Posted on 01/01/2013 9:38:08 AM PST by Kaslin
What's this? Joe Biden in weekend conversation with Mitch McConnell over how to step back from the fiscal cliff? Isn't Biden the man in charge of solving The Gun Problem? How does he have the time or energy -- not least the ideas -- to launch another rescue mission?
Apparently he had none of these. Not much came, reportedly, of the Biden-McConnell negotiations. One is struck anyway by an infinitely larger question -- how did we as a society, as a nation, get to this point: wrapped in suspense while the government of the United States works out, or tries to, the solutions to our greatest problems?
The government? Joe Biden? The Senate? The House? The presidency? The courts? What has a structural arrangement devised for the maintenance of ordered liberty got to do, legitimately, with all it's got to do with?
On Monday morning, the talk in Washington, D. C. -- a city named for a president with entirely modest aspirations when it came to power -- revolved around more than late-night negotiations.
Matters such as income levels, "chained CPI," alternative-minimum tax patches and Medicare payments, swam before the eyes of our elected representatives who, understandably, looked goggle-eyed as they rehearsed their arguments or recounted their labors. The New York Times highlighted Illinois Democrat Richard J. Durbin's account of the proceedings: "It looks awful."
That might be because it is : predictably so. Americans have had a good if unsettling look at the number of patch jobs necessary to make the pistons of modern government move with anything resembling regularity.
It was no wonder on Monday morning nothing was getting done. To switch metaphors, the pieces of the puzzle scattered on the respective floors of Congress' two Houses are infinite in size, variety and configuration. Who's able to assemble so great a number of pieces in the manner best suited to the needs of a diverse nation?
The trouble here is obvious. Anyway, it becomes so with a little thought. The bigger the policy questions at stake become, the more numerous the stakeholders become; thus, the dimmer grow the prospects for reconciliation of variant viewpoints. Everybody wants his piece of the action. In a democracy, that means, everybody gets it.
If you've gathered by now this is an anti-big government sermon, you have certainly gathered correctly. Americans perennially bat back and forth the arguments over big government's costs and who ought to pay them. How about introducing into the mix the topic of big government's basic unworkability? Too big to pay for equals too big to work. Can there be any doubt of it?
What's been happening the past decade or so in Washington -- not just since the election -- is the slow-paced screening of a disaster flick, "The Government That Ate America," in which demands that Congress and the president do a bit of everything finally overload the machinery of government. The machinery sputters, fizzles, gasps. Orange and red lights start to flicker. YOU CAN'T HAVE EVERYTHING YOU WANT! is the message the control system flashes.
A national government -- leave aside a multiplicity of state and local governments -- that absorbs a quarter of Gross National Product, as ours does, is the kind of government that ... well, look around Washington today, next week, next month. No short-term deal can get the job done. A government grown too large for its old-fashioned purposes ---"to provide for the common defense, to promote the general welfare, and to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity" -- can safely be pronounced in drastic need of reform.
Both political parties in some measure escorted us to the "fiscal cliff." The party now in general charge, led by the biggest big-government lover ever to inhabit the White House, bears presently the heavier responsibility. But back to guns. Wait till Joe Biden is done rebalancing the economy. He can go on from there to replacing rifles with clubs, plus anything else he may have in mind. With big government, it seems, there's no rest, no recess.
“...Everybody wants his piece of the action. In a democracy,...”
We’re a Constitutional Republic, not a democracy. A democracy, as Lenin well knew, is the first step towards communism.
The news media came up with this “fiscal cliff” bs . And that’s all we’ve heard about since the election even from the common idiots who have no idea what is the cliff when asked. Call Congress and tell them not to believe the media. What is the stupid cliff?There is no cliff. the country supposedly went over the cliff at midnight. pure media lies. then last night Senators were forced at 2 am on New year’s day to rush vote for a bill they couldn’t have read as the agreement was done by Biden and McConnell yesterday: all this to avoid the MEDIA’s stupid cliff. Now they are pressuring the House to vote rapidly without each congressmen reading it or absorbing what this is which a horrible bill.
The U.S.A is a dictatorship and the media are the dictators.
call GOP Congressmen in the House, tell them not to vote for this nor any deal ,there is no cliff as that “cliff” is media lies to force them to agree to tax increases
Congress switchboard number: (202) 224-3121.
The U.S.A is a dictatorship and the news media are the dictators. It’s been like this for many years. The media create the false reality we live in.
We assume it will be about guns, but what will it's PANIC name going to be and when? It has to coincide with something they want to hide and/or covering up.
Victims of Lawful Plunder
Men naturally rebel against the injustice of which they are victims. Thus, when plunder is organized by law for the profit of those who make the law, all the plundered classes try somehow to enter — by peaceful or revolutionary means — into the making of laws. According to their degree of enlightenment, these plundered classes may propose one of two entirely different purposes when they attempt to attain political power: Either they may wish to stop lawful plunder, or they may wish to share in it.
Woe to the nation when this latter purpose prevails among the mass victims of lawful plunder when they, in turn, seize the power to make laws! Until that happens, the few practice lawful plunder upon the many, a common practice where the right to participate in the making of law is limited to a few persons. But then, participation in the making of law becomes universal. And then, men seek to balance their conflicting interests by universal plunder. Instead of rooting out the injustices found in society, they make these injustices general. As soon as the plundered classes gain political power, they establish a system of reprisals against other classes. They do not abolish legal plunder. (This objective would demand more enlightenment than they possess.) Instead, they emulate their evil predecessors by participating in this legal plunder, even though it is against their own interests.
It is as if it were necessary, before a reign of justice appears, for everyone to suffer a cruel retribution — some for their evilness, and some for their lack of understanding.
The Results of Legal Plunder
It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder.
Bastiat
No kidding. And it is getting worse.
“I believe I heard Charles Krauthammer say it was rather scary when it appeared that Biden was the only adult in the room.”
There’s the understatement of the century. :)
Great link, whitedog57. Thanks. HOORAY anthonybsanders! BTTT!
I took my elderly Aunt to get her Dialysis Treatment yesterday. Large Facility, lots of Patients.
One gal in her mid 50’s started going on about the “Fiscal Cliff”, blaming “you know who” for doing nothing. Want to guess who she was blaming? I’ll give you a hint, it wasn’t Pharaoh Obama. She kept repeating “all they say is NO”, so I’m sure she keeps MSNBC on at her house 24/7.
Normally, I would jump in with both feet, but circumstances and proper decorum dictated that I just sit there and laugh to myself. If you have never seen a Low Information Obama Lover, they are everywhere, like Mosquitos.
The other Patients and the Staff didn’t react to the idiot since they were busy staying alive and keeping people alive.
Stupid bitch can ride that NBC coaster right over the cliff. They all can. I am beyond caring.
We are all there my FRiend.
I feel like Roddy Piper in the movie “They Live”.
As one of many revolving Taglines says, “They Live, and we’re the only ones wearing the Sunglasses”.
No, Bill. But never underestimate the moral midgets in the District of Corruption trying to force lots of big square pegs into tiny round holes and charging it up on our credit card. Most of them don't hold your (our) view. Quite the opposite.
As our eight year old once said to us when we told him we didn't have enough money to buy something he wanted, "Yes we do. You can just write a check!" He has since progressed beyond that and become a responsible young man.
Unfortunately, these Washingtonians didn't.
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