I am already sick of this new administration, and The One™ hasn't even been sworn in yet.
Is it really necessary for NBC to run stories about the inauguration with inspiring music on the soundtrack? How many times are we going to be told that this signifies the end of racism in America? How many times are we going to be told, in so many subtle ways, that everything is different now, that Obama will change everything, turn this country around, bla bla bla?
Turn what around? The economy? Here's the deal with the economy.
For decades, I can remember economists and commentators warning us that we had to go back to being financially responsible in this country. You can't keep buying on credit, they said, on a national basis anymore than you can in a household. Sooner or later you have to start paying it all back, and longer you put it off, the more it's going to hurt.
After a decade or so of these warnings, which I had heard since a tow headed boy in the 50's, they began warning that we were putting off the payback for our children to deal with - that we were spending our children's future. That would be me they were talking about.
Eventually my generation grew up and took over. And we did the same thing. There were still voices among us, still giving that warning, just as there were with the WW2 generation. Soon they were warning that we were postponing the problem for
our children to deal with, and that it was going to be much worse the longer we put off re-payment.
And it has continued until this day. Congress after Congress, president after president of both corrupt parties, spending to keep in office, and letting the Fed print more paper money each time the economy slows down. Let me explain that. It does work to print more money and spend it when the economy slows down. It works just like an injection of amphetamines. But you're supposed to then remove the drugs once the economy kicks in - you allow it to slow back down, rather than let it keep roaring. So the economy has been growing in spurts and leaps, much like the blob in those old horror movies.
And the debt has been growing, too - it's kind of a double whammy, with increased debt and dollars worth less and less. And the generations after mine, generation x or y or whatever Time magazine has been calling them, has been hoping - no, assuming - that they can simply pass the bill on down to
their children, just as we passed it down to them.
Well, that monster of a credit card bill is now due. The bill, with a row of zeroes that won't even fit on the page, has been delivered to us all, now, now, now - not next decade, but
now. And the Bush administration has been kiting checks, printing more money, borrowing money from China, and generally looking for revenue under the seat cushions.
Now comes Obama, The One™. He, peace be upon him, is going to Change things. We have Hope. With a soundtrack of love and racial equality and little bunny rabbits, he is going to turn this country around. What is he going to do to accomplish that?
Well, he hasn't really given us a lot of details, and the press, the Guardian of our Liberty and our Right to Know, hasn't really asked. In fact, they have ridiculed anyone who has tried to ask in order to make sure he got elected, and they have failed in their duty, but then they have been failing in that duty for a very long time. In the few proposals he has hinted at, and in his campaign rhetoric, it appears to be a simple matter of Income Redistribution, spreading the wealth, "asking" the rich to pay their "fair share" whatever that may be - or else.
But there is a problem with that - a big one. Oh, I know it has been working for the last forty years, but remember that the bill is now due - the Big One. The credit card company from hell is now demanding at least the minimum payment, which I assure you is a hefty amount. The Bush administration has been balancing on the high wire for some time. Let's sit down at the kitchen table with the family and see what our options are.
Raise taxes? We could do that, but the result will be an immediate crashing of the economy, or what's left of it. You may hear the talk about the rich paying more taxes, but the numbers won't support it. There aren't enough rich people out there, so you would have to tax them at nearly 100% to make any difference at all. No, the big bucks from the few won't do it - the numbers only add up when you raise taxes on the many, meaning you and me, the families, the working class. But when they do that, we have to spend less. And that in turn hurts the big corporations, and they have to lay people off, and there you go.
By the way, the
real reason for all these bailouts? Those are because the two parties owe favors to the big corporations, and they intend to get theirs before it all falls down for the rest of us. There is no other reason for doing what they have done.
So... borrow more money from other countries? No can do. That barrel has been completely tapped. It's empty and dry, throw it in the alley behind the bar.
Print even more money? He might try that. But every nation that has done that has found itself experiencing hyper-inflation, that curious economic state where you take your grocery money to the store in a wheelbarrow, and try to spend it before it loses its value again. They've done all of that they can afford to do, too.
Stop spending? Obama isn't going to do that if he can help it. But maybe he
can't help it. When the credit card company won't raise the ceiling anymore,
can't raise it anymore, and when you can't even pay the minimum balance, and nobody will issue you another card.... it's over. You have to stop spending like a drunken fool, and then you have to make payments and get nothing fun in return - just like real people.
He could do what Ron Paul tried to get us to do last year: pull in the military and stop being the world's policeman. Obama will almost certainly have to do that, and if so, we will stop interfering with the internal affairs of other nations simply because we no longer can. Don't be shocked - this is precisely how we won the cold war. The Soviet Union could no longer afford to spend money on its military excursions, and they pulled the troops home. We may have to do the same, and this is very likely what Mr. Obama will do, if only because military spending is such a huge part of our budget. Budget? As if we have been following a "budget."
But in any case, The One will not be able to fulfill all those promises, because the money is gone, and the credit is gone, and the eBay closet is empty. The Bush administration
spent it all. I guess they misunderestimated him again, ha ha.
He will either bring the military home and close those foreign bases all over Europe and Asia... or he will institute military rule, and abandon the pretense that we are self governed. If he does the latter, it will be appropriate that he has been compared to Lincoln so often during his campaign, only it won't just be the South that is crushed this time.
I hope he chooses the former. If he does, he may yet have something to brag about after he retires a gray haired old man in eight years.
