I Know How We Can Save Some Money

Stop allowing legislative bodies to spend millions of taxpayer dollars trying to tell other people what to do in their personal lives. Get politicians to quit wasting taxpayer money trying to keep two gay dudes from marrying each other, or trying to prevent a woman from having an abortion because they find abortions morally repugnant, ultimately costing taxpayers more in the long run. Just stop it already.

Stop pretending that the environment is not related to the economy. Quit falsely clinging to the idea that the creation of and investment in clean energy would not benefit the country in the long run through the creation of jobs and the ability to disentangle ourselves from violent regimes that we support/police because of our need for oil.

Stop thinking that the best approach to international relations is the “Puff up your chest and blow” doctrine. Quit allowing our country to spend $642 billion this year on a defense budget that has our country acting on inflated paranoia and policing conflicts from which it’s long past time we remove ourselves. Stop pretending that the “preventative war” crap is anything more than an excuse to exercise our capitalistic, selfish imperialism. And while we’re at it, stop sending young soldiers off to die and instead let them go to school and have families and become part of the country they were willing to die for.

Stop allowing our educational institutions to function as nothing more than profit-seeking degree factories. Take all that damn money you want to spend playing games in Washington, put it in a box with a big red bow on it, and send it to an inner-city schools in D.C. so they can buy computers and some textbooks. Stop deciding that only certain people deserve an education by jacking up tuition prices to the point that a person has to sell a kidney to afford it. Stop turning our noses down at vocational and trade schools, as if being anything except an MBA is less desirable or beneficial than being a mechanic or a welder or a nurse. Stop pretending that spending tens of thousands of dollars over the course of four years to get a degree is absolutely necessary for everyone, and instead implement apprenticeships and on-the-job training programs for the industries in which it makes sense to do so. Also, let’s hit ourselves over and over in the head until we remember that education, in various forms, is the key to absolutely everything worthwhile in a civilized society.

Stop perpetrating the insanely expensive and unsuccessful “War on Drugs” that has been the mostly costly endeavor this country, and our states, have faced in several decades. You don’t have to go all-in and start selling heroin at the corner store, but let’s take a more balanced approach and stop pretending that locking John up for five years for selling a little bit of weed is a good use of anyone’s resources. On that note, stop sending non-violent drug-offenders, who make up over half of prison populations, into a perpetually violent prison system that proves to be a breeding ground for criminal activity and a high likelihood of recidivism, all the while costing this country billions of dollars a year to maintain.

For God Sakes, let’s implement nationalized healthcare already. It won’t be perfect, there will be problems, and it will still cost money, but it’s better than the alternative we have now, which is a giant, money-sucking, deplorable failure that leaves us fiscally and morally bankrupt.

STOP GIVING NASCAR TAX BREAKS TO THE TUNE OF $70 MILLION. JUST STOP.

Open our greedy consumer eyes to the reality that corporate interests infiltrate and ultimately control every aspect of our society, including our politicians and government officials, and start requiring them to pay their fair share of the costs of living in a society of 350 million people.

Tear apart Fox News like a stolen car, sell its parts and donate the money to United Way.

I know that none of these issues are simplistic and what I’ve done is narrow them down into generalized points that probably have some of you angrily sputtering the term communist in my direction. And yes, some of these might even cost us a little more money in the short term, but perhaps it’s time we start rolling up our sleeves and trying to cure the disease instead of treating the symptoms.