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19-Sep-10 News -- State pensions systems are in a 'death spiral'

** 19-Sep-10 News -- State pensions systems are in a 'death spiral'
** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/cgi ... 19#e100919

Contents:
"State pensions systems are in a 'death spiral'"
"Snakebot: Robot snake climbs a real tree"

I've no objection to the idea that state pension systems are assuming Washington will bail them out. But the rot in these systems has been ongoing for decades, so the idea that they assume "Democrats" will bail them out is not in evidence. They assume whoever is running things when the system crashes will bail them out, or they simply figure they'll just get all they can while it lasts, they may simply not be worrying about the future as much as you think. Stupid, but then we use that word a lot.

Part 1: ok, I get that Tea Partiers are miffed about how the government takes their (our!) money and wastes it, but....the government does some good things with our money too. So what do the TPers want? Do they expect that cutting taxes to the bone (while they are already VERY low) will solve some problems? Isn't this part of the problem with TPers? That they yell about the evils of "the government," but don't suggest any alternatives?

Part 2 of my query/comment: John, (and others), don't you have a problem with the fact that the major (behind-the-scenes) support for the Tea Party is from the very wealthy who will directly benefit from the lower regulations and lower taxes? Sure, everyone has a right to lobby (and contribute to) groups that will work to help them, but these folks (the Koch brothers, for example) hide behind patriotic-sounding organizations which are nothing more than fronts to enhance their their profits. And it's another example of how corporations ARE NOT INDIVIDUALS. That was a huge mistake, which Congress could correct.

And Part 2, which is a return to Part 1: Whenever I hear that annoying, nasal whine of Sarah Palin, assuring her followers that "We are gonna take our country back." I get the willies. She never says what she plans to do with it. Do you notice a distinct lack of policy suggestions? Doesn't that worry you? Anger isn't government.

shoshin wrote:Part 1: ok, I get that Tea Partiers are miffed about how the government takes their (our!) money and wastes it, but....the government does some good things with our money too.

Part 2 of my query/comment: John, (and others), don't you have a problem with the fact that the major (behind-the-scenes) support for the Tea Party is from the very wealthy who will directly benefit from the lower regulations and lower taxes?

And Part 2, which is a return to Part 1: Whenever I hear that annoying, nasal whine of Sarah Palin, assuring her followers that "We are gonna take our country back." I get the willies. She never says what she plans to do with it. Do you notice a distinct lack of policy suggestions? Doesn't that worry you? Anger isn't government.

Re 1 : The general consensus is the ratio of waste/good is so bad with gov't that it's not worth it. When contributing to a charity, there's a cut off on the admin cost/money to people who need it ratio where you say, "Hey, this thing is a scam!" . The general Tea Party consensus is this has occured. The few good things gov't does aren't worth the evil it does.

Re 2: Every political group has big money backers. To say the Tea Party is irrelevant due to this is like saying one should ignore the Democrats because of George Soros. Further, if one starts looking more closely at the Tea Party sturcture, you'll see it's more like the cellular one of a resistance movement than the normal heirarchial one of a political party. This bothers me _much_ more than the allegations of big money backers

Re 2/1: "never says what she plans to do with it" - Just as "Change" was never defined very clearly during speeches. Curiously, the Tea Party does say what they want: Return to a system closer to the original implementation of the Constitution. I'd suspect that something like a political system circa 1900, before Wilson's segregation laws, before the Federal Reserve, before Income Tax, but keeping the Civil Rights advances of the 1960's would be an idea what they're looking for.

When the last crisis became bad enough that politics underwent a sea change, things happened. Starting with Roosevelt (and ignoring WWII) the USA ended yearly flooding, ended dust storms and most soil erosion, built a national infrastructure of dams, electric distrbution and communications that was all necessary for the US to become a united country that didn't have third world problems constantly. Truman and Eisenhower finished this off with a highway system and systems of dredging and canals that made it possible to send goods from one end of the US to the other at reasonable costs and in a reasonable time. Exploitation of these new systems caused business to boom and the US became the worlds major trading nation.

We need a newer infrastructure, that uses electricity to move goods and people, and new electric generation (probably a mix of solar and nuclear) that is less polluting and cheaper than oil for transportation. Everyone knows this, nobody is seeing anything done about it because the political alliances are fragile enough that offending say PETA might cause a turnover in Congress.

For God's sake, even ten years ago it was fragile enough that a nonentity like Ralph Nader could turn the presidential race into essentially a tie.

In such conditions, nothing gets done until the old alliances are torn apart. And I think that's what the TPers really want, to tear all the politics down, and start over. They don't seem to be planning much on what will take the place of the old alliances.