Opinion Editorials, December 2012

Al-Jazeerah, CCUN, January 1, 2013

Reality Looms


Congress, and our President and his cadre live in a giant honeypot of money and influence. They have seemingly ignored their responsibilities for the last four years and for many more years under both parties.

Now they are up against another deadline (after two more months) and they want to panic us to accept the legislation that lobbyists have no doubt written for them long ago. I say bring on the fiscal cliff. Let everything expire. Let’s air the problem and then let Congress and the President sort it out next year in front of us where we can understand what they are doing and for whose benefit.

Going over the “Fiscal Cliff” has some good in it because panic passed mischief of the past usually has an expiration date. What is so wrong with cutting $60 billion out of the Pentagon? Are we not phasing out of wars, so why are we spending as much as when we first bombed Baghdad? Bring on the Fiscal Cliff!

The Farm Bill needs to expire. The bloated 2012 Farm Bill passed by the Senate insures corn farmers against both bad weather that bring reduced crops, and fair weather that brings lower prices for their bumper crops. The taxpayers are paying for most of the insurance premiums that cover mega-farm companies. If the President wants to put on a patch, let’s say to continue the food stamp for the poor, let him issue an Executive Order to continue printing food stamps, temporarily! And let him take the heat if he is proven to be wrong!

What about the milk scare? We are told disaster faces us and the price of milk will double. Why? Because we are told we fall back to some 1949 law that requires the government to buy up most of the milk and create a shortage. Balderdash! Milk escalation is a scare tactic. Let the President issue one more Executive Order that the Federal Government cannot buy milk.

Mr. Obama has already issued some 130 Executive Orders, an average of two every month for four years, and each one a private law in itself that affects us and costs us money. We do not know about these “Orders” unless we Google them…no one informs us.

I am no authority on the budget, but I have written as much as anyone on the Ethanol Scandal.* By law, about 40% of all the corn raised will be siphoned out of the human and animal food supplies to make ethanol we are forced to burn in our cars. If you want a reason why milk and meat are expensive look at ethanol mandates. Ethanol laws have made giant corn farming companies, and yes many individual farmers not just comfortable, but wealthy on the induced hunger of others. Corn is food. Let’s let the Farm Bill go off the “Cliff” too.

What about tax increases? We have one of the lowest taxes in the world for the big players. Are we to believe we can carry on endless wars all over the world without paying for it, that the Pentagon can war forever and borrow all the money? So we are told the “Cliff” will cut about 8% out of the Pentagon’s budget at the very time we are told we need anther war in Iran, and that we need to invade Syria. And if Lower taxes are what President Obama wants for us, let him and the Congress make the changes retroactive in 2013 when we have time to watch. Bring on the Cliff!

Why crisis legislation can’t work We are supposed to believe that over a week end, 600 Congressmen and the President can structure together thousands of pages of legal jargon, involving trillions of dollars of expenditures. Can you read 600 pages of legalese by tomorrow night and understand it? Neither can they! Instead of writing and reading they will sign off on legislation that has probably been written for them by lobbyists, and of course, for the interests of Congress’s lobbyists. Bring on the Fiscal Cliff!

Let Congress meet in 2013, and spend six months doing their jobs, figuring out where we are and where they are taking us. Let them tell us what they are doing to us for a change!

What kind of Crises would we have if all 600 congressmen with the Administration loaded up on Air Force One with lots of caviar and martinis, and flew it off some real cliff. Yes, we would have chaos, but would we be  better off with a temporary crisis of no government than a huge government that is under the influence of others with interests not our own? 

Of course this “dream” of mine will not happen.  We are stuck with these people and the honeypot system created around them. It's up to us to fix the system, small and humble and peaceful as we may be. Maybe we will not need a revolution like the Arab Spring. Not if we get smart…not if we get to work. Maybe we need to get a bit more hungry and desperate, and this will come if we do nothing.

BRING ON THE CLIFF.

Toward the Strait Gate,

Chuck Carlson

Websites:  charlesecarlson.com  and whtt.org - Podcasts:  whtt.podbean.com  

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