The current news item concerns the deficit, raising the debt limit, and finding a way to manage the nation with less money than is currently required for it to function. At the moment the debt limit for the US Federal Government is about $14.3 trillion. Currently the annual Federal deficit is running roughly $1.5 trillion. If the debt limit is extended it will provide several billions more in spending for the Federal government, yet it will in no way solve the critical problem of chronic over-spending.
At this point it is worth noting some of the obvious "omissions" involved in what amounts to a total farce of a "crisis" where Federal spending is concerned. First, unless the level of Defense spending is severely curtailed, any discussions about annual deficit reduction are meaningless, and thus a complete lie. Likewise, discussions that do not involve a restructuring and overall increase in taxation ON EVERY LEVEL are likewise a farce, and an admission that this entire "crisis" is in fact a distracting charade perpetrated by our leaders to keep our attention away from the serious problem actually facing the country. Further, if discussions fail to include a comprehensive evaluation of trade imbalances, tax loopholes, tax breaks, and subsidies(as well as the now viral acquiescence to private contracting) where corporations are concerned, there is nothing to discuss about a "balanced federal budget", "mortgaging the future", or the "validity of the US federal debt".
The problem is that while millions of American workers are making do with less in a depressed economy corporations are sitting on billions of dollars in profits, banks are sitting on billions--even trillions--in reserves, and the federal government that should be working "to establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity" has effectively forfeited it's authority in this regard to those whose influence in government is both greater and more effective than the interests of the "people". When representatives in government are promoted by powerful interest to run for office, gain office by the funding of those interests, and then proceed to enact, enforce, and rule on particular laws that favor those same interests, the entire system of public service has been perverted because the definition of the "the people" becomes a subjective object, and thus "serving the people" means whomever that elected individual chooses to listen to. Because by US law a corporation is regarded as an "individual" or a "person" these also are considered among the "people" that government representatives serve.
In light of the above, it is no mistake that when the critical issues of the day are discussed between corporations and government the average working family is left out of the negotiations. It is no mistake that tax breaks, subsidies, and loopholes invariably favor the extremely wealthy, or that industry and finance have become a kind of aristocracy that effectively absorbs the public wealth via federal laws and out-right profits. It is not a mistake that the new Health Care law basically serves up every individual in the US to both the health care industry and the pharmaceutical corporations. That is, the law has created customers for an industry rather than effectively addressing the health care needs of the population as a whole. In similar fashion, the financial industry has stripped the nation of $13 trillion of it's wealth, created 25 million unemployed Americans, and then proceeded to throw these newly unemployed out of their houses because a housing market that they manipulated was inflated and summarily deflated by a corrupt and unregulated market to the benefit of those same banks.
Today we are without justice. We are without domestic tranquility. We are without a common defense, especially as law enforcement has been handed greater authority to arrest, to detain, or to simply burst into a home unannounced and begin to shoot and kill Americans without due process--that is, the charge of wrong doing is now sufficient to allow home invasion by paramilitary units of the local police or any number of agencies that have somehow been given--without the knowledge or consent of the American people--the right to deprive US citizens of their person and/or property without the due process of law. We are without the general welfare as well, and surely the blessings of liberty, in light of the crisis that has so clearly overcome our nation, are no longer secured for ourselves or our posterity.
And now, aside from all of this, we are hearing about the squabbling over raising the debt limit. While children starve, while the elderly suffer , while families are thrown out of their homes and people are subjected to blatant and grotesque violations of their persons by the Transportation Safety Authority, and while we, as working class citizens, struggle with inflation, with joblessness, and with an obvious continued erosion of the overall economic health of the country, we are treated to the agonized debates over how BILLIONS and TRILLIONS of dollars of OUR MONEY can be spent in such a way as to please the wealthy, punish the poor, and satisfy temporarily the insatiable greed of the banking industry.
Our nation is $200 trillion in debt based on current and unfunded future liabilities.
Our military absorbs $700 billion annually--more than every other nation in the world COMBINED.
Our banking industry, by virtue of it's outstanding liabilities, is effectively insolvent, and requires ever increasing sums of hard cash simply to satisfy interest on maturing debt obligations, bad investments, failed ventures, and the ever growing $250 trillion derivative speculations.
The United States is insolvent.
There is no debt deal, nor compromise, nor "way out" that will change the fact that our way of life has been destroyed, our future decimated, and our livelihoods obliterated by the failed economic and fiscal policies of three generations.
This is why the debate in Washington is a farce. This is why the entire charade is a huge insult to the intelligence of working people everywhere.
This is why faith in this government is at possibly it's lowest point in United States history. The people know there is no way out. Our government continues to pretend we don't know, to act like we don't know, and to pat our little heads and say, "You just keep working and let us solve this problem. You can trust us."
No, we can't. And we never should have in the first place.
