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American Sequestration

Updated on March 3, 2016
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By: Wayne Brown

Every day we hear another litany of claims regarding the “sequestration” and the automatic cuts to federal spending associated with it. Our illustrious leaders, though crafters of this consequence, claim to have no ability to alter the impact or find more appropriate measures among all the waste buried in the Federal spending process. America is like a ship without a sail with its useless rudder slapping back and forth against stern and its hapless captain below deck and unaware. One would think that we are dealing with a monumental amount of money when the requirement is to only cut 85 billion dollars out of an almost 3 trillion dollar package…in government circles it amounts to “chicken feed”.

President Obama likes to speak publicly of all the pain and suffering the cuts will produce in both the public and the private sector lining up civil service personnel and first responders as examples. He speaks of teachers losing their jobs and the impact on the education of children. The tours at the White House have been suspended. Yellowstone Park may not be able to open. The unsecured borders will be even more unsecured as border patrol personnel are cut back on service hours. There is no end to the things the president can list that will be damaged by these sequestration cuts.

This president is also the one who has led this administration for the past four years. He and his staff are largely responsible for the cuts contained in the sequestration agreement purposely putting them there figuring the right side of the aisle would not have the stomach to allow them to go forward while in the moment enjoying the leverage it brought them in securing an increased debt ceiling and unbridled spending, a condition the president both desired and demanded. During the debates, he confidently argued that the sequestration “would never happen” as he strongly believed the other side would fold like a house of cards on the issues. On this conclusion, as on so many others of the past four years, the president was dead wrong. Now, his ploy is to attempt to lay the blame at the feet of others…standard operating procedure for this poser to this high office of leadership.

Of course the president has not mentioned the possibility of foregoing his next planned vacation which weighs in at a figure approaching 2 million dollars. He has not raised the question of parking that Boeing 747 and using more economical aircraft for his weekend golfing outings with Tiger Woods. Nothing about the president’s lavish life style is affected by the sequestration yet he is so aware of the many who will suffer due to the cuts. His salary will go on as will the six-figure salaries and outrageous benefits of both houses of Congress…no suffering there either regardless of which side of the aisle one sits on.

The truth of the matter is there are very few elected officials in Washington today who really want to see any changes in the out of control spending and physical growth in federal government. The president has no trouble handing the EPA an open checkbook to run rough shod over the private sector and, in effect, write laws by extension and rationalization of it mission statement. Representative Pelosi stands before the microphones and declares that every tax write-off currently allowed is expenditure to the government”. In other words, all your money belongs to the government first and by “expenditure” the government allows you to keep some of it.

This attitude which has evolved in Washington as exhibited by Pelosi suggests that the government should never be expected to either cut back its spending or shrink in size. If more money is necessary to feed the beast, then let the peasants bear it on their backs as opposed to taking a more rational approach like any household might do and ask “what is it we can afford and what is it we cannot?” You see, it is extremely easy to sit up in Washington and pose as a “leader” when you do not have to make any choices or tough decisions; when you don’t have to say “no” for any reason other than pure political obstinacy. Those who do have that sort of spine are expunged from the “herd” and quickly labeled as some kind of “racist nut” who wants to throw grandma from the train and create difficulty for the minorities of America. Soon, the media and much of the public are looking at them as if they lost their minds. Labeling is a very effective measure and if you doubt it, you might consider reading a bit more about the late and former Senator, Joe McCarthy.

If we continue on our current financial path without any attempts to cut spending and reduce the growing size of debt, the country will see our credit rating as a nation down-graded once again…a situation which will have occurred twice under Obama’s watch. We will see the debt continue to grow and the Fed continue to print money to feed the federal monster slowly devaluing the dollars we hold in our pockets and work for each day in our jobs….nothing more than a form of reverse inflation. Our economy will continue in stagnation holding unemployment higher than it needs to be yet the true impact will never register as more and more of those unemployed run out of benefits and drop from sight making it appear that unemployment has turned the corner. Of course, this administration will spin that in exactly that fashion as they have in the past yet out in the marketplace, one will still find much evidence of small business people who are struggling to just hold on as taxation and regulation increase in that sector. At the same time, our president sits in his high office and declares “there’s nothing wrong with the private sector”….something only a blind man could deduce in the current economic environment.

Washington is ripe to be cleaned out on both sides of the aisle. We are long overdue to rid ourselves of those who elect to make holding office their career and then use that position to feather their own beds miraculously becoming multi-millionaires in the process while claiming that it is “all about serving the people”. This is a spineless bunch regardless of political orientation that, at the present, is holding the American public hostage with their dramas of political struggle and impending gloom and doom. It is all lies, sex, and video tape…never ending.

While we are cleaning up, let’s run the socialist and communist out of high offices as well. After all, we came to this world to be free as a people; to practice our religion; to speak our minds; and to pursue liberty, freedom, and happiness. Those who want to occupy high places and undermine our Constitution, our Bill of Rights, our education system, and prosecute our business sector in the name of environmental righteousness, global warming, and one-world government have no place in our society and very much need to move to more welcoming climates.

Maybe then the Democrat Party can actually recover itself and find a focus which is more attuned to the principles upon which this country was established instead of attempting to sell some “utopian” state which exists on the basis of everyone having an equal share of a pie…a pie of fixed size where if anyone gets more it requires that it be stolen from someone else…or at least they would have one think so. Let’s get back to an America where the pie has a dimension unlimited by government and driven by a creative marketplace where any individual with the knowledge, drive, attitude, and determination can be a winner and do so without it being at the expense of others. This nation has grown and expanded since its founding on the back of the private sector enjoying great economic growth and a general welfare which greatly exceeds any other nation on earth. There is no reason, except government, that such growth and expansion cannot continue into the future.

Government, as it grows larger, more expensive, and more cumbersome, justifies it size and existence on the back of the dependents which it has created in the name of its own power. It basically feeds off the inability of the citizens to gain their own independence. Government believes that it can legislate equality and fairness because that promise must be there if those in elected office are going to be empowered to act. We have proven that fact quite well since LBJ enacted the great society and made the federal government the “caretaker” for all. Social programs are licensed to expand and grow with no measure of their effectiveness or duplicity. Those offering up the money care little for the fact that it either comes out of taxpayer pockets or is partially borrowed and those taking care even less where it comes from as they as they continue to get it with the promise of even more to come. As a nation, we are currently taking care of people at a rate that we can neither afford or sustain yet our elected officials continue in denial for all they desire is to continue to be able to buy their next term in office with taxpayer money. We are watching as they damn our future generations to a lesser life mired deeply in unserviceable debt and surrounded by those who have become totally dependent on the government as their provider. What a great legacy for prior generations.

Republican Paul Ryan has once again introduced a budget bill capable of balancing the federal budget within ten years from enactment. For his efforts, Ryan will be labeled a “nut-case” only interested in destroying Social Security and Medicare (you have to inflame the elder generation), throwing grandma under the bus, casting hungry people into the streets, and protecting the wealthy from higher taxes. You see, Paul Ryan cannot possibly have an answer for it would mean that a Republican came up with a methodology to turn the disastrous, financial tide in America and that just cannot be allowed politically. Oh, did I also mention that Ryan is probably a racist? Well, that is something else he will be labeled in that he probably wants all the minorities in America to starve so the white people can be in power. You see, any viable solution to the problems facing America must come from the left and they must involve a continue movement toward Utopia.

It is extremely obvious that we have no leadership in America today. There is no genuine effort on either side of the aisle to find common ground, promote consensus, and achieve some level of compromise in working on our issues. Instead leadership has been replaced by manipulation and political pandering; fiscal accountability with investment through debt; checks and balances with political survival, and action with political drama and outright lies. America has become a majority voting block controlled by those desiring government handouts, labor unions, and political cronyism so blatant that it defines the idea of transparency for it is carried out right in front of our eyes.

Anyone who looks at our current situation and does not see the dire downstream consequences of an out of control federal monster has already arrived in Utopia. They have bought into the concept hook, line, and sinker and now await the delivery on the empty promises and lies they bought into with the current administration. Sequestration may have some consequences but they are minimal in light of what our future as a nation holds in terms of over-whelming debt, continued deficit spending, erosion of Constitutional government along with the rights and privileges afforded by it, all fed by a bunch of folks too gullible to question anything but all the ready to label anyone a “racist” who does. What a shame that the wheels must fall off before anyone notices that the vehicle is badly broken. What a shame.

The “greatest generation” is America is all but gone and they courage they showed in the face of world tyrants will die with them just as the America they once knew will die as well. Those presently in power are quite willing to turn our nation over to the United Nations and offer it up for its control and supervision all in the name of a “global society” which has no credible ability to either offer or preserve individual liberty and freedom but more than enough power to enslave the masses of the world. Compare that to the discomfort of a little sequestration.

©Copyright WBrown2013. All Rights Reserved.

12 March 2013

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