Not Taking Care of Business, or Budget In
She's so fine, there's no tellin' where the money went
She's all mine, there's no other way to go
Her methods are inscrutable
The proof is irrefutable
--Simply Irresistible, Robert Palmer
The business of America is business
--Calvin Coolidge
And if your train's on time
You can get to work by nine
And start your slaving job to get your pay
--Takin' Care of Business,
Bachman-Turner Overdrive
Sgt. McChesney: What do you mean "elephants"?
This ain't elephants. This is Annie. My Annie.
--Gunga Din (1939)
_________
Or worse, reading cavalier poet Richard Lovelace's "To Lucasta, Going to the Wars":"I could not love thee, dear, so much /Loved I not honor more." And we buy this bunk today. For our own good it is, you know, and we are surely much beloved by our beneficent maximum leader.
"The record $3.1 trillion budget proposed by President Bush on Monday would produce eyepopping federal deficits, despite his attempts to impose politically wrenching curbs on Medicare and eliminate scores of popular domestic programs."The Pentagon would receive a $36 billion, 8 percent boost for the 2009 budget year beginning Oct. 1, even as programs aimed at the poor would be cut back or eliminated. Half of domestic Cabinet departments would see their budgets cut outright (Bush Budget Would Bring Record Deficits.)
The basis of sound business practice is sound budgets, and fulfilling budgetary requirements. Whether approved or not, GWB's budget is an academic exercise. The extreme budget deficits are the fact that will impact all citizens, and the working people of the U.S. are bearing the brunt of shrinking domestic programs.
Couple the disastrous budget that cannot even cover most of the bases with trade deficits, shrinking dollars and all the other negativity that is GWB's legacy and one wonders why this campaign is business as usual regarding the elective wars -- the elephants in the room collapsing the floor of the economy.
The war and the economy are the same issue. Either we spend our assets on phony endless feel-good wars, or we take care of the welfare of America. Our phony wars do not make us safer; to the contrary. Instead they bleed off assets that are essential for the health and welfare of the nation. Killing people can never be more important than helping people, yet that has become the new business of America.
The Budget Inn at least gives a wake-up, but you have to request it.
Labels: 2009 Budget, gunga din, PWOT, the u.s. not iraq, war on terrror
posted by rangeragainstwar at 10:56 PM
8 Comments:
My cynical opinion:
America is a drug addict who won't face the fact that it has a problem. America is just looking for it's next fix and Militarism may provide that. In the long run there won't be change until there is an economic collapse that causes pain to not only the middle class but also the wealthy. Even then the change may be toward Facism and away from Democracy.
Where I live if you question the war in Iraq or the Military Industrial / Homeland Security complex you are accused of being anti-military ( "You don't support our troops who are dying for your freedom!") and un- American.
It is not hard to continually fool the common people by exploiting their fears and their patriotism.
I'd love to be proven wrong.
It's hard to picture how any business could be less accountable and more profitable than war when you make money both blowing things up and rebuilding them.
Waging war with borrowed money is just about the perfect scam. America's drug addicts don't want to hear that there will be a price to pay later.
Some of us have been demanding the wake up call for some time. In return we have gotten the "knife in the back" argument---that the war (and costs we bitch about) is being extended and lost due TO our anti-war tune. This is a step in the tracks of historically fascist regimes---blame the public, regardless how exhausted and bankrupt, for battlefield failures. Nothing taught those nations short of a really rough ride over the Failure Falls in a nail studded barrel. I fear America will be no exception to that rule of need.
wars start because they are "good for business" and end only when there is no profit left to be made. as long as there are so many folks getting obscenely rich off of this war, it will continue.
labrys,
America is not exempt from that flow of history.
--Jim
MB,
Yes, and on both sides of the fence.
--Jim
kevin,
That is a good definition of addiction -- not thinking past the moment. That is also a good paradigm for defining American politics in general, i.e., we want immediate gratification, even when it is a chimera.
The lie that the troops are fighting for our freedoms is right up there with, "the check's in the mail." Can anybody define precisely what freedoms of ours they are fighting for in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Your observation of the necessary and painful fall seems imminent, and we are already on the tracks to a more fascistic U.S.
-Jim
Barack Obama will be the next President of the United States of America. Barack Obama is the next Abraham Lincoln. Barack Obama will return credibility to this nation.
Signed Big Al in Eustis
Alex,
America is a great nation, yes?
I am glad you have such faith in your candidate, and I hope you are right, but it seems like magical thinking to me.
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