Joel's Rant

Did you know that in February, the deficit for that one month topped $220 billion?  That’s more than the entire budget deficit for 2007, which was “only” $172 billion.

So the federal budget for 2012, the one Barack Obama just proposed comes in at $3.73 trillion, of which about $1.65 trillion is borrowed.  That means over 40 cents of every dollar is borrowed.  How long would your family survive if you had to borrow that much just to make your ends meet?  The answer is not very long.

Or how about this?  The total budget debt of the United States is about $14.5 trillion.  It just so happens that the GDP of the United States, the worth of all the goods and services produced in our country, is also about $14.5 trillion.  That means that our “credit card debt” is the same as our “earnings.”  How long would your family be able to survive if you owed on your credit card the same amount of money you earned every year?  Again, the answer is not very long.  It’s just simple economics.

So in November we elect a Republican House to begin the process of scaling all of that back, by making meaningful cuts to spending and entitlement programs because we’re on the edge, and we don’t have much further we can go.  So what the Republicans in the House propose is to cut from the 2012 budget a total of $61 billion. (The fact that the Democrats and the President will agree to cut only $4.5 billion is merely a measure of their insanity and shows the deep hatred and disdain they have for the American system of government and for the American people directly.  But that’s another story.)

My focus is here the Republicans.  They think cutting $61 billion is an answer.  See the February deficit I noted above.  $61 billion is only one week’s worth of borrowing from China.  That’s it.  Just one week’s worth.  $61 billion is literally a rounding error; it would turn the $1.65 trillion deficit into a $1.6 trillion deficit.  How meaningful is that?  The answer is it’s not meaningful at all. It means absolutely nothing.  This is all some sort of joke, some sort of annoying and grotesque “budget theater”  being played out by Republicans.

Why aren’t the Republicans looking to cut $610 billion?  Why not $1 trillion?  Just 10 years ago, federal spending was ½ of what it is today, and if I recall we survived as a society pretty well.  In fact, we were at our grandest economy in history, just before 9/11.   Only 4 years ago the deficit was 1/10^th what it is today, yet we now have near record unemployment, record number of people getting food stamps and living in poverty, on the Medicaid rolls, record number of foreclosures and on and on.

So where are the Republicans?  I don’t hear anything from them.  Well, I don’t hear anything from them except that they definitely and absolutely do not want to “shut down the government.”  That’s what I hear from John Boehner, Eric Cantor and Kevin McCarthy, the entire House leadership, all the time.  They don’t want to shut down the government.  They are in near mortal fear of shutting down the government, and that’s very bad because now they’re terrified of doing anything meaningful and substantive.  They are rapidly becoming legislative losers, not unlike Democrats.

But wait, it gets better.  Now it turns out that the Democrats and Barack Obama purposely placed a Trojan horse in the 2700 page ObamaCare legislation that passed the Congress, with the assistance of fraud, blackmail and deceit, in March 2010.  It takes a long time to fully analyze 2700 pages in one bill but that task has finally been accomplished and it turns out Obama, Pelosi and Reid, had placed in the bill over $105 billion in appropriations to finance the efforts to make ObamaCare the law of the land. 

http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/watercooler/2011/mar/10/will-house-gop-rescind-obamacare-funding-appropria/

The idea that the Republican House can “defund” the bill is a pipe dream.  It can’t be done.  The money to fund ObamaCare has already been passed in the last Congress.  It’s a nightmare!

The Democrats already provided for ObamaCare funding last year but it was literally kept a secret.  This is the tyranny we now find ourselves in.  The people who actually wrote the bill didn’t tell the Republicans the appropriations were in there.  They didn’t tell the people of the United States the appropriations were in there.  I’m certain most Democrats didn’t know it was in there, but it is.  It took until now for that Trojan horse to be discovered.  ObamaCare is already funded to the tune of $105 billion…..and it can’t be stopped.

The only way now to stop ObamaCare is for the Congress to repeal the entire law.  Oh, but Boehner and his Republicans will tell you the House did that already just a month or so ago and the repeal was stamped out by the Senate…..and they would be right.

Here’s where the threat to close the government comes into play in a big way.  Now we have a new Continuing Resolution (CR) coming up for a vote on this Wednesday and Boehner has proposed having the CR go forward, so the government can stay open of another 3 weeks, by demanding $6 billion in cuts. 

How about instead Boehner promises the CR would go forward only if ObamaCare is repealed?  Or, how about instead promising the debt ceiling, looming large in April, will be raised only if ObamaCare is repealed?  How about instead stating the government will be shut down unless ObamaCare is repealed?

Why haven’t I heard this from the House Republicans?  Not only have I not heard this from Boehner and his incompetent and elitist lieutenants, I haven’t heard any of this from the Tea Party Republicans.  Where are they on this $105 billion ObamaCare funding debacle?

The most unfathomable law in United States history was passed last year, a law that will change forever the relationship every citizen has with the government, where the government will be able to force you to do virtually anything it wants, and yet the Republicans will not take the guerilla tactics necessary to get ObamaCare repealed.  The $105 billion was surreptitiously appropriated.  ObamaCare has the money to go forward.  The Republicans can’t stop it without drastic action.  But they do have leverage.  They have the CR.  They have the looming debt ceiling.  They can force the government to shut down.   

Unless the Republicans take action, Obama won’t be the only one allowing this to go forward.  So will John Boehner.  So will the Republicans.  And the “Obama Boehner Health Care Act” will destroy America.

And that’s all there is to it.

Did you know that the NEA, the SEIU and the AFL-CIO, the unions Barack Hussein Obama endorses, have not supported a single tax cut or a spending cut, at any level of government, in over the last 30 years?  Not one!

Here we are with our national on-budget debt about to top $15 trillion, and those unions ask for higher taxes and higher spending.  Our federal government has spent over $3 trillion additional dollars in just the last 2 years, and they think spending is too low.  Virtually every state in the nation is in huge debt, and several are near financial collapse and bankruptcy, and the unions are good with that.

Why is that?  It’s because public employee unions benefit from keeping taxes rolling in and spending as high as possible.  Public employee unions need higher taxes to get higher salaries and benefits, and know spending needs to grow to make those requirements happen.  They’re like a “fifth column” in our country.

Right now the average federal worker earns about $120,000 per year in wages and benefits, plus enjoys the ironclad job security provided by civil service rules and regulations.  The average Wisconsin teacher earns about $89,000 per year in wages and benefits and is similarly protected by civil service rules and regulations, but in addition also enjoys collective bargaining rights to use as leverage against local communities wishing to rein in spending.  The average private sector worker, whose taxes support the aforementioned public employee workers, earns only about $61,000 per year in wages and benefits, and has virtually no job security.    What’s wrong with this picture?

How can anyone expect lower wage and benefit people to continue to pay the higher wages and benefits of the public employees who control a monopoly over basic community services, and who continually demand ever more in wage and benefits, and are insulated and protected from the recessions and depressions private sector workers are forced to endure?  And with politicians beholden to public employee unions for votes and campaign contributions there is no one negotiating for the taxpayers.  This is corrupt and unsustainable.  In fact, it’s sort of a “master” class versus a “slavery” class, no?

Public employee unions are the enemy of the civil society.  I’m not talking about the members; there are lots of good teachers and cops and sanitation workers and all that.  I’m talking about the unions, and the union bosses.  They’re the enemy.

But that’s not the way it was supposed to be.  The whole idea of working in the public sector was that you earned perhaps lower wages, but received in return better benefits and ironclad job security than those counterparts in the private sector.  As a public sector worker you knew that going in…….there was definitely a well understood tradeoff.

But that changed in the 1960s when Democrat governors and mayors saw that bestowing collective bargaining rights on public employee unions could more or less guarantee reelection by creating an army of happy voters beholden to those same politicians for keeping the taxpayer provided gravy train going, even if it meant promising future wages and benefits that could never be paid.  I guess those conspiring politicians are the enemy too.

It may have taken 30 years or more for the public employee unions to overplay their hands but that’s what has at last happened.  The Wisconsin and Indiana and Ohio and Michigan situations of the past several weeks have forced America to take a new look at the extortion that is bringing the economies of these and other states down and there is an interest finally to do something about them.  America is finally waking up to the corruption.

I’m hoping America will wake up to the corruption that is preventing our nation from securing the energy it needs to maintain a 21^st century technological and free society.  I recently paid $3.85 for a gallon of premium gasoline while the guy next to me was filling his tank with $3.56 a gallon of regular. Our eyes met and we both shook our heads as if to say “this really blows, no?” Yet, other than an occasional mention in the media, there is no public outrage. 

I recall just 2 ½ years ago gasoline approaching $4.00 per gallon because oil was costing over $140 per barrel and the screaming about the collapse of our economy could be heard on Mars.  If I recall, the media drumbeat blaming George W. Bush for high gasoline prices was everywhere, all the time, around the clock.  Yet now, nothing.  What’s the difference?

The difference is, obviously, Barack Hussein Obama and the media hypocrisy.  Don’t forget, the media is merely the public relations arm of the Democrat Party and the Democrat Party is the federal government.  They are all as one, in bed with each other, part of the same genre. In effect, there’s the federal government, and then there’s the Republican Party.  That’s pretty much it.  Ergo, you can have $4.00 gasoline and hatred for George W. Bush; and you can similarly have $4.00 gasoline and admiration for Barack Hussein Obama.  Am I wrong?

I suppose we’re pretty lucky that oil is presently priced at only $104 per barrel, but when that changes you should expect gasoline prices to “necessarily skyrocket.”  That’s what Barack Hussein Obama said in his January 2008 comment to the San Francisco Chronicle in which he talked about energy prices under his administration, that they would “necessarily skyrocket.”  Yes, he seems to be a man of his word.

So here we are, facing instability and unrest in the oil rich Middle East, and the Barack Hussein Obama administration is purposely choking off all new oil exploration and drilling in the United States.  He’s currently defying a federal court order to resume drilling offshore in the Gulf of Mexico, and has refused to provide drilling licenses off the coasts of California, Florida and Alaska or anywhere else off shore of America.  How, as a great nation, can we let one guy, one single guy, do this to us?  Where does he suppose gasoline comes from?  Where does he get the chutzpah?

And what sense does it make to force energy prices higher, which he deliberately is trying to do?  At what per-gallon price will you purposely begin to curtail your own driving?  Let’s assume you’ll do less driving than normal when the price reaches $5.00 per gallon, which may not be very long from now.  That’s means your neighbors will likely do the same thing, if they can. 

Obviously, the first type of driving to be curtailed will be things like going to the mall and the movies and discretionary driving like that, which means the people working in those kinds of places will start to be laid off, which means they’ll be collecting unemployment benefits, and maybe social services benefits, which means they’ll be beholden to the government. 

And don’t forget the rising costs for the people driving food to your grocery store and how the costs of food and everything else that needs to be delivered, which is virtually every product you need to carry on your life, will be going up.  And don’t forget the price of every product made with petroleum products will be going up, which includes everything from Glad-Wrap and cosmetics to life saving drugs.

And all of this an intentional effort to raise costs, all brought to you by your government, your Democrat controlled government, your government administered by Barack Hussein Obama.  It’s all intended, it’s all purposeful, and it’s all been planned this way.  Buy why?

When Barack Hussein Obama was running for President he made it quite clear, and to cheering and adoring crowds, that his aim was to “fundamentally change America.”  He said that, right?  Everyone knows he said that, and in pretty much those exact words. 

You don’t do “fundamental change” to things you love.  If you love something you don’t fundamentally change it.  You may tweak it, but you never fundamentally change it.  That changes “it” into something totally different, right?  But you do make “fundamental change” to things you hate.  Am I wrong?

I’m sorry to say that Barack Hussein Obama hates America.  There, I said it, and I meant it.

That’s why he supports the public employee unions destroying the financial stability of the states, and why he supports the purposeful raising of living costs in an effort to put people on the government dole, to keep people victims, so they can be controlled by government.  It all makes sense.

And that’s all there is to it.