Money Talks

On the debt ceiling vote - Despite President Obama's inclination to give away the farm, Republicans can't take yes for an answer, and so we are in a continued impasse with Republicans now deciding if they can't get everything we want, then they just might want nothing. Having heard the President offer a 5 to 1 cuts- to- revenues formula, Republicans threw a temper tantrum about taxes on the rich and eliminating subsidies for the 5 largest oil companies in the world and ending tax breaks for corporate jets.

It's an ideological fantasy world..........these are the same people who took a $300 billion surplus at the beginning of George W. Bush's first term and turned it into a TRILLION $$$ annual deficit in just eight years. If the Republican supply side theories were true, we would have a roaring economy now that taxes are at the lowest point in five decades. There may have been points in history where lowering marginal rates could generate marginal employment increases, but we've long since passed that point. The Laffer curve is now the Laugher curve among non-ideological economists.

Tea Party/Republican threats on the debt ceiling vote are to default on the debt and plunge the world into a depression unless President Obama and Democrats agree to kill Medicare, privatize Social Security, lay off a million teachers, police officers, firefighters, public utility workers, highway maintenance workers, public hospital nurses, etc., etc., etc., take hundreds of billions if not trillions of $$$ out of the economy, end unemployment insurance, cut children off medicaid, break all the remaining unions, eliminate collective bargaining rights, lower peoples' wages everywhere, increase taxes on the poor and middle-class, throw people off their health insurance plans, and using that money for tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires and tax-payer subsidized corporations making record profits while paying no taxes and out-sourcing work to China or India, and let rich people and corporations own and run everything. Republican Governors across the country are working examples. Their negotiating theory is an all or nothing approach where what's yours is ours and what's mine is mine.

But there are fractures appearing:

The US Chamber of Commerce has sent a letter to Congress stating the obvious - the debt ceiling must be raised. Wall Street is getting a bit tired of the Tea Party antics now that its own profit margins are threatened. As long as the Tea Party charade only hurt other people, it was fine, but now...............not so. Defaulting on US debt includes their money.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell came up with an ingenious solution: we'll cede all Congressional authority to the President on the debt ceiling issue and create a system whereby a only a super-majority vote could overturn the President's raising of the ceiling. Republicans would, of course, retain the right to complain about it later. Talk about cynical.

And the Republican rank and file still are waiting for a good candidate:

Sarah Palin's movie is playing to empty theaters according to news reports now that her few diehard fans have seen it.

Mitt Romney continues to have problems with his past "success." One really was a success - the Massachussetts health insurance program but is now the bane of Republican mostly because Barack Obama adopted it as a model for his own health insurance reform act. The second is Romney's job destruction and the thousands of layoffs he orchestrated working for an equity firm. Not much job creation there.

Michele Bachmann's anti-gay positions and her past church affiliations with their anti Catholic views is beginning to catch up to her. Michele Bachmann's husband is proving a liability right now with his anti-gay Christian counseling clinic which received Medicaid $$$. Now there's a Medicaid practice which could be eliminated. Spouses probably shouldn't be an issue, but she is a partner in the business and should have to answer questions about it. So far, she's refusing to talk about it. She and her husband left their anti-Catholic church days after she announced her run for the presidency.

Herman Cain's anti-Muslim rants are, I hope and pray, starting to lose their appeal.

Tim Pawlenty's role in leaving Minnesota a financial basket case and his remarks that in the event of a default we should pay the Chinese before we pay military salaries is perhaps not the best soundbite to have out there.

Newt Gingrich's "delusional," in the words of a Republican strategist, campaign is hemorrhaging money mostly for private jet transport.

Jon Huntsman or Rick Santorum haven't appeared in press reports for days.

Other Republican candidates have disappeared into the fog and other potential candidates are still sitting on the fence.Governor Rick Perry, George W. Bush's Lieutenant Governor in Texas, is another possible entry. But his weird political philosophy which has included threats of secession from the United States, the dismantling of any semblance of a social welfare net in Texas, along with some right wing Christian affiliations, and Confederate worshiping rhetoric pose problems.

So there you go; I'm predicting that the Chamber of Commerce and Wall Street arm of the Republican Party will force the passage of the debt ceiling increase. After all, they purchased the Republican Party, and it better do what they say. Adolescent Tea Party tantrums and horn blowing aside, money rules.