone. You can't starve the engine and you can't break the backbone. Politicos are responsible for this balancing act, or should be. Governments create an economic reality. (Oxymoron: How can you create a reality????) But in fact we bend our economic efforts around avoiding paying taxes. So does Big Business, and they do it better. Big Business does it so well that they take their capital off shore to avoid paying tax at all while removing capital from the pockets of the PEOPLE.

Fair is fair. Without the people being solvent corporate America has to rely on third world countries for its income. If we're important to their pocket books then they should treat us with respect.

If I were to write a new way of budgeting money in Washington I would make every project, every "pork barrel" (though many of them have a lot of validity in road construction and helping the local governments help the people) every need out of Congress and the White House, subject to a line item veto of the people. Not a vote so much as a comparison to the requirements of this New Manifesto.

Does the project benefit the people? Are the costs of the project being shared equitably by all sources of capital? Does the project meet the standard of integrity we expect of our government?

How many line items in the current budget would meet these requirement? Half? Ten percent? Any?? I don't know. I expect the answer is "damn few." The tax system in itself isn't fair and equitable. The burdens and expectations placed on the average working man exceed his capability to pay. The benefits of many projects are not obvious.

Why does the War in Iraq come to mind? Who is benefiting from that? Not us. Not the Iraqis, at least in the sense that its hard to plan a future if you aren't sure you'll live through the night. The only possible beneficiary of the War in Iraq project seems to be Al-Qaida. They are getting trained in the most grueling school every created, attacking and resisting the strongest, smartest and best led Army on the face of the earth. They are gaining recruits to their cause or faction or whatever they think it is.

On the other hand they are teaching the youth of the Arab-Islamic world that the only value they have to the old men who lay down the fatwahs is to die. So instead of a steady stream of eager young minds being trained to creativity and commerce they have a steady stream of fools blowing themselves to hell and leaving no hope for the rest of their people.

I guess we need to say TANSTAAFL to the mullahs as well.