As predictably as the coming sunrise, a deal to increase the debt ceiling was reached; the only novelty being that this time the president dealt directly with the Evil Party instead of the traitorous members of his own party. (As an aside, while we decry Mitch McConnell for being spineless and the Stupid Party for being unable or unwilling to do anything they ran on doing, you have to credit Chuckie Schumer for being, perhaps, the most effective senator on the hill, simply for the amount of time he gets his way). As they've done before, the Treasury Department magically slowed the rate of debt increase by special means, the rest of us call that "lying", and then on last Friday the national debt suddenly and equally magically increased $318 Billion in One Freaking Day, so that now we're well over the $20 Trillion National Debt level.
Over a dozen years ago, Dick Cheney famously said, “Deficits don’t matter.” In the short term, that might be true. Seed corn wouldn't matter if you knew there'd never be another tomorrow. Hungry? Eat the seed corn. If there was no tomorrow, there'd be no reason not order a few extra desserts, no reason not to have a few more drinks, no reason not do just about anything. But there is a tomorrow. You need to plant the seed corn so you can eat next year. You might find the extra drinks lead to a hell of a hangover.
Since there is a tomorrow, the debt will matter. I can't tell you just when or just how it all comes crashing down, but it's fake. There is no real wealth backing it up, just phony money. It's the biggest pile of phony money in the history of the world, and it's going to make the biggest mess in the history of the world.
Best to find a place on the planet where you can be more self-sufficient and where the hoards from the inner city are unlikely to find you. Those few who do can fertilize the crops.
ReplyDeleteWe, the people who are part of this country, have only ourselves to blame. Social Security, Medicare, and the interest due on what we have already borrowed account for every tax dollar collected, plus a few hundred billion more each year. Just let a congressman talk about cutting Social Security and Medicare, and his career is measured in microseconds.
ReplyDelete"It's my money," the people cry, "I paid for that through payroll deduction." No, you didn't. Your payroll deduction has already been spent on other projects and giveaways. There is nothing left. The only difference between the US government and a drunken sailor is that the sailor stops spending when he runs out of money.
No, not exactly. When you say, "It's my money," the people cry, "I paid for that through payroll deduction." No, you didn't. Your payroll deduction has already been spent on other projects and giveaways. the problem is that not all of us voted for that. Many of us voted for years, over and over again, for people who promised to stop them doing that and it did us no good.
DeleteIf many of us had our way, the politicians would have fixed that ages ago. We've exhausted all the legal means we have as voters to get them to fix it.
We can't stop them from doing it, but if we don't pay those SS and medicare taxes, we go to jail. Not the politicians who cause the problems. We do.
So what do we do? What can we do? We've done everything we can do: try to elect representatives who will fix the mess, and it doesn't work. Now what?
In a nation with democratically elected representatives, we are all responsible for the bad decisions of the majority. We don't get to pick and choose, which is why "not my president" is stupid.
DeleteTheoretically, the founders insulated us from the folly of a strong national government, but that ended with the end of the civil war. THAT was the real issue behind the civil war- the Federal government was fighting to take over rule from the states, and used slavery as the excuse to grab power.
That power was expanded again and again over the next century
- the 16th Amendment gave it unlimited funding
- the 17th stole the states' powers and gave them to the Feds
- FDR took more powers for the Feds by threatening to rig the SCOTUS
and on, and on. We, as a nation of voters, are responsible for this mess, nothing is going to alter our course at this point. The nation is doomed- what I keep wondering is when will it end, what will replace it, or has it ended already? After all, we are in a police state that reads our emails, listens in to our homes, and monitors our entire lives. What else does it need to do?
Remember the four boxes of freedom: soapbox, ballotbox, jury box, and ammo box.
DeleteThe soapbox didn't work. We've still got the ballot box - 2018 could end up with Ryan and McConnell out. Followed by a full 2 years of Trump getting his agenda finally done.
But, if 2018 fails to bring a change, then its time for us to start nullifying trials where Americans stand up against the tax system. It worked for OJ the first time. It just takes one person on a jury to keep a guy out of jail.
tomfrompv
In a nation with democratically elected representatives, we are all responsible for the bad decisions of the majority.
DeleteHorsefeathers. If hundreds of millions of people vote dumbly, they are jointly and severally liable for their dumb choices, but I am not.
If ten military-age recent Muslim immigrants decide they want sex acts from one woman passing them on a sidewalk, did they outvote her and implement a new social contract? But somehow you think they did if the numbers are not 10 but 100 million. Psychology experiment. What's the minimum voter count it takes to make a government "legitimate" for you? Can you justify this number from first principles that weren't taught to you by a government employee?
You can call it illegitimate, but it has power as long as we grant it power- it is legitimate by the only metric that counts: power. Until and unless the people overthrow that government, through voting or by force, it has all of the legitimacy it needs.
DeleteFailing to act means that you are tacitly allowing that government to do what it is doing.
Might doesn't make Right, Might makes Results. I think you are arguing a superposition, a contradiction, a doublethink. An argument structured like a 14-square puzzle, where you move the fallacy around like analytical whack-a-mole.
DeleteHere are my predictions: The V-22 Osprey helicopter, the F-35 fighter plane, the Zumwalt ship, the Millennium Challenge wargame, SpaceX replacing NASA, the failure to predict the collapse of the Soviet Union, all these are the actual performance of the current US military. If it ever gets in a fight, including with rednecks with deer rifles, it will surrender immediately before it gets destroyed. Federal budgets will collapse inside the next four years due to medicare. Healthcare costs will be dumped on state budgets, which will then collapse. Government worker pensions will not be paid. Social security will not be paid. Welfare will not be paid. LEO will not be paid. LEO will abandon their posts to save their families. White collar government cheerleaders and paper-pushers will stand around frozen, unable to adapt.
Orwell says revolutions are the high end of the middle class splitting off and replacing the dysfunctional, no-longer-competitive upper class. Others define class as planning time horizon and future orientation, not material wealth. Invading the power vacuum of the collapsing government will be the home shop, computer, technological singularity, hackerspace tribe. Their cheap robots will turn the space around their houses into Grimm fairy tale enchanted forests which eat invaders. Not invited to the party will be the Muh Cornstitution tribe, which is not future-oriented. Just compare _Snow Crash_ and _Diamond Age_ to _World Made By Hand_. I do not expect a repeat of the US founding lawyers, a newly formed nobility which merely took the protection racket away from the British nobility, to operate it themselves. Main reason is that enchanted forest robots are better at defense than offense.
Freedom is created by forcibly refusing to obey bad laws, and nothing else. Freedom was made by the Deacons for Defense and Justice, not by JFK. Obeying bad laws in the USA is the same moral mistake as getting on the boxcars in Germany. The Nazis implemented their trail of tears in fewer, bigger steps than most governments, but it still sold in their mainstream media. In the USA, the implementation is denial of fossil fuels, retirement savings and healthcare. Britain is now denying surgeries to smokers and the overweight.
ReplyDeletePopulation bomb, peak oil, AGW, government retirement savings plans, government single payer healthcare, these are all substantially fake. Government is just another religious sect competing for mindshare with the kings in Rome, Mecca, etc.
What you have to do is give up your faith in the religion of government. Stop supplying their intelligence and their logistics. Take the license tags off your cars and stop paying taxes. Nothing will happen, just like attempted gun registration in Connecticut in 2014. Simple, right? Very simple except for the human brain computer virus the government schools have installed in your brains. That computer virus, transmitted by culture, is the actual systempunkt.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systempunkt
A systempunkt is a point in such a system vulnerable to disruption by many small interactions, such that a swarm of disruptions and attacks will cascade through the system and collapse it, possibly resulting in financial loss, supply shortages, or destabilization.
Or, freedom. Funny how that isn't listed on the wikipedia page.
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DeleteI have too much to lose. My house, my freedom, all that I have worked for. My family depends on me. Do what you are advocating, and they will destroy you and leave your family destitute.
ReplyDeleteI have too much to lose. My house, my freedom, all that I have worked for.
DeleteMuch of your freedom is already lost, it's a sunk cost. You don't own (control) your house even if the mortgage is paid off, just put up a shingle and invite retail customers to buy eggs from your backyard chickens. The choice you are able to make is, what is best to do starting from your present position today, "in a police state that reads our emails, listens in to our homes, and monitors our entire lives."
My family depends on me. Do what you are advocating, and they will destroy you and leave your family destitute.
Destroying you and leaving your family destitute is what they are going to do anyway. That pension won't pay out when medicare crashes all the government budgets inside four years. Everyone in the CONUS can telephone each other, but still can't seem to arrange a tax strike. How was the refusal to register guns in Connecticut arranged?
My best guess is, it wasn't. A whole bunch of Yankees decided individually they were not going to comply. There is still something to be said for Yankee common sense. As a Texan and a Southerner, my hat is off to them.
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