Tuesday, August 2, 2011

HOUSEKEEPING MEASURES

Random thoughts.

At the risk of being considered a traitor to my moderate to left leanings, maybe this would be the equivalent of lancing multiple boils if raising the debt ceiling hadn’t been considered a “housekeeping measure.”

Maybe we would have had this discussion a lot sooner if John and Joan public had seen the deficits ballooning after the Bush tax cuts and the decision to fight two wars off the books. The story we got on Iraq was that money from Iraqi oil was going to pay for that war. Yeah, right. Except that our handpicked candidates to run Iraq after the war couldn’t hold the country. And as if the Iraqis wouldn’t have a say in how their revenues would be spent.

Yes, raising the debt ceiling authorizes borrowing to pay for what congress has already authorized. But if raising it hadn’t been a “housekeeping measure” we might have asked some hard questions a lot sooner. Where are the jobs those tax cuts were supposed to create? Are they in America? Or are they in India and China?

It’s been sixty plus years since WWII, can’t the Europeans defend themselves by now? Alexander the Great, the Russians and the British have all tried to “tame” Afghanistan, they all failed. Something tells me that the best we can do is try to leave the country no worse off than we found it. Iraq was cobbled together from pieces of the British Mandate after the fall of the Ottomans. In the end the Iraqis will have to decide if they are going to be one nation or not. Again, maybe the best we can do is try to leave the country no worse off than we found it.

Oil companies are making record profits. Why do they need subsidies? We’re growing so much subsidized corn we can afford to dump it in other countries at a price below what their farmers need to stay on the land. Or we use it for animal feed. How much can we save if we end those payouts?

I forget who the senator was but he had a saying “a billion here, a billion there, pretty soon it adds up to real money.” And we appear to have barely avoided the financial equivalent of treating a sprained ankle by amputating the whole leg at the hip.

2 comments:

Lisa :-] said...

Let us all remember that when Bill Clinton left office there was a budget surplus. Was he responsible for it? No...the internet boom was. But that was back in the olden days, when our economy was based on something other than all of us spending money on products that American manufacturers have chosen to have more cheaply manufactured overseas. What's wrong with this picture????

JACKIE said...

A few months ago the Guard started to run a series on local "entrpeneurs" people who were out of work and starting their own businesses. I think it ended after two installments. Both were using the net to do business, no problem there. Except..........oh those pesky exceptions. One guy was trying to sell, as I recall plastic inflatables that you'd use in a pool. The other was a gal who had put together a lunch "kit." A case that held smaller components to put you meal in. Retail $49.95, plus shipping. WTF, in this economy?

Thing is I suspect very strongly that the components for both business came from either China or some other third world country. If we can't create jobs in this country who's going to have money to spend on dispensible gew gaws?(always liked that term) I got by very nicely for nearly ten years with a thermos, the generic version of tupperware and a canvas craft bag. Didn't cost me $50.00 either.