Is this all they are demanding? Shutting down the Federal government over less than $50 billion dollars when projected annual deficits are $1.5 trillion as far as the eye can see? The wimps haven’t even completely axed Amtrak, mass transit and High Speed Rail. They’re still arguing about the current fiscal year from October 2010 thru September 2011. Just wait till they debate raising the total federal debt ceiling and passing next year’s budget.
Our dysfunctional, paralyzed and ossified Congress will debate and it may pass a budget for the 10/01/11 to 9/30/12 Federal Fiscal Year or they might do as they did for this year – just pass temporary funding resolutions and muddle on. Towards this process, Republican U.S. Representative from Wisconsin Paul Ryan has proposed a “courageous” budget proposal – Ha I say. It is arguably the most partisan and warped list of national priorities to be presented in several years but it’s still very modest for a right-wingnut arrogant imbecile!
Democrats, moderate, independents, and Liberals call it all sorts of negative things, but they have nothing coherent in response except not so much and not so fast – neither of which are winning or intelligent counter-arguments. In my twisted logic, Congressman Ryan’s budget doesn’t go far enough. I’m ready to concede everything and see what happens if it is enacted in large part.
The Republican, conservative, anti-tax, anti-government, Tea-Party meme has won the public debate. After 30 years of constant fact-free propaganda and a steadily growing dumber electorate, the nation’s path for the next decade has already been set. No other fact-based arguments hold sway in this nation. Unless proposals have the support of the wealthiest 1 to 5% of Americans and large multi-national corporations, those ideas are meaningless and will not get any traction in Washington DC or any of the 50 Statehouses.
The innovative and competitive American free market system has given way to corrupt monopolistic corporatist state – except in this 21st Century feudal-fascist variation the large corporations and wealthy run the government and society for their own benefit. The American system of representational democracy is a complete fraud since it only operates for the oligarchy, plutocracy and kleptocracy who really don’t give a damn about anyone else. The American dream is a nightmare for a large plurality of U.S. citizens – most Americans are still too dumb, duped, delusional and deceived to realize they have no futures either. American exceptionalism is completely dead except for the exceptionally huge crash that awaits this nation during the next 20 years.
We no longer are a people united by anything; it’s every man for himself. (Democrats can fret about the politically correct way of saying this.) Our government can do nothing right and we should turn over our remaining wealth and personal lives to our benevolent multinational corporations. They are the true experts in making profits from leveraging overseas slave workers and wringing every last cent of productivity out of American workers to benefit their owners and executives.
The current Republican proposals don’t go far enough. Why not eliminate all payroll taxes to completely defund Social Security and Medicare now? They would be a nice offset to the proposed massive tax cuts for the wealthy – and would please Grover Norquist and the anti-tax and anti-government crowd.
We must completely unburden all those poor over-taxed, over-regulated, over-burdened, overly-criticized millionaires and billionaires from all civic, moral, ethical or financial responsibility for the rest of the nation. They are successful due to their own work without any help from customers, consumers, employees and colleagues, or the fact they lived in the richest country in history with a fair justice system building a long history of protecting private property and expanding civil rights. Instead they pulled themselves up by their own gilded bootstraps and crawled over everyone else. They were simply more intelligent and hard-working than the rest of us – and could spot a sucker a mile away. Therefore they should be lavishly rewarded by society and our merged political/economic feudalistic system as they are the “favored and chosen people of our gods.”
We should ignore the fact that the success of most members of our oligarchy was principally due to multiple factors, i.e. special connections of family and friends; inheriting significant wealth and getting into the best schools; gaming the entire system in their favor through massive bribery and corruption of governmental officials and both political parties; ruthless criminal behavior that was conveniently legalized or simply overlooked and never prosecuted; and simple good luck. These factors do not require them to help anyone else in society or even care about the best long-term interests of the nation.
Our oligarchy has bled America dry and now sadly they must turn their attention to billions of people in developing countries around the globe as their future serfs and slaves. 90% of Americans are no longer worth their attention or concern. Party on oh great ones at everyone else’s expense.
The rest of us have only ourselves to blame that we did not realize we were solely responsible for our own bad luck of not being born to the right parents or that we never had any lucrative opportunities given to us by family, friends, mentors, politicians and other corrupt members of the oligarchy. Intellectually and religiously, we were simply not the favored ones because we were not born sociopaths and psychopaths – god’s preferred forms of human life on this planet.
Why not set the marginal income tax rates for incomes above $500,000 a year to zero – nada – zilch – nothing? That would also go for all income derived from carry-forward interest (Billion-dollar Hedge Fund owners would go from a 15% tax rate to zero), plus exempt all income from interest, rents, royalties, capital gains, and anything else associated with our wealthiest citizens.
Since “S” Corporations, Limited Liability Companies and Partnerships are all non-taxed pass-thru entities, why not make the last group of special citizens – “C” Corporations – also tax-free pass thru entities? Then when they pay dividends to and buy-back stocks to create capital gains to shareholders, those should also be tax-free transactions as well. Only human beings should be taxed – not legal fictions who are superior “persons” under the Constitution. This will actually simplify the entire tax code and free up more money to buy up our politicians. This will also unleash the wonderful power of trickle-down economics – albeit mostly to developing nations.
By eliminating all taxes on large corporations and wealthy individuals, we would not need all those business exemptions, exclusions, credits and deductions – unless they produced additional government payments to them – sort of an earned income tax credit for the wealthy. Some of those tax attorneys and accountants who work for our large corporations and oligarchy may need to find new employment – possibly as lobbyists to preserve the status quo – and the remaining few would be still calculating the additional payments from government to these corporations and individuals – just to keep them from moving all their operations overseas.
Let’s shut down the Federal government now and permanently until we eliminate all discretionary domestic spending of about $400 billion. Everyone knows that President Obama and what’s left of the Democratic Party will completely cave into Republican demands after a few months. We need more money for defense, foreign wars, endless homeland security, and extensive domestic spying on those citizens who complain about or dare to criticize this brave new world.
Why not unleash Medicare and Medicaid to the completely unregulated free market dominated by a handful of greedy and corrupt healthcare and insurance cartels? There is no right to healthcare for anyone – unless you can afford it. No more governmental regulations, mandates or subsidies to anyone to distort or change the behavior of healthcare providers and health insurance companies. It will be so fun to see how things shake out for private insurance and Medicare.
Why even bother with federal block grants for food stamps, unemployment compensation and Medicaid? The Federal Government is “broke” and true Federalism demands that each state should determine how low they might finance these programs in order to compete with each other and third-world nations around the globe. The race to the bottom should be an exciting and really fast competition.
Since we allowed tens of millions of future unemployed, neglected, poorly-educated, and marginally-healthy people from being born since abortion was legalized in 1973, then the rest of us – particularly those women who had those abortions – should be punished by the elimination of Social Security. If you didn’t save up enough to provide a large private-sector retirement fund, then you should also be punished. You have children, friends and siblings. Let them take you in. We don’t need you sucking off the Federal or state trough. Dammit – we even have poor houses and debtors’ prisons – today they are called Detroit and Cleveland.
If you did not make gobs of money inventing numerous financial instruments that skimmed money off legitimate businesses, or won at the corrupt gambling casinos run by our financial sector, then you really have not contributed anything to our society. You might have some value as an organ donor, though. Some oligarchs could pay you for one of your lungs, kidneys, eyes, and part of your liver. Even the very wealthy may need organ donations and they might be willing to part with some money to be put at the top of the waiting list. But then those organs can be gotten for a much lower price in India or China – so much for that income idea.
We really don’t need public employees because they aren’t “real” jobs such as Hedge Fund Managers, insurance salesmen, and hamburger flippers. Only the private sector creates jobs – government jobs are just people stealing from the rest of us by doing nothing. Thus teachers, health and building inspectors, judges, prosecutors, police and firefighters, urban planners, public transit workers, and people who process government benefits are not doing anything real and are simply drains on society who should be fired. Instead they should be working for privatized schools, privatized police and fire departments, industry-owned and managed safety, inspection and regulatory companies, and they should solely serve our demi-gods who own and run the great multi-national corporate entities that will provide all our future needs and desires.
We need to downsize our Federal and State governments for a population that is in steep economic decline. Most of the U.S. jobs of the future will be low-paying and without benefits – except you will be escorted out by security when you are abruptly terminated. In fact, most private sector jobs will be 1099 independent contractor work or gigs for independent temps. There will be a permanent underclass of unemployed people of 8 to 15% of the total workforce. Others will have to work two or more lousy part-time jobs. About 40% of the total population will not be able to work because they are simply too young, too old, too sick (physically or mentally) to contribute – though Republicans are trying to eliminate child labor laws to ameliorate some of this situation.
Finally, many people are so in financial debt (all student loans are non-dischargeable and now exceed total credit card debt nationally) they can never return to being good “consumers” which is even more important than being good “citizens.” Besides “citizens” just vote between two pre-ordained candidates who serve the same wealthy masters once elected so that final vestige of representational democracy is a now a complete myth and fraud. The smart ones just don’t bother voting anymore.
The potential tax revenues from such an underpaid, demoralized, disillusioned, frightened, and disposable population will not be able to sustain anything more than remaining the policeman to the world. Of course military spending and foreign expeditions only benefit our oligarchy. The rest of the population has been, is, and will be, just cannon fodder for those blessed ones on the top.
Today our top 10% of households must create over 30% of all consumer spending while the rest of the lazy and worthless population bargain hunt at Wal-Mart and Target. Our top 1% of residents earn 25% of all income each year and control 40% of all wealth in the nation. Most of the rest of income and wealth belong to the next 19%. Do you think the bottom 80% of the nation really mean anything to the oligarchy, our governmental leaders, or multi-national corporations when half of those households don’t pay any income taxes because their incomes have declined in real dollars over the past 30 years and they can barely afford basic rent, food, and utilities? Don’t they realize that most electronic gizmos have declined in relative price over the past decade? Are they never satisfied or do they just demand more food stamps, subsidies and jobs?
Fortunately, the human products of 30 years of an overall substandard educational system are just too ignorant to know what’s really going on. The Oligarchy is busy ensuring there is enough media celebrity and entertainment coverage, and enough new electronic gizmos to keep the restless natives from rioting and trying to overthrow the status quo. The experiment now by the Oligarchy – acting through their Republican shills in government – is to see how little public services they can provide, how low can their taxes can go, and how effective their Military investments will be when turned against the few people who complain or protest within the nation’s borders.
America’s wealthy really don’t need the rest of us. Yes, they own some nice real estate in and around many large cities. They also own the mineral and resource extraction rights on most of the U.S. public lands. However, if things fall apart in the U.S., they can easily move to select locations in Lichtenstein, Switzerland, Singapore, Australia, Europe, Argentina, Brazil, and Belize. They can also park their vast wealth and money in many tax havens outside the U.S. where they already stash more than $1 trillion away from any U.S. taxation. They won’t shed any tears for the rest of us. What complete fools are the American People.
Submitted 4/6/11 by Marc Pascal happily ranting from Phoenix, Arizona. I apologize for the length of this post but I’m not a happy camper anymore.
N.B. My spouse works for a private company that has several large Federal contracts. She is a bilingual customer service representative who assists Medicare patients with various billing issues, ordering special healthcare equipment, prescription drug enrollments, reporting Medicare fraud, and deals with a variety of other important healthcare questions of older Americans – naturally a position that was outsourced by our Federal government to the private sector to save money for more tax cuts. Naturally she will immediately lose her job in a government shutdown as such workers do not provide any essential services or are part of the many huge income transfers of public money to large international companies who help us wage war around the globe. Even without the impending financial crisis facing our family, my real opinion of Republicans, conservatives and Tea-Partiers is simply too obscene and nasty to be printed on TMV. Those of you who gloat over shutting down the government for moronic and completely bankrupt right-wing ideologies and partisan gamesmanship should all go to hell.