Category: Politics

Only the rich get to see Europe

I had promised my sister-in-law, ailing in Germany, that my wife and I would be visiting her next June. That may not be possible.

I couldn’t believe my eyes when I checked into Orbitz this morning and discovered the cheapest fare was $902 with United/Continental. Wait! It gets better. That’s just the airfare. Add taxes, $617.19, and you’re looking at $1,519.19 per person. In other words, the taxes are two thirds the actual fare. I think that’s outrageous.

I decided to find out why the high taxes. It’s the EU countries that are doing this. Scrapped for cash to finance their deficit welfare-state budgets, they’re looking everywhere. Tourists don’t vote. Voila! Well, and I think I’m not alone, I’ll vote with my feet.

Have they no clue they’re busting their own economies? No more flotillas of Americans and Canadians. Already, you can hear the screams of the European travel industry, not to mention airlines. So far, to no avail.

It’s amazing. I can book a trip from Lexington, KY, all the way to gorgeous Hawaii for just 754 rt, taxes included.

What a mess Europe’s gotten itself into. For decades since WWII, they’ve pretty much thought they had a free lunch, given their generous government outlays. Did they really think Disney World would go on forever? As is, they’ve got this heavy value added tax on virtually everything you buy, their touted free medical care is escalating in cost, and all of this while cutting their defense spending, already meager, by 50% in some countries. What a milk toast ally!

They don’t work as hard as Americans. Most retire 30 years and out. Vacations average 6 weeks, versus two for Americans, many of them not taking any vacation.

What’s awful is that their sorry mess could plunge all of us on this side of the pond into recession again. But what do you do about people who riot in the streets whenever austerity measures are adopted?

And there’s a warning in all of this for America to get its own financial house in order to avoid becoming a version of Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain, and Ireland. My own state of Ky is nearly 8 billion dollars delinquent in funding pensions for its public employees, including teachers.

Republicans, cutting spending without revenue increases through higher taxation won’t get the job done.

Democrats, increasing taxes without meaningful cuts in spending only delays our day of reckoning.

Better book that trip to Hawaii–don’t I wish–before Congress fancies imitating our European brethren and we all go down the tubes.

Raising cain

News media have been preoccupied of late with the sex scandal surrounding Republican presidential candidate Herbert Cain to the point of nausea. I suspicion he may indeed be guilty of harassing women, what with a total of four women leveling charges, two of them publically, and a settlement years ago with another.

More women may be involved who haven’t come forward. As they say, “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.” One of the women going public gave very specific detail. Still, Cain simply denies the charges, blames some of his fellow Republican competitors, or even pulls the race card. He seems to be increasingly recovering from amnesia, each new day belying his initial bear-faced denials.

Americans need better than this, and clearly this guy’s running his campaign from the seat of his pants. If conservative Republicans remain loyal, it’s probably more their fear of Romney, whom they don’t trust, than Cain charisma. Anyone but Mitt.

Right now, it might be a pretty thing to see Newt Gingrich walk through the door. The several debates clearly evidence a man with articulation skills and a defined approach to America’s many ills that merit more listening. Without the baggage of Mitt, who likes camouflage, he could prove a strong Obama adversary.

But back to the media. In all this scuttlebutt, you’d think they’d make parallels with the myriad women linked to Bill Clinton across the years, and I’m talking about the pre-presidency years: Dolly Kyle Browning, Judy Gibbs, Gennifer Flowers, Kathleen Willey, Deborah Mathis, Christy Zercher, Elizabeth Ward, Paula Jones. As President, he showed follow-through with Monica Lewinsky in the Oval Office, who probably would have appreciated a good set of knee pads. The candidate Clinton makes Cain look impotent, a mere groper.

Yet not a word from the media about having gone down this road before. Is this lapse simply political bias at work? Or is it just another instance of press frenzy for the story-of-the-moment? Wait a little bit and they’ll move on to something else.

Ironically, today Clinton is one of the most well-liked politicians in recent memory, a caring, good-will ambassador bent on good deeds. People often forgive not out of charity, but because they forget.

If one likes Cain he might urge him to just hang in there. As I’ve said, time blurs misdeeds. What’s more, today’s miscreants often become tomorrow’s heroes.

Unfortunately for Cain, he’s a Republican, conservative, and black.

Right-on, Elizabeth!

Elizabeth Warren, Democratic aspirant to the Senate seat held by Republican Scott Brown in Massachusetts, recently came out with what’s now become a widely publicized comment, subsequently picked-up by YouTube and Move On websites:

There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did.

Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea? God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.

Her comment rests on the assumption that the rich aren’t paying their fare share in taxes. In a previous post I’ve shown that the top 1 percent do pay 38 percent of the federal tax; however, this isn’t the bottom line. It’s what they don’t pay in taxes, given limitations on payroll taxes on social security, or sharply reduced tax brackets, once 70% before the Reagan era, now 35% max, etc. And then there are the investment loopholes and off shore tuck-a-ways a la places like the Cayman Islands and Swiss banks.

Concurrently, many of the middle class at substantially lower income levels pay at a high 28% clip. That includes my wife and me.  The unpleasant truth is that the rich have exponentially  increased their economic disparity with the middle and working classes to the point where the future threatens something resembling the two class set-up common to many South American countries of some rich and many poor.

We now learn that 20 million of our fellow Americans live in poverty. Forty-three percent of our unemployed, those age 50 and above, have been out of work more than a year. Unemployment among minorities, the fastest growing segment of our population, approximates the squalor of the Great Depression. The average indebtedness of a college graduate, a good many unable to find meaningful work, stands at $25,000, all of this at a time when corporate profits have soared 12% over the last decade, despite the 2008 down turn.

Sounds like Jacques Rousseau, but in the fine print of Warren’s spirited quote lies the idea of the social contract, that those with means have a responsibility for those who lack. The perquisites of the wealthy rest on the labor of the working poor and middle classes, as Warren points out.

Here in Lexington, KY, local government, facing severe budget limitations, is impinging on health care benefits for its employees, who are being asked to pay a larger share; for families, that’s some $600 monthly. Get real! As prolific social commentator Barbara Ehrenreich astutely observes in her 2001 classic, Nickel and Dimed, “Something is wrong, very wrong, when a single person in good health, a person who in addition possesses a working car, can barely support herself by the sweat of her brow. You don’t need a degree in economics to see that wages are too low and rents too high.”

Ehrenreich writes of employees in the minimal paying service industries, or of the working-poor, but her observations are no less valid for the vast majority of middle class families, too.

It was essayist John Ralston Saul who famously observed, “Everyone has an equal right to inequality.” Let the rich, the banks, the corporations try on the other fellow’s shoes, and I can promise you bellowing howls and light-year speed in concocting remedy.

Right-on, Elizabeth!

Do the wealthy pay their fair share in taxes?

I was rummaging through the local county paper yesterday, sent to me free as a subscription  enticement, when I came across a guest editorial arguing that the “wealthy deserve to keep more than a hunk of their profits.”  This, of course, goes against the grain for the Obama folks and the occupy movement, who feel that the 1.1 percent, as they put it, isn’t paying its fair share in taxes.
 
The columnist argued that the IRS’ own figures show that the top 10 percent actually paid $721 billion of  the more than $1 trillion the government collected in federal income taxes in 2008.  In short, the rich really do pay taxes, or about two dollars out of every three collected. More than $392 billion of this came from the top 1 percent.  In fact, just 0.2 percent of the population pays 21 percent of the taxes.  As for the rest of us, some 47 percent pay no tax, while collecting many social benefits.
 
Do the poor pay taxes?
 
Is there any truth to the writer’s claim?  If you’re talking about federal taxes, the answer is, yes.  But this doesn’t get to the bottom line.  Virtually everybody pays taxes.  For example, there’s the payroll tax of 6.1 percent on the initial $106, 800 of wages (temporally reduced) for Social Security and 1.45 percent on all wages for Medicare. Then there are state and local taxes, e. g., sales, income, property, gasoline, utilities, etc.  Everybody, including the poor, the disabled, and the retired pays taxes.  According to the Tax Foundation, the 2008 earnings average for the bottom 50 percent, was just $15,300.  In short, these wage earners didn’t earn enough to pay federal taxes, though they paid other taxes at the same tax rates.  Broken down proportionally,  the poor pay more per capita than the rich, with the one exception of Vermont.  At this point, I’d urge everybody to read Barbara Ehrenreich’s monumental expose,  Nickel and Dimed: On (not) Getting By in America.
 
Do the rich pay their fair share?
 
Initially it would appear they do.  One percent of  the top wage earners paid 38% of  the total income tax in 2008, the last year figures were available (published at the IRS online site).  Left out is the fact that federal tax revenues aren’t solely collected from income taxes.  Payroll taxes for Social Security, Medicare, and even unemployment insurance, are paid by the bottom 90 percent of taxpayers.  This is because the payroll tax for Social Security is restricted to a maximum $106,800, after which there’s no tax.  Bill Gates and Steve Forbes pay the same amount as you and I.  Although they’re subject to paying a means tax on their social security income when they retire, so are you and I.  Don’t even get me started!
 
Is there a growing tax gap between the top 10 percent and the bottom 90 percent?
 
Yes!  When Reagan took office in 1980, the marginal tax rate (the tax rate paid on the top earned income)  stood at 70%.  By 1987, he reduced it to 50 percent  Under George Bush, the rate was reduced to 35 percent.  Since 1980, the average income of the bottom 90%, adjusted for inflation, has increased to $303, or 1 percent.  In the meantime, the 1 percent did a considerably better, doubling their income to $1.1 million.
 
And how goes it for the corporate sector?
 

According to IRS figures, 2008, corporate profits rose 12 percent since 2000, even though corporate taxes show an 8 percent decline.  This discrepancy is occurring  because of increasing loopholes or transferring of profits to offshore hideaways such as the Cayman Islands.  Currently, corporations have stashed an estimated 2 trillion in cash holdings, unwilling to reinvest in a volatile economy.  I’m not saying this is wrong in itself.  The spending of the average American family is down as well and for the same reasons.  Spending is the key catalyst to market regeneration. 
The point is, many of the banks were bailed out in 2008 to a tune of nearly a trillion.  They seem to have a short memory, and it hasn’t decreased either their zeal to close on beleaguered mortgages or award themselves bonuses in the millions while enjoying unparalleled tax breaks.  At the moment, bonus outlays exceed pre-recession levels, this in a down economy that has produced incalculable suffering for many Americans unable to afford their homes, buy health care, or find meaningful work.  JP Morgan’s CEO Jamie Dimon recently took home a $19 million dollar bonus, enough to keep food on the table.  While not all CEOs receive this kind of payout, the vast majority of CEOs continue to enjoy perks with the consent of their shareholders.  Forbes reports that investors at only 36 companies out of 2250 voted against pay increases for their CEOs.  Meanwhile, new data shows that nearly 25% of us now lives in poverty. 
Have the occupiers got it wrong?  Not by a long shot!

Iraq, Not Obama, Ends U.S. Presence in Iraq

Yesterday, President Obama informed the nation that all U. S. troops in Iraq would be coming home by year’s end and that he had kept his promise to end the Iraq war.

News which normally should have made me glad made me angry instead. The truth is our negotiations to retain a residual force in Iraq failed when its government steadfastly refused to grant remaining troops immunity from prosecution in Iraqi courts. Ironically, Iraq democracy, an American created anomaly, forced us out.

Additionally, it was George W. Bush who set the withdrawal deadline for U. S. troop withdrawal by the end of 2011, not Obama, unless the Iraqis were willing to extend their presence. Time

I had been watching Tamara Hall’s newscast on MSNBC and had to listen to her excitingly saying that the President was going into the 2012 election years with several foreign policy triumphs to his credit. Nor was there any correction of the record or the circumstances of the withdrawal on the part of the two guests analysts who also appeared. As is, the mission of the several thousand troops that Obama sought to keep in Iraq will probably be assumed by private contractors, and so it’s a change in name only.

While I’m glad our children are coming home, given the high price they and the Iraqi people have paid, I find the political dissembling of Obama, obviously trying to buoy up his reelection chances in a time of ebbing popularity, hard to forgive or forget. Politicizing the withdrawal as well as distorting its circumstances is just another one of those contradictions to that transparency he promised us nearly three years ago.

In the long term, Americans are unlikely to be very impressed should our economic woes continue into the elections. Of course, the Republicans may default the election by running a goon up against him.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve lost faith in both parties.

I’d love to know what you think, pro or con.

–rj

Obama’s assault on Social Security

Although vociferously claiming entitlement programs aren’t on the table in securing deficit reductions, the President’s recent actions prove his rhetoric to be little more than political chicanery in upholding the integrity of Social Security, for an example. In an effort to stimulate the economy by putting more money into our pocketbooks, President Obama has proposed continuing the payroll tax reduction (now 4.1%) for Social Security. In fact, he wants to cut the Social Security payroll tax still further, or to 3.1% of earnings below the traditional maximum of 6.2% on $106,800 income. This amounts to a $240 billion dollar funding hit on Social Security, a program already in trouble due to changing age demographics. In 25-years, it will only be able to pay out $75.00 on every $100.00 owed in benefits.

More specifically, his proposal represents a direct raid on the Social Security Trust Fund, short-changing our young people. As is, his proposal cuts $175 million from the employment payroll contributions and $65 billion in employment contributions. The President’s new, massive stimulus package before Congress, $440 billion, draws 55% of its funding from Social Security funding. You do the math. It’s simply untenable, an indulgence in political opportunism, betraying American workers and their future.

Compounding the demographic and political pressures on Social Security, today’s massive unemployment has ignited a rush in applications for disability income (SSDI). According to the government’s own figures, applications showed a 21% increase just between 2008 and 2009. While the rising number of aging baby boomers may account for some of this increase, it seems more likely this sudden swell has is origin in our down economy. Frankly, one has to suspect Social Security is being used as a ruse for welfare in many instances. Obtaining benefits also qualifies one for Medicare, no matter one’s age.

In its defense, the Social Security administration argues it has strict monitoring procedures in place to assure legitimacy in the application process, with only 30% of applications approved. This is true, however, only at the initial application stage. While denied applications going through the appeal process can take up to 2-years, persistence pays and ultimately most applicants, or 67%, get their benefits approved before an Administrative Law Judge. Meanwhile, legal representation for applicants has turned into a lucrative specialty.

What’s mind-numbing is that this deluge in disability applications is leading some trustees of the Social Security disability program recommending Congress reallocate money from the Social Security Retirement program to offset deficits in disability funding!

As is, the present and proposed cuts in Social Security payroll taxes don’t offer assistance to the many unemployed, retired, disabled or those, like teachers, who are ineligible for SS. More substantially, short-changing Social Security exacerbates its perilous future.

Backdoor amnesty granted by Obama administration

On Thursday, with the Congress out on vacation and the media and public preoccupied with the dismal economy and an approaching weekend, the White House announced a new immigration policy. It had been rumored to be coming down the pike several months ago by conservative adversaries. Then the shoe dropped, Homeland Security Secretary, Janet Napolitano, announcing that “non-dangerous” immigrants will be allowed to remain in the U. S., the priority shifting to deporting criminals. Some 300,000 pending cases involving illegals will be reviewed and those absolved allowed to apply for work permits. Certainly this change represents a political plus for an embattled president, who has been losing voter support and could use the shoring up of the Latino vote as he heads towards next year’s elections. For the nation, I believe the policy does an injury with ongoing consequences.

1. Immigration reform should be legislated by the Congress. Yes, the Congress has been reluctant to act and just recently voted down the Dream Act. That doesn’t justify the administration circumventing the Congress to get its way. Had the Congress not acted at the last hour to lift the debt ceiling, it’s conceivable the President might have invoked the 14th Amendment to get around Congress. I think you see where I’m going. Where does it end? Policy shouldn’t be made by fiat.

2. Some argue in favor of this change. Principally, why should young people who have come here early, some serving in our military; others now in college, be sent out of the only country they really know? Truth is, not all illegals came here as youngsters. Anyway, if illegals are inconvenienced, then this is their fault for jumping the queue. We do have an immigration process that allows some 500,000 Mexicans, for example, to enter our country legally each year. It’s unfair, as some of them have said, to let those who’ve jumped the line now stay.

3. And then there’s our unsettling economy, possibly about to go back into recession. Even when legal immigrants come here, a third end up on public support. Many choose to reside in states like California and New York, states riddled with huge public debt. Recently, California governor, Jerry Brown granted in-state tuition rights to illegals, this in the most financially troubled state in the country. The story repeats itself elsewhere amidst the political pandering, the public be damned.

4. Some argue that immigration reform is what the public wants. Thus, this is a good move on the part of the Obama administration. Yes, most of us do want immigration reform, but one not involving massive amnesty for an estimated 11 to 20 million undocumented. Think about the discrepancy in those numbers. We don’t even know how many illegals are in our country. I fault the Republicans as well as Democrats, however, as several years ago there was a bill in Congress to lower the number of immigrants admitted and employ criteria resembling Canada’s point system in exchange for amnesty. Borders would be enforced. Then again, maybe the Republicans were on to something—that administration promises were simply no more than means to an end. Enforce the borders now, and we’ll talk of reform. As is, the promised wall has yet to be completed, employers who hire illegals aren’t scrutinized or are granted minimal fines for violations if caught, and the government has steered away from mandating the very reliable E-Verify procedure to ascertain eligibility for employment.

5. The fundamental flaw in the administration’s new backdoor amnesty approach is that it’s likely to exacerbate the flow of illegals from all over the world into the U.S. After all, unless you get into serious trouble with the law, you’re safe. Hey, bring the family! By the way, when we talk of amnesty, we forget that family members can then come too. 11 million, the lesser figure, suddenly swells to 40 million residents at the very least, and you want to give these people work permits as well when millions of own people can’t find work? Suddenly people who don’t belong here are their competitors. 9.1 percent of our working population is currently out-of-work; more so our Black brothers and sisters at 16 percent. I tell you, we’re playing with social dynamite.

6. By the way, our biggest problem isn’t with Latin Americans wading across the Rio Grande. It’s with those overstaying their visas. The tenth anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy will soon be upon us. 18 of its 19 perpetrators had overstayed their visas. Ten years later, we still don’t have a handle on overstayed visas as I reported in an earlier post. But then, who the hell cares? Certainly not the Obama administration.

Reflections on Democrat defeat in Wisconsin recall

Despite large scale union efforts and a tsunami of out-of state money, Wisconsin Democrats fell short in their bid to unseat six Republican state senate incumbents in yesterday’s recall election, with Republicans winning four of the six contests. Democrats, irate at Gov. Scott Walker and his allies whom they view as short-changing the collective bargaining rights of state workers, sought to even the score in an election some have viewed as a bellwether of public sentiment before the November 2012 national election. Democrats had wanted to go after the governor as well, but were preempted by a state law that mandates a governor serve at least one year.

While not taking sides, I am happy with the outcome. For me, the issue of political stability is what’s at stake in such recall elections. Think about the chaos resulting from special interest groups petitioning for recall elections whenever they disagree with their political leadership. Think about the wasted millions in costs. After all, there is a process for change. We call it the ballot box, a right open to citizens every two years. In the interim, we also have the courts. In this instance, the state court upheld the Republican decision-making process.

As is, twelve senate Democrats chose to abandon the decision process by leaving the state in order to prevent a quorum. Again, whatever happened to this thing we call democracy? If I can’t have my way, I’m going to pick-up my marbles and go home.

California’s been dealing with similar gridlock in its state assembly for many years. They also had a recall election, this one successful, in which they got rid of Governor Pete Wilson. His successor? A B-film actor and former body builder without a lick of political experience. Nothing changed. Some might argue things got worse.

Imagine if we acted this way at the federal level. We don’t like a president, so we decide on a recall, never mind waiting another four years.

Soon it will be the turn of Wisconsin Democrats to twist in the wind. Next Tuesday, recall elections for two senate democrats will take place. Where does the retribution end? I am sick of factional politics. Talk to a politician and you won’t get a straight answer. As the Indians had it,”White man speak with forked tongue.”

If you think about it, recall elections have the stuff of lynch-mob mentality behind them. No fair trial. Act on impulse. String ’em up.

I’m starting to think banana republic. Hey, would the last one out get the lights?

Wise words from George Washington on government spending

Just moments ago I finished reading George Washington’s Farewell Address (1796), and I’m glad I did. While its language may be steeped in 18th century formality, it remains a sobering speech in its prescient wisdom. Had Congress over the years heeded our first president’s wise admonitions, we’d have avoided the divisive partisan rancor that imperils our financial solvency and our future. Make no mistake about it: We haven’t solved our financial dilemma in raising the debt ceiling. The truth is we spend too much while wanting more. If you spend, you must have revenue, today’s euphemism for taxes. To avoid raising taxes, you must cut your spending. Unfortunately, we’ve gotten ourselves into such a corner that we need to balance the equation, spending less and increasing revenue. The words below are Washington’s; the underlined passages, my own:

1. On political factions:

All obstructions to the execution of the laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle, and of fatal tendency. They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common counsels and modified by mutual interests.

I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the State, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally. Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight), the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.

It [party faction] serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions.

2. On Federal deficits:

As a very important source of strength and security, cherish public credit. One method of preserving it is to use it as sparingly as possible, avoiding occasions of expense by cultivating peace, but remembering also that timely disbursements to prepare for danger frequently prevent much greater disbursements to repel it, avoiding likewise the accumulation of debt, not only by shunning occasions of expense, but by vigorous exertion in time of peace to discharge the debts which unavoidable wars may have occasioned, not ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burden which we ourselves ought to bear. The execution of these maxims belongs to your representatives, but it is necessary that public opinion should co-operate. To facilitate to them the performance of their duty, it is essential that you should practically bear in mind that towards the payment of debts there must be revenue; that to have revenue there must be taxes; that no taxes can be devised which are not more or less inconvenient and unpleasant; that the intrinsic embarrassment, inseparable from the selection of the proper objects (which is always a choice of difficulties), ought to be a decisive motive for a candid construction of the conduct of the government in making it, and for a spirit of acquiescence in the measures for obtaining revenue, which the public exigencies may at any time dictate.

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The kidnapping of a nation

Many are doubtless giving a sigh of relief at the apparent compromise in DC, resulting in the lifting of the deficit ceiling and avoidance of the first-time ever debacle of a U. S. unable to honor its debts. The terms of this deal, however, may turn out worse than insolvency, the cure worse than the disease.

1. Who are the winners?

Clearly this is a victory for the Tea Party wing of the Republican party, with its insistence on a balanced budget, meaning spending cuts, and no increase in taxes. While they had also resisted raising the deficit ceiling, it represents their only instance of compromise.

2. Who are the losers?

President Obama: Americans may not perceive it this way, but it’s the President, who blinked, despite initially insisting on a package that would raise taxes for those earning more than $250,000 a year. We should have gotten wind of this pattern when at the end of 2010 he caved in to Tea Party demands of not raising tax revenue in exchange for extending unemployment compensation.

Democrats: This agreement curtails the New Deal/Great Society mandates foundational to the Party’s outreach to the indigent, working poor, and middle class. Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security, social mainstays for many, will see cuts, even as inflation increases and medical costs escalate. Cuts will affect our National Parks, environmental safeguards, education, etc. The costs in lost revenue to the States is yet to be reckoned in. As Steven Cohen, Director of Columbia University’s Earth Institute, has it: “All of President Obama’s brainpower, charisma and speaking skills have not translated into clear, crisp, leadership. Instead, I see just another calculating, poll-driven politico. His re-election campaign dominates his Presidency.” Huffington Post Politics, Aug.1, 2011.

Republicans: The GOP will be the primary recipient of public rage in the 2012 elections for their subservience to their Tea Party wing. Ironically, the GOP faces a high probability of the Tea Party running as a third party in 2012, should Republicans nominate a more moderate conservative such as Romney.

The average American: Ironically, our down economy, now into its third year, requires more cash infusion, not less, as a temporary means to stimulating the market place. Had the present legislation been in effect at the outset of the Great Recession in 2008, a hand-cuffed president would not have been able to bail out Chrysler and General Motors, for example. Three years later, these companies have paid back their loans and added 150,000 workers. Making spending cuts are likely to put out whatever blue embers there are, plunging us this time into world depression on a scale paralleling the 1930s.

3. Are there other consequences?

The worst is yet to come. As you’re probably aware, this agreement calls for a Super Committee composed of six Republicans and six Democrats to suggest further budget areas for cutting. If the Committee stalemates or the Congress balks, automatic cuts will ensue. Not only will entitlement programs be targeted as major areas for cutting, but the Defense Department as well, potentially hazarding our national security. What we lose is our flexibility to respond to crisis, whether economic or military.

This imbroglio hasn’t really been about cutting spending. It’s been ideological, a small core of die-hard conservatives operating as an insurgency to overthrow big government. Holding our country hostage, they have been quite willing to shove Americans over the cliff unless their ransom gets paid.