San Diego – We all know about “New Math.” That is the math that has left our kids without the ability to count change and depend on calculators. But now we have Extremist Math. Since good ol’ Chuck Shummer told his fellow Democrats to label anyone who wanted to cut spending as extremists and their ideas as Draconian that has been the obligatory label used for nearly anyone who disagrees with them. “Draconian” is a fitting label for them to use since they also accused their opposition of coming to town to kill women and old folks.
I hear a deafening silence… “Draconian?” you ask. Oh come on, all of you ever-so-educated and informed voters surely are so steeped in history you remember the Athenian Greek, Draco? In 621 BC Draco was asked to codify all laws so that everyone would know them and not be able to claim ignorance or to break them unknowingly. His code decreed death for virtually every offense. He stated he believed death was appropriate for ANY crime and could not think of something more severe for the bigger crimes.
So lets put the Draconian objectors to the budget deal to the microscope. it has become pretty well established that Americans. almost somewhat uniquely (and, in my opinion due in part to new math) cannot comprehend or deal with really big numbers. A million is slightly out of grasp and a billion or more are just abstractions. THe only way to make sense of what is really at play is to deal in percentages and bring down examples into the realm of the understandable. That is what I tried to do when I showed that, following the math done by a friend, using the Democrats’ reasoning, my own $3,000 credit card debt could be properly dealt with by my cutting $.08 (that is eight cents) from my annual spending.
Well here is another example. First the reality as described here in an article on the issue:
“Currently, the Federal debt amounts to $14.2 trillion. (Washington has) borrowed every penny the law allows. In fact, that’s the reason for the current war of words. If Congress won’t raise the debt ceiling, the government can’t borrow any more money. If it can’t borrow any more money, it can’t pay for all the boondoggles and giveaways that are already law. [DK: And that means that expenditures and liabilities were passed into law knowing full well they were above to so-called debt limit and now they need to hike the limit to pay for them. So much for any real debt ceiling: you just authorize the spending and then tell the people they will be devastated if they have to “cut” the programs. Can we spell “fraud?” Oh well, back to the quote… )
“The deficit is already scheduled to grow by $1.6 trillion this year. In other words, even if Congress can’t agree on spending one more dollar this year, we taxpayers are already on the hook for our government to fork over $1.6 trillion more than it collects in taxes.
“The deficit for February (the shortest month of the year!) was $223 billion. That was the largest single deficit of any month in our country’s history. Let me put it another way: The same day that Republicans in the House voted to cut spending by $6 billion, our national debt jumped by $72 billion. That’s $72 billion in new deficits, every day of the week, every week of the year.”
So lets convert that all to pennies where one penny equals a trillion dollars (from an analogy first presented by Chip Wood). The debt is roughly 15,000 pennies or a pile of 300 of those red penny rolls. And the pile is growing by 72 pennies a day or about a roll and a half. (for those who have never been in business or saved their change, a penny roll/wrapper holds $.50. Oh, I’m sorry, that is 50 pennies.
The nasty evil Draconian House wanted to cut 10 pennies from that pile of 15,000 pennies
but had to settle on less. The Dems were willing to cut 4.5 pennies and in the end settled on about 6 pennies or 1/16 of the amount of NEW debt being racked up that very day. Draconian? Extreme? And in following our analogy how do the liberal folks tell the tale? They say those nasty Draconians are trying to cut all of ten pennies at once (can you even imagine?) which will be disastrous because we only increased the deficit this month by 1.44 rolls. And the sychophants readily buy into that bit of verbal mis-direction. The nasty conservatives want to cut 10 but only increased 1.44. Uh, but wait a minute… the cut is 10 pennies but 1.44 rolls is 72 pennies… you have to not let them keep you from reading the fine print.
When it looked like they actually might lose the fight Dems accelerated the misdirection approach and added an old staple technique… they lied. they lied by also started telling people that if the government shut down then soldiers in the field (“America’s flowering youth now in harm’s way”) would not be paid. That is a lie. The Law is clear that active duty military are considered essential personnel and exempt from furlough or layoff without pay. And who else is excempt? I know this will surprise you. Congress and all of their staffs are also exempt. Reality is not kind to the liberal position but they can happily (for them) rely on voter ignorance and short-term memory and their fear of nasty labels.
King Barrack loves telling the world he inherited a Trillion Dollar deficit, as if that somehow excuses boosting it to the current levels. But it is a lie. $800 billion of that deficit was the one time, never to be repeated TARP bailout. But the new administration, instead of keeping it as a one time expenditure, rolled it into the base line for the continuing budget and then rolled their own additional “Stimulus” money of several more trillion into the base line. In a truly bizarre and utterly ironic twist of events, the idiot Michael Moore was partially right: we are not as broke as it seems because the reality of one-time expenditures has been rolled forward on paper as if we should be spending that money EVERY year, and God knows King Barrack wants to do just that.
Anybody know of a small isolated island needing a Photo Professor where the national budget is counted in fish and coconuts and one cannot run a deficit because the exchange is based in tangible goods? No one can say that a pound of fish is, today, worth 1.8 pounds of fish.
I want to declare a moratorium on the use of all labels and personalities used in place of national political debate. I want to make it mandatory that only the facts be presented and let the voters decide based on facts, not on fear-based labels and emotional arguments.
P.S. – re local/State issues. I do not support a tax increase; we are driving businesses out-of-state in record numbers and with them, losing the tax base on both corporate and employee levels. But I do believe the voters have a right to decide for themselves and it should be put on the ballot. and if, according to law, 2/3 of them vote to increase specified taxes then that should be allowed. Plato referred to pure Democracy as “the rule of fools” but the petition/referendum process in California has already totally subverted the 3-part government approach and created a third branch which is totally unaccountable and has consistently refused to pay for the schemes their petitions have put in place. Now I think we should give them a choice to face reality.
On the budget ballot we should list the amount that needs to be raised to pay for all of the schemes and let them chose to pay for them with additional taxes or not. Those that do not get the votes would be scrapped the day the votes are counted. For those that do, taxes will be raised accordingly unless enough are dropped to make up the difference.
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