Are Pols Our Servants Or Our Deities???

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johnkarls
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Joined: Fri Jun 29, 2007 8:43 pm

Are Pols Our Servants Or Our Deities???

Post by johnkarls »

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E-mails have been received from several of our approximately 150 members questioning the unofficial Six-Degrees-Of-Separation E-mail Campaign regarding Annual Deficits and Accumulated Debt which was contained in yesterday’s weekly Reading-Liberally E-mail.

Their common observation was that liberals are supposed to fight for increased entitlements while conservatives fight against tax increases, and that any display of concern by either side for Annual Deficits or Accumulated Debt is a sign of weakness.

The first problem with this view is that Pols are prone to do the wrong thing in return for campaign contributions and, as we have seen, voters will always vote for Santa Claus (particularly when encouraged by the Mainstream Media).

The second problem with this view is that Pols typically surround themselves with a small circle of advisers who rarely seek outside advice because they believe in their own infallibility.

Two specific points regarding such isolation.

First, there is a real danger that President Obama believes his own rhetoric that Annual Deficits and Accumulated Debt do not pose a problem for the next 10 years as he has claimed, for example, in a 3/13/2013 interview with George Stephanopoulos.

Accordingly, most of the unofficial Six-Degrees-Of-Separation E-mail was devoted to demonstrating why this may well be false.

After all, it would be tragic for both the country and President Obama for him to go down in history as the president who caused our national debt and our currency (which is nothing more than zero-coupon infinite-maturity national debt) to become worthless. But more importantly, as the president who took away from America’s poor for whom he had done nothing (the poor did NOT benefit from Obamacare because they were already covered by Medicaid) their Medicaid coverage as a by-product of the economic chaos as the American economy tries to regain its footing by running on someone else’s currency (like starving 1930’s Germany trying to run on the British Pound Sterling and starving 1990’s Russia trying to run on the U.S. Dollar).

The second point regarding isolation???

The political rationales for the respectful suggestion to President Obama that he might want to consider proposing a Balanced-Budget Amendment to the U.S. Constitution had to be eliminated from the e-mail due to the White House’s restriction on the size of e-mails to 2,500 characters.

At the moment, public opinion polls show that President Obama’s job-approval ratings and personal-popularity ratings have taken a nose-dive to substantially below the 50% level and Republicans are now more trusted to handle the economy.

This accompanies the constant Republican drumbeat regarding Annual Deficits and Accumulated Debt, and the constant Republican mantra that Senate Democrats haven’t even proposed a budget in four years (and President Obama hasn’t even been able to propose a budget in recent years for which even Democratic Senators were willing to vote).

If anyone stops to think (which President Obama’s advisers apparently do not), this situation could be transformed if President Obama proposed a Balanced-Budget Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Which would enable him to seize the issue from the Republicans PR-wise.

Before the reader closes her/his mind to the possibility, it should be appreciated that it takes quite some time for such an Amendment to be approved by both houses of Congress and then to be ratified by the states.

During the years that would remain before that happens (which would probably occupy the remainder of President Obama’s second term), he is free to propose Annual Deficits. Especially in view of the facts that the House Republican budget plan itself has Annual Deficits for the next 10 years and Republicans have often “talked out of the other side of their mouths” by agreeing that Annual Deficits are desirable in the near term because of their stimulative effect on a sluggish economy.

Moreover, President Obama is NOT forced to play by Congressional Budget Office (“CBO”) rules. All he would have to do would be to assume a slightly higher growth rate than the CBO in its famous 10-Year Base-Line Budget that is currently used as the measuring rod and President Obama’s budget would balance by the time that a Balanced-Budget Amendment takes effect.

And it would be wonderful to hear him as a Cheer Leader for the Economy, castigating the Nay Sayers of the CBO for their pessimism as self-fulfilling. And leading an FDR-style campaign that “all we need to fear is fear itself” -- that optimism will also be self-fulfilling.

A small point is that Congressional Republicans successfully insisted that the 8/2/2011 Debt-Ceiling Agreement contain a requirement for Congress to vote during the Fall on a Balanced-Budget Amendment because they knew that 20 Democratic U.S. Senators were on record as favoring it, and then threw in the towel after they realized that in the 49 states that have Balanced-Budget Requirements in their Constitutions, Republicans regularly vote for tax increases and blame it on their Balanced-Budget Constitutional Requirements.

And wouldn’t President Obama like to add to his legacy that he was the President who finally brought an end to the notion that it is possible for debt-financed spending sprees to continue forever???

Enough already!!!

Except to say for anyone who hasn’t figured out the answer to the titular question -- that all Pols should be treated as the Hired Help they truly are, always in need of constant supervision and direction.

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