No Money, No Policy Effectiveness?

We can watch a "once in a hundred years storm" in New England with moment-by-moment coverage, while ignoring another catastrophe of even greater proportions, namely America's National Debt of $16,489,000,000,000.00 . ($17.8 trillion only two years later as this is revisited!)

America is accustomed to simply spending, spending, spending to solve any and every problem.

If the problems are here in America, just spend more and hope the problems go away.

If the problems are overseas, we take the same approach anywhere we think our national interests can be served by a large enough stick dangling a large enough carrot.

It will take a sea change to turn the ship of state around and find workable solutions that aren't dependent on going further and further into the crippling debt which now limits Ameria's options at home and abroad..

If we can't just spend our way out of every problem (and we cannot) then how will we resolve our problems in a world in which our former leadership is likely to be sorely lacking?

The answer is brains supplanting the brawn, bluster, and outright bribery of the past.

People around the world, and many Americans who see this economic catastrophe for what it has become, have also seen frustration-induced slippage in America's bedrock values as exemplified by foreign interventions, drones, and what appear to be "an eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth" descent into acting like the very terrorists we claim to find so repugnant.

America is caught up in a vicious financial cycle. The more America owes, the more interest Americans have to pay; and, the more interest Americans have to pay, the more Americans owe!

American politics have descended to its own bedrock of "give the voters whatever they want."

It is a truism that every attempt at creating governments based on "the will of the people" have failed at the point at which those people realize that all they have to do to get whatever they want is to vote to have it.

Politicians want the votes. Voters want "the goodies." "The goodies" invariably cost dollars. The debts grow. When the debts become too burdensome, someone has to say so and inevitably cut back on "the goodies."

Americans had reached that point, perhaps long before this article was originally published online in 2012, now it is two years later and another "trillion or so" further from a solution. .

Now America's voters and politicians must decide: do they cut back on "the goodies" or simply use a tarnished golden shovel to dig a deeper and deeper grave for America as it once existed?

President Eisenhower, a Republican, and President Clinton, a Democrat, both took steps which actually reduced the National Debt somewhat during their terms as president. America's current president, President Obama, along with the politicians in Washington, DC, have seen and allowed the National Debt to skyrocket to the point that domestic programs and foreign policy options now weigh in the balance.

Which way will the current president and politicians take America in fashioning its future?

Time will surely tell. America's future, indeed the future of the world, will be written as a measure of how effective that leadership was in setting the course leading to that future.

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Copyright 2013-2014 Demas W. Jasper All rights reserved.