The last recession in 2008 was spurred by excessive debt in the private sector, mostly in the housing market. But this time, it’ll be worst and much more difficult, as the problem will be caused by corporate debt, according to several leading investors.
The ensuing downturn could be immediate and sharp, once the bull market ends. But some, such as Peter Schiff, already believe we are in a bear market. “Stocks are expensive. The bull market is over. It’s now a bear market. People want to get out. People are allocating out. Growth is slowing whether people want to acknowledge it or not,” said Schiff.
But others still think they have yet to hit the top. “Once we peak, our work shows that we should expect maybe a 40% decline in equities from their peak,” Scott Minerd, chairman of Guggenheim Investments, told Yahoo Finance.“I’m talking about a recession, possibly in early 2020. Stocks tend to do well two years before a recession. But in this rally, it’s the opportunity to sell.”
At the Milken Institute Global Conference in Los Angeles, the world’s top investors are asking how much longer the good times can last. They claim the current bull-market rally began in 2009, making it one of the longest on record. But others, such as Peter Schiff, said it’s a false recovery because of the money printing scheme employed.
“When we do all that [print money to recover from a recession], the dollar is going to implode because everybody is going to know that the [money printing scheme] experiment failed. Everybody is going to know there is no way out of this box. There is no normalization of rates. That is ever going to happen. Their [The Federal Reserve’s] balance sheet is never going to shrink. The balance sheet is going to grow permanently, which means this banana republic debt monetization. They can no longer pretend that they’re not doing the same things as South American banana republics. It’s a pure ‘we just print money to finance government spending,’ which is going to explode,” said Schiff. –SHTFPlan
The good news, if there is any to be had, is that the tax cuts President Donald Trump signed in 2017 could juice markets a bit longer by leaving more money in American’s pockets. But some investors gathered at the Milken Conference also feel that the corporate forces are now swirling that will trigger the next downturn.
Because the tax cuts didn’t offer a decrease in the size of government, they will add to US government debt. Spending, not taxation, is the problem and will be until the government is reduced. And while the Federal Reserve is gradually raising interest rates, they may still not be high enough to allow for aggressive monetary policy by the time a recession hits and the Fed needs to cut interest rates. “We’re in danger of having a collision between monetary policy and fiscal policy,” Minerd says. Once interest rates rise, the amount owed on the massive amount of debt corporations hold will increase along with the debt owed by the federal government.
We are in for a rough ride, everyone.
If Minerd is right, some of the riskiest investments include high-yield bonds, other fixed-income securities, and eventually stocks. But some investors will undoubtedly hold on, hoping to squeeze out the last gains before the market turns.
Yahoo‘s suggestion? Keep a parachute handy. But we prefer you actually prepare and store things that are of use. Prepping can be difficult and it’s often hard to take that first step, but if you’re new and interested in learning, it’s never too late to start preparing for any potential outcome. The book titledThe Prepper’s Blueprint offers a simplistic and easy to follow guideline for those who would like to take that first step.
“Oceania” was a nation described in George Orwell’s “1984” as being comprised of Britain (called “Airstrip One,”) and the United States. There were two other superpowers, namely Eurasia and Eastasia. Other lands rich in resources were contested over, such as Africa and assumingly South America…lands never kept by any of three Super-states for any significant period. The “flux” in conquests was exactly what the MIC (Military Industrial Complex) of our time would have termed “necessary” to justify large expenditures: War as the focal purpose, rather than the exceptional event.
We see a parallel in today’s world with huge defense budgets and troop deployments keeping the contracts on the move and siphoning off a considerable amount of national revenues to keep the patriotic war machines moving…respective of each nation. The psychology: keep the population agitated and on a continual war-footing, using a “threat” (either real, created, or imagined) to accomplish this.
You are witnessing the final alignment of those spheres of influence that are almost identical to the novel that Orwell wrote. Look at the situation with the alleged Russian poisoning of an intelligence operative and his daughter in Britain. The United States showed “solidarity” with Great Britain by expelling 60 Russian diplomats and closed the Russian consulate in Seattle, Washington. Russia countered by ordering the expulsion of an equal amount of American embassy personnel.
Yet the interesting fact is that the other nations who followed suit in the “humanitarian crusade” of the alleged Russian poisoning of former FSB agent Skripal and his daughter? The poisoning may have been done by the British, not the Russians. The U.S. State Department has made several statements to the tune that the Russians do not “see eye to eye with us or share our values of freedom and democracy.”
Really, now…in the surveillance state that inexorably draws to its conclusion with the country losing its rights while being monitored in every activity…what “values” do we have anymore?
I’m not characterizing the entire populace of the United States…but our government, that holds most of the “forms” that the country was founded upon without any true leadership, statesmanship, or representation of the American people. I’m characterizing much of the population…flitting from one reality show to the next dose of Hollywood propaganda and paradigm shift labeled as “movies” and only loyal to the country as long as the handouts (labeled “entitlements”) keep flowing.
The formation of the Super-states…each with their spheres of influence in the novel…that formation is taking place now. Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, and Romania have expelled Russian diplomats in-line with the U.S. actions. All those nations are heavily-invested in NATO militarily, with tremendous amounts received of American money, materials, and troops. Poland is purchasing U.S. missile and anti-missile systems. Romania already has a U.S. missile base.
Ukraine expelled Russian diplomats. Ukraine is a vassal state of the United States and the IMF. Most of the European nations such as the Netherlands (The Hague is there, go figure), Germany, France, Britain, Spain…followed suit. The battle right now is to see who will align with the U.S.-British Western hegemony [Oceania] against Russia and her allies (such as Iran, Syria, etc.) [Eurasia] with China being the “top banana” in the Orient [Eastasia]. The English-speaking countries will head the U.S.-British conglomerate…also including Canada and Australia…the former having participated in the expulsion.
It’s even deeper than the geographical and political distinctions paralleling “1984” when you examine it further. Little by little, as the U.S. becomes more repressive, more controlling, with a “nationalistic” bent driving the framework, the citizenry is becoming isolated. After World War I the United States pursued an isolationist policy, and the policy was reflected in the mindset of the citizens. This current isolation is one that is forced.
Oh, we’re building a wall to keep out the illegal aliens? Possibly, but look how late in the game it is. Look at how illegal incursions have taken place without any true resistance for more than a century unchecked and unabated. Why? To satisfy the U.S. corporations’ demands for cheap labor that could be off the books…and the government that turned a blind eye to it because of the taxable revenues made from the corporations. The taxes were paid, and kickbacks were undoubtedly delivered to government officials who managed to look the other way when faced with 100 illegal aliens working in the fields in front of their eyes. Everyone looked away, the corporations made profits, and everyone was happy.
The main reason to build the wall will not be to prevent illegal aliens from coming into the U.S., but to appear to prevent illegal aliens from coming in. That will be the main reason…subtly swathed in the name of the sacred “interests of national security” phrase we’ve all come to know and love. All the construction will be subject, of course, to taxation, kickbacks, and contracts to keep the flow of taxpayer monies moving out of their pockets and savings accounts into the hands of the rich and powerful. There is also another reason…purposed and insidious they wish the wall.
A wall will work in the opposite direction as well: to keep the taxpayer-serfs in.
Slowly but surely, a forced isolation policy is being pursued, and more: the ones traveling will be pursuing a government agenda in their endeavors and it will be limited to those with capital and wealth. We’re seeing it already: the new laws (Don’t you just love that? New laws?) that restrict those with a certain amount owed in taxes, in child support, or whatever…keep them in the country. How about that? The firms and corporations, and their employees…with the “trusted traveler” status…basically a “get-out-of-jail-free” card. Trusted to keep paying the taxes and conform to the existing social, political, and religious order…to be a “nark” on behalf of the government.
To be the “guy with the watch” in the movie “They Live,” selling out to the aliens.
All your communications are monitored: every e-mail, every telephone call. Talk to your friends in Moscow from college, and you’ll come up on a watch list. Talk to anyone outside of the U.S. and it’s a guarantee that you’ll be recorded and monitored. The new “Cloud Act” that slid surreptitiously between the thighs of the Omnibus $1.3 trillion spending bill (really…$1.3 trillion, can you imagine all the kickbacks on that one?). The harmless-sounding Cloud Act…giving foreign nations the ability to carry out U.S. government directives “in cooperation,” or “in partnership” …to surveil and monitor U.S. citizens and bypass the U.S. Constitution.
Marbury vs. Madison is extinct. Go ahead and take them to court, protest, and write to your Congressman or Senator (accomplishing nothing except identifying and marginalizing yourself). Your suit, your protests, and your letters will go nowhere…and eventually they’ll break you…and you’ll go somewhere…in the middle of nowhere…indefinitely (synonymous with forever). The need for a chargeable offense to arrest you is gone, along with the 4th Amendment…now you just need to be a “suspicious person” and be placed “under investigation.”
All of this is crafted to make the populations poorer, keep them monitored, and prevent them from interacting with one another as before. Limit their freedom of movement and therefore limit their freedom. This is happening in the other two “spheres of influence” as well. China has a Draconian police state where cameras and stoolies monitor and report every move of the people. China is the “model” (in the words of Kissinger and other globalist-Communists). The police in this country are becoming as the ones in China, with a capitalist agenda: To protect and serve the taxable, corporate entities, and oppress the common taxpayer.
This is the end-state desired by the creators of the Global Governance. They follow Milton’s words to a tee: “It is better to rule in hell than to serve in heaven.” They will have three spheres, just as in the novel “1984,” and keep the flames of ethnic difference fanned just enough to make War not an eventuality, but a managed, controllable event. War translates into industrial output, use of supplies and materials, and largesse that ends up “boomeranging” and turning into raises and bonuses for politicians (look at Congress “voting” themselves raises and bonuses in the Omnibus bill while simultaneously increasing the “defense” budget).
War enables favors, contracts, and immunity for oligarchs. A self-sustaining war machine that keeps the three spheres of influence at each other’s throats…while “managing” the people and tying them up in a never-ending loop of consumption, production, impoverishment, debt, and always directed by patriotic fervor.
In the end, the world will not notice its enslavement, because the generations capable of creative thought and reason will have been replaced by a stultified, obedient mass of humanity only capable of acting in a manner predetermined by the rulers. The world of “1984” is forming today. The Gulags are just around the corner. They’ll have “occupants” as soon as the time is right. Not at gunpoint. The people will enter the camps of their own accord, enslaved with the baits of entitlements and material conveniences. The world of “1984” was written about years ago, but it is upon us, now, and before we know it, we will be in it.
Jeremiah Johnson is the Nom de plume of a retired Green Beret of the United States Army Special Forces (Airborne). Mr. Johnson is also a Gunsmith, a Certified Master Herbalist, a Montana Master Food Preserver, and a graduate of the U.S. Army’s SERE school (Survival Evasion Resistance Escape). He lives in a cabin in the mountains of Western Montana with his wife and three cats. You can follow Jeremiah’s regular writings at SHTFplan.com or contact him here.
This article may be republished or excerpted with proper attribution to the author and a link to www.SHTFplan.com.
Like the weather when a storm approaches, or as the seasons turn, or waves pounding on a shoreline, any deviations are measured and compared by speed and intensity. The same can be said for headlines: Omnibus, discouraged Deplorables, rumors of war, prospects of peace, economic bubbles, fluctuating markets, and political intrigue. Round and round it goes; when it ends, nobody knows. It’s a time of transition; and when traveling over mountaintops, through valleys, and on rough seas, no one has all of the answers.
Even when looking at maps.
The books, “Generations”(1992) and “The Fourth Turning“(1997), were written by the historians William Strauss and Neil Howe. These recent explorers identified recorded cycles of history and categorized them across multiple cultures and eras. In both books, historical timelines were analyzed and populations were correlated to specific life-cycles labeled as generational types. Strauss and Howe additionally addressed the concept of time in the context of both circular and linear perspectives and defined what is called a “saeculum” as a “long human life” measuring roughly 80 to 90 years. Every saeculum is comprised of four turnings, each lasting around 20 years.
Just as there are four seasons consisting of spring, summer, fall and winter, there are also four phases of a human life represented in childhood, young adulthood, middle age and elderhood. As each phase of human life represents approximately 20 years, so is each generational archetype identified within the historical cycles, or turnings, as follows.
The generations experience eachturning according their life stage; and the Seasons (i.e. order of Turnings # 1 -4) are identified by each generation as they reach middle-age. Amazingly, history shows a consistent pattern in how the generations both cause and affect historical events. The patterns develop based upon how each generation interacts with the other and documented consistencies are delineated by the authors.
In America, since the end of the late sixteenth-century, there have been four full “cycles” (i.e. saeculums) as follows:
1.) Colonial Cycle
2.) Revolutionary Cycle
3.) Civil War Cycle
4.) World War Cycle
In every Fourth-Turning, or Crisis period, within all of the above saeculums, American society experienced great upheavals and war. Moreover, like progressively burgeoning tsunamis rising and crashing upon the sands of time, each consecutive American Fourth-Turning Crisis was more devastating than the last.
America’s last crisis occurred during the years of 1929 through 1945; a turbulent transition period whereby the nation experienced a financial crash, a great depression and a world war.
Now it’s our turn. Time’s up. According to Neil Howe, this current Fourth Turning began in September 2008 and is projected to last until around 2030.
All we can do ride it out the best we can. Trying to individually affect a Fourth Turning would be like lassoing the wind or reversing an ocean’s tide. It can’t be done. With this in mind, it is best for us prepare and adapt by battening down our hatches and adjusting our sails.
Whether we are climbing mountains, descending into valleys, or being tossed about on stormy seas, know that the Presidency of Donald J. Trump is a storm. By accident or design, he has shaken the foundations of geopolitics in ways few could have forecasted less than two years ago.
Although I am first and foremost a Better-than-Hillaryite, I was always cautiously optimistic about Trump. This does not make me a Trumpster, per se. I’ve called him the Oompah Loompah Man, a Reality TV Star, the Orange One, etc., and I’ve previously written about him as the manifestation of one of the following three possibilities:
1.) The Real Thing
2.) Serving the agenda of the global financial elite unwittingly
3.) Controlled opposition as a Judas Goat or Trojan Horse
Time reveals everything; and people are known by their actions, not by their words. The same can be said for events.
Much has transpired in American politics over the past year and a lot of it has been good for Trump voters. Yet, in his recent Omnibus signing speech, Trump acted like a man in a hurry, with more important things on his mind. Obviously, his signature on that steaming pile of shit pissed off a lot of former Deplorables, including one of his most avid advocates, Ann Coulter.
What was Trump thinking? He signed his name while sounding like Br’er’ Rabbit pleading not to be thrown into the brier-patch. Trump wanted the military funded. And now it appears he desires to build The Wall, as a priority of national security, using the defense budget.
Did Br’er Rabbit Trump, outsmart the Establishment’s Tar-Baby? Or do the globalists have photos of Stormy Daniels spanking him in his underwear? Could it be the swamp is too mucked and the mountains too high for a lone, art-of-the-deal making, 6-level-chess playing, billionaire wizard and his staff?
What’s going on?
Transitions.
Appearances are not always what they seem and Occam’s Razor, at times, loses its edge. But, if past history is any guide, it may not be wise to underestimate Trump; even if paying for the $1.3 trillion Omnibus Bill will be like America’s children climbing Mt. Everest in bare feet.
Multiple forces have been aligned against Trump from the moment he first rode down his escalator in 2015 to announce his candidacy for president. And now, every day, he’s still here driving all of my sworn enemies batshit crazy, one Tweet at a time.
The famous underworld attorney extraordinaire, Roy Cohn, in a 1984 interview claimed Trump was the closest thing to a genius he had ever met in his life. Thirty-two years after that statement by Cohn, Trump became President of the United States while being outspent two to one, against a rabidly hostile media, in opposition to colluding officials in the United States’ FBI, DoJ, and State Department; plus, with zero support from all Democrats and a significant percentage of Republicans.
Transitions, indeed. Tightrope walking is more like it.
Today, Trump stands high up on the mountain in the middle of a political blizzard. He is surrounded by the gale force winds of a phony Russian election hacking narrative, a sinister special council investigation, and allegations ranging from obstruction of justice to being spanked by porn star with a Forbes magazine.
The majority of the country believes a group of unelected government and military officials secretly manipulate national policy, according to a Monmouth Poll released Monday.
Of the 803 adults polled, 27 percent said they believe the unelected group known as the deep state definitely exists. An additional 47 percent said it probably exists. Sixteen percent said it probably does not exist and 5 percent said they believe it definitely does not exist.
Although most people may consider the Deep State as the “administrative state”, or the “establishment”, one wonders how many of the sheeple would have been half-awakened if not for Trump. I say “half-awakened” because most know nothing of the round table groups as referred to by the historian, Carroll Quigley, or the secret societies as referenced by former president John F. Kennedy. This means the majority of Americans remain naïve, controlled, and at the whim of True Power.
But what about Trump?
Our president is either who he professes to be, or he is not. You either trust him, or you don’t. It could be he is playing the power game the best he can and prioritizing actualities that we can’t see for purposes we don’t know; or he’s puppet, or imbecilic sell-out leading us down to a dead-end on the primrose path.
Call me quixotic, but I remain cautiously hopeful. I remain so in spite of the warhawk John Bolton, Trump’s new war cabinet, and his latest hardliner stance with Russia. Why? Well, similar to the way I rejected solipsism in college for fear of being too lonely, I now refuse to despair over Trump’s personality swings because I enjoy the view.
Is he controlled opposition? Or controlled demolition?
Either way, I have nothing to lose and nowhere else I’d rather be at this time. There’s not one damn thing I can do to prevent Russian bombs so I will , instead, wait patiently for the imminent Inspector General’s report; which is said to contain some pure TNT.
What a panoramic scene that will be.
Will the revelations of Michael Horwitz’s report turn the tide for Trump and make America great again? Hope springs eternal. Or, it could be the global elite will trick Trump into cannonading the Cossacks in order to conclude any conversations on corruption in our country. Who knows? The elite bankers could also crash the economy, like Kondratieffand Elliot Grand Supercycle waves, on history’s rocky shore; leaving Trump in a rumpled heap right next to the bleached white bones of Herbert Hoover.
The winter of this Fourth Turning’s discontent will undoubtedly deliver war and economic turmoil; and not necessarily in that order. But what will ensue? Constitutional Law or tyranny?
Time reveals all things; and, what happens after the release of the Inspector General’s report will be very telling. Why? Because transitions are roads to revelations.
So keep going, watch, and see.
On the way, however, look for any false flags and know this: Tyranny wants you controlled or dead; it is, in fact, right behind you, and up just ahead. It also really, really, really wants your guns. If you don’t believe me, just look behind to see how fast we’ve traveled from Parkland, Florida to a full repealof the Second Amendment.
Yeah, keep your eyes on the road, your hand upon the wheel
Keep your eyes on the road, your hands upon the wheel
Yeah, we’re goin’ to the Roadhouse
We’re gonna have a real
Good time
The Doors – Roadhouse Blues
Spending a week driving around a western state 1,700 miles from my stomping grounds in Pennsylvania provides a different perspective on the level of economic, social and political degradation impacting the country. With a daily commute along the crumbling, crummy, gridlocked deathtrap roadways into West Philadelphia, the squalor and decomposition of our civilization is self-evident.
I live in a corrupt state with the highest gasoline taxes, highest tolls, massively underfunded government pension liability, failing government run public schools, suburban sprawl dotted with ghost malls, vacant industrial parks, and urban ghetto shitholes plagued by drugs, murder, welfare mentality, excessive taxes, and left wing politicians.
Politically, the state is virtually split down the middle, with the urban enclaves of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh dominated by Democrats, rural areas dominated by Republicans, and suburbs capable of going either way – but leaning left. Trump won the state mostly due to the lack of enthusiasm for Hillary in Philly and Pittsburgh. If the Democrats weren’t so dysfunctional and beholden to the far left, a moderate Democrat would win the state easily.
The governor is a Democrat and the legislature is Republican controlled, so budgets are virtually impossible to pass, with the only predictable outcome being higher taxes, fees, tolls, and deferral of essential actions to address the billions in underfunded government pensions. The Federal prison has a wing just for corrupt PA politicians. At least life is predictable.
Living in the northwest suburbs, 30 miles from the City of Philadelphia, and commuting into the city on a daily basis for the last 12 years, has given me a good vantage point in assessing the state of the infrastructure, economic trends, and societal decay in my part of this exponentially delusional, debt dependent, chaotic country. The U.S. and my corner of PA. have supposedly been in the midst of an economic recovery for the last nine years.
The government data shows a declining unemployment rate, rising GDP, non-existent inflation, record corporate profits, low interest rates leading to a growing housing market, soaring consumer confidence, and a record high stock market. In the parlance of Jim Morrison, we’ve been at the Roadhouse having a real good time. We’re gonna need more than a beer to recover from the inevitable hangover.
My suburban slice of Montgomery County is prosperous and growing, based upon demographic and economic data produced by the government. The populace is mostly upper middle class white collar families. I’ve lived in the same house for 23 years, through the 2000 internet bust, the Greenspan created housing bubble, the 2008 Wall Street created financial implosion, and the supposed nine year economic recovery. Within three miles of my house we had two strip centers with 100% occupancy in 1995. For the last eight years one center has been 90% vacant and the other 50% vacant. Office buildings built in 2005 still have numerous vacancies. Entire 600,000 sq. ft. office parks remain unoccupied, except for weeds, rodents, mold and decay.
Grand government plans for new retail outlets never materialized. Numerous gas stations have been shuttered, rotting and weed infested testaments to better times. Numerous grocery stores, locally owned restaurants, and small businesses have gone belly up during these supposed good times. Imagine what will happen during the next official recession.
This Potemkin economic recovery is buttressed by unpayable debt, Federal Reserve easy money, fudged financial industry accounting, fake economic data, endemic political corruption, and a perpetual flow of propaganda from the corporate media spigot convincing the mathematically challenged masses all is well and going into debt to keep up with the Joneses is a brilliant strategy for success. If you ignore the fake news and false rhetoric from politicians, bankers and the media, you can see the continued economic deterioration with your own eyes and your own bank account.
You can tell what our society values and supports by observing your immediate surroundings. The only construction I see are new bank branches, new medical facilities, drug stores, new fast food joints (creating the need for new medical facilities), and new government buildings. The once teetering Wall Street banking industry is alive and well due to tens of trillions funneled their way by the Fed and feckless Washington political machine.
You can’t swing a dead homeless person without hitting a Too Big To Trust Wall Street bank branch. Why do we need these monuments to greed and hubris when you can make a deposit with your smartphone, pay your bills on-line, and use your debit or credit card for every transaction? It’s insane to waste money on thousands of branches. But, when you can get your money from the Fed for free, everything looks like a good investment.
The trillions flowing out of people’s bank accounts and into the coffers of the sick industry complex have enriched these corporations to such an extent; they feel the need to build palatial complexes and numerous outlets for their “legal” drug distribution. You know an industry is rolling in dough when they build high tech glass palaces with concierge service and upscale restaurants, to service sick people.
Those Obamacare premiums and insurance payments are going somewhere, and even after paying the corporate executives their obscene salaries and bonuses, there is plenty left over for the construction of medical Taj Mahals and lobbying corrupt slimy snakes in congress for more. Despite the extravagance of these medical facilities, the service still sucks, a Tylenol costs $25, the physicians are barely adequate, the mis-diagnosis rate is sky high, and the staff is surly and rude.
Local politicians build themselves new grand municipal buildings, even though there are vacant office buildings out the wazoo. New Social Security Administration buildings are constructed at an astounding pace, especially in the Democrat controlled urban ghettos. New Section 8 housing estates are built with union labor on the taxpayer dime. That is the common denominator in all the new building occurring in this country.
The funds for this frenzy of banking, sick care and government construction has materialized out of thin air by a privately owned banking cabal called the Federal Reserve in conspiracy with the Deep State. This entire engineered Potemkin recovery and building boom is built on a liquefying foundation of bad debt and lies. Let it roll, baby, roll.
My little piece of suburban paradise in this failing and falling empire of debt may be decaying slowly, but my daily commute into the putrid, dilapidated, crumbling ghetto killing field called Philadelphia is a different matter. This corrupt liberal bastion of unfunded government pensions, outrageously high taxes, overpriced union labor, criminal Democrat politicians, dreadful public schools, potholes that could swallow a small car, crumbling infrastructure, murder, mayhem, and an enslaved underclass of welfare dependent minorities, is much further along the track to collapse. This city has pockets of prosperity, but its death rattle is unmistakable. The decay is too far gone and debt too large to realistically reverse course, even if there was a will to do so – which there is not.
My week in Colorado further clarified my view the American empire is in decline, but it is a cascading decline with regions and cities at various stages of collapse. My relatively rural suburban enclave is probably fifty percent of the way there. Philadelphia is eighty percent of the way there. Colorado only appears to be twenty five percent of the way there. I would ponder much of the western U.S., excluding the liberal bastions in California and Washington State, is also further from collapse than the heavily urbanized debt burdened northeastern U.S.
Driving up I-25 to Fort Collins, down to Colorado Springs and west to Boulder and Breckinridge, presented a fairly broad view of the greater Denver area. The most conspicuous aspect of Colorado, from my perspective, is the vast picturesque expanse of open space as far as the eye can see. Every direction seems to be framed by snow-capped Rocky Mountains. It’s the diametric opposite to my daily commute through the 30 Blocks of Squalor in West Philly.
The beauty of the Colorado landscape is somewhat obscured by a seemingly never ending proliferation of retail malls along the entire expanse of I-25. They all look alike, bathed in a beige sandstone design. The malls are populated by the same national retail chains inhabiting the ghost malls on the east coast. They are still constructing new malls, something not done on the east coast for years.
It seems there are still a significant number of people with disposable income in Colorado. Their labor participation rate has actually increased as their unemployment rate has fallen. The plunge in the participation rate has produced fake unemployment levels on the east coast. From that perspective Colorado is in better shape than most of the country.
You can’t help but notice the weed dispensaries sprinkled across the countryside. The legalization of marijuana has certainly had a short term economic benefit, as it has generated jobs and a massive inflow of tax revenue into government coffers. The longer term negative impact is revealing itself by the inordinate amount of homeless addicts in downtown Denver, at interstate off-ramps, under bridge overpasses in Boulder, and loitering in public parks in college towns like Fort Collins. The seeds of collapse are already planted. The influx of liberals fleeing California and the east coast are already indoctrinating a formerly conservative self-reliant state with socialist, feminist, and nanny state philosophies. This was borne out by Hillary’s narrow victory in 2016.
The infrastructure is not in a state of disrepair. Instead of trash and garbage along its interstates, there are clean-up crews picking up tumbleweeds. Everything still has that new smell feel. You just don’t see dilapidated structures. There are no potholes. Stop lights always function. Traffic is heavy at peak times, but not gridlocked. With the best ski resorts, awe inspiring tourist attractions (Garden of the Gods, Red Rocks), the majestic Rockies, growing economy, lack of government pension liabilities, and the weed industry, Colorado will sustain itself far longer than the Democrat run putrefying urban ghettos on the east coast. Make no mistake, the American empire is in the midst of a cascading collapse, and it will reach Colorado eventually.
If ever the lyrics “The future’s uncertain and the end is always near” were more applicable, it would be this past week. The stock market plunged by almost 1,300 points (no tweets from Trump taking credit), Trump accelerated his trade war with the world, he replaced a warmongering general with a warmongering neocon psychopath, the first quarter GDP estimate continued to decline to below 2%, a bunch of useful idiots were manipulated by Soros, Bloomberg and other liberal billionaires to protest against their own rights, and Trump topped it off by stabbing his supporters in the back by signing a bloated Democrat/RINO $1.3 trillion spending bill funding left wing priorities while ignoring everything he supposedly stands for. The Deep State either has pictures, or he is just a wolf in sheep’s clothing with no moral compass or desire to fulfill the agenda he ran on. It was a profoundly disappointing week for Trump supporters, even as the financial markets and economy show unequivocal cracks.
As we enter the second half of this Fourth Turning, there is a lot of uncertainty regarding the specific events which will propel us towards its climax. We do know the events will be driven by the three catalysts of debt, civic decay, and global disorder. We’ve breached the $21 trillion national debt level, with Trump’s new budget poised to blast through $22 trillion in less than a year. The $200 trillion of unfunded liabilities looms in the foreseeable future. Corporate debt stands at an all-time high. Consumer debt stands at an all-time high. Global debt approaches $200 trillion. The coming financial dislocation will blow this powder keg of debt sky high. Matches are being lit on a daily basis.
Civic decay accelerates as gun grabbing left wing billionaires attempt to disarm the deplorables before the real conflict arrives. The Deep State wages war against the insurrection within their swamp. Surveillance agencies commit acts of treason. The Constitution is shit upon by those in power. An ongoing coup against the sitting president proceeds unabated. The citizens are treated as sheep being led to slaughter.
The few critical thinking dissenters are treated as criminals for exercising their First Amendment rights. The social media conglomerates, acting as the eyes and ears of the Deep State, lure the masses into willingly sacrificing their private information. There will be no compromise. The animosity between right and left has reached civil war levels. There is no middle. This will be a fight to the finish.
Trump has surrounded himself with neo-con war mongering philistines, while provoking nuclear powers, and embroiling our military in unwinnable conflicts across the Middle East. Trade wars, whether warranted or not, will ratchet up the intensity and antagonism. The Muslim hordes invading Europe are already provoking a political uprising across the continent. The North Korea problem is far from solved. Politicians across the globe facing unsolvable domestic issues will turn to foreign conflict as a way to distract the masses. Once the Rubicon is crossed the law of unintended consequences will rear its ugly head. The future of humanity hinges on the push of a button. Do you trust the current lot of feeble minded sociopaths to do the right thing?
The future may be uncertain but the end is always near. Within the next decade the future will be revealed. I believe we are headed for harder times. There is no going back to better days. Trump is the catalyst for conflict, both domestic and international. He will not save this nation. It will be up to individuals across the land. It’s time to mentally, physically, and financially prepare for the bitter winter ahead. Keep your eyes on the road and your hands upon the wheel. In the meantime, follow Jim Morrison’s advice and get yourself a beer.
Our national debt is rapidly approaching 21 trillion dollars, and yet Congress wants to follow up a large tax cut bill with a massive increase in federal spending. This is absolute madness, and it is going to make our long-term financial problems as a nation far worse. After passing the tax bill, the appropriate thing to do would have been to cut federal spending. Yes, that would have not been a positive thing for the economy in the short-term, but we must start addressing our long-term priorities. If we do not do something about this exploding national debt, it could potentially destroy our republic all by itself.
Earlier today, I was absolutely horrified when I learned of a budget deal in the Senate that would increase federal spending by about 200 billion dollars in each of the next two years…
The Senate’s Republican and Democratic leaders unveiled a sweeping two-year budget agreement on Wednesday that would increase federal spending by hundreds of billions of dollars on domestic and defense programs alike.
That deal would eliminate strict budget caps, set in 2011 to reduce the federal deficit, and would allow Congress to spend about $200 billion more in the current fiscal year and in fiscal year 2019.
Seriously?
Our federal debt is going to hit 21 trillion dollars some time this year, and they want to throw hundreds of billions of dollars more spending on top of what we are already doing?
This alone is why we need true conservatives all over the nation to run for Congress. Our endless greed is literally destroying the bright future that our children and our grandchildren were supposed to have.
I don’t know if I even have the words to describe how foolish our leaders are being. If interest rates on government debt were to return to their long-term averages, the game would already be over. We should be desperately attempting to get our financial house in order, but instead we are spending money as if tomorrow will never come.
But tomorrow always arrives, and a day of reckoning is fast approaching.
Fortunately, there are some members of Congress that seem to understand that we cannot keep spending money that we do not have. The following comes from USA Today…
Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., who chairs the hard-line House Freedom Caucus, wants to see what comes back from the Senate, said his spokesman Ben Williamson.
“But if the numbers are as high as we’re hearing, Rep. Meadows does not support the budget deal,” Williamson said.
Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Ala., said “this spending bill is a debt junkie’s dream… I’m not only a ‘no.’ I’m a ‘hell no.’”
As a member of Congress, I would always be a resounding “no” vote on these sorts of absurd budget deals.
Whatever happened to all of the strong fiscal conservatives that we sent to Congress during the days of the Tea Party movement? So many of them seem to have been enveloped by the swamp and are now doing whatever party leadership tells them to do.
Sadly, most Americans don’t even seem to understand that we have been adding more than a trillion dollars a year to the national debt since Barack Obama first entered the White House. The following is an extended excerpt from one of my previous articles…
When Barack Obama entered the White House, the U.S. national debt was just over 10.6 trillion dollars, and when he left the White House 8 years later it was sitting just shy of 20 trillion dollars.
So during those 8 years more than 9 trillion dollars was added to the national debt. But for purposes of this example we will round down to an even 9 trillion dollars.
When you divide 9 trillion dollars by 8, you get an average of 1.125 trillion dollars that was added to the national debt per year during the Obama era.
Dividing that figure by 365, you find that an average of $3,082,191,780 was added to the national debt every single day during the Obama administration.
And since there are 24 hours in a day, that means that an average of $128,424,657 was stolen from our children and our grandchildren every single hour of every single day while Barack Obama was president.
Under President Trump, we should be dramatically reducing federal spending and the size of the federal government.
Yes, this would hurt the economy in the short-term, but if we continue down the road we are currently on it is a recipe for national suicide.
As interest rates rise, it won’t be too long before we are paying more than a trillion dollars a year just in interest on the national debt. And when America plunges into a debt nightmare, there won’t be anyone in the entire world big enough to bail us out.
America cannot be great again if we are drowning in debt. What is happening in Washington is utter madness, and it should greatly anger all of us that our irresponsible politicians are systematically destroying the greatest republic that the world has ever seen.
Michael T. Snyder is a graduate of the University of Florida law school and he worked as an attorney in the heart of Washington D.C. for a number of years.Today, Michael is best known for his work as the publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog and The American Dream.
The federal government is now 20.4 trillion dollars in debt, and most Americans don’t seem to care that the economic prosperity that we are enjoying today could be completely destroyed by our exploding national debt. Over the past decade, the national debt has been growing at a rate of more than 100 million dollars an hour, and this is a debt that all of us owe. When you break it down, each American citizen’s share of the debt is more than $60,000, and so if you have a family of five your share is more than $300,000. And when you throw in more than 6 trillion dollars of corporate debt and nearly 13 trillion dollars of consumer debt, it is not inaccurate to say that we are facing a crisis of unprecedented magnitude.
Debt cannot grow much faster than GDP indefinitely. At some point the bubble bursts, and when it does the pain that the middle class is going to experience is going to be off the charts. Back in 2015, the middle class in the U.S. became a minority of the population for the first time ever. Never before in our history has the middle class accounted for less than 50 percent of the population, and all over the country formerly middle class families are under a great deal of stress as they attempt to make ends meet. The following comes from an absolutely outstanding piece that was just put out by Charles Hugh Smith…
If you talk to young people struggling to make ends meet and raise children, or read articles about retirees who can’t afford to retire, you can’t help but detect the fading scent of prosperity.
It has steadily been lost to stagnation, under-reported inflation and soaring inequality, a substitution of illusion for reality bolstered by the systemic corruption of authentic measures of prosperity and well-being.
In other words, the American-Dream idea that life should get easier and more prosperous as the natural course of progress is still embedded in our collective memory, even though the collective reality has changed.
The reality that most of us are facing today is a reality where many are working two or three jobs just to make it from month to month.
The reality that most of us are facing today is a reality where debts never seem to get repaid and credit card balances just continue to grow.
The reality that most of us are facing today is a reality where we work day after day just to pay the bills, and yet we never seem to get anywhere financially.
The truth is that most people out there are deeply struggling. The Washington Post says that the “middle class” encompasses anyone that makes between $35,000 and $122,500 a year, but very few of us are near the top end of that scale…
It’s also situation specific. “The more people in a family, the more money they typically need to live a comfortable middle-class lifestyle,” writes the Post. Likewise, the more expensive your area, the more you need to make to qualify. Overall, “America’s middle-class ranges from $35,000 to $122,500 in annual income, according to The Post’s calculation” approved by the Pew Research Center.
“The bottom line is: $100,000 is on the middle-class spectrum, but barely: 75 percent of U.S. households make less than that,” writes the Post.
In a previous article, I noted that the bottom 90 percent of income earners in the U.S. brought home more than 60 percent of the nation’s income back in the early 1970s, but last year that number fell to just 49.7 percent.
The middle class is shrinking year after year, and the really bad news is that it appears that this decline may soon accelerate. In fact, one major European investment bank is warning that the U.S. economy will “slow down substantially” in 2018.
But we can’t afford any slow down at all. As it is, there is no possible way that we are going to be able to deal with our exploding debts at the rate the economy is growing right now. According to Boston University professor Larry Kotlikoff, we are facing a “fiscal gap” of 210 trillion dollars over the next 75 years…
We have all these unofficial debts that are massive compared to the official debt. We’re focused just on the official debt, so we’re trying to balance the wrong books…
If you add up all the promises that have been made for spending obligations, including defense expenditures, and you subtract all the taxes that we expect to collect, the difference is $210 trillion. That’s the fiscal gap. That’s our true indebtedness.
Where in the world is all of that money going to come from?
Are you willing to pay much higher taxes?
Are you willing to see government programs slashed to a degree that we have never seen before in U.S. history?
If your answer to both of those questions is no, then what would you do to solve the fiscal nightmare that we are facing?
According to Brian Maher, author Robert Benchley once sat down to write an article about this fiscal mess, and what he came up with sums up the situation perfectly…
Benchley sat at his typewriter one day to tackle a vexing subject.
He opened his piece with “The”… when the full weight of his burden collapsed upon his shoulders.
He abandoned his typewriter in frustration.
He returned shortly thereafter and resumed the task anew…
With only “The” to work with… Benchley immediately knocked out the article, presented here in its entirety:
“The hell with it.”
Unfortunately, we can’t afford to say that.
Our exploding debt is a crisis that we must tackle, and the first step is to understand that our current financial system was literally designed to create as much debt as possible. Once we abolish the Federal Reserve, our endless debt spiral will end, but until we do our debt problems are only going to continue to grow until the system completely implodes in upon itself.
Michael T. Snyder is a graduate of the University of Florida law school and he worked as an attorney in the heart of Washington D.C. for a number of years.Today, Michael is best known for his work as the publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog and The American Dream.
[image: KAREN BLEIER/AFP/Getty Images]The video that you are about to watch shows exactly why we need to “drain the swamp”. In Washington D.C. it is all about the money, and those that don’t play by the rules get punished severely. But if we don’t start to fight back against this corruption, we will never have a chance to turn our nation in a positive direction. I want to go to Washington and start “flushing the toilet”, and I am asking for your help. I can’t do this alone, but if you help me get there, I promise to be your voice against the insidious corruption that has taken over our federal government.
In the video below, award-winning journalist Sharyl Attkisson interviews U.S. Representative Ken Buck. The following short bio for Buck comes from Wikipedia…
During this brief video, Buck explains to Attkisson exactly how Washington works, and what he reveals is absolutely shocking…
Like Buck, I want to fight against this system. If I win this election, I plan to go to D.C. and start turning over the tables. If you would like to help me in this crusade, you can contribute right here…
As Buck discussed in the video, as a freshman member of Congress I would be expected to raise around $200,000 for the National Republican Congressional Committee. In other words, I would be expected to spend several hours a day calling back home to my district and begging my constituents to give money to the NRCC.
Well, I am simply not going to do it. I have pledged that I am not going to participate in this system, and I am the only one in this race that has made such a pledge. In fact, the other guys I am running against have already indicated that they intend to be very good members of “the club”. Needless to say, the “establishment” is not behind me, and so this is totally a grassroots effort. We are being funded by hundreds and hundreds of very small donations, and if you would like to pitch in, you can donate here…
When I go to Washington, I am going to do the job that the people sent me there to do.
Sadly, most members of Congress do not actually spend that much time in their offices. The House of Representatives will only be in session for about 140 days this year, and even on those days not much work gets done. Both parties instruct their members to spend about two hours doing “floor/committee” work on those days, and they are instructed to spend about four hours a day “dialing for dollars”. Both parties have huge call centers near the U.S. capitol, and every day that Congress is in session you will find your “representatives” spending hour after hour in those call centers raising money for their parties or for their next campaigns.
When I go to Washington, I am not going to be a mid-level telemarketer, and so I have promised that I am not going to participate in this very sick system. If you are ready for a change, please help this campaign…
And I am not going to “sell my vote” for campaign donations either. In the video, Ken Buck accurately detailed what really goes on behind closed doors, and it is a very, very twisted system.
If I am elected, I am not going to play the game. The special interests can wave as much money in front of me as they want, but I am not going to move. Instead of representing the special interests, our members of Congress should start representing the people once again.
You can read about where I stand on the issues right here. And if you all help me get to Washington, I want you to know that I am never going to back down. I am so sick and tired of politicians that use labels such as “conservative” and “pro-life” and “pro-gun” to get our votes, but then once they get into office they betray us over and over again.
It is time to get rid of all the RINOs. If someone runs under the Republican label but governs like a Democrat, we need to hold them accountable. One of my campaign slogans is “every RINO needs to go”, and if you agree with me I hope that you will stand with me in this campaign…
I literally want to tear down the system that Representative Buck described in that video. If every member of Congress was like him, the corruption would already be cleaned up. That is why we need good men and women to run for Congress all over the nation.
There is a reason why Congress consistently has an approval rating of less than 20 percent. It is a cesspool of filth and corruption, and we need to send people to D.C. that are not going to be seduced by the money, fame and power. Here in Idaho, I have been criticized for not being a “professional politician”, but I am very proud of that fact. I never want to be part of the “establishment”. Instead, I want to topple the establishment and restore the constitutional republic that our founders originally intended.
There is no incumbent in this race here in Idaho’s first congressional district, and so the race is totally wide open. So far our campaign is doing extremely well, but we are also running a bit low on fuel. If you would like to help us keep going, I would like to ask for your help today…
Because this is considered to be a very “safe” district for Republicans, whoever wins the Republican primary next May will almost certainly be the next member of Congress.
And if the wrong guy wins this race, he could be in there for the next 20 years.
We cannot allow that to happen, and with your help I can win this election and start cleaning up the cesspool that Washington D.C. has become.
Yes, GDP may get a temporary boost from rebuilding, but there’s nothing positive about destruction
Once the immediate danger of a natural disaster subsides, and the loss of life, property damage, cost of rebuilding, and degree of insurance coverage can be assessed, attention generally turns to the economic effect. How will Hurricane Harvey affect the nation’s gross domestic product?
You will no doubt hear assertions that the rebuilding effort will provide a boost to contractors, manufacturers and GDP in general. But before these claims turn into predictable nonsense about all the good that comes from natural disasters, I thought it might be useful to provide some context for these sorts of events.
The destruction wrought by a hurricane and flooding qualifies as a negative supply shock. Normal production and distribution channels are destroyed or disrupted. Producers have to find less-efficient (i.e. more expensive) ways to transport their goods. The net effect is lost output and income, and higher prices.
Over the years, I’ve observed a tendency among economists and traders to view such events through a demand-side prism. They see lost income translating into reduced spending on goods and services, which might even warrant some largesse from the central bank.
Of course, that is precisely the wrong medicine. Supply shocks reduce output and raise prices. The Federal Reserve’s interest-rate medicine affects demand. Lower interest rates will increase the demand for gasoline, among other goods and services, but they have no effect on supply. An easing of monetary policy under such circumstances would increase demand for already curtailed supply, raising prices even more.
But wait. What about all the new construction and investment necessitated by the devastation? Homeowners will have to rebuild. Businesses will have to replace destroyed or damaged plants and equipment. Pretty soon, we should start to hear about a boost to GDP growth.
In the short run, yes. But focus on the prefix, “re,” as in re-building and re-placing. After a natural disaster, housing starts are bound to increase, but there will be no net addition to the supply of homes. Capital spending will increase as well, but it will not expand the nation’s capital stock.
Economics is about the allocation of scarce resources. A natural disaster commandeers those scarce resources in an effort to return to the status quo ante. Any boost to quarterly GDP from an increase in residential and non-residential fixed investment is an arithmetic expression of current activity, not a reflection of the wealth of a nation.
The one redeeming virtue of a natural disaster is that provides an opportunity to revisit a classic essay by the 19th century French political economist, : “That Which Is Seen and That Which Is Unseen.”
In Chapter I, “The Broken Window,” Bastiat relates the story of a shopkeeper, whose son accidentally breaks a store window. The shopkeeper has to pay six francs to the glazier to replace it. The glazier now has six francs to spend on something else. And so on. Behold all the spending that emanates from a broken window!
What is unseen is what the shopkeeper would have done with the six francs if he didn’t have to replace the window. “In short, he would have employed his six francs in some way, which this accident has prevented,” Bastiat writes.
The parable, or fallacy, of the broken window has applications elsewhere, even if no window has been broken.
Take the belief that government spending stimulates the economy, based on the notion that $1 of government spending provides the resources for someone else’s spending: something known as the multiplier effect.
If the government borrows from A to give to B, it constitutes a transfer of resources, not stimulus. (Fiscal policy gets its bang for the buck from monetary policy, or an expansion in the money supply.) A dollar spent by the government can’t be spent by the private sector. During a severe downturn or depression, when the private sector isn’t spending, government spending as short-term stimulus may be justified. But, as per Bastiat, we can’t ignore that which is unseen, or what would have happened in the absence of government co-opting savings to spend.
Estimates of the effect of fiscal stimulus are all over the map, according to a review of the financial literature by Veronique de Rugy and Matthew Mitchell, senior research fellows at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center. The estimates of the government spending multiplier range from +3.7 to -2.88. In other words, a $1 increase in government spending produces $2.70 of private-sector growth, or displaces $3.88 of private growth, or anything in between, depending on economic conditions at the time and how the money is spent.
Discussions about the merits of fiscal stimulus are generally clouded by political bias, with liberals finding huge benefits and conservatives pointing to steep costs. The cost-benefit analysis of hurricanes, on the other hand, should pose no such hurdle.
I found enlightenment back in 1992, as Hurricane Andrew was sweeping the coast of Florida. I turned on the TV to hear a business news anchor proclaim that this Category 5 hurricane would be “great news for GDP” going forward. My reaction and response to his comment proved to be one of my more memorable laugh lines when I spoke to audiences on the subject of economic nonsense.
If natural disasters are such a good deal for the economy, I said, why wait for Acts of God to come along? Why not nuke our own cities so that we can rebuild and reap the benefits?
This writer has made it my main purpose, for 15 years now, to focus on the single most important issue destroying our nation’s economy. Yes, for those who read me frequently, it is this obscene military spending coupled with extreme militarism! Unbeknown to most Americans, over half of our federal taxes goes directly or indirectly for military spending. To keep one soldier in Afghanistan, for example, for one year, costs us over one million dollars! The soldier gets less than $ 75k a year, depending on rank. When the government farms out, which it does quite excessively to private mercenaries, oh I mean’ military contractors’, their guys get around $ 200k a year each. Of course their employers, the private companies hired by Uncle Sam, like Eric Prince’s ( formerly called Blackwater ), get tens ofmillions of our tax dollars. Then we have the over 1000 military bases in over 100 countries with powerful WMDs at their disposal, that cost we taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars to operate. And they actually have the audacity to ask the question of those natives of these countries: ” Why do you hate us?”
Listening to the local Orlando NPR station this morning in my car ( of which I renamed National Propaganda Radio, serving the empire so well)they had a segment about some poor working stiff. It seems that public transit in the area where he lives does not go to the nearby town where he works. The gist of the story was that the guy is a low level worker, earning about $ 10 an hour. He has to take a UBER to and from work each day which costs him $30 a day. After taxes he is lucky to earn enough to barely survive. The reporter interviewed the official from the LINK public transportation authority about the lack of viable public transport. He gave the usual and most honest answer that there was NOT enough funding for this. Of course, the reporter and the official never dared mention why there is not enough funding for things like that. Remember the emergency management official during the Flint, Michigan safe drinking water crisis, and what he answered during the Congressional hearing? They asked him why nothing was done to get the citizens of Flint better drinking water and lead free water pipes, and he said ” We didn’t have the funds.” Not ONE of the two party congress people conducting the hearing EVER mentioned how we could have plenty of funding to address this problem: Cutting the obscene military spending and getting the hell out of the Middle East! Not one!
We have a scam perpetrated countless years ago by the super rich who run things. They made sure that there would always be this Two Party/One Party system in place, making sure, by any means necessary, of keeping third party movements OUT of the process. So, they, the super rich, separated into groups ( and sometimes not even doing that ) of their super rich compatriots, with one funding the Republicans and the other, the more ‘ kinder and gentler’, funding the Democrats. Since they have always owned and controlled the mainstream media, they made sure that we working stiffs were mesmerized into believing those fairy tales. It actually became a ‘ sense of pride ‘ for many working stiffs to boldly announce what affiliation they individually had, Republican or Democrat. Look at all the recent rancor that good and decent hard working Americans take part in over this con job. Sad. Meanwhile, the real empire of the super rich continues with such draconian means of control… worldwide and domestically!
The ‘ Trump Phenomena’ is another aspect of what many in the confidence game refer to as ‘ The Long Con’. The use of phony populism and misdirected national pride convinced so many working stiffs to get on board. In reality, and this is key, the only real reason why this man ever won was due to the disgraceful choice of the other party to run Mrs. Clinton. I joke with many friends by saying that if the Democrats ran Donald Duck they would have defeated Donald Trump! Even still, the underling sad fact is that, once again, regardless of which of the two parties runs things, the obscene military spending and imperialist mindset still rules! When the ‘ cookie crumbles ‘ and we march into a new economic depression, even worse than the 2009 upheaval, we may face a terrible fascist revival here at home, echoing to a lesser extent what transpired in 1932 Germany. The only hope for we working stiffs is to realize that the same super rich who have always controlled us will welcome such a thing. Americans need to stop supporting political movements that are against their own interests.
Why do things never seem to change no matter who we send to Washington? It seems like for decades many of us have been trying to change the direction of this country by engaging in the political process. But no matter how hard we try, the downward spiral of our nation just continues to accelerate. Just look at this latest spending deal. Even though the American people gave the Republicans control of the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives, this deal very closely resembles “an Obama administration-era budget”. It increases spending even though we have already been adding more than a trillion dollars a year to the national debt, it specifically forbids the building of a border wall, it fully funds Planned Parenthood, and there are dozens of other concessions to the Democrats in it. As I previously warned, these “negotiations” were a political rout of epic proportions.
Perhaps many of us were being highly unrealistic when we expected that Donald Trump could change things. Because fixing America is going to take a lot more than getting the right number of “red” or “blue” politicians to Washington. Rather, the truth is that the real problem lies in our hearts, and the corrupt politicians that currently represent us are simply a reflection of who we have become as a nation.
The generations of people that founded this nation and established it as the greatest republic that the world had ever seen had far different values than most Americans do today.
So until there is a dramatic shift in how most of us see the world, it is quite likely that not much in Washington will change.
Throughout the campaign, Donald Trump spoke boldly about “draining the swamp”, but this spending deal very much reflects the swamp’s priorities. The Washington Post has published a list of eight ways that “Trump got rolled in his first budget negotiation”, and in this case the Post is quite correct…
1. There are explicit restrictions to block the border wall.
2. Non-defense domestic spending will go up, despite the Trump team’s insistence he wouldn’t let that happen.
3. Barack Obama’s cancer moonshot is generously funded.
4. Trump fought to cut the Environmental Protection Agency by a third. The final deal trims its budget by just 1 percent, with no staff cuts.
5. He didn’t defund Planned Parenthood.
6.The president got less than half as much for the military as he said was necessary.
7. Democrats say they forced Republicans to withdraw more than 160 riders.
8. To keep negotiations moving, the White House already agreed last week to continue paying Obamacare subsidies.
In essence, the Democrats got virtually everything that they wanted, and the Republicans got next to nothing.
Trump and the Republicans are promising that they will fight harder “next time”, but we have already heard that empty promise from Republicans year after year going all the way back to 2011.
Now, with control of all three branches and a president who sold himself in the primaries as the antithesis of weak-kneed Republicans who don’t know the first thing about tough negotiations, we are in the exact same position. Last night, President Trump signaled that, after not even fighting on refugee resettlement and Planned Parenthood, he would cave on the final budget issue – the funding of the border fence. But fear not, he’ll resume his demand … the next time!
This degree of capitulation, with control of all three branches, is impressing even me … and I had low expectations of this president and this party. They have managed to get run over by a parked car. It’s truly breathtaking to contrast the performance of Democrats in the spring of 2009 with what Republicans have done today with all three branches. At this time in 2009, Democrats passed the bailouts, the stimulus, the first round of financial regulations, an equal pay bill, SCHIP expansion, and laid the groundwork for other, bigger proposals, such as cap and trade and Obamacare. Then they got everything they wanted in the March 2009 omnibus bill, and a number of GOP senators voted for it. We, on the other hand, are left with nothing.
And even the mainstream media is admitting that the Democrats made out like bandits in this deal.
“Overall, the compromise resembles more of an Obama administration-era budget than a Trump one,” Bloomberg reports.
The Associated Press calls it “a lowest-common-denominator measure that won’t look too much different than the deal that could have been struck on Obama’s watch last year.”
Reuters: “While Republicans control the House, Senate and White House, Democrats scored … significant victories in the deal.”
The Los Angeles Times describes the agreement as “something of an embarrassment to the White House”: “Trump engineered the fiscal standoff shortly after he was elected, insisting late last year that Congress should fund the government for only a few months so he could put his stamp on federal spending as the new president.”
If Trump can’t get his priorities funded now, do you think that the Democrats will somehow become more agreeable after he has spent a year or two in the White House?
Of course not.
If there ever was going to be a border wall, it was going to happen now.
If Planned Parenthood was ever going to be defunded, it was going to happen now. From this moment forward, the blood of every child that Planned Parenthood kills will be on the hands of every Republican that voted for this bill or that signed this bill.
The next “big battle” is going to be over a bill to repeal and replace Obamacare, but the truth is that “Trumpcare” is going to end up looking very much like Obamacare.
Instead of repealing it, the Republicans are trying to “fix” Obamacare, and that is kind of like going to the dump and trying to “fix” a big, steaming pile of garbage.
But like I explained earlier, we should not expect things to move in a positive direction in Washington D.C. until the values of those representing us change.
At this point, there are only a few dozen members of the House and a handful of members of the Senate that even give lip service to the values of our founders.
And until our values change, we are not going to send representatives to Washington that share the values of our founders.
Sadly, most Americans know very little about the history of early America. I would encourage everyone to look into why our founders came to this country in the first place, what they believed was most important in life, and how they viewed the world.
If we ever want to “make America great again”, we need to return to those values. Otherwise, we are just blowing a lot of hot air.
