The U.S. is on a Suicide Watch ... Alan Caruba

The U.S. is on a Suicide Watch

By Alan Caruba

In 1991, the Soviet Union, arguably the greatest experiment in Communism, collapsed. After Mao Zedong died in 1976, his successors moved to shift its Communist economy to one that embraced Capitalism while retaining centralized government control.

Following World War Two, the recovering nations of Europe were rescued from Communism by the Marshall Plan, but adopted Communism-Light in the form of Socialism. The U.S. was already headed in that direction, creating programs that we now call “entitlements.” For most of the nation’s history, such “entitlements” did not exist.

What binds together the financial problems of the West is the common thread of infantile behavior and thought. One might call it wishful thinking. Instead of encouraging people to provide for old age and possible illness, politicians decided to turn government into Big Daddy, the eternal source of money for everything.

Need to go to college, start a business, or plan for retirement? Government would be there to help. All this ignored the need to actually pay for these programs. In the case of Social Security Congress began to dip into its funding to pay for other programs! This is what children do.

One can look around the world and see what a failure both Communism and Socialism have been. Governments spending more than their tax and other revenues have suffered grievously from this path to default and that includes the United States of America. It can be argued that, with few exceptions--the Reagan years come to mind—Presidents have been poorly served by their economic advisors.

Politicians make poor economists because, in America, members of the House must think of getting reelected every two years and Senators every six. Moreover, being politicians, they believe that the more federal largess they can bring back to their State and then brag about is the one true path to reelection.

At the very beginning of the nation, Thomas Jefferson said it best. “I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.”

How many commissions and special committees have earnestly produced reports intended to deal with a government grown too large? At the federal level, some two million or more Americans are employed promulgating a deluge of regulations and pushing paper.

Now President Obama says he wants to streamline the federal government.

The real issue is not “streamlining” government agencies by gathering them together under one roof and one administrator, but the failure to end government departments and agencies that no longer serve a useful purpose and whose removal would also remove countless obstacles to economic growth.

In April 2011, Wayne Crews of the Competitive Enterprise Institute warned that “the federal government is on track to spend more than $3.5 trillion this year. What most people don’t know is that government actually costs about 50% more than what it spends. That’s because complying with federal regulations costs an additional $1.75 trillion—nearly an eighth of GDP. And almost none of that cost appears on the budget.”

The United States of America, the greatest engine of wealth the world has ever seen, is bankrupt. The national debt exceeds the Gross Domestic Product, the sum total of all revenue generated by goods and services.

The President has asked that the debt ceiling be raised another trillion or so and Congress will comply. That, I submit, is insane.

I also submit that, since Barack Obama was sworn into office on January 20, 2009, the nation has been witness to the economic insanity personified in the man and in the Democrat-controlled Congress that was his partner until 2010 when the control of the House of Representatives was wrested away by the Tea Party movement and its support for Republican candidates.

The only constant in life is change. America’s demography has changed. We have, thanks to medical care and other advantages, a much older segment of the population than ever before, but the nation from the 1930s to the 1960s had committed itself to ensure they would have Medicare and Medicaid at a time when people more often than not died in their 50’s and 60’s. We now have an average life expectancy of 78 years. My parents lived into their 90s.

Politics, not economics, continues to make it impossible to revise and restructure both Medicare and Social Security to reflect this reality. Instead, we had Obamacare foisted upon us which took trillions from Medicare and imposes rules that will let elderly heart attack or stroke victims die rather than pay for a level of care to which they contributed during their working years.

If the Supreme Court declares Obamacare unconstitutional it will go away. If we elect a Republican Senate, the repeal already passed in the House will be passed and it will go away.

But America’s economic problems will not go away until Americans insist that the shackles of Big Government be cut loose to enable the growth of an energy industry that can not only make the nation energy independent, but produce billions in revenue as far as the eye can see into the future.

The tax system with its thousands of pages must be revised to a simpler, fairer program. It makes no sense that forty percent of Americans pay no taxes at all.

It’s not that we don’t know what must be done. Conservative think tanks like The Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, The Heartland Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and others have spelled out programs that can and will save America, but the nation must be led by a president who understands that Capitalism involves budgeting, planning, hard work, and—yes—risk.

The federal government is running on “continuing resolutions.” It has not had a formal budget since Obama arrived. This is no way to run the greatest nation on the face of the Earth. America is on a suicide watch and we are just an election away from saving it.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

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 Alan Caruba's commentaries are posted daily at "Warning Signs" his popular blog and thereafter on dozens of other websites and blogs. If you love to read, visit his monthly report on new books at Bookviews. To visit his Facebook page, click here For information on his professional skills, Caruba.com is the place to visit.

The United States Is Now A Socialist State.

The United States Is Now A
Socialist State.

The “S” Word IS Accurate.

A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

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The comments herein have been made necessary, in my opinion, by the left’s campaign to redefine socialism. The campaign is about to slip into high gear as the MsM (Mainstream Media) has taken up the banner and, from all appearances; they intend to run with it. The left-wing media folks have not yet settled on a common definition for “The New Socialism,” as of this hour, but soon they will, and it will be off to the races!

When I began using the word “Socialism” and “Socialist” to describe our new government… mainly the executive and legislative branches of said government, I was among the very few commentators to “call it as I saw it.” I was being honest. I use the word to describe that which I am observing, as it is being acted out right before my eyes.

Whilst using the words “Socialist” and “Socialism” correctly (as defined by the dictionaries I referenced) I must tell you… I wondered how long it would be before the leftist/socialists in the mainstream Media would protest the accurate description of the current US Government. Honestly… it took longer than I ever thought it would!

There is an old saw that says: “The truth hurts” and, indeed, it must, because the socialist media is coming after Conservatives who choose to use the “S” word. Yes, the leftists are coming after we capitalists with a vengeance.

Look, I was born before the 2nd World War. I have seen and observed Socialism as it crept it’s slimy way out of Russia, or as it was most recently known, “The Soviet Union”, and spread it’s malignant tentacles across the face of the European continent, and crossed the North Sea and the English Channel into the British Isles. I have observed socialism take root in South America and bring a few countries there to ”a head” (reminiscent of a pus-filled boil about to burst). I have a lifetime of observing socialism. So, do not tell me I don’t know it when I see it… because… I DO! I have lived on the same planet with socialism all my life and my education predates the takeover of the pubic education system in America by the left and their hordes of revisionists.

What we are seeing, dear reader, is a move by the leftist/socialists to “redefine” socialism in a vain attempt to camouflage it so the less educated, the less sophisticated among us, won’t recognize it as the “Nation-Killer” that it is. Given the absolutely absurd public education system in America and the two generations that are products of that system… their task will not be a difficult one. What I mean is… Modern Americans are too dumb to know the difference between REAL socialism and whatever the socialists, now in charge of the US Government, and the ever “faithful-to-Obama” Mainstream Media, tells them it is.

Try a simple experiment. Read the “A” section and the “business section” of your newspaper. Now before you turn your attention elsewhere, get your dictionary and look-up socialism, and compare what you have just read in your newspaper against the dictionary’s definition of the word “socialism”. But… do it quickly, before the next edition of the dictionaries is published. Why do I urge you to hurry? Because, the current definition of the word socialism WILL be CHANGED! Bet on it!

I am a Southern-American and I have seen what revisionists can do when they set their collective minds to it. As an example, I have seen the reasons for the American Civil War go from “States Rights,” taxes, and tariffs, to being about one thing, and one thing ONLY. Slavery.

Two generations of American kids have been taught that slavery was the reason behind that war. Now they believe it, completely, even though it is a bald-faced lie. The same two generations of Americans have been spoon-fed the myth of “Global-Warming” and they have swallowed it line, hook, and sinker! So, do not think for one moment, they cannot change the definition of Socialism…because they CAN… and they WILL!

American has now begun her slide into obscurity. Socialism will eat the heart out of this country. Just look around you and observe how our society is already crumbling right before our very eyes. That collapse is partly dues to the current government’s drive to redistribute the nation’s wealth. It is a simple fact of economics that when you take away the producer’s money… the producer stops producing! His incentive to produce has been taken away by the government. Socialism is, well, killing the goose that lays the golden egg.

Voltaire summed it up. He said: "In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other." Even Norman Mailer got it right when he said: "The function of socialism is to raise suffering to a higher level.” Ayn Rand said this: "Socialism is the doctrine that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that his life and his work do not belong to him, but belong to society, that the only justification of his existence is his service to society, and that society may dispose of him in any way it pleases for the sake of whatever it deems to be its own tribal, collective good." And finally a quote from one of the outstanding thinkers of his time and one of the Founders of what came to be known as the United States of America, Thomas Jefferson. He said: "To take from one, because it is thought that his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, 'the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry, and the fruits acquired by it.'"

As I said above, America has only just begun her ignoble journey to the dust heap of history. Socialism will eat the heart out of the country and, by “country” I don’t mean only the collection of people, places, and things we define as “a country.” I also mean us, you, and me. Just look around you. Let it sink in. Store it away in your memory bank somewhere, for soon that is all the America you and I have known will be. It will be just a memory… a DISTANT memory.

J. D. Longstreet

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America+Obama+Socialist+Government+National-Decay

A “Crisis” of Governors ... Alan Caruba

A “Crisis” of Governors
By Alan Caruba

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If you can have a pride of lions and a gaggle of geese, then I suggest that the forthcoming July 17-20 meeting of the National Governors Association can be described as a “crisis” of Governors.

This once-esteemed office, a platform from which some launched campaigns to become President, has become a sinkhole of sexual misconduct and corruption; witness New York’s unlamented Eliot Spitzer, New Jersey’s James McGreevey, and now South Carolina’s pathetic, moon-struck Mark Sanford and Illinois’ Rod Blogovitch whose alleged sins involved money.

Because states are sovereign republics and because being governor is primarily a “local” responsibility, the job requires significant administrative and political skills to ensure the state meets those obligations closest to voters. Infrastructure must be maintained. Issues of public safety, health, and education are paramount concerns.

With a few exceptions, today’s Governors are struggling with bloated budgets and huge deficits despite the fact that most states require a balanced budget or at least the semblance of one.

Watching Arnold Schwarzenegger announce that California will be paying its bills with IOUs would be comic if it were not so serious.

Watching Governor David Paterson of New York desperately trying to get that state’s legislators to even convene a session reflects the absurdity of watching the House of Representatives vote on trillion-dollar legislation it hasn’t even read.

What, in fact, Americans are witnessing is a failure of government at both the state and federal level. The nation has managed to elect too many people to public office that are so clearly inept, incompetent, and untrustworthy, it poses a threat to the republic.

When the National Governors Association meets this week, we shall have an opportunity to see this group address the challenges facing the nation. Chaired by Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, it is to his credit that he has focused on infrastructure—bridges, roads, tunnels, water treatment plants, the electrical grid, schools and hospitals.

In earlier times, infrastructure was seen and understood to be essential to America’s growth and prosperity. Not so today. It is, generally speaking, vastly under-funded.

The NGA will open with meetings of two committees, The Economic Development and Commerce Committee and the Education, Early Childhood and Workforce Committee. If California is any example—and it is—than economic development has long since been thrown overboard as state-after-state has denied or delayed permits for the building of new plants, coal-fired or nuclear—for the generation of electricity. No energy. No development. As for education, it is a national disgrace.

On Sunday, the Health and Human Services Committee will discuss health care reform. The present White House proposal, unbelievably vague, and whatever will emerge from Congress will add more trillions to the national debt, require everyone to purchase a national, not private health insurance, and end up rationing health services because that is the only way a national system can function. It is a very bad idea that has already failed in Massachusetts.

The Natural Resources Committee will concurrently “examine barriers to American energy independence and security.” I can virtually guarantee you that the Governors of America’s coastal states will resist exploration and extraction of vast natural resources of oil and natural gas from their offshore areas. Others will call for huge expenditures for wind and solar energy that cannot even begin to meet the energy needs of America.

On Sunday afternoon, Janet Napolitano, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, will join others to discuss “emergency preparedness” and, if Hurricane Katrina was any indication, the nation’s and the state’s ability to respond to emergencies is not encouraging. The former Arizona state governor is usually glassy-eyed and phlegmatic when questioned about issues.

Monday’s session will examine energy and the economy. Given how poorly these related areas of concern have been addressed at this point, one is tempted to suggest that the Governors pack their bags and skip that little gab-fest.

The Governors are a microcosm of the entire nation’s ills. Many, if not all, are dependent on federal largess in order to fund the needs of their states and many states send more to the federal government in tax revenues than they receive in return. You could call it a redistribution of wealth.

A growing number of state governments are passing resolutions stating they will not be bound by federal mandates regarding health, education, immigration and other key issues. They are declaring their sovereignty to reassert control over those areas of governance which, until the major shift to federal control at the mid-point of the last century, were their province and their responsibility.

This nation fought a Civil War over the issue of state’s rights, over the right of secession. Now the issue facing California is whether other states have an obligation to bail it out of its financial problems and the answer is no. A host of other incursions of state’s rights, enshrined in the Tenth Amendment, is sparking resistance.

Too much centralized government in Washington, bad management, too much control by public service unions, ignoring infrastructure needs, failure to provide for the provision of energy to a growing population, and the distractions of idiotic issues such as same-sex marriage are combining to destroy a once-great nation.

Alan Caruba writes a daily blog at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/ and a weekly commentary at http://www.anxietycenter.com/, the website of The National Anxiety Center.

© Alan Caruba, July 2009

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