The poor and budget cutting.

We are looking at America finally being in a position where she can no longer pay the new bills that have been piled on her. There are about enough straws to break the camels back and the DC Ruling class is still adding straws.

It would seem to those of us who have been personally successful in budgeting in our own lives that what is needed is to cut spending, or get a second job, or both. While the federal government can't get a second job they can raise taxes. They can also cut regulations that keep us from tapping our national resources such as oil, coal and farm ground.

The first option of raising taxes will be tried, but it will not work. The first problem is that the lower income half of earners pay no taxes, and will not be asked to get some skin in the game that would connect them to the pain of wasted spending. They would sooner raise taxes on the rich by which they mean anyone who makes more than they do.

In Africa a missionary friend of mine told me they can tell a man is rich because "he has meat twice a week instead of twice a year." The poor in Europe are much better off than that and can hardly be called poor by Biblical standards; the poor in America have a higher standard of living than the poor in Europe. Many have two cars, a flat-screen TV, a a lot of living space. There are exceptions, but this is the rule.

Next, we have the aged folks; as a group they tend to have more wealth than any other group, but they also include those with no means of providing for themselves and no ability left to do so. They are also becoming a group that is proportionately larger than it ever was because of the baby boom followed by the baby bust followed by advances in medicine that have extended many lives.

The population explosion increase in not happening because people are multiplying like rabbits, but rather because we are no longer dropping like flies soon after retiring. The advances in medicine have also make it possible for men to stay in the workforce much longer. Probably less than 5% of the men nearing retirement still work with their hands so if the retirement age were lifted one year, two years or even 3 years it would hardly be an unbearable hardship.

So while a sane nation would cut military expenditures by 1/3 by withdrawing from Libya right away. We could also come to the conclusion that there is no reason to be fighting the Taliban now that we have killed or captured most of the men who plotted against us including their cult leader Osama Bin Ladin. A sane nation would also dramatically cut the amount of money that goes to the fake poor and focus taxed dollars on those who truly are starving and can do nothing for themselves.

But that is not what is going to happen; too many people (the ruling class) have too much invested in the status quo. So those with defense contracts (and interests in the Mid East) will fund publications that will scream bloody murder. Many of them will also undercut efforts to drill for our own oil. The Democrats will lie about cuts, who gets what, and how bad they need it and how incapable they are of surviving without more government money let alone less.

I've noticed the poor have enough money to have turned Mexico into a drug-running Heck hole so I'm just sure that cuts can be made. In the mean time they won't so expect massive inflation, further loss in the means of production, and a bigger debt crisis than ever. If you don't have some means of production now, some tools with which you can produce a product, a place to plant a garden, then I suggest you go out and get them if you can while you still can because some time within the next few years things will get ugly and the only way we will see it through is if there is a population ready to support themselves.

Cut Cap and Balance V.S. Crap, Cut and Run

The fact that Cut, Cap, and Balance was bi-partisan and a total compromise (not raising the debt ceiling at all is the hard right position, anything less is a compromise)

but anyway given that CC&B was bi-partisan and Boehner's bill Crap, Cut and Run, is further to the left and yet not Bi-partisan tells us all we need to know about who was right about the wisdom of putting forth a new bill rather than holding firm and concentrating energy on getting that through.

When CC&B was the plan there was no co-ordinated big push to get the message out, bully anyone who didn't "Get their A** in line", and put the pressure on Obama and Harry Reid.

That tells us that CC&B was never their plan, that was just a bone that they through the TEA Party to get us to move to the left a few steps so that once everyone was more comfortable with a small compromise they could stretch that to what they always wanted.

The TEA Party had the left up against the ropes, they had democrats quaking in their boots and afraid to vote against CC&B, but because the RINOs let on that this was not their bill, and that they would undermine it, the Democrats in the Senate took heart and now they even oppose CC&R.

To put this in Weakly Standard speak the Neo-Con Uruk-hai have captured a few key TEA Party Hobbits and are taking them back to Boehnermon who drank too deeply of big government under Bush and is now secretly in league with the Ruling Class of Mordor of the same.

Ruling class warfare

The TEA (Taxed Enough Already)Party of 2010 created a Republican landslide all throughout the state governments and the House of Representatives, but they didn't get a majority of TEA Party members.

If you consider that the Ruling-Class Democrats still own the White House, the Senate and that half the Republicans in the House of Representatives are either part of the ruling class or aspire to be members then you begin to see why nothing has changed.

We see a lot of hot rhetoric, but the numbers haven't moved. The continuing resolution passed the House after spending cuts of only $62 Billion, which upon further examination was revealed to be $32 Billion and then after the bill was really put under the micro-scope, it came out that the real number was closer to $300 million.

While there was a move to cut spending, cap spending, and vote on a balanced budget amendment, it was clear that the Ruling Class Republicans were telegraphing that they were only going through the motions. They had to give the base some red meat, but they were not going to really put up a fight, they were not going to go all the way and just go back to the alternative which is to not raise the debt ceiling.

What would not raising the debt ceiling do?

1 It would force everyone to stop spending on everything but the most critical priorities.

2 By limiting all spending to priorities we would be able to go line by line through the budget and say hmmm, war in Libya? Not a priority. Social Security checks, pay 'em! Check to Planned Parenthood? Denied! Military pay? Pay the man! Salaries for congress, and so forth? Denied! Programs for medical care for the aged and disabled? Pay it! Budgets for agencies that don't show up to work on "snow days" cut them to the bone or get rid of them!

You get the idea how a prioritization would go. now how about if spending isn't prioritized? Check to Obama's cronies in Planned Parenthood? Obama's man will pay that first; same thing with ACORN. In fact all of the spending that is unpopular with the American people will happen first so that when the money runs out Obama can actually say that cuts in spending will hit the neediest the most.

This is not true now though; we could stop all spending until all spending is prioritized, or we can continue to run up spending for programs that at best do not help the poor or the needy. This means bigger debt now and less for the real poor and needy later. So anyone who cares about the poor and needy is for cutting spending now.

What about just raising taxes on the rich? Well first of all taxes are never increased on the politically connected because they are able to get special treatment from their cronies in office. They get loopholes, they get special contracts, and they get regulations that favor them over their competition. Next after a certain point the more you raise taxes the less you get, and partly that is because you ruin the economy and without a strong economy you cannot fund this level of spending.

The politically connected and their buddies in office, by which I mean the DC establishment or "Ruling Class" need the spending to be so big that it can't all be tracked so they can hide the amounts they are funneling to their cronies. This is why all their posturing is all talk. Big Government is their family business model. Until we really engage in class warfare against the "Ruling Class we will never get to the root of the problem.

Debt ceiling the GOP's fault

There is no doubt in my mind that no matter what happens in regards to the debt ceiling/overspending/default the New York Times and their gang will not blame Obama. Also it can be known ahead of time that no matter what happens all or part of the GOP will be blamed.

The liberal hardliners in the media used to get more done by reporting on a center-right country from a center-left position and thereby moving the positions incrementally to the left. Now with the rise of Talk Radio/Fox/and Blogs the liberals have lost their monopoly and they have had to push harder to get the same leftward movement.

The strategic telling of the truth has almost been thrown out and the only time we get the truth out of them is by accident or because the facts are so well known that they can't get away with it. At that point they either ignore it or tell the part of the truth that is well known but put a spin on it with a sob-story, a false study, or an opposing quote from some leftist with a website and a fax-machine who poses as the leader of a large group.

Since we cannot trust the media in this debate we need to gather the facts and say who is in the wrong, right? Well the first set of facts we should look at is that Obama has taken spending as a percentage of GDP from about 20% and raised it to 25%. Historically Federal spending has ranged from 17% to 19% and it cannot go above 19% without crushing the productive sector.

So if you want to look at symptoms you would say that the economy is having a heart-attack and needs an aspirin. If you consider that the patient has not taken care of it's health we could say that the republicans propose to fix the economy by giving it an aspirin. The democrats want to give the patient a combination of donuts and lard as well as half an aspirin.

Neither side wants to get the patent onto a diet and exercise program; the patient wouldn't vote for that! What constitutes a diet and exercise program in our analogy? First of all it will not work to do across the board cuts of all programs. True, all government programs would be forced to adapt the efficiencies of the productive sector if their budgets were cut, but across the board cuts are like mowing your lawn; at first it looks great and by next week it is right back!

The real problem is the concentration of government into a huge centralized government that has way to large of a population to be responsive or accountable to those who vote. We have to distribute power back to the states, the states need to redistribute their power back to the local level. Then what doesn't work can be identified and gotten rid of and things that work can be put in place.

So maybe in a way the Old-line GOP is to blame because they keep the game going while pretending to be an opposition party. They are the folks who were fine with partial birth abortion so long as they could look good voting against it and using it as a fund-raising issue against the Democrats. In the same way they need big government waste fraud and abuse so they can be against it, but they never get rid of it by returning the power to the states.

And you will also notice that they are also almost all part of the "ruling class" which is the group of "crony capitalists" who get rich through inside access.