Associated Press has a report out on the disastrous Bush/Obama deficit. I find the way it is worded a bit deceptive myself. I want to discuss how words are chosen to give people particular impressions that may, or may not, be accurate.
The headline is: “Meltdown 101: How did $1 Trillion deficit happen?”
This is a rather passive phrase. Deficits don’t just “happen” they are caused. Accidents happen; assaults are planned. To say something happened implies a lack of human causation. Tidal waves, earthquakes, and tornados happen. Budget deficits are planned and imposed. At the very least words that indicate active causation ought to have been used.
The report says that the projected deficit by the Obama White House is $1.84 trillion, which is “four times the size of last year’s deficit.” It is noted that the previous deficit “was the all-time leader at the time, at $454.8 billion—a figure that now seems puny in comparison.” Consider that the size of deficit has ballooned by 400% in just one year. The debt that the government now holds, and which it intends to hold you responsible for, amounts to $184,000 per person. For the typical family this more than pays off a home.
The cost of government is not just the lose of freedom through the war on drugs, the war on terror, the war on obscenity, the war on poverty and the real wars. It is not just the burden of Obama’s auto czar, drug czar, health czar, energy czar, border czar, bailout czar, urban czar, regulatory czar (aren’t they all?), Middle East czar, and a couple of dozen others. (Remember when czar was a term for despot? It still is.) The cost of government is also the taxes that destroy jobs, create poverty, and strip people of the ability to pay for health care. And it is another $184,000 in debts that the Demopublican authoritarians have imposed on each and every American.
The AP story asks how America went from budget surpluses to deficits. It’s answer is again very passive—no causation, no human agents doing anything. “The surpluses at the end of the last decade reflected a boom-time economy, which was enjoying the longest uninterrupted expansion in U.S. history.
When the last recession began in 2001, that cut into revenues. Then the government's budget picture darkened even further after the 2001 terrorist attacks as government spending was increased to pay for wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.”Things happened, see. No one increased budgets. No one spent more. Bush and Obama didn’t rush out and decimate the economy with unfunded, onerous spending. Bad things happened, no one is to blame.
The article says: ” Two things happened to make the deficit balloon: The country was hit by a severe recession that began in December 2007, and then those troubles were compounded by the worst financial crisis in seven decades, which struck in the fall of 2008.”
The article keeps alive the lie that government spending is “stimulus” that will solve the problem. Bush spent the savings of your unborn grandchildren. Obama spent the savings of their children, their grandchildren and their great-grandchildren.
The only spending this article talks about is “stimulus spending” and “automatic stabilizers” such as “food stamps and unemployment compensation.” It doesn’t mention bad programs like ethanol, farm subsidies, foreign aid, and billions of raw pork, spent by dishonest politicians in both parties. That sort of spending apparently does not exist, or is not acknowledged.
The article also claims: “Economists say it is OK to run massive deficits now to stablize the banking system and get the economy growing again.” Notice that the way this is worded is as if there is unanimous consent by economists that deficit spending does these things. There is good evidence that deficits don’t stabilize but distort and that they prevent economic growth. Thousands of economists have spoken out against the disastrous spending of the Bush/Obama regimes. Associated Press doesn’t think they exist.
And remember that Obama isn’t finished. What he is seeking is state control over as much of the economy as possible. That which the State doesn’t control directly (socialism), it will control through regulations (fascism). Obama is an economic totalitarian.
And what sort of solution does Associated Press offer in this “analysis” of the problem. According to them, private economists believe we need some type of tax increases to convince foreign investors that the administration is serious about getting its deficits under control.”
How do you get deficits under control? Do you pick your neighbor’s pockets? Or do you cut spending? Obama doesn’t want to get the deficit under control by spending less. He has only two alternatives. One is to tax you directly and steal even more of your income. That means you consume less, jobs are destroyed and the economy shrinks even further. Or, he can spend wildly and monetize the debt through inflation. In that system he steals your income indirectly by reducing the value of the currency. Either way the Obama plan is to screw you over economically. You will have to cut your spending while Obama expands his. You will have to make do with less so he can have more.
As I see it the deficit of Bush was very bad. The deficit of Obama is four times worse. Bush was the worst president in American history, by my standards. Obama is set to be four times worse. Barack Obama is worse for America than the 9/11 terrorists. What those terrorists did was awful and killed thousands. What Obama is doing is wrecking the entire economy and inflicting misery on hundreds of millions of people. It is rather disgusting.
His one virtue was supposed to be his stand on civil liberties. Pass the air sickness bag on that one too. After raping you economically he’s still pumping up the police state of Homeland Security, he is still working to restrict first amendment rights, he is still imposing bigoted policies against gay people and he is still conducting the disastrous war on drugs. Obama is as bad on civil liberties, to date, as George Bush and he’s worse for the economy—as hard as that is to believe. It is claimed that Nero fiddled while Rome burned. One can't say the same for Obama. In his case fiddling would be an improvement. He's thrown gasoline on the flames.
