Sunday's Mail Bag

Topher Morrison
PurpleSerf.com


We all receive a lot of chain mail especially when people catch wind of what is most important to us.  I want to start posting some of the best I receive each week on Sunday.  So here it is, enjoy Purple Serf's - Sunday Mail Bag.  

Don't take him back!  He broke nearly every promise
he every made to you America!  He may be a good
lookin', smooth talkin' long legged mac daddy, but
you know he just playin' you!

          Consider how Barack Obama has recently lambasted fiscal conservatives for using the debt ceiling as a political bludgeon.  These are very different sentiments than he has previously espoused.  Once upon a time you would have thought President Obama was a fiscal hawk!

“The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the US Government cannot pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government's reckless fiscal policies. Increasing America's debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that, "the buck stops here.' Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.” - 

-Senator Barack H. Obama, March 2006

          Once upon a time Barack Obama was a lot of things to everyone.  He promised restraint, transparency, but most of all change, yet he has proven as bellicose as the Bush administration, if not more. Barack Obama has now advanced America into Libya, Yemen, Pakistan and covertly in Iran.  We are more deeply involved in Middle Eastern politics than ever.  Obama double downed on Bush's torture gaffs and now tacitly supports extrajudicial killings of US citizens.  


          The virtual financial dictatorship of Ben Bernanke is more apparent than ever when it was shown that not only the biggest banks in America get bailed out, foreign banks were financed as well and behind our backs.  This administration is more involved even in the shadows as the growing Fast and Furious scandal attests.  Moreover, Obama has filled his cabinet with big business insiders, he has increased our nations profligate spending and he presides over unprecedented debt and persistent unemployment.  We are more than ever one nation under Washington.

SALVATION! The Oboenher Bill Saves Big Government, Again

Topher Morrison

PurpleSerf.com

Compromise, the predictable spawn of divided government - hailed as progress and a testament to democracy.  The nation has been held hostage by the debt crisis over the past month amidst a barrage of countervailing sound bytes from both sides of the isle and obnoxious CNN digital countdowns to default, and for what?

          We are being led down a seemingly inevitable path, by our leaders, to credit downgrade, irreversible economic malaise, perpetual political tumult and loss of international leadership.  The 2.4 trillion in "cuts" proposed by Washington should return us to 2004 spending levels, albeit in 2021 and if they were real, but they almost immediately could give us the largest debt-limit increase in US history!  How can Washington be serious about tightening its belt when it apparently plans to create a bigger one?    
     

Like shooting BBs at a battleship, "cutting" 2.4 trillion
over a decade wont take down this Leviathan.
Graph made by usgovernmentspending.com

                    The marathon long "cutting" plan will only succeed at mitigating the avalanche of government spending as it remains obvious "cuts" in Washingtonese means reduction in discretionary lower-than-projected spending not real cuts, you know like the ones you and I use planning our daily lives, which bring spending in line with revenue, balance our budget, and allow us to save.  The "cuts" our fearless leaders propose pair down what they hoped to spend in the next 10 years and they praise it!  This is like a welfare recipient pairing down their hope of buying a new Fendi purse and saying it was a relief they made the right decision.

          The federal government has doubled its expenditures over the last decade and now the president and Capitol Hill want us to believe they'll reduce spending to 2004 levels?  They actually want us to believe that they have flipped the political universe on its head and turned the tide of the past decade.  According to Ron Paul (R-Texas) today:

"Why has our budget doubled in 10 years?  This country doesn't have double the population, or double the land area, or double anything that would require the federal government to grow by such an obscene amount.  In Washington terms, a simple freeze in spending would be a much bigger "cut" than any plan being discussed."

          Conservatives decry the compromise over cutting spending on our worldwide police force and not tackling entitlements, while liberals/progressives lament the lost opportunities to saddle the rich with an even higher proportion of tax burden and to incorporate newer environmental regulations.  


          I'll put it this way, growth in government perpetuated by both parties has led us to this atmosphere of hyper-politicization.  When government usurps the lifeblood of a nation in ever-increasing amounts the people have no choice, but to argue over how it is spent.  This is not a fight over a specific program, but a clash of reality and the ideologies that grew government for the last 100 years.  The palatable national stress is the due to our collective cognitive dissonance!  If taxing, rampant spending, printing money out of thin air, and economic oppression continues our republic will fall.  

          Albeit China has decades of economic and democratic growth to undergo before it can claim real international leadership it will nonetheless overtake the Unites States in GDP around 2015.  The effect it will have on our politics, the radicalization of both parties, cannot be understated.  The far right will attempt to posture and cajole the American public into thinking we are in a new Cold War and the far left’s argument will in some sick way be vindicated, that in fact large government can bread success and growth.  Both as history has shown will exacerbate our insecurity of being second place.




...notice how I didn't mention anything about what to cut?  Just cut, cap and balance like Americans and people all over the world do everyday.