Monday, March 04, 2013

Sequestration Blues...



Well, President Obama's Sequestration is going into effect.

As I said at the time, it was a stupid deal for Republicans or anyone in either party who actually cared about any notion of fiscal responsibility.

To get the obvious ObamaLie ™ out of the way, yes, as Bob Woodward has documented, it was President Obama who torpedoed a budget deal  at the last minute by hitting Speaker John Boehner with a huge additional $400 billion tax  increase after Boehner stupidly thought he and  the GOP caucus had a deal.

If it was me, I would have called a press conference, hammered the president for his duplicity and bad faith and let the government shut down. But John Boehner is, um, different. He agreed to a temporary increase in Obama's credit card limit  and a plan the president put forward for automatic cuts in the Federal budget. Again, as I pointed out at the time, it was a deal only  someone with the testicles and common sense of a gnat would have agreed to .

 it's important to remember that there's no incentive for President Obama to make any compromises. He wants to raise taxes anyway, many of the mandated cuts will come out of our military budget which he also wants to slash to the bone and best of all, he feels he can blame Republicans for it. This makes absolutely no common sense but the way the president sees it, it makes political sense and he sees it as a win-win situation: either they'll knuckle under and give him what he wants, or they won't, and he'll make political capital out of while getting some things he wants anyway.

Simple truth. This president and his minions were always going to raise taxes and refuse to cut any spending except when it comes to strangling the defense budget. It's who they are.

Just to show you how wacked out this is, here's an example from Los Angeles,but it could just as easily be your town, and when I describe it, I'm positive you'll recognize the same scam having been pulled locally.

The city elections are tomorrow and on the ballot is Proposition A,yet another half per cent sales tax increase. And how is it being sold? Constant scare ads, paid for of course by the Democrats and the public employee unions. According to them, if Prop A doesn't pass,the police and Fire Departments won't be able to respond to emergencies, school teachers will be laid off by the busload, school lunch programs will be cut, street maintenance will suffer, the sky will fall...

If this sounds familiar, it's because it's a tried and tested formula that's always used when 'progressives' want more of your money. It's always 'pay up, or else' and the cuts are always targeted at things designed to frighten the average person into giving up the money. They're never targeted at things government could make cuts in without affecting public welfare, quality of life or safety.

For instance, this citywide sales tax hike is the brainchild of City Council President Herb Wesson, who makes $178,789 per year in salary, more than a member of the U.S. Congress. Given that he also gets a free car, a driver, excellent health care, pension benefits and other perks the average citizen wouldn't even get within spitting distance of, could he and the other Council members manage to struggle by with a 15% or 20% salary cut? Could they make do with a couple less staff members, or at least furlough them a couple of days each month? How many police officers would that keep on the job?

Instead of furloughing teachers, could we furlough or even eliminate some of the top heavy administrative positions in th escholl district? Could we privatize the L.A. Zoo, the convention center, or some of the other city-owned facilities? Could we eliminate some of the wasteful 'cultural affairs' and other frivolous and frequently duplicated city programs?

Needless to say, this isn't what's being discussed.Instead, the Fear is being shoved down people's throats 24-7. Recognize it now?

That's exactly the sort of protection racket President Obama is running now. It's the same old dishonest political ploy, just targeted towards a bigger audience. Rather than cut spending on wasteful government programs, he's deliberately taking it out on border patrol agents,social welfare programs for people who really need them, Pentagon and Defense Department employees, and members of the active duty military...and blaming the GOP House members for a scenario he engineered!

How many of these people could avoid being thrown out of the service or 'furloughed' for what it cost the country for the separate vacations the president and his wife just took? Would it have been better to spend that money elsewhere rather than on the President's lavish golf weekend and the First Lady's skiing jaunt at an exclusive Aspen Resort?

Oh yes, I forgot. They're the defenders of the middle class.

The reality is that the sequester is barely a slow down in out of control spending. We borrow that much every 28 days.

Federal spending has gone from a $2 trillion budget in 2002 to a $3.5 trillion budget in 2012, and there's no sign of a slowdown...not with this president. He's run up over $6 trillion in new debt. Any wonder that it's been almost four years since the Democrat run Senate has passed a budget?

That's the Sequestration Blues, folks. We've got a hard driven' free spending big legged guv'mint hellhound on our trail that eats money, and the harder we work, the faster our money goes and the more we go under.

Muddy, Memphis Slim, Willie Dixon or Robert Johnson could have made a song out of it.

1 comment:

louielouie said...

is anon john boehner?