Posted on 07/31/2003 12:17:30 PM PDT by 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.
At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide." - Abraham Lincoln
Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)
At least the dead ones in Chicago and other such pestholes.
It almost happened on his watch.
Democrats are roughly half of our population. And they have already drunk the Kool-aid. "Prescription drug benefits" tell me that Republicans are at least tasting the Kool-aid.
I have been a Republican all of my life. Since Reagan left office, my biggest reason for remaining a Republican has been because no one else can defeat Democrats. Much of what Republicans have done and are now supporting is anathema to freedom and capitalism. Republicans are losing sight of the real goals and need their attention refocused on supporting the Constitution which does not include socialism.
(In case you haven't been pinged already. This may produce some interesting discussions in the near future.)
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