Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
I don’t usually wander too far off of the climate reservation, but this excellent cartoon by Michael Ramirez deserves wider publication, as it addresses a critical problem. It shows the US Budget for 2011, along with the cuts proposed by the Democrats (liberal) and the Republicans (GOP, conservative).
The US Government is about to shut down because the two sides can’t agree on a budget.
Can the rest of us agree that despite all the posturing, neither side is actually serious about the problem?
w.
PS – Anyone who thinks that CO2 is more important to the US than the above pie chart is fooling themselves badly …
This is starting to sound like the Fall of the Roman Empire and just maybe there are parallels in that every civilisation has a limited lifetime as it’s youthful vigor slowly evaporates and is replaced by a far more slothful population expectant of having all it’s desires and wishes fulfilled out of the public purse but which same population does not intend to make any contribution itself if it can possibly avoid it.
And there is always an increasing concentration of wealth into fewer and fewer hands in a declining civilization and that wealth is used for less and less genuine wealth generating activities ultimately leading up to the ultimate collapse of past very well endowed and established civilizations.
America can rejuvenate itself but I suspect that it might take as Thomas Jefferson said;
“God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion.
The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is
wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts
they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions,
it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. …
And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not
warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of
resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as
to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost
in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from
time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
It is its natural manure.”
Or as Mao Tse Tung also said, roughly; “Every now and then you need a revolution!”
By which he meant that there comes a time when the accumulated dross, detritus, corruption and sloth of governments and those who run them must be cleaned out.
Not that I agree with Mao’s methods but?
And if America goes so goes the rest of the world even the over rated newly rising stars of the East.
As a 73 year old I saw how those of my parent’s generation were forever scarred by the Great Depression and I saw what it did to them and I dread the day but it is most surely coming again.
Jessie says:
April 9, 2011 at 3:30 am
Thanks for the link to Daniel Hannan’s speech. Interesting to see how our representative in the EU was being totally ignored and talked over.
Similar to when Vaclav Klaus the Czech president made a speech there appealing for a real debate over the meaning of Europe and the European Union –
““The most important task is to make sure that debate over problems is not silenced as an attack on the very idea of European integration. We have always believed that being allowed to discuss such serious issues, being heard, defending everyone’s right to present a different that “the only correct opinion – no matter how much may disagree with it – is at the very core of democracy,” he said.
Many MEPs booed or walked out – so much for our European ‘democracy’!!!
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/brunowaterfield/8623966/MEPs_boo_call_for_free_speech_and_EU_debate/
I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.
Thomas Jefferson,
3rd president of US (1743 – 1826)
Shut it Down!
This has been a silly discussion.. lots of talk about deficits and debts, but no discussion about revenues.
The USA needs to go back to the high marginal tax rates of the past when we were in trouble or had to pay off a war:
http://politics.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474977623449
WWI 70%
1920s 23%
New Deal 63% to 79%
Eisenhower 91%
Nixon 70%
Reagan 50%
Bush II 35%
If people on this BB do not understand from these numbers what is happening, then you may as well be clueless warmists imo!
So the democrats refuse to pass a budget when they control both houses and the presidency….can’t let anyone see what it really costs
…and they refuse to pass a budget when they don’t
And Obama starts out his campaign lecturing and talking down to all of us about our irresponsible spending and running up our credit cards.
The bigger question is: did this interrupt his vacation?
My Democrat friends are not happy about the situation (they’ve gone very silent about everything in the last year or so). I told them that the Republicans have the Tea Party to keep our politicians in line w/respect to debt and spending, I suggested that the Democrats need a Tea Party of their own.
The revolt by the Republican base against the Republican establishment, since our guys were all becoming such big spenders, and is something the Democrats could also use.
Nothing will wake up the heirs to Tammany Hall faster than having “your guy” lose a primary, and thus your party loses a seat, and then finding that your base doesn’t care because they don’t see you or your party or “your guy” as being representative of their interests anymore. You’ve lost your all-important base. Which is what the Tea Party is putting the Republicans through.
The Dems need this treatment also. You would think that with all the activist groups associated with the left, one of them somewhere would take up the “debt” cause. But I think they will need a genuine grassroots movement for that, and the left (shockingly) doesn’t seem to have any.
Please don’t lump us “Conservatives” in with the GOP.
There’s nothing “conservative” about spending $1,500,000,000,000 more than you collect.
They’ve accomplished nothing. The reduction is about 0.7% of the total government yearly expenditure. In terms of a household that spends $40,000 per year it’s like reducing the spending by $24. Big effing deal. Much ado about nothing.
Willis,
Is it a wonder that billons of dollars is buying out gold?
At least gold has a value when currency does not.
Actually, I’ll take it one step further:
Please don’t lump us “Conservatives” in with the GOP or the Republican Party. From our view, the Democrats and Republicans are just different shades of the same color.
The D’s are leading this country into financial and social ruin at a speed equivalent to a jet.
The R’s are leading this country into financial and social ruin at a speed equivalent to a train.
Us C’s would like to stop, turn around, and walk the opposite direction from financial and social ruin.
Willis
In all fairness, Congressman Ryan has proposed $5.8tn of reductions starting next year. I gather he hasn’t had the time to do all the necessary pitches to his constituents and the GOP. Also, the latest polls out of the US suggest that you americans want cuts but not for each other, just for everyone else. Now that is absolutely normal, of course.
We are not at the end of the crisis, not even the beginning of the end – only the end of the beginning. Look at the price of commodities, from precious metals, to oil, base metals and agriculture. Could there be a more stark reminder of the destruction that is now taking place to fiat currencies? The ECB is taking on more and more toxic debt and will eventually implode.
But let it be said this is not a failure of capitalism. It is a failure of government intervention and the mixed economy. It is the inevitable result of what happens when governments attempt to stave of bankruptcies with bail outs and subsidies. But businesses – indeed whole industries – go bankrupt only because they can no longer provide the goods and services that consumers desire at a price they are willing to pay. The process of bankruptcy allows the resources to be freed up by new enterprises to be used to generate new jobs and new wealth.
Other examples of government interference include regulations to try and redistribute wealth, or put right some perceived injustice. The Bush era regulations requiring Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to give mortgages to people who lacked the ability to pay, was just such an attempt to make houses ‘affordable’ for everyone. All it ended up doing was driving up prices still further, and we all know how that ended.
The EU is weighed down with social policies for ‘protecting’ workers jobs, providing entitlements that can’t be afforded and racking up ever increasing debts in the process. The workers jobs have been protected off to China and other countries, yet still the process goes on, with another round of legislation due this year to ‘protect’ temporary workers jobs. You can bet this will lead to less of them being hired in the first place.
As in the US, the UK’s much lauded austerity plan to cut the deficit, is really no such thing. Spending in nominal pounds will be higher in 2015 than it is today. Yet you have the opposition going round whipping up hysteria about ‘savage cuts’.
The worse things get, the more they seem to stay the same.
What a shambles the EU is, and I live here. doh.
Cut the Climate Ca$h…NOW.
The moron’s won’t stop spending.
Thanks Willis, like the ocean heat content, seeing the magnitude of the overspending by this insane government is absolutely frightening.
I don’t think it will end well.
Follow the money people. Just examine the amounts being extracted from our pockets to fund the solar energy programs in New Jersey. And 5 seconds before the subsidies run out, the hogs will have left the trough and there will not be one scrap remaining. We are allowing ourselves to be scammed on such a massive scale it is frightening. To quote Walt Kelly: “We have met the enemy and he is us!” Unless we are willing to make these clowns in Washington (and our State Houses) accountable for what they are doing, we will continue to speed on to the inevitable train wreck we all know that is coming. We know what the light we see in the tunnel really is. It just makes me angry.
Allanj says:
April 9, 2011 at 12:54 am
Debase the currency is a better word, I think. Debauche means to make it unemployed, redundant or temporarily out of work (til the morrow).
What about it…. look at the DATA..
The USA had high marginal tax rates under REPUBLICANs of the past when we were in trouble or had to pay off a war:
http://politics.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474977623449
WWI 70%
1920s 23%
New Deal 63% to 79%
Eisenhower 91%
Nixon 70%
Reagan 50%
Bush II 35%
Is there any doubt that we the electorate are being played? It is all about making the rich richer, and wiping out the middle class. GWB started two wars and gave tax breaks. Then he shut down government oversight of the SEC. We had a 1920s boom. We had the ‘wild west’ inder GWB. Guess what, we had a 1929s crash and now a 1930s situation.
The top marginal tax rates will go up, big time.
Anyone who thinks otherwise is saying the USA will self destruct. Past history says NO, it will not.
You are right, Steven Richards. I was using the word “debauch” as quoted from Keynes by Liaquat Ahamed in his book, “Lords of Finance: The Bankers who Broke the World”.
It is a very interesting book in the context of current events.
Meanwhile,
over here in the UK, those of us on the libertarian leaning right have organised a ‘rally against debt’. The supposed “savage” cuts here – at best – have only slowed the rate of increase in government spending and put off a credit downgrade.
The left, after having smashed up numerous shops and banks, are having kittens over it and attendees have been compared variously with nazis, paedophiles, evil rich toffs etc etc and there have been many threats of violence.
Amen, Willis
What about the EPA and their plan to control CO2 emissions by administrative fiat?
Was that defeated by withholding finance in that area?
Or are they free to attempt to damage the economy?
Surely that is known or does nobody care about the economy anymore?
Two years ago I would have laughed at the thought of Donald Trump running for, or being, president. I’m starting to warm to the idea. Perhaps we need a president who is ruthless, rich, and with a good head for business. A president who needs a prosperous America to stay rich. A president who understands that cheap plentiful energy, from any source, is a good thing. Someone who loves America, and speaks their mind (without having someone else’s words spoon-fed through a teleprompter). However, we also need Representatives and Senators who are the same way. Maybe we need to vote for the people who somewhat offend us, by telling us the truth (and who understand the truth), rather than who speaks the prettiest.
I tend to avoid posts such as this here, largely because my views are never taken well. Hopefully you folks have a good bit of salt. It reminds me strongly of Lil Abner’s musical’s song, “The country’s in the very best of hands’.
I concur. A pox on both of their houses.
Frankly, the largest issue appears to be the promulgation of laws and regulations that directly attack one group, in order to profit another. By categorization and regulation, they separate groups for their own interests. The guarantee of the constitution, however, was one of general laws, not targeted laws. The Federalist 57 goes so far as to say that the congress can make no law which does not have its full operation upon itself, its friends, and the whole of society. U.S. v Brown 334 F.2d 488 (1965) spoke of this nature of general law.. and the Federalist Papers spoke of the same power in the federalist 44, regarding Attainder. Madison spoke of the full power of that clause (article 1, section 9 and 10) as being impossible so long as slavery existed, as it would forever be a separation under the law.
Both parties are outside the constitutional mandate, and so far outside of representing the people and states that it is.. frankly terrifying.
The modern view as attainder being only punitive is quite different from the origin, as attainder was any law, for or against an individual, in which property was affected. It might be conditional upon expurgation by oath or action, it might be real property or the rights that support life, or the right to have rights itself (as spoken of in Trop v. Dulles 239 F.2d 527 (1955) as part of citizenship), or annulling (according to Blackstone) court cases decided by those in conflict of interest by act of legislature rather than by judiciary. In short… these parties in power have eroded all of the safeguards, by ‘deferred maintenance’, then chosen to pull the control rods all the way out when they can’t find enough power to satisfy them.
Habeas corpus (the bulwark of rights) itself was considered the most vital of the powers of the individual… but we no longer have that right, if we are judged to be ‘terrorists’. Nor do we have any right to police protection, even at the same moment they remove our rights and capability of self-protection. It is a curious thing…
But then, I admit to ever and truly being an idiot… but I know right and wrong. It is wrong to enrich yourself whilst enforcing by law the poverty of others… it is wrong to eliminate competition by placing laws with which you can afford to comply, but your competition cannot. And it is wrong to support monopoly by law.
The problem is that most Americans have been brainwashed into thinking we need a big spending government. CNN had a real time clock showing the countdown to closure. They dragged every left wing nut they could find to tell us how horrible it would be if the government shut down. What garbage.
The reason no shutdown occurred was because the folks in DC knew that once the government shutdown, people would realize it didn’t effect them one iota. That would be game over.
As a side note – Nancy Pelosi, the current minority leader in the house, was up in Boston yesterday making a speech. She totally ignored her responsibilities, just as she did when she was speaker of the house. Time to start that revolution.