Are you familiar with the concept of a mashup?  Basically, you take multiple popular things and squash them into one “appealing” package.  This is how we ended up with Pirate Zombies and this little nugget of a video that Kurt Cobain would have never signed off on.

Anyway…. I’m going to “mash up” some of this week’s more popular stories and try to find a way to tie them into an old blog I wrote.  (a little rehash with your mashup)  And on that note, I’ll be referencing a blogger that I’ve referenced before, so it’s pretty much like that week of meals after Thanksgiving, where you’re basically scarfing the same food for five days.  Let’s begin.

Today’s theme will be money.

I really wanted to start out with the cluster truck that has been Solyndra, but Jimmie Bise Jr. has pointed out that there are much bigger fish to fry right now.  It’s recently been unearthed that over $18 Billion in unemployment benefits have been mistakenly paid out over a course of three years.  This amounts to about ten percent of the unemployment benefits budget.  Jimmie quipped on it in this piece here.

Ten percent of our total budget is about $380 billion. In the grand scheme of things — when we’re talking about a $14 trillion to $16 trillion dollar debt — it’s not very large at all. But let’s not move so quickly here.

While ten percent seems like small potatoes, none of us would shrug if we ran a company that frittered away ten percent of its revenues every month. If we found that we lost ten percent of our household budgets to theft and frivolities we knew nothing about and didn’t approve, we would be livid, and rightly so.  -Jimmie Bise Jr.

I’d like to add my two cents to what Jimmie is saying.  Something that I’ve known for a long time is that a lot of businesses that you would consider to be successful make it on a profit margin of 10% or LESS.  In other words, if Exxon Mobil frittered away 10% of their earnings, they would cease to exist.  Now chew on that.

How can we be so callous as to let tens of billions of dollars be squandered every year?  Well, I have a few theories.  The most obvious is that it’s “other people’s money”.  The most damning is that most of us don’t know how to manage our own resources, let alone the largest economy the world has seen.  The truth hurts, but it’s still the truth.

If you haven’t read Jimmie’s piece, I really implore you to go ahead and do so, but he goes onto say that Medicare and Medicaid also waste about ten percent of their budgets too.  That’s about $60 Billion each year.  Now why do I bring that up?

In the first piece I ever wrote that I was really proud of, I discussed how Republicans were stupid in thinking that foreign aid was a good place to cut our budget.  You see, we get to put our shiny aircraft carriers in several strategic ports around the world, because we dish out a little pocket money each year to various countries.  The total spent on Foreign Aid is about $30 Billion a year.  And “aid” does not always mean that we just give countries money.  That also counts the loans that we give them too.

Anyway, if you’re going to cut the Foreign Aid budget, AKA a huge diplomatic asset, without trimming the $60 Billion in waste that we have in Medicare, then you are by far one of the biggest idiots in the history of all idiots.  That idiocy is further made evident when you consider that China is ramping up the amount of money they invest in other nations.  So while our politicians have proposed that we be less influential around the world, China has been getting chummy with several nations, themselves.  It is estimated that they have over 900 projects in Africa alone.  What does that mean?  It means that they can start parking their shiny hardware in more spots than they currently do.  It also means that they have been gaining favors from countries that are rich in natural resources.  This fact alone should scare you off of going back to the gold standard.  Trust me, at this rate, China is going to have its hands on more gold than we will.  So as much as Glenn Beck would like to see us trading on bullion, I think we would regret it if we did.

And what about Solyndra?  Well, in light of how much money we waste in the programs mentioned above, $500 Million doesn’t sound like that much dough, now does it?  And that brings us back to the callousness.  It is insane how much money our country hemorrhages, and we don’t even try to keep track anymore.

I will say this much, even if you don’t believe in the existence of a divine being (see religion), you have to admit that the timing of this Solyndra discovery could not have been better.  It’s basically 500 million reasons to say “no” to our president’s 17 requests that we “pass this jobs” bill.

I mean isn’t this the same guy who asked for $800 Billion in stimulus money the last time and then laughed about the shovel-ready-jobs not being “shovel ready”?

Yep… I thought so.  But like I said, this is what happens when you spend “other people’s money”.  Of course, the problem is, we’re not even spending other American’s money anymore.  We actually ran out of that, so now we’re spending China’s money.  And guess what, the Chinese like to get paid.  They also have over 1.3 billion potential repo men that they can send over to collect that debt.  I’d really hate to see the Washington Monument get turned into Buddha’s tooth pick, but at this rate, it could happen.

And so far, the greatest idea our president can come up with is some gimmick based on an op-ed that Warren Buffet supposedly wrote about how millionaires should be taxed at a higher rate than their secretaries.  That whole sentiment is highly bogus, by the way.  It doesn’t even begin to explain the difference between income tax and capital gains tax, but since this post is already over 1000 words, I’m not even going to indulge that digression.  Instead, I’ll quote one of the smartest men on Twitter and show you this:

So go ahead, Mr. President.  Tax “the millionaires” as much as you want.  Take their whole fortunes while you’re at it, but you won’t even be able to pay the interest on the debt that you owe various other nations.  Whoever said you were “the smartest guy in the room” must have been working the night shift in a mortuary, because I have seen nothing that looks like a good idea come from you.  Your campaign can’t even run a good website this election cycle, and that was your big bag of tricks last time.  But again… I digress.  Oh, wait…  I did remember your one good idea.  You hired Hillary Clinton into your administration, so that at least some semblance of professionalism exists.  So you have had one good idea… of course, I wouldn’t be surprised if Rahm Emanuel made you do it, but I’ll give you credit for that one anyway.

So there you have it, folks.  That’s the big mashup for this week.  We’ve got money spraying out of our coffers like a mountain sized jar of jelly beans with a giant gash in it, and nobody is even counting the jelly beans as they spew out, because no one gives a rat’s <behind> about how much we spend or where it goes.  We’re in shambles, folks.  When you aggregate all of our money problems and really look at them, you start to realize that we are hosed in a special kind of way of being hosed.  It’s enough to make you think about watching TV and not pay attention to it.  Oh… crap.  That’s what 80% of us have been doing this whole time, isn’t it?

It’s not all doom and gloom though.  If we do start paying attention, and we do start tracking our jelly beans, and cutting spending, and coming up with ways to make money again, then we can pull out of this.  It’ll take some doing, but it can be done.  Of course, we’ll have to pay attention first.  And if you read Jimmie’s piece, you’d know that we could even buy a few football teams while we’re at it.  Finally… something to show for our money.  Good night.