While the latest machinations from Trump are taking up oxygen, the debt ceiling crisis hasn’t gone away. Indeed, just as it is becoming more and more urgent, Republican far-right extremists are becoming more committed to using the opportunity to blow up the economy as a way to get their wishes.
The radical-right House members aren't stupid enough to believe their irrational justifications for seeking to blow up the economy. They want more than a financial meltdown; they want a complete breakdown of the rule of law that ends democracy and imposes theocratic rule.
The danger should be big, big news every day. Most of America is clueless.
Torn between wanting to keep up with the news in the hope of hearing that 45 will be indicted, versus feeling my brain boiling in rage and frustration over the ignorance, selfishness and cruelty of the Rethugs in Congress... I rarely comment these past few weeks because I feel incoherent and wonder whether all the small things I do can make a difference in saving our democracy. However... WE THE PEOPLE must persist, and I follow HCR and Robert Hubbell and Jess Craven and others on Substack to hang onto my sanity.
It seems that, for once, the Democrats need to use fear to get Republican voters to tell their Congress critters to vote to raise the debt ceiling. They need to be told on every television station how interest rates will skyrocket, making credit card payments go up dramatically, and explain that they won’t come back down because other countries won’t trust us to pay our debts. Show how various federal services will have to be curtailed due to money having to pay higher interest rates on federal debt—show long lines at veterans hospitals, airport screening, etc. it’s time to show the American public how not raising the debt ceiling will hurt them and those they love.
The Republican position is based on a willful misunderstanding of our monetary system. The private sector doesn't fund the federal government. The federal government funds the private sector. It spends directly into the economy; it also delegates to banks the distribution of money to private business. The banks create and loan credit-money out of thin air ($16 trillion outstanding currently), but they rely on the Federal Reserve for (yes) reserves. The private sector creates goods and services, but it doesn't create money. When the government taxes back only part of what it spends, its debt grows and so does the value of private assets.
It's difficult for people to understand this, because households, cities, counties, and state governments don't create money. They can tax and they can borrow long-term, but they can't create money. And they do wither away when businesses and people leave and their tax bases erode. Look at inner cities in the Northeast. Look at much of the Deep South. Look at Midwestern farm towns. Look at former mining towns in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Kentucky.
Republicans pretend that Social Security is an expense. It isn't. It's funded by savings via the payroll tax, and Boomers after 1986 overpaid into Social Security, built up a trust fund, and subsidised other government spending along the way. Social Security isn't broke. It's experiencing the kind of demographic imbalance that all pension systems must navigate. Private insurance companies can't do what it does.
In our national balance sheet, the liabilities all end up on the government side, and the assets all end up on the private side. Conservative economists like to present only the government side, which always shows pure red ink. Some of them won't acknowledge that a Treasury bond is someone's asset as well as a government liability. I'm not talking accounting hocus-pocus. I'm talking about Alexander Hamilton's establishment of the nation's credit, backed by an almost infinitely large asset called the United States.
There's a specific lie at the core of the Republicans' position. Republicans are telling Americans, in effect, that they can pull the plug from the wall and have the lamp stay on. In truth, if the government doesn't pay its bills, nobody else can pay their bills. And if there's a temporary meltdown in asset prices, those who have already cornered the nation's money will snatch up everything on the cheap--stocks, bonds, real estate, companies, utilities--and economic darkness will cover the land.
"His antics have gotten so extreme that he posted an image today of Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg beside an image of himself brandishing a baseball bat. Today, citing Trump’s apparent calls for violence, Judge Lewis A. Kaplan ordered that the jurors in the case of E. Jean Carroll’s rape accusations against Trump be kept anonymous for their own safety."
Let’s face it (for those that haven’t already) the GOP doesn’t give a rats ass about the average American. What would happen to the economy well they could care less. Wonder if they realize they loose some of their almighty $$$$$$ too.
It’s unbelievable that they hate the democrats so much to put power over country.
Prez. Biden needs to direct the treasury to simply follow the constitution (14th Amendment) and honor the congressionally approved debt. The "Debt Ceiling" is a senseless political fiction.
Simply ignore it and challenge the "originalist" fanatics on the Robert's Kangaroo Court to twist themselves into pretzels to come up with yet another example of partisan hackery to explain why the constitution must be ignored when a Democrat is in the White House . . .
Going forward, all budget bills passed by the Democrats (since the GQP is too fanatical and incompetent to ever do the right thing) should have one simple line added: "The treasury is authorized to issue any debt needed to cover approved spending."
"Republican far-right extremists are becoming more committed to using the opportunity to blow up the economy as a way to get their wishes."
"in response to a question about "whether you think this debt ceiling is going to be used as a bargaining chip in some way that could turn dangerous?” the chair of the House Budget Committee, Jodey Arrington (R-TX), said, “I believe it will and I believe it has to.” "
What comes to mind is "hostage taking", "IEDs", "bombing", "Taliban", "terrorists" and "treason". The Taliban destroyed Afghanistan in order to gain control. They opposed and destroyed all aspects of civil, social, economic and modern society in the name of their ultraconservative religion and ideology. Extreme Republicans with their manufactured anti-woke rhetoric are equivalent to the Taliban, ISIS, Saudis and current Israeli government leadership.
If the banking system and/or the dribble of loan defaults on commerical real estate becomes a torrent and the government has to bail out more institutions and there are a few more FEMA emergencies, the debt ceiling due date will get pushed forward. It is currently less than 3 months away.
If the debt ceiling is not passed the government shuts down and bills and salaries and benefits don't get paid. And aid to Ukraine from America STOPS. The ensuing financial crisis will disrupt the NATO allies as well. And aid to Ukraine STOPS. No more bullets. No more short range missiles. No more ammunition for tanks.
The debt ceiling hawks are also the Putin admirers in Congress.
And Putin and XI made their arrangements last week.
A terrifying prospect-and how absolutely insane is it that we were depending on a traitorous unAmerican like McConnell to control the extremists??????? If our economy collapses, will the GOP cult members then open their eyes? Or will Fox and tfg convince them it was caused by the dems? (Rhetorical questions with an obvious answer). This entire debacle can be laid at the feet of the GOP-Greed Over People indeed.
Sometimes I think our age will be remembered for the shrill, brazen, ignorant voices of people like Trump, MTG, Gaetz, and Boebert. Then I hear people like Whitehouse, Sanders, Warren, and Porter and realize there is still hope.
Katie Porter brilliantly summarizes complex concepts on her whiteboard. This clip (which was on MSNBC in February) addresses social security and it's zero impact on the national debt as well as a couple of other issues. https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1634152813675440 So weary of the abject ignorance of republicans in Congress. They don't even try to understand the basics of how the U.S. government functions. Their only mission (they have no policies) is to destroy and consolidate power into their own hands and make up rules to suit that goal. Their constituents are even more ignorant . . . they, and congressional republicans, continue to support a cultist criminal which is just plain nuts.
The last time Republicans in Congress threatened not raising the debt ceiling, were Democrats actually able to get the message across to the public that, should Republicans be successful, the economic disaster that followed would rest on the shoulders of those extremists? I don’t recall whether or not there was any backlash from the public at the time.
I understand McConnell was successful in reigning in those members of his party who were threatening to throw the country (and world into chaos), with him out of action, is there any Republican who might stand up and coral these crazies?
The only way to get to the Freedom Caucus folks who are driving this financial freight train toward the precipice is for them to feel that their "powerful" jobs are in jeopardy if they don't turn away or apply the brakes very soon. It seems that they can't win a fair fight, they can't play by the rules with the other kids in the sandbox so they create the threat of a disaster...a meltdown...to get their way...to get Joe & company to be the weak adults and capitulate to the children having a world class tantrum. We all know how that turns out in our lives. Spoiled children who rule the roost. We cannot do that...we cannot empower that kind of drunken behavior. It just makes everyone miserable. We have to call their bluff at every opportunity. Because if they drive their train over the cliff...they have nothing. We can't be on their train. We need to be on the sane train. Not the insane train. Do I hear an amen brother...??? We MUST encourage the administration and our local elected leaders to stay the course. Get the message above the Trump noise.
One thing Trump has that's neither negative or positive on it's own is AUDACITY. He's not afraid to be audacious in his manipulation of the media. He may be the "Stonewall Jackson" of modern manipulation of the media. I like that simile...and I can only hope that Trump meets his own "demise" (not violent) to friendly fire on May 10. There would be historic poetry in that. 160 years to the day that Thomas J Jackson was swept off the battlefield by his mistake of being too far out front on a night recon. Just to finish this "history lesson" part of the sermon out...Lee would fail at Gettysburg...his high water mark 2 months later. Many historians believe that the lack of Jackson in his normal command position, may have cost the confederates the battle...and the war. His command had been divided up between two lesser generals...who lacked Jackson's audacity to perform battlefield miracles. On July 4, 1863 Lee's Army of Northern Virginia retreated in a miserable procession, in the rain to the Potomac River, where they set up a defensive perimeter. He lost more men in those 3 days at Gettysburg than he did in any other battle. It was the single deadliest battle in the history of the Western Hemisphere. Lee was able to keep the war going (insert Mitch here) because of his ability to manage the chess pieces he had in his command...but the die was cast, he had lost too many of his pawns & knights...and he had no queen to save him. Lincoln finally found the right general, after Gettysburg in Grant, who knew how to checkmate Lee and end the deadly mess. Let's do that. Let's have Joe give his own "new birth of freedom" speech...and let's rally round the flag. I was just in Gettysburg yesterday. The town is basically a quiet tourist trap, promoting ghost tours....one last thought on audacity.
It may have been the audacity of a professor from Maine that really saved the Union at Gettysburg.
After 3 assaults by rebels up Little Round Top, Joshua L. Chamberlain of Bowdoin College, pulled out a textbook maneuver and did a wheel and charge bayonets down hill at the exhausted foe. The men of the 20th Maine had almost no ammo left. Rather than run...they charged...and won the day. Read the Killer Angels...Lee the invincible became Lee the loser.
The radical-right House members aren't stupid enough to believe their irrational justifications for seeking to blow up the economy. They want more than a financial meltdown; they want a complete breakdown of the rule of law that ends democracy and imposes theocratic rule.
The danger should be big, big news every day. Most of America is clueless.
Torn between wanting to keep up with the news in the hope of hearing that 45 will be indicted, versus feeling my brain boiling in rage and frustration over the ignorance, selfishness and cruelty of the Rethugs in Congress... I rarely comment these past few weeks because I feel incoherent and wonder whether all the small things I do can make a difference in saving our democracy. However... WE THE PEOPLE must persist, and I follow HCR and Robert Hubbell and Jess Craven and others on Substack to hang onto my sanity.
It seems that, for once, the Democrats need to use fear to get Republican voters to tell their Congress critters to vote to raise the debt ceiling. They need to be told on every television station how interest rates will skyrocket, making credit card payments go up dramatically, and explain that they won’t come back down because other countries won’t trust us to pay our debts. Show how various federal services will have to be curtailed due to money having to pay higher interest rates on federal debt—show long lines at veterans hospitals, airport screening, etc. it’s time to show the American public how not raising the debt ceiling will hurt them and those they love.
The Republican position is based on a willful misunderstanding of our monetary system. The private sector doesn't fund the federal government. The federal government funds the private sector. It spends directly into the economy; it also delegates to banks the distribution of money to private business. The banks create and loan credit-money out of thin air ($16 trillion outstanding currently), but they rely on the Federal Reserve for (yes) reserves. The private sector creates goods and services, but it doesn't create money. When the government taxes back only part of what it spends, its debt grows and so does the value of private assets.
It's difficult for people to understand this, because households, cities, counties, and state governments don't create money. They can tax and they can borrow long-term, but they can't create money. And they do wither away when businesses and people leave and their tax bases erode. Look at inner cities in the Northeast. Look at much of the Deep South. Look at Midwestern farm towns. Look at former mining towns in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Kentucky.
Republicans pretend that Social Security is an expense. It isn't. It's funded by savings via the payroll tax, and Boomers after 1986 overpaid into Social Security, built up a trust fund, and subsidised other government spending along the way. Social Security isn't broke. It's experiencing the kind of demographic imbalance that all pension systems must navigate. Private insurance companies can't do what it does.
In our national balance sheet, the liabilities all end up on the government side, and the assets all end up on the private side. Conservative economists like to present only the government side, which always shows pure red ink. Some of them won't acknowledge that a Treasury bond is someone's asset as well as a government liability. I'm not talking accounting hocus-pocus. I'm talking about Alexander Hamilton's establishment of the nation's credit, backed by an almost infinitely large asset called the United States.
There's a specific lie at the core of the Republicans' position. Republicans are telling Americans, in effect, that they can pull the plug from the wall and have the lamp stay on. In truth, if the government doesn't pay its bills, nobody else can pay their bills. And if there's a temporary meltdown in asset prices, those who have already cornered the nation's money will snatch up everything on the cheap--stocks, bonds, real estate, companies, utilities--and economic darkness will cover the land.
Biden better fire up the mint and print the $1 trillion platinum coin.
And then tell these goddamned Goobers to go to hell.
"His antics have gotten so extreme that he posted an image today of Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg beside an image of himself brandishing a baseball bat. Today, citing Trump’s apparent calls for violence, Judge Lewis A. Kaplan ordered that the jurors in the case of E. Jean Carroll’s rape accusations against Trump be kept anonymous for their own safety."
NOT satire.
Let’s face it (for those that haven’t already) the GOP doesn’t give a rats ass about the average American. What would happen to the economy well they could care less. Wonder if they realize they loose some of their almighty $$$$$$ too.
It’s unbelievable that they hate the democrats so much to put power over country.
Prez. Biden needs to direct the treasury to simply follow the constitution (14th Amendment) and honor the congressionally approved debt. The "Debt Ceiling" is a senseless political fiction.
Simply ignore it and challenge the "originalist" fanatics on the Robert's Kangaroo Court to twist themselves into pretzels to come up with yet another example of partisan hackery to explain why the constitution must be ignored when a Democrat is in the White House . . .
Going forward, all budget bills passed by the Democrats (since the GQP is too fanatical and incompetent to ever do the right thing) should have one simple line added: "The treasury is authorized to issue any debt needed to cover approved spending."
"Republican far-right extremists are becoming more committed to using the opportunity to blow up the economy as a way to get their wishes."
"in response to a question about "whether you think this debt ceiling is going to be used as a bargaining chip in some way that could turn dangerous?” the chair of the House Budget Committee, Jodey Arrington (R-TX), said, “I believe it will and I believe it has to.” "
What comes to mind is "hostage taking", "IEDs", "bombing", "Taliban", "terrorists" and "treason". The Taliban destroyed Afghanistan in order to gain control. They opposed and destroyed all aspects of civil, social, economic and modern society in the name of their ultraconservative religion and ideology. Extreme Republicans with their manufactured anti-woke rhetoric are equivalent to the Taliban, ISIS, Saudis and current Israeli government leadership.
Some food for thought.
If the banking system and/or the dribble of loan defaults on commerical real estate becomes a torrent and the government has to bail out more institutions and there are a few more FEMA emergencies, the debt ceiling due date will get pushed forward. It is currently less than 3 months away.
If the debt ceiling is not passed the government shuts down and bills and salaries and benefits don't get paid. And aid to Ukraine from America STOPS. The ensuing financial crisis will disrupt the NATO allies as well. And aid to Ukraine STOPS. No more bullets. No more short range missiles. No more ammunition for tanks.
The debt ceiling hawks are also the Putin admirers in Congress.
And Putin and XI made their arrangements last week.
Just saying...
A terrifying prospect-and how absolutely insane is it that we were depending on a traitorous unAmerican like McConnell to control the extremists??????? If our economy collapses, will the GOP cult members then open their eyes? Or will Fox and tfg convince them it was caused by the dems? (Rhetorical questions with an obvious answer). This entire debacle can be laid at the feet of the GOP-Greed Over People indeed.
Who knew that the Freedumb Caucus would be Putin’s best weapon in Cold War 2.0.
Sometimes I think our age will be remembered for the shrill, brazen, ignorant voices of people like Trump, MTG, Gaetz, and Boebert. Then I hear people like Whitehouse, Sanders, Warren, and Porter and realize there is still hope.
Katie Porter brilliantly summarizes complex concepts on her whiteboard. This clip (which was on MSNBC in February) addresses social security and it's zero impact on the national debt as well as a couple of other issues. https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1634152813675440 So weary of the abject ignorance of republicans in Congress. They don't even try to understand the basics of how the U.S. government functions. Their only mission (they have no policies) is to destroy and consolidate power into their own hands and make up rules to suit that goal. Their constituents are even more ignorant . . . they, and congressional republicans, continue to support a cultist criminal which is just plain nuts.
The last time Republicans in Congress threatened not raising the debt ceiling, were Democrats actually able to get the message across to the public that, should Republicans be successful, the economic disaster that followed would rest on the shoulders of those extremists? I don’t recall whether or not there was any backlash from the public at the time.
I understand McConnell was successful in reigning in those members of his party who were threatening to throw the country (and world into chaos), with him out of action, is there any Republican who might stand up and coral these crazies?
The only way to get to the Freedom Caucus folks who are driving this financial freight train toward the precipice is for them to feel that their "powerful" jobs are in jeopardy if they don't turn away or apply the brakes very soon. It seems that they can't win a fair fight, they can't play by the rules with the other kids in the sandbox so they create the threat of a disaster...a meltdown...to get their way...to get Joe & company to be the weak adults and capitulate to the children having a world class tantrum. We all know how that turns out in our lives. Spoiled children who rule the roost. We cannot do that...we cannot empower that kind of drunken behavior. It just makes everyone miserable. We have to call their bluff at every opportunity. Because if they drive their train over the cliff...they have nothing. We can't be on their train. We need to be on the sane train. Not the insane train. Do I hear an amen brother...??? We MUST encourage the administration and our local elected leaders to stay the course. Get the message above the Trump noise.
One thing Trump has that's neither negative or positive on it's own is AUDACITY. He's not afraid to be audacious in his manipulation of the media. He may be the "Stonewall Jackson" of modern manipulation of the media. I like that simile...and I can only hope that Trump meets his own "demise" (not violent) to friendly fire on May 10. There would be historic poetry in that. 160 years to the day that Thomas J Jackson was swept off the battlefield by his mistake of being too far out front on a night recon. Just to finish this "history lesson" part of the sermon out...Lee would fail at Gettysburg...his high water mark 2 months later. Many historians believe that the lack of Jackson in his normal command position, may have cost the confederates the battle...and the war. His command had been divided up between two lesser generals...who lacked Jackson's audacity to perform battlefield miracles. On July 4, 1863 Lee's Army of Northern Virginia retreated in a miserable procession, in the rain to the Potomac River, where they set up a defensive perimeter. He lost more men in those 3 days at Gettysburg than he did in any other battle. It was the single deadliest battle in the history of the Western Hemisphere. Lee was able to keep the war going (insert Mitch here) because of his ability to manage the chess pieces he had in his command...but the die was cast, he had lost too many of his pawns & knights...and he had no queen to save him. Lincoln finally found the right general, after Gettysburg in Grant, who knew how to checkmate Lee and end the deadly mess. Let's do that. Let's have Joe give his own "new birth of freedom" speech...and let's rally round the flag. I was just in Gettysburg yesterday. The town is basically a quiet tourist trap, promoting ghost tours....one last thought on audacity.
It may have been the audacity of a professor from Maine that really saved the Union at Gettysburg.
After 3 assaults by rebels up Little Round Top, Joshua L. Chamberlain of Bowdoin College, pulled out a textbook maneuver and did a wheel and charge bayonets down hill at the exhausted foe. The men of the 20th Maine had almost no ammo left. Rather than run...they charged...and won the day. Read the Killer Angels...Lee the invincible became Lee the loser.
OK I surrender now....Peace to all