Political Dictionary

Compromise: Some want to get the deficit to zero, some want it to be 10% of income.
In real life, compromise would be perhaps 5% deficit, in Washington it's15% instead.

Some want to reduce spending by 10%, some want to increase spending 10%.
Real life compromise: spending stays the same.
In Washington, spending increases 15%

Getting things done:
In real life, you mow the lawn, redo the kitchen or build a house.
In Washington, more laws and regulations are made to complicate your life without any commensurate benefit.

Politicians:
I see them as blowhards who have not the faintest knowledge on the things they're trying to regulate,
some see them as wise stewards of our nation.

Some are very educated and intelligent, some are fairly dumb. It appears that those of lesser intelligence often have better mass-appeal.
Everyone, though, is vain. No-one wants to admit to mistakes that have been made and that alone is the most important reason why the political class is so detrimental to our well being.

The more intelligent are the more dangerous, because they have even more difficulty admitting to their failures.
The problem with that? Nothing is learned from failed policies and they are instead amplified, as if what failed on a smaller scale will somehow succeed on a bigger one.

Take a look at this chart:

In 1939 there were 504 pages of "code", now it's more than 71,000 !
How many times were we promised a simplification?

Adherents of constitutional, limited government, libertarians, are often labeled anarchists. In my view, what you see depicted in this chart though, represents anarchy.
The law is the constitution. But when Congress is able to enact anything they want, without regard to the supreme law, that is indeed anarchy.

Even only 25 years ago, the IRS tried to maintain the illusion of constitutionality by speaking of "voluntary compliance" with the income tax law. This pretense has been given up, of course.
When 93 of 100 senators vote to give the president the authority to detain citizens without charge or trial, by the military, or an indefinite duration, that is anarchy.
When whistleblowers get tortured and locked up for life, while the murderers he exposed get a slap on the wrist, should I feel safe to write this anymore ?

In 1980, this nation elected a president who, to the world, held all these views that I espouse here. There was great hope that anarchy could be stopped and reversed. But, this great president made a huge mistake: He made compromises and in the end, nothing had changed in this nations march toward the all-powerful, all regulating, state.  As a percentage of GDP, the debt had doubled, while the IRS code went from about 26,000 pages to 34,000 pages.