Posted on 02/20/2011 9:48:36 PM PST by DeaconBenjamin
Our southern friends live the American dream these days, a dream that’s removing them from reality. Their federal legislators, including the President, imagine a brilliant future that cannot be. None of them wants to awaken Americans from this dream.
The dream? Economic recovery followed by the return of prosperity, built on borrowed money. And not just some borrowed money, but trillions and trillions of borrowed money.
Like all dreams, this one has lost touch with reality. In Washington, legislators seem to accept that amassing trillions of dollars of additional debt is a bad idea. Then they argue furiously about a mere 12 per cent of the budget that, even if half of it were to be eliminated, would still leave the government in a deficit position this year.
Two bipartisan commissions have instructed the country in simple arithmetic: namely, that the budget can’t be restored to sanity without cuts to discretionary spending and entitlement programs, and tax increases. In the dreamland of U.S. discourse, however, no one wants to talk about cuts to entitlement programs or tax increases.
American friends acknowledge that it will take a “crisis” to awaken enough people so serious action can occur, instead of the shadowboxing that passes for action.
Would a huge run on the dollar be a “crisis”? Would a serious surge in inflation? Or a nose-diving stock market? Or another housing plunge? Or all of the above?
Barack Obama has obviously calculated that the political risks are too great for candour, so he, too, operates within the dream by proposing some restraint on discretionary spending without touching the entitlement programs, the military or taxes.
He has obviously reckoned that, with the Republicans believing the problem can be solved by discretionary spending cuts alone, he isn’t going to do anything credible before the next election.
(Excerpt) Read more at theglobeandmail.com ...
Writers like this do not understand that the bamster’s plan is to destroy the US economy. He has the usual support from the left and unfortunately there are enough “moderate” pubbies that nothing significant will be done before it is too late.
Well they can’t force socialism on us the usual way, so they are going to destroy the country, the economy and the job markets ensuring that the supermajority of the population must turn to the .gov for food, shelter, medical care, transportation, etc... its actually a rather brilliant plan...
It always is, until the money runs out.
>Writers like this do not understand that the bamster’s plan is to destroy the US economy<
As a former canadian, you have to understand that the G&M is the New York Slimes of canada. Their editors are more anti-American than the CBC and of course, that means they would love to see America destroyed. Ignore this garbage.
>>>Well they can’t force socialism on us the usual way, so they are going to destroy the country, the economy and the job markets ensuring that the supermajority of the population must turn to the .gov for food, shelter, medical care, transportation, etc... its actually a rather brilliant plan...<<<
It’s called the Cloward-Piven strategy.
Sadly, they are about to underestimate the strength of the Constitutional system. It’s a lot like 9/11 in that respect. They’ll be able to destroy a fair amount of the landscape until the identity of the enemy becomes obvious, at which point people will pull together. Not everywhere, I would imagine, but from my vantage point up here by the Arctic Circle, I’d imagine that a complete system breakdown would be followed quickly by people around here stepping up and keeping it going. I would imagine that same thing will be true throughout the West, the upper Midwest, many areas of the South, perhaps even Maine and New Hampshire. A collapse of the central authority would still mean that state and local authories would remain. And we’re all heavily armed, unless you’re a poor slob in Chicago or New York City, so quickly creating a police force or Army is within the realm of possibility. In any case, there are more of us who still consider ourselves “Americans” than those who don’t.
And don’t get me wrong, either. Social collapse is a horror. People will die. It will be awful. I just believe we will pull through.
I agree with you that the leftist elites are aiming for social collapse, in which they dream to insert themselves. Depending on how bad it is, they’ll either try to fade away in disgrace or be carried to the gallows. We’ll see.
Cheers!
The writer seems to not understand that Americans are awake. Just look at the results of the '10 midterms. Also one can say that Obummers attempts to turn the county into a socialist utopia have massively backfired. Because of that midterm, we now have elected officials like Scott Walker who are going to end collective bargaining. Did anyone think we would ever see the day that the unions would be neutered? In WI of all places? The tide has turned and we are on the winning side.
You mean the midterms where Harry Reid was re-elected?
Btt
So he was. One hollow victory for the Rats when generations of Dims were eliminated in state and federal races. There are a lot of impressive Conservatives voted in as Gov in states that would generally not touch one with a ten foot pole. I actually like seeing Reid as the face of the Rats in the Senate.
Are you trying to say the ‘10 wasn’t a devastating, crippling loss for the Rats?
We didn’t start out that way. America has been the cradle of productivity and creativity for almost as long as it has been a country.
The problem is, there is a small subset of leeches who discovered they could make money by loaning it out and charging interest. That was OK when we were on the gold standard, because the amount of gold available grows by a small percentage per year, and thus acted as a governor on the leeches.
But when the Feds decided they could just print money and bonds and whatever, the sky became the limit. Then the key point is not PRUDENT lending and investing, it becomes the SIZE of the investments.
And we saw the results in the housing debacle. No limit, until you face the reality that some kid flipping burgers at a MickeyD’s really can’t afford a 3300 dollar a month shack payment!
I don't think it matters. Wakefulness will not be sufficient to alleviate the pain or avoid the crises.
I fault the writer for not recognizing that we are "Taxed Enough Already". It will be painful making the adjustments that must be made, and the pain is such that I think it will only be accepted as a result of crisis.
It will be interesting to see what happens in Wisconsin. I believe that they must force their expenditures downward to match their present revenues. Everybody in Kalifornia should be, and probably are, watching Wisconsin. The problem here in Kalifornia is that the government is still being run by liberals.
‘With a 5-per-cent national sales tax, of the kind every other industrial country has implemented, the U.S. would be halfway home to budgetary solvency. In dreamland, however, such a dose of reality is unthinkable.’
This is a propaganda advertisement for Obama’s “Added Value Tax”. I’m all for a “National Sale Tax” with no exceptions as long as all existing federal taxes and fees are eliminated. This way every consumer knows how much it cost to run the government and our “Elected Elite” only needs to vote on either lowering or rising the tax. Let the sun shine in.
This writer is pushing the same crazy notion that a national sales tax added on to all our other taxes will solve the budget crisis. Only blubbering idiots believe that. There is not an endless ocean of money to be plundered by new taxes. If higher taxes are the answer let’s raise the tax rate to one hundred and fifty percent and create heaven on Earth.
It was certainly a calculated loss they were willing to take to enact their 100 year old wet dream of socialized medicine. A Federal Judge has ruled Obama-care unconstitutional. Has it stopped them? Wisconsin, California, Illinois, New York, Ohio Massachusetts, et al, are all broke and only one solution to the problem exists. Has it stopped the Dims from pursuing their goals? Not even a little bit. They know exactly how they got Socialist (in)Security, Medicare, Medicaid, TVA, HUD, the Department of (re)Education, EPA, etc. They did it incrementally. Are we seeing any serious opposition to the Dim agenda? I don't see it. Perhaps you do.
Chip, chip, chip.....
SOME American are awake! Permit me to say that MANY have no idea what is really going on. The scary part is that the ignorance runs the scale from some of the least educated to some of the most educated. Those who trust the media have very little understanding of how close we all are to the ultimate disaster. The only people who had it right twenty years ago were those who were called kooks (I proudly say I am one of those kooks) and a huge percentage of the population still thinks those people were and still are kooks.
It is really amazing to see how many still think all this is going to pass away and once again there will be plenty of jobs at good wages and handouts for all. People who have no knowledge of history will believe almost anything and we have countless millions who are “historically illiterate”.
The great mistake was made when the left succeeded in removing barriers to voting so that an illiterate with an IQ of eighty who is living on welfare has the same vote as someone who has worked since the age of eight.
You are right. I disagree with our system in that I strongly believe ONLY those who make money and pay taxes on it should have the ability to say where that money is spent. You don’t pay taxes you can’t vote. I know this is radical thinking but look at our troubles!
I don't recall massive demonstrations by Tea Party style people when those things were passed. Nothing incremental about them. They were voted in fairly easily. Johnson did not run for reelection because of the Great Society, it was Viet Nam. The Rats also did not suffer any solid rebuke from the voters after those passed as well. I see state AG's winning suits and the house GOP trying to defund Obamacare. There is a totally different dynamic today.
If the Rats make a calculated move to jam unpopular legislation only to lose most of their power, they made a terrible mistake. States Obummer needs to win have gone all Red. OH, PA, WI are just a few examples. What does this calculated risk matter if all the garbage they jammed through destroyed their party apparatus and will be dismantled anyway?
Of course not. You're talking about a government educated populace. They didn't demonstrate in 1913 when the 16th Amendment "passed" because the people were told that the income tax would only be 1% and would only affect the top 5% of income earners. Do you think those people would be demonstrating if they knew marginal tax rates would ultimately reach over 90%? That wasn't incremental?
When Social Security passed it was a 1% tax and only on the first $1400 of earned income. Do you think the people who were alive in 1935 would have raised hell if they knew it would cost them 16% and there was a near zero chance that they'd live long enough to collect? Do you think they would have been in the streets if they knew it would amount to tens of BILLIONS in fraud, waste and abuse of their money? Wasn't that incremental?
You don't think people would oppose Medicare and Medicaid if they knew the true costs when it was initiated? The Congress of 1965 only missed the cost estimates by a factor of 10. Original cost estimates in 1965 for Medicare for 1990 was $10 billion. The actual cost was a fuzz over $109 billion. That wasn't incremental?
How about the good 'ole TVA? Would that have been approved if folks would have known that 60 years later they'd be billions in debt with no hope of ever seeing black ink? Meanwhile, they mothballed one nuke plant (Belefonte) due to shoddy construction and one of the other three (Watts Bar) is #1 on the DoE's list as being the most likely to have an accident. (all while no other electric company is allowed to sell power inside the TVA "fence" and compete with them?) TVA has no competition and it still can't operate with a positive cash flow! Do you really think the citizens would have signed onto this multi-hundred billion dollar boondoggle?
How about welfare? Do you really think that a welfare system would have been approved by voters if they had known it would be extended not only to those who can't work, but to those who won't work?
Do you think people would protest the EPA if they had known how it has been used to destroy private property values and halt the tapping of much needed domestic energy resources? That effort has most definitely been incremental!
Do you really think that people would have approved of Johnson's so-called "War of Poverty" if they knew that 40 years and $70 TRILLION later that we'd have 3% higher percentage of "poor" than we had in 1965? Do you think they would have agreed to support the "poor" if that meant 2 cars, a cell phone, plasma TV, central air conditioning all without having to work?
How about the Department of (re)Education? Do you think that people would have protested the formation of the Department of Education if they knew in 1978 that the USA would go from first in education in the industrialized world to 25th and would be "graduating" students that cannot read, write or do simple addition and subtraction (forget calculus) under their tutelage?
How about the DoE? Do you think people would approve a Department of Energy with a $29 BILLION annual budget whose stated purpose when it was formed was to ween us off foreign energy, but that reliance has more than doubled since the department's inception? All of these are prime examples of incremental Liberalism and there are many, many more. What part about all this debt has not been incremental again?
None of these programs were pitched and sold to the American public for more than a small fraction of what they have ultimately grown into. Had the people been told the mess these politicians were going to create I think A LOT of people would have been demonstrating. They didn't because they were lied to, repeatedly. Each and every one of these "programs" were sold to the American public as small operations with defined goals and minimal impact. Americans trusted their government and their government screwed them, big time. The reason you are seeing people out demonstrating now is they are finally realizing what many of us have known for more than thirty years. The reality is all these programs have grown well beyond their original scope and they simply are not sustainable. Not a single one has met their intended goals. In many cases they do nothing but serve political ends, and, as a result, the country is bankrupt, both economically and culturally. That is the reason there is a new dynamic today. That "new dynamic is absolutely due to the incremental addition to each of the programs I cited (plus a whole lot more). How you can not see that is well beyond my comprehension. To view this topic and to be argumentative in way you are is to be willfully ignorant of history.
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