Facing The Ugly Truth

[Big Gubmint]

Tsk, tsk

Some benighted citizens may believe life would be simpler to live in a world without Big Gubmint, where every Tea Bagger, unencumbered by bureaucrats and welfare cheats, could dream of ephemeral Constitutional restraint.

What would this "free market" nation be like?

Leaving aside the national defense, which even the Tea Baggers cede to Big Gubmint, imagine how scary the world would seem without the warm, comforting layers of Big Gubmint.

Without the guiding hand of Big Gubmint, greed-crazed corporate execs could spew arsenic-laden tailings from mining operations, dump oceans of waste from vast feedlots in your drinking water, or invite fellow CEOs to drill for oil on pristine Gubmint property.

That's why Big Gubmint will continue, and grow.

Big Gubmint makes rules that soothe the public's fears and sometimes even enforces them.

Someone needs to appear to protect baby seals. Someone needs to pretend to care about the E. coli in your burgers and the heavy metals in your kid's toys, because the truth is, the people crave a protector.

That someone is Big Gubmint.

Keep paying those taxes.

 

[Dixie - In Memoriam]

The budget deficit becomes the most important thing in the world to Republicans when they're out of power.

It's something we should focus on in the middle term, but Republitards are demanding drop everything now or we die..

Read the post, this isn't about being Republican or Democrat. Both parties are responsible for recklessly spending us into oblivion and mortgaging our future. It's not even about the rhetoric of the two parties, where they want to SAY they are for responsibility, yet can't ever seem to manage to be responsible. Democrats have their special interest constituencies, and Republicans have their corporate constituencies, and both parties are spending our money like drunken sailors to appease those constituents. Partisans on BOTH sides, line up behind their guy, and repeat the same rhetoric year after year, and we never actually FACE the ugly truth, we simply remain in denial, as we rally around whomever is enabling our justifications.

 

[signalmankenneth]

No Self-Control Indeed

At some point in the foreseeable future, I think Americans are going to have to come to the realization that we can't continue to allow government to borrow, print, and spend, like insane people. But are any of us prepared to face the ugly truth of how we must fix the problem? Of course, we have to cut the budget. It simply can't be supported by the revenues we bring in, and it can't continue to run in the red forever. As long as it does, we continue to amass debt, and it's almost to a point now, of us never being able to feasibly repay it. Before we can even think about starting to repay it, we have to balance our annual budget, it's as simple as that, but the ugly truth must be faced.

Many of us can stand up and cheer this! Oh yes, we DO need to balance the budget and pay down the debt! The problems start when we begin to get into the details of how we go about doing that. It essentially means drastic cuts in many 'entitlement' programs, of which we have become accustomed to, familiar with, and sympathetic for. It also means dramatic cuts in military funding, government contracts, and corporate welfare. Regardless of the argument for the benefits, these expenditures are way out of proportion to the money we take in, and these discrepancies have to be resolved. Facing the ugly truth requires you to set aside your personal feelings on what is off the table, with regard to budget cuts, and America just isn't there yet.

Liberals want to live in denial of the ugly truth, maintaining that we just need to raise taxes on rich greedy people and corporations, and this is the answer to our money shortfalls. In fact, we can spend even MORE money, if we raise taxes on the rich fat bastards, who have more than they deserve! While this childish mentality serves to gratify feelings of class envy to some degree, it doesn't even recognize the ugly truth. Raising taxes and punishing capitalism has proven to actually be detrimental to revenue, putting us even further in the hole, while liberals appease their denial. Oh, but they aren't Liberals, they are "Progressives!" The only thing "progressive" about their viewpoints, is how progressively it is pushing us off a cliff.

Republicans haven't been much better, they live in their own denial of the ugly truth. If we could just cut taxes and stimulate the economy with corporate incentives, we can "grow" ourselves out of this mess! This is what they say, but... the ugly truth is; not unless we first balance the budget! Oh, but we can't cut the military... Yes, we have to cut the military's budget too, that's all a part of the ugly truth. And on both sides, our Senators and Representatives pander to their own self-interests, fight for the pork for their states... make the backroom deals to secure money for their constituents... and continue to live in denial of the ugly truth.

The act of just balancing the budget, not paying a penny toward the $13 trillion debt, would cause the biggest public outcry this nation has ever seen. There would be opponents on the left and right, screaming and raising hell about elimination of inefficient programs, and cuts in their pet agenda items. It wouldn't be pretty, and the media would inundate us with sob stories, pulling and tugging at our compassionate heart strings, and enough people would cave and give in to the much easier concept of remaining in denial of the ugly truth.

Keep in mind, most of this debt was created under Bush and the republicans! And the sad part is, it did not benefit the country as a whole!

 

[Dixie - In Memoriam]

Keep in mind, most of this debt was created under Bush and the republicans! And the sad part is, it did not benefit the country as a whole!

Does it matter where or when most or any of the debt was created and by whom? Is that some sort of factor in what we should do about the problem? It sounds like that is what you are trying to say here... that because R's screwed it up so bad, we have to totally fuck it up beyond repair now!

It doesn't benefit the country as a whole (or in part) for us to go financially insolvent, to collapse our dollar and declare bankruptcy as a government. Yet that seems to be what some of you are hell bent on doing... I guess so you can turn around from the heap of smoldering ashes and blame it on Bush! Amazing!

 

[DamnYankee]

Keep in mind, most of this debt was created under Bush and the republicans! And the sad part is, it did not benefit the country as a whole!

A lie.