In this column, I cover politics, wars, culture and the many political criminals facing prosecution and trial. Please consider supporting me and my work by buying a subscription for yourself or a friend. If nobody had come up with the word “stopgap,” oh whatever would we do? That pathetic adjective is all over the news tonight as January 19 approaches, when the first of two government funding bills comes due. The other bill’s deadline is February 2, when even more of the money we pay in taxes must be appropriated to keep the government open.
Thank-you for this piece,Lucien.Gas Can Caucus is perfect for what we have going on in DC as far as governance from our House of Representatives.I use the term” governance “ loosely because these folks are far away from legislating anything.They obstruct.They file useless Articles of Impeachment.They send a holier-than-thou Speaker with his useless minions to the border where they have no interest in fixing this situation.It is a hammer they want to use to bludgeon Biden and Dems as an election issue.They back a traitor who has zero plans to help average Americans and whose platform is one of hatred and division.This situation is becoming more predictable and tedious by the day.We The People deserve better and maybe need to make more” good trouble” in the coming days.
Repubs wouldn't have the foresight to carry extra gas cans, they would be more like the guy who drives until he's out of gas, then relies upon the kindness of strangers to bale him out. Then promises to repay them in two weeks when the new health plan and infrastructure week will take place.
Tim Burchett deserves no credit. His solution to a $2 trillion deficit is to cut discretionary spending by some ridiculous %. If you cut discretionary spending other than military, by 100%( impossible) you still have a 1.3 trillion deficit. We must increase taxes. Although it would hurt my bottom line, it is best for our country. The rich and powerful are overwhelmingly against this, and with Citizens United on their side, it probably won’t happen. Thanks for your insights, Lucien
When Bush the Lesser inherited a tiny budget surplus from Clinton, the Republicans immediately blew it on a tax cut... and proceeded to start not one, but two wars, and then cut taxes AGAIN, the first time in our history the government did such an irresponsible, plainly stupid thing ("Reagan proved deficits don't matter. We won the mid-terms. This is our due." - "Dick" Cheney).
We have accumulated a huge federal debt because we've undertaxed ourselves for decades, because those who have wealth can block the government from collecting the taxes needed to cover the nation's expenses... but they'll happily lend us the money, at a nice, safe, guaranteed interest rate. Clever scoundrels, those plutocrats....
That's good news! I have "heard about that" but no local news coverage in the entire Twin Cities has ever mentioned it to my knowledge, I should "google it" and see if I missed that - I am pretty obsessive about following local news of that kind...
It came up in the wake of the Parkland shooting in February 2018, and especially the student activism that followed (and continues to this day). Many people noticed that Marjory Stoneman Douglas High had strong programs in both government and theater, which helped fuel the activism. I just Googled "civics education in America" (without the quotes) and turned up lots of recent links, including one from the American Federation of Teachers and another from the American Bar Association.
100% my reaction! And having been involved in both, always on the local level and occasionally at the same time, I am acutely aware of how intertwined they are.
Thanks Susanna I hope to see it reflect some local moves I missed - the whole world saw the local activism in response to the Floyd extra-judicial police execution but that's not the same thing, although there are overlaps.
I'm thinking primarily of the electoral process, which is what "civics education" was mostly about: how government works at various levels and how citizens can be involved in it. Check out, for instance, what Parkland survivor David Hogg is doing with Leaders We Deserve (https://leaderswedeserve.com/). There is a connection to the activism that followed George Floyd's murder, but it's also very much connected to the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the lack of action on gun control despite all the mass shootings, many of them in schools.
Vas you dere Charley? (radio comic straight line). As a matter of fact, I was. Russian *commies* put up Sputnik in October, 1957 and America wet its public education knickers. Math! Science! Civics? History? Feh.
The sudden discovery of math and science happened for sure (for boys at least -- for girls it took another decade or so and a mass movement to get started), but I question whether the decline of civics started that early. I had it in the mid/late '60s and most of my college peers, who came from all over the place, had it too. We were a civically conscious and activist bunch. Now I'm curious -- it wouldn't surprise me at all if the disappearance of civics education was, at least in part, a reaction to that activism.
Oh it disappeared, to the extent it did, for that reason - once the POTB felt they had lost control of HOW civics was taught, it became suspect as hell.
You are correct, of course Lucien, but when we remember who they look up to and ardently work for the advancement of, You must remember PUTIN. Their every move is to bolster his power at our peril.
Also, we could collect the trillions in taxes owed, but not collected. That would ruffle too many Repugnicants canstiteruncy.
Perhaps a more apt description might be "the gas BAG caucus." After all, what do we ever hear from the GQP and MAGA side of the political spectrum but so much bloviating, led by the former bloviator -in-chief, Donald Trump.
Break down "war profiteers" in a specific case - you may find an immense supply chain that pays the salaries of all sorts of workers, it's not enough to demonize the top brass, much more complicated than that, surely.
I admit it makes a great slogan, though!
"Down with the war profiteers!"
That way, you need never reach the part about Ukraine defending itself against a genocidal aggression, or Israel being in the same situation from two sides - internationally designated terrorists bent on mass murder because liberation Palestine Arab Land Holy Martyrs...
Yet it's also problematic that Burchett gets to say what he does and Inskeep doesn't say, "But, Mr. Burchett, if that's the case why is your party calling for defunding the IRS given how much unpaid tax we know is sitting uncollected, or why did the GOP enact tax cuts during the last administration when it was known *at the time* they'd add to the debt – which has only been proven true – and yet Republicans continue to call for cutting taxes?"
Perhaps Inskeep did that. I'm too lazy to research it. But the public doesn't say it, doesn't know that that's the case. And therein lies the real problem.
Republicans would rather the US return to the first Constitution, The Articles of Confederation not only due to their platitude of states' right. The primary reason is they have no idea to govern the United States of America at the federal level. None. Nada.
As to bedlam, sure asfuq not a word Trump came up with on his own. Prolly took more than 5 minutes to explain the word to him. And boy or boy is he low energy now.
Not to mix metaphors or anything, but the Republicans are kicking those gas cans down the road while playing with matches. Why did "No more water; the fire next time" just pop into my head?
“God gave Noah the rainbow sign/Dyin’ times a’comin’ when the sinner must die/Won’t be the water but the fire next time/Dyin’ times a’comin’ when the sinner must die.”
What's that from? What was running through my head was James Baldwin's book _The Fire Next Time_ and a gospel/spiritual song that was everywhere in the 1960s, covered by Peter, Paul & Mary, Bob Gibson, the Seekers, and others. Just found this web page about it: https://www.ibiblio.org/jimmy/folkden-wp/?p=9492
I have a large collection of old time string band music and bluegrass on vinyl and CDs, so it’s on one or more of those albums. I can’t remember which band’s or singer’s album that song is from.
I know it's not the same song. My point is that this imagery, and that particular Bible verse, has inspired plenty of creative work, including spirituals and James Baldwin's book.
One of at least a hundred reasons why I can't fathom why sincere critics of Christianity sometimes hit an extreme phase of completely dismissing its vast treasure of cultural influences, whether in art, music, or philosophy. It's a kind of "atheist religion" that needlessly tries to lump any and all the characteristics of organized religion in its Christian forms together, and attack them all.
It's also weird because if you didn't mention the origins there would be no argument from them, at least none any different from other disputes about good and bad music or art or anything else.
Something a lot of white people don't realize is how important Christianity -- the lessons and the imagery -- was to the enslaved surviving and resisting the effects of enslavement. So many of the spirituals/slave songs use biblical imagery to envision a better world. And Harriet Tubman wasn't code-named Moses for nothing.
Chilling, it's not exactly the Gospel of Love and Compassion I would personally endorse based on extensive Bible texts, but I suppose it accurately reflects the justifiable moral outrage of oppressed people, no doubt about that!
Even better, it's multi-pronged, so the congregation gets the message you just highlighted, but also is able to crow in advance at the fate ordained by Almighty God for the slave-owners and perhaps especially the most brutal sadists among the overseers, i.e. Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Simon Legree."
shee-rah, I just had an "involuntary `wow' moment, reading this:
"In the United States, Uncle Tom's Cabin was the best-selling novel and the second best-selling book of the 19th century, following the Bible.[7][8] It is credited with helping fuel the abolitionist cause in the 1850s.[9] The influence attributed to the book was so great that a likely apocryphal story arose of Abraham Lincoln meeting Stowe at the start of the Civil War and declaring, "So this is the little lady who started this great war."[10][11]"
So, given the fact that "Bible sales" include, as they still do, huge buys by evangelists (and I cast no aspersions on their motives, the problem remaining that essentially *everyone* except sociopaths, psychopaths, severely intellectually challenged people who are necessarily excluded from the expectations of consistent rational behavior, etc. "have the best of intentions"!) for distribution as part of their "witnessing for Christ," her book was THE #1 seller. I confess I have only skimmed that book, maybe because I was so saturated by years of second-hand accounts in history texts, that I really had trouble (then - this was in the early 1970s) approaching it as a work of art.
But its power as a "morality tale" practically leaps off the page anyway!
For as long as I can remember, we follow a standard pattern. Dems get in office, raise taxes, (or at least don't reduce them) cut the defense boondoggle, and start to balance the budget. Then Repubs take over, go crazy rebuilding the "dangerously depleted military," and cut taxes so that the economy will "take off like a rocket." Which of course never happens, then dems get back in office and Repubs decry the deficit. Meantime the deficit inexorably increases. Neither party really cares except to use it as a cudgel against the opponent. Maybe deficits don't matter, but we waste a lot of energy on doing nothing. Just like the border. Meanwhile the rich get richer so we're fine.
Yet the recent GOP Trump cultists have for the most part shown little interest in helping Ukraine ward off Russia's genocidal war of aggression - launched to some extent as early as 2014 when one examines the specific history, and virulently extended in February 2022; so much for the utility of a rebuilt "dangerously depleted military" when it comes to "handing Joe Biden a victory," any victory, no matter how much in the national security interests of the United States.
Or in the interests of supporting a nascent democracy, or helping our European allies, or defeating the vile and vicious Mad Vlad Putin and thus assisting Russians yearning to breathe free.
I know the first fallacy of federal finance that U.Sicans believe in their guts is that good governance requires a national budget that is balanced just like their family budgets. I know that's untrue, but don't know why. Is it only because governments can tax, families can't? If anybody here is an economics maven, could you explain that issue comment-length?
Here is one explanation in part from Nobel Laureate William Spencer Vickrey to that very fallacy and reaffirms how comparisons and analogies are best to be avoided.
"This fallacy seems to stem from a false analogy to borrowing by individuals. Current reality is almost the exact opposite. Deficits add to the net disposable income of individuals, to the extent that government disbursements that constitute income to recipients exceed that abstracted from disposable income in taxes, fees, and other charges. This added purchasing power, when spent, provides markets for private production, inducing producers to invest in additional plant capacity, which will form part of the real heritage left to the future. This is in addition to whatever public investment takes place in infrastructure, education, research, and the like. Larger deficits, sufficient to recycle savings out of a growing gross domestic product (GDP) in excess of what can be recycled by profit-seeking private investment, are not an economic sin but an economic necessity. Deficits in excess of a gap growing as a result of the maximum feasible growth in real output might indeed cause problems, but we are nowhere near that level. Even the analogy itself is faulty. If General Motors, AT&T, and individual households had been required to balance their budgets in the manner being applied to the Federal government, there would be no corporate bonds, no mortgages, no bank loans, and many fewer automobiles, telephones, and houses."
In simple terms it is a myth that families actually operate a balanced budget. Sure some do however most don't. So, the predicate itself is ALL WRONG. Or as am fond of quoting my Downeast Mainers "you can't get there from here" wisdom.
Ahoy, ~Shadowcloud~. As everyone says so often on MSNBC, "Much appreciated!" Quick-scrolling through William Spencer Vickrey's wiki, I feel like an idiot. How could I never have heard of him—by choice a New Yorker and hardly obscure! I don't want to think about how long it would have taken me to put this together. I'm glad I asked—thank you.
No, thank you for putting your question out on the thread.
Added to the piece by citing the Federal Reserve on household and business debt which destroys the myth families balance their budgets. If my recall serves me Household debt is north of 17T-$. Corporate/business debt much higher. And of course the other myth is states actually have to balance their budget and do so, What is not noted most float their actual debt via bonds. Also missing is the revenue those states receive from the USG including those states who receive Federal revenue than the residents pay in Federal Income Tax.
The honest southerners and Bible Belt residents love that annual windfall with many framing it as war reparations from the War of Yankee Aggression. You be surprised how many from the southern front porch group admit that after a few foo-foos. That includes national and state pols.
Some of that is offset w/o them catching on via all the ~indigenous~ casinos located in many of their states. We have no problem lighting their wallets. And have since the first one came on line due to a major f-up by Nixon that was leveraged into sovereign gaming and gambling. .Not a single Nixon historian nor the curator of all of Nixon's misdeeds ever knew what that was. That is not the only one Mr. Dean is unaware of. (yes, intentionally leaving a tease that will remain unexplained.) One thing we are really good at is keeping secrets secret until there is value in to the ~people~ for revealing it.
Secrets like that are fun. I know: The obit I mention in my reply to Susanna omits a fact about this man that the Times surely would have included in normal times. In these times, the fact would have alerted trump goons to death rites they'd have loved to invade and mess up. … Every word true about parasite Dixie states freeloading off the more industrious Yankee north (and we think we're the smart ones!). NYC does balance its budget without resort to bonds. When over-borrowing nearly bankrupted the city in the '70s one of the disciplines imposed for rescue was no more hanky-panky. Ever.
"Secrets like that are fun. I know: The obit I mention in my reply to Susanna omits a fact about this man that the Times surely would have included in normal times. In these times, the fact would have alerted trump goons to death rites they'd have loved to invade and mess up." Excellent example of how revealing the smallest to the biggest secret comes w/ unintentional consequences.
Often recall and ponder this century's best and worst kept secret, the Obama Adm. ordering the kill or capture of Bin Laden w/o it leaking only to have the kill be publicly fought over by 2 operators of SEAL Team 6. IAs if SEAL Team 6 was not part of Team USA. (They think and act that way and have for decades.)
Without knowing anything about the NYC budget, I've still got to wonder how much *legitimate* -- what to call it? not "hanky-panky" but maybe casuistry? -- goes into achieving the appearance of balance. ;-)
All I know for sure is that I worked at City Hall for three years (between newspapers) and I can't tell you how much Ed Koch hate — hate — hated the restrictions Felix Rohatyn's Financial Control Board imposed on the budget. The city has survived those disciplines, and will survive even Eric Adams, who probably hates them even more than Koch did. The watchdogs never let up.
Another part of the larger fallacy is the absurd worry that every single person and bond fund and foreign nation and business that owns US government debt might just ALL AT ONCE AND ALL TOGETHER DEMAND! THEIR MONEY! RIGHT NOW UNCLE SAM, FORK IT OVER BUDDY, WE AIN'T PLAYIN' AND THESE BOYS HERE BACKIN' ME UP DON'T DANCE!
Sort of a "run on the banks" on a titanic international scale - but it CANNOT happen that way, the loans come due, the bonds come due, and THEN USA has to pay up....
I saw something similar to your paraphrase of Vickrey a few years ago about raising the minimum wage - very similar. You can't just raise it to $50,000 an hour and then have all those workers in paradise financially, TRUE, but so what, just pegging it to 1970 level would have it around $40!!!! an HOUR!! - I think that's actually true, there may be apples and oranges problems with size of workforce and so on, though.
Rs/cons appeal to ignorance through oversimplification, then keep repeating it until both the media and general population repeat it back. No need to think when someone has figured it all out for them. No thinking, the dumber the nation becomes.
Must add to families don't balance their budget. Proffer: (From the Federal Reserve) Personal debt in the US is north of 17T$ and business debt is north of 36T$. Balanced, my red arse.
LOL, and their immediate rhetorical pivot is it's ALL the "GUMMINT'S FAULT, ye yellow-bellied Demonrat! The dad-gum consarned GUMMINT don't need to be givin' out jobs, neither, that's God's work! He built the Roads, Sinnah, n' don't you fergit it - we'll see you in hellfire brimstone flames of holy ret-treee-boo-shun, yup, and yer acursted yelping young' uns what needs a sound butt-paddlin' - and sent to reform school! Amen!" [yadda yadda yadda nada nada nada"]
"Thus endeth the holy rolling sancified rant, fer now, yea heathen pagan wiseguy troublemaker!"
5***** for mockery. Something D pols fail to invoke when dealing with their cray-cray R colleagues.
O did it on occasion as Senator, and a few times as President/CinC yet not nearly enough. Joe is the type to do it in private yet is reluctant to do it publicly. Some of the young blood Ds in the House are very good at mockery during hearings.
As you demonstrated mockery is at its zenith when invoking the other's own word and adding as you did voice intonation,
FTR: Get a kick out of the Rs and cons who insist the Founders/Framers were small government advocates. The authors of the abject failed first Constitution were whereas the Framers of the 2nd turned that model of its head by establishing a strong central federal government that they correctly assessed would grow as the nation grew. And the proof of that is all the elements of the Framers grabbing land for the District of Columbia, far more than was needed for the times.
When I hear Rs/cons repeat the trope of shrinking the USG into a bathtub one need only look at the size and scope of DC, then across the river into Virginia (DoD, Langley) and Maryland. (NSA/Fort Meade). Shrink all dat umoronic mothafuckas.
Exactly, they've been hornswoggled into becoming enablers of the endless lies and abuse, it's straight outta "Codependent No More" material from over thirty years ago, too!
Balanced, what does "balanced" mean in that context? A static balance?
You see it isn't really that tricky to work out that the United States Treasury issues bonds and pays back the buyers OVER TIME, with interest. So just keep on that track and apply it to our "tax and spend" Neo-Keynesian system - it's a dynamic balance, which is why what this is really about is arguments about what the tax revenues pay for, and the Republicans really really hate the idea that the state, the Feds, the city, the county, can raise money through taxes and spend it on something for the "common good," like libraries.
Their view is we do not need libraries, we already have the Good Book, the "Muikle Buik" in Scots, the One Sacred Holy Indispensable Text, so all others are redundant, filled with snares and delusions, the work of SATAN!
Same with parks and recreation facilities - it leads to dancing, card-playing, and discussions that are ungodly. So, that's out.
Police we need, but they need to beat people up and shoot people we don't like because they don't reliably vote for us, otherwise it's gated communities and hired security.
Roads, no way, we should only have toll roads, no public highways, no sidewalks, see difny, this is saving us a lot of money!
I hope I answered your question, and if you don't like these answers, I have others, just like Zorba!
I guess I once again failed to make myself clear. Much as I appreciate your effort, Richard, ~Shadowcloud~ and Susanna seemed to better understand what I was looking for—conceptually easy to express in the vernacular, not debate points. Whatever, your back and forth with ~Shadowcloud~ was fun and relevant.
"Before 1929, the budget was balanced or close to it in most years (except during major wars). From 1933 on, however, the federal government fought recessions by allowing deficits to grow when the economy was weak and then to shrink as it recovered. The latter approach worked better, with fewer recessions, longer expansions, and better growth . . ." It's followed by a little chart comparing 1854–1929 (when the budget was mostly balanced) and 1929–2018 (when it often wasn't).
Blessings on the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Bob Kuttner, Dean Baker, and everyone else trying to correct the evildoings of the intellectual progeny of Pete Peterson. Real useful insights on this issue. … I actually got an error in an nyt obit a few weeks ago partially corrected. The man's last name was spelled correctly in text, misspelled in url and hed. They fixed the hed and footnoted the correction, stet'd the link misspelling, which I would guess could botch up future research.
Lucian, please forgive me. I have been remiss at speaking up about how much your posts mean to me, personally. For instance….the one a few days ago where you detailed with great candor and exquisite precision the arc of happenstance between yourself and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar re Atrial fibrillation and how, through the Grace of God and sheer Good Fortune, you managed, with your beloved Tracy’s assistance, to hie thee to a hospital post haste and get diagnosed, evaluated and treated in good order and were back home cooling your heels and celebrating your good fortune before you could say, “Heavens to Mergatroyd!” (Exit, stage left!) For that one I at least wanted to tell you that after reading it, and many of the Comments below your piece, that I immediately went on to the interwebz to order a decent Pulse Oximeter for my own personal use. Not out of fear, but out of a nagging suspicion that I may have been blowing off my own issues in that department. There have of course been others since….that seem to generate within me an urge to respond or comment, but for reasons unknown, I don’t. Later, I wish I had jumped on it whilst the iron was hot to let you know what a godsend I think you are to all of us—we who have been absolutely gobsmacked about what has happened to this country since our duly elected representatives and ‘Leaders’ decided that morals, character, ethics, honesty, fair-dealing, common sense, and integrity don’t matter any more. They prefer to remain silent while the Orange Succubus drains the body politic of meaningful cognitive coherence. How long have we been in this waking nightmare? Has it not been nine years(!) since that awful creature glided down a chintzy escalator with his third wife to regale a paid claque of supposed fans with an unhinged lurid rant about all those evil immigrants (excepting his Slovenian wife, of course, who arrive in the U.S. c/o a ‘Genius’ Visa!) who have come to drug us, steal, rape, spread disease, and make us all into the kind of zombies who would think being a dopey Reality TV Host would be a perfect credit on one’s Curriculum Vitae if aspiring to run for the highest office in the land. I digress….as usual.
Thank you, Lucian. Sometimes I think of ending it all. The ‘Black Dog’ of Depression has been my unwelcome partner on this Journey ever since I can remember. That has only gotten more pronounced since that awful morning in November 2016 when I woke up and learned the Earth had shifted on its axis and that nothing was ever going to be ‘Normal’ again. And from the cast of characters in government from whom we expected they at least honor their Oath to “…support and defend the Constitution…” by their silence and failure to speak up about the horror that was being foisted upon ‘We the People,’ have damned them in our eyes and in our hearts as unworthy of any further consideration as honorable Americans. This current crop of doozies in the House beggars the imagination of just how crazy this country has become. I will not mention names as there are far too many and the night is growing late.
Just know that you are a light to all of us in this virtual Valley Forge of the soul. So, whether I comment or not….I rarely miss a Post, Lucian, and am all the richer for knowing that you are there….tapping away on the keyboard in your corner of the home you share with Tracy, Ruby, and the felines….sharing with us your insight into the Darkness that is upon the land, sprinkled with the Light of Bygone Daze when we all were young…..of Jazz clubs and smoky bistros….barge cats and parties with Dylan and Mailer and Talese….”Those were the days, my friend…we thought they’d never end…We’d sing and dance forever and a day…We’d live the life we choose…We’d fight and never lose…For we were young and sure to have our way….” G’Night and God Bless.
Thank you Mr Nadas for sharing your thoughts with this community that Lucien Truscott IV has brought together. I also love reading these posts and I have learn much from the information shared here. It gives me hope to have found such a smart group of like minded democracy lovers. Please continue to fight the darkness trying to overcome you.
Thank you, Barbara. This community, my wife, children, friends, and my dog are what keep me from pulling the plug. All the best to you and yours. Best wishes from Paul N.
Thank-you for this piece,Lucien.Gas Can Caucus is perfect for what we have going on in DC as far as governance from our House of Representatives.I use the term” governance “ loosely because these folks are far away from legislating anything.They obstruct.They file useless Articles of Impeachment.They send a holier-than-thou Speaker with his useless minions to the border where they have no interest in fixing this situation.It is a hammer they want to use to bludgeon Biden and Dems as an election issue.They back a traitor who has zero plans to help average Americans and whose platform is one of hatred and division.This situation is becoming more predictable and tedious by the day.We The People deserve better and maybe need to make more” good trouble” in the coming days.
Repubs wouldn't have the foresight to carry extra gas cans, they would be more like the guy who drives until he's out of gas, then relies upon the kindness of strangers to bale him out. Then promises to repay them in two weeks when the new health plan and infrastructure week will take place.
And stiffs the helpers regardless.
Tim Burchett deserves no credit. His solution to a $2 trillion deficit is to cut discretionary spending by some ridiculous %. If you cut discretionary spending other than military, by 100%( impossible) you still have a 1.3 trillion deficit. We must increase taxes. Although it would hurt my bottom line, it is best for our country. The rich and powerful are overwhelmingly against this, and with Citizens United on their side, it probably won’t happen. Thanks for your insights, Lucien
The GOP perfectly mirrors Trump: opportunistic, amoral, bigoted, corrupt, and on its way to being as authoritarian as it can get away with.
And gassy (phew!)!
BTW, proof of never taking civics required for GOP membership, based on results.
When Bush the Lesser inherited a tiny budget surplus from Clinton, the Republicans immediately blew it on a tax cut... and proceeded to start not one, but two wars, and then cut taxes AGAIN, the first time in our history the government did such an irresponsible, plainly stupid thing ("Reagan proved deficits don't matter. We won the mid-terms. This is our due." - "Dick" Cheney).
We have accumulated a huge federal debt because we've undertaxed ourselves for decades, because those who have wealth can block the government from collecting the taxes needed to cover the nation's expenses... but they'll happily lend us the money, at a nice, safe, guaranteed interest rate. Clever scoundrels, those plutocrats....
I've read your comment 3 times now and I'm roiling with laughter at "Bush the Lesser"
The other one is Bush the Elder.
Should be taught. Mandatory civics. Now.
Yes, exactly Patris, that seems to have almost disappeared as a basic class in middle school and the upper grades.
My understanding is that it mostly disappeared decades ago but at least in some places is now staging a comeback.
That's good news! I have "heard about that" but no local news coverage in the entire Twin Cities has ever mentioned it to my knowledge, I should "google it" and see if I missed that - I am pretty obsessive about following local news of that kind...
It came up in the wake of the Parkland shooting in February 2018, and especially the student activism that followed (and continues to this day). Many people noticed that Marjory Stoneman Douglas High had strong programs in both government and theater, which helped fuel the activism. I just Googled "civics education in America" (without the quotes) and turned up lots of recent links, including one from the American Federation of Teachers and another from the American Bar Association.
Yay! Government and Theater!!
100% my reaction! And having been involved in both, always on the local level and occasionally at the same time, I am acutely aware of how intertwined they are.
Thanks Susanna I hope to see it reflect some local moves I missed - the whole world saw the local activism in response to the Floyd extra-judicial police execution but that's not the same thing, although there are overlaps.
I'm thinking primarily of the electoral process, which is what "civics education" was mostly about: how government works at various levels and how citizens can be involved in it. Check out, for instance, what Parkland survivor David Hogg is doing with Leaders We Deserve (https://leaderswedeserve.com/). There is a connection to the activism that followed George Floyd's murder, but it's also very much connected to the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the lack of action on gun control despite all the mass shootings, many of them in schools.
Vas you dere Charley? (radio comic straight line). As a matter of fact, I was. Russian *commies* put up Sputnik in October, 1957 and America wet its public education knickers. Math! Science! Civics? History? Feh.
The sudden discovery of math and science happened for sure (for boys at least -- for girls it took another decade or so and a mass movement to get started), but I question whether the decline of civics started that early. I had it in the mid/late '60s and most of my college peers, who came from all over the place, had it too. We were a civically conscious and activist bunch. Now I'm curious -- it wouldn't surprise me at all if the disappearance of civics education was, at least in part, a reaction to that activism.
Oh it disappeared, to the extent it did, for that reason - once the POTB felt they had lost control of HOW civics was taught, it became suspect as hell.
Maybe they need to watch re-runs of Sesame Street at least…
Could start with mandatory civics classes for all military as a qualification to serve.
Baseline. Yes!
Include in boot camp.
You are correct, of course Lucien, but when we remember who they look up to and ardently work for the advancement of, You must remember PUTIN. Their every move is to bolster his power at our peril.
Also, we could collect the trillions in taxes owed, but not collected. That would ruffle too many Repugnicants canstiteruncy.
Perhaps a more apt description might be "the gas BAG caucus." After all, what do we ever hear from the GQP and MAGA side of the political spectrum but so much bloviating, led by the former bloviator -in-chief, Donald Trump.
I wondered when the gas bag image would show!
The deal looks like $886B for the war profiteers, $705B for everything else. What does that say about us? IMHO nothing good.
Break down "war profiteers" in a specific case - you may find an immense supply chain that pays the salaries of all sorts of workers, it's not enough to demonize the top brass, much more complicated than that, surely.
I admit it makes a great slogan, though!
"Down with the war profiteers!"
That way, you need never reach the part about Ukraine defending itself against a genocidal aggression, or Israel being in the same situation from two sides - internationally designated terrorists bent on mass murder because liberation Palestine Arab Land Holy Martyrs...
But it is a neat slogan!
I cannot agree more.
Yet it's also problematic that Burchett gets to say what he does and Inskeep doesn't say, "But, Mr. Burchett, if that's the case why is your party calling for defunding the IRS given how much unpaid tax we know is sitting uncollected, or why did the GOP enact tax cuts during the last administration when it was known *at the time* they'd add to the debt – which has only been proven true – and yet Republicans continue to call for cutting taxes?"
Perhaps Inskeep did that. I'm too lazy to research it. But the public doesn't say it, doesn't know that that's the case. And therein lies the real problem.
An inspired metaphor: the gas can. Fitting, certainly, because so much of what America was is in the trash can.
Republicans would rather the US return to the first Constitution, The Articles of Confederation not only due to their platitude of states' right. The primary reason is they have no idea to govern the United States of America at the federal level. None. Nada.
As to bedlam, sure asfuq not a word Trump came up with on his own. Prolly took more than 5 minutes to explain the word to him. And boy or boy is he low energy now.
Nailed it! The Articles failed, the Confederacy lost, but states' rights never goes away.
Not to mix metaphors or anything, but the Republicans are kicking those gas cans down the road while playing with matches. Why did "No more water; the fire next time" just pop into my head?
“God gave Noah the rainbow sign/Dyin’ times a’comin’ when the sinner must die/Won’t be the water but the fire next time/Dyin’ times a’comin’ when the sinner must die.”
What's that from? What was running through my head was James Baldwin's book _The Fire Next Time_ and a gospel/spiritual song that was everywhere in the 1960s, covered by Peter, Paul & Mary, Bob Gibson, the Seekers, and others. Just found this web page about it: https://www.ibiblio.org/jimmy/folkden-wp/?p=9492
Here's a link to The Carter Family singing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYluL97N3rM and here's a link to an early Bluegrass version from Flatt and Scruggs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQeXH2x-aZU
(Not the version that comes to mind when I think of this song, but it would take me too long to look through my collections.)
I have a large collection of old time string band music and bluegrass on vinyl and CDs, so it’s on one or more of those albums. I can’t remember which band’s or singer’s album that song is from.
I know it's not the same song. My point is that this imagery, and that particular Bible verse, has inspired plenty of creative work, including spirituals and James Baldwin's book.
One of at least a hundred reasons why I can't fathom why sincere critics of Christianity sometimes hit an extreme phase of completely dismissing its vast treasure of cultural influences, whether in art, music, or philosophy. It's a kind of "atheist religion" that needlessly tries to lump any and all the characteristics of organized religion in its Christian forms together, and attack them all.
It's also weird because if you didn't mention the origins there would be no argument from them, at least none any different from other disputes about good and bad music or art or anything else.
Something a lot of white people don't realize is how important Christianity -- the lessons and the imagery -- was to the enslaved surviving and resisting the effects of enslavement. So many of the spirituals/slave songs use biblical imagery to envision a better world. And Harriet Tubman wasn't code-named Moses for nothing.
Yes, so true!
Here’s the second part:
Oh, sinners, you better get ready/Oh, you better get ready, hallelujah!/Sinners, you better get ready/Time’s a’comin when the sinner must die.
Chilling, it's not exactly the Gospel of Love and Compassion I would personally endorse based on extensive Bible texts, but I suppose it accurately reflects the justifiable moral outrage of oppressed people, no doubt about that!
Fire and brimstone, all you sinners! I think that’s what it means. Mean to scare you into being a good Christian?
Even better, it's multi-pronged, so the congregation gets the message you just highlighted, but also is able to crow in advance at the fate ordained by Almighty God for the slave-owners and perhaps especially the most brutal sadists among the overseers, i.e. Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Simon Legree."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncle_Tom%27s_Cabin
shee-rah, I just had an "involuntary `wow' moment, reading this:
"In the United States, Uncle Tom's Cabin was the best-selling novel and the second best-selling book of the 19th century, following the Bible.[7][8] It is credited with helping fuel the abolitionist cause in the 1850s.[9] The influence attributed to the book was so great that a likely apocryphal story arose of Abraham Lincoln meeting Stowe at the start of the Civil War and declaring, "So this is the little lady who started this great war."[10][11]"
So, given the fact that "Bible sales" include, as they still do, huge buys by evangelists (and I cast no aspersions on their motives, the problem remaining that essentially *everyone* except sociopaths, psychopaths, severely intellectually challenged people who are necessarily excluded from the expectations of consistent rational behavior, etc. "have the best of intentions"!) for distribution as part of their "witnessing for Christ," her book was THE #1 seller. I confess I have only skimmed that book, maybe because I was so saturated by years of second-hand accounts in history texts, that I really had trouble (then - this was in the early 1970s) approaching it as a work of art.
But its power as a "morality tale" practically leaps off the page anyway!
I have read about that quote from Abe Lincoln on Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
GAS CAN CAUCUS, love it! What a rip-roaring price to liven up a stormy Tuesday. Thanks, Lucian 👏
For as long as I can remember, we follow a standard pattern. Dems get in office, raise taxes, (or at least don't reduce them) cut the defense boondoggle, and start to balance the budget. Then Repubs take over, go crazy rebuilding the "dangerously depleted military," and cut taxes so that the economy will "take off like a rocket." Which of course never happens, then dems get back in office and Repubs decry the deficit. Meantime the deficit inexorably increases. Neither party really cares except to use it as a cudgel against the opponent. Maybe deficits don't matter, but we waste a lot of energy on doing nothing. Just like the border. Meanwhile the rich get richer so we're fine.
Really depressing thought Tom.
Your still dressed for Winter? Cold there?
Yet the recent GOP Trump cultists have for the most part shown little interest in helping Ukraine ward off Russia's genocidal war of aggression - launched to some extent as early as 2014 when one examines the specific history, and virulently extended in February 2022; so much for the utility of a rebuilt "dangerously depleted military" when it comes to "handing Joe Biden a victory," any victory, no matter how much in the national security interests of the United States.
Or in the interests of supporting a nascent democracy, or helping our European allies, or defeating the vile and vicious Mad Vlad Putin and thus assisting Russians yearning to breathe free.
I know the first fallacy of federal finance that U.Sicans believe in their guts is that good governance requires a national budget that is balanced just like their family budgets. I know that's untrue, but don't know why. Is it only because governments can tax, families can't? If anybody here is an economics maven, could you explain that issue comment-length?
Here is one explanation in part from Nobel Laureate William Spencer Vickrey to that very fallacy and reaffirms how comparisons and analogies are best to be avoided.
"This fallacy seems to stem from a false analogy to borrowing by individuals. Current reality is almost the exact opposite. Deficits add to the net disposable income of individuals, to the extent that government disbursements that constitute income to recipients exceed that abstracted from disposable income in taxes, fees, and other charges. This added purchasing power, when spent, provides markets for private production, inducing producers to invest in additional plant capacity, which will form part of the real heritage left to the future. This is in addition to whatever public investment takes place in infrastructure, education, research, and the like. Larger deficits, sufficient to recycle savings out of a growing gross domestic product (GDP) in excess of what can be recycled by profit-seeking private investment, are not an economic sin but an economic necessity. Deficits in excess of a gap growing as a result of the maximum feasible growth in real output might indeed cause problems, but we are nowhere near that level. Even the analogy itself is faulty. If General Motors, AT&T, and individual households had been required to balance their budgets in the manner being applied to the Federal government, there would be no corporate bonds, no mortgages, no bank loans, and many fewer automobiles, telephones, and houses."
In simple terms it is a myth that families actually operate a balanced budget. Sure some do however most don't. So, the predicate itself is ALL WRONG. Or as am fond of quoting my Downeast Mainers "you can't get there from here" wisdom.
Ahoy, ~Shadowcloud~. As everyone says so often on MSNBC, "Much appreciated!" Quick-scrolling through William Spencer Vickrey's wiki, I feel like an idiot. How could I never have heard of him—by choice a New Yorker and hardly obscure! I don't want to think about how long it would have taken me to put this together. I'm glad I asked—thank you.
No, thank you for putting your question out on the thread.
Added to the piece by citing the Federal Reserve on household and business debt which destroys the myth families balance their budgets. If my recall serves me Household debt is north of 17T-$. Corporate/business debt much higher. And of course the other myth is states actually have to balance their budget and do so, What is not noted most float their actual debt via bonds. Also missing is the revenue those states receive from the USG including those states who receive Federal revenue than the residents pay in Federal Income Tax.
The honest southerners and Bible Belt residents love that annual windfall with many framing it as war reparations from the War of Yankee Aggression. You be surprised how many from the southern front porch group admit that after a few foo-foos. That includes national and state pols.
Some of that is offset w/o them catching on via all the ~indigenous~ casinos located in many of their states. We have no problem lighting their wallets. And have since the first one came on line due to a major f-up by Nixon that was leveraged into sovereign gaming and gambling. .Not a single Nixon historian nor the curator of all of Nixon's misdeeds ever knew what that was. That is not the only one Mr. Dean is unaware of. (yes, intentionally leaving a tease that will remain unexplained.) One thing we are really good at is keeping secrets secret until there is value in to the ~people~ for revealing it.
Secrets like that are fun. I know: The obit I mention in my reply to Susanna omits a fact about this man that the Times surely would have included in normal times. In these times, the fact would have alerted trump goons to death rites they'd have loved to invade and mess up. … Every word true about parasite Dixie states freeloading off the more industrious Yankee north (and we think we're the smart ones!). NYC does balance its budget without resort to bonds. When over-borrowing nearly bankrupted the city in the '70s one of the disciplines imposed for rescue was no more hanky-panky. Ever.
"Secrets like that are fun. I know: The obit I mention in my reply to Susanna omits a fact about this man that the Times surely would have included in normal times. In these times, the fact would have alerted trump goons to death rites they'd have loved to invade and mess up." Excellent example of how revealing the smallest to the biggest secret comes w/ unintentional consequences.
Often recall and ponder this century's best and worst kept secret, the Obama Adm. ordering the kill or capture of Bin Laden w/o it leaking only to have the kill be publicly fought over by 2 operators of SEAL Team 6. IAs if SEAL Team 6 was not part of Team USA. (They think and act that way and have for decades.)
Without knowing anything about the NYC budget, I've still got to wonder how much *legitimate* -- what to call it? not "hanky-panky" but maybe casuistry? -- goes into achieving the appearance of balance. ;-)
All I know for sure is that I worked at City Hall for three years (between newspapers) and I can't tell you how much Ed Koch hate — hate — hated the restrictions Felix Rohatyn's Financial Control Board imposed on the budget. The city has survived those disciplines, and will survive even Eric Adams, who probably hates them even more than Koch did. The watchdogs never let up.
Another part of the larger fallacy is the absurd worry that every single person and bond fund and foreign nation and business that owns US government debt might just ALL AT ONCE AND ALL TOGETHER DEMAND! THEIR MONEY! RIGHT NOW UNCLE SAM, FORK IT OVER BUDDY, WE AIN'T PLAYIN' AND THESE BOYS HERE BACKIN' ME UP DON'T DANCE!
Sort of a "run on the banks" on a titanic international scale - but it CANNOT happen that way, the loans come due, the bonds come due, and THEN USA has to pay up....
I saw something similar to your paraphrase of Vickrey a few years ago about raising the minimum wage - very similar. You can't just raise it to $50,000 an hour and then have all those workers in paradise financially, TRUE, but so what, just pegging it to 1970 level would have it around $40!!!! an HOUR!! - I think that's actually true, there may be apples and oranges problems with size of workforce and so on, though.
Rs/cons appeal to ignorance through oversimplification, then keep repeating it until both the media and general population repeat it back. No need to think when someone has figured it all out for them. No thinking, the dumber the nation becomes.
Must add to families don't balance their budget. Proffer: (From the Federal Reserve) Personal debt in the US is north of 17T$ and business debt is north of 36T$. Balanced, my red arse.
LOL, and their immediate rhetorical pivot is it's ALL the "GUMMINT'S FAULT, ye yellow-bellied Demonrat! The dad-gum consarned GUMMINT don't need to be givin' out jobs, neither, that's God's work! He built the Roads, Sinnah, n' don't you fergit it - we'll see you in hellfire brimstone flames of holy ret-treee-boo-shun, yup, and yer acursted yelping young' uns what needs a sound butt-paddlin' - and sent to reform school! Amen!" [yadda yadda yadda nada nada nada"]
"Thus endeth the holy rolling sancified rant, fer now, yea heathen pagan wiseguy troublemaker!"
5***** for mockery. Something D pols fail to invoke when dealing with their cray-cray R colleagues.
O did it on occasion as Senator, and a few times as President/CinC yet not nearly enough. Joe is the type to do it in private yet is reluctant to do it publicly. Some of the young blood Ds in the House are very good at mockery during hearings.
As you demonstrated mockery is at its zenith when invoking the other's own word and adding as you did voice intonation,
FTR: Get a kick out of the Rs and cons who insist the Founders/Framers were small government advocates. The authors of the abject failed first Constitution were whereas the Framers of the 2nd turned that model of its head by establishing a strong central federal government that they correctly assessed would grow as the nation grew. And the proof of that is all the elements of the Framers grabbing land for the District of Columbia, far more than was needed for the times.
When I hear Rs/cons repeat the trope of shrinking the USG into a bathtub one need only look at the size and scope of DC, then across the river into Virginia (DoD, Langley) and Maryland. (NSA/Fort Meade). Shrink all dat umoronic mothafuckas.
Exactly, they've been hornswoggled into becoming enablers of the endless lies and abuse, it's straight outta "Codependent No More" material from over thirty years ago, too!
Maybe that's why so many are adament that the government should balance its budget.
This is great -- thanks!!
Balanced, what does "balanced" mean in that context? A static balance?
You see it isn't really that tricky to work out that the United States Treasury issues bonds and pays back the buyers OVER TIME, with interest. So just keep on that track and apply it to our "tax and spend" Neo-Keynesian system - it's a dynamic balance, which is why what this is really about is arguments about what the tax revenues pay for, and the Republicans really really hate the idea that the state, the Feds, the city, the county, can raise money through taxes and spend it on something for the "common good," like libraries.
Their view is we do not need libraries, we already have the Good Book, the "Muikle Buik" in Scots, the One Sacred Holy Indispensable Text, so all others are redundant, filled with snares and delusions, the work of SATAN!
Same with parks and recreation facilities - it leads to dancing, card-playing, and discussions that are ungodly. So, that's out.
Police we need, but they need to beat people up and shoot people we don't like because they don't reliably vote for us, otherwise it's gated communities and hired security.
Roads, no way, we should only have toll roads, no public highways, no sidewalks, see difny, this is saving us a lot of money!
I hope I answered your question, and if you don't like these answers, I have others, just like Zorba!
I guess I once again failed to make myself clear. Much as I appreciate your effort, Richard, ~Shadowcloud~ and Susanna seemed to better understand what I was looking for—conceptually easy to express in the vernacular, not debate points. Whatever, your back and forth with ~Shadowcloud~ was fun and relevant.
This 2019 piece focuses on the balanced-budget amendments that get proposed from time to time, but I think it gets the idea across that requiring a balanced budget is a bad idea. https://www.cbpp.org/blog/5-reasons-to-reject-any-constitutional-balanced-budget-amendment
This bit is especially interesting:
"Before 1929, the budget was balanced or close to it in most years (except during major wars). From 1933 on, however, the federal government fought recessions by allowing deficits to grow when the economy was weak and then to shrink as it recovered. The latter approach worked better, with fewer recessions, longer expansions, and better growth . . ." It's followed by a little chart comparing 1854–1929 (when the budget was mostly balanced) and 1929–2018 (when it often wasn't).
Just corrected the link in my post -- thanks, difny, for pointing it out! (How the hell did it sneak in there when I cut & pasted the damn thing??)
Blessings on the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Bob Kuttner, Dean Baker, and everyone else trying to correct the evildoings of the intellectual progeny of Pete Peterson. Real useful insights on this issue. … I actually got an error in an nyt obit a few weeks ago partially corrected. The man's last name was spelled correctly in text, misspelled in url and hed. They fixed the hed and footnoted the correction, stet'd the link misspelling, which I would guess could botch up future research.
Why balance the budget when we can borrow from the Chinese?
Lucian, please forgive me. I have been remiss at speaking up about how much your posts mean to me, personally. For instance….the one a few days ago where you detailed with great candor and exquisite precision the arc of happenstance between yourself and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar re Atrial fibrillation and how, through the Grace of God and sheer Good Fortune, you managed, with your beloved Tracy’s assistance, to hie thee to a hospital post haste and get diagnosed, evaluated and treated in good order and were back home cooling your heels and celebrating your good fortune before you could say, “Heavens to Mergatroyd!” (Exit, stage left!) For that one I at least wanted to tell you that after reading it, and many of the Comments below your piece, that I immediately went on to the interwebz to order a decent Pulse Oximeter for my own personal use. Not out of fear, but out of a nagging suspicion that I may have been blowing off my own issues in that department. There have of course been others since….that seem to generate within me an urge to respond or comment, but for reasons unknown, I don’t. Later, I wish I had jumped on it whilst the iron was hot to let you know what a godsend I think you are to all of us—we who have been absolutely gobsmacked about what has happened to this country since our duly elected representatives and ‘Leaders’ decided that morals, character, ethics, honesty, fair-dealing, common sense, and integrity don’t matter any more. They prefer to remain silent while the Orange Succubus drains the body politic of meaningful cognitive coherence. How long have we been in this waking nightmare? Has it not been nine years(!) since that awful creature glided down a chintzy escalator with his third wife to regale a paid claque of supposed fans with an unhinged lurid rant about all those evil immigrants (excepting his Slovenian wife, of course, who arrive in the U.S. c/o a ‘Genius’ Visa!) who have come to drug us, steal, rape, spread disease, and make us all into the kind of zombies who would think being a dopey Reality TV Host would be a perfect credit on one’s Curriculum Vitae if aspiring to run for the highest office in the land. I digress….as usual.
Thank you, Lucian. Sometimes I think of ending it all. The ‘Black Dog’ of Depression has been my unwelcome partner on this Journey ever since I can remember. That has only gotten more pronounced since that awful morning in November 2016 when I woke up and learned the Earth had shifted on its axis and that nothing was ever going to be ‘Normal’ again. And from the cast of characters in government from whom we expected they at least honor their Oath to “…support and defend the Constitution…” by their silence and failure to speak up about the horror that was being foisted upon ‘We the People,’ have damned them in our eyes and in our hearts as unworthy of any further consideration as honorable Americans. This current crop of doozies in the House beggars the imagination of just how crazy this country has become. I will not mention names as there are far too many and the night is growing late.
Just know that you are a light to all of us in this virtual Valley Forge of the soul. So, whether I comment or not….I rarely miss a Post, Lucian, and am all the richer for knowing that you are there….tapping away on the keyboard in your corner of the home you share with Tracy, Ruby, and the felines….sharing with us your insight into the Darkness that is upon the land, sprinkled with the Light of Bygone Daze when we all were young…..of Jazz clubs and smoky bistros….barge cats and parties with Dylan and Mailer and Talese….”Those were the days, my friend…we thought they’d never end…We’d sing and dance forever and a day…We’d live the life we choose…We’d fight and never lose…For we were young and sure to have our way….” G’Night and God Bless.
Thank you Mr Nadas for sharing your thoughts with this community that Lucien Truscott IV has brought together. I also love reading these posts and I have learn much from the information shared here. It gives me hope to have found such a smart group of like minded democracy lovers. Please continue to fight the darkness trying to overcome you.
Thank you, Barbara. This community, my wife, children, friends, and my dog are what keep me from pulling the plug. All the best to you and yours. Best wishes from Paul N.