TAMPA, November 27, 2012 – The 24-hour news cycle is dominated with frantic warnings about the “fiscal cliff.” If you merely listen to the sound bites, there is another “emergency” facing the United States of America and only some drastic action by Congress can avert it.
What nonsense. Don’t Americans ever learn anything from even the recent past?
Just four years ago, we were told that if we didn’t allow Congress to give Wall Street almost a trillion dollars of our money, the end of the world would occur. The “bold” legislation was necessary to “save the financial system.” Other than preventing a lot of billionaires who made bad investments from losing their money, I’m not sure what that was supposed to mean.
It didn’t prevent millions of borrowers from losing their homes. That happened anyway.
We were told after 911 that “the world changed” and the 4th, 5th and 6th amendments to the Constitution would have to be trashed. Americans now subject themselves to unreasonable searches without warrant merely for the “privilege” of getting on a plane. They allow presidents to arrest American citizens without a warrant or charges and hold them indefinitely without recourse to a writ of habeas corpus.
The president can even kill American citizens without due process.
It was all supposedly necessary to protect us from…the shoe bomber and the underwear bomber. Both defeated the new government security apparatus and were subdued by private citizens.
Both initiatives were accompanied by a non-stop barrage of media propaganda trumpeting impending doom if the government wasn’t given more power.
The fiscal cliff scam is playing out exactly the same way. Day and night, Americans are bombarded with the same message. If Congress doesn’t do something, the world will end.
There are two components to this supposed disaster. The first is the “draconian cuts” to government spending built into the Budget Control Act of 2011. Supposedly, they will “gut the military,” while plunging the economy back into recession.
There is only one problem. Even if Congress fails to make a deal, nothing is being cut from the federal budget.
Let me repeat that. Nothing is being cut.