The real national emergency
bisley
Senior MemberPosts: 10,798 Senior Member
Forget about border control for a moment, and analyze what the function of government is supposed to be.
For the USA, the original function of the federal government was to unite the individual states into a coalition whose task was to ward off invasion from foreign entities and protect the citizens from each other. To fund a military and establish a system of justice, taxes were levied upon the citizens, with their consent, at least in theory. Truthfully, large numbers of citizens did not approve of any taxes, because of their experience with a government that took their hard earned money and sent it to another country, to fund that country’s colonial expansion. It was just that simple, really.
Naturally, when any money is collected by any entity that is supposed to use that money for a specific purpose, there is a danger that corruption or incompetence will divert money to other causes that the ‘contributors’ will not approve of. In order to keep such behavior to a minimum, a budget must be agreed upon, and oversight provided that can force the money to be managed according to agreed upon rules or laws.
The real emergency is that this country is electing scoundrels
to Congress who cannot agree on a budget. Why? Because only a scoundrel will
risk ruin to advance his ambitions. Congress is charged, by law, with creating
a budget and executing a spending and collecting plan that fits that budget. There has to be a deadline or no decision point will be reached, but we no longer hold them to that deadline.
The President’s function is to exert enough control over the process, by virtue
of the veto, to force them to compromise on, and agree to a budget, every year
The last president to succeed in corralling the spending of Congress in a way that forced them to spend only the amount of money that they collected, was Andrew Jackson. The last president to preside over a watered down version of a 'balanced budget' was Bill Clinton. But wait.... the House of Representatives forced him to re-submit lower spending proposals, five times, lowering it enough that they would pass it. Naturally, he immediately hit the campaign trail claiming credit for balancing the budget. This was the last House of Representatives that actually did its job.
How does this relate to the impasse over border security? After all, the president wants more money for his plan, not less.
It relates to it because the president is now exercising the
only power he has to force Congress to do what he has promised to do - exactly what
every other president has tried to do (if he had ever had any intention of keeping campaign promises), by varying methods, to fund what the
voters elected him to do. The difference between what Trump is doing and what
other presidents have done is that he apparently is not bluffing. He is betting
the ranch, to keep a campaign promise. Right or wrong, he is doing the job, and
he is paying dearly, in the process. All of the acts of Congress that allowed the government to remain 'mostly' funded during a shut-down have actually undermined the president's power to restrain the Congress and maintain the balance of power.
Congress has not met the deadline requirements for agreeing on
any budget, much less a balanced one, in years, during which time our deficit
has reached over $21,000,000,000,000. Every budget fails to meet the fiscal year deadline, and extend it until one party or the other finds enough political leverage to force a
compromise that they can live with. Continuing resolutions have displaced the
original 'law of the land,' as the way budget disagreements have been dealt with. Congress
can pass spending bills, but they can’t fund them, and they do not care, as
long as they can hold on to power. There is no other logical answer.
A president is elected on the campaign promises he can make the electorate believe, and
exerting leverage over a dysfunctional Congress is the biggest battle he will ever preside over. When a Democrat is elected, he has to have a Democrat
congress to have any hope of keeping the campaign promises he made to voters. Likewise, a
Republican president needs a Republican Congress.
The voters have no remedy for this situation, except using their votes to divide the Congress, which is a de facto vote for political gridlock. This gives the media immense power, if they choose to denounce journalism, in favor of propagandizing for their own agenda, so any party that aligns with them (or vice versa) has a huge advantage, during gridlock. Propaganda is used to neutralize all of the 'good intentions' that still remain in government, and allows corruption to flourish.
Now, that is an emergency, and we can’t buy our way out of it. A president is charged with protecting the country, and he has to get the money for it in any way that he can find to do it, without getting thrown out of office. Very few have the guts or the brains to do it, and they will be destroyed, in the process.
It is a rotten situation, and it looks like voters may always have to choose a rotten representative, and just hope that he will use his rottenness to advance the agenda they support.
Replies
The real emergency is that the government no longer serves the common welfare. It serves the collective oligarchs exclusively. Serving the oligarchs is fine and likely according to capitalist theory, in fact serves the common welfare. My personal contention resides with the exclusivity.
― Douglas Adams
― Douglas Adams
I'd not like to think of anyone here demanding a utopia. Maybe just a return swing of the pendulum.
What political administration coined the phrase too big to fail? Stewart McKinney sound familiar? Is capitalism a government subsidized endeavor?
Are leftist fiascos like Freddie Mack sp? not the opposing side of the same coin?
Heck no, a leftist elite's are not better. I could easily be swayed that it's worse.
Nobody in their right mind wants communism. We've been debating alot of this for months. As far as I know no one's mysteriously vanished. I love it here with all the faults and blemishes. I ain't going nowhere. At the same time I won't be frightened by the word socialism. Our government's had its hand on the wheel sence the wheel was reins.
Im not afraid of utopian proposals either. This is America. We have total freedom of the exchange of ideas. If those ideas are doomed as proven by history Im all ears to that too.
It can also be argued, and honestly I believe, that leftist policy and populist leanings of the 1960s and 70s brought on predictable economic recession and social malady of consequence still relevant today. And further that the conservative tenants of the Reagan administration is what averted complete disaster.
I think maybe wrongly? Maybe not, that many of those tenants either went too far or were corrupted to move the balance too far over the intervening decades.
These are only perceptions and can be debated and even possibly corrected.
FDR simply modernized the old Roman "Bread and Circuses" model to keep the "great unwashed" from revolting. Now, it's "Beer (or pot) and the NFL- - - -NBA- - - -NHL- - - -Fantasy Football"- - - -etc.! The only difference is that they took the swords away from the gladiators.
Jerry