Steve: It’s my pleasure to introduce “Katalyst,” using a pseudonym until we’re out of the woods of censorship and reprisal. Kat will be providing news and views that katalyzes our appreciation of the New Paradigm. I’m glad to have her support and viewpoint.
Katalyst: The political theater going on in the debt debate is evident but I couldn’t resist posting another gem of support for the President from the Daily Kos. I’ve always said those detractors of the President would do well to remember the story of “The Tortoise and the Hare”.
The Hare that tricked the Bear
Dr. Phillips, Daily Kos, Aug. 1, 2011
https://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/08/01/1001630/-The-Hare-that-tricked-the-Bear:-My-take-on-the-debt-dea
I’m reminded of an old children’s book that was a favorite of mine, called “Tops and Bottoms”. In that book, the rich and lazy bear wants the hare to do all the heavy lifting in exchange for all of the crops. The hare is clever enough to trick the bear into agreeing to take the scraps of the vegetables, while the hare takes the good parts, sometimes being the tops, the other times being the bottoms.
The point of my analogy is this, the GOP thinks they are getting something, but in reality they are only getting something that is rather hollow. I don’t consider any of what they got to be much of a win and I think the President did protect the people in this. I know that many may not agree to this and I may be wrong about what the deal does, but I feel that I am correct about this.
I am not thrilled with the debt deal either, it is far from ideal, but the good thing is, it makes no promises or guarantees and Social Security, Medicaid and Veteran’s benefits are secure. All that is given is a promise of a committee to look at cuts, defense spending being one of them, which is something that would be a good thing, but still, it’s only just a promise to look at cuts. And then there’s the promise of a vote on the balanced-budget amendment, which will go nowhere, because constitutional amendments are very difficult to get passed. There is the issue of revenue, but that can be handled when the fight comes up and, to be honest, that was going to be a fight regardless of how this deal shook out.
I supported the 14th amendment solution, but it didn’t happen. On the flip side, this deal could have been worse, as unilateral cuts could have been agreed to straightforward. From my point of view, the President got the guarantees and the GOP got the maybes. The debt ceiling will be raised, key programs are protected and if the GOP votes down the deal, they look even more like the game players that they really are. The automatic cuts if a deal isn’t reached by the committee is a difficult point of the deal, but in my opinion, I think things like this are all just nominal at the end of the day and won’t really happen. That’s just what I think. And on top of that, all of it is pushed to after the election, which is pretty cleaver.
I realize it can be frustrating, but getting angry isn’t the solution. What we need to do now is step up and make sure that we are ready to oppose negative cuts and tax cuts for the rich, make our opinions known. This may sound trivial, but if all of use would sit down and write well composed letters of opposition to the President over cuts to entitlements and tax cuts for the top 1%. We also need to demand that the President take a harder line with the opposition over jobs, the GOP ran on creating jobs and hasn’t made a single proposal on how to do that yet.
Calling them on the carpet on this issue is what he needs to have been doing for months, but he hasn’t. To paraphrase Harriet Harman (former interim leader of the British Labour Party) speaking of the Liberal Democrats, the GOP wants to be in government, but hang on to the trappings of opposition. That cannot be allowed, they must be held accountable and responsible for fixing the economy that they helped to ruin. We haven’t lost anything at this point, but we have to stay focused and not get bogged down in frustration and anger. Channel your energy into the positive.
Lastly, there is no guarantee that the deal will pass, so we may end up getting something better. The GOP may think they won, but they haven’t won jack.