Cowboy Confessional

One would think free hair cuts might be a popular offer, except perhaps to bald fellows taking offense to the lack of value received.

It appears that America may be on the brink of such an event, one where (nearly) everyone receiving Uncle Sugar’s lucre will take a cut. Earlier this year, in a desperate attempt to create a passing resemblance of fiscal sanity, opposing political forces decided that if they could not agree on meaningful (i.e. large) cuts in federal spending, that all spending would be sliced (substitute “sliced” with “chopped”, “hacked”, “dismembered” or other violent terminology depending on your love or lack thereof for government spending). The military as well as most non-military expenditures would be reduced.

Entitlement programs like Medicare, Social Insecurity and other blessed bovine are excluded. Seems senior citizens are more equal than others.

This morning combating factions confessed that compromise was unattainable. Pre-programmed and relatively equal spending cuts would then automatically occur. The predictable prevailed;  stock markets panicked and plunged, partisans propelled accusatory sound bites, working Joes shrugged their shoulders and went to work to create wealth, jobs and general prosperity. Well, Joes with jobs. The unemployed variety stayed home to watch twenty-four-by-seven news broadcasts from Capitol Hill and fume over their breakfast Budweisers.

Our current conflagration shows two evil aspects of democracy, a system of government where any activity is both possible and unwise.  Foremost are factions that fight for theft. Accepting the definition of theft as the unwilling surrender of property for the benefit of other individuals, then most forms of government spending is theft. If you are unhappy financing the crack habit of inner-city teenage moms or subsidizing the bottom-line of mohair farmers, then government has stolen from you. Likewise if you involuntarily contribute to a bankrupt pension plan (Social Security) that is structured in the same way as voluntary Ponzi schemes, knowing that at best you will lose at least 2% on your contributions, then government has stolen from you too.

Indeed, most of K Street is devoted to the art of theft, which is why lobbyist and politicians profit handsomely.

The other ill effect of thievery is that dividing a limited pile of plunder creates political factions around clusters of beneficiaries. Since old folks are ornery, have time to vote and are the fastest growing herd on the political prairie, they were largely excluded from the aforementioned across-the-board cuts. Now that congressional failure has been admitted, various factions are rushing to pervert the original promise of spreading fiscal pain across all thieves and the military (unlike entitlement programs, the military is expressly identified in Congress’s list of allowable expenditures). Pro-military congress critters are hurrying to revise the original agreement to exclude armed forces. Left-of-center acolytes are seeking to exclude their disarmed forces. By the month’s end, enough legislation will have been penned to eradicate automatic spending cuts altogether.

And that’s the less horrifying of two actions.

The automatic spending cuts don’t start 2013, leaving one year and an entire national election cycle for budgets to be the debate. It will be twelve months of professional chickens playing chicken … for politicians grand(iously) standing and posturing preposterously. We will witness Republicans and Democrats hurl insane accusations concerning who is the most repulsive representative by financially harming children, elderly, education, national defense, national parks, Rosa Park’s descendants, and anyone who grubs a free buck from federal programs. An already disaffected electorate will watch in amused horror as the two major parties dismember each other’s members.

And the ranks of self-described independent voters will swell.

Lost in rhetorical falderal is the fact that two opposing factions will force independents into the fiscal conservative camp. The Tea Party, like or loath them, are organized, ideologically focused and will take Democrat or Republican scalps as needed. They are the most formidable force outside the beltway, and hold more sway than either of the major parties. Tea Party rosters will rise as the anti-intellectual Occupy Wall Street mobs voice unmistakable socialist slogans, demand more government spending but lack the ability to organize votes for specific candidates. Fence-sitting voters will clearly see the difference between the Tea Party organization and the Occupy disorganization, and drift toward the former given that the later wants more unregulated spending.

2012, the year of the Tea Party is upon us, thanks to a Congress incapable of balancing the national checkbook.

Tags:

This entry was posted by Guy Smith on Monday, November 21st, 2011 at 4:00 pm and is filed under Economics, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.