There has been a lot of discussion, mosty on the Right, about cutting down the size of government. It’s a pretty senseless argument because anyone who has reached the age of seven should be able to understand why we need government. I have discovered, however, that there are among my readers, those who have seemingly progressed far past the chronological age of seven, and yet have never acquired the requisite logical abilities that are normally assessed to that growth factor. Therefore, let me point out a few salient facts.
Why we need government:
It provides and maintains an army and other security. Just as important it provides roads, bridges, schools, government buildings, sewers, clean water, a patent office, a post office, a national bank, public transportation, police, a fire department, scientific research, disease control, the Internet, GPS, the energy grid, museums, parks, recreation facilities, a coast guard, plus regulatory agencies to keep the greedy from running amok, and much more, all of which we need to maintain an ordered society.
Without the government there would be chaos. It often seems that there is plenty of chaos with it, but that’s just a point of view. There are people who claim that we would be better off without government. They are called anarchists. They wish to bring down all government and create chaos. But sane people know that we cannot live in a state of anarchy and most of them understand that we must live within a system of government so that we can experience order to our lives.
Most, even on the Right, concede that we need some kind of government, so the debate gets down to how big or small that government should be. Most important to the discussion of size is the fact that governments need money to exist. How much and where it is spent is decided by a document known as a budget. Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney have proposed a budget for the United States government. It is a force against nature.
I have spent a great deal of space in this blog accusing the right of being stupid or moronic, but it looks like I have been wrong. They are neither. Of course there are exceptions, look at Todd Akin. But for the most part they really aren’t. I see this budget and I understand the problem. They are evil. I say this with great trepidation but also with a firm sense of surety because no one could back this budget unless they had completely abandoned all their moral responsibility and had completely surrendered to greed.
This is a budget that will eliminate all the programs that make this country America, maintaining only the military while abandoning the 99% of the country’s citizenry to the, not so tender, mercerizes of the 1%, who, for the most part, have shown no inclination to be their brother’s keeper.
The Congressional Budget Office’s projection of the Ryan budget into 2050 shows that while defense spending will be kept at the same level, all other spending will all but disappear. That’s because after military spending, all that will be left will be about $100 billion, less than 1% of GDP. When you split that up between, veterans programs, (already more than $1% of GDP), health care, education, food stamps, unemployment insurance, border patrol, Pell grants, The EP, NIH, NPR, scientific research, the FBI, FAA, FDA, the small business administration, government regulatory agencies, Medicare and Medicaid, etc., etc., and after you figure in what all these agencies will steal from social security just to try, unsuccessfully, to stay alive, even that will be gone.
What this budget will do is save trillions for the rich. What it will also do is destroy the middle class and push it economically below that level into penury. If you are really greedy and terminally short sighted, it’s a great idea. For everyone else it is hell and that’s where the evil comes in.
Ryan and the Republicans must know this. They can’t be stupid enough to not see where this budget leads. Which means they don’t care. Which means that they are so in thrall to the money interests in this country, the Carl Rove’s, the brothers Koch, the Trump’s and the Sheldon Adelson’s that they don’t care how badly they screw the rest of us.
We already know how the above named patriots feel about our country. Rove already helped start two wars that killed thousands of our kids and almost bankrupted the country. The Koch’s are even now selling out our health to the fossil fuel industry and corrupting our congressional process with Pac money, Adelson is willing to sell out his own country for Israel and Trump is willing to sell out anyone and everything to get his ludicrous face on TV, all in the search for a document that his phantom investigators haven’t yet discovered has already been produced and viewed by most sensible men.
These guys, and more just like them, are why we need government, and yes, big government because it must be big enough to withstand the humongous financial assaults that these degenerate traitors have mounted on our country and on the concept of democracy. They want to rule. They want to crush the little guy and squeeze every last drop out of him before they discard all the little guys and their families on the junk heap of a destroyed economy.
It doesn’t matter that by destroying the little guy, the worker, they are destroying the very economy that now supports and enriches them. They are so shortsighted that they can’t see over the piles of gold in their own swimming pools.
This is a catastrophe that is already happening and the only way to stop it is for government to be big enough, strong enough and honest enough to support those who have some modicum of integrity left in their souls, to support those who will ignore the power hungry lobbyists, overpower their dishonest contemporaries, turn away the bribes and coercion and bring back the regulation necessary to curb the abuses of the corporate structure. This is not a diatribe against capitalism. This is a diatribe against small government because only with a big, strong government can we curb the abuses of capitalism and make it work for, instead of against, the majority. We need a big, strong government which will, like the stern father, chastise the unruly child and make it function as part of the family. If you don’t believe that, you just ain’t been paying attention.