Over the Cliff and Across the Sea

The United States of America had a deficit of $1.3 trillion in 2012. That’s trillion with a t. That number is tough for some of us 99 percenters to fathom so I’ll write it out. $1,300,000,000,000. And that’s just the annual number. All told, our country is in debt to the tune of around $16 trillion. Almost half of that debt is owed to foreign investors, China and Japan being the two largest. These sobering statistics provide some back-drop to the current “fiscal cliff” drama that is playing out between the Obama administration and Congress over how to lower our debt without dipping the country into another (or worse) recession. Obama and some of the more left-leaning Democrats believe we should raise taxes on those making over $200K per year in the form of not renewing the Bush-era tax cuts that are set to expire at the end of December while extending those cuts for anyone making less than that threshold. John Boehner, Mitch McConnell and their rightwing Republican counterparts want to extend those tax cuts for all Americans, no matter their income level, and believe the deficit should be reduced via cuts to domestic spending, i.e. welfare benefits for the poor. Both parties have been steadfast in their refusal to bend on these stances and if a compromise isn’t reached in the next month, the result will be a higher tax bill for all Americans. Estimates put that tax increase at $2000-$3000 per American family.

Neither of our two major political parties is tackling the problem properly. Raising taxes per the Democrats’ plan punishes the very business owners that we need to create more jobs. The less they can profit, the more wages, benefits, and jobs they’ll need to cut. On the other hand, cutting benefits to the poor, elderly, and unemployed in an already weak economy will only drive us further away from being a land of equal opportunity and closer to the type of caste system found in India and Pakistan.

What we should do is reduce the size of government, create tax policies that foster bringing jobs back onshore, legalize and tax marijuana, and most importantly, pull our troops and funding out of the Middle Eastern countries that pretend to be our allies only to repeatedly stab us in the back. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are estimated to cost our country four to six trillion dollars when all is said and done. Obama’s proposed 2013 budget earmarks over $8 billion dollars in aid for Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan alone. That doesn’t even include the billions set aside for “friendlier” countries like Israel, Jordan, and Egypt.

Earlier today, Iraq’s representative to the Arab league, Qais al-Azzawy, told that body "Iraq will invite (Arab) ministers to use the weapon of oil, with the aim of asserting real pressure on the United States and whoever stands with Israel.” This is a representative of the country that we spent trillions of dollars and thousands of American lives freeing from the tyrannical grip of Saddam Hussein telling his fellow Arabs that they should charge Americans more for oil in order to pressure us to leave them alone in their mission to destroy Israel.

Meanwhile, Pakistan holds our supply routes for ransom, demanding astronomical fees on top of the billions of dollars we already provide them while they spent years protecting the architect of 9/11, Osama bin Laden. I don’t think anyone in this country is naïve enough to believe that Pakistani officials wouldn’t have spirited bin Laden out of that compound if Obama had given them warning of our Navy SEALs mission that night.

Enough is enough. Spending must be reduced and it needs to start with slashing the funds to these foreign cutthroats. Let them fight their own battles and fund their own nation building. We have a nation of our own that is crumbling while our leaders’ eyes are across the sea instead of focusing on what they were elected to do.

The Insanity of American Politics

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” That quote is generally attributed to Albert Einstein, a man most consider to be one of the smartest people to have made a mark on our country in the past hundred years. I wonder what he’d say about yesterday’s election results.

If you pay attention to some of the Republican blowhards in this country, you’d think the reelection of Barack Obama is the end of our country and way of life. It isn’t. But his reelection and that of the vast majority of Congressional incumbents begs the question, why do Americans keep voting these people into office if they aren’t happy with the direction our country has been going? The answer you’ll hear most often is that voters are given no real choice. Congressional House districts are gerrymandered to ensure they never change hands and election funding rules allow the two major parties to accumulate and spend vast amounts of money on campaigning in order to drown out any opposition.

The United States’ two party system is now so entrenched that nearly 99% of the 1.2 million voters yesterday chose between Obama or Romney despite the fact that 28 candidates received at least 500 votes each. That is the power of money in politics and the influence money has on the American press. I’d wager 98% of those 1.2M voters couldn’t even name one of the other 26 candidates.

My candidate, as documented in my previous post, was the Libertarian nominee, Gary Johnson. With two successful terms as governor of New Mexico, he has more political experience than Romney or Obama before Obama took office in 2008, but he still wasn’t invited to the debates, wasn’t reported on by the press, and came in a very distant third place with just over 1.1 million votes. Why is that? Money, of course.

In George Washington’s 1796 Farewell Address, he shared the following warning about political parties:

 “They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation, the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common counsels, and modified by mutual interests.”

Washington’s fears have come to pass. Our federal government no longer serves the people, but serves only itself and those rich corporate donors and PACs that pay for it. Politicians vote based on party platform rather than conscience, common sense or the voice of their constituents.

The saddest part of this is that American voters have been fooled into believing one party is better and significantly different than the other. In fact, the majority of voters passionately believe this, but they’re wrong. Unless you make over $200K per year, there’s almost no difference in how the two parties’ tax plans will impact you. Neither supports pulling all troops and funds out of the Middle East. Neither supports smaller government and significant deficit reduction despite rhetoric from the Republican party stating otherwise. Neither has the political will to solve the mounting crisis of Medicare costs or the corruption of Wall Street. Neither supports the legalization and taxation of marijuana despite the revenue it would generate, the huge hit it would deliver to the Mexican cartels, or the fact that it’s no more medically dangerous than alcohol. Neither supports Congressional term limits despite the fact it would reduce corruption and force regular change within the ranks of leadership. In short, for almost all of the major issues facing this country’s well being, the choice of Democrat or Republican doesn’t improve a thing in the life of a typical American citizen.  

So what’s the answer? 3^rd party candidates. If you want real change in this country, you must stop voting for the candidates our two major parties and their media cronies spoon-feed you and begin voting for independent candidates instead. Support independents at every level; city, state, and federal. Sure, they probably won’t win in the next election or two, but movements must start somewhere and the longer we wait, the longer things remain status quo.