To the editor,

Mr. Mansfield, I am glad you had some fun from your email in-box, but I’m afraid the last laugh is on you. Regarding the national debt, your analogy is wrong from the start and so are your numbers.

Lesson #1: The U.S. budget is not a household budget. This is the most simplistic, debt-scold, right-wing canard going, and it’s not just misleading, it’s simply wrong. The United States is not a household. It is a government, and most of the debt it incurs is owned by our own citizens – not all of it, but a huge majority. With that in mind, Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman notes that while debt can cause problems, it is not making our nation poorer. As Krugman also notes, “True, debt can indirectly make us poorer if deficits drive up interest rates and thereby discourage productive investment. But that hasn’t been happening.” (Source:  NY Times, Nov. 8, 2013.)  

 

Second, your numbers are wrong. As of the close of the last fiscal year (Sept. 30), and according to the Congressional Budget Office (as reported in the Washington Post on Oct. 31), “government receipts totaled $2.774 trillion, up $325 billion from 2012 ... .” That led to a deficit of $680 billion. So you’re off by about $600 billion on revenue and $1 trillion on new debt. Which is to say, you’re not even close enough for horseshoes or hand grenades.

 

If you’re going to whine and scold, Mr. Mansfield, please at least get your facts right.

Lesson #2:  The Ceiling Sewage Analogy. The government shutdown, courtesy of the clown-car full of Tea Party Republicans, cost our economy billions of dollars, which translates to lost tax revenue.  What would you suggest the impact of that act is on the national debt?  It’s something like shooting ourselves in the foot, isn’t it?

 

The same group of zealots in the so-called fiscal cliff negotiation was willing to risk the full faith and credit of the USA plus the functioning of the worldwide economy to shut down the Affordable Care Act, which in the broadest perspective has approximately nothing to do with the budget you are so concerned with. Maybe 4 the proper description here is the Tea Party’s circular firing squad which, thank goodness, was not actually armed with real bullets.

 

If you insist on using a household analogy, how about this one: unemployed people don’t pay taxes, no matter what home they live in. And until people get jobs, households won’t be paying enough taxes to significantly lessen the debt. The last time we ran the kind of surplus you seem to insist on was in 2000-01 when – no surprise – we had something like full employment.

We don’t have a debt problem, Mr. Mansfield, we have an unemployment problem. And the sooner debt-scolds like you quit spreading bad information, the sooner we may be able to recognize the problem for what it is and begin trying to attain full employment again.

In the mean time, please knock off the misinformation campaign and the sewage analogies. If you aren’t smart enough to see through the so-called amusements in your in-box, then at least have the courtesy to spare the rest of us.

 

 

 

To the editor:

The Oct. 31 Telegraph was a gem from cover to cover. Let’s start with the cover: incredible photo by Steve Eginoire – gorgeous. Zach Hively completely summed up why I have always been ambivalent about Halloween, it’s the “come as you aren’t” night, and I am trying my best to show up these days as who I am. Thanks, Shan, for the wonderful memorial to Lou Reed (and to your keen sense of humor on all the topics you typically cover in ReTooned.) I loved the story of breathing life back into the Mancos Grange, as a 4-H alum of La Plata County. And lastly, thank you Burt Baldwin for your reflections on your own education and your many years of teaching in our community. Thanks everybody!

 

 

 

To the editor,

Include in your definition the absence of this from the public eye: The Public Be Suckered http://patrick.net/forum/?p=1230886

 

 

 

To the editor,

Finally, the nation and the world can take a breath of relief; the Senate and the House came up with a compromise for the President to sign off on. As a result of a Speaker caving in to the extreme members of his party, America and the world suffered physical and psychological damage. The nation and the world were put on hold because of inexperienced lawmakers’ attempts to demonize and defund the Affordable Care Act.  John Boehner, the Speaker of the House, should be fired for putting this nation through this type of stretch of uncertainty.

 

It is my notion that many among the Tea Party members would probably fare better if they were on meds to help in their thought processes; they held the nation and the world’s financial reliance system hostage because of their bitterness against the Affordable Care Act. They did not listen to the seniors in their party; and they went out on a limb that had to be pulled in. Consequently, the effort to defund Obamacare was in vain. It was a waste of time, and a lot of people suffered. This will not be forgotten in the 2014 elections.

 

 

 

To the Editor:

To the hungry children, the elderly, the disabled and the low-wage workers trying to feed a family in the third congressional district: Scott Tipton has a surprise for you!

 

You have already felt the reduction of a bare-bones diet by about 21 meals a month caused by the expiration of stimulus funding passed in response to Wall Street’s Great Recession. This cut amounts to about $5 billion. Now Tipton and his tribe have passed legislation providing for $39 billion in additional cuts.

 

So why would he resent your receiving $1.70 a meal for minimum nutrition? You see, Tipton thinks that you should lift yourselves up, like he did. He worked 16 hours a day at minimum wage, gathered wild berries and roots to feed his family and went to Fort Lewis College, too. Yeah, sure. You might wonder why not increase revenue to balance the budget, like rolling back the subsidies for the world’s wealthiest and most profitable companies collectively known as Big Oil? Or closing offshore tax havens?

 

Well, there are a couple of issues here. One is his innate opposition to the concept of our doing anything as a national community, from helping the disadvantaged to regulating rogue banks to protecting our air and water. The other is that the wealthy fund political campaigns and you don’t.

One in 10, or about 2,500 people in Tipton’s home county receive nutritional assistance. Do you suppose Tipton has ever volunteered at the Cortez Food Pantry or Grace’s Soup Kitchen, to see what it’s like to be chronically hungry? I really doubt it. It is so much easier to live in an ideological cocoon, and allow your ideology to set your policy.