Sunday Mix and Match

The Republican women--Lisa Murkowski, Olympia Snow and Susan Collins--woke up to the horror of the House Republicans trying to cut Planned Parenthood and Title X funding for women's health. So they are now publicly resisting the move.

Another Republican woman--Laura Bush--has weighed in on the House plan to cut foreign assistance, which she claims would be a travesty. Of course, she's right but the teabaggers really think that foreign assistance represents 10% of our budget, not less than 1% as it stands. Unfortunately, the American people also believe foreign assistance is excessive even though we give far less than other developed countries.

Some of the budget jockeying has to do with internal Republican politics. Senator Cornyn of Texas is now claiming he will hold up the debt ceiling vote unless entitlement prograns are cut by President Obama. This probably has more to do with Jim DeMint having outraised Cornyn's own Republican Senatorial Committee. This would mean that DeMint would push Republican Senatorial candidates further to the Right than they already are.

John Kerry wants to create an Infrastructure Bank to fund building the national infrastructure we need for the future. A good idea but it is being talked down by the Senate who is afraid of its own shadow. The Obama Administration will face a fierce challenge to his desires to make the United States competitive through technological innovation, education and the improvement of our infrastructure. The question is not a deficit but it's an issue of revenues.

What we are seeing through the House Budget plans is the unravelling of the different pieces of our national system. Cuts to the Social Security Administration will mean that seniors will have to wait more time for the processing of claims. Ego, Social Security doesn't work--which would open it to another attack. The cuts in healthcare are aimed at more than President Obama's initiative, it is to facilitate the states in their agenda to defund Medicaid, thereby cutting another rung out from under the poor and the disabled. The cuts to education at a national level combine with state cuts to education basically collapse our public school sytem and the possibility for millions to get a college education. So there is ideological sense to their madness.

Never in my lifetime have I ever seen such a disparity between what the public wants in public policy and what our Congress is doing. You see this in the Wisconsin situation where the general public and small businesses joined the unions in their protests. There is a real sense that America is being looted by people we don't even know and with no campaign finance laws will never know about. We now get to choose between Anonymous corporate money and Anonymous hackers. The final looting of the country is full gear. It's like a goldrush.

If you participated in the New York Times interactive program on the national debt, you will have solve the debt issue like I did. Everyone I know who participated eliminated the national debt or got it to an acceptable level even though we have policy disagreements on the proper mix. I had 55% tax increases and 45% program cuts. Conservatives I know have mostly program cuts. But the idea is that this problems can be solved. But given the current politival climate they can't because there is nothing in the national political debate that raises the issues of revenues.

When I began this blog over two years ago, I wrote that we have to move away from a consumer based economy. I still believe that but what intrigues me is that in the name of the free market,the New Republicans are hellbent on destroying the market itself. If you diminish the earning power of Americans, who are you going to get to buy anything. As we saw the other day, the wealthy are bitter and even though 400 of them have the combined wealth of 150 Americans, they aren't going to make up the difference. They have already gone into their hoarding mode. From Where do the New Republicans believe wealth is going to be generated?

Even if your goal is to preserve the privilege of white people over 60, will not their pensions and 501Ks lose value as the economy shrinks? If you are so concerned about bailouts and deficits, then who is going to bail out the corporations, which exist in the portfolios of the rich.

Take Bob Barton, Congressman from Texas and the great defender of BP during the Gulf Spill. he said this week that if the United States took away ExxonMobil's tax breaks it would collapse. The oil tax breaks are estimated at $45 billion per year. Exxon Mobil has been racking up the largest profits and percentage of profits of any company in the history of man. That is factually true. So is Bob Barton simply saying it's all a House of Cards and will fall down anyway?

The Walker Union-busting bill does contain the great power plant sell-off scheme. The Governor can unilaterally sell off without competitive bidding the state's power plants. The Koch Brothers are denying they are going to buy the plants. But two days ago it looks like the Koch Brothers want to manage the plants. Is this the trend , selling off government to the private sector? If you get rid of public employees, then American businesses will be doing the job of government. Is that where the final frontier is?

The implications of this paradigm are staggering. There will be no pubic good. There will be no national interest. Should we intervene in Libya? Depends on whether a defense contractor needs another contract. Let's leave it there for today. It's too depressing.

But meanwhile in New Hampshire, Michelle Bachmann beginning her president bid rhapsodized on the Granite States' commentment to liberty, citing the state as the place where the Pilgrims landed and the battle of Lexington and Concord was fought.I guess you could have a country where the President was a certifiable moron. I don't want to find out.