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Severe Outflow by R. Edwards

National Debt: Not Just a “Problem” — A Crisis

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Interest Paid by Federal Government

Here is a chart (click to enlarge!), tracking interest paid by the government on the national debt, since 1990. This fraction of the federal budget also is growing. That’s because the national debt is getting bigger. For other purposes, it may, but for this, it really doesn’t matter which supposed “side” of the debt-bloating duopoly you prefer. Administrations (purple, my addition) and Congresses of both parties have been in place during debt-growth periods, and therefore, increases in interest payments.

Ignore and/or mock those who claim the national debt is not a problem. They are naive, unknowing, shallow, woefully and likely willfully ignorant of basic economics, and are not to be taken seriously.

Why federal debt not just a problem…but a crisis? Among a vast many other things, the proportion of the budget taken up by interest payment balloons, all other aspects get crowded out. As the fraction of the budget that goes to interest gets larger, less and less money will be left over for every other Federal budget aspect. Hard choices must be made. Austerity must be undertaken. That ultimately includes your favorite budget programs, and mine.

Austerity doesn’t win votes, so the can keeps getting kicked, money keeps being printed, inflationary times raise interest rates, the national debt grows larger (raising interest payments even when rates stay the same or fall), and this budget parasite swells up still further.

It’s a vicious cycle that media is almost wholly ignoring. It’s not sexy. It doesn’t involve Hollywood celebrities, British royalty, the “transgender” fad, prosecution of politicians, failure to prosecute politicians, famous pro athletes, whiny Tik Tok influencers, or other titillating clickbait that passes for “journalism” now. And it’s over 30 trillion times more important than all that put together.

The time will come, maybe in my lifetime but certainly in my children’s, when:
* Republicans’ favorite spending targets — military programs, home-district pork, the secret state, endless overseas wars — get crowded out of the budget by debt interest. Then what?
* Democrats’ favorite spending targets — social-entitlement programs, home-district pork, the secret state, endless overseas wars — get crowded out of the budget by debt interest. Then what?
* Bipartisan-supported beneficial and popular functions of government that take up very small budget fractions — air-traffic control, meat inspections, railroad safety, natural-disaster response, national parks, and yes, dangerous-weather forecasting — get crowded out of the budget by debt interest. Then what?
* We cannot afford even basic defense of the nation from foreign attack or takeover. Then what (besides the need to learn Mandarin)?

Those times are coming. Maybe in two decades, maybe in five. When they do, however, and the government no longer can afford to fulfill whatever you think or the Constitution directly mandates is its function, this republic is lost, forever.

I used to wonder why the end-times prophecies of Revelation never mentioned nor even hinted at an overseas superpower akin to what the U.S. has been, far from the Middle East. Between our own malignant moral and cultural decrepitude, and the upcoming fiscal implosion of debt-interest dominance of the budget that self-destroys the nation as anything relevant or powerful on the world stage, now I know.

There are solutions — painful, sacrificial, all-encompassing ones that yes, involve intense austerity — but as long as politicians pander to their bases and want votes, and the populace/lemmings don’t question things in a critical mass big enough to matter, we’ll keep marching toward the cliffs in ignorance of the fall that awaits.

Pray for your children and grandchildren. Even without an asteroid, no matter what happens with climate, regardless of anything going on abroad: tough times are on the way, the likes of which this nation has never experienced.

Active Repression of Journalism by U.S. Federal Officials

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U.S. authorities under the last three presidents have wanted to extradite freelance reporter Julian Assange, currently held without cause in a British prison, to face U.S. prison for practicing journalism. The domestic-spying deep state hacked into the computer of longtime reporter Sharyl Attkisson during the Obama administration. More recently, using warrants signed by puppet judges, Federal thugs raided the homes of several Project Veritas investigative reporters, including its founder, James O’Keefe, over a supposedly “stolen” diary belonging to Joe Biden’s daughter that Veritas gave back without disclosure.

The common pretext between O’Keefe and Assange? The suits and ties in DC unilaterally have decided those being targeted with these tyrannical tactics are not journalists.

What? That’s not the government’s call to make. Journalism is not supposed to be subject to Federal gatekeeping in a supposedly free society. The Constitution not only provides no Federal authority over news reporting of any sort, by any means, but expressly forbids its interference therein!

When a government nominally bound by Constitutional law of press freedom simply can declare the people it is persecuting “aren’t journalists”, and get away with that, they can come after anyone for reporting anything. Then there is no freedom of the press; the Constitution is no longer an ideal, but just another meaningless piece of paper that some long-dead dudes scribbled stuff on, hundreds of years ago. Moreover, “journalism” becomes a governmentally prescribed caste system of dictated exclusivity, rendering all approved “journalists” as de facto stenographers for the regime.

Governmental Dependency as a Toxic Relationship

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When it comes to logistics and preparedness, the mode of thinking needs to be logic and reason — not emotion. Pretend you’re an interstellar alien, we’ll call him Spock (or her Spockette, if you want to be equal opportunity), evaluating our relationship with central Federal bureaucracy from outer space.

Two pertinent points: First, when an entity has failed, over and over and over, to accomplish goals timely and accurately, is it logical to keep depending upon it, or to demand from it what it has repeatedly foot-dragged and failed to deliver? Spock(ette) says: No. Highly illogical.

What is that entity? Distant, detached, massive, red-tape-ridden, impersonal, faceless Federal bureaucracy. I’m speaking of the whole entity, as a large, bloated mass, not individual right-minded people inside it who are trying to improve things, mostly in futility.

Epidemiologists have been warning of a pandemic like the one ongoing, for over a quarter of a century. Yet through multiple D and R presidencies, multiple D, R and split Congresses, this is the result. Blaming only the current people (while they deserve just the latest few years’ share of it) is purely partisan, shortsighted, ignorant of history, and emotional — not logical, not reasoned.

This scenario has been warned about for DECADES, with only token, window-dressing action. Such longstanding foot-dragging in preparation for what has been an inevitable pandemic is just one example of such lack of foresight and attention to low-probability (in any one year), high-impact events that will happen some year. This is such a year.

Those who expertly predicted it for the last few decades have every right to say, “I told you so, why didn’t you listen to me and prepare?” And they are entirely reasoned and logical in asking such a question. Spock(ette) would approve.

This is why foreseers and visionaries get disillusioned: government bureaucracy — too debt-ridden and bloated from generations of exceeding its literal Constitutional authority in many areas — is too focused on the here and now and the pork-barrel pandering that doesn’t lend itself to accommodating accurate expert farsightedness. This is objectively demonstrable in the lack of preparedness in numerous crises — not just this coronavirus. And when it comes to logic and reason, objective evaluation is what matters.

Is it logical to expect quick deployments and resolutions when, as only a mild exaggeration, it takes 37 layers of approvals and nine months to unlock a door latch? Spock(ette) says: no. Highly illogical. We see it over, and over, and over, from slow hurricane response, to days/weeks wait for Federal deployment on wildfires, to the CDC bungling of this virus disaster, to weekly politicization of nonpartisan issues.

Yet I see so many people demanding more involvement of the very same thing that keeps failing, over and over and over: Federal “help”! That’s not only illogical, but irrational, unhealthy, toxic! And also: Sisyphean.

Second: Disasters really are local. This is because individuals are affected.

States (especially for their resource/economically poor rural areas) and major cities need to learn to prepare as if they essentially will get zero help from above in a timely way. Quite often, after all, that’s the brutally honest truth. This way, if help does arrive, it’s a bonus, a relief.

Dependency on big, inefficient, untimely, unreliable Washington is really a form of unhealthy codependency — akin to a neglectful, often gaslighting, sometimes abusive personal relationship, but wrought on a broad scale.

Think about this, please. Relate to it. Would you tell your friend in such a relationship to stay the course, stick it out, trust the abuser/neglector will somehow, someday reform? If you have been in such a relationship personally, you will get what I’m saying. Why encourage such relationships of cities, counties and states with Washington, who has and will let them down, gaslight, neglect, attach strings, token-“help”, or even trample them as often as fully assist?

Abusive relationships don’t just arise from individuals, but also…see encircled. The question isn’t which of these federal government has done at some point or another, but which it hasn’t! It’s not hard to find historic examples of every pie piece above.

If you still don’t understand the concept of betrayal by centralized DC bureaucracy, and how systemically destructive that can be, ask our native American Indian tribes.

Exactly as we correctly advise friends in toxic relationships, states and cities need to learn to get out of that bad relationship with Washington and go it on their own, with years to decades of advanced planning for every sort of disaster that could befall them. Spock(ette) would see this through the lens of history and say, “That’s imminently logical.”