Ok it has been a while. This is long overdue, but it is time for another rant. What I have seen in the last few weeks has been nothing short of stunning.
As everyone knows Congress passed their big "budget deal" Friday night to avoid a government shutdown. They produced a whopping 38 billion dollars in cuts! We are running a 1.6 trillion dollar debt this year so this whole debt debate is a political sideshow. The democrats wanted to blame the republicans for shutting down the government and the republicans want to blame the democrats for not wanting to cut any spending. The fact remains the fiscal crisis lies largely in defense spending and Medicare. We could not touch Medicare very much if we ended the three wars, closed 50 percent of our bases overseas and slashed defense spending across the board by 10 percent. That would save at least 500 billion dollars and you would not have to go after the social programs as much. Medicare must be cut a little bit because it is just running too much of a deficit, but defense is a more political viable way to cut spending. The fact remains there is not leadership in Washington on this issue and each side is trying to position itself to attack each other for the 2012 election. I am tired of the political games because it is obvious that both sides remain controlled by corporate interests. The unwillingness to touch any defense spending tells me that the defense contractors still have a firm grip on Congress. Obama promised to run the most "transparent" government in history and go after lobbyists. His empty promises are not surprising yet reveal him to be another typical politician. I would like to see some bold decision making and no more decisions purely based on politics.
I do not hear much out of Libya largely because Kadafi is still in power and it makes our operation look weak in my view. No one knows how it will turn out so it is not really practical to comment on it.
Gas prices continue to sky rocket. It is being caused largely by inflation, but also by speculators. The fact that we are still so reliant on Middle Eastern oil is stunning and gas prices have hit 3.99 a gallon here in Michigan. They will go close to 5 because there is nothing being done about this. We have no other sources of energy and the oil companies want to keep it that way. The CEO of Wall Mart is also warning about inflation this summer and this could stall any economic recovery. What we need to do is simple:
1. Cut defense drastically
2. Consider increasing taxes on the top 1 percent of Americans making over 250,000 dollars a year.
3. Confront China and address their continued manipulation of their currency.
4. Increase taxes on any company that ships jobs overseas.
5. Break the political establishment's favor of trade organizations like NAFTA and CAFTA.
Doing these things will take increased pressure on all politicians and right now I do not see it.
