AAAH! It’s t he Deficit!

         The word deficit these days is synonymous with big government and finger pointing.  “We must decrease spending!” cried the rhetoric.  Are we being misled?  Is it realistic to stop spending when still in a recession? Tea Baggers are attempting to point the blame President Obama and prevent his re-election by stalling any kind of perceived recovery.  Both Republicans and Democrats have contributed to our current economy and neither is immune from blame. Making severe cuts to “entitlement programs” will not help those that are currently dependent on them.  In our current financial situation we would be removing the programs that are the life blood of those who can’t find jobs.

          Keynesian theory suggests increasing government spending to offset economic contraction.  However politicians are flag waving the deficit in an  attempt to discredit spending and strike fear into the hearts of voters.  The government needs to raise the debt ceiling and spend more on services like the Works Progress Administration of the great depression.  Once we are out of troubled economic waters, then we need to focus on balancing the budget.  We do need to resolve these wars soon though, are we really gaining anything  from remaining in Iraq or Afghanistan? Another issue that must be addressed is the Bush era tax cuts .

      Having a high deficit is not the end of the world, in the 1940s during the war the US had a deficit that was 120% of GDP.  We seemed to have come out of that OK, granted we owned a lot of Britain’s debt. Although care must be taken: After WWII the French and the British were escalating military action over control of the Suez Canal in Egypt. The US, in protest threatened to dump all of the British debt and collapse their economy. It worked to end the conflict.  The same thing could happen to the US with 47% of the public debt owned by China and Japan.  We need to buy more American bonds so that The US owns more of that public debt.  There are many more factors to our economy than the talking points that are constantly preached at us by politicians.The economy is in tough shape but it is not game ending. If the politicians can get past partisanship and attempting to mislead your votes, we can come out of this recession intact.

GOP misdirection

          A Discussion about Julia's editorial on the Republican (GOP) attack on Planned Parenthood. Julia does not site any sources, nor does she provide links. Her target audience is presumably liberals and women. Her numbers are legitimate according to Planned Parenthood's report from 2009 . Julia shares some widely accepted statements about the conservative nature of the GOP. Her Argument is that the GOP is picking on Planed Parenthood in an effort to restrict women's right to choose.  In fact it more likely that the Republicans are attacking due to it's ideological conflict with Republican “morals.” Planned Parenthood is an easy target because it is associated with abortions. According to the Planed Parenthood website they do not use any money for such procedures, but some critics claim that the federal funds free up other resources enabling abortions to be possible.

       The Republican's validation is that federal law prohibits direct taxpayer funding of abortion. The Republicans are "taking a stand" to gather support from their constituents. Julia is right about the Republicans wanting to narrow choices, not only for  women, but also for secular individuals and gays. Republicans recently got together for a back slapping convention (and to trot out POTUS hopefuls), the theme was the moral slide of the US and how voting GOP would fix the state of the union. Why couldn't the theme be about fixing the economy or the rift that is forming between the left and the right? Roe v. Wade is a popular topic of debate and which side you choose is a good indication of whether you are a Republican or a Democrat. In the book Freakonomics, it is theorized that Roe v. Wade actually helped crime halt it's apocalyptic rise in the US and leveled out the curve in the 80's. There is a general feeling that people take advantage of  welfare programs, but we shouldn't stop a system that is designed to help those in dire need because of some bad apples. On the other hand we as a society need to take more responsibility for our own problems. The government can't provide for everyone unfortunately. Politicians certainly have real issues to fix,  rather than aiming at low hanging fruit like Planned Parenthood.