July 6, 2011
The United States government, today, stands mired in political theater and brinkmanship, and as it does so the nation’s economy hangs in the balance, wavering before the precipice of default upon our national debt. Whatever the outcome of this current debate, one thing must be abundantly clear, and that is that no one can, with reason and good faith, cast aspersions upon the President in this matter. The President has, throughout the entire course of his tenure, insisted on bipartisanship and cooperation from members of both parties. All can plainly see, and recent polls irrefutably demonstrate, that it is Congress that must bear responsibility on this issue. Congress, and Congress alone, will take the blame.
One party has most recently begun to suggest that come August second the United states government will simply pick and choose which of its obligations it will meet, while the other remains curiously silent, seemingly content with the President’s insistence of shared sacrifice and their own previous demand that certain tax loopholes be closed. While much of the economic future of the nation remains uncertain, there can be no doubt: this cloud looms over the market and dampens investment optimism amid the certainty of the increased cost to borrow should default occur – and we have all seen quite clearly during the last two years how fundamental the need to borrow has become in the maintenance of our daily commerce. Vast segments of our economy depend on the ability to borrow to meet certain portions of monthly expense. An inability to borrow has predictable and almost immediate consequence: goods cease to flow, services dry up, and our economy as a whole contracts. It shrinks while Congress seemingly debates matters of economic philosophy.
If there is a silver lining to be found among all of this uncertainty it may perhaps be found among certain and various lenders who, though they may lend less, they will certainly charge more, and therefore think to themselves that they will have come out even in the end. I refer of course to those same individuals who brought our economy to the brink of collapse in the first place; who through bribery and fraud managed to accumulate an abundance of bad debt that they easily and gleefully bundled for sale on the international market and yet insist that any predatory practices not be curbed. Certainly the realtors of this nation will find no benefit, realtors who have through national advertisements implored this Congress to act on the issue of banking regulation. They will find no benefit because if it costs more to borrow, and yet property value has not at the least stabilized, there will be no incentive to buy. Nor will there be incentive to buy if unemployment numbers do not recede in a consistent manner.
This then, becomes a burden for every property owner in America, regardless of means or political affiliation. Alas, I do not own property. Nor, as it happens, do I claim political affiliation.
That is not to suggest that there is anything inherently wrong with property ownership any more than there is with amassing the means with which to own and to maintain it. Rather it is the method by which that means is obtained with which I take issue. I am tempted to suggest that any man who would choose to pick the pocket of the general citizenry as the preferred method to amass the means with which to own and to maintain property does so at his own peril, and yet, it must be recognized that today greater market efficiency does indeed extend to the practice of picking pockets. It is often a practice that parades beneath the banner of deregulation.
There is one party so consumed with a deregulatory fever that it is without comprehension. There is one party delirious with the malignant notion that smaller government, by whatever means, is better government, and that this is to include handing over Social Security to the private sector. Without hesitation or even the common decency to blush bright crimson such suggestion has been made, and this despite the hundreds of billions of U.S. dollars that have most recently been lost through hedge fund speculation and other similar practices; practices that researchers have indeed conclusively determined to be physiologically identical to the practice of compulsive gambling even while they are attended by far more deleterious and detrimental, even world wide, effects.
There is one party so enthralled with the malignant notion that smaller government, by whatever means, is better government, that this must include the entire dismantling of FEMA. There is no small irony here. While the FEMA of today functions like a well oiled machine, bringing disaster relief in an efficient and timely manner simultaneously to multiple natural disasters around the nation, yet we must confess, it has not always been so. At the hands of the previous administration FEMA labored beneath the hands of incompetence and complacency, having indifference forced as its head, and so became demoralized, inefficient, and ineffective. In consequence tractor trailer loads of ice traveled the entire breadth of this nation without ever once reaching the hands of need at time of disaster. This then, came in consequence of a political, and a politically motivated ideological mindset, one that is poison to the body politic. One that has, without doubt, in this event and on this occasion, cost American lives. Yet, despite the lessons learned from what we call Katrina, despite the obvious failure of one President and his adherence to ideological dogma, despite the utter humiliation of this complete failure of ideologically driven policy implementation, and despite the suffering this did engender, another man, a member of Congress, one with aspirations to that same high office and who even hails from the same home state, has been seen proclaiming before the cameras of CNN that he would indeed abolish FEMA. Without hesitation, without blush, and with no apparent concern for his own political future what so ever, such proclamation was seen to be made. Such irony would indeed be an occasion of tremendous hilarity were it not attended by the suffering of so many of our fellow citizens. It seems that in Texas there is no shortage of fools, so much so that in fact they are elected to office as a matter of course.
This fever of deregulation must be acknowledged to have been at play when the American people were handed water boarding as a response to terrorism. While the men and women of the CIA most certainly should have known better, most certainly do just as they did then, know better, never the less it must be presumed they acted in good faith and upon the principle that the executive body charged with civilian oversight of this agency, namely that of the Presidency of the United States, did seek and so did find justification for this practice through the rule of law. And this was done despite international commitment and even our own Constitution.
This party, so consumed with the fever of deregulation, is the self same party that continues its steadfast insistence that it is right and proper, when the public mood can be so suited, to bend the law by fiat, rather than follow the guidance of reason and justice. This is the same set of legislators who insist that tax breaks and loopholes will provide more jobs than the economic stagnation their procrastination does currently promise, and this despite several consecutive years evidence to the contrary. This despite the fact that while corporate profits are up, and while corporate executive compensation in the form of bonuses and golden parachutes reaches such unprecedented heights that some respected national commentators have termed it an embarrassment before the international community, jobs growth remains stagnant.
And it is this same party that today derives the chief benefit of media deregulation, for while the charge of insolence before the public is leveled by the media in equal measure before the feet of both parties, that subject which might lend credence to such fallacious claims remains unaddressed, and that subject in particular is the bald and barren fact that at this time of budgetary necessity neither party is sufficiently possessed of the intestinal fortitude required to broach the topic: Congressional Entitlement; oft referred to as ‘earmarks,’ or ‘pork barrel politics.’ On this topic, today, both parties are silent, and this fact is conveniently overlooked by the national media. Yet it must be remembered that one and only one party lays claim to fiscal responsibility of any kind and have indeed been known to hold forth the very topic of Congressional Entitlement with vociferous derision, to the vilification of their opponents amid the jeers of their faithful.
This is the self same party of men like Richard Nixon.
This is the self same party that brought us trickle down economics - as if the flow of our economy were governed by none other than a withered old man with an inflamed prostate, one whom we now refer to as ‘elder statesman.’
This is the self same party that turned the national focus into frenzied obsession over the issue upon a single blue dress. While the blasts of embassy bombings and a suicide attack upon a U.S. military vessel far from our shores did reverberate around the whole world, members of this party did publicly insist that any response to acts of terror by the President of the United States of America at that time were nothing more than political theater designed to distract the public from their party obsession: that of ejaculate upon a single blue dress. Let us be very clear on this matter. For the sole cause of political expedience this party did insist that this one blue dress represented an issue that far outweighed matters of national security, and in direct consequence two thousand nine hundred and seventy-seven citizens of over seventy nationalities were later slain on United States soil by terrorists in one single day.
This then, was far more than calumny against the people or an abrogation of sworn duty - this was a treason, one conducted by certain members of the United States Congress, committed against the whole of this nation.
This was done for no other cause than that of political advantage.
It is no wonder that this same party today holds our entire economy hostage and does so for the self same reason: political expedience. This party finds it expedient to insist that we cannot in any way, shape, or form raise revenue to address our deficit. We cannot bring an end to unneeded tax breaks nor can we close loop holes. This despite ten years of war on two fronts and a defense budget that is nearly a trillion dollars every year.
This is the same party whose supporters have repeatedly assured the American public that our current President is either a Moslem or a monkey, depending on the occasion. This is the party that we must assume holds the entire electorate in such high esteem that in their eyes we are no more than buffoons, no brighter than a forty watt bulb with no filament nor smarter than the average Texas ranch hand content with censorship within the Texas school system of various founding fathers whose words of 200 years ago remarkably fail to toe the current party line.
This is the self same political entity that five years hence will fade into utter obscurity, and do so not solely in cause of this present offense so plainly put forth before the people of this nation. It will not be for this grand display of hubris our present national circumstance does occasion. Not for this willful, obstinate, and even malicious curb to our economic recovery their stubborn and unreasoned adherence to broken party dogma does admit.
Rather it will be seen that this party is so consumed by a complete inability to commerce with truth, so inept in the face of fact, and so unfamiliar with the process of reason, that their only recourse in the face of ever more disastrous weather events presaged by the reality of a warming earth can and must be the manufacture of ever greater lies and ever new crises. Thus will their great and heinous abuse of the public be made manifest and thus will their fortunes cease. It will be as it is with any crass and common, chronic and compulsive liar who finds that in the natural course of time even the most gullible among us do cease, finally, to pay any heed.
D. Winter
http://zendogblog.net
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