I'm not caught up in any media frenzy about the tea party. To me, they are as relevant and intelligent as the Westboro Baptist Church protesters.
I can read "dupe" on their foreheads as easily as anyone else. If they are going to counter with "how capable Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann are" in comparison to anything going on in Washington, I would be severely disappointed.
From a personal perspective, I have no problem with the concept of living within one's means. No one can kite checks indefinitely, expecting their kids to pay the debt. Nor should this be done on a national level.
Do you honestly believe United States corporations will repatriate wealth if only United States governmental entities (and that includes the states) would reduce taxes?
Corporations want it both ways. They want to be people when it comes to buying political influence. They want to be things when it comes to paying taxes. If you ask me, the uber-wealthy divorced themselves from the United States during Ronald Reagan's presidency ... or even before.
Figuring out "how" we hang together or hang separately is left to the rest of us, with less than adequate resources to leave the country ourselves. Someone earning $250,000 per year is doing well, but he is not wealthy in comparison to the likes of the Koch brothers. I submit the Koch brothers and their kindred plutocrats have more at stake with a healthy United States than do you or I.
What a drag it is to be daddy to 300 million people.
I have no faith in political parties, nor the people behind the scenes, running the political parties. None of them have ever done anything for me. I see no advantage in supporting a Democrat, a Republican, a tea partier, a Libertarian and so on. They are all P.T. Barnums — manipulators.
As John Lennon said, "I believe in me...my wife and me...and that's reality." My conversion to the Protestant community is exactly that ... a conversion to a community that outwardly and inwardly gives a damn.
The more enlightened Protestants will tell you that Revelations and the related apocalypse are not our historic fate, rather a personal journey which we all take to our earthly death. Those who want to participate in a global apocalypse are purveyors or victims of a mass death wish.
I agree that government continuing to kick the can down the road is beyond foolish. Sooner or later you kick the can over a cliff. Fiscal sanity in this country probably ended with President Lyndon Johnson with his attempt to get both the Great Society and Vietnam paid for with the same domestic tax base.
President Richard Nixon did us no favors by continuing the war (and its expense) and putting our country on the road to international debtor status. Jimmy Carter? No comment. Debtor status occurred on Ronald Reagan's watch while he and George H.W. Bush accellerated economic globalization. Bill Clinton was simply a smart kid who followed the path that Reagan/Bush/Greenspan laid down.
Henry Paulson was the gorgeous Illinois boy who said, "Enough." Henry made it clear that United States as a whole, and by inference the American consumer, could no longer sustain consumerism at its then present pace. How many trips to Walmart do you need until you and your family are satisfied?
Going back to my Protestant conversion, render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, render unto God that which is God's. My thinking on that is that Caesar can have all the material possessions he (it) wants. The mass of humanity, all 6 billion of us belong to God, period. That is where I place my faith.
Debt crisis? I'll take the Prophet before profit. Everything else follows like the mountain stream.
How's that for a rant you won't hear on MSNBC or FOX, or the Cartoon News Network?
They key issue missing in all of our national financial debate is, "What's best for the Commonwealth?" Everybody is lining up to scream their opinion as if it was the only opinion that counts.
True Christianity, true community living, takes "I" out of the center and replaces "I" with the common God, the common good. It no accident, in my humble opinion, that the words "good" and "God" are so similar.
In German, the words are "gut" and "Gott." I wonder, in how many other languages does this similar etymology occur?
Never mind the screamers - they make too much noise, which makes me suspicious of their motives.
Brian Watt resides in Kalamazoo.
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