Posted on 08/13/2007 10:07:41 PM PDT by esarlls3
By Jeremy Grant in Washington
Published: August 14 2007 00:06 | Last updated: August 14 2007 00:06
The US government is on a ‘burning platform’ of unsustainable policies and practices with fiscal deficits, chronic healthcare underfunding, immigration and overseas military commitments threatening a crisis if action is not taken soon, the country’s top government inspector has warned.
David Walker, comptroller general of the US, issued the unusually downbeat assessment of his country’s future in a report that lays out what he called “chilling long-term simulations”.
These include “dramatic” tax rises, slashed government services and the large-scale dumping by foreign governments of holdings of US debt.
Drawing parallels with the end of the Roman empire, Mr Walker warned there were “striking similarities” between America’s current situation and the factors that brought down Rome, including “declining moral values and political civility at home, an over-confident and over-extended military in foreign lands and fiscal irresponsibility by the central government”.
“Sound familiar?” Mr Walker said. “In my view, it’s time to learn from history and take steps to ensure the American Republic is the first to stand the test of time.”
...
“With the looming retirement of baby boomers, spiralling healthcare costs, plummeting savings rates and increasing reliance on foreign lenders, we face unprecedented fiscal risks,” said Mr Walker, a former senior executive at PwC auditing firm.
Current US policy on education, energy, the environment, immigration and Iraq also was on an “unsustainable path”.
...
“Our very prosperity is placing greater demands on our physical infrastructure. Billions of dollars will be needed to modernise everything from highways and airports to water and sewage systems. The recent bridge collapse in Minneapolis was a sobering wake-up call.”
(Excerpt) Read more at ft.com ...
No comment.
Here’s a lesson from Rome that’s appropriate to our times:
“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murder is less to fear.”
Quote by:
Marcus Tullius Cicero
(106-43 B.C.) Roman Statesman, Philosopher and Orator
Date:42 B.C.
Source:Speech in the Roman Senate
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote/marcus_tullius_cicero_quote_b6ea
Another lesson is to stand fast against the leftists constantly attacking the foundations of our republic.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
I see Walker got the DNC fax.
Sound familiar with today’s situation with our Senators and Congress doing everything to get the vote from the Illegals?
True. Thanks for posting this. It is the treason. It looks like GW and his group are going through with the N A U thing whether the American people like it or not. I will bet he and his cronies are not going to do anything about what we want regarding the illegals. I never liked or trusted his father; but this seems to be what GW was brought into the Presidency for. To finish his father and other’s vision of a global world. I just wish they had let us in on it.
I don’t understand that one either.
Thomas Malthus first proposed the Demographic Doom scenario in 1798. Didn’t quite work out for him.
Forecasters such as Walker always discount man’s ability to find new technology to offset doom scenarios well before they develop. Moreover, Walker’s message appears to be “more taxes”, not surprisingly for a Democrat appointed by Bill Clinton in 1998.
“Forecasters such as Walker always discount man’s ability to find new technology to offset doom scenarios well before they develop. Moreover, Walker’s message appears to be “more taxes”, not surprisingly for a Democrat appointed by Bill Clinton in 1998.”
Here’s the thing you’re missing. He’s not predicting “doom”, i.e. the end of the world, or even the end of civilization. He’s simply saying that America is in danger of economic collapse, following in the well-worn footprints of many other great civilizations/empires.
History’s great lesson is NOT “man’s ability to find new technology to offset doom scenarios”. It is that empires and civilizations rise, and they fall. Why do you think America is immune?
He didn’t tie the two together. He’s been a consistent advocate of “fixing” Social Security and Medicare, which he believes will ruin us if left unchanged. Walker, while not a conservative is no liberal either, he’s an accountant and he’s going by the numbers. The numbers show the real ticking time bomb is on Mcare and we can’t even get a grip changes to SS. He may have been appointed to head GAO under Clinton but he also served under Reagan and Bush 41.
Much as I like to root for the home team, I think this may prove to be right. I’d have to set a modern record for longevity to see 2070, though.
The first reason of the fall of Rome is the MORALLY fall.
Be warned : LIBERALISM never built any successful civilization anywhere, anytime.
LIBERALISM destroys civilization.
LLS
Did he make these same dire charges while Clinton was in office?
It is that empires and civilizations rise, and they fall. Why do you think America is immune?
Gee, I don’t recall saying America is immune. However, economic growth and changes to technology can have a substantial effect on economic collapse scenarios, or don’t you think so? Most empires and civilizations have not ended due to economic collapse, they have crumbled from outside attacks and inadequate defenses. That is the great lesson of history.
Yep.
Not like that was unexpected, given “Iraq...unsustainable...overconfident...”
He forgot “...massive cash infusions to counteract sea surges due to global warming...”
Bush should have dumped the Libs as soon as he took office.
Every last one.
You see what they’ve wrought in LA, in San Fran, in NO, in Mass, etc., ad nauseum.
Liberals simply are not competent in positions of responsibility.
They do more harm than good, massive quantities of the former, and very little of the latter.
Trust anything to a Lib and you get exactly what you deserve.
Stupid people die, while smart ones don’t trust Libs to even know what day it is.
If it’s citizens see little benefit in keeping a nation any minor disturbance can trigger disintegration. And such fate has befallen America before. Only the military conquest by the North reversed it.
Currently I don’t see a comparable situation. Most important the American dream ís still alive. Best would be to keep it that way.
Hmmm, sounds a lot like the modern Church of Global Warming Apocalypse, or at least what the GWA zealots would like to have after they shut up all naysayers. However, that account also strongly resembles Gibbons’ account of the Roman decline. For a more sensible account, see the Teaching Company course on the foundations of western civilization.
excerpt from course description:
Illuminating Questions about Familiar Categories
Professor Noble suggests that many conventional historical categories and concepts can obscure as much as they reveal. By setting aside these ideas, you can open your mind to a broader and perhaps more accurate picture of history.
Did the Roman Empire really “fall”? What did people at the time experience? What exactly was being reborn in the Renaissance? Is it historically accurate to speak of the “Protestant Reformation”? Why do we think of the Middle Ages as just that—i.e., a time somehow sandwiched between two other (and presumably superior) times? Did the brilliant intellectuals and writers who clustered around the court of Charlemagne see it that way?
Though not our children, and theirs, and....
Every last one."
___________________________________________________________
Certainly he could have dumped more than he did, eg. Clinton's DOJ attorneys. That said, the great majority of federal bureaucrats are in for life and they can make things impossible for presidents and their newly appointed heads. The example par excellence would probably be State, which has been shot through with anti-American leftists since the 1940s. The federal employees' unions are one of the biggest obstacles to sane governance.
“It is that empires and civilizations rise, and they fall. Why do you think America is immune?”
well i would not say immune however America is certainly Unique in a lot of ways that prior empires and civilizations have not been. Part of it is modern technology, communications, the world’s “economic engine” and basically the US as an insurer of more or less global stability. This unique situation makes a direct comparison to Rome or Britain unfair. Again this is not to say we are immune to a fall only that looking at past performance does not necessarily predict the future in all circumstances.
If the US does fall i sincerely doubt China, Brazil or India would be able to fill the entire void left by the US.
So very true! Frame the terms of discussion/debate and you're at least 1/2-way to imposing your view.
Lenin and his western intellectual sympathizers in the universities realized this when they concocted their "political continuum," representing communism at the far left and fascism at the far right -- all part of the effort to legitimize or "sanitize" communism by obscuring its close relation to its chief totalitarian competitor, fascism.
A far more accurate continuum would, of course, group these two together at one end of the continuum (no individual liberty) and place anarchism at the other end (too much individual liberty). Ordered liberty, which is what America was intended to have, would be positioned somewhere near the mid-point -- to its right if Jeffersonian, to its left if Hamiltonian.
This would have been a far more accurate and useful conceptualization, but unfortunately what I call the Leninist model is the one that has persisted to this day.
Not sure CIA’s all that conservative either.
Well, outside Operations Directorate, anyway.
I’ve always been curious how Lyddie England voted, though I suspect from her...open mindedness...I’m pretty sure I already know.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.