Monday, November 21, 2011

Woe is Us

Senator Pat Toomey, from Pennsylvania was on CBS’s Sunday Morning yesterday and he showed why this Congress and it’s Super Committee are jokes and have to go. It is time to vote them all out and bring in anyone, and I mean anyone, that will begin to work towards reforming the rule of the elite we now have. Just look at the Republican field of presidential candidates. If you can raise enough money, anyone can get in the race and be a factor; at least temporarily.

Senator Toomey reflects the feelings of most of the members of the Super Committee. Do nothing and the cuts in spending will automatically take effect in 2013. That gives them plenty of time to change the balance of the plan. It was supposed to be 50% defense cuts and 50% to discretionary expenditures. Senator Toomey, and others trying to protect the defense contractors, have already begun talking about changing the formula of the agreement so that the defense budget would not be severely impacted. Stay tuned and you can see how this is going to develop.

Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle have lined up against the other side and do not want to listen. This Super committee didn’t even meet in the same room. The Dems met in one room and the Republicans in another. They hammered out some proposals they know the other side couldn’t accept and then had them delivered by some junior staffer running back and forth between the rooms. Neither side wants an agreement.
The Nough Boys in the GOP are afraid of the far right fringe and their big-money supporters so they won’t even consider a fair and balanced approach to solving the crisis and keeping the country sane and the economy afloat. The Democrats have already made significant concessions and feel that they can’t move any more, at least until the Republicans give in at least a little, or they will piss of their supporters.  Both are rigging the argument. It’s all about spin and blaming the other side right now.

The bottom line is, most people in this country know that there has to be a reasonable accommodation between the two extremes that requires cuts and new revenues. Most of the politicians have not come around to that realization yet. Why are they always behind us? They are more afraid of losing their job than actually governing, that’s why.
Though they blame it on the Democrats, it is the wacko right of the Tea Party, and the talk radio zombies that have created the current state of what they like to call class warfare. This Occupy (plug in a city) movement is not well organized or particularly effective at doing anything other than getting people arrested right now, but if we don’t get some kind on sanity and leadership out of Washington soon that could change. If the elite well-heeled class thinks that it can win a protracted class war, they may want to read a little history. Look what happened in France in the late 18th century, Russia in 1917 and the Arab world this year. I don’t care how much money you have or how strong you build the walls around your castle; 99% against 1% wins every time, if the 99% get hungry enough. I don’t even want to think about where an escalation of the bickering and posturing we have now could lead us.


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