It’s the Borrowing and Spending, Stupid!
Mickey Walker-August 8, 2010
A good friend and I were talking recently about how stupidly
people would buy spin instead of the truth. There were glaring examples of how spin was the new truth
when clearly it was not. So I made
a few remarks about the Moral Majority and held it up to the light. Was the Moral Majority truly a
religious organization? Headed by
Jerry Falwell, a Virginia preacher and founder of Liberty University and many
television shows of his own, on the surface he seemed to be. But was it right that he used tax-exempt
money in the collection plate of his church to further his political agenda to
elect Ronald Reagan to president, to promote their own brand of political values,
and to target the opposition candidates on a “Hit List” to unseat them
all? I made a comment that the
Moral Majority, was, in fact, not moral. It preyed upon the faithful to collect monies as any PAC would only tax
free because the founder, Jerry Falwell, called himself a church.
My friend taunted me with, “Are you saying the only ones
that don't buy the spin and therefore can discern the truth is the immoral
minority? Wouldn't that make them moral? i.e. part of the moral
majority?’”
“You know I am not.” I told him. The Moral Majority from the git-go is immoral.
When they got out of the God business and into stumping for their candidates
from the pulpit, they should have lost their tax-exempt status. But those
in government were immoral, too, so they did nothing to preserve our
Constitution there, either. And I think my point is that there are few
who do not buy the spin and can discern the truth. Reagan and Falwell,
who inflicted the Moral Majority upon America in an attempt to contaminate
religion with politics, did so only for the votes. That pact with the
dark side, from the beginning, was immoral. Still is. And fooling the American people to believe a
holy war against the Evil Empire, Russia, was essential to living in a moral
world, and the welfare of America, was mega immoral. It was a lie based
upon greed. And it was immoral,
too, to convince America to build up our arms by borrowing 3 Trillion dollars
during Reagan’s 8-year reign, while continuing to chide his political opponents
as being Big-Spending Democrats. Talk about the parable, "Do not pay
attention to the speck in your brother's eye while ye pay no mind to the plank
in yours?" But my point to my friend was that Reagan had camera
appeal. He had a smile and delivery
that would melt the lens. Lots of actors got that. People believed him and some call him the best president
ever. But it was anything but
moral to use God, The Evil Empire rhetoric, and the church to build up arms while
rewarding the military-complex that Ike warned us about. Ike’s Warning
The purpose of the buildup was to redistribute wealth and
incur debt. If that ain’t immoral
then Pat Robertson is a true man of God and not a businessman turned charlatan
with a profitable television show and Jesus Power Bars and shakes what FEMA
spent millions on after Hurricane Katrina. If Halliburton could win no-bid
contracts with the US Govt. and could sell Uncle Sam a hammer that cost them
$10 at Wal-Mart for $500 and those running the government were in cahoots with
the thievery, then that fleecing of the American people who pay taxes, is
immoral. The proof of the crime is in the price of the hammer with no one
crying, “Rape!” A hammer is not
worth $500, so the difference is an immoral profit. And that immoral
profit grew to become a redistribution of wealth to the Halliburton’s of
America, and all such defense contractors who sold war machinery and products
to the government. Only trouble was
(wink and nod) Uncle Sam awarded many of them the contract without having to
bid on it. Somehow that little no-bid
trick seems immoral, too. But, thanks
to government complicity, a no-bid contract would eliminate investigations and
competition, wouldn’t it? Does
that seem moral? And was the
result of the massive borrowing and spending under Reagan and Bush II to build
up the military industrial complex business really worth it? America’s sinking into a 14- Trillion
dollar debtors’ prison hole that we will never get out of, does that seem
immoral, somehow? Just askin’.
And isn’t the result of all that under the table chicanery to fool the American
people into believing that our military needed a massive buildup, well isn’t
that downright immoral? Heck when
Reagan started his 3-Trillion dollar debt he added to the Treasury we were not
even at war. But the Evil Empire
was a scary beast, you know, them Russians, them communists.
Then Bush II finally attacked two countries at the same time
(Iraq, based on lies about WMDs), which added another 4 Trillion dollars
(Ka-ching) to the National Debt. I ask you isn’t that worse than just stealing
simply because the stealing was accomplished by people we elected as our
representatives to perform their sacred duty as fiduciaries of our public trust?
And isn’t that immoral, seeing as America is left holding the remnants of our
once great economy in a sack with a hole in it due to the two presidents who
gave us a combined effort of 7 Trillion dollars further in debt? Reagan and Bush II. Was it worth all the lost jobs? Was it worth setting America awash in
Trillions of dollars of worthless derivatives? And at the mercy of Wall Street and its demonic new shell
game of credit default swaps that on the sell end they tout and then turn
around and short-sell with an innocent face? Was it worth all the homes people had to walk away from to
sleep in their cars? While trying desperately
to get on the welfare rolls. When the Treasury is bankrupted by all the
borrowing and spending for the greed profits of war corporations? Was all the borrowing and spending worth
a bankrupted future for us and our kids? While the printing presses grind ‘round the clock to inflate our dollars
to pay off the unconscionable debt our leaders borrowed us into? Oh, but let’s blame Obama for his first
year and a half, many say. While
the true perpetrators of our destruction got to walk, laughing all the way to
the bank and Paraguay. Bush family buys Paraguay land and more:
Senator William Proxmire did his best to expose such immoral
stealing with his "Golden Fleece Award" which broadcast the most
flagrant boondoggle example of stealing. One such memorable boondoggle had the Government paying $600 for Home
Depot toilet seats that are worth $19.95. How many million toilet seats
were involved I do not know. Proxmire knew that it was totally immoral and wanted the American people
to show outrage and rise up against the thieves and bandits of the public
trust. They did not. You didn’t hear a peep out of them. The television
ads, paid for by the deep pockets that benefitted from the immoral no-bid
contracts put the damper on Proxmire and his kooky assessment of the
government's business. He was told that the government agency made hammer
specifications so precise and exact that one had to be made from scratch.
This would cost many times the price of a common hammer, the defenders of this
mass thievery contended. This was reiterated by an Air Force Colonel I spoke to
a few years back. Yes he too, blamed the government for not just
loosening their specifications on how the hammer was supposed to be made so
that hammers could be bought off the shelf from Home Depot or Wal-Mart for the
reasonable price of say, $20. This lame response was typical of the
government defending even its most bizarre and deplorable wasting of tax
dollars.
Proxmire and Ralph Nader, I believe, mentioned that a simple
tool like a hammer should not cause so much excess stress on our National
Debt. Somehow the requirements of the government agency that needs the
hammer should be eased so that the agency could ask for and be able to use the
more reasonably-priced hammer. No soap. That brilliant idea must
have died in a deep pocket committee somewhere. Besides, it would have
broken the no-bid contractors' rice bowls to make immoral profits that they so
love to make. Eisenhower must be
turning over in his grave.
So what happened to our brains? Did they feed us
something in the water? Why
couldn't we see that government and the military industrial complex continue to
play the American people like fiddles while they steal us blind? When we
see immoral behavior by those who tax us to pay for their greed, why cannot we
say, STOP. NO MORE. Have we gone crazy? Doesn't the immoral
wrecking ball of the military corporation complex in bed with government
concern us? Is it not disturbing to know that we are being boiled slowly
like a frog in a pot? Guess
not. And that, dear hearts, is why our Treasury is more than bankrupt
into the Trillions of dollars while the inflated dollar itself is burning while
we watch American Idol. Funny how
people sometimes talk about earmarks being a bad thing. But they overlook the biggest earmarks
of all, the military industrial complex and the government agencies that
condone them robbing us blind while destroying America. It’s the borrowing and spending, stupid.