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QOTD

by: Dean Barker

Sun Jun 06, 2010 at 21:16:43 PM EDT
Social Security Reform is to deficit reduction what Saddam Hussein was to 9-11.
- Arnie Arnesen.

(me, I'm getting increasingly worried that Very Serious People, even some on our side, are going to start arguing for a reduction in benefits and/or raising of the retirement age as being somehow good for the 99% of Americans who are not wealthy.)
Dean Barker :: QOTD
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QOTD | 5 comments
well d'oh (0.00 / 0)
we can't very well cut the defense budget, or force the Pentagon to pass an audit, or stop our efforts toward global military imperialism.  

sanctimonious purist/professional lefty
Pay-as-you-go was a Clinton and now an Obama rule (4.00 / 1)
Reagan and Bush talked a big game on fiscal responsibility, but heaven forbid they ask their generation to pay for its own wars.

--
Hope 2012

@DougLindner

and Obama (4.00 / 1)
has increased the defense budget, while talking about making cuts in other places.  

sanctimonious purist/professional lefty
[ Parent ]
Reading Shock Doctrine: Rise of Disaster Capitalism right now (4.00 / 1)
And it's pretty amazing how predictable this is.

But the idea here is when people are reeling from the shock of double digit employment, tell them that this is just the start if they don't dismantle social programs now.

Ideally the republicans and blue dogs can work together to get unemployment up around 15% which will let them talk about how it is our long term insolvency keeping the economy down.


There's a war on between the people and those who want to (0.00 / 0)
rule them. For a good long while, the disasters that were universal suffrage, freedom of information and paper currency were avoided because it turned out that paper money was even easier to control, and more easily secured, than gold.  Moreover, monetizing all transactions and trade and declaring some exchanges downright illegal, made it possible to maintain a regimen of deprivation, and fine-tune how people sustain themselves, almost unnoticed.  Money leaves no fingerprints and propagandists have no trouble turning reality into myths.  
Wishful thinking isn't necessarily what people wish to think; it can be what the myth-makers want people to think.

That said, there's more than one way to skin a cat and pay-go can cut both ways.  Moving the financing of higher education from the banks to the Department of Education and the Treasury to "save money" and get more bang for the buck is a good move.  Whether the financial sector gets the message that greed and sloth will be rewarded by loss is still to be seen.  They may be too dense or proud to get the message.
Also, what we should remember from Clinton and Bush is that the budget Congress approves and the money it allocates are irrelevant.  What counts is how much money is actually spent and for what.  Bush Two proved that the Congress has no recourse against an Executive who doesn't do what Congress has allowed.  Money can be moved around and is more fungible than men.  Congress could have passed a dozen AUMFs and they could have all gone un-used.  Clinton reduced the deficit but not the long-term debt by not spending what the Congress appropriated.  It was when the surplus revenue was about to be used to buy back the long-term debt that panic set in on Wall Street.  If Washington doesn't have to borrow, there goes Wall Street's risk-free income.

Since it's our money, "we the people" do have the power to control Wall Street.  We just have to use it.  But, like health insurance, taking on the distribution of money wholesale would be a gigantic enterprise and, if anything, TSA has proved that public corporations aren't necessarily more efficient than private ones, if they operate by the same disrespectful rules.

How do we get people who want to rule to be polite?

Did you know that FOIA did not go into effect in Britain until 2005?

QOTD | 5 comments

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