printThe more pertinent point to make about the Super Committee, and its failure today to come up with “$1.2 trillion in deficit-reduction measures,” is not that it is unelected. Unelected and unaccountable is the hallmark of the shakers and movers of our Managerial State.
A soviet-style, souped-up politburo is making decisions that are generally entrusted to the people’s representatives. That’s the mundane and obvious complaint that has been lodged against the Super Committee.
But who in his right mind still believes that elected representatives in this democracy of ours carry out the will of the majority and protect the minority? (A point belabored in “Into the cannibal’s Pot” is that democracy gives “the People’s representatives carte blanche to do exactly as they please.”)
The people’s business in the welfare-warfare managerial state is relegated to unaccountable, usually faceless bureaucrats, ensconced in enormous bureaucracies. Nothing unusual about that. We’re lucky to know the identity of the “twelve members of Congress, six from the House of Representatives and six from the Senate,” who’re officiating.
Of course this committee was destined to fail. There is no climbing out from under a government debt of $15 trillion when the pols and the people don’t want to downsize their taxpayer-sustained life styles. (Let’s see some leadership from our men and women in uniform; join the civilian workforce.)
The point about the Super Committee is that it has only ever been about Teflon politics: make sure nothing clings to the culprits, members of both Houses and the president. Its achievement—also its aim—is that it puts distance between the debt, on the one hand, and the Congress and the president on the other.
Some quickie math: 41% of GDP is spent on government so approximately 41% of the workforce is government and government contractors or retirees dependent on the government or those receiving student loans… then add in their families …. then add in the fact that those who are not on the take are often apathetic or perhaps illegal fruit pickers (e.g. not voters) … – the majority of VOTERS are recipients (or expect to soon retire and receive payments themselves). The addiction to spending is deep and the aversion to pay for it (via taxes) is also deep – hence we have the deficit.
Both “factions” in the Welfare-Warfare Leviathan are playing their part – the Democrats protecting the high spending and the Republicans protecting the low taxing and hoping to score political points blaming the other for the “mess”.
The Super-Committee is just part of the Kabuki Theater on the Titanic on the way to hit the iceberg of Debtmageddon.
Misdirection. What the eyes see and the ears hear, the mind believes. -Gabriel the movie Swordfish