Those who are paying attention to our dwindling economy realize, that president Obama's proposed Robin Hood tactic of taking from the rich to give to the poor isn't going to work to solve our deficits or our economic woes. Those who are paying attention and who lived through the 60's and are alive today know that this socialist scheme is nothing original. America has been on the Robin Hood plan of socialist economics since at least the era of Lyndon Johnson's 'great society.' Therefore, Barack Obama hasn't come up with anything original when it comes to his version of spreading the wealth.
If anyone wanted to write a blueprint on how to destroy a capitalist nation, all they would have to do is to look at the United States over the last fifty years and look at where we are now. America hasn't had a true balanced budget since 1957. Everything in the interim has been run as a deficit with smoke and mirrors as the accounting practices of congress. When John Kennedy took office and began programs like the Peace Corps and NASA? These programs began to be funded on the American credit card of deficit spending and everything since has followed the exact same formula. All Lyndon Johnson and his predecessors did was jump on the financed band wagon of deferring payments.
Everything that we have done in the interim since the early 60's in this country has been charged to our futures and now the debt has become so enormous as to literally be beyond comprehension or our ability to pay it. Washington operates like some maddened entity that knows only how to spend and never how to save or pay back.
Since the middle 60's and president Johnson's grandiose war on poverty, America has spent about fifty trillion dollars on social programs, none of which have accomplished what they promised. And the most recent examples of these socialist feel good policies, are precisely what has put us where we presently are today. We have been 'paying it forward' for almost fifty years now and the bill is coming due now.
As recent as five and ten years ago, the likes of Barney Frank and Barbara Boxer and a host of other liberal democrats in congress, were telling us that there was a 'right to fair housing.' What they didn't tell the people was that fair housing meant 'free housing' or more specifically stated, government subsidized and taxpayer paid for housing.
So, literally millions of people who could not qualify for mortgages and should have never of been considered for mortgages were given mortgages under the auspices of 'fair housing.' And they were given marked down adjustable rate mortgages that allowed them to qualify for homes two and three times what they should have been qualified for even considering the lunacy of the existing mortgage lending practices. And the banks and the conservatives played right along and bundled these mortgages and rode the waves of speculative financing and revamped fiscal responsibility legislation right into the collapse of 2008.
And one day in 2008 when the music stopped and there simply weren't enough chairs for everyone at the party? That's when the trembling began and it has worsened every day since. Our economic dream bubble finally burst in 2008 and we have been on a greased rail to oblivion ever since.
We are two and a half years into the era of a 'change we can believe in?' And so far absolutely nothing has changed in the economy or our future prospects for the economy. The economy has worsened, jobs continue to fall away and the best that our president (and his party) can muster is to tell us that he will not stand idly by while cuts are made to the entitlement Nirvana that his party created over the last fifty years. Make no mistake, the republicans are equally complicit, they just turned their heads and allowed the entitlements to rise, just as long as they got their earmarks at the public feeding trough for their own pet projects.
So here we sit. Rapidly descending into an abyss of economic collapse and oblivion and all that our president can tell us? Is that the evil rich need to be squeezed, taxes need to be raised and once done all will be well with the world. The liberal democrats would like us to believe that all we have to do is raise taxes on the 'evil rich' and the deficits will somehow simply go away. Maybe someone needs to look back over the history of tax increases and the deficit and show me where and at any time our deficit has been reduced by a tax increase. It simply has never happened. All that does happen when we increase taxes, is that those elected in Washington see the increased revenue as so many more blank checks for them to spend on their entitlement programs.
"Mo Money! Mo Money! Mo Money!!!!!
Ronald Reagan proved that the economy can literally be grown by reducing taxes and increasing jobs and productivity, but what was the end result of increased tax revenues through growth during the Reagan years? That's right, we spent that much more and borrowed that much more. Same thing different day is a nice way of putting it (SSDD)
America as a nation simply cannot sustain our existing debt, much less afford to add to it. If we were to stop spending today. On everything? Not just eliminate ear marks and add on's to the budget, but truly call a full stop on every addition? It would take us almost four hundred years to pay off our existing debt. If we were to make payments of one hundred million dollars a day, (that's a billion dollars every ten days) and thirty six and a half billion dollars a year! It would take three hundred and eighty nine years for us to pay off our debt. And that does not include our day to day expenses of running this government. So what was it the bipartisan budget deal saved us last week? Thirty eight billion? and we spent fifty four billion while they were arguing over it?
So the next time that you see John Boehner or Barack Obama telling the nation what a good job they did in lowering the deficit, think about the lies that you are being told by them. They are lying! All of them! If there is one thing that is truly bipartisan in Washington? It is the lies!
I'll close this rant by making one more observation as it concerns our debt and our deficit. Last week, Treasury Secretary Geithner told Americans that if we didn't raise the debt limit? Then the nation would collapse and the blame would fall to the republicans who stood in the way of raising the debt ceiling.
And today? The S&P came out and notified the United states that they had "downgraded the outlook for the United States to negative, saying it believes there's a risk U.S. policymakers may not reach agreement on how to address the country's long-term fiscal pressures."
That's at nice way of saying that we have reached the limit on our credit cards and that they know that we cannot make the interest payments for much longer. It's also a nice way of saying, don't be surprised when later on down the road, when we down grade the US long term fiscal outlook to unstable and collapsing.
And as a result of our inability to rein in spending, as I write this, the Dow Jones opened down 225 points this morning on the S&P forecast and has remained -200 all morning. Today, we may see a one day drop that sets a record before this day is over. The stop gap fail safe is (I believe) a 1200 point drop in one day. If that happens, then the markets automatically shut down until the following day. We may just see that happen to the markets before this week is out.
