In The Bubble of Stupidity

The brilliant and colourful English Lit professor and occasional philosopher Marshall McLuhan presciently wrote, “Politics will eventually be replaced by imagery. The Politician will be only too happy to abdicate in favour of his image, because the image will be much more powerful than he could ever be.”

 McLuhan passed away in December of 1980, yet he seems to have had the capacity to perceive so many vacuous celebrity politicians which today fill our electoral landscape – empty vessels which float to re-election on electoral carpets of wishful thinking and ignorance. With an uninquisitive media abstaining from accurate reporting, the misinformed public remains in the dark.

No-where is that ignorance of “imagery” politicians in more glorious display than on all matters economic. Politicians may not hold forth on brain surgery or Mars landings, but they certainly expound profusely on the economy and its forces.  This week we were treated to a rather typical display of incomprehensible idiocy by none other than a Ranking Member of the House Financial Services Committee. Perhaps we should underline “Financial Services Committee.”

Congresswoman Maxine Waters made the following statement,“Yesterday we did have Mr. Bernanke in our committee and he came to tell us what he’s doing with quantitative easing and that is trying to stimulate the economy with the bond purchases that he’s been doing because he’s trying to keep the interest rates low and create jobs–and he said that if sequestration takes place, that’s going to be a great setback. We don’t need to be having something like sequestration that’s going to cause these jobs losses, over 170 million jobs that could be lost–and so he made it very clear he’s not opposed to cuts but cuts must be done over a long period of time and in a very planned way rather than this blunt cutting that will be done by sequestration. . . . . And so, we are here today, one more time, talking about women and children and families and how we can protect our women, children, and families and have a decent quality of life–sequestration will set us back. All of the gains that we have made will be lost with sequestration.”

So there you have it from very near the top of the Nation’s political hierarchy – a statement providing clear insight into the frightening lack of comprehension with which the country’s financial affairs are supervised.  Let’s ignore the absurd claim, “170 million jobs that could be lost,” since there are only 141,614,000 jobs as of January 2013 in total – and well, anyone can make a mistake when making a supposedly critical statement to the Nation. No?

Of greater import is Waters’ description and characterization of Bernanke’s presentation to her Committee?  Does she, or any other member of her Committee understand enough of what Bernanke is doing, or why?  She states,  “he came to tell us what he’s doing with quantitative easing and that is trying to stimulate the economy with the bond purchases that he’s been doing because he’s trying to keep the interest rates low and create jobs.”  Huh?  Does anyone ask her how her brain connects all those dots? That would be embarrassing, since the dots don’t connect.   They don’t and they can’t.  Did anyone on her committee ask Bernanke to connect those dots?

Her statement demonstrates that this “imagery” politician is lost and baffled by economic matters and realities, but she is evidently confident of achieving a successful outcome for herself through the spewing of unintelligible gibberish as long as it is followed by a comment about the sky falling on single women and children.  Pretend to somehow be protecting single women and children, which is even better than championing motherhood and apple pies, and Walters succeeds in propping her own statue another day.

Waters is simply another fear-mongering politician ignorant of the fact that the Fiscal Cliff is only reducing some of the planned increases in discretionary spending.  Almost nothing will be cut from mandatory entitlement programs – Social Security, and Medicare, or from debt interest payments.  The Nation’s financial problems rests primarily on mandatory expenditures and their looming explosion.  Should someone point that out?

With the quality of economic acuity we are subject to, as demonstrated by politicians of the Waters caliber, it is hardly surprising that nothing is being done to bring spending and debt under control.  Nothing is being done to restrain the excessive growth of government.  The complexity is too difficult for uninformed and uncreative minds of the “imagery” politicians to confront. It is so much easier to ignore a complicated reality, particularly when doing so might throw shadows on their ideology.

Let's take another prod from Marshall McLuhan’s stimulative mind, in which he prophetically defined mindsets of the current leadership in Washington, “I wouldn’t have seen it if I hadn’t believed it.”

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Truth On Fiscal Cliff Negotiations

We apprehensively advance through this nail biting moment in history as a great Nation floats, uncertain, caught in a holding pattern, hoping its leadership will find wisdom enough to avert the so called Fiscal Cliff, even if most of us don’t fully comprehend what such a cliff entails, or even if such a thing exists. We’re too busy struggling, hanging on to whatever we have, hoping for stability, and hoping that tomorrow brings some relief to our stress.

So let’s look for a little insight into what astute and gifted minds are really doing deep in the core of the negotiations apparently so critical to the very future of the Nation. Let’s dig for a sign of prescient coherence determining the very nature of our future.

Here is a discussion/interview which John Mauldin recently conducted with Rob Lehman and David Krone, the chiefs of staff for Senator Rob Portman (R-OH), and of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), respectively. Lehman and Krone are two very key individuals in the current budget negotiations. Mauldin, who writes on economics and investments, usually refrains from using an ideologically tempered pen. Late in the somewhat non-descript forty minute discussion, a head snapper gets dropped by Lehman, who works on the Republican side of the negotiating table.

At minute 37:00 of the linked video Lehman (R) makes a statement about spending. “We’re talking about reductions in the growth of spending.” He confirms that there will be no reduction in spending. Krone (D), sitting next to him, is drooling out of camera shot. Washington does not spend less year-to-year. Ever. Is that clear? Negotiators are only negotiating amounts of spending increases and areas of such increases in spending. That’s it. Don’t believe anyone standing at a podium performing waffling prevarications in Washington while making claims of imminent spending cuts.

Oh, but wait, you say, what about that the $16.2 trillion in debt which we cannot ignore? When you spend $3.6 trillion, but receive $2.3 trillion, you have to cut over a trillion from your annual expenditures somewhere along the line if you harbor any hope of getting ahead of the backlog of debt and the corresponding overwhelming interest. What about that looming additional commitment in entitlements which will more than quadruple that debt? Hmm. Well, forget about it. Ignore it. Have a good Christmas, and Happy New Year. You’ll never be able to endure that burden, so why worry? We’ll just crank up the presses. Isn’t that how you pay back what you owe? Just print money?

Obama continues down the seemingly never-ending campaign trail, arrogantly pretending that he is providing tax cuts to the middle class and further pretending to demand a “balanced approach.” He has repeated his limited talking points at every recent use of the teleprompter. Someone might explain to him that retaining the Bush tax cuts which are due to automatically expire at the end of December, does not mean reducing the middle class tax rates. He either has no grasp of what he is claiming, or is knowingly lying to the taxpayers.

There are no tax cuts on the horizon and there are no expenditure reductions coming. Spending is out of control, and the truth is that tax increases are coming for all levels of society.

Everyone knows that the mantra “tax the rich” is just demagoguery, . . . well everyone except those with a paucity of common sense. Tax increases for the so-called rich will not put a dent in the deficit. And Obama’s claims of the approximately $10 billion in revenues anticipated from the rich is annoying. He still won’t acknowledge that such supposed anticipated amount is over 10 years. Please, someone tell him. The very rich probably don’t much care, since the increases will simply mean less real redistribution of wealth, but the increase will not impact their lifestyles.

Obama professes that only agreeing to his demands would avoid the ‘fiscal cliff’, and doing otherwise, “would be bad for the economy, it would be bad for those families (supposedly the whole middle class), in fact it would be bad for the world economy.”

He’s getting ahead of Republicans on the “message,” so that no matter what happens, Boehner and the Republican controlled House of Representatives will eat the negative fall-out. And the fall-out is coming, but what is not coming is spending reductions.

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