The Awesomeness that is Comptroller General

While preparing a post on my family finance blog, I found it necessary to use the title Comptroller General. After throwing it in there, I stopped for a moment to ponder if my readers will know who, or what that is. I mean, what do we really know from the name?

What I know is that it sounds awesome! I picture an evil cyborg general from the future, with his army of comptrollers, ready to open up a can of trollerness. He definitely wants to rule the world, speaks in a soviet accent (cyborg dialect of course), and is loaded with some serious software that lets him do all his comptrolling. He probably has some pretty sweet hardware as well, and can shoot missiles out of his nostrils.

Possible Comptroller General

Possible Comptroller General

                                                       

He should have a comic book. You should draw me a picture of what the Comptroller General looks like.

Well, when he isn't comptrolling his robots, the Comptroller General is in theory doing his cover job, that of the Director of the Government Accountability Office or GAO. I realize that it may come as a surprise to most of us that Government and Accountability are found not only in the same sentence, but in the same acronym. If you are anything like me, your first question is, where the heck has this guy been for the last decade? Why have his comptrolling skills failed to control the government or made them admit accountability for their mistakes?

Comptroller General Under Cover

Gene Dodaro is the current General. Yeah, General Dodaro. He likes to go by General Gene instead. Has a nice ring to it. Apparently the general is in for 15 years. Pretty sweet. Gene is pretty new to all this, being a Interim Comptroller appointed earlier this year in March, so he is not to blame for the previous madness.  He is awaiting confirmation from Congress; perhaps they are laying down some ground rules first.

How exactly does the Comptroller make the government accountable? Well, funny you should ask, because the office used to be known as the General Accounting Office GAO, before its name was changed to the Government Accountability Office GAO. Got that? I mean, you wouldn't want to be the General of the General Accounting Office....much too redundant. The new name is much cooler, especially the new acronym.

Oh yeah, back to what they do. Accounting. They audit the financials of the Office of Management and Budget, and the financials at the Treasury. This makes them experts in examining negative, and some might add, imaginary numbers. Really big ones. What they have found may shock you.

According to wikipedia, who is quoting Cornell, who probably quoted Andy Bernard,

“For every fiscal year since 1996, when consolidated financial statements began, the Comptroller General has refused to endorse the accuracy of the consolidated figures for the federal budget, citing "(1) serious financial management problems at the Department of Defense, (2) the federal government’s inability to adequately account for and reconcile intragovernmental activity and balances between federal agencies, and (3) the federal government’s ineffective process for preparing the consolidated financial statements." “

That's right, since the end of Ronald Reagan, through the Bushes, Clinton, and into the now, the Comptroller General of the United States can't even put his name to the numbers on the budget. He can't do it. As an expert in negative numbers, they probably are not negative enough, (or imaginary enough).

Overall it looks like GAO does a pretty good job of telling us how much money is being wasted. Head on over to www.gao.gov and check out the never ending story of mismanagement. Atreyu would be devastated.

As a watchdog, it appears their bark is worse then their bite, since they report to congress, who approves the same budget that the Comptroller General can't put is name to. They do throw a pretty mean party though, so next time you are in DC, swing on by the party palace, and don't forget to bring your financials. Make sure they use negative numbers though, lots of them. And say hi to General Dodaro for me.

Feel free to submit your own versions of the Comptroller General.

King of the Forest

Occasionally, when we are feeling daring, we allow are children to watch controversial shows.  This can only be done every once in a while, for shows of this nature will induce questions, questions that children will pursue with relentless tenacity.  Thus, with much trepidation, we allowed our children to watch...Bambi.
  I steered clear of the actually showing, not wanting to have to deal with the inevitable discussions of love, hunters, and eating flowers.  The children seemed adequately entertained, no questions were forthcoming, and I figured we were in the clear as we started the mid-day meal.  Then the questions started.
   As we partook of our daily bread my seven year old got us started.
7: "Who is Bambi's father?"
Sounds innocent enough, right?
Me: "Well, remember the big deer that Bambi sees in the meadow?  And the one that he runs into during the forest fire?  That was his father".

Figured we were done.  Not quite.

7:  "What was his name?"
Me:  "Whose name?"
7:  "Bambi's father."

Ah, now that is a mighty fine question.  What is his name?  I have spent the last seven years carefully crafting the misconception that Dad knows the answer to any questions, even if the answer is to ask mom.  I sure as heck was not going to be stumped by a question regarding the geneology of Cervidaen Royalty.  Time to put the ol thinker to work and see what we can come up with to preserve my Oz like grandeur.

 Well, what do we know about him?  He is King of the Forest.  He let his son be named Bambi.   Anyone see a problem with those two things?  I mean, what kind of a King lets his son be named Bambi?  This is the prince of the forest, not a future porn star of the Glade.  Bambi?  Why not Spear Antler, Fierce Nostrils, or Buck Grande?  Surely if the name was Bambi's mothers idea old pops would have put his hoof down.  That means the name had his approval, a thought that was truly disturbing.  Then it occurred to me, that there was a possible explanation.

Me:  "Bumbi.  His dads name was Bumbi."

My wife gave me the raised eyebrow look, and I needed to defend my position.

Me:  "Surely the only way he would let his son be named Bambi is if he had an equally awful name?"
  Thats right, it was a revenge naming, the worst kind.  Having lived with the shame of his own name, he was ready to pass on the family tradition to his son and heir to the throne.  She seemed content enough with the answer while I endured the disbelieving looks and protests from the younglings. I was pleased enough with the turn of events, and figured the case was closed.

7:  "Why didn't he talk to him?"
Me: "What?  Who?"
7:  "Bumbi.  Why didnt he talk to the Bambi in the meadow?"

Ah.  Good grief.  Why didn't he talk to him?  Now that he mentions it, Bumbi seems like a real slacker.  Is he there at the birth? No.  Is he there to teach him to walk?  No.  Is he there to keep the future prince from having a skunk for a best friend?  No.   Does he warn him of hunters, talk to him in the meadow, or send a check to mom to help cover the cost of raising Bambi.  No on all accounts.  In fact, the first he decides to do anything is when he becomes Bambi's guardian after his mothers death.  Probably court ordered.  He shows up when the whole forest is on fire, tossing his rack around and letting him know that his inheritance it being destroyed and if he wants to survive to enjoy the ashes he needs to get going.  How do I tell that to my child?  I don't, I can't.  Gotta come up with something else.

Me: "Bumbi couldn't talk to Bambi.  He couldn't come over and spend time with him at all.  That's because he had antleritis."
7:  "Whats that?"
Me:  "Its a disease that keeps your antlers from growing. It only effects young bucks, older deer can carry the disease, and Bumbi didn't want to spend too much time with Bambi so that he would be able to grow antlers and win his future bride and become the next king."

Whew.  Saved by a mysterious disease that only effects the potential headgear of deer.  Mysterious persona preserved, we completed our meal to much hilarity.  Satisfied with the tale of Bumbi and his illness, the questions stopped coming from the children, but ultimately the conversation created more questions than it answered.  The questions haunt me, leaving me to doubt everything I thought I knew about Bambi.

Why is a deer the king of the forest?  Why not the mountain lion, bear, or wolf?   Why not a moose or an elk?  Who died and made the deer king?  I mean really, what kind of a racket are they running?  Its no wonder the kingdom burned down.  Do they have some kind of an alliance with the lesser animals that allows them to rule?  Gives me shivers.....how do the bears sleep at night.....

Why Seven and not more?

The title for the blog is simple, my wife and I, plus five kiddos, so seven for now, with no way of knowing if that number will go up again.  Well, actually, there probably are ways of knowing but I am not going to get into that because this blog is family friendly. Unless your family cant read, because at this point it has no audio, so, if you are not reading this and want to know what it says you can always give me a call on the phone instead and I will read it for you.  I will even do voices.

I considered many other titles, but most of them were taken by people who posted once in 2005 and dropped off the face of the earth.  I have decided that the first thing that blogger needs to do is come up with some way for someone to take over the web address of inactive blogs that basically have no content.  The second thing they need to do is come up with a mascot.  I mean, I want to see what a blogger looks like.  I think the word is rather ambiguous, the way USU's Mascot, (the Aggies) is a Big Blue Bull, and the New Mexico Aggies have a Cowboy.  Same name, totally different species.  Though I suspect some cowboys speak bull.  I wouldn't be surprised if they did, for in my experience individuals from a wide variety of jobs speak Bull, in many cases fluently.

Taking the plunge.

Some might argue that the time for a personal blog is past.  Some might argue that for me it should never be.  Most probably don't ponder it all.

A recent employment change led to renewed focus on my thesis, unarguably a good thing.  Writing my thesis has proved to have an unintended side effect.  Academic writing is boring, dull, tooth achingly maddening.  I need something else, anything else, lest my love of writing perish in the journey through the dull halls of academia.  This then is to be my release.  Therapy for me, and perhaps, the cause of therapy for my readers.

As a personal blog it is intended to be a catch all.  It will have family news, political views, and family politics.  It is guaranteed to contain random thoughts and well intended thoughts that you hope are random.  I promise spelling mutilations, grammatical errors, and sentence structural anomalies.   I hope you enjoy the reading as much as I enjoy the writing.