After years of policies expanding the national government until it employed 1/3 of the workforce and expanding their social welfare net into a hammock for those who chose not to work the International Monetary Fund (IMF) demanded that Greece impose a budget that the unions saw as austere. For weeks riots raged, buildings burned and people died. Greece having cast their freedom into the wind is reaping the whirlwind. By seeking to make everyone equal and to ensure that no one failed they have placed their entire nation in risk of failing.
After massive bailouts from their EU partners and the United States the Greek problem seemed to go away. Now it’s back and our generous President has offered to borrow money from China to bail-out Greece once again. As all the Progressive Internationalists scurry to keep Greece from swirling down the drain we shouldn’t fall for the illusion. Systems like this don’t work no matter how hard people try to keep the house of cards from collapsing.
Our turn is coming soon.
Even though we are the largest single contributor to the IMF they have recently issued a stern rebuke to The United States. This rebuke stated that in order to meet goals previously promised we would have to implement austerity measures that would be tougher than any since records began in 1960. Yet instead of austerity or even fiscal sanity our leaders, the same ones who have led us into not only mortgaging the farm but mortgaging the kids and the grandkids are acting as the cheerleaders and hand-wringers for the ritualistic rise in the debt limit.
In the last round of the serial continuing resolutions, the one that ended in the Republican House surrendering to the White House and passing the bloated 2011 budget we were told there would be massive cuts. This would be truly historic, 38 billion dollars in cuts. This was so substantial it would only leave a record yearly deficit of 1.6 trillion. There was joy in the House as they took a victory lap beating their chests for holding out for the BIG money.
Then we learn the president and his staff of Chicago trained slight-of-hand bean counters had cooked the books, took credit for laying off people who were already laid off and presto-change-o the massive 38 billion was actually 352 million. This is still a massive amount of money but in the rarified air our high flying government budget it doesn’t quite qualify as chump change. This isn’t the change anyone was hoping for when we changed the chumps back in November of 2010.
This breath-taking cut still left the spending for 2011 more than 773 Billion above 2008 levels and thus President Obama was forced to agree to stealth stimulus almost as big as the one in 2009 that put America back to work, at least in Democrat campaign commercials. And while every one of the serial continuing resolutions was reported with great fanfare as cutting the budget according to the Treasury the 2011 budget deficit actually increased by 15.7% in the first six months of fiscal 2011. In other words the more these leaders who are so concerned about cutting the deficit cut the bigger the deficit grows.
All of this looting of the American economy has a tremendously high price. While no one will ever know what didn’t happen because of the government crowding private capital out and soaking up all the time and energy required to make it through their red-tape bureaucratic maze we see the crippling effects every day.
Although the officials in charge of the silly statistics department tell us there is no inflation even though they are printing money 24/7 as fast as the presses can go inflation is actually nearing 10%, which anyone who lives in the real world and has to buy food or gas knows. And our once free economy is now in the hands of a Federal Government that has no limits and a gaggle of mega-banks that for all intents and purposes should be re-classified as government-backed.
Now the drums are beating for the Progressive Federal Government to bail out the Progressives who have destroyed our once great cities. As Detroit begins to revitalize by surrendering entire communities to the gangs and bull-doze abandoned buildings the same thinking that picked America’s pocket to bail-out the crony capitalists is gearing up to prop up the culture of decline on the local level so the local level will deliver the votes in 2012. This is nothing more than vote buying and money laundering on a grand scale.
This gamesmanship has done nothing to reign in the uncontrolled spending of our unlimited Federal Behemoth. Even the politically blind are beginning to see that this profligate spending is unsustainable. Unless we embrace the austerity needed to right our ship of state we will flounder on the shoals of self-indulgence which have been the death-bed of empires since Nimord tried to build a tower. And if we continue to mortgage the lives of those who have not yet been born we will end up losing the deeds to the lives we think we own.
So, no matter what the teleprompter readers tell us at the end of the day the Republican majority in the House will go along with their Progressive pals and raise the debt limit. And no matter what they say about trillions of dollars of cuts, off in the future and over the rainbow, the deficits will continue and the debt will grow.
Come on Charlie Brown kick the football Lucy promised she won’t move it this time.
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion for Southside Virginia Community College. He is the author of the History of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com View the trailer for Dr. Owens’ latest book @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ypkoS0gGn8 © 2011 Robert R. Owens dr.owens@comcast.net Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook.
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