Housing (Market) Crash
It’s terrifying to realize how the majority of politicians think.
I believe it was the late Senator Everett Dirksen who said “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.”
A BILLION is such a big number it’s hard to wrap one’s head around. Consider:
> 1 billion seconds ago is was still the 1950’s.
> 1 billion minutes ago Jesus Christ had yet to be crucified by the Romans.
> 1 billion inches would get you to the moon and back over 3 times.
> 1 billion dollars ago was just over 8 hours at the rate our government is spending it.
Now consider that I had to try several calculators before I could find one that would even let me do calculations with more than 8 digits. Apparently neither the makers of Blackberry nor Mac desktop apps work in government accounting.
Anyone who is running and campaigning openly on raising taxes of ANY kind to spend MORE money at the Federal level, and not explaining how he or she will simultaneously cut hundreds of BILLIONS in spending to match is a charlatan. If not for your own sake, then for your children and grandchildren, please wake up and smell the wizard behind the curtain.
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2 responses so far ↓
1 TheEarlyHours // Oct 17, 2008 at 10:45 am
amazing.
2 Chris Jensen // Oct 17, 2008 at 6:32 pm
Chris — I agree that the federal government shouldn’t get any bigger. But is the Republican party a model of fiscal discipline? No — quite the opposite. Realistically, I don’t know how we can climb our way out of this deficit without raising taxes *and* reducing spending.
If the Republican party were truly a conservative organization, I would think about voting for it from time to time. But today’s Republicans — note I don’t say “conservatives” — are every bit as financially irresponsible as the most profligate Democrats. (The main difference seems to be that they’d rather overspend on war than on, say, healthcare.) And a large portion of the Republican party supports invasive social policies and spouts theocratic claptrap as a first order of business. (We might call this the Sarah Palin Wing of the party, a distressingly large faction that asks us to pay attention to two or three wedge issues, all the while ignoring her complete lack of basic leadership qualities like competence and integrity.)
I have few illusions about Barack Obama, but I see little evidence that he’s an uber-liberal bogeyman. Liberal, sure, but a liberal who’s far more pragmatic and even centrist than a lot of the starry-eyed loons on the far left. I actually think he’s going to disappoint a lot of liberals who are hoping for a deeply partisan Democratic administration.
He’s ahead in the polls because the scare tactics just aren’t adding up. For all the right-wing hand-wringing about his supposed terrorist ties and his liberal voting record, he consistently comes across as a calm, reasonable, serious person who doesn’t freak out in a crisis.
You’re more than welcome to object to Obama’s economic policies — I’m certainly not comfortable with all of them — but you need to remember that most people have begun to notice that the terms “Republican” and “fiscal conservative” are no longer even remotely synonymous. The liberal approach — i.e., flatly stating that taxes are going up — may not always be economically sound, but it offers less of the pandering cynicism that we see in the cut-taxes-but-keep-spending philosophy favored by the neocons.
I think the larger issue here is a cultural one, where all of us are accustomed to overwhelming debt and addicted to spending more than we can afford. Neither candidate can fix that. All I know is that in the midst of a financial crisis brought on by a combination of liberal policies, conservative policies, mismanagement, and simple greed, I’d rather have a calm and disciplined leader than an erratic “maverick” who’s saddled himself with a deeply uninformed and obviously unprepared running mate.
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