Yes, I did mean billions, not millions. Good catch. Billions of dollars are used to measure the incompetence of our government. Millions of dollars are used to measure what lobbyists spend these days to buy off government.

I am still gravely concerned about our future. No job growth in 10 years. No wage increases in 10 years. Well paying middle management jobs being sent to low wage countries. Declining innovation. Declining enrollment in math and science programs. Overvalued housing assets. These are all long-term problems. I could go on, but it is too early here to start drinking.

You are correct, it should be quick to regulate the financial industry. Repeal Graham-Leach-Bliley and restore Glass-Stegal. Repeal the Credit Futures Modernization Act. Basically, repeal any piece of legislation that Phil Graham had a part of because it is more than likely tainted.

I’d prefer to see the free market mechanics regulate the banks. Having said that, there is no such thing as an unfettered, free market. Someone always get sc*ewed. Best we can do is create competitively fair markets by restricting certain anti-competitive activities and creating transparency. Obama got it right last night by providing mid-tier banks $30 billion. It should have been $300 billion. That money should foster a lot of quick innovation among smaller tier banks to take market share from the big banks. If any regulation is necessary, it should be to prevent the big banks from acquiring smaller banks to get bigger.

I agree wholeheartedly with most of what you say, but I think that the matter of deficit spending is not quite so serious as you think. After 1945 the world was a different place and since then all of it has been betting on the US to manage to do the right thing, as I think it was Churchill said, after we have tried everything else.Incidentally I think you meant billions instead of millions in your comment.

Since my ability to post is precarious I have to be brief, I can’t elaborate all at once on any of the points that follow but I want to suggest them.

Financial industry reform should be simple, Banks should be required to return 2/3 of their profits to their depositors in interest on ;said deposits, over time this would enable us to finance our national debt ourselves and it would uplift the entire underclass, the 99% of the population that lives from paycheck to paycheck. IOW it would make sense to save.

Education is indeed the key to our future success but we need to be pragmatic. My vision is that the US could become a scientific society. Instead of making things we devote ourselves to understanding things and most importantly, just exactly how our complex world works.

I throw these ideas out for consideration, if anyone is interested in following up I will try to do so by writing comments off line.

To whit: For years now, I’ve been utterly baffled by the proliferation of so-called “mega Churches”; I – being ‘old school’ – couldn’t, for the life of me, wrap my mind around the notion that people would willingly join a congregation sooooooo large, that in joining, they were fated to be nothing more than just an itty-bitty speck [of one] amongst all the other itty-bitty specks constituting the congregation ~ just another face in the indistinguishable crowd.

Back in “my day” (which, admittedly, was long, long ago), a house of worship’s congregation was composed of the folks in/from the neighborhood; the congregants were an extended family and all knew each other by name. Houses of worship were big enough to meet the spiritual needs of the members AND small enough that the all the congregants ‘knew’ each other. Within the congregation, there was the ‘understanding’ that: if a member was experiencing a difficulty, all members rallied to their comfort and aid. From the priest, pastor, imam, rabbi, etc., on down, everyone in the congregation was engaged and *involved* with each other — not in an intrusive sort of way, but in a ‘you’re an integral part of my family, and because you are part of my family, what joys you or pains you also joys or pains me,’ sort of way.

I appreciate that we’ve a growing population and that funds are short, but I can’t help but wondering if ‘we’ don’t mind being part of a ginormous house of worship’s congregation because we’ve become ‘accustomed’ to ‘accepting’ being a speck in a political constituency, or if it’s the other way around. Or, possibly, we ‘accept’ both because it’s easier to ‘go with the flow” (bumping into SPs infamous “dead fish” along the way, or not) than to do else-wise? How about when it comes to consolidated schools in towns, cities, and/or districts: are ‘we’ doing what is financially expedient, or what is most beneficial for/to the student…

I do believe I’m going to have to puzzle this out some more. A lot more. beth.

[Disclaimer: For mudpups who are members of any super-large congregation, I mean no disrespect for your choice of place and/or fellowship within which you practice your Faith.

Please accept the above ramblings as just the thoughts of one who realizes there are whole bunches of things in this world I need to need re-examine and re-evaluate as the years –and situations – continually change; one who’s still trying to figure things out and grow. b.]

uh…Chris…aren’t we pretty close to this ourselves?

I can’t bring myself to say we’ve already fallen into this category.

Thanks for your comments. Another thing that gets by most people is that the wars were not part of any budget between 2002 and 2009. Instead the people in the Bush administration twice yearly put up special appropriation bills to fund the wars. Each bill appropriated somewhere between $300 to $600 million. By taking this approach, Bush avoided making the official budget deficit look larger. Per his budgets the deficits were “only” about $400 million.

The size of the budget deficit is the issue for our time. It will affect our lives over the long term far greater than terrorism ever could hope to. It will stunt economic growth and limit employment options for our children and probably our grandchildren. As we are seeing, it will affect choices about health care. It has direct consequences on our foreign policy options. The debt is a potential weapon in the hands of irrational governments who are not beholden to their constituencies.

The nation has faced a debt load like this in the past. After WWII the national debt stood at something like 125% of GDP (whereas today it is about GDP). The difference between then and now is that during the 50′s there were multiple opportunities for growth, i.e. game changing technologies, emerging foreign markets. Economic growth paid down the debt. Not so today, unless a durable way of growing our economy is discovered. That is unlikely to occur.

These teabaggers are not the problem, they are a symptom of the problem. Somewhere Ronald Reagan must be smiling as these teabaggers are the fruit of the war on education he started 30 years ago.

During my own non-career time in the military, I affected dozens rather than thousands, but I realized much the same thing. If I expected adult behavior (or to be more honest, allowed my NCOs to expect it), lots of adult behavior magically occurred.

This turned out to be just about the most important thing I knew during my next 35 years (and some hundreds of folks) in the semiconductor biz. The notion that “people are inherently perfectible” is sometimes dismissed as the “liberal fallacy”, and over the years I’ve gone from conviction to hope on that one. But I’ve seen nothing to shake my belief that “people want to act like adults”. Of course, there are exceptions, and some of them can be downright annoying, but for the vast majority: treat ‘em like adults, and they act that way. Applies to me too, of course.

I wonder if our gradually degenerating Federal governance is due to the fact that the US has gotten too big. Each Congressional district contains around 700,000 residents. That’s a huge number of people — a good sized city. How can any MC maintain meaningful personal contact with such a large constituency? Answer: they can’t. Instead, they rely on polls, and their local party organization, and lobbyists — who can afford to call on them, instead of vice versa. Some of them may have sufficiently extensive family-and-friends networks to give them another view into their constituency, but even in those cases it’s a single view.

And, unfortunately, the 400,000 or so voters in the district have plenty of problems of their own, and so don’t spend much time trying to figure out what they want their MC to do, or how well he/she is doing it.

Generally, every two years, most will vote based on (1) traditional ideological/partisan alignment; (2) candidates’ personal charm; (3) scandal, if any; (4) the economy; (5) TV advertising. The average MC can only affect (2) and (5).

You’ll notice that there is no (6): what the Congress critter actually did during the last term. If you don’t agree this is insignificant, ask yourself “What did my Congressperson do last term”. (Pelosi, Grayson, Kucenich constituents just hush).

So, the way the game is set up, they need to exude charm and run lots of ads. Ads need money, money comes from lobbyists. And what we end up with is, in fact, a game. Now, games are fun, and they are what adults do to relax. But they’re not what adults do when they’re being adult.

I’m afraid that our great expansion as a country has made constituencies so large that they can no longer be comprehended by their elected representatives. Thus, adult behavior (do what is best for my constituents and the nation as a whole) is not reinforced, and childish behavior (get re-elected because it’s cool to be in Congress, win points against the other party, get media attention, etc) prevails.

Sorry for rambling. I am pretty pessimistic. beth really made the point already, and much more briefly — the reason the House and Senate appear to be filled with squabbling children is that they are.

@38 lysistrata — I do try (with indifferent results) to use the term “tea-partier”. However, it’s difficult to be linguistically sensitive when the iconic photos of folks — and I’d say the photos they themselves consider iconic — are of OWGs like me wearing fishing hats with teabags hung off the brim.