Page 4 — THE LACONIA DAILY SUN, Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Pat Buchanan
Barack Hoover? Is the world headed for a debt crisis to dwarf the one that befell us in 2008, when Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson stood aside and let Lehman Brothers crash? No one knows for certain. As Yogi Berra said, “it’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” But the probability of a financial crisis increased this week after President Obama’s trashing of Rep. Paul Ryan’s deficit reduction plan as dragging us all back to the Dickensian days of “Oliver Twist.” For the savagery of Obama’s attack persuaded Standard & Poor’s to begin to move to downgrade U.S. sovereign debt from the triple-A rating it has held since Pearl Harbor. The British newspaper The Guardian wrote of the dramatic news: “With the political infighting between the Republicans and Democrats on the deficit now so bitter that there was a risk of the US government being shut down earlier this month, S&P said it had taken the decision to change its outlook because ‘the path to addressing these issues is not clear to us.’” “We believe there is a significant risk,” said S&P credit analyst Nikola Swann, “that congressional negotiations could result in no agreement on a medium-term fiscal strategy until after the 2012 congressional and presidential elections.” Obama adviser Austan Goolsbee challenged the S&P rating and rationale behind it. “They are saying their political judgment is that over the next two years, they didn’t see a political agreement. ... I don’t think that the S&P’s political judgment is right.” But the S&P’s projection of gridlock got support this week when two polls showed that the nation is much closer to Obama’s resistance to Ryan’s plan than it is to Ryan. A Washington Post-ABC News poll found 78-percent of Americans oppose cutting spending on Medicare to reduce the deficit, and 69-percent oppose cutting Medicaid. Obama’s plan to raise taxes on couples earning $250,000 a year or more wins the support of 7percent of voters. A McClatchy-Marist poll found 2 in 3 Americans favoring raising taxes on those earning more than $250,000 but 4 in 5 voters opposing cutting Medicare or Medicaid. Obama’s position is in sync with three-fourths of the nation. Why would he retreat from this unassailable high ground to seek a compromise with a hugely unpopular Republican proposal? Why not pound the Ryan Republicans remorselessly as defenders of the rich and slashers of the social safety net if America agrees with you? Obama may have found an issue to save his presidency. He is today upside-down in every national poll.
Many more Americans disapprove of the job he is doing than approve. Why would a president who has lost the support of half his country surrender a strong position that three-fourths of his country agrees with? Democratic allies on Capitol Hill would regard this as madness. What of the Republicans who appear today to be on the wrong side of the deficit reduction debate? Will they look at these polls and say, “We must stop trying to reform Medicare and Medicaid and move closer to Obama and impose higher taxes on successful Americans”? To ask the question is to answer it. Should Republicans revert to their venerable role of pre-Reagan days — the tax collectors for the welfare state — what would be the argument left for the existence of the party? Not only does S&P’s grim assessment of the prospects for U.S. deficit reduction seem sound. News from across the pond points to a fastapproaching day of reckoning in the financial world. European investors are now demanding and getting 22-percent interest on two-year Greek bonds. And with Greek debt at 150-percent of its gross domestic product — the same as Zimbabwe — the question is no longer whether Athens will default, but when, how and what will be the losses to European citizens, banks and governments who hold Greek paper. Will Greece be the only domino to fall, or will Ireland and Portugal follow and the contagion spread across Europe and leap the Atlantic? What makes this appear more imminent was the triumph this week of a Euro-skeptic and ethnonationalist party, the True Finns, which vaulted from five seats in the Helsinki Parliament to 38 and will almost surely be in the new government. High on the True Finns’ agenda: tougher terms for any bailout of Portugal and using Finland’s EU veto to kill Angela Merkel’s plan for a super-bailout fund after 2013. Like other northern Europeans and even Germans in Merkel’s party, the stolid Finns are sick of subsidizing the self-indulgent deadbeats of Club Med. And here is where the risk to Obama comes. Playing off Ryan may be smart short-term politics, but if the world financial system were to come crashing down — in part because of the absence of a U.S. deficit deal — no one would blame Paul Ryan. The Herbert Hoover of that depression would be Barack Obama. (Syndicated columnist Pat Buchanan has been a senior advisor to three presidents, twice a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination and the presidential nominee of the Reform Party in 2000. He won the New Hampshire Republican Primary in 1996.)
LETTERS Boys & Girls Club has been vandalized and now burglarized To the editor, Three months ago the Boys & Girls Club of the Lakes Region was broken into. Stolen was a new lap top computer that was used by the kids for movies, power point presentations, and our Smart Moves and Netsmartz classes and was our mobile research center. The new Konnect Xbox 360 which was a favorite with the kids especially on a rainy day when they would use it for “Dance, Dance Revolution“ and other active games was also stolen . And some money of which $60 was stolen out of our collection cans. In cooperation with the Laconia Police Department, we kept quiet hoping that what was stolen would be recovered. The Laconia Police who are very supportive of the Boys & Girls Club, tried their best to apprehend the
person who burglarized our “home” but no luck. We really appreciate their help. There was just not enough evidence. So I decided to go public not to look for another lap top or Konnect but to voice my complete dismay and sadness that we are so desperate as to steal from kids. I have been here in Laconia for two years and seen our buses tagged and our club burglarized and it just makes me feel angry and sad. I know these are difficult times. I just think that no matter how desperate life is you shouldn’t take it out on kids. If you have any information on the club break-in please contact the Laconia Police Department at 5245287. Dave Parker, Executive Director Boys & Girls Club on the Lakes Region
When Democrats speak of equality, they’re talking about Marxism To the editor, The New York Times has published articles on the Civil War since Oct. 2010; the April 18 Time Magazine’s Cover shows Lincoln with a tear from his eye, stating, “Why we’re still fighting the Civil War, and a Citizen article, Civil War at 150. There is focus in these articles about slavery, New York Times heads their article with “Disunion”. Back in the 90s I lent a book on Lincoln published in 1865, (never got that one back either) in which was explained Lincoln’s first concern: Union. What ever the differences to be worked out disunion would never be the answer. Much is written about “all men are created equal”, which can in itself be dissected, much written about presidents being slave owners themselves; but from where in history we stand beyond the reality of the day it is an endless task to dissect and analyze. The fact is, prior to the invention of the cotton gin slaves doing field labor was very limited as the economy of owning a slave wasn’t cheap and had been expected to end over time. After the cotton gin production/profit from cotton escalated, but the general population of the south didn’t nor could afford slaves. The issue of slavery is an issue of
history, a political issue; after all the “Revolutionary War” itself was about the enslavement of the colonists by the king and Parliament. Colonists were demanding their ‘rights’ as British subjects because with them they had a level of equality without them they were no more than slaves. The Civil War was fought by the Democrats of the ‘South’ who wanted to retain slavery and the Republican North (the Party founded here in New Hampshire) that voted in Republican Lincoln, who was elected to prevent the extension of slavery West and “Disunion”. The Republican president won. Democrats 150 years later still wish to enslave the “people” via the federal government, referring to equality. Not the equality of the Founders but the equality of Marx, which is determined not by the individual but the government. Today we’ve reached a tipping point, possibly beyond it, enslaved by debt and federal programs our freedom has been erased. We can still vote for fiscal sanity, smaller government and the freedom to control our own income. The Soviet Union lasted 70 years, hopefully the United States will last another 200+. GW Brooks Meredith