A Cranky Curmudgeon with a Mean Krugger Shillelagh

Wanted to address two separate articles the famed former ENRON financial adviser, Paully " I love ET's" Krugman.

In summary,  the 1st article presents the The Naysaying Prophets of Doom warning of a pending economic collapse due to mountains of debt un-envisioned by nary a megalomaniac ever, in the history of mankind. the Chief players as the street preachers, one can find at Times Square during rush hour, screaming to anyone who will listen "Repent! The end is Near!" are the Conservative TEA party.

The second Article is a "Have No Fear Obamacare is not as nearly as bad as those other guys would have you believe and besides, it's typical ideological warfare  from those right wing nutbags anyways !"

Article 1- Addicted to Apocalypse

The Professor has staked his claim on - "Move along Folks- Nothing To See Here" sort of argument. By saying -the claims of an economic collapse is even building and advancing, have been in the public sphere for a number of years now and nothing has happened yet.So why are we wasting our precious time listening to these loons?

 Funny how The Professor has played this soft shoe dance in the past though to the determent of his blinded flocks.  The professor readily admits to 2 epically flawed assumptions on his own part- a failure to recognize the the productivity gains thanks to information technology in the 90's boom and the market reaction to tax cuts in the early 2000's both of which he was an active soap-boxer harking the end of the world as we know it. But the more disturbing parts are where he was suppose to play the early warning system and either predicted pure unadulterated serenity and calm financials seas when the maelstroms erupted or he slept through the Chaos and Armageddon.
The KRUGGER was very happy to deduce Europe was going to weather the Financial crash of 08 splendidly. Those economies were All Set to hunker down and; ride the storm while we here state-side would reap the whirlwinds. Afterall They were  de-invested of huge dependency of  fossil fuels -They were the shining ancestral inheritors of Bismarck's Nanny State. Nothing could possibly derail them but for the briefest of moments.

  But alas the misanthrope, Krugman was so busy breast feeding his leftist babes of the old world order that he thoroughly the missed 2plus years of data building and forecasting the melt down of the PIIGS ( the near defaults and; social disruption of Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain ) nor the tumult they would create for the rest of the leveraged European Union.

From there we can point to another prediction The Famed Nobel Laureate has made on numerous occasions now- the ever certain demise of the EURO.  The bulbous professor of the dismal science has been harking that coming catastrophe since 1998 now, whistling past the graveyard all the way.
Note to the Town Crier, Krugman;  the four horsemen called, they said they'll get there when they could but they do have a rather busy schedule these days.

Of course I would be quite remiss if I failed to mention that in the pending two years BEFORE the ultimate financial crisis in 2008 the twice weekly columnist of the famed "Old Gray Lady" was shrieking to the top of his voice as though his aged silver mane were indeed set afire about the Super gigantic humongous Housing Bubble. Out of the literally hundreds of columns he submitted for print and were approved, he warned of this enormous threat to our very way of life a total of 8 times in 2006 and without mentioning the term "subprime" once before 2007. To be sure the professor knew the Housing Bubble POP would be a sting and drop consumption but He did not bother to give much attention to the rippling effect as the energy displaced from the burst- the foreclosures, the bond investments and pension funds, the billions upon billions of dollars represented in junk liar loans sitting in the asset columns across every financial institution around the globe. In that occasion, just one of the horseman, Conquest, I believe was his name, arrived and started a buying long on US bonds.

 Some of the backing noise of why someone other than the stupendous Paul Krugman may just have a right to get a bit hesitant about our debt and the potential hyperinflation

 

Article 2 - The Big Kludge

 

First off - One must admit they have a Problem before they can begin to fix the Problem offers the legend in his own tribe The inestimable Paul Krugman. Obamacare- ACA has a problem with Technology and that can be repaired. Aside from that, a bit of a weight problem, there is absolutely NOTHING wrong with the 2,000 plus pages long law or it's 4,500 ( give or take a dozen ) of additional rules and regulations. In fact, to paraphrase the Chronic Crooner " Kruggy" It's not as peachy as MEDICARE! But it's a good get for a few millions of folks while not such a fine proposition for the rest of the equation. A fabulous program despite the greedy interest of those healthcare professionals a.k.a. Doctors who arrogantly expect to be paid for services rendered at fair market rates ( a bad faith ideal in the eyes The KRUGGER and all his ilk)

Of course the rationale of Obamacare could be easily dismissed if we go to the free healthcare model called single payer  a la Medicare Model -SIDEBAR- (like the type of Healthcare all of our once friendly allies maintain - not so friendly now that they know we spy on them these days) - END OF SIDEBAR- just let the Government pick up the tap for you. Heck that's what they are there for aren't they?  Because if they manage your healthcare as effectively as they manage the national debt and foreign relations - What Could Possibly Go WRONG?

 If the Feds tell you, that you can certainly manage along for a week or two in the Emergency Ward waiting for a doctor of some sort, to pass by and order you up a few aspirins, make an appointment for the following month, and be sure to avoid   Sneezing with your herniated Gray matter protruding from your ear - Why shouldn't you have the utmost faith? After all you didn't Build THIS you know!

The point is, it ain't free. It is tax funded Healthcare and numerous examples of what our tax dollars can actually buy abound all around us. Those marvelously curt and brooding department of motor vehicle employees spring to mind or how about the road construction crews who do the bulk of their heavy labor precisely as RUSH HOUR traffic strays onto the pitted asphalt. Not to mention the wondrously diligent EPA agents inspecting your property for evidence of too much rainwater runoff and the ever so studious IRS agent sneering at your TEA Party bumper stickers. For the benefit of brevity I will forgo the multitude of other examples - I am fairly confident I made the point ( ain't that right NSA Agent Leerer?)

So where was I? Oh yes that's right the point of that dandy Medicare program could have been easily turned into a single payer system for EVERYONE. Just one slight problem- Medicare is unsustainable NOW. According to The Medicare Board of Trustees the path for Medicare insolvency by 2024 or 2016 depending how Obamacare/ACA is really being paid for - The Medicare board of trustees report

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Punching Back Twice as Hard

 Back in my younger seasons, I was much a different individual as a great many of us tend to be. I found myself wandering amidst random groupings, compulsive clicks, percolating packs, pestering posses, and fractious fraternities. Many of these were (mostly) harmless associations- like the "Gang of Summer Drinkers" of which I was a devoted yearly member of - our mission statement as it was, was fairly clear cut - to remain as thoroughly inebriated as physically possible, throughout the entire summer break. Another was the Decorative Scarring Gang- which the group attempted to gain the most interesting pattern of scarring (sans the artist with the tattoo pen) from any intentionally or not, fool hardy deed we could find. I believe "Sunny Ed" achieved the most distinguished scar when he plunged from the second floor landing of the never completed Rosedale High School skeleton to the ground floor thus suffering a pierced left shoulder by a deeply rusted 3/4 " rebar. And then, of course, there were the Brotherhood of the Big Boys.

    The BBB was a group that converged each break from university in my home town Rosedale. They would come down with wild tales, of all sorts adventures from tavern hi jinx to full scale barroom brawls to potential arrests for such vagaries as propositioning county officials while cross dressing. General frivolity and no charges that would stick allowed them to wander the through formative years gaining and amassing a great wealth of knowledge and intellect, with wisdom being the chief ingredient being distilled and removed from the product. 

  The de facto lead of the brotherhood fell to young man named Willard. Whom by virtue of being a few years elder to his fraternity, had weathered and weaved though many scenarios before others began to follow his trial. His uncanny ability to strike up an impromptu conversation was so effective that he could charm a snake from its skin. That in itself was a gift but to have it and coordinated it with a masterful art of manipulation of most situations to his own accords.What a Godsend!  If Willard could not reach a person by rationale he could switch gears in a second to baffle them with bullshit. 

 In his world he managed to craft around him, he needed not to shed the notions of an ubiquitous social justice as he became an adult. He could trumpet on about the inequality of results while in full belief he fought against an institutionalized inequality of opportunity. He could maintain his posture as a devoted follower of  master planners and in effect played the role of a mother duckling to the fraternity. The brotherhood seldom ventured far astray of the path he cut before them. Full faith in the majestical concept of relativism and a false definition of fairness or equality unless it blocked the ends to which they applied their means. At such an impasse it was a fair certainty they would employ the fiery rhetoric of the Jacobin Conventionists, circa the French Revolution or the positioning of the politically corrupt mechanisms, a la Tamney Hall of NY. They were not beyond calling for the heads of their rivals, intently inflaming the passions of their like minded drones.

  I was dazzled by the nature of their sense of importance. They patterned lives in a manner so distinctly different from the wilderness my life had seemed to travel. They governed themselves to carry their flags and marched in solidarity with the allure of perfect ideals. For them it was a cause to celebrate wildly  when, by  quota or fiat, it was established to guarantee the less prepared stood even with the prepared. The BBB rejoiced when advancement in positions far above competence and aptitude was achieved. More so when it was a matter of longevity than mastery All this made the world a place simpler for a person such as me the average, the inexperienced, the un-enthused. Alas my departure from the Brotherhood would not be comfortable.

 I began to awaken when I had to labor for my desires. I questioned why it was wrong to see the man who took me in to work at his shop, as an interloper... He was not. He was the purchaser and  shipper, bringing goods from one market to another. He offered some common products at close to cost and others less common items at higher rates to balance for earlier. The profit was not exorbitant but it provided for the costs of the business and the good of his family. Was he not extorting the townfolk by getting between the producer and the consumer? Was he not holding them ransom to his decisions about what he brought to the market? or was it he who was on the hook? If he did not bring desirable goods to a needful community he would not remain in business for long.

  I questioned why his values were fixed and non transitory - he labored for his family and their desires and need. Why he took such determined moments in preparing, performing, and finishing a job for the customer. He explained to me once ...that too much haste could create waste and discourage a customers return ...Too little haste and the customer would take time to consider additional purchases. 

 Over time I learned things I had never heard of before. Concepts of the Sovreignity of the Individual, grandeur of the Nature Law and moral truths for mankind to follow for the Good and betterment of himself and all around him there is not a moral relativism there definable justice and injustice. The rest of the trappings are minutia 

 There is incalculatable value in traditions, in the history of our predecessors, for the examples of historical evidence of forming a virtue for our society.  Finding a glue that unites our separate free wills to the betterment of our community as we labor simultaneously for ourselves and families. Something so massive with hundreds of thousands of decisions by a society that no one group of men or women could ever manage- perhaps not even a fraction of it all - because each individual decision is fine tuned to an individual need or desire.

We carry on our daily lives upon the paths struck by our ancestors who bore the burdens to set the stones of this foundation to our societies. It is  destructive to revision the nature of those sacrifices to a mere set of evils leveled at others. 

It was not malice that drove the great expansions of mankind. It  was requirement as sure as one needs to know the make of a soil to determine the best seed to sow. And yet none of these reasoned principles had been presented to me before. Had the Brotherhood known of these things? 

 Perhaps they had heard of them in passing and elected to scorned them as old tales of the mythical characters. Perhaps they turned them upside down and twisted them to and fro and inside out determined to find them flawed speculative reasonings of cruel folk types set against anything different. Whatever the answer was in truth the results were plainly evident to see. There is little sense of these things today in a great many avenues and causeways of the United States of America.

  

 So let's run down some of the pure unadulterated horse shit the Brotherhood have been pushing this week- 

- There is No Constitutional Obligation to Fund the 

Military- 

 "The Congress shall have Power To ...raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years...."

Article 1 Section 8 Clause 12

[t]o provide and maintain a Navy.”

Article 1 Section 8 Clause 13

 An army is not a military- it is a portion of a military-and that, while the constitution clearly states it may be funded in two year intervals it has, in earnest, been the receiver of regular funding since 1798- While lastly, the Constitution mandates the funding and maintenance of a Navy from which the Air Force & Marine Corps were developed out from.  

-The Total 100 Trillion Dollar Debt Complete Right Wing Nonsense-  

The whole enchilada of on budget & off budget items is @/over100 Trillion dollars according the CBO & could easily become 222 Trillion dollars based upon interest rates and fiscal calamity according to Economist Kotlikoff . Brother Willard huffs and puffs there no spread sheets no balanced accounts to study ( which is a convenience for the Elected Political Elite to ignore blissfully and have no need to answer for ) That these obligations - Federal pension plans, social security, Medicare, Medicare and the deepest reaches of the Fannie & Freddie Junk Mortgages Are  spread out through 30 +years and claims we have time to build up surplus' AFTER the Boomers Retirement Parties fade set them in bankruptcy - here is the rub we are in decline on demographics- we don't have the generational manpower to rebuild surplus in these accounts once they are broke- and that means generations are already screwed despite their labor.

 Brother Padula is not afraid ( Nod to REM -It's the End of the World as We Know It ) 

 -The SpiteHouse Shutdown of 2013-

s

    Knowing full well the main portal to his signature piece of legislation PPACA/OBAMACARE and the data collection and storage of electronic medical health records are inoperable, the president and his junkyard dog, Harry Reid shutdown the government. Wait it gets better, they feigned outrage at the republicans they claimed were the cause of it. The Reality ( vastly under reported by the Liberal biased press) was that the House of Representatives sent up multiple bills to keep the Government operating- several of which funded EVERY Red Cent, Plumb Nickel and Spare Dime of the FULL Government including Obamacare but asked for two consessions
 -1-  that the Roll out of the exchanges and mandatory enrollment be delayed for a year as it was done for large business' 
-2-  That White House and Congressional staff be required to participate in the Exchanges just as the tax paying public is required to.

  But in order to paint the Republicans has a group of angry treasonous bastards, out to blow up the economy ( which was not even a possibility that could occur unless the President " Petulant" so directed the treasury to PURPOSELY default on the interest & principle payments ) they went on a campaign of pure dishonesty. In Fact as the shutdown raged - The a Brotherhood aimed such vitriol at me. I accept it in honor- one can tell a lot about a man by the actions and behavior of his  opponents.  

- The MSNBC ObamaCare Defense-

  A pure talking point rolled out of the DNC and their sock puppet media outlets ( MSNBC, The Politico, The Daily Beast ) is that Obamacare/ACA was a republican plan - "Why don't You support it NOW? Are U a Racist? "

 Now there are two arguments that the left roll out, the more popular one these days is to point to the Massachusetts healthcare that was called Romneycare- in fact President Obama regularly cudgeled  Romney over the head w/ this approach during the election in 2012 and Romney was happy to allow it to go unopposed seeing it as a shiny accomplishment that looked good on his resume for the Presidency - Here is the truth though Romney's Plan NEVER was anti free market or dictatorial as Obamacare. The plan was amended after he left the Governorship of MA. The Original plan never Mandated participation by Individuals or Business'. 

 The other argument is that the origin of the Individual Mandate idea was a product of the right-wing think tank Heritage Foundation. That much is TRUE, but the second half of story is what they will not tell you if they know about it at all. From the moment Heritage walked that dog out of the barn Conservatives Opposed the Constitutionality of it. 

  The government is suppose to have very limited authority and scope in our daily lives and it is never been an aspect that the enumerated powers of the Federal Government that allowed it to penalize the individual for inaction. In this case the Individual Mandate fines people for NOT electing to purchase health insurance based solely on the fact that they are living and breathing and will eventually require some sort of healthcare. The very essence of the concepts of freedom and liberty is to NOT have the federal government that acts to Coerce it's Citizens into actions they DO NOT desire to take.

- RACIST!!!!-

- Brother Padula ran to the defense of  loathsome troll Rep Alan Grayson who attack millions of TEA partiers by posting on his fund raising literature and electronic correspondence the image of a burning cross w/ Klu Klux Kan members in the background  

                      
   



So I pointed out to the Brother that there were a great many black conservatives who disagree w/ the narrative the disgraceful congressman was attempting to paint. Well let me tell you, He was astonished to discover any Black people were in fact Conservative at all. I gave him a short list of some very prominent people he should be aware of. He thought the list too short and suggested I was being shameful by making this point given my lightness. 

I then send him a list of over a hundred different websites by individuals and groups of black conservatives. I asked him not to hand it off to others who I ffend these people by calling them House-Negros or Uncle Toms. Or worse to utilize it as an enemies list and ship it off to associates that fully believe that persons of color should only have the beliefs of the Brotherhood of the Big Boys.

   That there is called punching back twice as hard.

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The erosion of your representative government

It is now evident that a great many of people are not aware of what is truly occurring in the rolling rhetoric of our two party democratic republic's government. It has been framed in several ways from a republican hissy fit to an opposition to a fatally flaw law PPACA or Obamacare. But there is something far more substantial happening beneath the surface that is paramount You and your family understands. It is the Erosion of your representative will. An effort that is in FACT stealing your own ability to express your will via Your elected representatives.

Ok- brace yourself & I will try lay this out clearly & concisely. Regardless of whether you support or oppose the PPACA/Obamacare law, it's crucial you understand it's passage & decision by the SCOTUS ( the supreme court of the united states) in finding it Constitutional & the subsequent alterations applied unilaterally by the executive branch (President). These last items are our larger concern- for they dissolve the very principle of separation of powers that is the heart of our law in total.

When SCOTUS decided the constitutionality of Obamacare they had to alter the law in order to make pass the requirements to deem it lawful. The first alteration was changing the language of the individual mandate provision which was written by both houses of the Congress to be regarded as a penalty if individuals fail to purchase healthcare insurance. SCOTUS realized it would be gross violation of the constitution to penalize citizens who elect not to purchase insurance on the sole basis of being alive. In determining that alone SCOTUS had full authority to deem the law invalid however, that is not what they did, at that point they elected to view the penalty as a tax.

The difference between tax & penalty are long established in the history of the SCOTUS decisions . They have their own numerous & specific clauses differing between them. But the single most important fact you must realize is nowhere in the law is it ever called a tax. Of all the representatives in the House & the 2 Senators of each state Purposely did not draft the law with a tax provision. SCOTUS effectively wrote that into the law without any authority to do so in any manner of understanding. They usurped the power of Congress the one branch tasked with representing Us the citizens of the United States.

The next issue is even more baffling and easier to see the manner in which the SCOTUS has asserted unconstitutional powers over Congress. That issue is in regard to the "opt out" provision for states.

The Obamacare law essentially required all states to set insurance pools for their citizens ( the Exchanges) as a Medicade Expansion program but failed to acknowledge that the states had the right to refuse setting up these exchanges & expanding Medicade which already accounts for over a quarter of all states expenses. This is the principle of Federalism. SCOTUS recognized this to be unconstitutional as written in the law ( by OUR Representatives in their Duly Appointed roles as Representatives) . Out of Whole cloth SCOTUS then proceeded to write in an opt our clause to allow states to refuse to make the law work within the parameters of the constitution. This is entirely without Precedent. It is fully and unequivocally unlawful for SCOTUS to craft law.

From there I will fast forward to us to the more recent events. As of today, the President Barrack Obama has unilaterally without Congressional approval issued 14 separate amendments concerning waivers & subsidies. This is power and authority that the presidency simply does not have. It is completely unlawful & wholly unjust by any understanding of our governing documents.

Ok so with that laud out, exactly why is this a huge concern? Because we have been on a long winding road that is taking our representation out of establishing laws in our nation. We & oddly enough Congress members themselves, are losing our own authority to craft laws according to our concerns & issues. Why is Congress not outraged by this ? Why are they not bringing up these issues themselves? I can only offer a theory to this & it would be far astray from the point of writing this piece at the outset. In short, i believe Congress is tied to moneyed interests via their political parties & seek the unaccountability this offers them & sadly enough, too many average citizens just do not understand what they are doing