This what we have done to our children with our reckless spending and massive national debt. Sadly this video is already out of date. Since this video was made, our national debt has climbed another $1700.

New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson used your tax dollars, courtesy of the stimulus package, to crack down on cock fighting. The New Mexico Independent reports, “The Department of Public Safety will get $150,000 to combat illegal cockfighting, dog fighting and animal hoarding. The money will pay for an staff, training and materials.”

MAD isn’t saying that cracking down on cock fighting isn’t a worthy expenditure, but we are wondering why working families in other states have to pick up the tab for New Mexico’s animal control especially when we are broke.

And we aren’t the only ones wondering. The Nanny State Liberation Front wrote:

Basically, Richardson has created a budget for a new police force to do the job of the state’s existing police force. It sort of sounds like the roles the so-called “czars” play in the Obama Administration, doesn’t it?

More bureaucracy. More of taxpayers’ money being wasted to create it. Talk about a ‘pet’ project of a(nother) big government bureaucrat!

So while you work to feed and clothe your children, government continues to spend more of your money.

Amanda Teresi from Liberty on the Rocks provides a visual interpretation of what’s happening to “your nest egg” on government spending. Hopefully you like scrambled eggs…

The Wall Street Journal exposes what some members of Congress do with their “excess travel funds,” a.k.a. your money:

Rep. Joe Wilson (R., S.C.) said he once bought marble goblets in Kabul. Rep. Alcee Hastings (D., Fla.) said he paid for drinks and gifts for people who traveled with him. Rep. G.K. Butterfield (D., N.C.), who is a member of the House ethics committee, said he sometimes keeps the extra money. Rep. Robert Aderholt (R., Ala.) said he didn’t know if he kept extra money because he doesn’t keep receipts.

New congressional motto: They take vacations so you don’t have to…

A big thank you to Mort Zuckerman of U.S. News and World Report for validating MAD’s argument for “sustainable economics.” In his latest article titled “The Most Fiscally Irresponsible Government in U.S. History” Zuckerman argues:

On the national debt, the money the government has spent without the tax revenues to pay for it has produced mind-numbing numbers so large as to be disconnected from reality. Zeros from here to infinity. The sums are hard to describe; it is hard to describe an elephant, but you know one when you see one. The public knows that, shuffle the numbers as you may, the level of debt is unsustainable.

Simple — our “level of debt is unsustainable.” What makes Zuckerman’s article so extraordinary is that he is a big fan of President Obama.  He voted for President Obama, his magazine endorsed him, and he helped write one of Obama’s speeches. It seems the only people who think we can and should continue to spend at current levels are members of Congress, President Obama and his administration.

It’s the 90th anniversary of the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote! Time to celebrate! In 1971, Congresswoman Bella Abzug declared August 26 Women’s Equality Day. Again, time to celebrate!  Women rule their world, as I recapped after the 2010 BlogHer conference. Once more, time to celebrate!  Women have choice in their lives.

Don’t listen to all the doom and gloom and victimization talk on the “gender wage gap”!  This comes from people who want to keep women dependent on government. The Independent Women’s Forum, “all issues are women’s issues”, blew apart the myth of the gender wage gap in 2005:

The 76-cent statistic (now actually 80 cents, according to the U.S. Census Bureau) is misleading because it is a raw comparison of all working men and women. Thus a female receptionist working 40-hour weeks is tossed in with the male orthopedic surgeon putting in 70-hour weeks.

A study of the gender wage gap conducted by economist June O’ Neill, former director of the Congressional Budget Office, found that women earn 98 percent of what men do when controlled for experience, education, and number of years on the job.

Warren Farrell, three-time board of directors member of the National Organization for Women New York City, exhaustively debunks the wage gap myth in his book “Why Men Earn More.” Farrell documents occupations requiring bachelor’s degrees in which women’s starting salaries actually exceed men’s. Female investment bankers and dietitians, for example, can expect to earn 116 percent to 130 percent of their male counterparts’ salaries.

As I stated in a post titled “Working for the man,” I choose to make less money because a flexible schedule that allows me to be available for my kids is more important than money. IWF confirmed that its “choice” not gender that dictates income.

The real reason than men tend to out-earn women is the choices they make. Men are far more likely to take unpleasant and dangerous jobs, what Farrell calls the “death and exposure professions.” For example, firefighting, truck driving, mining and logging — to name just a few high-risk jobs — are all more than 95 percent male. Conversely, low risk jobs like secretarial work and childcare are more than 95 percent female.

Think about it.  If hiring women only could reduce a business’s labor cost by 20 to 30 percent, wouldn’t it make good business sense to do so?

The real obstacle to women’s or anyone else’s achievement is government spending, which requires too much of our money — on average, 64 percent of working folks income must go to pay for government spending and regulations.

On Women’s Equality Day, I am grateful to all the women who came before me so that I can enjoy the choices I have today, but I am MAD that reckless, irresponsible government spending threatens those very choices that women before worked so hard to get. No wonder I am MAD.

How much do Americans dislike Congress? So much that a year after the trial of accused murderer OJ Simpson, he had a higher approval rating at 29 percent than Congress does right now.  Only 19 percent of Americans have a favorable opinion of Congress according to a new video on from Bankrupting America. Check out the bleak view we have of our federal government.

I was a stay at home mom until my youngest was in first grade.  Then a changing family situation dictated that I get a full-time job taking me away from my home.

The most important aspect of my job is my schedule. It must be flexible so that I am available for my kids whether it’s for a doctor’s appointment, school conference or after school athletics. I realize that this requirement greatly impacts the amount of money I make, but that’s my choice and a tradeoff that I am more than willing to make.

My income, while necessary to pay the bills, serves as a reminder of time spent away from my kids. That’s why the latest report  from Americans for Tax Reform titled “The Cost of Government” enraged me. (A special thanks to my friend Ben DeGrow for bringing it to my attention.  He’s now an accomplice to putting me in a bad mood.)

I’m not foolish enough to think that all the money I earn each year simply goes to me so that I can feed, clothe and care for my children.  There is a cost to government that we all must share, but it never occurred to me that the cost of government was so high.  According to Americans for Tax Reform:

Cost of Government Day for 2010 is August 19. On average, working people must toil 231 days out of the year just to meet all costs imposed by government. In other words, the cost of government consumes 63.41 percent of national income.

Because I live in Colorado, I get to pay for two additional days.  Cost of Government Day for Coloradans is August 21, 2010. Government at all levels consumes an outrageous 64 percent of my gross income and yours as well. Taxpayers worked 104 days to pay for federal spending, 52 days to pay for state and local spending, 48 days for to pay for federal regulations and 26 for state and local regulations. Government’s insatiable appetite for the fruits of my labor — labor that takes me away from kids — is not exactly family friendly. I’ve come to realize that government spending is not a family value.

And what did I get for my 64 percent? New shoes? A babysitter? School supplies? Dinner perhaps? No! I get mediocre (lousy in some cases), overpriced public education, roads in disrepair and government at all levels begging for more of my money because it’s addicted to spending.

If one of the goals of the feminist movement was to dismantle a “sexist” power structure, it failed miserably.  A majority of the fruits of my labor still are going to “the man.” Now “the man” is government.

Chinese prostitutes in China.  I couldn’t make that up. Check out the video Real or Fake from Bankrupting America.  A big thanks to Who Said You Said for capturing the thoughts of a young man after he heard me talk at an Americans for Budget Reform rally for a balanced budget amendment:

I think it kind of sucks that I’m going to have to pay for all the debt that’s going on right now. And my kids are going to have to pay, too. And then hopefully, the big guys in the Senate can change that for my future generations.

He then mentioned the $2.6 million of your money that our government spent on Chinese prostitutes in China. No, not to use their services. But to make sure that when these prostitutes drink alcohol, they do so responsibly, which will lead to safer sex.

Sorry we missed this video last year from our friends at Just Facts.  It answers the question: How much does the average taxpayer owe in unfunded liabilities? The answer should frighten you because I am a taxpayer, and this amount will seriously overdraw my account. We must break our addiction to public spending.  The future we save just may be our own, our children’s and our grandchildren’s.

The ladies from Who Said You Said have documented the Spending Revolt bus tour as it rumbled through Colorado bringing attention to the massive, unsustainable government spending that threatens our kids future with exploding national debt.  It’s time to embrace sustainable economics.