The Big Lie - "Our Economy Is Strong"

Here's another one of those disgusting Bush / neo-con / GOP lies that they keep repeating to the point where the ignorant people in this country actually believe it. Here's a quote from a recent article in Yahoo news about Bush touting our "strong" economy as an accomplishment:

In Washington, the economist in chief encourages GOP candidates to embrace the economy as a stellar accomplishment. "I'd say 'Look at what the economy has done. It's strong. We've created a lot of jobs,'" Bush said recently.

Of course the balance of the article goes on to pick apart the 'strength' of our economy. I believe every word of this article, but that's not the point of my message today. The fact that they can even claim that the economy is strong and cite specific statistics & metrics is completely absurd.


My Home Metaphor

Humor me for a minute. I like to think of the government's budget as kind of like my family's budget. We have income just like the government (tax revenues), and we spend money just like the government (appropriations). Let's make a comparison, shall we?

My wife and I try not to spend more money than we take home. We understand that too much debt is going to haunt us in the future, so we try to keep the debt down to a minimum. But if we didn't understand that, we could take out a loan at a bank (perhaps it's a Chinese or Saudi bank) for... say... $1,000,000. Gee, with a million dollars there's lots we could do...

We could hire a full time cook, housekeeper, gardener, trainer, AND tutor for our kids. Yes, unemployment would go down as we just put 5 more people to work for a year!

Next, we would upgrade our vehicles, upgrade our appliances, upgrade our house, send our kids to private schools, and join that expensive golf course we couldn't have otherwise afforded.

Then, I would hire a bunch of thugs to kick the crap out of some brown people who live across town and take over their house too. After all, they have a lot more sunlight on their property... and I want it!

And, since we're afraid of evil-doers out there who hate our way of life, we'll have to hire a team of round-the-clock security guards. They won't be standing around our house, though. Nooooo... Instead, they'll be out-and-about town, looking into other people's houses, listening in on their phone calls, intercepting their email, and finding out what library books they've checked out. If they see anyone who looks even remotely suspicious, my boys will beat the crap out of them until they tell us what we want to hear, whether it's true or not.

Finally, I would go to my boss and ask for a huge cut in pay!

Sounds realistic, doesn't it?



No. It doesn't. It's not realistic at all, but that's what I see going on in our government. Anyone can pump an EXTRA $450b into our economy (deficit) to bring unemployment down, bring GDP up, and make our economy appear artificially strong.

But all they're really doing is piling on the debt for the next administration, and generations to come. Sure.... the Democrats will be the bad guys having to reign in the Republican's overspending and tow the line on fiscal conservatism. Just like Clinton did, after 12 years of Reagan & Bush (41), overspending to fuel the military-industrial-complex. They'll have to raise taxes to bring the budget & deficit under control.


Ladies & gentlemen, please don't buy it. This is the same, neo-conservative, misleading bullcrap they've been selling us for 6 years. Our economic condition is dire, though not necessarily immediate. Our national debt is fast approaching ten TRILLION dollars (pinky on upper lip). And our president is running our country into the ground, just like he ran his private business ventures into the ground before he sleazed the Texas governorship away from Ann Richards. And he continues to use the Saudis, Chinese, and other rich nations & families to bail him out.

This time, it's U.S. who needs to be bailed out.