Thursday, June 10, 2010

If it's a Diet, it's Atkins

There are millions - even billions - awaiting the creation of the first truly effective painless diet. If someone can follow Drs. Melik and Aragon in Sleeper and figure out how to lose weight on steak, cream pies and hot fudge, there is serious money to be made.

Tom Barrett is giving the political equivalent a try. He's going to put Madison on a diet, but it won't hurt a bit. It's not that his plan doesn't have some good ideas but what they have in common is that no one (save prisoners, persons engaged in "fraud" and "waste" and some unidentified middle managers)must make the slightest sacrifice. Turn off the computers at the end of the day, go paperless, provide something called "accountability in state contracting training" and there's a billion dollars for you.

Count me skeptical. Politicians have been promising easy savings to avoid addressing spending cuts or tax increases for at least as long as I have been sentient. I've got no problem with most, if not all, of Barret's ideas but I wouldn't count the money just yet.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

And Scott Walker has a better idea . . . how?

At least Barrett has the balls to say it's time to get rid of Doug LaFollette's office and Dawn Marie Sass's. These historical anachronisms (the offices, that is) have outlived their purposes.

Anonymous said...

Sounds a lot like the House GOP's brilliant "YouCut" plan, where they let the public vote on a bunch of low hanging fruit that adds up to approximately 1% of the annual budget deficit.

Leadership? Ain't none anywhere that I've seen on a ballot recently.

Serious question Rick: when I go into the voting booth, what fiscally sane alternatives do I ever have these days? I can't think of a single one.