9:07AM
The Boomers' Pontius Pilate moment
Friday, March 1, 2013 at 9:07AM 
How symbolic that legislators all skip DC early for the weekend as the sequestration mechanism kicks in.
A new low point for the worst generation of political leadership that America has seen in well over a century.
And yet, it's the leadership we deserve. The larger public's unwillingness to deal with fiscal issues is the underlying core of stalemate. A close-but-evenly divided electorate gets us a do-nothing Congress.
The upside for me? The soured gov and biz climate in US makes US companies that much more eager for brokered business opportunities abroad. Takes a bit of the usual arrogance off the top.
Reader Comments (4)
I fully agree Americans are getting the leadership they DESERVE...however for Americans like me I have not voted for any winners in more than five years. Perhaps this has become the low point and believing you can't fool ALL of the people ALL of the time; us minority of Americans who do not deserve what we have been receiving may be headed toward "our just deserts". I believe the American system works & change will occur. Keep helping!
I'm a little bit gentler on the american people as much of the issue is a tools problem. What may surprise some of your international readership is how many governments the US has.
Besides Federal budgets, proper popular fiscal oversight would include state budgets, county budgets, and a plethora of locals including special purpose districts. All in all, an individual could face up to a dozen budgets to be reviewed each year. In toto, the US has around 89,000 governments, each with their own ability to tax and spend.
And the governments don't make it easy to do proper oversight, not providing modern business intelligence reporting to allow individuals to do the sort of analysis that would really be needed to weed through the fiscal imbalance that is eating us all alive in the US. The press doesn't help either because data gathering arrangements like this just don't regularly fall into their business model.
Thomas,
The "larger public" you refer to does care. In my sphere of social interactions with deli clerks, fireman, postmen and women, teachers, ministers, business owners and those both employed and unemployed are all Americans who throughout their lives have seen and experienced sacrifice for future good and when it is in their sphere of control they accept it, make the necessary adjustments and move on. Pain and pleasure are part of life, we experience pain and eventually learn the signs that pain is coming and eventually learn to take measures to avoid it. Not so in the group dynamics of Washington where they live for special interests and political turf, forgetting their best interest is in keeping the country we have sent them there to support and protect safe from all enemies external and internal. Insert here the old POGO cartoon captioned – “we have met the enemy and it is us!”
We the people who care about our nation’s future know what our forefathers meant in the Constitution that it was established to make “a more perfect Union” but when the Constitution is blatantly ignored by the very people “we the people” sent to “Sodom and Gomorrah on the Potomac” we the people (liberal and conservatives) are perplexed as to how to correct the betrayal of trust by committing, what amounts to my way of thinking is, a treasonous act of violation of the primary document they swore to God to uphold.
We the people have only one "reasonable" recourse to corrective action – not to send the offending politicians back to the "district of corruption" (DC) and that is to send in new people who will provide us the basic values we hold so dear and their primary task "to uphold the Constitution" and to hold one another accountable for that what should be that basic common value. Of course between election cycles those in DC by their (not our) decisions could cause great damage to the country we love. One house is called Representatives and once in DC very few of the represent the people they were sent there to represent. The others are called Senators – a Roman term for a council of elders, chief legislative and administrative body to be trusted - but today can they be trusted? Did not the Senators of Rome became exorbitant spenders leading to Rome's demise?
I am tired of hearing about Czars, exorbitant travel, cover ups such as Benghazi, gun running, providing billions of our nation’s taxpayer monies to peoples that are attempting to engineer our country's failure and take our country over or wipe out our allies or making our nation dependent on others for our energy needs… – need I go on?
Our nation needs to go back to the basics and the Constitution as the base document derived from the era of the Federalist Papers and the other great documents of the world by a group of people who were inspired by their/our Creator to draft a document that seeks to create a more perfect Union – not to destroy it.
Where are the men and women of honor who understand the Constitution and will step up to reset the values and ideals espoused in the Constitution?
God Blessed us all by making us Americans by birth or choice.
It all reminds me of this old Paul Harvey piece. I hear Ben Carson’s values here… maybe he is the one!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSFaLUZ2rf4ting
Thomas,
We may not always agree but I know you care and have greater vision from a higher vantage point than I. You are one of the most respected analyst I follow. I care even more now that I am not physically able to help this country right itself and I have sons who are great patriots who now have children they want to craft into men of their word and honor the traditions of this great nation. God help us/U.S.
Semper Fidelis
This "sequestration" can be viewed two ways, and while the first is dishonest, the numbers ALL show a "trumping up of the charges." There are roughly 85 billion in "cuts," or really, a lower INCREASE in federal spending, in nominal, and for the most part, real terms. If we use the 2012 federal budget total, at 3,539 Billion, or 3.539 Trillion, there is a % point cut of 2.4. This is a relatively modest "cut," given total government spending and "net" (exclude medicare/social security) debt. It's worse if we include "gross," debt, but I am being a little faithful in the "full faith and credit of the US treasury bonds."
But indeed, the "cuts" are for the 2013 budget, which is 3.803 trillion. I really want to ask, this is not rhetorical, but when did a "cut" become an increase? Am I missing something?