The Economic Asteroid Plan

The federal government failed to sort out a budget again, many months after the supposed due date, which was OCTOBER 2010. Just a little late now that it is April.

To budget or not to budget, that is the problem, it seems. It is way beyond WHEN.

I am already good and tired of the scare tactics by the leftists. They gave the same emotion-based proclamations over ObamaCare. Not surprisingly, these are the same "leaders" who in recents decades have always insisted on adding more and more government, Now they are insisting it will all be paid for with magic pixie dust or something. To the very brink, these folks had also insisted there was nothing wrong with certain federal financial programs, such as the CRA that allowed loans to the unemployed, and Fannie and Freddie, which were the nonsensical housing debt twins by the time 2008's economic fall happened. 

I'd like to see a real reason, not some emotion-charged twaddle that explains why a tightened budget shouldn't happen. Not just some 5% haircut that hurts education and the poor, but broad pay cuts (to put public employees on par with private!), nonessential program slimmings, defense project trimmings, etc. Barring that, how about a good reason -- emotion and threat-free -- why a shutdown should not happen, from leftists. 

Maybe I have it wrong, perhaps it is better to continue pretending that government is not too large and it is paid for, that the majority of citizens and our futures aren't getting a raw deal by the feds, that poor habits and waste are virtually gone from government, that loopy politicians and interest groups are not bent on further betraying the basic concepts of the republic. 

Yeah, it will aaaaall be OK so long as we keep putting off the tough trim-down. The US seems to be no longer the Eagle, instead the 500-lb man who refuses to see his doctor for a checkup. (You gonna eat that?) How very American and exceptional it is to pretend necessary decisions away! 

We can always hope an asteroid hits the planet and that solves the economic problems for us. Party till the planets bursts! 

jR

Related articles

• Video: Fannie & Freddie execs made millions in bonuses the last two years (hotair.com)

Haiti's new president: Unexpected but understandable

Haiti's new president: Unexpected but understandable

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/americas/04/05/haiti.martelly/

 

I have long hoped for something pleasantly short of a dictatorship, and lacking the brutality seen in Haiti in the 1980s and 1990s, with battles in the streets, and images of bodies of victims stacked like sacks of rice to get them off the streets.

 

CNN offered a nice little piece, by Moni Basu, on the newly decided president of Haiti, Michel Martelly, a political outsider (apparently) who was known for his music, not his politics. It is that is short enough to read in a few minutes that offers a picture of a man who might try to see change (while what kind of change is yet to be seen, as guns and money have spoken more effectively than words in Haiti for decades). Even if one is cynical of Martelly's outsider status, he is not a career politician, or a career con man (apparently).

 

I quote the end of that article, but the real quote is bolded, the money quote (literally). If we are going to help the unsophisticated masses improve their lot, trusting them with lots of money is not the way to go about it, but to help them to help themselves. And throwing money at them won't do that, much as throwing money at a child will not teach them to earn it for themselves. Active input, needed supplies and guidance are acts of hope, not money.  

... Haiti will go nowhere, he said, unless the people have a president they can trust, a president who is honest. He was that man, he insisted.

"I've been on the ground with them for 22 years. The people know me. I represent the light at the end of the tunnel."

But the man also had plans.

He said, for instance, that the $12 billion that was pledged by the international community for earthquake assistance should come in the form of infrastructure, not money, because Haitians don't know how to manage money.

"People are fed up here," he said. "They have no food, no education, no health care. What kind of place is it when a young girl will sell her body to buy a phone card?"

So what makes a man who made a name with dance music think he can change things in Haiti?

Martelly flashed his signature smile; the light glinted off his tet kale.

"Well," he said. "Look at what the politicians have done."

 

- jR (aka @AirFarceOne on Twitter)