30 | July | 2011 | Existential Ennui

Tags

CCB, corporatocracy, debt ceiling, economics, GOP, John Boehner, teabaggers

Much as we all turn our heads at a freeway accident, unable to not look, I’ve been caught in the macabre fascination of watching a branch of government self-destruct before my very eyes.

After writing e-mails and tweets to my congressmen, advising them to get on the ball and get a balanced approach in the works, nothing changes. Even when polls suggest that by overwhelming margins of high 60’s to high 70’s, the American people are speaking out in favor of a balanced deal including cuts and revenue, and universally blaming Republicans for the log jam, nothing is being done.

I’ve been mesmerized by John Boehner’s dizzying death dance with the TeaNutz®. Some pundits are now dividing the Congressional GOP as those that are “sane” versus the “insane. The TeaNutz® are being called “hobbits,” uneducable, and intractable in the extreme. Boehner is giving screaming speeches in near tears as he tries to make it appear somehow that he didn’t totally cave to the least and worst of his fellow GOPers.

Of course Boehner and McConnell know that the TeaNutz® have once again handed the high ground to the Dems and the President. Even Billo the Clown screeches that they have insured Obama’s re-election with their insane inability to accept anything but their own rhetoric. Indeed Boehner has not budged a single one even with the usual promises of earmarks, good committee assignments and the coffers of the RNC for their re-election. These fools actually believe that they were sent on this holy mission by “the people”, and they are so ill-educated as to the facts of the real world that nothing gets past that mantra.

The polls serve to appeal to the “sane” GOP only, which it is still hoped will agree with Democrats to accept mostly a win as good enough and will in a true bipartisan fashion give up the necessary votes to avoid Armageddon.

I’m not at all sure it will happen. We ordered our money out of the stock market on Wednesday and we won’t be going back in until this crisis is over and we start to see a settling of the markets. We’ve never done this before, but our broker sure didn’t make any argument against our doing so.

Our Congress is so dysfunctional as to be worthless, and I’m getting to the point where I see only once solution. It is not some ideologically pure third-party, because I think that reasonably unrealistic. What I see the need for is that all Americans, or at least enough of them agree to simply vote out every incumbent up for re-election. This will be painful for everyone. The House will go back to the Democrats and the Senate will go to the Republicans. However the message will be clear.

The ONLY thing that these fools understand is a threat to their own livelihood. If they understand that scorched earth policies by their party will result in removal from office at their next election cycle, I suspect they will get the message that they actually have to learn to get something done.

And the President MUST start to engage the public with education as to basic economics. Even with a panel of economists of the highest order if necessary. Question and answer format.

The GOP (rightly) claims that polls show that a majority of American favor CCB. But that is because they don’t understand it. It sounds right, but it is not at all so. Most families don’t live this way. The analogy is quite simple. Under a CCB approach to your family finances, you don’t buy cars or homes until you have saved all the money to pay cash. And that means no more credit cards either. You want your mortgages and car loans? Well the government does too, except they are paying benefits to most people in one form or another.

In states that have enacted CCB, they maintain their budgets by raiding pension plans. That is why you see the draconian actions of Republicans in those states trying to gut unions and then advising state workers not to count on their pensions any more. They have been borrowed against, there is no money in them, just a big IOU.

You want to live under CCB? They forget about social security or medicare. They will be small pittances and you will be footing most of the costs for your medical care.

I imagine, once explained, that the poll numbers in support of CCB will drop like a rock.

What people have to get is that the GOP has always hated social security and medicare. They have tried to cut them since their inception. They see the deficit as a way to get away with it finally. They want, as one pundit suggested to return to a time of a hundred years ago, when business did whatever it wanted and people lived with what was offered. After all, the poor, if they had no vision and no drive, deserved nothing but the poor house. America was for the entrepreneur, the self-sufficient, the fittest. The rest are just the necessary fodder to turn the wheels of industry.

This is Ayn Rand. That is the GOP.

How will it all play out? I have not a clue. We seem trapped in an insane scenario. Have you gone to the asylum recently and tried to have a rational conversation? Enough said.