Out past the city limits in Eagle Point, Oregon is a dirt road leading around a bend in the river, and out of sight past a hay field on the left and copses of tall whispering trees on the right. My wife and I lived on her Grandmother’s seventy acre ranch for the summer. It was the summer after I graduated from college and Tamie was heavy with our first child. Her grandfather had died earlier that year and I was tending to the hay farm; fixing the tractor and moving pipe.

Grandma Ernie had a soft spot for cats. We counted fifty-six at one time, most of them feral types keeping to themselves under the porch or out in the woods. She would buy fifty pound bags of cat food and split them open with box knife on the back porch. Raccoons and other local animals would join in the nocturnal feast.

When Grandma Ernie passed on I imagine most of those cats died of starvation. Whole litters of kittens reduced to bones.

In unrelated news…

I read this morning that the F-22 program was cut. Here’s an excerpt:

F-22 supporters complained the action would be a blow to long-term national defense — and cost thousands of jobs in the middle of the recession.

My humble insight: The F-22 program already costs jobs. It sucks them out of small businesses like mine. For everything that the government does visibly, it evaporates something in greater proportion invisibly. This is effected forcibly through a trio of evils: taxation, inflation, or public debt.

The difference is that in the private sector the job is created by actual demand of someone like you who chooses to buy a product or service, whilst in the government sector the job is created through other forces that may or may not be in your interest. It is done by force. How much government is good for the general welfare of the people? In my opinion it’s about one quarter what we have now*.

Blue Table Painting exists because you want painted miniatures. You are best suited to decide what your money is good for. The more local the decision, the more efficiently and wisely it will be done as a general rule.

What would it look like if the federal government lived within its means? What would you see on the news? If a president or some members of congress took a stand on staying within budget, what do you think would be said of them?

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*if the income tax were eliminated and replaced with nothing it would reduce the federal budget by approximately 40%. It is my opinion that the government could do everything it needs to do with that amount of revenue. Imagine for one glorious moment what that would mean: no tax returns, no revealing your money matters to a stranger every year. For my miniscule business it would mean one more person could be hired.