Recommending personal lifeboats might seem redundant, but I'd recommend personal lifeboats for what lies ahead.
Posted on 11/22/2011 2:03:48 AM PST by Rummyfan
Those who can do. Those who can’t form a supercommittee. Those who can’t produce a majority vote in a supercommittee sequester. Those who can’t even sequester are telling the world something profound about American inertia.
As Veronique points out below, the “automatic” sequestration cuts would over the course of ten years reduce US public debt by only $153 billion. Which boils down to about a month’s worth of the current federal deficit.
Yet even slashing a pimple’s worth of borrowing out of the great oozing mountain of pustules will prove too much for Washington.
Another downgrade is now inevitable. After that, all that’s holding the joint up is the dollar’s status as global currency. If the world were looking around for a reserve currency today, I doubt it would pick that of a $15 trillion sinkhole. This week’s failure will hasten the urge of the Chinese and others to arrange a post-dollar order. I wrote earlier this year about America’s inclination to do everything big. And so it goes even with imperial eclipse: We are inviting nothing so genteel as “decline” but rather a sudden convulsive collapse.
Forget the Supercommittee; the timidity of the GOP frontrunners is far more disturbing. In a sane polity, they would be competing over the abolition of departments, the rollback of regulatory tyranny, the shrinking of entitlements – not to mention flying commercial and making do with a mere 20-car motorcade. This close to the abyss, public discourse is nowhere near where it ought to be.
(Headline courtesy of Otto Harbach, whose “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” also seems oddly relevant to this week’s alleged “drama”.)
“Yet even slashing a pimple’s worth of borrowing out of the great oozing mountain of pustules will prove too much for Washington.”
Mr. Steyn can paint a picture eh?
Nbody on either side is prepared to do what’s needed. And even $153 billion worth of reduction is too terrifying for our congressional elites to bear. Something has got to give. Increasing the debt limit is not the answer - its a gimmick that can only be resorted to so often. We’re headed for a crash that will make the Great Depression look like a hiccup.
“This close to the abyss, public discourse is nowhere near where it ought to be.”
And, it probably never will be. Maybe once it’s too late, but, certainly not before that.
What it would take to eliminate $15 trillion of debt, I can’t imagine. Congress can pass an act declaring national bankruptcy. We will pay $3 trillion of the debt and wipe the slate clean so to speak and start over. There is no other real solution. If any one has one, I would like to hear it.
The following Departments must be eliminated: Agriculture, Labor, HUD, Energy, Education, Veterans Affairs (goes back to Defense), Homeland Security.
The Commerce Department will be reduced to the Post Office, wieghts and measures, patents and copyrights, and interstate commerce (all per the Constitution).
Health and Human Performance will be just Health and will consist of the Food & Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control.
All federal land not used for military purposes will either be sold to the private sector (cash to pay debts) or turned over to the states. National Parks will become state property.
Move to the country, stock up, become self-sufficient and ride it out until the useless idiots wipe each other out. Then start over. Oh, and watch the media next time...
Collision will occur shortly. Buy popcorn.
I once thought I could write as well as Mr. Steyn, the difference being that he can crank ‘em out on a daily basis, and I might do one a month.
Then I look a lines like that (and a few others) and say to myself “Nope. Not gonna happen. He’s the Master.”
You could eliminate everything except for Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and Unemployment (there may be one other entitlement, memory’s a bit weak this morning) and the Federal Government would still run a deficit.
Those programs consume ALL federal revenue and then some.
Everything else the Federal government does is done on borrowed money.
Recommending personal lifeboats might seem redundant, but I'd recommend personal lifeboats for what lies ahead.
Until the 'Gingrich Revolution' the democrats controlled congress for 40 years so the 'bipartisanship' then was the GOP surrendering and that was that. Even when we had the House locked up and technically had control of the Senate, we, oops - THEY, gave in to the RATS with that dumb 'split leadership' (or whatever it was called) nonsense and Tiny Tommy dASShole stopped everything he could.
Ergo, what's happening now is just the GOP finally realizing that they are vertebrates and have a spine. It's in there somewhere and they now occasionally stand up, use that newly found spine, and say 'NO'.
Then factor in that the democratic party of today isn't the democratic party of 1960. Back then they loved America and wanted it protected, believed in God, weren't for KILLING BABIES, owned guns and believed in the second amendment - and the Constitution. But that ended in 1972 when the 'progressives' (commies) first made inroads and took control of the party at their convention. The legally elected delegates from IL, led by Mayor Richard J Daley, were kicked out and replaced by leftist rift-raft. They were led by Jesse Jackson.
From then on their radical anti American - pro commie - views and statements got bolder and bolder, inch by inch, year by year. So today 'we' have a pResident who doesn't even use the word 'democrat' when speaking to his own party. It's 'my Progressive friends this' and 'my Progressive friends' that.
And THAT needs to be ...'rectified'... asap.
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