In times like these, you’d expect prudent leaders to prepare for the worst. After all, the pessimists have recently been vindicated by events. But that’s apparently too painful to think about. In normal times, leaders like to focus on the short term at the expense of the long term. But now the short term is really confusing, so leaders take refuge in projects that are years or decades away.
The president of the United States has decided to address this crisis while simultaneously tackling the four most complicated problems facing the nation: health care, energy, immigration and education. Why he has not also decided to spend his evenings mastering quantum mechanics and discovering the origins of consciousness is beyond me.
The results of this overload are evident on Capitol Hill. The banking plan is incomplete, and there is zero political will to pay for it. The president’s budget is being nibbled to death. The revenue ideas are dying one by one, while the spending ideas expand. By the latest estimate, the health care approach will cost $1.5 trillion over 10 years and the national debt will at least double, while the Chinese publicly complain about picking up the tab.
I’d like to think this “myopia” is the product of incompetence, but it’s so obviously a complete failure and Obama is still so set on it, I’m beginning to think that chaos is the desired end.
#1, yes, because when real chaos sets in, if it’s not too long from now, it can still be blamed on Bush, and then BHO and his Congressional buddies can really pass some left wing “changes,” in the name of worsening crisis. As Hillary and Rahm have said, this is just too good a crisis to pass up.
It’s almost like it’s a [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloward-Piven_Strategy]deliberate strategy[/url], Billy.
Yes, and being a avowed conspiracy theorist, I am confident that it is a deliberate strategy, just like it was in 1966, as you relate back to (and I remember it). I do believe I heard early in this Administration the words, “we don’t care about the stockmarket,” and “we are going to protect the bank’s depositors and let the stockholders take the loss on this (in reference to Citi going down).”