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Deficit Reduction Plan Takes from Poor and middle class to reward the wealthy

It is an unfortunate truth that a sizable number of African Americans are seemingly more interested in whether T.I is going to prison again, or Mike Vick’s great performance against the Washington Redskins, or in Tyler Perry’s brutal dissection of Ntozake Shange’s play, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf, than they are in the economy. President Obama’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform revealed a recent plan to reduce the national deficit. Unlike most people, I have just finished reading the proposal and the way I read it, the deficit is the least of its targets when compared to cutting taxes for the ultra wealthy.

The guiding principle of the proposal is not to reduce the deficit, but rather to establish an upper limit on revenue — not lower. The obvious point agreed upon by the Democrats, Republicans and other members of the commission is tax cuts for the rich.

Case in point, the proposed tax cuts obviate mortgage interest and health benefits deductibles — things that the middle class and lower economic groups depend on. Yet, all gained from these tax cuts. From my reading and interpretation the tax cuts will be used to reduce the top marginal and corporate tax rates. So, in essence the breaks that regular folks receive will currently result in larger breaks for the wealthy, who do not need them. Don’t get me wrong, I am not a socialist, but rather a pragmatist who understands basic math.

Another example is the proposed increase in the retirement age for Social Security. The commission has suggested that the age to be eligible to receive social security be raised to 69, in line with the increase in life expectancy of U.S. citizens. The problem is that most Americans do not have jobs where they sit on their ‘azzez’ all day. Not to mention that African Americans and minorities, for example, have a life expectancy less than the current age for retirement under Social Security. Which, in turn, means that to expect someone to work more years labor-intensive job than somebody like a politician, who sits on their butt behind a desk, is just foul! The truth is that the rich and wealthy live longer and they don’t need Social Security for a safety net.

No way in the world is the work of a garbage man, teacher, janitor or day laborer as easy as an executive, banker or Wall Street lawyer.

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A Tale of 2 Quaterbacks

As you read this, especially if you are a fan of football, you may be still marveling at the gridiron feat composed by one Michael Vick of the Philadelphia Eagles against the Washington Redskins. It was indeed a work of art comparable to Tchaikovsky’s Overture of 1812, Prince playing each of the 16 instruments used to make his first album at age 16 or martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter From a Birmingham Jail. His six touchdown sonata included 300 yards in the air and an astonishing five touchdown drives in a row to begin the game.

Unfortunately, as opposed to pronouncing this historical accomplishment on its own merits, the America I live in as expressed via commentary, prefers to couple this even with his past of dog fighting and incarceration (that serviced his criminal debt) albeit more than two years past. I find this strange and have asked the question why this is so? Yes, Vick did commit a crime and he also paid for it, but in comparison, Pittsburg Steelers’ Quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, seems to have been given a pass although his iniquities have occurred during the current year and are recurrent. I did not hear one mention of his problem behaviors during the Steelers beat down by New England this past Sunday Night. But for Vick, it is a continuous theme.

I suspect that the main reason why Vick is always discussed with his past and Roethlisberger is not, is rooted in the fabric of American history. In America, African descendents have always been considered less than white people and even equated to livestock in the US constitution. Consequently, dogs were regarded in higher esteem by whites than slaves or the African Americans trough the times of Jim Crow up until the civil rights movement – maybe this is why dogs were released on protesters during that period. Thus it would not be unreasonable to assert that Mike Vick and what he represents humanly is not as important or valuable as a dog to many. Likewise, that it is more heinous to fight and kill a dog than molest, assault or have forcible sex with women- in particular under-aged college girls, with GBI documented bodily fluids of her alleged attacker.

Now I may be wrong but my recollection of history is not. America has always saluted rapist, drug addicts and other sultry types if they were of European descent. Thomas Jefferson (who raped his slaves), Rush Limbaugh (drug addict), Andrew Jackson (Indian killer) and now Ben Roethlisberger.


I guess it is easier for folks to speak about redemption and forgiveness than it actually is to do such. Folk just need to get off Vick’s phallus, but I know they will not, for they do not desire to see him as the MVP and in their mind he will always be behind Tom Brady, Matt Ryan and even Ben Roethlisberger; for he will never have blond hair or blue eyes.

GOP More Concerned With Obama than China Passing US

Since the Democratic party took an old-fashioned butt whipping from the GOP during the midterm elections, one can only assume that their “just say no” mantra and incessant attacks on President Obama and his administration will not only continue, but might even accelerate and become more pointed.

As a result, we should all be on guard for the Republican-dominated Congress, along with the assistance of Fox news and other right-wing extremist groups, to ask for investigations into the fledgling Obama administration. If this speculation is true, then there are several areas for certain that the GOP will likely target over the next few years.

First, based on what has already transpired over the past two years, it is clear that Representatives Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and Lamar Smith R-Texas, will likely lead the charge. Both have been attacking the Obama administration since day one through often strange and bizarre press releases. Now after this past Tuesday, the actually have some pull, since they will most probably become the chairs of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and the House Judiciary Committee, respectively. And what does this mean; it means that they now have the power to subpoena presidential staff and appointees. But what will they investigate?

Well, based on all of the attention Attorney General Eric Holder received for not investigating the New Black Panther Party, one should expect to see a monumental government waste of money on this. The Obama administration decided to limit the scope of the civil case and the Department of Justice was strongly criticized by the GOP for dropping the case against some of the members of the party. Then there will also be some interest in how the administration dealt with the BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Issa has made it clear that he had some major issues with how the president handled the natural disaster, stating that the Obama was more concerned about his image than the oil spill.

Whatever happens, it will be very interesting. It won’t be a surprise if they decide to hold hearings on his religious beliefs or whether he was truly born in America. So the question is, how long will it take for the Republican-led House to start investigating the Obama administration?


If they do, it will show me just how stupid the GOP and worse, how much they hate America. For if they were competent and loved this great country, they would focus on the nation and not politics. It is as if they cannot see how China is running around us like the Roadrunner. China has the world's longest network of high-speed rail, giving China more high-speed rail tracks than the rest of the world put together. But Republicans don’t see this and say stupid things like they do not want high speed rail. That is what the Governors-elect of Wisconsin (Scott Walker) and Ohio (John Kasich) said during their campaigns. This has also been a point made by Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., the committee's ranking GOP member, who said that he believes high-speed trains are a good idea, doesn’t agree with the projects selected by the Transportation Department for funding. Other idiots include New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and Florida, Governor-elect Rick Scott.

Republicans have shown they are the party of no, but now they are the party of China, doing all they can to make certain the pass us by as number one in the world as soon as they can.

There is a hole in the economy

It gets me as to how folks can propound on the esoteric meaning of nothing in the world of economics. Especially here in America, were we hear how to solve problems with solutions that do neither have method nor definition. All reminds me of an Island song I would hear harry Belafonte sing when I was a child growing up, “There's a hole in the bucket dear Liza, dear Liza.” If ever was there a need of a song to be remixed, it should be this one and the word bucket should be replaced with economy.

What is their not to see? It seems that politicians, albeit not very good in math as most Americans, want to make this a complex issue and act as if the solutions are massive and difficult – for lack of a better phrase, as if we are talking about Calculus or differential equations. Unfortunately it is not that complex and really a function of basic, simple, remedial math – adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing.

The simple truth is that the way we are going economically is unsustainable. We are borrowing as a nation more than one-third of what we spend. I mean, let me put it another way. We as a nation, the United States, are spending $3 for every $2 we are bringing in the form of GDP.

It is also infelicitous that our political leaders know this and don’t or won’t tell us or worse, they do not know or understand the rusticism of the situation at hand themselves. For if they did they would do something and stop pointing fingers at each other. If they do not, you can best believe that the global capital markets will do it for us and like at the G20, we will not be in a position to do anything about it. We see what has happened in London, with students marching against the conservative political leadership, or last year in Greece with protesters in the streets or even this year in France. Don’t sleep it can happen here also.

But what is more troubling and scary to me is that if the Government, regardless of political affiliation does not see on the horizon what I fear, and that is a collapse in the bond market. I mean if the US is a company, with a massive debt problem plus $12 trillion and counting, with all these nations like China holdings of dollar-denominated short-term U.S. securities, including Treasury bills, and other custody liabilities, and the feds drop $600 billion into circulation, the value of the dollar may drop.

If this happens then it would not surprise me if foreign governments no longer want long-term US debt and will dump all the bonds on the markets if interest rates rise from current lows. This is not as farfetched as one may think given what has just occurred in Ireland and soon maybe in Portugal.

Politicians, there is a hole in the bucket. We have a sovereign debt crisis and all yawl do is point fingers at each other. We see that neither the Bush Tax Cuts, nor Obama’s massive spending have not worked. Regardless, something needs to be done now before it is too late, and it must entail at looking at entire projects and not bits and pieces. For inaction, may take our jobless rate up like Greece while they are trying to tackle their deficit. Maybe we could learn something from the difficulty they face now trying to restore fiscal soundness to their economic policy – naw, that would be too simple, instead we pass the buck, a borrowed buck at that,.

Constipated Now Nows

While many of us continue our habitual over zealous consumption of stuff and things of no real economic value, two events have occurred since the November mid-term election that may be of critical economic importance regarding the future of America, three if one includes the proposal presented this week by President Obama’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.

The first was the announcement by the U.S. Federal Reserve this week of $600 billion of extra money being put in the economy. Specifically they will use the loot created out of thin air and computer virtual reality to buy $600 billion of long-term Treasury bonds (about $75 billion a month) through March 2011. They call this “quantitative easing.” In theory, this can be defined as a willy nilly, hocus pocus way to promote a stronger pace of economic growth and recovery. By my math, in addition to the pronouncement made by the New York Federal Reserve Bank to reinvest maturing mortgage securities owned by the Fed in Treasury bonds, that projects to approximately $900 billion of Federal bond purchases in the next six months or almost half the loot issued to finance this year's federal deficit.

The second is the meeting of the G-20 in South Korea. We know that most of the attention during this meeting will be directed towards the global economy. Particularly, monetary and currency policy and international trade. This will be an up hill battle for the US, since most of what we see that is jacked-up economically is our fault. I mean since the time of Nixon, we as a nation encouraged all of this, when we decided to get cheap stuff abroad via Chinese, Vietnamese and Latin American labor and taking the dollar off the gold standard.

Yes, once upon a time there was a gold standard in which the monetary unit is a fixed weight of gold. This came about via the Bretton Woods agreement put in place after World War II, allowing several countries to base their exchange rates to the U.S. dollar. But like I said previously, this ended in 1971 when President Richard Nixon ended the dollar-gold peg, leading to what we have now - floating exchange rates. Even stranger is that at this time, Alan Greenspan, who arrived in Washington in 1967, as a campaign advisor to Richard Nixon, wanted to reshape the economic landscape of America via deregulate, But I digress.


The China/US relationship is a clear example of what I am trying to say. They have pegged their currency to the dollar, which keeps the value of the Yuan artificially low, thus giving them the ability to flood the US market with cheap products. The consequence was that it gave China the ability to use the dollars they earned to buy US debt, which let us live way above our incomes. Unfortunate for us, this created a trade imbalance between the two nations, growing dollar reserves in China and creating a trade surplus (just as what we see with Germany).

Chinese dollar reserves currently are estimated at about $2 trillion. If the Feds puts too much money into circulation, these reserves may be devalued. And if China isn’t happy, and their value is decreased because the dollar is reduced in strength by the Feds actions, a trade war and a worldwide recession would not be far fetched as a probably outcome. Funny thing is we complain about china keeping the value of the Yuan fixed, but the actions the US central bank is doing by flooding billions in the world market, is the same thing, only via monetary policy.

What the federal Reserve has done is to take more risk with respect to our economy, an untested risk, which could not have come at a more dangerous time globally for the US. Banks already have about $3 trillion in cash, they just are hoarding as opposed to lending or spending. Thus such actions seems to increase the risks of higher inflation sooner than latter, especially now since the places we used to get cheap labor from is outcompeting us and holding our economic growth stagnant.

Now, other wealthy nations are super critical of the US economic policy as were of theirs 30 years ago, with the clout being on their side now. Especially the German and Chinese with respect to the Feds actions and overall macroeconomic policies. I just don’t get it, what will buying bonds do to encourage job creation? We still spend too much. On December 31, 2010, the Obama stimulus package, will end and thing will really be up in the air.

I do not know what the end game will be but I can say from our actions at home and our buddies around the world. And on the real the U.S. needs to generate at least a million plus jobs annually to keep up with new workers entering the job market alone. From the actions of the G20 summit there are several things we see. First is obvious, that no one wants to be in any paper currency. This may be why a former banker at Goldman Sachs and deputy secretary of state under George H. W. Bush, suggested a return to a modified gold standard. Second, that we are not in a position to tell other nations how large of a surplus or deficit they can run. And last, Unfortunately neither individual folk or our government have learned anything from the last 6 to 10 years of economic disarray. It is very obvious that folks still think and behave the same and still have not taken responsibility and just spend as much loot as they brought in – Governments included. Foir even with this second round of “quantitative easing," Amercia sure feels constipated to me. And may require Funkadelic - Promentalshitbackwashpsychosis Enema Squad.