One Democrat From Disaster

Free Republic ^ | 7/31/2003 | Reagan Renaissance

[Reagan Renaissance]

One Democrat From Disaster

    By October 11, 2001, just thirty days after 911, there were precious few Americans that weren't grateful that George Bush was President and that Al Gore wasn't. As someone who has very little faith in any branch of government, it was encouraging to learn that occasionally even the Supreme Court gets something right. On the other hand, Al Gore got over a million more votes than Bush, proving that the voters got it wrong. George Bush was President that day because the Founders got it right; the Constitution saved us again.

    This is the first in a series of articles that I will be posting with one article appearing every Tuesday and another on Thursdays. I would like to invite each of you to read and add your comments to the discussion of these ideas. I hope to make the articles informative and provocative. By the time we reach the conclusion, I hope that we will have outlined the problems facing the United States, how these problems came about, the consequences of not properly addressing these problems in a timely fashion, the potential solutions and a prioritized list of preferred solutions. Properly done, we will all have a better understanding of America and the limited role that government should play if we are to recover the freedoms we have lost and hope to restore a proper Constitutional balance of power to the various parts of government. 

    Most people believe that under our Constitution the powers of government are balanced and limited by dividing power among the three branches of government. Government and practically everyone else seems to have forgotten that there are really four parties who exercise power with regard to the government. If We the People fail to limit how much power the other three branches can have and how that power can be exercised, We should not be surprised when the other branches of government exceed their authority and usurp more power for themselves. History has repeated this verse in every country in every century. Left to its own devices, no government has ever decreased in size or power.

    If We the People, are going rein in government, there are only three ways that are practical to consider within the time constraints imposed by the economy coupled with the accruing, but unfunded liabilities that have been promised by professional politicians. This series will be making repeated references to the Grandfathers Economic Report. This is an excellent source for evaluating where we are and how we got here. We will be referring repeatedly to the study ordered by former Secretary of the Treasury Paul Oneal. The study was done by Jagadeesh Gokhale, Senior Economic Advisor, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland/Visiting Scholar, American Enterprise Institute (2003) and Kent Smetters, Assistant Professor The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania-Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy at the U.S. Department of Treasury from 2001-2. This study indicates that it is not possible to fund the accruing, but as yet unfunded liabilities of Social Security and Medicare using reasonable economic projections. Given our history, cutting benefits and increasing taxes by the orders of magnitude required using reasonable economic projections will be incredibly challenging from a political perspective, if not frankly impossible.

    The problems that confront the United States are not only economic, but structural as well. We are going to examine some of these problems in a fair amount of detail in order to understand how serious and how large these problems are. Most Americans under-estimate the severity of our problems and are overly optimistic about the amount of time that we have to confront and solve them. There is an old accounting and financial adage, "Unsustainable trends end." The growth of government and socialism in America are unsustainable trends. Professional politicians set these trends in place. It is my opinion that professional politicians will not play a significant roll in finding solutions to the problems that they have caused. And it is prudent to believe that Democrats can be expected to get in the way of finding reasonable solutions. Unchecked, unsustainable trends end in crashes. It will be up to us, We the People, to decide a reasonable way to bring about the end of these unsustainable trends. Professional politicians moved America away from being a representative republic. Professional promisers have made the United States a democracy by surrogates. Democracies are themselves political examples of unsustainable trends. And unchecked, we know how democracies end. Gokhale and Smetters have proven that Democrats have taken us to the brink of financial disaster and Democrats can be expected to prove to be formidable political opponents to finding rational solutions to our problems.

    By the time we finish this series, some of you will share my belief that America will be unlikely to survive either the election of another Democrat to the Whitehouse or the recovery of both houses of Congress by the Democrats. Some will share my belief that the United States will not survive past 2016 unless we bring about major changes in Social Security and Medicare. Regardless of whether you end up sharing any of my views, we should all end up better informed and just possibly, we may find the solutions to our problems. I can tell you for sure that if We don't, nobody else will. Government bureaucrats have never found anything until it was too late, and the professional politicians in office are only going to compound the problems, not implement solutions.

    I hope that you find these discussions informative and thought provoking. Please ping your friends and/or enemies alike. Freep mail me if you would like to be added to the ping list for this series. There may be any number of solutions to our problems and I may be over-estimating the severity of the problems and/or under-estimating Americans. History has proven time and time again, the resourcefulness and productive genius of the American people. But I hasten to caution, only God never drops the ball. And it is unarguable that Americans have been getting fat, dumb and lazy. Please invite your family and friends to participate in these discussions. And please invite and welcome Democrats to the discussion. Changing America for the better would be made a lot simpler if we can convince a few Democrats that they are on the wrong side. Government is composed of bureaucrats and politicians. Can you think of any worse groups of people to entrust with important responsibilities? Whom do you believe is the source of our problems? If you believe that government is the solution to anything, please pay careful attention to these discussions. But be forewarned that you will face stiff opposition in defending your views.

 

[Reagan Renaissance]

Part II will follow next week. Each new article will be indexed with links to prior threads. Welcome and thank you for your participation. Our goal is the Reagan Renaissance.

[babyface00]

Any chance you might create a ping list for your articles? If so, I'd like to be on it.

[alisasny]

put me on your ping list thanks

[Bahbah]

Same here re the ping list. Intriguing beginning.

[Old Sarge]

put me on your ping list thanks

Ditto, and Wlecome to FR!

[Stat-boy]

Please add me.

Thanks!

[Russell Scott]

America will survive into eternity. I'll bet anybody any amount of money (if I had any).

[centurion]

Please add me also.

[Russell Scott]

And it wouldn't matter if Hillary Clinton was President. God could have her out in a field chewing on grass at the snap of a finger if he desired. America has one huge problem, it puts way too much faith in a bunch of specks of dying dust (fallen humans), and way too little faith in the eternal, no beginiing, no ending, creator of ALL, and his Son Jesus, who ALREADY sealed the deal that NO amount of evil can ever, EVER!!!!, EVER!!!! defeat.

[Jack Black]

Please provide links for the Fed article mentioned. This article is all wind up and no pitch. I'd like to see where you go with it and put me on the list.

I don't think these mandates are that big a deal. There are several obvious ways out of this problem, which governments have been getting themselves into since Rome. The first and most obvious is to inflate the currency. By inflating while under-reporting or under-indexing the inflation you can essentially lower payments to those you owe money to.

Another thing is simply lowering service levels on madated services. Yes, you get medicare but what is covered? That can be changed in the background with little debate. Happens all the time.

Raising ages on the retirement benefits is almost assured. It is constantly discussed, and even some of the Dems support that.

In summary I seriously doubt that mandates will cause the USA to fall. I also doubt that Democrats getting elected will cause this. It will probably assure gay marraige though.

Anyway, post away. Hopefully we can get to the meat of the discussion next time. Why the delayed posting schedule? Are you still writing this? If not I suggest just putting it up and letting us get on with it.

[Stat-boy]

RS:

I agree with you 100%, to whit:

“And it wouldn't matter if Hillary Clinton was President. God could have her out in a field chewing on grass at the snap of a finger if he desired. America has one huge problem, it puts way too much faith in a bunch of specks of dying dust (fallen humans), and way too little faith in the eternal, no beginiing, no ending, creator of ALL, and his Son Jesus, who ALREADY sealed the deal that NO amount of evil can ever, EVER!!!!, EVER!!!! defeat.”

Nevertheless, He gave us the capacity to think and reason, the ability to analyze and attempt to solve problems. For example, when my boy needed stitches, my wife and I prayed, and we always knew he was in His hands; but we still took our son to the doc! It’s a similar thing here. Just trying to understand the social and economic issues facing our country.

[El Laton Caliente]

"Government is composed of bureaucrats and politicians. Can you think of any worse groups of people to entrust with important responsibilities? Whom do you believe is the source of our problems?"

Most of the politicians are lawyers making law for lawyers. Combine that with the living constitution concept and you have disaster.

I would like on the ping list...

[Blood of Tyrants]

Two points. First, if Bush had spent more money and time in the blue states, he would undoubtedly have still lost the state and the EC votes that would have gone with them yet would have gotten a few more percent of the votes. It didn't matter if Bush didn't get a single vote in any of the blue states, the number of EC votes is the same. He spent very little time or money in Californication and NJ and the others because he knew that it was a waste of time and energy and money.

IMO, the founding fathers flubbed on the EC thing, creating an eternal two party system that virtually locks all others out of office and power. A 50% + 1 vote with a runnoff between the top two in case no one gets a majority would break the backs of the two party system.

Second, the Republicans are poised to create ANOTHER unconstitutional entitlement that will cost us trillions of dollars. How are they any better than the Rats when it comes to fighting socialism?

[Elliott Jackalope]

Short version: Trust in God, but tie up your camel.

Funny how thinking about Hillary reminded me of that quote.

[iceskater]

Please add me to your ping list.

[LS]

Well, just last week, there was an article on the coming federal treasury BOOM, which will be caused when all of the non-taxed retirement plans of the baby-boomers suddenly become eligible for taxation. According to the author (I think it was on NRO), these revenues would not only pay Medicare and SS, but would leave money left over. I think the tax revenues based on this funds came to $13 TRILLION!!

[Blood of Tyrants]

Money left over? LOL! Politicians make sure that they NEVER have "money left over". They have proven that they can spend ANY amount of money. And the Pubs are no better than the Rats in this arena.

[deport]

On the other hand, Al Gore got over a million more votes than Bush, proving that the voters got it wrong.

---

Where are you getting that info?

[LS]

Guess that's what those tax cuts were all about huh. Not having money left over?

[LS]

Oh, and for the historical record, the Jackson administration had a surplus that it returned to the states. One of the very few measures that AJ did that didn't increase the size of government.