By Warren Gross: We Are Still At War Within Our Nation!
Just the other day, with minutes to spare, our country came up with a mini-fix to stabilize our nation. While default and putting innocent Americans back to work are of enormous importance, the so called deficit is, from a professional budgeting and accounting system, actually a very poor way of controlling those expense and revenue factors that should guide a nation in setting goals and balancing budgets or, surely setting forth conditions for bi-partisan management of this nation.
Barack Obama is 50% of the problem and he should hang his head in shame based both on his truculence and his talk to the nation today about moving forward on the activities required to bring forth a budget and work towards reducing the national debt. I am increasing this to 60% today based on his egoistic need to scold his opponents and to put forward his agenda for what should be the content areas of the budget. He is a small minded man, full of hubris and unable to see the basic needs to heal this divided nation. He is the President of the United States and has the moral responsibility that exceeds all others in the legislative and judicial branches to set an example, a tone, and as important, set expectations that do not reflect those of a controlling parent. He failed the country on October 17th as he has failed us in the past. I don’t care about the provocation, the stupidity of many of his critics; he failed the country and likely guaranteed further issues in the months ahead.
His boasting about the reduction in the deficit, where he is essentially taking credit for it, is attributable solely to the effects of the Sequestration. Stripped of the foolishness of how it was constructed, it demonstrates that we can and should do more with less. I add this to an unwillingness to take responsibility for other serious deficiencies; excessive pride in a failing Affordable Care Act that might jeopardize the need for such as program given the reality of our nation’s needs, an unwillingness to hold members of his Cabinet such as Eric Holder, responsible for significant performance problems around issues such as Guantanamo Bay and the lamentable case involving arms shipments from Mexico.
He is far from alone. The GOP has its own instances of multiple failures ranging from sheer stupidity up to what could almost be seen as treason. The irresponsibility of not establishing positions with end states or outcomes around matters, such as the Affordable Care Act, that they were holding the country hostage for is a fine example. The unwillingness to risk re-election failure by causing pain and suffering to innocent Americans by delaying the inevitable is yet another. Examples are easy to find and it points to a painful disease that infects our society; one of the promotion of self-interest, pride, and its sadistic co-conspirators that make people less than their Maker intended. That interest is that our political process, our very way of governance, encourages the worst in our stewards and in us. Put in terms of a potential way of examining it as a problem to be solved, it is simply that the variables and changing demographics we face require us to look at a new form of governance in the United States. We need a model that actually combines our Federalist system with its economic thrust of capitalism with some form of a socialist economic system that protects and nurtures its citizens and not speak idly and ignorantly about components such as government is too big for example, or changes in revenue taxation restrains growth. Bullshit!
I have seen nothing to indicate what rightsizing of government at any level would represent. I have seen nothing that suggests that strengthening states’ rights in certain areas would not lead to mass migration of the poor or middle class to more “friendly” legislative states. I have seen no actions of consequences that bring back jobs to the United States based on outsourcing without being fully aware of the realities of unionization and varying standards of living within our states much less the willingness to challenge the basis of globalization and its realities of how resources are advantageously cost controlled or contained. Our tax system is totally broken; both on income and expense and no one talks about fixes but everyone talks about the risks of increasing taxes. Finland for one taxes income I believe at 60% but they have free education, health care and the year’s leave for maternity and I believe paternity leave. They are ranked number one in the education achievement of their young people. I am not advocating for the total adoption of their system but only for the fact that I will wager that their leaders and communities some years back gave this a hell of a lot of collaborative thought.
Now I am writing this as a citizen who gives a damn and most of you will likely throw it into the circular file and go ahead with your hating the establishment, partisan views, and non-critical thinking preferences or as Pope Francis would say “indifference.” Well I am going to make it harder on you to do that especially since I have no forum, I barely can make out what I am typing and…… That said, I am asking Bob McCaffrey to place this on Talk of the Sound. I am a member of this site who can barely make out the screen and will take a long nap when this is completed.
I want to further bring to your attention how simple productive work in these areas would have been years earlier if the President, who sponsored the Simpson-Bowles Commission Report and the Congress who could have embraced it and demanded a hearing would have stepped up and gave it the light, the visibility, the positive expressions that a through and non-biased piece of work deserved. Neither the Executive nor Legislative Branch brought this work forward; an act of sheer stupidity, excessive pride, and disservice to the American people. Most of you, maybe all of you, probably have not read it but you should! Much of what is dominating the headlines today in terms of problems facing our country is covered in this seminal work. Perhaps both branches were offended by the fact that the report had definable outcomes, a clear statement of vision and values and a commitment to do no harm to the least among us while working on the tremendous issues we face in revenue generation and cost control. This is truly an American Tragedy. Judge for yourself by simply downloading a copy from the Internet.
This infection in reasoning, in civility, in governance is seen at our local levels as well. In today’s Daily News the progressive columnist Errol Lewis cites a Newt Gingrich memo written in 1996 where he encouraged supporters to use language such as lie, sick, and liberal to denigrate or describe an opponent’s policies or person. He mentions Noam Bramson , the Democratic Mayor of New Rochelle in this context. He states that Bramson dubs his opponent for the seat of County Executive as having policies that represent “the Tea Party with a Smile.” What the hell does that mean? Tea Party has become the buzzword for all those who oppose progressive or liberal agendas. It may be good politics but it is lousy stewardship. Voters need to be informed on the record; what has someone accomplished or what has that someone not accomplished? And, there is plenty of this type of hyperbole active on the other end of the spectrum. Ultra Conservatives can rationalize their issues with buzzwords equally as well and just as self-serving ranging everywhere from size of government to “guns don’t kill people kill.” What the hell does that really have to do with better regulation of licenses, denial of licenses to the mentally affirmed and so forth? Frankly I also get turned off by campaigns that ignore the issues such as taxes and crime statistics substituting other issues that are of either a personal mind set or already protected by law such as abortions and a woman’s right to choose.
Thanks for listening and I hope you all get involved and if in politics, risk not being elected or re-elected by living up to the moral letter of the written law which is providing service to the electorate and doing what is right, not what you think is right.
Irresistible Force vs. Immovable Object
You’ve written quite a bit here, Warren, and I’ll have to re-read it several times to fully comprehend it.
I see more complaint than solution, in what you wrote. But I think you are saying that everyone is complaining without solving the problems of government.
The real issue is that what some people think are problems, are perceived by other people as the solutions.
For instance, I think the solution to under-nutrition of young people and mothers, or insufficient public education, is for the government to spend more on those problems.
And I think it is best for the USA to spend more on infrastructure and science, while spending much less on what Republican President Eisenhower knowingly derided as ‘The Military-Industrial Complex’.
And I think it is best to pay for those costs, by increasing taxes of those who can most afford it, and to rely less on government bonds.
But others, who call themselves ‘conservatives’ or ‘Tea Party’, are actually reactionaries with preferences the opposite of mine. They wish to lower taxes for the Wealthy, which by its very occurrence would require more borrowing of money and increasing the taxes and expenses of the working class. With their tax savings, the Wealthy purchase and profit from the Bonds issued to permit their low taxes.
The Tea Party wishes to reduce government spending on public education, and have an anti-social attitude of every man for himself. They whine that the government intrudes on every man’s rights, while themselves insisting on the government intruding on the most personal of womens’ rights. They abhor science, as a fiction while imagining that their favorite religious mythology written thousands of years ago by less-educated humans, fully explains all workings of the universe. Their understanding of economics seems to be an unproven article of assumption, faith and myth, rather than something that can be demonstrated by math, science and history.
In the end, reactionaries, whether the Know Nothing Party of the 1840’s, or the Dixiecrats of the 1940’s, or today’s Tea Party, all tend to be short-lived populist movements destined to fade, because such movements tend to draw in people who despise American society’s continual evolving due to science, immigration, ever-faster, inexpensive communication and transportation.
It’s obvious one can’t reverse time or our society’s ever-enlightening direction, but populists and reactionaries insist on doing so, while obviously being doomed to failure.
Progressives do recognize that over time, our society has continually benefitted from immigration, science, communication, transportation, public education, and expanded civil rights for everyone, all very much being part of the necessity of our government’s policies, spending, taxing and borrowing.
The present problem is that Progressives and Moderates looking towards the actual future, are stymied by the Tea Party’s instance on returning to an imagined past that was much more harsh than their mythology projects. But in the end, the majority will rule, our society will evolve and improve, and today’s problems will be read about in history books, by people grateful for the progress that we can only look forward to.