No doubt you’ve heard that a village in Texas lost its idiot. Now he’s in Washington where people actually listen to him and he’s a mean mother capable of spewing out all sorts of vile things to start wars and get his way.
Right now, he’s learning that some words are worth a thousand pictures. Words like greed and lust can generate many mental images and some very ordinary words, when strung together, can scare crowds and stir them into a frenzy of hatred and mob action. He’s being held accountable for 16 of these words used in the State of the Union Address last January and he may not be able to pass this off on someone else. We’ll see what happens.
But this isn’t the only thing that’s been happening in Washington. He’s got a plan to destroy every social program under the wing of the federal government. From education to housing for the poor and including Social Security and Medicare, the plan is to get rid of them all.
Just like the federal government, every state and local government in the union has been dealing with a shortfall in personal and corporate income tax receipts. Unemployment is high, the economy is sour, and unlike the feds, the rank and file local guys can’t easily borrow money to make ends meet. This leaves them wide open to a sucker punch from the big boys, especially in times of national emergency.
On February 20, 2003, the federal government hit its own self imposed debt ceiling and all borrowing was brought to a screeching halt. Having gone into the fiscal year planning to borrow some $304 billion (now $455 billion), the feds were suddenly cut off from a major stream of money necessary to carry out discretionary “over budget” plans.
Congress and the Bush administration did absolutely nothing about it for 92 days. For more than three months, they were silent about the cutoff while spending money hand over fist to keep thousands of troops and equipment at the ready and deployed around Iraq, buying a coalition of the willing, and so forth until exactly one month later, on March 20th, the even more costly inevitable invasion finally began.
For exactly one full quarter of the fiscal year, states and local governments were cut off from most of the programs, handouts and table scraps the feds had promised. This further necessitated widespread choices to either raise local taxes, cut local programs, or lay off people at the local level. Social programs like education, health care, headstart, and so forth were hit the hardest.
Nicholas D. Kristoff of the New York Times wrote a brilliant editorial titled “Going Home, to Red Ink and Blues” that clarifies the local position better than I could even hope to do. In the opening paragraph, he says: “Across the nation, state and local leaders have been forced to slash more than $100 billion in spending, laying off thousands of employees, cutting off health insurance for roughly one million people, and lowering America’s standard of living. Washington is not just aloof from the pain out here in real America, but is making matters worse.”
By the time the fed finally did open the floodgates of borrowing, the damage had been done. There doesn’t seem to be a way, or the intention, to make up for lost time and hurt at the local level.
As of Thursday, July 17th, the Bush administration has borrowed an additional $262 billion for a grand total of $494 billion borrowed so far this year. More than half of this has taken place in the last 56 days as the fed rebuilds its coffers.
Except for reports on the casualties and the damage, the Fourth Estate has been silent on the 92 days of draught deliberately caused by Congress and the Bush administration and more concerned with the fact that the debt ceiling increase was only a few billion short of one trillion. Raising the debt limit is one of the easiest tasks in Washington and one that should rightly have been accomplished immediately, especially with an impending war staring us in the face.
Now, the real question is whether the village idiot was capable of this maneuver on his own or is he just a puppet in a concerted plan to reduce the American way of life to the level of a third world nation in the New World Odor? To level out the international playing field so to speak by making millions of Americans suffer.
And still, the effected local governments seldom blame Washington or even realize how it was done to them.
Absconding money without the victim’s knowledge is the hallmark of a brilliant con artist. Do you really believe that George W. Bush is capable of this on his own?
“Published originally at EtherZone.com : republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact.”