Goodbye Mom

In place of a MAAS or Blog posting, I am posting the following portrait of my mother that cites her last words spoken to me...and as soon as possible, I will make a picture of the poem I wrote to honor her memory that was read so eloquently  at her funeral by the Reverend Joseph Lee.:

...And here's Mom's poem; how I wish it were better and longer but nothing could do her justice anyway. Oh, and I might add that the translation for the Armenian Name "Areknas" is "Light of the Moon".



 



Monday Attitude Adjustment Story

Bits & Pieces
No time this week for a good, well stretched out story, so you will have to settle for a last minute, short and (hopefully) sweet snippets of comedic narrations that will (again; hopefully) tickle your collective funny bone. I’d dearly love to add a little more padding to this opening paragraph but to be honest I’m not a good enough writer to drag this sh*t out any longer so without further adieu, and mainly since I have run out of clever, witty ways to embellish this short storey into an epic novel, the next writing junctures is my first short morsel of hilarity.


Back in the days where the latest, greatest technological advancement in communications consisted of answering machines and pagers or beepers or (well, I won’t provide you with the term I was most fond of employing to describe the piece of sh*t my company had ordered me to carry, so for the sake of the young and innocent, I will defer to the euphemism:) emergency communications device. As almost everyone in the western hemisphere and India knew at the time, to contact a person assigned to such a device, you had to first know the particular phone number assigned to the pager; second dial it and third, once the tone or “beep” was heard (thus endowing the evil devices with the nomenclature “Beepers”) you were to enter the telephone number you wished the respondent to call, usually but not always your own. Well, my lovely bride, Sylvia, had an aversion with machines in those days and she found communicating with mechanical equipment especially repugnant. Many people we knew used to call me, almost in tears from laughing, and ask why Sylvia hated machines so much, but they would caution me never to let her know they had called because they loved to listen to the messages she left while verbalizing with their answering machines. So it came as no surprise to anyone in my family when Sylvia said she wanted to call Paul and ask him to stop to pick up something at the store on the way home but knew he would get into trouble if she called his work number. I was busy working at home, which I did a lot in those days, and told her to call his pager number, since he was allowed to call out, but not to receive incoming calls. Everyone in the house over the age of 18 months old broke out in guffaws when they saw my wife pull the phone from her ear and then, holding it like a microphone simply stated… “Paul call home” and hung up.


The really funny part of this short story is that Sylvia did not understand what everyone had found so amusing but did not have time to question us as she answered our ringing phone and told Paul that we needed milk and asked home to stop and pick some up on his way home. Later, out of keen sense of hearing her beautiful ears provided her with, I asked Paul, “How did you ever figure out to call home?” His answer was, “Only a wrong number or Mom would call me on the pager and not leave a phone number, so I took a chance and called home”. Not wanting to appear to be verbose, I will end this mini-saga at this point as I am out of time and hope to use the material I could add in another, future MAAS.


Next week's 11-22-2010 (#168) title: TBD

Monday Attitude Adjustment Story

The Fun Train to Reno – Part II

I believe that last week I left you as we were de-boarding the train and watching the paramedics treating the “The Flying Wallenda’s” for various cuts, bruises and bumps. Now that we were at the train depot, we had to fetch our luggage, which was in the compartment below our traveling seats…that the Lord, and find transportation to our chosen hotel. There were cabs to share so that the cost would not be prohibitive but being the cheap SOB that I am, I chose the cheapest hotel in the package, and there were no other Signetics’ employees to travel with us. However, we did find another cheap couple and eventually got to our assigned hotel.  Now one reason I chose the cheaper hotel was because I knew my wife and only when she would stop gambling (and that was when she ran out money) would she venture into our room; wake me up to “check on me”. At that time, I would give her some nickel rolls (or a few dollars to buy whatever she wanted which would usually be nickels) and off she would a gambling again go. In fact she would gamble as long as the money lasted or until she collapsed…she reasoned there was always time to sleep on the way home.

We started in play quarter machines (since I found about $2.00 credit in one that somebody forgot or just didn’t know about…and boy was I glad I did. I could not lose,; nothing big ($30.00 was the biggest single payout) but it was a constant payout. That slot machine provided me with my one-armed bandit gambling philosophy lasting until today. Find a two coin maximum machine (other than the quarter poker machines which take five) that is close to an area which a lot of non-gambling people can either see, hear or walk by (as potential outside customers) because those machines are set to pay out more often so customers will be drawn into trying their luck. When that “Ding…Ding…Ding” sounds with a flashing light followed by a sire, I know it gets my curiosity up and the old “What the Hell take a chance” juices flowing. I did tell my wife that I didn’t think she would like the weather outside because I had observed the snow on the ground. I reminded her that we were more than 4,000 feet higher than in California so would be cold outside, but still she persisted. Even though I was happy as a pig in sh*t gambling were I was, I deferred to Sylvia’s demands to travel to another gambling facility to try to lose our money. Reluctantly I gathered my bucket of quarters and exchanged it for dollars (about $230.00; not bad for an initial $2.00 Free bet) and proceeded to the casino exit doors. We got about 100 feet from the doors when some customers staggered inside and a blast of Arctic Air followed in with them. That was enough for my honey (who did not bring her winter coat as I suggested) so we attempted to return to the slot machines that had treated us so well. Unfortunately, an old lady had been watching us and had happily staked a claim on both our machines and gleefully kept pumping both arms until the wee hours of the night. Needless to say we lost most of the money I had won on futile attempts to resurrect our luck, so I left my wife at the nickel bank of slots and retired to our room. She interrupted my sleep about three times and by morning, we had lost most of the money we had to gamble with.

The weather at least was bearable in the light of day, so we did manage to visit a couple of other casinos, but I was wondering what we would do for the next day and a half. I didn’t want to use any more of our money and then I saw the booth promoting $50 per couple in casino chips just to take a bus ride to the state line and sit through a time-share skiing vacation promotion at a California Ski resort. Well, neither of us had snow skied before, although having been raised on water skis I was willing to risk life and limb, but Sylvia was not. Anyway, we did not want to sign our life away for $9,000, which we actually could not afford to turn down but we did. It was funny to be driven back down to the casino by an Alabaman Chain Gang escapee instead of the dapper clean shaven drivers flirting with the skimpily clad champagne pouring tour guide who drove us up. Anyway we did get our chips (one $25 chip each that were only good at that casino and could only pay even money) so we bet on the even/odd numbers on the roulette wheel.  We hit both picks and cashed our chips in and then proceeded to take a different time-share skiing vacation promotion for $50 and this time, when it was over, we tried the red/black and hot one of our bets, so we ended up killing a day; getting free drinks and pocketing $75.00. I was ready for bed but Sylvia was ready to gamble so I limited her to the Nickel slots and she only lost $10.00 during the night. We had a great breakfast; bought some beer and booze for the ride home and had enough money to gamble until it was time to go (had to hold back enough to cover the $10.00 cab fee back to the train station).

Funny thing about the whole trip was the number of people who fell for the same Dan Cone “close the door” trick and the number of “show time” I had to yell. We never did take another “Fun Train Trip” because we discovered the bus turnaround trips that were faster and more fun because we did much better gambling that way…A side note here is that due to personal constraints, I may not be able to post any more MAAS stories for a while. If that is the case, I will post a notice to that affect…From the Main MAAS Managing Moron.

           

Next week's 11-15-2010 (#167) title: TBD

Could governors be the most important elections in 2010?

As we head into the 2010 mid-term elections, the question to answer is: “Could state Governor Elections actually be more important than Senators or Representatives?” My answer would be…Yes…and my reasoning is this… Details concerning voter fraud have been emerging which underscore the lengths to which the Obama Administration will go to ensure their victory in the upcoming elections. However, to me it is obvious that Obama is really interested his 2012 re-election chances, which currently seem to be slim and none. If you have been paying attention, you will notice that he has put more time and effort into backing Democratic gubernatorial hopefuls than any other political campaigns. Why do you think this is? My guess is based upon these facts:

Governors select the Electoral College electors
There is no penalty for not voting for your state’s winner
Electors have in the past not voted for their state’s selection

Now I must impart the fact that never has an Electoral College member cast an unconventional vote which has altered the outcome of a presidential election. What troubles me is the record number of “Firsts” this administration has accumulated and I would not doubt that the Progressives in charge would not hesitate to ensure that their “democratic” electors will cast their ballots only for Barack Obama no matter what the individual state election has mandated and therefore another “First” will be added to the legacy of the Barack Obama Regime.

Monday Attitude Adjustment Story

The Fun Train to Reno

I know I have written about this excursion before but it never made it into a book of mine and since I lost my hard drive full of MAAS stories, those who remember this saga will just have to suffer through it again. While working at Signetics (a lot my stories seem to originate at that time don’t they?) our director, Dan Cone, suggested that we should get a group together (for better rates) and purchase the Fun Train to Reno weekend package. He had his secretary set everything up and we got about 19 couples together which, based upon the choice of hotel, set our price at $139 each. The kicker was that this trip took place a few months after the infamous event that spawned initiation of the FAAS. The train departed from Oakland and we were again barraged with a host of convoluted travel arrangements, the most intricate being provided by Frank “Wrong Way” [last name omitted; but his ancestor was… Jonathon Corrigan Nagle], who insisted, again, that we would never be able to drive to Oakland in a respectful amount of time. His suggestion was to drive to Fremont and catch the Light Rail (it did not run all the way into San Jose at that time) to Oakland. This leg of the journey was 17 miles out of about 43 of the entire trip’s total miles. However, there was one small irritating detail associated with this schema and that concerned parking. There were parking lots, within walking distance, at the Oakland railway station expressly for extended parking unlike the Light Rail parking lot in Fremont that had to be cleared out by 3 AM every night. Frank lived in Fremont and indicated we could just go to his house and park (for free) and our boss Percy [can’t remember his name but I do have a story about him to tell later in a story that I will call “The Bionic Mom”] would then drive us in his van conversion (he was not going to Reno) and drop us off at the Light Rail Station. An itinerary which didn’t sound too bad until Frank added the small detail about living 11.5 miles away. We had driven to Frank’s apartment before and it took us twice as long to go the 11.5 miles as it did the first 17 since the first leg of the trip was on the freeway, so we declined. I felt I made the correct decision when I learned that no one had taken advantage of Frank’s offer.


Well, needless to say that after listening to all the disgusting details of everyone’s horror stories of traveling to the Oakland Railroad station, Sylvia and I decided to leave two hours earlier than our original plan had indicated. Bad mistake, again, because we had three hours to kill sitting and waiting on hard wooden benches in the dirtiest train station I have ever had the displeasure to visit. Anyway, I did get some degree of satisfaction and enjoyment from the fact that Frank [still unidentified] never made the train on time…he ended up having Percy drive him (at a price) to the next train stop. I must take time here to explain why the train was called the “Fun Train”. It had a dining car, bar car and a dance car plus the seats in all the cars were configured to twist and turn so that two or four people could sit facing each other and the Conductor had lap tables to use to play checkers or chess or cards or almost any game, many of which he also provided. There were also permanent tables (for poker, etc.) available in each car as well. Now the people who made the trip before told us that we should bring our own food and drink because we were allowed and it was extremely costly to purchase anything on the train; so we brought an ice chest packed with sandwiches and beer. The Signetics gang filled up a car but it soon became more than half empty as all the women and the younger, single guys who did not want to play poker, all went to the dancing car. I went with Sylvia but could I soon could not stand the hot, crowded condition and told her I was going back, but she stayed. All during the trip, she came back every so often to check on me, eat and drink a beer, until we were about two hours from Reno, but I’ll get to that later. The trip took about 12 hours because the train’s top speed was 70 mph but it could only reach that amazing pace about one hour total of the trip…when the rails were actually level or on a down slope.


After about three hours of playing cards, those California wimps had enough and most sacked out so they could be fresh and alert when we reached Reno. It was then that I discovered Dan Cone had a Marquis de Sade lineage. You see all the doors leading in and out of each car were open, but even when closed there was a huge sign about waist high that read: “Press Here To Open”. Having made the trip previously, Dan knew most of the passengers traveling through our car were heading to the bar car and if they possessed the ability to read before four or five such trips, they seemed to lose it soon afterward. He told me to sit down and watched and he proceeded to close the door, I couldn’t believe how many people would bump into the closed door and then either muscle the thing open (if they were strong enough they could) or ask for help. One girl in particular must have made over a dozen trips (it was a wonder she could still stand) and forced the doors open every time…except for her last time though. That time Dan stood up and uttered, “Permit me” as he touched the spot indicated by the sigh to open the door and the doors split open with a “whoosh”. This bimbo glared at Dan and said, “You let me open these [censored] doors the hard way you [censored…remember I have grandchildren that read] jerk. It really was funny to watch these budding morons come through again and again and never see read the sign. Some at least had the smarts to ask the conductor to “Fix the doors” and he would lock them open, but as soon as he left, Dan would unlock those demon doors and I would announce “Showtime”. Surprisingly, this nasty deed kept us amused until we were about two hours from Reno when a sh*t-load of people passed through our car and our women also returned. I asked why everyone came back so soon and Sylvia said that the conductor announced they were shutting the dance & bar cars down because they had run out of liquor. He added that this had never happened before; not in all the time the “Fun Train” had been in service. I still had beer left in my cooler and Dan had wine left in his so we became two of the most popular guys in the car, besides one of Dan’s managers, Vic McPherson [the guy who recruited me] who still had a full bottle of Jack Daniels in his possession. When we de-boarded the train in Reno, we noticed the paramedics had been called to the station and they were administering first aide to a couple of guys from a group that I had dubbed “The Flying Wallenda’s” because every time this group of six guys, clad in identical attire, passed by someone would shout for them to “build the pyramid” and they would do so by climbing on each other’s backs. I asked the fellow that looked the healthiest of the five men being treated what happened and he just shrugged and answered, “I guess we fell one time too many”. When I asked where the missing guy was he answered, “At the hospital; two cracked vertebra.” The sad thing was none of the injured felt any pain as long as the booze was flowing, but once it ran out I guess screams could be heard. We were lucky to have been about eight cars away.
I’ll finish my story next week because that way I can stretch one story into two and I don’t have time right now to think up more of this crazy, but basically true crap.


Next week's 11-08-2010 (#166) title: The Reno Fun Train Part II

Monday Attitude Adjustment Story

Al “Boris” Morris
As I mentioned in my previous MAAS’s, I need to take time to pay homage to a truly great, late comic genius…Al Morris. I met Al my first day working at Signetics [a wholly subsidiary of NV Philips which has since been re-named to Philips Signetics division] in California. You see Al was in charge of communications and on my first day, that meant that he had to install my telephone service. Of course the telephones required their own training session as well as handbooks…ah those were the days. You see back then, Al was a one-man division and I really think he liked it that way. This week will be a short MAAS as I will confine this story to how Al received the “Boris” nickname. Back in those days, 1984, Sylvia and I both liked to party and Signetics was, if nothing else, the most partying company I had ever worked for [and to this day, it retains the partying king title]. Before I became a manager and held my “Staff Meetings” at the Moria Inn on Friday afternoons, we had Friday gatherings always centered around happy hours at rotating bars in the area. The only qualifications were that the joint had to have a dance floor; free food; cheap drinks and could not be the same watering hole we had visited the previous Friday.


Our first occasion to attend one of these functions [Sylvia would always go with me] was in the Double Tree lounge located at the hotel of the same name in San Jose. I was sitting with Al waiting for a slow song to play because I knew no matter what was playing; Sylvia would never leave the dance floor. She had a habit, in those days, of wearing out dancing partners and the guys I worked with were no exception. After about six straight fast songs, the idiot who was playing the music played another blistering, allegro composition and Al asked why I didn’t go out on the floor and dance with my wife. I replied because I was too fond of living and she was a woman who only knew one phrase when it came to dancing and sex…”Do ‘gain daddy?” He laughed and asked if I would sanction his gyrating with my spouse. I shrugged and told him to be my guest but don’t come crying to me when she wears you out. If they play a slow one [I made a mental notation to myself at this point, “Self…never attend a Happy Hour at the Double Tree again”] I will have to cut in on you. He eagerly agreed and quickly bounced out to the dance floor and offered to cut a rug with Dancezilla, much to the relief of all the other potential partners who were sheepishly attempting to escape the gaze of this Dancing Queen.


After a couple of long dances I could see the sweat flowing freely from AL’s furrowed brow as he shot a pleading glance towards me. I laughingly replied “no way Jose” by merely shaking my head. After the next frenzied dance had begun, a shapely, buxom beauty sat down at my table and asked if I would care for a drink. Thinking it must be California’s version of Sadie Hawkins day, I didn’t pay much attention to her and [due to the loud strains of the next piece of music] I just pointed to my nearly full bottle of beer and shook my head no. Turning my attention back to the dance floor believing the issue had been resolved, I felt something lightly caress my arm and turned to see her mouth almost touching me utter “Hi I’m Amber, would you like to F**k?” as she leaned over the table spilling her ample, non-confined breasts all over its slick, shiny surface. Thinking fast I conjured up my best Russian accent and said, “Sadly I not can because Natasha, spouse to me…” and at this juncture I paused, pointed to my wedding ring and then continued “operative number two is upon floor dance now with Boris, operative number one. If even she suspect talking with me, your life I would be afraid for.” This Bimbo was not too discerning as after she recoiled back from my warning and removed her clutching claws, she stared at the dance floor and asked, “Which one is Boris?” Thank my lucky stars the next record was a slow song as I hopped up and muttered “You excuse please, I must now go to dance”, and as the shepherd was known for saying, “I got the flock out of there”.


Al was already returning to the table when he spotted the wench and as I began dancing with my wife I answered his quizzical, head-cocked non-verbal question with, “Her name is Amber; Sylvia is Natasha and you are Boris. And if she should ask my name tell her I’m Ican Snatchyourtitisoff. We are all Soviet operatives so speak accordingly in accent.” Al broke out in a big, shit-eating grin, sauntered over to the table and whispered something into her ear. She leaned back shaking her head “no” and then, leaning forward again, whispered something into his ear. I thought he was going to dump our table over; glasses, ashtrays, bottles and all when he flew to his feet. The two locked arms and as they were exiting the bar he looked back at me and winked. The rest of the night went uneventful for an hour or so when Al returned in a huff, plopped down and admonishingly stated, “You set me up with a hooker!” I replied that I was pretty sure she was, didn’t he see it? Ignoring my question he continued, “She wanted to charge me $50.00 after I paid for the damn room too!” Laughing, I asked if he paid the $50.00 and he answered, “Boris could do nothing else!” We both laughed and then he added, “My only complaint is now I can’t afford lunch for the next week!” Slipping into character I told him, “Is not for you to worry my friend, Natasha make extra big pot borscht for you for to eat with us …” Naturally, my next FAAS was about this incident and Al “Boris” Morris and the name stuck.


Next week's 11-01-2010 (#164) title: TBD

The answer is not term limits

The problem with our government today is the money involved; Congressional salaries, pensions, perks, health care etc. are all benefits that are greedily desired. Money is also amassed and dispensed in massive amounts in attempts to win elections and once “Pot of Gold” offices are secured, no amount of money, time or effort expended in retaining them is considered too great…And there lies the problem. Not only is corruption practically mandated, due to the accumulated power and potential wealth involved, but political coalitions are cobbled together without consideration of the harm these alliances might do to our country. Although term limits would keep greedy people from establishing congressional dynasties, the corrupting influences of power and monetary gains eventually perverts even the most chaste, idealistic candidate into a grasping, morally bankrupt monster. It has been suggested that junior members of the House and Senate spend most of their time raising campaign funds for their parties…that is their primary duty and if they do not perform, they do not receive monetary backing from their party when it’s their re-election time. How many times have you heard “He/she does not have enough funds to seriously contend for a congressional seat”? This is not the qualification standards our founding fathers had in mind…degree of wealth.


Another strand of this unscrupulous web of political depravity is lobbying firms. These organizations offer money; the promise of future employment and/or special privileges for legislation configured to suit their client’s best interests. Frequently, in order to pay off these “considerations” [besides composing “special interest” bills from scratch], politicians will insert “earmarks” [also known as “pork”] into popular, practically sure to pass, bills which have no logical connection to the proposed legislation, but merely serve as the Quid pro quo remittance to the lobbyists who “bribed” the politicos. Notice I used the term bribed…I know of no other term that can describe the activities defined by lobbying. Senator Obama promised he would put an end to earmarks but when his first major piece of legislation, the Stimulus Package or the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 or the Jobs Bill or whatever the name it is going by now, was passed it contained a whopping 9000 earmarks!


The next piece to this progressively expanding puzzle is the “Campaign Reform” legislation that had been composed in an effort to bestow an aura of legitimacy to current day election financial gathering [no, not “gathering”…amassing] activities. Laws have been written defining “Hard” and “Soft” campaign monies and regulations covering donations of these kinds of finances. Rules have been established concerning amounts for each type of resource that can be donated by a company, individual or entity; how these funds can be distributed and which contributions must be identified, etc. It has also been confirmed that no “Foreign” money, via any kind of contribution, be allowed to be donated to a candidate’s election fund, but this particular regulation is often hard to uphold because of the “Identifying Contribution Rules”which allow donations of under $200 to remain anonymous. Additionally, there are too many political money gathering/disbursing entities to successfully monitor, so instead of regulating them (which only causes government expansion) just remove the reason the rules were established…money.


Finally, I’d like to offer my own observations concerning the temptations that are in place that attract undesirable people into government employment today. For my entire childhood and throughout my adult life until now, I kept hearing how little our government employees were being paid and this caused the government to lose quality people to the Business World. The talk was always about how governmental salaries had to be increased to attract and retain qualified personnel. Well, that was all just smoke and mirrors to cover up progressive increases to federal paychecks and congressional perks [free parking, free airplane transportation (and in Nancy Pelosi’s case, even her choice of planes), free gasoline, etc.]. The idea has always been that “don’t worry…congress cannot vote itself a pay increase” but that is not true when you consider the shit-load of career representatives and senators who will be retaining their jobs when these new rates become effective. Let’s not forget to mention the number of administrators required to fill the needs of an ever expanding federal government. Today, as reported in the USA Today March 8, 2010 edition, that the typical government worker is paid 20% more than his counterpart private industry worker. Of course when you add in perks and retirement benefits, the gap is much higher making government work more attractive to a job seeker than any employment in the private sector.

Some questions to be answered before I propose my fixes for this total degradation in our Republic are:

• Why did President Obama, on December 23, 2009, issue an executive order increasing federal civilian employees’ salaries by 2% when SSA recipients were denied a cost of living increase in their payments for 2010 due to no inflation?
• Why are the same salaries being increased in 2011 by 1.4% by the Senate Appropriations Committee when again, SSA recipients, for the same period, are being denied a COLA because there was no inflation?
• Why are former congressmen allowed to work for lobbying firms in any capacity?
• Why are congressmen allowed to work for any organization that profited from their oversight?
• Why are the Congressional, Executive and Judicial branches of our government exempt from so many statutes covering the rest of America?
• How can legal immigrants and illegal aliens who have not made any Social Security payments, ever, collect money from this fund?
• How can non-citizens who have not made any Medicare/Medicaid payments receive free Medical Treatment?
• How can people, who have sworn to uphold the Constitution, blatantly ignore it and go unpunished?
• How can a US city declare itself a “Sanctuary City”, which is not constitutional, and not have the US Attorney General prosecute them but the same Governmental Authorities will sue a state for attempting to ensure its sovereignty from foreign invaders which is its constitutional right?
• Why are groups that demand fiscal responsibility and a return to the Constitution in peaceful demonstrations described as Terrorists while real terrorists are identified merely as criminals?
• How can the same groups that claim peaceful Tea Party members to be radical activists describe Left-wing protesters, who burn cars, buildings and otherwise destroy personal property while violently confronting police, as merely “demonstrating their frustrations”?
• How can the US Government describe 2nd amendment right groups and former military as “Potential Terrorists to watch” when they ignore the real terrorists encroaching on our borders and teaching in our schools?
• How can anyone who ever declared their intent to overthrow our government be allowed to serve in that government?
• How can anyone be named to the post that oversees payment of taxes when they didn’t pay their own taxes for any reason?
• How can anyone in the post that writes tax code not be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law when they don’t pay their own taxes?
• How can Congressional members commit illegal acts, which would result in non-government workers being immediately jailed, get away with no punishment for years or even ever?

I have many more questions but this Blog entry is getting too large so I’ll stop here. Although it looks like I may have strayed off subject, I can point to the “love of money” as the cause for all these problems as well as, but not limited to, totaling dismantling our Constitution by establishing a “World Order”; “saving” our planet by “Going Green” and destroying the United States of America by redistributing our wealth to everyone else. I firmly believe that if we elect people that will attempt to fix the money problem, then term limits will be easy to pass...who would want to fight an attempt to limit the chance to make a career out of a crappy paying job? Okay, here’s the start of my plan to take the “Money” out of our government:

#1 – Reduce all pay scales for all branches of our Federal government (Legislative, Judicial & Executive) to the level of the Social Security Administration’s highest wage. Administer these wages under SSA rules (including COLA). Also apply to all retiree’s.

#2 – Place all Federal jobs under the auspices of the Social Security Administration and dump all undistributed former pension monies into the Social Security fund. Also apply to all retiree’s.
#3 – Replace all government employees’ medical benefits (except for the Military) with Medicare coverage and distribute any monies into the Medicare account. Also apply to all retiree’s.
#4– Eliminate free gasoline, free parking, free transportation and all monetary compensation from any unused allowances pertaining to all Congressional and Executive office employees.
#5– Remove all political contributions of any kind. Political expenditures must be allocated and tracked to the penny. Every major, political party (that is registered and meets rigid qualifications) must be provided the same amount of money per candidate for a position from Federal or State General Political Funds that contain only voluntary, private contributions. After all, who cares where the money comes from if everyone gets an equal share?
#6– Eliminate all earmarks. If a need is so great to consider an earmark, write a bill.
#7– Outlaw all Lobbying functions. Treat any lobbying activities as felony bribery crimes.

If we can elect honorable candidates into the Federal Government, we may be able to implement at least some of my proposed changes and then we will be served by a government that would be interested in making America whole again. Someone would surely suggest term limits, balanced budgets, reduced taxes, reduced expenditures, restoring the Constitution and reducing the immense size of our bloated government.
Remember this Ronald Regan Quote, which is even more valid today: