"Fiscal crisis hits the states" has become this year's most boring and repetitive headline.

But what is largely overlooked is that some states are doing relatively well - such as my home state of Virginia - and are, in fact, balancing their budgets without draconian budget cuts or tax increases.

What are the well-managed states doing right and the others doing wrong? And what lessons could those running the federal government learn from the better managed states?

The accompanying table shows the rankings of seven of the major states by various organizations.

If you don't read the TTP Forum, then you may not have heard the announcement of the Obama Administration's that the US Geological Survey has identified the source of the earthquake that shook Washington DC last Tuesday (8/23).

The USGS is saying that it occurred on an obscure fault line that runs directly under the White House known as "Bush's Fault."

************
Speaking of Zero... the HFR Word of the Week is palilalia.  It's a speech disorder, the involuntary or obsessive repetition of the same words or phrases - such as "millionaires and billionaires," "corporate jets," "redistribute the wealth," or "Bush's fault."

Clearly, we have a palilaliatic president, who is incapable of saying anything creative or new, but endlessly repeats the same moronic liberalisms over and over.  What was Einstein's term for doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results?

************
The most uplifting news of the week comes from Wisconsin.  On Monday (8/22), the Washington Examiner reported: Union Cash Cutoff Has National Implications.

Last week, Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, again came out against the pending trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama, claiming they would cost U.S. jobs.  Yet every respectable economist, from Adam Smith way back in 1776 until the present, has argued the virtues of free trade.

Those in the Obama administration continue to waffle on these agreements by catering to the ignorance or deliberate know-nothing stance of their labor and other left-wing supporters. Many of the anti-free-trade types also argue for sourcing things locally.

Does any of this make sense?

Should we have protective tariffs on pencils? As simple as a pencil is, it contains materials from all over the world (special woods, paint, graphite, metal for the band and rubber for the eraser) and requires specialized machinery.

How much would it cost you to make your own pencils or even grow your own food? Trade means lower costs and better products, and the more of it the better.

What are the ramifications if the Supreme Court finds the individual mandate provision of the healthcare reform law unconstitutional? This provision requires individuals to purchase government-defined health insurance or pay a fine.

I hope it will serve as a wakeup call to a nation that I believe is still sleeping through a crisis.

Liberal and open-ended interpretation of the Constitution has rendered it practically meaningless, opening the door to steady growth of the federal government and its inexorable encroachment in our lives over the last half century. The problems we are having today all originate here.

Our growing burden of taxes and government debt -- what now is breaking European countries and is about to break us -- stems from the growth of government programs, enabled by open-ended interpretation of the Constitution.

Our private economy, in which freedom and the creative spirit are still allowed to operate, is going great.

A miracle is taking place in energy, with new domestic production of oil and gas made possible by new drilling technologies.  New technologies abound, with more and more gadgets appearing all the time at lower and lower prices.

So why are we turning over more and more of our lives to the most unproductive, least efficient part of our country: government?

Let's start with a trio of quotes.

On Monday (8/15) in Decorah, Iowa, President Zero explained why he has been a total economic failure:

"We had reversed the recession, avoided a depression, gotten the economy moving again.  But over the last six months we've had a run of bad luck."

Which recalls the observation of Lazarus Long in Robert Heinlein's 1973 sci-fi classic Time Enough For Love:

"Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded -- here and there, now and then -- are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people.

"Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. This is known as ‘bad luck'."

And on Wednesday (8/17) in Bedford, New Hampshire, Texas Gov. Rick Perry explained:

"America's crisis is not bad luck, it's bad policies from Washington DC...  Our economic plan shouldn't depend on luck, it should depend on sound economic fundamentals."

If your accountant told your family that you are spending 40 percent more than you are earning, and that your borrowing limits have been reached, how would you cut your expenditures?

Would you stop buying food and not pay your mortgage and utilities, or would you first cut out entertainment, such as movies, sports events, cultural performances, nice restaurants and vacation trips?  Rational people would do the latter, but government bureaucrats often do the equivalent of the former.

This is known as the Washington Monument Ploy, which got its name when a national parks director shut down the Washington Monument and Grand Canyon for two weeks in 1969 to protest budget cuts, rather than cutting administrative costs, deferring maintenance and curtailing new projects.

When faced with a need to cut budgets, the Washington Monument Ploy - or stunt - is the political tactic of shutting down the most visible, popular and/or valuable government service while leaving less important and less appreciated government activities untouched.  What needs to be shut down is this extortionist ploy.

Next to the Nobel, the richest and most prestigious economic award is the £250,000 ($400,000) Wolfson Economics Prize, awarded by the Wolfson Foundation, founded by British entrepreneur and philanthropist Sir Isaac Wolfson in 1955.  It currently has an endowment of $1.2 billion.

Unlike the Nobel, the final contenders for the Wolfson are known in advance.  This year, out of 425 entrants, five were chosen as finalists - and they all have a shared nightmare on how to "manage" a full or partial disintegration of monetary union. They agree on little else.

"The consequences of a completely unplanned 'Exit' are likely to be catastrophic," said Neil Record from Record Currency Management, one of the five qualifiers.

Catherine Dobbs, a former algorithms expert at Gartmore, said the global shock could be five to 10 times worse than the Lehman earthquake in 2008, given the scale of contracts and counter-party exposure.

The Lehman lesson is that authorities must have contingency plans in place to stop a seizure of the global credit system. The crucial point is exactly how a break-up occurs, not whether it does so.