The Budget Monster Sequel Will Have a Different Ending
The sequel, “Special Session 2, The Budget Monster is Still With Us” will have to end differently than “Special Session 1, Taming the Budget Monster.” You remember that one. It bombed at the box office, wasn’t around very long. In the end of that Special Session nothing much happened. The monster won.
So now a new cast of characters has joined the fight against the monster. Fortified by fresh blood from new recruits freshly arrived in Sacramento, the plan is to take down the monster this time. And there’s no question that this sequel will have a different ending. Because if nothing happens to the monster, quite a lot will happen to the state of California.
The state will run out of money to pay its bills. Vendors, recipients of state largess and probably public employees will feel the blow. But, all Californians will feel the effects. Interest rates on state bonds will explode, bankruptcies could ensue. It’s not a pretty picture.
Energy and Education
With incoming liberal President-elect Barack Obama (already tending
toward moderation) and an outgoing conservative President Bush
(already tending toward obscurity), we are naturally going to debate
all the issues that liberals and conservatives love to debate:
abortion, same-sex marriage, immigration, public safety,
infrastructure, taxation, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the
current economic crisis.
It is my sincere belief that we will solve these problems, never to
everyone’s satisfaction, but in a way that benefits most Americans
and hurts the fewest. In simple terms, facing and defeating great
challenges is what Americans do best. As a nation, we are the
ultimate sleeping dog. Initially happy to be a British colony, the
Brits could not leave well enough alone and eventually we revolted
and defeated a nation previously thought invincible. We were
isolationist and passive as WWI and WW2 began, until prodded by world
events to enter – and win – both wars. Stumbling along with our space
program until surpassed by the Russians and challenged by President
John F. Kennedy, we did the impossible and put a man on the man in
less than a decade.
Fire Up The Printing Presses!
Once upon a time, US currency was actually backed by gold and silver and you could redeem paper money for its equivalent in these precious metals. During the Depression that all changed with the Executive Order signed on April 5, 1933 by FDR "forbidding the Hoarding of Gold Coin, Gold Bullion, and Gold Certificates," and requiring everybody on or before May 1, 1933 to deliver all gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates to the Federal Reserve in exchange for paper money.
Then, in 1944 the Breton Woods Conference agreed upon a gold standard, the US fixed the value of gold at $35 per ounce and the rest of the conferees fell in line until Nixon in 1971, squeezed by financial pressures of the Vietnam war, un-fixed gold from it’s $35 per ounce anchor and detached our currency from any gold standard at all. Ever since, it’s just been paper, backed up by the US government’s promise to make good.
Well, that is all up for grabs now, as are so many other things. T incoming Obama Administration has boldly gone into the fray and conjured up a stimulus package the size of the September Bailout, another $600 to 700 Billion dollars on top of that September $700 or 750 Billion dollars.