October 1-- Rural values and gross incompetence


Jane and I have sat listening to the presidential debates and wondered about the effect of the economic crisis on our own financial futures. It was already shelled by the downsizing I suffered in August.

We are fortunate that we are both relatively healthy and do not plan to retire soon. Still, it would also be nice to have that option. Watching The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart describe President George Bush as the frat boy who is three months from graduation and suddenly realizes he has a big test, I was reminded of my own thoughts, watching him stumble through news conferences in the past two weeks: he has the deer in the headlights look of Dan Qualyle.

If it weren’t for the fact that his mismanagement of the economy and of nearly everything else, has cost us more than a year’s household income in lost value, I could feel sorry for him. No, I guess despite that, I do feel sorry for him. He is so clearly out of his league. Here is one of the few men who can discuss the experience of being President of the US, and he is just beginning to realize how deep the water is.

Now I realize that the GOP likes to portray itself as the party of rural values. But I’d like to know the answer to a simple question: The Clinton Administration left a $127 billion budget surplus in 2000. The White House projects a $482 billion budget deficit in 2009, before the effects of the $700 billion bailout. In total, in the last seven years, not including 2009, the total budget deficit, including the last year of the Clinton administration is now $1.549 trillion, before the bailout and the effects of the stimulus and previous bailouts this year of Fannie and Fredie.

That’s about $5,000 for every man, woman and child. I don’t feel as though I received an additional $5,000 of federal services in the past seven years, six years actually. And the $2,500 of annual tax benefits the average taxpayer received due to the Bush tax cuts? That’s a combined $15,000 plus present value. (And that isn’t per person, but per taxpayer. The average for a person is lower because most minors and many low-income households don’t pay taxes.) Look, I just lost more than a $15,000 in home value and portfolio value this month alone. That doesn’t include Janes’ losses. This month just washed out all those years of tax cuts: Good management of the economy trumps tax Band-Aids.

I’d like to know what happened to that money.

(About $4 billion was put on pallets and shipped to Iraq. That’s about $13 per person, about 2 ½ percent of the $1.549 trillion. That amazing story of incompetence and mismanagement is reproduced here: http://www.truthout.org/article/us-sent-billions-cash-pallets-baghdad).