Leadership

What a difference a couple of months makes!

The last time I posted, Obama was driving the nation to financial ruin, and may very well have been the personification of Satan. Today, what with George Bush & Dick Cheney having tortured bin Laden to death Obama sweeping up the sawdust afterwards, the world is better off for their efforts. (Whaddaya mean Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Blackwater weren't a part of it? I mean, I mean ...).

Summer reruns in America.

We are quickly approaching an election year. Geez, it seems as though we just finished with one and the reverberations from the chest beating and the "well we sure showed them..." gloating are still bouncing through the political atmosphere and here we go again.

I am betting that one of the first themes that comes up is "America's unfinished business" in reference to cutting the deficit and undoing the health care reform bill passed in 2009.

What I want to ask about is America's finished business. Show me some of it.

The GOP House of Representatives has failed to meet its rather pathetic, (a term used by the Tea Party factioneers), budget cutting goal of about sixty billion dollars annually, and may have exacerbated the health care crisis with all the self back-patting they did over a thirty-some billion dollar reduction in the annual special-interest spendfest, with reductions to programs and services that benefit mainlycitizens, so as to preserve the ability to buy campaign funds with the public checkbook.

Lets face it, times are pretty tough. You know it when even the political camouflage doesn't cover much of the landscape, or maybe we are just immune to the bullshit after all these years.

I think that may be the case, but the unspoken tragedy is that with the immunity there comes a callousness, an inability to care anymore. Government has become monolithic, something that simply is, a fact of life, like gravity.

Recently, I have posted a short letter to both of my senators and my congressman suggesting that they introduce and actively support a bill in their respective chambers to cut the budget for the Congress in half, and to put the members of both chambers and their employees on the Social Security/Medicare system. This might not accomplish much fiscally, but would remove one of the many disconnects between this ivory tower and the people it serves/rules. From another perspective, it gives the 535 chosen ones some skin in the game.

The reduction in the congressional budget might help set the mood for the coming year, but I doubt it. The twin and seemingly contradictory issues facing the Congress right now are the debt ceiling (and the GOP's refusal to raise it) coupled with an unwillingness to raise taxes in any way shape or form.

As of this minute, the President is wading into the fray in order to forge some sort of agreement in order to avoid a default of obligations which may occur as early as the first of August.

That friends, is leadership, no matter what you think of him or his politics. The strategy of the GOP is to have the President (specifically) hemorrhage as much political capital as possible and assume as much blame as possible both for the fiscal mess that we are in, and for the inevitable wave of ill will that will come from whatever deal is reached in this little exercise.

It is time to define priorities, clearly, in terms that a simpleton, such as myself can understand and digest. This is a time of sacrifice, but it seems that the rules are being changed in the middle of the game to the detriment of many and the benefit of few, with the well-being of the country changed not a bit.

I am not a dummy, and my perspective is fairly broad, but I just don't see the logic or justice. This is government serving ideology, (at best), or maybe just a pork barrel rampage, under a cover of some persistent bullshit.

The thing is, the GOP has moved most of the country to where Dick Nixon wanted them to be, forty years ago, and they aren't doing anything with that very valuable resource. The lost opportunity may not come around again (for either party) for a couple of generations.

I didn't vote for this President, and I don't know if I will next year, but I will give him credit for being inventive and trying to move off dead center on quite a few issues. To blame him for not being able to single-handedly control a herd of self-serving bloodsuckers of indeterminate loyalty, (of whatever party), is not quite fair or realistic.

To whit, as the next few weeks come and go, I want to hear specifics from both sides of the budget/debt debate on exactly what is to be cut, including an explanation of the ramifications of the action and the impact on the population(s) most impacted. And I want to see twelve hour workdays for both houses of the Congress, every day, until this is worked out.

Is that too much to expect?

Edit 1: July 10 > The Boehner goes limp.

Speaker of the House John Boehner has boldly stepped back from the brink and decided to ride the coattails of VP Biden on the budget battle, opting to wait until after the 2012 election to tackle the big issues, rather than piss off the Tea Party faction of his constituency by taking any more from the rich.

Yeah, leadership.