Retro

Greetings good citizen,

Since I made the move to an ‘independent’ blog, space I ceased ‘parsing’ news stories.

Some of you enjoyed that format so today’s offering will be sort of a treat!

Due to the frightening subject matter contained in this rhetoric filled bit of reportage, I feel compelled to ‘dissect’ this top of the headlines article.

If you don’t have access to today’s NY Times, this is indeed THE headline story:

Next on the Agenda for Washington: Fight Over Debt

By JACKIE CALMES
Published: April 9, 2011

WASHINGTON — The down-to-the-wire partisan struggle over cuts to this year’s federal budget has intensified concern in Washington, on Wall Street and among economists about the more consequential clash coming over increasing the government’s borrowing limit.

Congressional Republicans are vowing that before they will agree to raise the current $14.25 trillion federal debt ceiling — a step that will become necessary in as little as five weeks — President Obama and Senate Democrats will have to agree to far deeper spending cuts for next year and beyond than those contained in the six-month budget deal agreed to late Friday night that cut $38 billion and averted a government shutdown.

Wait a minute Slim! You mean it AIN’T OVER? We’re going to go through this ALL OVER AGAIN six months from now?

This is the critical piece of the puzzle I sought in vain yesterday, the ‘how long’ qualifier.

I find it ‘odd’ that this piece of information wasn’t anywhere to be found yesterday…which leads to the next question: How many people will be ‘blindsided’ by a government shutdown six months from now?

Republicans have also signaled that they will again demand fundamental changes in policy on health care, the environment, abortion rights and more, as the price of their support for raising the debt ceiling.

In a letter last week, Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner told Congressional leaders the government would hit the limit no later than May 16. He outlined “extraordinary measures” — essentially moving money among federal accounts — that could buy time until July 8.

Once the limit is reached, the Treasury Department would not be able to borrow as it does routinely to finance federal operations and roll over existing debt; ultimately it would be unable to pay off maturing debt, putting the United States government — the global standard-setter for creditworthiness — into default.

The repercussions in that event would be as much economic as political, rippling from the bond market into the lives of ordinary citizens through higher interest rates and financial uncertainty of the sort that the economy is only now [not!] overcoming, more than three years after the onset of the last recession.

Like ‘Timmy’ says, this most recent stay of execution is nothing more than a bit of financial ‘Hocus Pocus’ to kick the can further down the road.

What should be obvious to you all, by the exponentially increasing mountain of debt the idiots in charge keep piling up is that’s something is ‘radically wrong’ with our economic model.

War time, peace time it doesn’t matter…we obviously don’t have enough economic activity to ‘balance’ our budget.

And the party of ‘Knows nothing’ continues to blame this on the people WHO DON’T HAVE ANY FUCKING MONEY instead of their idiotic ‘tax cuts’ for the people who do!

Tell me again HOW a SINGLE conserative politician EVER wins election THAT DOESN’T involve FRAUD?

But that’s unfair…there isn’t a nickel’s worth of difference between a boot licking conservative and a spineless liberal!

Given the short time frame for action and the prospect of an intractable political clash, leaders in both government and business are already moving to avert a crisis that most likely would be “a recovery-ending event,” [You have to be one hell of an optomist to even imagine that anything resembling a ‘recovery’ is underway.] as Ben S. Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, testified recently in the Senate. He described a sequence of events that “would cascade through the financial markets,” provoking another credit crisis like that in 2008 and causing interest rates to jump.

Mr. Geithner has been meeting privately with senior lawmakers of both parties to underscore the economic stakes. At the White House, Mr. Obama’s chief economic adviser, Gene Sperling, peeled away from the spending fight in recent weeks to turn nearly full time to developing the administration’s strategy for the debt-limit debate.[Not to be mean good citizen but so far the Obama administration has proven to be a one trick puppy and that singular trick has been ‘roll over and play dead’!] Central to that, administration officials say, is whether Mr. Obama initiates bipartisan talks on a long-term debt-reduction plan that tackles taxes, military spending and fast-growing entitlement programs like Medicare and Medicaid. [Fat lot of good ‘one sided bipartisanship’ has done so far…how many times does stupid need to get his teeth kicked down his throat before he smartens up?]

Executives of the nation’s largest financial institutions in recent days met with Mr. Geithner, House Speaker John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio, and other lawmakers, arguing for the importance of raising the debt ceiling. Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, told them that his bank had devised contingency plans to protect its global business in the event of a default.

“If anyone wants to push that button, which I think would be catastrophic and unpredictable, I think they’re crazy,” Mr. Dimon said recently at the United States Chamber of Commerce.

Ah, the US Chamber of Commerce, providing a bully pulpit for multi-national corporations and Wall Street Bankers since its inception…

I’m gonna backtrack to the previous paragraph that details the President’s plans for a ‘bipartisan attack’ on the ‘increasingly expensive’ entitlement programs.

Most of us pay into these so-called ‘entitlements’ all of our working lives…except if you’re rich, then not so much…(there is, bizarrely, a ‘cap’ on annual SS contributions. Seems you no longer have to pay in after the first hundred grand, it used to be $90,000 but they kicked it up a little since then.)

Left to our unending exasperation is why healthcare costs keep spiraling out of control and why the fucktarded politicians NEVER attempt to make cuts to the world’s most inefficient military?

You don’t suppose it’s that ‘stupid’ thing biting us on the ass (again,) do you?

What would the (less than one percent of one percent) Tea Partiers say? Is that what keeps our politicians quaking in their collective shoes? Making them more willing to risk the political ‘third rail’ of attacking the social safety net rather than trim the fat from the sacred cow of our constitutionally enshrined ‘duty’ to protect the ‘interests’ of (very few) Americans around the globe? (via taxpayer supported ‘military force.’)

What the fuck, good citizen, what the flaming fuck!

Are these people THAT stupid or do they just think that WE ARE?

Sadly good citizen, the answer is the later…we have and indeed continue to ‘buy the lie’.

Talk about it all getting ‘hinkey’, well it don’t get much hinkier than throwing extremely expensive ‘mercenaries’ into the mix.

Mercenaries that we will soon no longer be able to afford…

Yet NOBODY (Democrat or Republican alike, never mind the sell-out media) has even proposed that we, er, ‘eliminate’ this extraordinary expense.

Is this being laid at the feet of the statistially and politically insignificant (at only 30,000 members) Tea Party too?

It’s like blaming ME, like anybody gives a fuck what I think!

That said, I deeply care about what you think good citizen.

Did I mention that this article is ‘particularly disturbing’?

There’s a lot to parse here, perhaps more than can be successfully done in a single session but I’ll give it my best shot.

Please bear with me for more backtracking.

I believe I have presented enough ‘evidence’ that should prove beyond a doubt that we are currently being ruled over by a ‘captive government’.

By extension, the media has also ‘fallen victim’ to the power of the usurper(s)

Remember the axiom ‘You can’t make informed decisions without accurate information.’

Thus do we end up with ‘nonsensical’ headlines like this one! (Not that I blame the writer, it has to pass muster with an editor before it gets to the press room.)

Isn’t the ‘chain of command’ wonderful (at shielding the guilty?)

But we digress (mightily) good citizen, back to the article!

The United States is one of the few nations that limits its debt by law, and votes in Congress to raise the ceiling, something that happens every few years, are perhaps the least popular that lawmakers face. [St. Ronnie doubled the national debt and so did his running mate’s progeny, talk about Republican ‘fiscal responsibility’]

Financial and government leaders alike have grown accustomed to some political brinkmanship over raising the cap, confident that Congress ultimately would do so, usually with the party holding the White House supplying most votes. (So it was that Mr. Obama, as a Democratic senator in 2006, voted against a Bush administration request to raise the debt limit; it passed with mostly Republican votes.) [Go figure, eh?]

What makes this year different, people in both parties say, is the large number of Congressional Republicans, including the many newcomers who gave the party a House majority, who are strenuously opposed to government spending, and egged on by the activist Tea Party movement to use the leverage of the debt-limit vote to make their stand. [Baffling is how a fragment of a party that only one in five voters claim membership in is ‘dominating’ the political dialog in this country…did I mention the ‘captive media’ that makes this even possible?]

“We want to see real structural, cultural-type changes tied to this debt ceiling. We’re not interested in a one-off kind of savings, or anything small,” said Representative Mick Mulvaney, a first-term Republican from South Carolina. “There has got to be game-changing kinds of changes to get us to vote for it.” [We just recently had a local incident where a fresham Republican member of the NH house resigned his seat over, um, a ‘compromising incident’. The telling part wasn’t the incident, a routine traffic matter, it was his admission that he ran (and amazingly won) by running as a ‘non-politician’…makes you wonder what kind of IDIOT(s) would vote for someone who purposefully DIDN’T INTEND TO DO THE FUCKING JOB! Talk about throwing your vote away, you could have accomplished the same thing by staying home!]

He dismissed warnings about default as “just posturing,” and said Democrats should bear the responsibility for passing any measure to increase the borrowing limit. [How much do you want to bet this jerk ran as a ‘non-politician’ too?]

“It’s their debt,” he said. “Make them do it. That’s my attitude.” [He certainly didn’t run on his ‘brainpower’, must have been his ‘charm’. Fortunately the reporter doesn’t let him getaway with his false ‘blanket assertion’.]

In fact, the debt was created by both parties and past presidents as well as Mr. Obama.

Of the nearly $14.2 trillion in debt, roughly $5 trillion is money the government has borrowed from other accounts, mostly from Social Security revenues, according to federal figures. Several major policies from the past decade when Republicans controlled the White House and Congress — tax cuts, a Medicare prescription-drug benefit and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — account for more than $3.2 trillion.

More evidence of a ‘captive government’ situation; if we follow this concept further we’d have to assume that this budgetary Kabuki Dance is merely more ‘window dressing’ for the gullible electorate. More re-enforcement of the Red State/Blue State memes intended to add to the impression that our society is more deeply divided than it actually is.

Understand good citizen, if our society were indeed as deeply divided as the media makes it out to be you wouldn’t be able to go about your normal business without getting involved in a fist-fight over politics with a passerby on a daily basis.

You’d be brawling at work OR teaming up with your co-workers looking for some liberal/conservative ass to kick!

Contrary to the conservative portrayal of liberals being ‘spineless’, they’ll kick our ass, hell 30,000 of them DIED bringing the rest of us the 40 hour work week!

But somehow the conservatives keep forgetting that inconvenient ‘fact’…

Back to the article or we’ll never finish!

The recession cost more than $800 billion in lost revenues from businesses and individuals and in automatic spending for safety-net programs like unemployment compensation. Mr. Obama’s stimulus spending and tax cuts added about $600 billion through the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30. [We’d have been just as well served if he’d taken a match to the money considering where it went! Why do you think Jamie Dimon is flipping out? If they DON’T raise the debt ceiling, HE ain’t gonna be able to roll over HIS debts!]

Though the recent standoff that consumed Washington over spending for the 2011 fiscal year ended without a government shutdown, the messy process and 11th-hour settlement have stoked trepidation about the debt-limit fight to come. If Republicans and Democrats found it so hard to compromise over a few billion dollars, the thinking goes, how can they ever come together on a multi-year, multitrillion-dollar plan to cut the debt within weeks or months? [Indeed something to ponder…and I don’t see it ending well either!]

“If I were still Treasury secretary, it would worry the hell out of me,” said James A. Baker III, who served in that office for President Ronald Reagan, during a time when the total federal debt nearly tripled over his two terms. “But it doesn’t worry me as a good Republican, and one who wants to finally see some fiscal responsibility in this country.”[Um, considering his personal ‘contribution’ to the current mess you know that asshole is lying through his teeth…and I think we would be ‘worried’ if he was still Treasury Secretary because it would amount to ‘irrefutable proof’ of a captive government! Not that Mr. Obama’s totally illogical cabinet appointments aren’t all the proof one needs, including appointing a Republican Treasury Secretary! ]

Mr. Baker, long known as a deal-maker, said Republicans were right to say, “O.K., we’ll increase the debt limit, Democrats, if you will enact enforceable spending restraint.” [Wait a minute Slim! It was THE FUCKING REPUBLICANS who spent us here! The fact that the banking system collapsed not just once but during EVERY Republican administration over the past three decades!]

Neither the White House nor Congressional leaders are certain how they will get enough votes to raise the limit. The White House and Democrats in Congress will urge passage of a “clean” debt limit increase, without amendments, though they acknowledge that cannot pass in the Republican-controlled House.

While the House is the focus of most concern, passage in the Democratic-controlled Senate will be a challenge as well. Republican conservatives there, reinforced by Tea Party adherents elected last November, vow to filibuster any increase in the debt limit, which would require a 60-vote supermajority to overcome.

The Republican leader, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, has privately urged the conservatives not to filibuster, without success, say three people familiar with the talks. He argued that if Republicans did not filibuster and just 50 votes were needed for passage, the Republicans could try to force all the votes to come from the 51 Democrats — including 17 who are up for re-election. But if 60 votes are required because of a filibuster, ultimately some Republicans would have to vote for the increase lest the party be blamed for a debt crisis. [How’s that for ‘under-handed’?]

In the House, Mr. Boehner said after the November elections that his new members would have to deal with the debt limit “as adults.” But with many Tea Party-backed [Read Koch industries] Republicans feeling that they already compromised more than they wanted on the current year’s budget, it is not clear how receptive the freshman Republicans will be to a deal this time.

The just-concluded budget fight has spawned talk that the White House and Congress will perhaps resort to a series of short-term extensions of the debt limit while they bargain over a debt-reduction plan or some other mandatory budget restraints. The question is, how might global financial markets react?

“We’ve never seen that before,” said Robert E. Rubin, the Treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton and a longtime Wall Street executive. “But I know this: It’s not a risk I’d take.” [Yet another ‘fine one to talk!’]

After this week, Congress recesses until early May, returning just two weeks before Treasury hits the debt ceiling. Even stretching the deadline for action to July, there would be little time to reach a debt-reduction accord.

So attention is turning to a bipartisan “Gang of Six” in the Senate. The senators, three from each party, have met for 10 months to negotiate a comprehensive plan on taxes, entitlement programs and military spending. They have considered recommendations made by Mr. Obama’s bipartisan fiscal commission in December. [Excuse me but doesn’t this smack of ‘government by committee?’]

“It would be nice to have it in a package form by the debt-limit” debate, said Senator Saxby Chambliss, a Republican of Georgia. But even if the six agree, he added, “hitting everyone else with something this major, it’s going to take some time to be digested. Plus you’ve got to go through the various committees.”

House Republicans in effect outlined their starting position last week, when, amid the fight over 2011 spending, they unveiled their budget for the 2012 fiscal year and beyond. It would cut $6 trillion over 10 years, mostly from projected spending for Medicare and Medicaid. [Resulting in a major crisis for the retiring Boomers!]

But those savings would be offset by about $4 trillion in tax cuts. The result, according to the Congressional Budget Office, would be continued annual deficits until 2040 — necessitating more votes to raise the debt limit, even under House Republicans’ plan, for decades to come.

Jeebus good citizen, seems like we’re well and truly until we retake control of our captive government followed immediately by our decidely corrupt system of commerce.

Luckily, we’re only fucked ‘on paper’, none of the ‘crises’ facing our civilization is either ‘insurmountable or overwhelming’, they merely challenge the ‘status quo’, which should have been overthrown generations ago!

I think the most disturbing part of this whole article is level of arrogance on display in even publishing this tripe! It is insulting to the intelligence of the average citizen to be told up is down and black is white!

How can they tell us that we will be faced with budget deficits ‘for decades’ when it has become obvious to the average person that it is unlikely our civilization will survive the year!

Which is to point out that the US isn’t the only troubled economy on this goofy ‘run for the benefit of the few’ planet!

This is, as you might expect, doing nothing for my blood pressure…if I hope to avoid suffering a second stroke I’m going to stop belaboring the obvious for a while…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner