Who's responsible for the US's massive debt? You and I!

Why does the President always get blamed for the economy, but Republicans in Congress get a pass?

To take one statistic that President Obama is often cited for by his critics, long-term unemployment. Those numbers have risen because of things like Baby Boomers leaving the workforce to retire, among other positive signs. The influence of retiring Boomers on the economy and statistics like jobs numbers will continue as the wave of Boomers grows, and peaks. Whoever is President in that period should see that number rise, and that's a positive sign that the economy is strong enough that they feel confident enough to retire rather than stay working. 

So when his critics - say everyone at Fock Snooze or the rest of the Conservative talking heads - cite these numbers, they should - but they don't - discuss why the numbers have changed. It's disingenuous to suggest they're something they're not.

As for the rising debt, what other course would  he have taken? It's entirely incorrect to use the family budget comparison that people like Paul Ryan employ - families can't print new money as needed nor are family budgets comprised of billions of line items; the complexity difference should suggest that anyone using the comparison really does not understand the complexity of the Federal economy - but that's often cited by budget conservatives as reason to cut the budget. 

Neither a family nor a nation can cut its way out of debt. The only hope is to raise income. For the family, that means a new revenue stream - someone else working or someone bringing in more money. But for a government, that means helping citizens make more money so tax revenues will rise proportionately, which in turn are used to pay down the debt.

But, just like FDR used debt to rebuild our economy following the Great Depression, had we not incurred new debt, our economy would have flatlined because in order to make money available to lenders - banks - to lend to businesses to finance new ventures or expansions in order to grow the economy, the US had to borrow it from abroad. At that point, new money can be made available - printed or made electronically utile - for workers who then spend it and it recycles throughout the economy, including a portion of which goes to pay down the debt.

This is also one of the reasons that being tied to a gold standard is like having an albatross around one's neck. If you only have a specific amount in the treasury, you can only print notes or make electronic funds available in that amount. A gold standard note - or even a treasury note for that matter - is a check. A gold standard bill is owned by the government, whereas a treasury note is owned by the central bank. So the more money you must print as both your population and economy grow, the less each note is worth because just like your own checking account, if you have checks and have to split the money in your account evenly between them - just as each $1 note is worth the same as every other - then the notes - or checks - become worth less the more you have to write or print. Simple math. But being able to borrow new money - incur debt - allows the government to add money to the treasury as needed to insure that everyone has money available to them. Yes, wealth still accumulates, but with a gold standard, we would have long ago run into the situation wherein the wealthy would own everything and the poor would own nothing because, eventually, the wealthy would have ended up with ALL of the limited gold-backed notes. The problem of continuing down that road is self-evident. It's not even up for discussion, and that's why even fiscal conservatives only mention it - the few who actually understand it, that is - when the rabble get fired up about it by some radio dittomonger. 

No President creates jobs. None. He doesn't own the companies that actually create them. All he can do is to make enough money available that banks feel comfortable enough to lower interest rates - following the Fed's lead - and making massive amounts of money available to investors so that they feel comfortable enough to borrow. 

That money has been available for several years now. But what has happened is that multinationals have used the opportunity to move either their headquarters or their operations offshore to increase their bottom lines while putting Americans out of work, and they're doing it on American taxpayers' dimes. Or trillion-dollar notes, as the case actually is. The President can't stop that. Congress must. And both John Boehner and Mitch McConnell have refused to allow legislation to pass that will prevent American taxpayers' money from being used abroad. 

Add to that that Conservative media like Fock Snooze and others have used the opportunity to fearmonger rather than unite the republic. 

The debt has grown because people think that jobs aren't coming back. They are. 

The debt has grown because people think that the government - meaning the President because they give the real problem, Republicans in Congress, a pass - isn't doing enough, so it has to continue to borrow money to make more and more of it available - which it is in unprecedented measure - in order to create new jobs. The jobs are there. What's not there is an honest media which will put partisanship aside and tell the truth.

The debt has grown because American corporations have used American taxpayers' money to fund their overseas expansions and tax evasion.

The debt has grown because Americans have been duped into thinking that the economy is too complex for them to understand unless the false equivalence of a family budget is used, and they can't make sense of it because you can't explain a complex system of that order using an example that doesn't fit.

The debt has grown because Americans have been lied to for so long, so deeply, and so broadly that they think that the guilty parties are innocent, and the innocent parties are guilty. 

The debt has grown because Americans demand cheap goods from abroad. We want to shop at Walmart and Kmart and Target and dollar stores, and we want cheap goods, and the only way to secure those things is if you have enough money in your account to make your currency worth more than that of the person from whom you're buying things.

The debt has grown because we demand that it grow.

Who's responsible for the debt growing? You and I.

A Path To Our Republic's Future - Learning To Pull As One

We were taught, and we taught our children, that individualism is the highest form of freedom, but we failed to learn the lessons that our parents and grandparents learned from the Great Depression and two World Wars, times that brought the republic together through national service, much of which was in the military.

We've forgotten that the infrastructural backbone of our nation was built in part by the CCC or Civilian Conservation Corps. The Corps built roads where none previously existed, bridges that span our nation's waterways and chasms, and the built-to-last structures we see in our National Parks and National Forests. Along the way, people learned trades that served them well the rest of their lives, they helped build the engine which powered America's greatest growth boom, and they often made friends for life serving alongside their fellows. They learned to pull together rather than pull apart.

I envision a modern CCC wherein every able-bodied citizen - and I consider many who are deemed 'disabled' to be able to help as they may - serves 1-2 years depending on job skills and possibly the ability to "re-enlist" for 1 term of 1-2 years, all of whom help our republic recover from the deeply-damaging Great Recession. I see Conservants help to rebuild our parks, roads, and bridges, and help lay a network of fiber optic trunks and dark fiber that will continue to serve us long into the future. I see them helping lay tens of thousands of miles of underground power cable, bringing electricity from the great wind farms of the Midwest and West to our cities and rural areas not capable of generating enough wind energy to meet their own needs. I see them building solar collection farms. I see them helping to clean up toxic waste dumps. I see Conservants laying the bricks and mortar on new government buildings built in a grand fashion to last rather than the brick-facade, steel building, temporary structures we now see. These would be monuments to the CCC's past and future accomplishments, built in a manner that will allow them to be flexible for future remodeling and which will stand to remind us that universal service is a boon for our society.

We see the path that crass commercialism, rampant runaway capitalism, and mass consumption has taken us down, all of what we've wrought being the result of individualism. A new CCC would again show us what the value of teamwork can accomplish. It would show us that it's far better to get to know our neighbors than to remain fearful of them through our ignorance. And a new CCC would elevate our republic back to the top spot among nations, not through idle boast, but through the quiet acknowledgement that comes from one's peers at a job well done. We would again achieve a status worth emulation rather than revulsion, and would do so by means of care and tender concern for that we love rather than ugly show of force abroad.

Our republic still reels under the staggering weight of the Great Recession, an economic kill switch on our future unless we rewire our way of thinking. We need a boost from within rather than a loan from without. The time has come for us to return to a program whose grand achievements still stand as reminders of what we can do when we pull as one.

Whack-A-Mole, GOP-style (Cue Psy...two, three, four!)

I said before and I'll say again that the GOP ran 2 weak candidates in 2008 and 2012 against Obama: John McCain and Mitt Romney. 

They knew, like the rest of us suspected, that the economy was headed down the toilet and they wanted to be able to use a Democrat as the scapegoat for 8 years of Enrich The Rich economics which tanked the economy. They probably guessed back in 2008 that Obama, if he won, would be a one-term President, not guessing that he had a chance at a second term. But when the economy hadn't recovered by 2012, they doubled down and ran a second weak candidate, Romney, figuring that as long as they had an intransigent Congress which would stop most Obama initiatives, as it has, they would be in good shape to take over the Oval Office again in 2016 when the economy was back on its feet. But, they underestimated the depth of the recession and now they're running scared for 2016, so they're at Defcon 1 with anything at all they think they can turn to their advantage.

But, their own man, former SecDef Robert Gates, unwilling to lie, put the kibosh on that end run on Sunday, as far as the non-partisan public is concerned. So, it's back to North Korea-like hypervigilance hoping for new scandals to arise. 

It's like the GOP is playing Whack-A-Hillary, using the oversized, comic mallet of Conservative Doom to obliterate-then-defecate any hint of success that might, in an alternate universe with idiocy aforethought, be construed as shining a positive light on Democrat-leaning news, especially as it applies to former Secretary of State Clinton.

Watergate none of this is, but someone in the GOP must be channeling Richard Nixon.

Same Shit...well...Same Shit

Response to yet another excellent ThinkProgress.com article found here

The people ultimately behind sequestration are guilty of hypocrisy, greed, and treason. A republic's economy is wholly unlike a family's budget. A family can cut their way out of debt, but a nation can not. When an economy is depressed and the government cuts its budget, money stops flowing. The problem isn't a lack of money, it's the lack of movement of money. Government should monitor but generally stay out of the way of a healthy economy, but just like a doctor giving you an annual physical then getting out of your way when you're healthy, he must step in and do something when you're sick, and cutting the medications that have kept you healthy isn't the way to do it.

When an economy is sick, it takes the government to make money available at no or low interest in order to get the blood - money in this case - flowing again. Failing to do so would be like a doctor stepping back away from a patient when the patient goes into cardiac arrest and saying, "Hmmm. Maybe it will fix itself". Or likely not.

Sequestration is a failure of our government to take the shock paddles of money flow and zapping the heart of our republic back into health. Like a sick patient, the worse the recession, the longer it takes to get back to healthy, but pulling the plug will kill the patient, just like sequestration will kill our republic.

The BRICs - Brazil, Russia, India, and China - are breathing down our necks as it is. Now Congress has essentially said, "Come on, guys! You can overtake us! And we're here to help!" Cutting scientific funding is analogous to failure to fuel your car before a long trip. Yep, you'll have more money in your pocket...when you're on the side of the road out of gas watching others who planned ahead go flying past you.

Romney should do his own research

Response to Daily Beast article at the link here.


The fact is that Carter's necessary austerity measures brought the nation out of the deep recession brought about by 12 years of Republican rule - Nixon and Ford. Reagan capitalized on Carter's successes and unlike former presidents, refused to acknowledge that those successes belonged to his predecessor. While that happens to a varying degree in every presidency, it has never happened as much as it did with Reagan. Carter's programs were still in effect and working as far along as Reagan's second term. Carter also got more productive legislation passed in his 4 years than Reagan did in 8. That was not due to Reagan's reticence in growing the government, it was due to his personal inability to lead legislators despite the fact that so many defected from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party. 

The Reagan myth lives on, just as do the lies that Reagan's PR team created about Carter. Also, Carter served as a line officer in the US Navy serving in both the Atlantic and Pacific fleets, whereas Reagan served in the US Army's First Motion Picture Unit and never left the States during his service. Carter lead the US nuclear disaster team after Canada's Chalk River Laboratory's accident. Carter, along with other members of his team, spent time inside the highly radioactive reactor disassembling it for shutdown. Reagan had no such leadership time nor service involving potential personal injury.

For Romney to attempt to disabuse President Carter is further proof of his 1%-er, bullying, elitist behavior.

Bring Public Enemy #1 to justice

Typically, in US politics, we don't go after the liars, because we understand that politicians ARE liars by nature. But the current crop of conservatives, many of whom are Tea Partiers, have gone beyond simple politics and have engaged in treasonous behaviors. For example, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said after the infamous 2011 debt ceiling increase debacle that the US's credit rating was "a hostage worth ransoming". By that admission, he stated that he and his fellow Republicans knew, and approved of, the coming credit downgrade, and that they approved of it as long as it resulted in political gains for him and his cronies. Of course, the creditworthiness of the US doesn't affect his real constituency, the wealthiest 400 people in the nation, it only affects those who can't secure loans from other sources and so end up paying more in interest than they would have if the nation's credit rating hadn't been downgraded. McConnell and his buddies screwed the entire nation in order to support the ones who least needed it. By any other name, that is treason. And treason is a capital offense. More on that later.

McConnell isn't alone in Washington, D.C., he has friends like Eric Cantor who seconded the charge on the national prestige and who helped him put the shaft to the country for political capital. And others from the sidelines included Sarah Palin, the usual radio trash like Limbaugh and Beck, Newt Gingrich, and a plethora of middlemen who sought to ride the Tea Party Express to fame and fortune. Instead, they rode the train off the tracks in the fashion of the 1970s-era poster which adorned the walls of many of us who were teenagers then and featured the two gentlemen standing aside and looking at the derailed train with the caption, "Oh, shit!"

The United States's 'Oh, shit' moment came when our credit rating was downgraded.

The same posse of incomprehensible, treasonous behaviors continues to ride and its now lead by Grover Norquist, a man whose concern for his country is devoid of reason, thought, or rationale that doesn't include cutting taxes. The fact that the nation has prospered when the tax rate was higher eludes him, not that he would care to acknowledge the fact, anyway. He has callously thrust aside historical truths which show his idol, Ronald Reagan, acting prudently 11 times in his 8 years in office by raising taxes in order to pay the nation's bills. That's an immutable fact, yet Norquist tries to spin it in his favor. He has held the intent of reason of GOP lawmakers in contempt and has forced them to sign his treasonous pledge not to raise taxes. If you want to point to a single person who's most responsible for the collapse of our nation's infrastructure, the rust of American industry, and the common sense that says if a bill is due, you must have the funds to pay it and you can't continue to pay the bills by simply cutting funding for other projects. It's crazy. It's insane. It's treason. And he needs to pay the ultimate price for his treason.

Our nation holds treason as a capital crime. Norquist's crimes are treasonous. He has single-handedly brought down the house that great Presidents have engineered and the sweat of American workers built. The great edifice of American strength has been crumbled by a single traitor, and the Republican party has hoisted him onto their shoulders for doing so.

You'll know this is true by this sign, that our great republic is weaker today than it was 20 years ago.

And you'll know the traitor by name by the proof of his authorship of the one document that he alone has championed and which has lead our nation to ruin.

His name is Grover Norquist, and he is Public Enemy #1. Demand that he be brought to justice and when found guilty, and he will be, demand that he pay the price for treason with his life.

America the Dumb

As I watch the daily news cycle, I'm constantly amazed at how Americans are talked down to by the media; this is even more true about the conservative media who consider themselves smarter than the rest of us. How can you tell? How many conservative radio schlock jocks are there compared to liberal ones? They even have their own TV network. While talking down to voters has been true for a while in politics, it's taken a new turn with the inclusion of national conservative figures like George W. Bush, Sarah Palin, and Rick Perry. Collectively, these three aren't capable of being a dog catcher in a progressive industrialized country like Finland.

So how did we get here and where are we going? Well, we got here when the GOP decided that it was better to say whatever they needed to say to get elected, but to then do whatever they wanted to do after getting into office. Politics ceased being about the candidate who's best suited to fulfill the duties of his office and started being about whom the party cognoscenti could coach and get elected. In our lifetimes, it began with Ronald Reagan, an actor given lines to read and who put on an Oscar-quality performance for 8 years, even when he was unfit to lead due to the Alzheimer's that Nancy and her coterie kept from the public.

Why would the GOP want to dumb down America? Because smart people can see through the lies and would never allow them to wrest power from the electorate. The GOP had an image problem after Nixon soiled the office of President, and along came Ronnie RayGun riding a white horse into the White House. He was the perfect foil; he sounded genuine, he talked like Joe Six-pack, and he was a true believer. All they needed to do was to paint Jimmy Carter as an elite, something that they're trying to do again with Barack Obama,  and they had their man with the plan.

So who did they go after first? Well, if you're in the United States and you're looking for a body of people who have absolutely no critical thinking skills, who act in lock-step, who are monolithic in thought, you go to church. American Evangelicals are reared into a religion that stifles creative thinking, critical thinking, and just plain old thinking, period. Why? Because the guise of Christianity is so thin that having people think is tantamount to having them ask questions about the inconsistencies in the bible, and in their 23,000+ denominations. By the way, why ARE there 23,000+ Christian denominations? And each one thinks that only they have all the answers. Yet, when pressed, they'll clump together like so much fecal matter and shout down anyone who questions their beliefs. They'll scream that it's they who are being repressed if you complain that their religion is in your face every day, and that it's their demagoguery which has brought America to its knees. They've fought science at every turn to the point that science is taught in schools with a bent toward their mythology, Creationism, rather than the true path of Evolution. Is it any wonder that American school kids lag behind the rest of the industrialized world in math and science when what they're taught is at odds with the truth? It's shameful. And they've been duped into thinking that they're right. America lost its way the day we stopped following intellectuals and started following myth.

This morning, I watched a series of videos filmed in a small town in Minnesota. The interviewer was unbiased and was very neutrally trying to understand what people thought about government entitlement programs. The interviewer pointed out that those drawing Social Security today bring in 3 times more, adjusted for inflation, than they paid into the system. And in every case but 2, the people interviewed believed that they were exceptions to the rule, and that they had somehow earned the 3x payout. And in every case but 1, they considered themselves conservatives. I would like to see a similar set of interviews where people are asked who voted back in the 1980s for Social Security privatization. How would they feel today with no income? What? That's right, no income. Why? Because with two major recessions - that caused by 9/11 and then the Great Recession - their income would have been wiped out. Completely. The politicians who proposed that Social Security be privatized - and they're still at it - have cleverly avoided pointing out that they proposed that it would not be regulated by any government agency, that it would be governed by the free market. In that case, small investors, who would make up the vast majority of a privatized Social Security, would have been among those who lost everything in the Great Recession, and that the earlier 9/11 recession would have taken some out then. Ask people what they think about that and you get stony silence. I know. I've asked. I asked people at my mother's doctor's clinic when I've taken her to appointments. I've asked at the VA hospital when I've gone to my own appointments. Someone always blurts out that the government wouldn't have let them go without income. But that's wrong; the politicians - conservatives - who proposed privatization have all also proposed a laissez-faire system, letting the market rise or crash as it would with no oversight. None. And there are far too many people for the government to have picked up from the crash since Social Security would have been de-funded when privatization took effect. People get very quiet when you point this out, although there's always someone who thinks that he's outsmarted reality. IN reality, those people have to ignore some iron rule or another to arrive at their conclusions.

In those videos, this morning, there was person after person justifying why they should get 3x more than they paid into the system. All conservatives. All claiming that there were too many people with their hands held out. All ready to jerk the rug out from under someone else. All good, solid citizens. And every one of them was a hypocrite. Or as I refer to them, "Good Christians".

For America, it's 'Make Stuff or Die'

I'm not really a fan of Apple, but I do understand why their products are manufactured and assembled in China. We, as a nation, have allowed religion to trump science in our nation's schools. God has become more important than advancing the human condition. As long as we allow that to continue, we will always ride backseat to China. 

Going back to the mid-80s, I've watched the US become a services-based economy. Services feed the need for domestic consumers, but largely aren't exportable - diners from Beijing, Tokyo, and Munich aren't coming to Wichita or Macon or Sioux Falls to eat dinner. They're not coming from Sao Paolo to get a tan in Ithaca. We don't export enough services to bring in foreign dollars.

Maybe the problem is that we're too busy entertaining ourselves, or perhaps distracting ourselves, to focus even momentarily on the issues that are tanking our nation. Even if we manage to pull out of the current economic morass, our economy will remain fragile until we begin to build and export. A nation's economy depends not on domestic consumption of goods and services but rather on how much money it can earn from other nations.

Take this analogy:  Suppose you have 4 teams of 3 people each. Each person has $10, so each team has $30 available to it. Let's say that Team A's people, Members 1, 2, and 3, each have to eat, but Team A doesn't produce food, it provides services, but only to one another, not to other teams. So they have to go to Team B, which produces food, and buy their groceries. Assume that those groceries cost 1/3 of Team A's funds, so it ran them $10. Now Team A only has $20 while Team B now has $40. Now imagine that Team A is the United States and Team B is China. See where this is headed? 

Pretty soon, the Team (nation) that has the most PRODUCTS that other Teams (nations) need has the most money. (Yes, you can export some services, but it's much easier for another nation to step in and underbid you, taking your clients). Remember who we've been borrowing money from? China. Which makes things. We provides services, they provide THINGS. 

We need to rebuild our heavy manufacturing base; ships, planes, heavy mining and earth moving equipment, trucks, cars...THINGS! Some economists have been warning us since the early-80s that what has happened would happen. Obviously they were right. And we're still not doing anything about it. In fact, we're digging a deeper hole by propping up the house of cards that collapsed, the financial sector, causing the Great Recession. 

Our great hope just might be green technology, but if we're going to export better, more efficient, cheaper products than other nations, we MUST get the ball rolling. We MUST focus on manufacturing exportable, durable goods. We MUST!

Failing that, the future doesn't look so bright.

Make employers pay their own way or tax the shit out of them if they move overseas

Maybe it's time that employers ponied up and spent some money on training the people they need rather than profiteering on taxpayers. Corporations pick and choose locations based on how little it will cost them to operate there. Politicians give them the store - tax breaks, donated land or buildings or both, immunity from prosecution for violating environmental laws - and the moment they find themselves needing something, in this case trained workers, they get ready to close shop and move on to the next highest bidder.

Fuck 'em! Let them pay to train the people they need. If we got tough with corporations rather than caving to their whims, we would tell them, "Move your operations offshore and we will tax your imports to the US equal to the value of your products". See how they like having the world's largest economy essentially off limits to their products by virtue of not being able to compete. See how long it takes 'em to get the message. (Hint: Until the first stockbrokers meeting where they see how much money they've lost)

I Finally Understand Capitalism, Wall Street, Government, and Their Relationships

Let's see if I understand this correctly.

A) Wall Street is the bastion of capitalism.
B) Government is evil.
C) Public companies whose stock trades on Wall Street, ergo capitalists, believe that the private sector does a better job at virtually everything than the 'inept' evil government does.
D) Wall Street's actual ineptitude and real felonious behaviors led to the stock market crash which tanked our national economy and threatens other economies worldwide.
E) The 'inept' government or as we prefer to call it, We The People, rode to the rescue of the private sector and Wall Street, but for only those who made enough money to actually afford to play the market, leaving our nation with a debt which will take over a decade to pay off.
F) Publicly traded companies whose stock is traded on Wall Street reward actually inept and truly felonious CEOs with, in some cases, money that belongs to We The People,  while simultaneously decrying the ineptitude of the evil government.
G) Wall Street is still considered the bastion of capitalism.

Huh! Well I'll be damned, I figured it out. And by 'figured it out', I mean, 'understand that capitalism is the real evil'.

Got it.

Reply to comment on ApplePaul's FB page about government being "in charge of stuff"

Both government and business are subject to the laws of human nature. Government can run efficiently, but it takes oversight to keep people focused on their jobs, just like in business. Business needs oversight to prevent issues like the debacle with sub-prime lending, using toxic chemicals in our children's toys, and keeping their effluent out of our waterways. The right course is somewhere in the middle, not on one of the extremes in either direction; in other words, right where most things work best. Government, when run by concerned individuals, not like the current Nay Sayers we have in Congress, has given us a national system of freeways, free education, airports that all can access, and a host of other things that every successful person in this country has taken advantage of on the way to success. It's folly to think that government, properly run, isn't a boon to individual prosperity. The Works Progress Administration, the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Rural Electrification Administration and other projects of the New Deal program helped the United States pull itself out of the morass of the Great Depression...which was caused by the crash of the Stock Market, a PRIVATE endeavor. In our grandparents' or great grandparents' lifetimes, government was trusted to ensure the common weal, because it was the lifeline which saved the nation from economic apocalypse. It seems very short-memoried to claim that government shouldn't be "in charge of so much stuff...", making me wonder, what is it that people are doing that they don't want government to know about?