During the less than blissful early days of my first marriage, (unfortunately, a list that can be said to have numerous entries,) I would come home from work on certain days to find my young bride sitting in our apartment’s small living room with what appeared to be at first glance, about a dozen shopping bags. These bags would invariably have hempen handles and be made of that sturdier form of paper that was pretty close to corrugated cardboard in quality. The bags served two purposes. First, they served to help transport the contents from store to home and let everyone who saw them know that the store who provided the shopper with such happiness was where the purchases were made. The second and more subtle purpose was to let the entire world know that the prices exacted for the contents of those bags resided in a region somewhat North of the prices exacted at one’s local Wal-Mart. Her admittedly cute brown eyes would look up at me each and every time, while she made the same statement, “you’ll never guess how much I saved you at Hudson’s today.”
Welcome to the world of spin. Those shoes, that anyone with two functioning grey cells would have to have recognized as not only being unnecessary, but also soon to be abandoned, were supposed to be viewed by me as some sort of bargain that could not be passed up. They were half off you see, which means that we saved half of the price listed, and only paid the price exacted. I was too insistent on concentrating on the latter number for her tastes, and anger ensued when she wanted credit for the, “budget savings,” from the full price listed with only half being paid. Our car you see needed repairs, or groceries needed to be purchased, or heat paid, or savings invested for those golden years far off in an unseen future.
I told you that story so that you would understand this latest gem, in its proper context. Recently I heard the President, during his latest campaign tour, which has been termed a, “charm offensive?” convincing us of his bipartisan bona fides, make this statement.
I’ve already cut $2.5 Trillion in spending from the budget over the next 10 years.
We’ve gone over this nefarious ground before, you and I. It is that bit of Legislative Kabuki Theater known as Baseline Budgeting, and ridding ourselves of it should definitely be the first order of business once sane people start winning elections again in sufficient numbers. You would have to be from some woozy Unicorn Infested alternate dream Universe to believe that anything this President has done or advocated can in any way be termed, a spending cut.
In 2008, the last year that George W. Bush was our President, he presided over an amount of spending that was admittedly alarming in both size and scope. His deficits, (which during his last two years in office were partly the doing of a Nancy Pelosi led House and a Harry Reid led Senate,) rang all sorts of bells at the astronomically absurd number of $450 Billion. (I say partly, because they still required the man’s signature in order to become law.) Today, those $450 Billion deficits would be a welcome change of pace, since Barack Obama’s promise to, “cut them in half,” came with the usual Obama Promise Expiration Date, which is about 5 whole minutes after he’s left what ever stage he was on at the time. Our deficits are now North of $1.4 Trillion, and will automatically grow at a staggering 8% per year according to the baseline law. Any growth less than that 8% is, as a matter of the magical baseline law, now labeled a cut in spending. It should also be noted that President Obama as of now, has not yet signed his name to a budget, as is Constitutionally required. Perhaps, and I’m just spit balling here, this is part of the problem.
A new demographic in American society has been identified this year, and it has been given credit for the election of our current President. That demographic has been labeled, and appropriately so by the way, as the low information voter. That group of people who vote in our national elections, helping to decide our collective fate as it were, without bothering to familiarize themselves with trite little things such as actual policy positions, basic economics, foreign policy beliefs, or even the cursory perusal of a candidate’s resume. I’ve talked to these people plenty over the last 5 years, and one thing is certain, they were all Obama voters, and proud of their choice. The astounding thing for me is this, many of them were well aware of the fact that they were low information voters, and just plainly felt that the banality of the Obama campaign and the endless stream of mindless platitudes emanating from that high tech internet driven cult group known as OFA, (Organizing For America,) would somehow translate into real world results that would match the dream and not the nightmare.
Hopety Change has led to some real world disaster. Unemployment has been reported as having ticked down, but only the economically illiterate believe that fairy tale being told by the Solis Labor Department. The Labor Force Participation Rate is the lowest since just prior to World War II, a period of time commonly referred to as, “The Great Depression.” Per Capita Income has dropped each and every year of the Obama Presidency, and every single commodity requires more of our devalued dollars to purchase on a world market that has clearly not been fooled by the single greatest currency manipulation in world history. Our President’s goal, clearly is to follow this path, knowing full well that the ramifications of such an action will mean tremendous economic hardship for Millions of Americans. At the same time that he is doing what ever he can to destroy our nation, he is telling those irresponsible minions who make up the low information voter demographic, (unfortunately one of the largest American demographics,) that he has indeed seen to the greatest spending cut of any President in American history.
Please for the love of God America, buy one of those $1.00 calculators that are available in dollar stores all around this great nation and perform some simple math. You don’t cut spending by increasing the amount on the checks you write from $2.5 Trillion to $3.8 Trillion. That, at least to people not operating in the Unicorn filled world of the baseline scam, is what is termed a spending increase.
