That's when the furlough is done on short notice. This time they have gone through all the necessary hoops to keep from having to give people backpay.

Your numbers are non-sense. You are using national averages to make your case. A person living and working in NYC compared to a person living and working in Kansas will have a different pay. Secondly, the government has very few positions that are minimum wage jobs. The private sector has tons of minimum wage jobs. So, geography is not your friend here and your comparisions are not accurate because you fail to compare skills sets between public and private sector pay. The last part of your post is the worst, extrapolating non-sense is no way to make a logical point.

Income taxes are terrible. I hope Bobby Jindal is able to make LA work without them to serve as an example of a different way to do things.

Stealing from Reagan and using your own take on it, why mess with a great quote?

Reviving Milton Friedman, I love it.

All America needs to do is start drilling shale oil. We would take over as the leading exporter of oil and gas to China. We would no longer need to police the OPEC states and China would be our biggest customer. American geopolitical interests would then become Chinese interests. Let the Chinese and Indians form a coalition to contain the spread of radical Islam in Asia. Its there backyard, not ours.

The conclusion is this, there is a strong under current of nationalism stirring around the globe. The only saving grace for North America between 1933 and 1945 was geography. We were far, far away from the conflicts that consumed the rest of the world. Internally, we were a hedgemonic culture with few internal dissidents. Those boundries are not a great deterent anymore. We are in range of our foes worst weapons. Likewise, our multi-faceted society is also more apt to be torn apart from within than it is to coalesce around a righteous and patriotic leader. There is no conclusion, its an observation of the state of affairs and its more like describing the weather than it is an analytical piece with a conclusive end.

That is a great point. Mortgage interest rates are not tied to the interest deduction. They would fluctuate with the Fed rate, just as they always have.

I'm going to channel my inner Christie here, " What the hell are you talking about?"

The best way to expand government is to eliminate the charitable contribution deduction. The private social services provided by charities would be choked off from many of their revenue sources. Go ahead, end that deduction but don't be surprised when there is a louder public outcry for more government to provide those same services.

That's a tongue in cheek response but there is an element of truth to it.