Here is a birthday present everyone can give me by reading the following. It should become obvious why I am doing this by the time you finish reading this. For the people that just insist on laying the blame for the shut down at the feet of both parties there are some basic facts that you need to know that I do not think most people do. So let me attempt to enlighten you. This is the point where most people reading anything I might post move on to someone else’s posts but I really wish for once that you wouldn’t. I understand this is a really long post but my choices were to post a series of incoherent and seemingly unrelated facts over time or make one long post here and now that puts all these facts together in one place (that no one will probably read anyway). Some more informed people might say I am preaching to the choir or that what I am rambling on about is just common sense but I know from talking to a lot of different people that is not the case. To start, this country has not had a budget to work from for some time even though the president is supposed to submit a budget every year for the upcoming fiscal year. Typically that part of the process does happen every year but the problem starts when the budget is passed off the Congress for ratification and that is where the budget gets stalled. At present, it has been about four years since Congress has passed a budget. I really do not want to get into finger pointing why that is the case but it is really quite complex and there is so much rhetoric surrounding this fact that no one would ever be able to give you an answer that you could believe beyond what you have already heard and come to believe on the airways. If you listen to primarily conservative news stations then you have probably bought into their story hook, line, and sinker and vice versa. So let us get beyond assigning blame for that fact (although it really was the Republicans….I couldn’t resist saying that). Republicans really do not want to work from a budget because it would take away a lot of their power to shape the output of produced legislature as far as funding of the bills and laws that come out of Congress. Being that they are currently a minority party right now you should be able to see why it would make sense for them to not want a budget and ergo my claim that it really is the Republican’s fault (simply because Democrats have no vested interest in operating this way in the current political climate). Sometimes applying a little common sense will give you a much clearer picture than what you are being spoon fed by the cable news pundits. The next thing to explain is how all this relates to the current government shutdown. Without a budget to work from, Congress uses what is known as a continuing resolution which functions as sort of a blank check to allow us to keep the wheels turning for a much shorter period of time than a budget allows. Right now Democrats are asking for a clean continuing resolution vote which means a blank check with no strings attached but Republicans insist on attaching strings. Some people that understand this seem to think that strings are a good thing but I happen to take an opposite view and here is why. If Democrats agree to this piece-meal approach to funding government that Republicans are asking for or if Democrats even flinch, it will happen again and again as we go down the road. They keep talking about kicking the can down the road but their approach is the ultimate form of this children’s game. Operating a country this way makes everybody nervous. It makes investors and job creators nervous so investors do not invest and job creators do not create. Foreign entities also get nervous and the dollar will be devalued as a result and we could find ourselves no longer being the accepted major currency of the world. Our primary banker, China, will start backing out of the American financial system and attempt to create their own system where they are no longer beholden to us. Interest rates will rise and we will enter a recession where everything we buy is much more expensive as a result. Product quintiles will be reduced while prices go up. Everything that Republicans say they are attempting to prevent by standing in the way of the president and the Democratic Party will come to pass because of the doomsday tactics that are insisting on using and they will be the cause for it (although there is no way they will take credit or rather blame for this when it happens – I just hope by then people are smart enough to know better). Obama and the Democrats are right to resist Republicans (and the Tea Party in particular) on this fight because no matter how bad the outcome, it cannot compare to the destruction that will occur if Republicans are not stopped here and now. They are persistent as pit-bulls so who is to say that winning this one battle will actually win the war. Republicans keep insisting that we should run the country like a business but when a business is in a slump they simply stop producing and put their inventory on the shelf to await a better time to resume business. For them it is simply a matter of blowing off the cobwebs but the government is not dealing with objective inventory. They are dealing with subjective human beings that must eat in the good times as well as the bad. We know that the economy is bad right now but still we insist on pointing fingers at unfortunate individuals as we are unwilling to give the benefit of a doubt that they might really wants to work but there are simply no jobs so they have to use government assistance. All too often our common sense escapes us when it really shouldn’t (perhaps because we are a little biased or bigoted). In better times the economy will breathe again, people will get back to work again, and pay into the government rather than take from it. At that point we will see a surplus that we can use to pay down debt and save money for bleaker times should things get bad again in the future provided Republican politicians do not decide to give major tax breaks to the affluent in society instead (as was done under George Bush). Right now the biggest problem we face are individuals that have taken sides and are operating off emotion and adrenaline rather than using their own brain and common sense. They refuse to listen to the other side of the story by checking out what opposing news outlets have to say because they fear they will be brain-washed. I hate to tell them that for the most part, they already are brain-washed. What does it take for them to look around at how many people are speaking out against the Tea Party tactics that used to be in favor of them? Why is it that they view all poll data with suspicion? Why is it they are so emotionally vested in almost any and all conservative causes from denying women’s rights, to cutting down on Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security? Why are they vested in the conservative causes to give tax breaks to the rich, subsidies to big pharmacy, industrial agriculture, and oil? Why do people support conservative ideology to deny climate warming, abolish the EPA and FDA, and support bank deregulation? Why do these people believe Tea Party leaders that say a government shut-down will not hurt this country as long as we continue to pay the Chinese their interest payments? Why do they believe a country can be run like a business? I could keep going with this but the main thing here to realize is that the sum total of all these things are simply crazy to believe and I contend that anyone who does is the subject of subliminal suggestions because that is the only way that crazy can trump common sense. For those that want to blame Democrats in this fight for not being willing to compromise, you need to first ask yourself what it is that you are willing to give up yourself among their list of demands. If you say Obamacare then are you really willing to give up your own health care coverage even though you really do not have to (if you can ask it of others would you be prepared to impose the same restriction on yourself and your family and not cop out with a statement that you should not have to because you worked all your life to insure that you had such coverage)? If you say Social Security, are you really willing to give up some portion of your Social Security (and you must answer this question from the perspective that you also do not have a pension or 401K to supplement you Social Security because a lot of people do not even though you might)? The long and short of what I am asking here is, are you willing not to be a hypocrite? I need now to ask one more thing so I know that you have read this. I need you to “Like” what I have written. This is not an acknowledgement that you agree with what I wrote but only that you have read it. I am just curious of how much I am wasting my time.
Posted on: Wed, 16 Oct 2013 08:19:22 +0000
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