What I learned from the government shutdown

What I learned from the Government shutdown
The government is shut down! What are we going to do?  Who are we going to blame? 
These are the questions that all the pundits and "experts" are battling.  Well, I
was raised by a scientist and all we have now is a variable that has been
eliminated.  Based on what happens, we can see what that variable does.  So far, it
doesn't seem like it does much.

First off, the last two weeks, I have not noticed anything different in my life.  I
wake up, I go to work, I check e-mail, eat food at restaurants etc. etc.  Nothing
has changed except every now and then when I watch TV I see something about a
government shutdown and people coming up to me asking me what it all means.  Here's
the answer in a nutshell...it means the conservatives are right, we don't need the
federal government that much because private enterprises will pick up the slack if
people want it.  Let's see some examples from the last two weeks.

While watching a sport channel, I looked at the ticker on the bottom of the screen
and read, "Army vs. Navy game may be cancelled due to the government shutdown." 
Well that's a great way to get Americans upset, take away their football.  Me, I
couldn't care less.  I've never watched the Army vs. Navy game, I am an Ohio State
fan so I was looking forward to that game.  That and starting at noon on Saturday
there are other college football games to choose from.  Who cares if one game is
missing? and I do have a cousin that's an alumnus of West Point and I still didn't
care.  A couple days later, I was watching the same sports channel and I see
something like, "Army vs. Navy has received funds from private enterprises and the
game will take place." Well, apparently someone cared.  Problem solved.  The next
Saturday the armed forces were still able to play football because they found the
money.  Apparently people cared even about the non-rivalry game.  Alright so that
crisis averted.

Then we had the military controversy.  If you're killed in action in the military,
your family gets $ 100,000.00.  Now the families of those who died and are in all
those coffins coming home from Afghanistan won't get paid because of the government
shutdown.  Now, President Obama could just take his pen out, draft an executive
order and pay these families but no he didn't do that.  President Obama seemed to
use this to stick one to the Republicans and their shut down so he screwed our
troops.  I truly believe Bush would have been crucified definitely figuratively and
if the liberals got to him, maybe literally.  Obama, however, always gets a pass and
this time the liberals don't have to be hypocrites because they're rooting for our
enemies anyway in the war.  Now, the American people can be like, "see with the
government shut down, the military families won't get any money."  What happened
though?  The corporations ruined the liberal cause once again.  Fisher Price(tm) was
like we'll pay it.  Then private individuals started donating money to Fisher
Price(tm).  Some schools even decided to do a fund raiser to raise money to pay the bill to
the military families.  A corporation showed up the government by throwing all their
money around and the private citizens started reimbursing the corporation.  Yea,
this capitalist society is so full of greed you can't rely on generosity (sarcasm
greatly involved in the last sentence).

The only thing I can see is the national parks are closed.  I try to hike in a
national park every year and I love them.  This is a case where private citizens
cannot step in because they're not allowed.  I have a feeling though if you were to
say sell the Grand Canyon, there would be buyers.  You can even put in the contract
that it has to be used so people can see the view and not destroy the park for
commercial enterprises.  That can be done.  When I brought this up to someone they
said, "Don't you have to pay to get into a national park?"

Yes you do.  It's $20 per car for the day.  You can get week passes
and other denominations but that's the one I normally pay. 
Apparently national parks are run at a loss or else they would have
stayed open because it is a way for the government to make money. 
Or, this is the only thing those opposed to the shutdown could
shutdown to make people notice.  Either way, this is not too
catastrophic to me.  Like I said, if the government were gone, 
someone would buy the national park from them.  Liberals may
contend, "Yea but the entrance price would probably go up so our
poor couldn't appreciate them."  If you were so concerned about
that, you'd complain that it's twenty dollars a day!  That's a
price! Why not just have it be free?  Well the government wants some
money too.  There's that greed again.

If the government shut down is really the Republicans' fault, I say thank you
Republicans for proving my conservative views are right.  All these programs and
whatever the hell the federal government pretends to do are probably just as
ineffective and useless as I thought.  There really is too much government waste. 
So, now that we know this, let's use the federal government only for strong national
defense, to keep out national parks open (naturally keeping the entrance fees), and
the Supreme Court when we don't think our state courts upheld the constitution
enough.  There's probably a couple more things but It won't cost that much if those
are your only expenses so then you can lower taxes and give more money to the
people.  Any kind of gap this will cause will be picked up by private enterprises as
we noticed during the shut down.

Autographed copies of my book The World Hasn't Progressed in 5,000 years can be
bought at the bottom of this page