I want my EBT

to the tune of the song, I want my MTV

Nov 05, 2025

Let’s talk about governments, their purpose, and their limitations. This is going to be thirsty work, pour yourself something, the booze is in its usual place, same with the soft drinks, and the tip jar is here, if you enjoy the work, please leave a tip or become a paid subscriber, it’s how we keep the lights on.

I’ll cover some other things as well, but let’s start out with “what is government for?” (Cue The Temptations “Government, good God, Ya’ll, what is it good for?”)

If humans were perfect, (all humans everywhere) then we would not need a government. All people would act in not only their, but everyone’s best interest. There would be no theft, no cheating, no behavior which endangers others, and everyone would recognize the inherent value of each type of labor, everyone would want to work for the good of all, and charity to those few who cannot do any work at all would be readily granted.

Of course we don’t live in that world, and short of the Christian heaven, never will.

Hence, we need rules. Rules that determine who owns things, who should pay for things, to ensure that cheating is kept to a minimum (keeping it from happening at all is a bridge too far for the real world) to determine what constitutes harm to others, and how to stop such things from happening. At its base, that’s what Government does internally. Externally, its purpose is to ensure that people and nations over which it has no control by simple law, do not harm those which it represents. Every other thing that government has appointed itself responsible for, is a power grab.

That’s it, in a nutshell.

That’s the basic purpose for which we, mankind, created the concept of Government. Of course, it got perverted about a nanosecond after it was invented. The original, and still ultimate fallback form of government is despotism. Force, raw naked force.

“You all are going to do this, because I say you’re going to do this, or I will start breaking your body. Eventually, I will kill you if that’s what it takes. I get what ever I want, and get to do what ever I want, because I’m the biggest, strongest, meanest Son of a Bitch here.”

If you’re the despot, it’s a great governmental system. Of course, there’s no retirement plan. Despots get retired to a little plot of land, about six feet, or as much more as shall be required. Ask Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, or any of thousands of kings, princes, and potentates. As soon as you are no longer the biggest etc. you get retired, permanently. If your rule is too brutal and arbitrary, you get to learn fast that “while you may be bigger than any of us, you are not bigger than all of us.”

Eventually society grows to the point that we find better systems. From Monarchies, to Constitutional Monarchies, to Democracies and Republics, with side trips to Kleptocracies, Aristocracies, Meritocracies, and many others, all are intended to meet those preceding requirements, or as some of the wisest men in the world put it, “To provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and ensure the blessings of liberty.”

All forms of government do that to some greater or lesser extent. Even that most basic, despotism has most of that as a goal, because “If I don’t defend my sheep from other wolves, I can’t eat them myself.”

The blessings of Liberty, of course don’t appear on the radar until you get to the more wide based governments, that at least attempt to a greater or lesser extent to be “government by the governed.”

Note however that nowhere in the whole requirements list, does “Keeping every individual happy and healthy” appear. Promoting the general welfare is something that has been often pointed out to me, by people with a poor understanding of the English language, as justification for all nature of “Welfare programs.” (AKA Social Safety Net, AKA Charity, AKA Free Shit.)

Those “Smartest guys in the world” studied every single form of government created and recorded since the dawn of civilization. They discussed, and ROUNDLY REJECTED all forms of Free Shit, from Free Medical Care (the one part of Free Medical Care that they allowed would be useful was “An Act for the relief of sick and disabled seamen” as passed by the 5th United States Congress. It was signed by President John Adams on July 16, 1798. {1} ) to Free Land, Free Food, etc.

What’s that? Yeah, you in the back. “What about the homestead acts, wasn’t that ‘free land?’” you ask?

Well, glad you asked. No that was not free land.

Yes, I know, if you look at Wikipedia it says that “The land was given away free.” Guess what, Wiki is often filled with shit. Let’s look at the requirements for that “Free land”: You had to pay $10 to file (in a time when $40 a month was the going wage for most people, and $10 was the price of a decent green broke horse.) You had to live there for five years, you had to build a house on it, and you had to have successfully grown crops on it for those five years. Then you had to pay the sum of $1.25 an acre. Plus an $8 filing fee. Oh, and you couldn’t sell off any of it, or the rights to it, during the period you were homesteading. Only 40% of the people who homesteaded ended up with the title to the land. The rest of them defaulted, and the government took the land back.

There was prolonged discussion of the idea of “provisions for the Poor.” as it was called in the eighteenth century (see: welfare.) It was decided that this form of charity was theft. By forcing people who did not want it, to pay for it, they were stealing from their working Peters, to pay for their wastrel Pauls.

This whole issue was something I discussed on a friend’s Social Media account, when one of her acquaintances (I dare not call this woman her friend.) stated: “Which is why I think we should have government do it instead. We shouldn’t need charities. Everyone should already have enough. But we are paying more in taxes to insure some people don’t. And that is the problem.”

Well, don’t wave a red flag in front of a bull, if you don’t want him to charge. I fired back with:

1) We are in the middle of a government shutdown where EBT is being used as a blackmail tool to try and push politics... And you think that the government should handle ALL charity? (Yes, EBT is charity.) Read the Federalist Papers, and the Constitution, no where will you find anything saying that the American system of government is or should be, responsible for feeding those who can’t or won’t work. Instead, you find words like;

“I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth, I traveled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.” -- Ben Franklin

If all charity where in the hands of the federal government, rest assured that the government WOULD use that handle to control people. And I find it odd, that you complain about the government not taxing in accordance with your desires, yet out of the other side of your mouth, you want to give government MORE power. I don’t know the name for your problem, but I’m sure there’s an Abnormal Psychology paper on it.

2) As a federal employee for 41 years, (in and out of uniform) the very concept that the federal government, or indeed any government is “more efficient” than a private charity is so laughable as to be worthy of a spit take. The layers of red tape and the “required studies, evaluations, and review” in the modern government are beyond the comprehension of anyone who has not actually experienced them.

3) Let me explain by allegory. Gold is a very mailable and ductile metal... It’s quite soft. So soft, in fact that some rubs off with every contact. Even innocent contact removes some small amount of gold, and that ignores those individuals with rasps clasped in their hands, the better to insure that a significant chunk rubs off into their pockets on the way through.

Thus it follows, as day follows night, that the more hands gold passes through on its’ way from where it is dug up, (earned) to where it is intended to go (End goal spending) the less gets to the end. With a charity there may be three, four, or even five layers of hands that it passes through.

In some rare cases like international organizations, and the Wholly Roman Catholic Church inc. (yes I spelled that the way I meant to) There’s probably as many as fifteen layers; on the other hand, in small organizations, like the one being founded this week to help feed the folks of the town I now call home, there are literally TWO.

The Federal Government has over twenty between where the money comes in, and where it goes out. That’s twenty layers of people who must get paid (have some of the gold rub off in their hands), all of which takes money you meant to go to those you consider needful, from those you consider to have more than they need.

There is this overarching charity group sponsored by the Department of War called “The Combined Federal Campaign.” It was created in the 50s to consolidate all the people who were begging the troops and the military civilian employees for donations. They said “look, we’re going to take one month a year, and allow you guys to hit up our guys for cash. That is instead of each of you hitting them up in turn and wasting our time.

To participate in this, you had to provide your financials with an independent auditing agency, who would provide a report on what percentage of your donations went to your stated purpose, and what percentage was “overhead.” If you couldn’t make it on less than 25% overhead, and did not demonstrate a reason why, you were not allowed to play. Also, you were required to state those numbers in your plea for money.

As a result, I’ve seen the overhead costs on everything from Doctors Without Borders and the International Red Cross and Crescent, to some LGBT (and the rest of the alphabet) group out of San Francisco who wants money for outreach to the school system. These numbers are public record; you should go look at them. They provide a useful yardstick as to where your money goes. (IE to the cause you want to support, or to the pockets of the people who man offices and write grant applications.)

Yes, grant writers that are skilled, are obviously worth more money, but if, because of the level of skilled troops you have, none of that grant money really goes to anything but overhead... Cui bono? Is your charity nothing but a money mill for grant writers and lobbyists? (Looking at you here ASPCA)

Take the Military for example on the subject of overhead. The USN currently has more admirals than ships. The Army has more generals than brigades, in fact more generals than brigades, battalions, regiments, and armies combined, by a factor of three. They almost have as many generals as companies. (a company is usually commanded by a lieutenant or at most a captain.) Is this the sort of outfit that can manage your charity work well?

Finally, if we let the federal government decide who gets the money that is currently handled by charities, they WILL decide, and you probably will not like it (Nor will I). With one party in power, it may all go to eight or nine inner cities, the ones that have the majority of the votes, and completely ignore anyone who is on record as supporting their opponent politically.

Then, when the other party gets into power (and they will. History has shown for five thousand years that no one gets to sit on top forever.) The other party may decide that all the money needs to go to people of a certain religion, or to faith based causes, and things like Planned Parenthood need not apply. Or maybe it all needs to go to provide a rifle and a pistol to every land owner in America... Or it all needs to go to farmers...

“The problem with a government that can take care of all your needs, and answer all your desires, is that it can and will take from you all that you have.” I believe that was Maggie Thatcher.

Maybe it’s better if we keep that stuff private sector, and allow each individual to decide where their money should go, what causes they feel are deserving of the hours of their life that they are giving away? After all, that’s what money really is, hours of your (or someone else’s, if you inherited, or otherwise got it without your labor) LIFE. I don’t want you to decide where the hours of my life go, and please believe that you don’t want me to decide that for you. We would both be very unhappy with the results of that model.

That did not, of course convince her, and she fired back with some bullshit about how the one percent needs to be paying at least ten percent of the tax bill, and that would solve everything. At which time I pointed out to her that by HER party’s computations, the top one percent of the population financially, paid FORTY percent of the income taxes collected by the federal government.

At this point she left the discussion, no doubt to lick her wounds, and plot my demise.

Thanks for reading! This post is public so feel free to share it.

{1} Even that was paid for, according to law, by the masters of the ships allowed to pull into US ports. Its purpose was to ensure that ships, especially foreign ships, didn’t just dump their sick crew members in American ports to die. One thing that simply must be understood, when viewing this act, is the attitude of the entire world towards sailors at the time. That is to say, they viewed sailors as, at best, idiot savants, and at worst, children. They were people who, on shore, needed to be looked after.

In other news, CDR Sal had a very interesting post, Australia has a Chance to do the Most Incredible Thing

It’s a very important discussion on the whole Rare Earth China issue thing, and some info that is kept very quiet on that front.

The Wallstreet Journal is having palpitations over: “The number of legally sanctioned homicides by civilians in the 30 stand-your-ground states has risen substantially in recent years,” reports The Wall Street Journal, having analyzed FBI data. “Justifiable homicides by civilians increased 59% from 2019 through 2024 in a large sample of cities and counties in those states, the Journal found, compared with a 16% rise in total homicides for the same locales.”

Being New Yorkers, they find this to be a huge problem. I on the other hand, find it to be a feature.

And finally, in a follow on to my article last week discussing AI, in what should be one of the most frightening things you will read all day:

The United Kingdom is trying to develop an AI program that will predict murderers, so that they can arrest you before you kill someone. https://www.sciencefocus.com/future-technology/murder-predicting-tool-could-save-lives-or-destroy-them

But see, it’s totally not “Minority Report” because that used fallible “precog psychics” and WE are using the science of AI. If you had plans for visiting the UK, you might want to reconsider them until after the peasant uprising that is way overdue. Being a tourist in the middle of a civil war is contraindicated.

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