Take that, middle class!

     So it seems there is a debt deal. The debt ceiling will be raised and the USA will pay its debts, which one would have thought would be a foregone conclusion. The Republicans won, and I haven't seen or heard the terms of the deal. So how do I know they won? Simple, Obama started by offering a compromise, and has been publicly talking about the “debt crisis.” So why am I not worried about the debt crisis, is there a bigger crisis, and if the Republicans won then who lost?

     

     America's debt crisis is similar to my own, in that I really should have a little less debt but I'm paying on it and the situation is pretty manageable at this time. I should avoid incurring more debt, although if it's necessary (say to buy a house or replace a totaled car) then I could manage it. My own debt crisis is actually very similar to the government's, except that their credit is perfect and they pay virtually no interest. Seriously, if I could finance everything in the world at their rates I would drive a Jaguar when I decided to get out of the hot tub. But I digress. I've heard people compare our debt to that of Greece. Greece really does have a debt crisis, in that they pay high interest due to poor credit and a staggering debt burden, and that they can no longer make all their payments. That is a crisis. (Believe me, I had some problems a few years back, I can tell the difference!) Our debt is nowhere near as crushing a burden as Greece, and our interest payments are laughably small compared to the size of our budget. That doesn't mean we should go overboard, but so far we are mostly responsible consumers of credit.

     

     The bigger crisis here, and the one which is not only being ignored but worsened, is the economy. One would think, with all the hoopla surrounding the federal deficit, that the economy had fully recovered and unemployment had returned to pre-recession lows. Well, yes and no. Stock prices and large corporate profits have rebounded to, and frequently exceeded, pre-recession levels. Unemployment however remains high, which one would think effectively repudiates the myth that more money at the top trickles down through the whole income spectrum. At any rate, all economic theories state that to help an economy one has to put money in, and that taking money out will hurt it. Allow me to restate. Taking money out of the economy will slow growth and raise unemployment, every single time. In fact, the recession was caused by the removal of wealth from just one sector, real estate. Home values crashed after a wave of foreclosures on fraudulent mortgages, home construction stalled, contractors lost jobs and stopped spending money, tax receipts caused local government cutbacks, teachers and cops got laid off, they stopped spending money so retailers were hurt, and so on. So how do we expect a massive decrease in government spending will affect the economy? I was listening to the news today and I heard that the FAA budget didn't get approved on July 23^rd. They laid off 4000 people, they stopped construction on a flight control tower (I think in Washington state, although I don't recall for sure,) and the ripple effect will probably lead to an additional 10,000 fewer jobs nationwide. One department, one budget. This will get ugly.

     So the Republicans won by focusing the media on the largely manufactured “debt crisis.” Then who lost? Well, for starters everyone who still waits in the unemployment line lost. The long term unemployed, who have started seeing “must be currently employed” in classifieds pretty regularly, will not get any more unemployment extensions. So in all likelihood they will be homeless, or in shelters and on welfare, very soon. The myth that there are plenty of religious organizations to pick up the slack probably makes people feel better about the very un-Christian act of denying food and shelter to the poor, as does the constant barrage of examples of system abuse, though that's uncommon. So who else lost? Well, massive budget cuts will mean government layoffs, so individual departments will start finding people to fire, government contractors will be unlikely to get their contracts extended, government suppliers will sell fewer supplies, so they will be putting middle class workers out of work as well. So anyone looking for a better job should redouble their efforts before they start competing with literally thousands of workers with years of government service and experience under their collective belts. For that matter, we can assume “cuts to entitlements” will mean “cuts to things Republicans hate” and not “cuts to checks to petroleum and corn conglomerates,” so the social safety net in all its guises is in the crosshairs, as is arts funding, education and the list goes on. But hey, at least Donald Trump gets to keep his low taxes.

Thanks for reading, sorry I was gone for so long.

Congressional Budget Office report detailing America's debt structure. http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/120xx/doc12039/01-26_FY2011Outlook.pdf

Yes, it's a lot, but not a record level. Interest on the debt is at lower levels than during the 1980s.

AP Global Economy tracker; world's largest 22 economies, 80% of world economy

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=13252620&page=2

We have the 3^rd highest unemployment, we pay the lowest federal debt interest. Which is a crisis?

Greece debt is 150% of GDP, interest is 15%

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/23/greece-economy-bailout_n_852922.html

Sorry, I know Huffpo is biased, it's from an AP story. It was easy to Google.

Bin Laden is a right wing extremist. So was Hitler.

OK, that's an oversimplification, and could be rightly considered hyperbole. But it's more accurate than claiming them as leftists, for the most part. Let's examine the evidence.

NRA. The Republicans really seem to like guns, and national defense seems to be their largest spending priority for the federal government. We know that Bin Laden and Hitler also really like(d) guns and a strong military. (We have to consider Al Qaeda's terrorist cells as the closest that Bin Laden can get to his own army for this analogy.) It's not really a priority for the left wing in modern America. We don't want to disarm the country, but some registration and regulation seems reasonable. Not a hot button for us though.

Religion. We all know that Bin Laden claims the mantle of religious leader for the dominant religion in his area. Hitler was fond of comparing himself to Jesus. Glenn Beck claims to talk to God, and every Republican candidate for years not only makes a point of mentioning their faith, but they imply (not very subtly) that anyone who doesn't vote for them isn't a good Christian. (I actually got to rebuff such an argument a while back with Jesus' story of the Good Samaritan, which I had heard in church 3 days prior to being told that liberals hate Jesus.) Now, Republicans aren't the only good Christians any more than Bin Laden is a good Muslim, but they all advertise themselves as such. Republicans work to hide, with varying degrees of success, an anti-Muslim bias, whereas the others hate(d) Jews. (I got some truly appalling e-mails during the Presidential campaign. Clear racism, even before you get the "Obama's a muslim" lie in there.) Liberals? Pluralism is a good thing, believe what you want and worship your way. Here's what I believe, learn from it if you are interested.

Civil liberties. Religion gets introduced into textbooks despite hard scientific evidence to the contrary. Laws get passed in the name of public safety or national defense that allow the government to take an increasingly intrusive role into peoples' privacy. This is true whether Texas teaches Creationism or Afghanistan teaches only the Quran. Whether Bush puts warrantless wire tapping in the Patriot Act or Hitler has the Gestapo watch the populace. The degree is completely dissimilar, as is the level of evil. But there are similarities. (There are also similarities between a bicycle and a Harley, please don't think I'm calling Republicans vessels of pure evil.)

It's too easy to mention at this point that Hitler had all the liberals, socialists, and communists killed. For that matter, intellectuals. They were also killed in Afghanistan.

Economic policy. Here's where it gets sticky. Bin Laden's economic policy is up for question, but the Taliban had a pretty hands off policy. They even let business people make heroine! That's laissez-faire at its finest. Hitler? Actually, Hitler's economic policy was largely left leaning. Also, it worked. Now, he went way too far in the end. But he took over a country that was almost bankrupt after WWII, that had printed so much money that people literally wallpapered with it, and 10 years later he was taking over Europe. So although he was a bad guy, he was initially very popular with Germans because his left wing economic policies brought back prosperity and almost eliminated unemployment.

My apologies for having called him a right wing extremist. Only his bad parts were right wing.

Also, before I'm accused of horrible things, I don't think all conservatives are evil. Most of them I just disagree with, politely, and occasionally enjoy a spirited debate with. Some are evil, but so are some on the left.

Thanks for reading. Now go get into a political debate!

What I believe, and why.

What I believe, and why.

I think it's important to know not only what you believe, but also why. You should be able to defend your viewpoints with facts and logic, and if proven wrong you should be able to change your points of view, even if it means changing sides on an issue you feel strongly about. To that end, here are my views on a variety of things. You'll find that yes, I am generally speaking a progressive, liberal type. Here's why.

The deficit- Big scary number. It certainly is. Is it manageable? Yes, for a little while. We're paying our debt, we have good credit. As long as we raise the debt ceiling and prevent a serious monetary disaster we have some time to get it under control. What the government lacks in that regard is income. We can cut some programs, but Texas has recently proven that after you cut all the programs you can still run out of money. OK, they haven't cut all the programs. Police, firefighters and teachers are only cut back, significantly. But that's ok, cutting teachers won't lead to more uneducated people becoming criminals, which is good because there aren't enough cops any more if they did.

The deficit is Bush's fault. There, I said it. He said “we have a surplus, let's give everybody a tax cut.” That sounds nice. Quietly, he added “especially if you're rich. You get a big one.” Now, I didn't make enough money to notice my tax cuts. (Woohoo! I saved $40 this year, thanks George!) But if you cut teachers in my kids' school, that I'm going to notice. Or policemen on my block. I want my family to be able to walk around safely at night, you know? And then 2 wars? Come on, ok, give back the tax cuts. Seriously, you were already being taxed at the lowest rates in decades, it won't hurt. We can't afford it any more! Ok, well how about just the really rich people? I'm still upset that Obama rolled over on this one.

Uncle Sam ran its credit cards up a ways. We're still paying on time, but man a raise would help. That would be taxes. The Bush tax cuts created more debt than even the horrifying and cruel Ryan budget would cut. What, Ryan has tax cuts for the rich in his plan too? Good thing the middle class and poor don't mind suffering the burden of paying for government on their own.

The government has responsibilities. National defense. (That could theoretically end at our borders, but that can be another discussion.) Police. Firefighters. Public schools. Regulations to ensure that governments and corporations are not permitted to commit atrocities against humanity, in the name of governance or profit. Meat inspectors aren't in the Constitution, but I'm glad to have them. The government has to pay for all this stuff, and it does so through taxes. Let's all just agree to complain for a few days in April, and then do our fair share. Because I can't afford to hire my own police force.

I wonder how many billions could be saved in law enforcement and generated in taxes if we legalized pot. The end of Prohibition was one of the government's budgetary strategies that worked hugely. Just a pragmatic thought. And no, I have no interest in smoking it myself.

Economic policy- The conservative movement is constantly telling us that business creates jobs, and creating the most advantageous business environment possible is the quickest way to create jobs. There is a degree of truth to that, until it becomes more profitable to eliminate jobs. American employers have no loyalty to their employees whatsoever. If it is cheaper to find unskilled labor in China or skilled labor in India they will do so. No amount of lower taxes will change that, not that many corporations pay significant taxes anyway. (Case in point, GE this year paid $0 in taxes on billions in American profits. If I need to cite my source you need to read a newspaper.)

Lower taxes, it should be mentioned, do generate a little bit of economic activity. Any time the government puts money into the economy it does. Lower taxes allows the wealthy to buy an extra Mercedes or plot of investment land. And to save more, or invest in gold, which does NOT generate economic activity. Spending money on infrastructure or cops or teachers generates economic activity far more effectively, because cops, teachers and construction workers can't afford to save as much, thereby putting a higher percentage of those dollars into the active economy.

So if lower taxes are not the sole answer Republicans turn to deregulation. They say that corporations will police themselves, despite centuries of history proving that corporations will treat anyone horribly if there's a profit in it. (Child labor, slavery, Standard Oil's monopoly, the “company store,” the sale of cheap booze as medicines, exploding Ford Pintos. Feel free to add to the list.) Deregulation of the banking industry caused the stock market crash in 1929, the S&L crisis in the 80s, and repeal of Reagan's new regulations led to the Bush depression a few years ago. (Those are just the instances I can remember off the top of my head.) A lack of government oversight allowed Bernie Madoff to become the most successful con artist of all time, and dozens of banks to write fraudulent mortgages. Too much deregulation is a bad thing.

I believe that the government has to invest in the future. If we want to compete globally, we have to invest, heavily, in education. I want my kids to have a good future, and I'm not sure an underfunded public school can do that great a job. My little girl is in a kindergarten class of almost 20 kids, and I have no idea how her teacher keeps up. It looks like herding cats in there some days! Smaller class sizes would help, but it's not in the budget. Research in pure sciences used to be funded hugely by the government, but that's being cut again. Patents on computers and manufacturing tech were funded by the USA and we turned that into a huge economic advantage. We don't do that any more. Children who go to college become adults who make more, contributing more to the economy and paying enough in taxes to pay for the education. (See the US after WWII, when all those GIs got the Montgomery GI Bill.)

And yes dammit, the government needs to invest heavily in the next big American industry. It won't be cars, we've done that, well, and now the Japanese and Koreans and Europeans do it comparably well, if not better. High tech is good, we do that well and it's harder to outsource those highly skilled jobs, but India is catching up, and Japan and Korea? Maybe clean power startups can do it. (It would also help decrease our dependence on foreign oil.) Small business startups, sounds like a Republican dream, but I don't think they're sincere about that.

Education policy- Conservative thinking lately has been that underperforming schools should be punished. If their test scores suck, take away federal funding. This resembles a schoolyard bully stealing lunch money from poor kids and then making fun of their clothes. Invariably the at risk schools are in economically depressed areas. The kids who attend these schools are disproportionately poor, have only one parent at home, don't get adequate nutrition, and just don't stand a chance against the big wide world. They are probably just being coddled by overfunded schools though, let's have tests and punitive measures for schools that don't fix it.

If there's anything we should invest in, it's our kids. If we don't, America will not be a superpower for long.

Religion (and yes, abortion)- I'm pretty sure Jesus would have been a liberal. I don't necessarily think he would have been pro choice, but I think on most other issues he would have been a serious tree hugging liberal. He spent his whole life in the company, and service, of the dregs of society! “It is harder for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle than for a rich man to get into heaven.” Oh, he was very big business! “Blessed are the poor.” Let's end welfare!

He gave up all his worldly possessions and shared everything he had with the people who followed him. Early Christian communities had serious communist tendencies. It should be noted that I am most certainly not a Marxist, nor do I think Communism would ever work no matter how effectively it was instituted. People need incentive for doing a good job. If everything is communally owned, people get lazy. Also, we like owning stuff. I do anyway! I'm just pointing out that Jesus led a very un-Republican lifestyle.

Regarding abortion by the way, I think it's an abominable form of birth control. However, it's perfectly understandable in some circumstances, rape, incest and threat to mother's life for instance. Also, the pragmatist in me knows that in countries where abortions are illegal, they get done illegally, and usually at far greater risk of death to the mother.

Gun control- I'm in the Army, and have enjoyed a gun or two. So under no circumstances would I support a law that outlawed firearms. However, you don't need an AK-47 assault rifle for hunting or self defense. Nor an M16, nor anything on full auto. You should also be required to register your firearms, just like your far less deadly car. That way if it's ever used in a crime, they can link the weapon to the police report you filed when it was stolen, and boom. Extra evidence to use in tracking the criminal. You support law enforcement, right?

Oh, and if the shadow government that's constantly watching you is why you need a room full of ammunition, allow me to burst your "crazy bubble." That's the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and they're watching you because you're breaking the damn law. If you were just a schoolteacher they would leave you alone. (Also, you wouldn't be able to afford so many weapons, we don't pay teachers very well. But that's off subject.)

So go hunting, go to the range, hell, shoot some crap in the yard if you live outside the city limits and have a large piece of land. Do so safely of course. Just stop being crazy.

National defense- We need it. There. Strong defense is important. The strongest in the world? Sure, we can do that. The most powerful the world has ever seen? Ok. Done. The world's cop? Um, hold on. A strong presence worldwide, including permanent bases in Germany, Japan, Italy, Korea, and Turkey? No, we don't really need that, do we? I mean, we deployed people to Iraq from mainland USA, even before we deployed 1ID from Germany. We certainly need allies in all regions of the world, and cooperative agreements so we can use their air fields in case we get in a scuffle with Libya. But, and I'm a guy who LOVED being stationed in Germany, we don't need permanent bases in every country we've ever visited. Really, we have the biggest Air Force and Navy in the world. We can get where we're going. Let's save billions annually. We can apply it to the deficit.

Immigration- OK, so there's a country directly south of us that is poor. Got it. We could build a wall. Surely none of them know how to dig! We could increase border patrols, but let's be honest. It's a lot of border, we can't pay for that. Not really. We could make it harder for them to get jobs here in the US! Maybe that would work!

How would we do this? It's already illegal to hire illegals. Hmmm, maybe we could enforce those laws! Strictly! If you fine a business $10,000 per illegal worker, I suspect they will get very serious about checking those documents. If they have them, and they're not obvious fakes, business owners are covered. If not? They broke the law, make them pay. Heavily.

Oh, and since agriculture will die off without migrant workers from Mexico, let's streamline the process for getting work visas. Industry needs a legal way to hire enough workers, and generally speaking Americans really won't do those jobs. There was even a takeourjobs.com website a year or two ago inviting Americans to do the job of a migrant worker. When the union president was on the Colbert Report he said 3 people had inquired.

I guess when it comes down to it I like practical solutions. I'm not too concerned about idealism, except I'm uncomfortable with any society that can abandon its most disadvantaged. I want a country that will invest in practical long term solutions, and I'm not too greedy to pay a few extra dollars on April 15. Although I do think that if you don't have a legitimate financial care in the world you can probably afford to pay a higher percentage of your income than I can. I also feel that this rant has gone on quite long enough.

These are all my opinions. If you really are curious about why I feel something, or want some source references about something in particular, mention it in the comments and I can dig something up for you.

Thanks for reading.

Shutdown averted. But.

So the government shutdown didn't happen. As a guy who's still getting paid, I'm kind of glad I was wrong on that one. As a guy who spends a lot of time researching economic facts, and politics, I'm a little less than thrilled. Allow me to explain.

The Republicans won the House back in last year's midterm elections based on a few things. They promised jobs, they promised tax cuts, and they promised to cut spending in Washington. Two of the three I think they actually even planned to do. Fox News started the Tea Party as a means of rallying the populace to the cause, and Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity praised the Tea Partiers and their patriotic goals every night on TV. I remember watching it on Fox News in the chow hall on my base in Iraq. So some new Congressmen and women march into Washington with a clear objective. The Tea Party, meanwhile, is excited to a fanaticism that America hasn't recently seen in politics, which gets sticky. The Republicans had already instituted a “don't compromise or work with the Democrats ever” policy, but with the Tea Party going they would now be unable to compromise at all, even when they wanted to. Which, let's be honest, is now necessary if government is to happen.

President Obama, usually an intelligent man, didn't seem to notice that. So the Democrat proposal was a pre-emptive compromise. They want $61 billion in cuts, let's offer about half that. That's the best we can do. This is a strategy that sometimes works while buying a car, because you don't have to buy the car. You can walk away. But there has to be a budget, and by starting out with a compromise the Democrats gave away all the power. Again. Do you remember the roundtable health care reform discussions? My favorite was the time that John McCain made a point, and while waiting for Obama to reply he got his angry retort ready. He already had his angry face on as the President said “good point John, we should fix that.” That was one confused looking Senator. But why did we have the attempt at compromise? Nobody crossed the aisle. Republicans who do are vilified by Fox and lose their next primary, and they know it.

Instead of starting off with a compromise figure, the Democrats needed to take the lead and try for once this century to control the tone of the debate. I would have loved to see President Obama on TV telling people that John Boehner wanted to eliminate jobs and destabilize the economy. That Eric Cantor was tired of unemployment dropping to levels that we haven't seen since the economy crashed under Bush. Explaining that while he understood the suffering of the long term unemployed, the Tea Party wanted to make sure rich people got tax cuts, so we might have to cut back on things like infrastructure projects that create jobs. We might have to fire some teachers, and Border Patrol agents, and meat inspectors. We don't want our meat inspected anyway, who ever hears of food poisoning these days? That's the debate I should have seen, and I feel robbed. Because all I heard about was the deficit, which is the bogeyman this year. Everybody needs a bogeyman, Bush used terrorists to great political advantage, this year it's the deficit.

Is the deficit a problem? Sure, has been since Nixon removed us from the gold standard, Reagan tripled the deficit, and GWB handed Obama the largest one ever. But being in the military has taught me some things, and one of those is that tactically, you worry about the thing that will kill you now before the thing that might kill you in a minute or ten. So is the deficit an IED a few hundred meters in front of our economic Humvee? No. It is an IED on the road. Just not this road, and we can still turn before we hit it. But there's an IED right there in front of us, daisy chained to the one that hit us three years ago. (Daisy chaining is a tactic wherein insurgents place several IEDs in a row in order to catch more than one vehicle, or catch vehicles not hit in the initial blast.) This IED is known as unemployment, and it's still big.

Are our unemployed still having a hard time finding work? Yes, although corporate America has returned to record profitability. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that unemployment is “little changed” at 8.8%. Output in the last quarter of 2010 is up 4%, 5.9% in manufacturing, while labor cost decreased 0.6% and 2.7% respectively. Yet by the July-September quarter of 2010 corporate profits were 12% higher than before the recession. (http://www.telegram.com/article/20110410/NEWS/104109883/-1/NEWS04) It seems that while the recession was in full force our workers got more efficient, or maybe they just started working more hours for less pay. Either way our economy started producing at or above pre-recession levels without the commensurate hiring orgy that would seem to naturally accompany such success. It seems those profits haven't trickled down enough yet to result in hiring. So what do we think will happen when the government pulls $38 billion out of the economy? $38 billion is 760,000 $50,000 a year jobs. (I know it's not that simple, some of the money would have bought office supplies, some would have been spent repeatedly, thereby skewing the figures. Bear with me.) Of course, that budget only applies to the next 6 months, so double either number. Unemployment is about to go back up. Remember to thank your Congressman in November of next year. Alas, they will find a way to blame Obama. I just wonder what buzz words Fox News will introduce to the debate.

Thanks for reading.

Why there will be a shutdown.

“So be it.” Why the government will shut down.

With these words John Boehner summed up his attitude toward what his budget plan will do to the economy. On 15 February he was asked about the jobs that his budget would eliminate, and he responded with “If some of those jobs are lost so be it. We're broke.” He stated that the federal government had added 200,000 jobs, and it those to which he was allegedly referring. He was wrong, the government had increased civilian employees by 58,000. (This was in part due to layoffs at the Post Office, the new hires were 140,800 without Post Office layoffs, still well short of 200,000.) So maybe he's just willing to eliminate 58,000 jobs. (Facts from PolitiFact, using figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.) With unemployment so low, our economy can absorb that loss easily, right?

Ah, but here's the rub. $61 billion divided by 200,000 jobs would mean each worker earns $305,000 a year. (Calculator, iPad.) So even his initial incorrect figure must be wrong, how many jobs will this actually cost? According to Dana Milbank at the Washington Post, a lot. Her words, which I found on Daily Kos. “I checked with budget expert Scott Lilly of the Center for American Progress, and, using the usual multipliers, he calculated that the cuts - a net of $59 billion in the last half of fiscal 2011 - would lead to the loss of 650,000 government jobs, and the indirect loss of 325,000 more jobs as fewer government workers travel and buy things. That's nearly 1 million jobs - possibly enough to tip the economy back into recession.”

So Boehner doesn't care at all about your job, or the economy. None. He can look up these figures as easily as I can. Bear in mind that he's really passionate about huge tax cuts for the wealthy. We have to remember that as we consider his priorities and our own. If you're reading this and happen to be a doctor or lawyer, by the way, remember that unless you make over $250,000 you got a tax cut under Obama, and even if you make more than that the first $250,000 you make is taxed less heavily than under Bush. When I say rich I mean rich, not upper middle class or comfortable.

President Obama, in keeping with what he always does, has been trying to extend the olive branch of compromise. He should realize by now that it doesn't work. They want $60 billion in cuts, he offers $30 billion in hard cuts, they say no. They want all or nothing. No negotiating will help. The Democrats in the last decade almost always give up and roll over, so Boehner expects to win the showdown. He can't wait to cut federal jobs, but in order to cut that much money he'll have to cut programs too. What kinds of programs? Paul Ryan has been saying that no program will remain untouched, so the Department of Education, National Park Service, EPA, law enforcement, the Interstate highway system, food stamps, education loans, and anything else you can think of that the government does to help its citizenry will be cut. And that's just a start.

Paul Ryan has already presented a budget proposal for next year. Maybe you've read about it in Time or the New York Times, or on the Huffington Post where it's been vilified as a horrible idea. The gist of the idea is this. Mr. Ryan wants to cut trillions of dollars from the budget. Trillions. His plan seeks to do this in several ways. First, by limiting Medicaid and Medicare payments. In the future. He looked at a way to save billions, and made it effective only for people currently under 55 years old, so the AARP doesn't riot in the streets. (From Fareed Zakaria's Time article on the Ryan budget, except for the AARP editorial comment.) But do you really believe a 55 year old man will pay taxes to prop up Medicare and then not riot in the streets when Paul Ryan hands him a voucher and tells him to go buy some private insurance? The voucher will either increase costs to the government or to the retiree. Probably the retiree, and probably to a degree that will financially cripple the retiree.

Another way he predicts the deficit balance is by predicting that his bold tax policies will lead to 4% unemployment, for the first time in well over half a century. Some of Europe's more conservative countries recently enacted austerity measures that resemble the Tea Party proposals. In Britain, austerity measures were predicted to increase confidence, leading to consumer spending, hiring, and an economic golden era. But, their economy stalled and government deficits are going up. Ireland had accumulated unsustainable debt trying to bail out banks, which sounds familiar. So they imposed massive budget cuts. The following quote, and much of this information, comes from the Paul Krugman article referenced here. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/25/opinion/25krugman.html?_r=2&smid=fb-nytimes&WT.mc_id=OP-SM-E-FB-SM-LIN-AD-032511-NYT-NA&WT.mc_ev=click

“Ireland offers an admirable lesson in fiscal responsibility,” declared Alan Reynolds of the Cato Institute, who said that the spending cuts had removed fears over Irish solvency and predicted rapid economic recovery.

So how did that work out for Ireland? Simple. Their interest rate has doubled, and their unemployment stands at 13.5%. And Boehner wants to follow that lead.

So that's why the Republican budget is bad enough for Democrats to grow some backbone and say no. Well, to some degree, they're still giving in to $30 billion. I really don't want a shutdown, I need to feed my family. And if there's no government to pay me, they can't very well go get food stamps either. But this extremist budget plan needs to be stopped. I'll have to skip this month's car payment for sure, and credit card too. We do what we can. So be it.

Thanks for reading.

Buzz words, or why Obama can't possibly be a Nazi.

Buzz words.

Socialist. Nazi. Obamacare. The Republican propaganda machine has done a remarkable job of framing the public discourse. Liberal is not a bad word, yet it's pronounced as an insult by every talking head on Fox, regularly. They're taking an idea, boiling it down to a scary phrase, and using it to influence how people feel, rather than think. Because if people thought they would be less likely to just accept Fox at their word.

OK, we've all heard Glenn Beck call Obama a Nazi, or a Socialist. Jon Stewart likened it to a form of Tourette's syndrome wherein poor Glenn just couldn't help but shout Nazi every few seconds. No, it's just propaganda and lies. Here are some definitions from dictionary.com.

so·cial·ism   [soh-shuh-liz-uhm] –noun

1. a theory or system of social organization  that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole.

2. procedure or practice in accordance with this theory.

3. (in Marxist theory) the stage following capitalism in the transition of a society to communism, characterized by the imperfect implementation of collectivist principles.

Is health care reform Socialism? Are the ownership and control of the means of production owned by the community as a whole, or by the government specifically? No, private insurers continue to fleece the public and for-profit hospitals continue to charge exorbitant fees for Tylenol. Was GM a Socialist government takeover? No, the government stepped in and purchased a controlling interest in the company, and then sold the stock in an IPO once bankruptcy was averted. Just like private industry does all the time, except the government had to step in because nobody else who could, would.

com·mu·nism   [kom-yuh-niz-uhm] –noun

1. a theory or system of social organization based on the holding of all property in common, actual ownership being ascribed to the community as a whole or to the state.

2. ( often initial capital letter ) a system of social organization in which all economic and social activity is controlled by a totalitarian state dominated by a single and self-perpetuating political party.

3. ( initial capital letter ) the principles and practices of the Communist party.

Just had to get that one out of the way. We can see that Communism was a derivative of Socialism, probably more extreme and even less justifiable a buzz word than Socialism, although only just. I haven't heard this one as often, by a stretch, but when it pops up it's nice to be aware of the great scare from several decades ago.

Regarding the Nazi analogy, as farcical as it is, I should probably debunk it. From www.nazism.net.

Key elements of the Nazi ideology

National Socialist Program

Racism

Especially anti-Semitism, which eventually culminated in the Holocaust.

The creation of a Herrenrasse (Master Race= by the Lebensborn (Fountain of Life; A department in the Third Reich)

Anti-Slavism

Belief in the superiority of the White, Germanic, Aryan or Nordic races.

Euthanasia and Eugenics with respect to "Racial Hygiene"

Anti-Marxism, Anti-Communism, Anti-Bolshevism

The rejection of democracy, with as a consequence the ending the existence of political parties, labour unions, and free press.

Führerprinzip (Leader Principle) /belief in the leader (Responsibility up the ranks, and authority down the ranks.)

Strong show of local culture.

Social Darwinism

Defense of Blood and Soil (German: "Blut und Boden" - represented by the red and black colors in the Nazi flag)

"Lebensraumpolitik", "Lebensraum im Osten" (The creation of more living space for Germans)

Related to Fascism

In practice, Nazis were far right extremists who exterminated opposition from the left, not just the socialist and communist parties that existed within Germany at the time but also people they considered “liberal elites” and “intellectuals.” For a fascinating insight, the book Defying Hitler by Sebastian Haffner is a fascinating and terrifying insight into Hitler's persecution of intellectualism and liberalism. http://www.amazon.com/Defying-Hitler-Memoir-Sebastian-Haffner/dp/0312421133/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1302104997&sr=8-1 And if you replace the phrase öst-Juden with Muslim, you can see remarkable parallels with current Republican schools of thought.

So what's my point? Reasonable, rational people never believed that Obama was a Nazi, right? One would hope not, but where are Glenn Beck's viewers coming from? We've all seen the Tea Party signs of Obama with a Hitler stache right? It's fear-mongering and lies and propaganda and it needs to stop. No Democrat votes in a way that would please a real Nazi, they vote Republican, like the Klan. (Remember David Duke? What, too honest?) So when you hear people using buzz words instead of thinking, call them on it. If they use a phrase that rhymes or they sneer when saying “Obamacare,” remind them that catch phrases are for people who don't really understand the issues, and the health care reform bill that passed was largely based on Republican legislation from the Clinton era. Then call them Nazis, just for good measure. Playfully, don't get into a fight.

Thanks for reading.

*Anything not specifically cited as being from another source comes either from my brain or the news I read and listen to daily, specifically NPR, CNN, The New York Times, Foreign Policy, The Economist, and yes even the admittedly biased Huffington Post. I watched some Bill O'Reilly last week too, but that wasn't pertinent to this posting.

The budget crisis.

The budget crisis.

Paul Ryan has figured out how to solve the budget crisis. He figured it out and sent it up, and it's not acceptable to the other party and he knows and doesn't care. He has decided to go ahead and make the hard decisions that will force America to balance her books, and then blame Obama for disagreeing with some of those hard decisions. Ok, that's why the Tea Party gained some power. (Would it be rude to remind people that they only gained some power, and were solidly defeated in many elections?) So I can sympathize with Mr. Ryan, and Eric Cantor, who believe that it is their job to fix the deficit. They even know how to do it, by gutting the programs that Democrats like.

They could save billions by pulling the military out of Europe or Japan. We just represent symbolic partnerships there. The initial invasion of Iraq had the 3rd Infantry Division from Georgia while leaving the 1st back in Germany; we don't need military might all over the world. We could legalize, and tax the hell out of, the milder recreational narcotics. I say this as a man who never had any interest in even trying a joint during college, although I certainly had friends who did. I say this as a pragmatist who would rather see pot become an economic asset than remain a drain on government resources in both law enforcement and incarceration. We could place protective tariffs on imports, although I realize that's a double edged sword. Or we could drastically cut benefits in Medicaid, future benefits in Medicare, and save literally dozens of dollars by eliminating NPR. (Ok, the NPR budget is more than dozens of dollars. But as a percentage of the budget there are a lot of zeroes after the decimal point and before an actual number. The percentage of my meager enlisted pay that it represents would be, let me get my calculator, well over two cents.)

Ok, so what's the danger? What is my biggest fear, don't I want a balanced budget? Wouldn't I like to see the federal debt reduced? Of course I would. In the long term I demand it. How would we do this? Well, austerity measures like Paul Ryan proposes have already been introduced in Europe's more conservative countries, as well as states like Texas. Should we check on them? Britain tackled its deficit issues as soon as their stimulus programs had worked, and fixed the economy. Their fragile economic recovery was greatly helped by the elimination of public sector jobs and the removal of millions of dollars of government spending in the economy. I'm sorry, that doesn't sound logical. Oh, I meant the economic recovery stalled and things like unemployment are back up. My mistake, I'll try not to repeat it with stateside conservative economic miracle, Texas. After years of very, very Republican leadership Texas had cut its government down to as small as possible, and dropped taxes to the lowest levels imaginable. Good job Texas, you must be plugging along smoothly! Oh, last month Texas had to fire a bunch of cops and teachers, and raid its rainy day fund, in order to prevent bankruptcy. Oh, and by prevent I mean "delay until August." I'm sure they'll figure something out.

Ok, so austerity measures are a likely, nothing is ever certain, but likely way to head to the double dip recession. (Incidentally the same thing happened when Republicans took over Congress in the late 30s. That was the end of the New Deal, and also the end of unprecedented economic growth. Wikipedia!) So how, then, should we balance the budget? Well, some things are simple. Legalizing pot really would help, just like the repeal of prohibition helped end the Great Depression. Yes, really, read some history! I sincerely loved being stationed in Germany, but we don't need any permanent bases there. The Cold War is over folks. The same applies to Japan, although I hesitate to include Korea. I'm pragmatic. But how else? These are good ideas, but what about long term ideas? Ok, here's where things get a little dicey.

End farm subsidies, especially for ethanol. Ethanol takes almost as much energy to make from corn as it produces, and once it gets to the pump it loses out to gas. And why are we subsidizing farmers? They enjoy a higher median income and standard of living than the rest of America, why are taxpayers adding to it?

Get rid of the middle man and have the government make college student loans directly. Why assume all of the risk and none of the profit? Why let student lenders make millions in risk free profit? That leads me to education.

Ok hear me out. We need to spend some money, quite a bit, for maybe five to ten years before we see it pay back. Think about it like an IRA, you never see that money until years down the road, but then you'll be glad you have it. Education for the masses. Serious investment in education at all levels is what propelled America to become the world's pre-eminent power in every way. The GI bill after WWII created an enormous body of college educated taxpayers. People with college educations tend to make significantly more money, and pay more taxes. (This last part might not be true in Texas.) Investment is the name of the game here.

If we worry about a debt crisis that will overwhelm us in 20 years, then let's take some baby steps now toward slowing that problem, by educating a work force that will earn enough to end the problem. The middle class is currently squeezed, hard, when it comes time to send kids to college. I'm pretty solidly in that bracket, and with 13 and 16 years respectively to save enough for my kids' tuition, I can say with all certainty that it won't happen. No chance. My kids will, however, go to college on my post 9/11 GI Bill. Another military benefit. But if you aren't military, and you are in my tax bracket, you earn too much to get your kids a Pell Grant, but not nearly enough to pay for school. If the government issues student loans at ridiculously low rates, if it invests heavily in affordable public universities and tech schools, if it makes it possible for kids with not enough money to make a decent living at a skilled job, it will reap the benefits in markedly higher tax revenues for decades to come. Oh, and it might help to reduce poverty and racial inequality, if you're into that sort of thing.

Thanks for reading.