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Trillion-Dollar Coin? Insanity!

October 5, 2021 by tornado Leave a Comment

This is insanity. It’s truly come to this?…serious talk about the feasibility of minting and depositing a coin stamped “ONE TRILLION DOLLARS” to avert a debt-ceiling default? Again, insanity. Perhaps the scheme would work, technically, but it should be prevented from being necessary to even consider!

The national-debt crisis grows ever deeper as the debt vs. GDP swells grotesquely (even before the pandemic!), and even more importantly, interest on the debt cancerously eats up an ever-larger share of the budget, invariably crowding out needful things by slow creep (hence, the growing, already massive, silent debt crisis), and yielding a vicious cycle in which the debt can make itself worse and worse without any assistance from us. Where does this lunacy end?

Read this little primer I posted in January to better relate to our debt. This is the fruits of decades of abject, shortsighted failure of the Republicrat duopoly to rein in their entirely undisciplined fiscal practices with our tax dollars, and instead pander to their ever-bloated lobbies and bases (mainly different entitlements favored by the Ds and Rs, and war spending by both parties).

Don’t dare blame just one party. Democrat presidents with Republican Congresses, Republican Presidents with Democrat Congresses, either with mixed Congresses, either with their own party effectively controlling both chambers (as now)…it hasn’t mattered. The national debt has grown, factually and demonstrably, for decades, under every permutation of those — every single one. Even with record- to near-record-low interest rates, so has the percentage of the budget devoted to debt interest.

What if interest rates double, or worse, approach levels of the early ’80s? That accelerates the vicious cycle much faster than any current projections, introducing upward nonlinear growth of our debt, even with small yearly deficits (which aren’t happening).

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Plotted by PGPF from public-domain CBO data.

These Republicrats will drive us straight to economic ruin through their base-pandering shortsightedness and hapless ignorance of the greatest economic crisis our nation ever will face, staring us right in the face. And it’s not just the extremes of D and R either; the so-called “moderates” are ignoring it too. Only a very few outliers (e.g., Justin Amash, Ron then Rand Paul) ever bring serious attention to the debt, and they get swamped in a tsunami of everyone else’s drunken-like spree of profligacy.

Republicrats in Congress have shown they simply won’t behave themselves as they’re supposed to — adults managing a budget — refuse to control federal net spending to zero-deficit yearly levels, and certainly won’t bring about budget surpluses needed to draw down the debt. They’re not going to force themselves to balance the budget. Therefore, they need to be forced to do so externally, by The People.

The only way I see out of this is for an Article 5 Constitutional Convention of States to go around these spineless fiscal children in Congress and enact a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution, which would force Congress to balance the budget yearly. This at least would stop the debt-growth bleeding via ending yearly deficits. [While we’re at it, enact a Congressional term-limits amendment as well.]

Worried about wars or pandemics under a BBA?

From the PPGF:

Most amendment proposals go further than requiring a balanced budget or budget surpluses. Some of the most frequent additional elements are:
* A requirement that the President submit a balanced budget to the Congress;
* Provisions that allow some flexibility in times of war or economic recession provided that a supermajority (typically three-fifths) of the members of the Congress vote in favor of a waiver;
* A provision requiring a supermajority vote of both houses of Congress in order to raise the debt ceiling;
* A cap on total spending (as a percentage of gross domestic product or GDP) unless waived by a supermajority of both houses;
* A limit on the total level of revenues (as a percentage of GDP) unless waived by a supermajority of both houses; * A provision to prevent the courts from enforcing the amendment through tax increases;
* A provision assigning the Congress the responsibility to enforce the amendment through legislation.


Some of these (especially the last item) would water it down to something near uselessness. Others, such as a declared-war provision, might be beneficial in that it would, in effect, enforce what’s already in the Constitution: making sure all wars are formally declared, or they can’t count as BBA exceptions.


A balanced budget needs to be forced on Congress, because it will not come from Congress. Otherwise…disaster! Maybe not this year or next, but in the lifetimes of our children (and maybe us middle-aged people too).

Filed Under: Not weather Tagged With: budget deficit, Congress, debt, Democrats, duopoly, economic policy, economics, economy, federal debt, national debt, Republicans

Phooey on Political Parties

June 30, 2016 by tornado Leave a Comment

Recently this text-meme appeared on the social-media feed of a longtime friend, who also is a consistent, sturdy and respectable conservative.

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While I agree with this statement, per se, it can be (and based on comments, often is) misinterpreted as pro-Republican. Instead it only lays down the truth about one half of the problem with political parties today.

Most of us who have decided not to play this binary, lesser-of-two-evils game anymore, can see the forest from the trees and clearly understand that BOTH parties have abandoned American exceptionalism, rugged independence, national sovereignty, wholesome family values, and the Constitution. Both treat the Constitution as optional and interpretive instead of as its own literal words read, the founding law of the land, changeable not by interpretation but only by amendment. Republicans too have been guilty of this, capitulating meekly to amoral social leftism and anti-Constitutional ideals such as “free trade”, globalism, unfettered immigration, and domestic spying via CIA and NSA. They have pandered to conservatism in primaries only to go to Washington and turn into a gaggle of center-left slugs who conspire with the Democrats to bloat the national debt, and who and put far more effort into theatrics than accomplishment.

That said, the Ds have gone much, much, much farther askew. They have become dominated by radically far-left lunacy unimaginable 20-30 years ago, and are veering so deeply into the weeds as to be absolutely unrecognizable to those (mostly before my time, sadly) who recall when such a thing as dignified statesmen actually existed in that party. To wit: John Kennedy’s taxation and military principles would be considered “Tea Party” today, and his opinion on so-called “gay marriage” was…what, exactly? I challenge anyone to look it up and tell me. I’d love to go back in a time machine and ask him. The answer likely would shock the sycophants who worship the false god of the rainbow flag.

Democrats? Republicans? Traitorous, one-world puppets and two-faced purveyors of slime, they both have become.

How befitting, really, that a noisy, unhinged, false-conservative opportunist like Trump has taken the Republican Party over from a bunch of weak, spineless, corporatist, bailout-pushing RINO sellouts. Meanwhile the Democrat Party (also decidely corporatist, free-trade puppets of big money…Bernie was right about just that one thing) has been conquered virally by a mass orgy of moral rot and corrupt “leadership” the likes of which only Satan himself can be credited with influence. That is a combination sure to doom this nation for ever and ever, without sure and speedy intervention.

At least 95% of them all should be exported to a faraway island and never allowed back.

Regardless of your inclinations–conservative, liberal, libertarian or some blend of the three, vote third party this cycle–and work to end political parties altogether. Political parties are corrupt, insular, lobbyist- and corporation-controlled bastions of greed and payoffs, and are malignant tumors destroying this country. As they are not enumerated in the literal words of the Constitution as a functional part of governance; national political parties are unconstitutional.

All national elections should be nonpartisan, with only names on the ballots. This way votes are cast solely on the stated positions of candidates, and we can work toward what we should have had from the start: a positional, issues-based meritocracy, instead of an executive and legislative branch controlled by distant, detached, elitist, globalist, “we know what’s best for you” arrogance, wolves in sheeps’ clothing, offering partisan machine politics where Democrat and Republican are distinguishable only by conveniently divisive hot-button issues.

Filed Under: Not weather Tagged With: Bernie Sanders, conservative, Democratic Party, Democrats, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, John F. Kennedy, leftism, liberal, Republican Party, Republicans, RINO

Brexit: Calm Down, Knee-Jerk Reactionary Fools!

June 27, 2016 by tornado Leave a Comment

Several days ago, a majority of the British people, in a fair and open democratic referendum, and with a margin comparable to the Obama-Romney election here, voted to pull out of the bureaucratic and regulatory quagmire known as the European Union.

I’m not going to pretend to be any sort of expert on the logistic or economic details of the “Brexit” maneuver. Yet I guarantee I’ve read more about it than 95% of the instant-experts on social media, who had no clue about it a month in advance, yet somehow grossly overestimate the meaningfulness of their day-after knee-jerk thoughts thereabout. All I can do is draw some parallels to tendencies I see every day in the news and in the society here, and draw upon experts I do read, most from the homeland of our former colonial overlords.

Brexit, in many ways, was inevitable. Ivory-tower left-wingers on this side of the pond have been casting the vote as “xenophobia” (example). Bullshit. American leftist Bill Maher, of all people, countered nicely: Is it really a phobia if you really have something to be afraid of?

Or, as Ian Tuttle put it: “They are unable to believe they may be wrong, so their opponents must be irrational bigots.” “Bigot”, of course, is a common, hackneyed, petty, laughable, increasingly meaningless, ad hominem slur, arising from the insular catacombs of a leftism that acts so self-congratulatory when some election result does go their way. No, xenophobia had nothing important to do with it. Instead, authentic, real-world concerns of real people did.

In addition to immigration, and likely more importantly, the issue of globalism was at play. The opposite of anti-globalism is not “xenophobia”. The latter simply is a convenient and patronizing pejorative used by the economic, bureaucratic and (pseudo-)intellectual elite for those they perceive as ignorant, drooling rubes. This is done to elicit head nods from the agreeable fellow members of the herd, as I’ve seen commonly on social media.

Go the globalists: “Clap clap clap…yes they’re xenophobes, clap clap clap, yes they’re xenophobes! Thank you sir, shall we pander to one another some more, and continue with our patronizing, elitist puffery…”

Instead the opposite of globalism is more properly termed sovereignty. Boris Johnson, who actually is English and is immersed in this issue deeply, elucidates this well, as he assures us all from within that the U.K. still is part of Europe, and isn’t going to collapse into a smoldering heap of ashes.

The reasoned people who supported this (yes, they exist!) cast a vote substantially for sovereignty, or if you prefer, against the slow-creep toward one-world governance. And yes, there were young voters who voted for this also; this fact is being swept under the rug. Minority or not, they clearly matter(ed). And yes, there were highly educated people who voted for this; that also is being conveniently ignored. I have read a few of their well-reasoned essays. But if one wants to take the easy road and label this “xenophobia”, it’s apparent the proletariat aren’t the ignorant ones.

Yet for expressing this layered, textured idea, I’ve been labeled “absolutist”. Hardly! Indeed, to dig deeper than that is the farthest from “absolutist”–but instead peels into layers of the onion that aren’t so readily apparent.

One of these is the supposed “regret” bloc that is receiving attention far out of proportion to its size of assorted well-publicized individuals. This is so short-sighted and irrational. If you’re going to vote one way and second-guess that the next day, you should have studied the issue better, or stayed home. Your vote is your word…too late now, grasshopper. That passionate one-night stand is done and you must live with your decision. Such is the case in any election in any nation.

Two days is much too short of a time to determine ramifications. The meaningful consequences of this vote, for better or worse, will unfold over 5-10 years. Rantings of pundits this soon thereafter are worthless drivel (it’s way, way, way too soon!)–much akin to NFL draft-grading before the players have even reported to training camp. That (including the aforementioned buyer’s remorse reactions) is itself reactionary, emotional, shortsighted.

Whither the shock and rage over losing value in the equities and monetary exchange markets? That is a very overstated, short-fused gnat fart when you graph it versus the past seven years’ bull market; if we do happen to go to into bear mode soon, factors far larger, deeper and darker than Brexit will be responsible.

Brexit is a sign simply and foremost of working-class disillusionment with an inertial and bloated bureaucratic establishment, globalist trade policy, unfettered immigration at the expense of domestic jobs and security, and loss of both economic and sociopolitical national sovereignty. It’s very loosely similar to some sentiments behind the Trump phenomenon here–but not necessarily in the way you might think at first.

Instead, it’s a manifestation of democracy as it should work: enough people get sick and tired of what those in power are doing and want to go a different way. Personally I wish that “way” in the U.S., were a truly intelligent leader like Rand Paul or Ted Cruz, and not a conceited, false-conservative buffoon like Trump, who is driving me even farther out of the Republican Party than the reprehensible “RINO” establishment in DC did. But for all his flaws, he (along with the authentically principled, if misguided, Bernie Sanders) has figured out one thing: there is a lot of discontent with the “way things are” out there and an intense desire to knock it down and start over.

In the U.K., the people had their vote. Agree with it or not, we should respect it. Or as more than one Obama voter obnoxiously and pompously stated after 2008: “Deal with it”.

As for the anti-establishment sentiment here, I refuse to support a candidate entirely devoid of integrity, whether “establishment” (HRC) or pretending to be anti-establishment (Trump). I will not play that binary-choice game anymore. Hillary and Bill Clinton (and they are a package deal, remember) are classic corporate-globalist tools (not to mention corrupt as hell), and Trump is simply deranged. Neither gives a whit about the Constitution in full; either would ratchet domestic spying and Constitutional evasion to new levels. I’ll be voting third-party; hence, don’t blame me for whatever happens when either of those two egomaniacal head cases attains the presidency.

Filed Under: Not weather Tagged With: arrogance, Bill Clinton, Brexit, bureaucracy, Clinton, Donald Trump, economics, economy, elitism, England, establishment, European Union, globalism, Great Britain, Hillary Clinton, immigration, nationalism, one-world governance, Republicans, sovereignty, trade, Trump, xenophobia

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