Posted on 08/13/2007 10:07:41 PM PDT by esarlls3
By Jeremy Grant in Washington
Published: August 14 2007 00:06 | Last updated: August 14 2007 00:06
The US government is on a ‘burning platform’ of unsustainable policies and practices with fiscal deficits, chronic healthcare underfunding, immigration and overseas military commitments threatening a crisis if action is not taken soon, the country’s top government inspector has warned.
David Walker, comptroller general of the US, issued the unusually downbeat assessment of his country’s future in a report that lays out what he called “chilling long-term simulations”.
These include “dramatic” tax rises, slashed government services and the large-scale dumping by foreign governments of holdings of US debt.
Drawing parallels with the end of the Roman empire, Mr Walker warned there were “striking similarities” between America’s current situation and the factors that brought down Rome, including “declining moral values and political civility at home, an over-confident and over-extended military in foreign lands and fiscal irresponsibility by the central government”.
“Sound familiar?” Mr Walker said. “In my view, it’s time to learn from history and take steps to ensure the American Republic is the first to stand the test of time.”
...
“With the looming retirement of baby boomers, spiralling healthcare costs, plummeting savings rates and increasing reliance on foreign lenders, we face unprecedented fiscal risks,” said Mr Walker, a former senior executive at PwC auditing firm.
Current US policy on education, energy, the environment, immigration and Iraq also was on an “unsustainable path”.
...
“Our very prosperity is placing greater demands on our physical infrastructure. Billions of dollars will be needed to modernise everything from highways and airports to water and sewage systems. The recent bridge collapse in Minneapolis was a sobering wake-up call.”
(Excerpt) Read more at ft.com ...
Did he make these same dire charges while Clinton was in office?
It is that empires and civilizations rise, and they fall. Why do you think America is immune?
Gee, I don’t recall saying America is immune. However, economic growth and changes to technology can have a substantial effect on economic collapse scenarios, or don’t you think so? Most empires and civilizations have not ended due to economic collapse, they have crumbled from outside attacks and inadequate defenses. That is the great lesson of history.
Yep.
Not like that was unexpected, given “Iraq...unsustainable...overconfident...”
He forgot “...massive cash infusions to counteract sea surges due to global warming...”
Bush should have dumped the Libs as soon as he took office.
Every last one.
You see what they’ve wrought in LA, in San Fran, in NO, in Mass, etc., ad nauseum.
Liberals simply are not competent in positions of responsibility.
They do more harm than good, massive quantities of the former, and very little of the latter.
Trust anything to a Lib and you get exactly what you deserve.
Stupid people die, while smart ones don’t trust Libs to even know what day it is.
If it’s citizens see little benefit in keeping a nation any minor disturbance can trigger disintegration. And such fate has befallen America before. Only the military conquest by the North reversed it.
Currently I don’t see a comparable situation. Most important the American dream ís still alive. Best would be to keep it that way.
Hmmm, sounds a lot like the modern Church of Global Warming Apocalypse, or at least what the GWA zealots would like to have after they shut up all naysayers. However, that account also strongly resembles Gibbons’ account of the Roman decline. For a more sensible account, see the Teaching Company course on the foundations of western civilization.
excerpt from course description:
Illuminating Questions about Familiar Categories
Professor Noble suggests that many conventional historical categories and concepts can obscure as much as they reveal. By setting aside these ideas, you can open your mind to a broader and perhaps more accurate picture of history.
Did the Roman Empire really “fall”? What did people at the time experience? What exactly was being reborn in the Renaissance? Is it historically accurate to speak of the “Protestant Reformation”? Why do we think of the Middle Ages as just that—i.e., a time somehow sandwiched between two other (and presumably superior) times? Did the brilliant intellectuals and writers who clustered around the court of Charlemagne see it that way?
Though not our children, and theirs, and....
Every last one."
___________________________________________________________
Certainly he could have dumped more than he did, eg. Clinton's DOJ attorneys. That said, the great majority of federal bureaucrats are in for life and they can make things impossible for presidents and their newly appointed heads. The example par excellence would probably be State, which has been shot through with anti-American leftists since the 1940s. The federal employees' unions are one of the biggest obstacles to sane governance.
“It is that empires and civilizations rise, and they fall. Why do you think America is immune?”
well i would not say immune however America is certainly Unique in a lot of ways that prior empires and civilizations have not been. Part of it is modern technology, communications, the world’s “economic engine” and basically the US as an insurer of more or less global stability. This unique situation makes a direct comparison to Rome or Britain unfair. Again this is not to say we are immune to a fall only that looking at past performance does not necessarily predict the future in all circumstances.
If the US does fall i sincerely doubt China, Brazil or India would be able to fill the entire void left by the US.
So very true! Frame the terms of discussion/debate and you're at least 1/2-way to imposing your view.
Lenin and his western intellectual sympathizers in the universities realized this when they concocted their "political continuum," representing communism at the far left and fascism at the far right -- all part of the effort to legitimize or "sanitize" communism by obscuring its close relation to its chief totalitarian competitor, fascism.
A far more accurate continuum would, of course, group these two together at one end of the continuum (no individual liberty) and place anarchism at the other end (too much individual liberty). Ordered liberty, which is what America was intended to have, would be positioned somewhere near the mid-point -- to its right if Jeffersonian, to its left if Hamiltonian.
This would have been a far more accurate and useful conceptualization, but unfortunately what I call the Leninist model is the one that has persisted to this day.
Not sure CIA’s all that conservative either.
Well, outside Operations Directorate, anyway.
I’ve always been curious how Lyddie England voted, though I suspect from her...open mindedness...I’m pretty sure I already know.
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