[Cross-posted at The Left Coaster.]
Bob Herbert of the New York Times has a most excellent column on US political denial this morning, but there’s one element missing to a stream of facts that bears close scrutiny.
State and local governments, faced with fiscal nightmares, are reducing services, cutting their work forces, hacking away at health and pension benefits, and raising taxes and fees.
No, our state and local governments are so strapped they’re selling or leasing physical assets, like office buildings in California or parking meter revenue in Chicago. The very talented Anthony Bourdain, who at one time sold anything he had (books, records) on the streets of New York for his needles knows precisely that this isn’t a case of human entity in denial over mundane issues, this poor son of bitch is piping crack.
That’s exactly what how the sterling Matt Taibbi characterized our very ill public service personas, too, where addicts to anything but progressive taxation sell off extremely valuable public assets in a terribly downward spiral ripoff. These steps are tumbling us down, deserving the same shock and horror if discovering a fervently loved brother or sister with infected needle tracks.
Crackheads have another dismaying characteristic of lost self-preservation, the ability to lose precious assets and environments through stupid cons (Catfood Commission) and totally lost endeavors of disaster (Afghanistan). When they’re not selling albums on the street cars and homes just tumble into voids of gone, whoops, woulda handled that better in the past but with a fried brain, oh well.
Appalling and heartbreaking opportunities to reform and start fresh with such excellent environments for opportunity are simply chucked aside or ignored with an unbelievable flippancy. Such is the case with our lost and bewildered Party leadership and unemployment benefit extensions.
Those extensions have to happen. At least half the recipients use those benefits—those tiny checks only--as a thin rope over the abyss, cut it and our people tumble into an oblivion of losing almost everything and living in a shelter or relative’s attic.
If that wasn’t horrifying enough, losing the extensions further cripples our busted economy, lost extensions means more foreclosures, much less precious cash in the system. Again, half the battle of getting out of recessions is the absence of fear and distillation of real confidence from good policy.
Every actor in our system will see the rank stupidity and awful pain from losing the extensions and quite rightly conclude Americans have become too stupid in 2010 to get out of this recession. Our people are already terribly afraid, and an even more pernicious and extremely dangerous fear will creep over us with a terrible strength.
By god and baby jesus the Republicans are watching us on this issue, they may be many things but they are always ruthlessly vicious political actors. They’re more than capable and willing to smash our people into horrors of poverty and destitution to take down President Obama, everyone knows it, and I’m extremely sorry—the last election just proved it—Americans won’t trust or vote for a Party that can’t defend itself, let alone their people.
The very good John Aravosis, quite the healthy human being he, recently tweeted with hurt bafflement that the Democrats were adjourning Congress on December 11th. What the hell! We have this tiny window when we still have majorities in both houses, now is the time to fight like wolverines for anything we know is absolutely vital to accomplish before the Republican destroyers take over.
Such as unemployment extensions, which have to happen. Even though failure is not acceptable in this scenario, a long bruising fight that clearly damaged the Republicans horribly for daring to be so stupid and cruel to our people (lord the glorious political opportunities in making the Republicans pay for blocking unemployment extensions, damn the pusher) would at least be a significant political victory and a desperately needed demonstration Democrats have put down the pipe.
But no, crackhead Harry Reid recently bleated with the most appalling and infuriating weakness that, hey, we got some good whiskey, great rocks and a new bong for the holidays, okay? We need to leave by December 11th to do it right, no time or brains for an extensions fight. No worries.
Anyone who thinks this virulently appalling "quantitative easing" by nauseating toady Bernanke will solve our employment problems and deliver 2012 for Obama is—as we’ve demonstrated all along—on crack.
We have so little chances left, if we don’t use them we’ll lose in 2012 again. For our country, Party and children, somebody perform a drastic intervention on our Party leadership for those unemployment extensions.