Herbert of the New York Times Bawls for Alms or Thinking Backward without Thinking

Abstract: Herbert of the NYT offers us maudlin theatre with an irritating display of alms grubbing as he carefully sidesteps the only solution to our massive debt problems that are sinking this economy and that is government spending. He wants to rescue some states with federal funds. CA and NY are hopeless cases where spending is out of control and hundreds of thousands of taxpayers are fleeing these places while their governments import illegal aliens and poverty to bolster their voting roles. Tax and spend are the only two operative words in this piece.

All humans posses different attributes and can be ranked by standardized tests on some and by subjective or casual analyses on others. The complex mixture of such attributes forms part of the personality and the manner by which these characteristics are expressed in communication complete the person. Presumably, education or one of its political variants is impressed upon the student in early years to enhance some of these attributes and even more important becomes the use of refined thinking skills to make analyses and extract new information from current events. This is all very complex, but what we view from reading samples of a large number of persons’ works is that some people can think and then write and others can write without thinking by substituting dogma or by intercalating clichés among the blank spaces of their written works.

Now, political machines like the New York Times employ a variety of writers[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8] and staff[9] that may appear to have spent some time thinking and analyzing the news and to compile that information into some article for, in this case, the op-ed section. There is fame and fortune in this business if they can rise above the rubble of yellow journalism and launch some new concepts or discover the hidden secrets and unleash them upon the public.  Many must thrash about in a contest of ideological rivalry to see if any are noble enough to match the elegant essays of their honored Pulitzer Prize winner Walter Duranty.[10]He set standards of journalism that, while not based on truth, were politically stimulating and formed the basis for political decisions since politicians seem to read this paper often to learn about their agendas. He was a role model whose mantle few expect to wear.

Today, we are treated to examine a grand example of a cogitatively deficient process, although apparently  an acceptable variant of what some call journalism, wherein some written work is composed while the salient  facts are omitted, any hints of objectivity are scrubbed away and suddenly a maudlin propaganda piece of tear-jerking majesty is unveiled for us. We have been invited to a disaster and here it is in cognitive terms:

Herbert recites our mistakes and our inattention to danger:

“We didn’t pay attention to the housing bubble. We closed our eyes to warnings that the levees in New Orleans were inadequate. We gave short shrift to reports that bin Laden was determined to attack the U.S. And now we’re all but ignoring the fiscal train wreck that is coming from states with budget crises big enough to boggle the mind”[11]--Invitation to Disaster By Bob Herbert Op-Ed Columnist Published: January 8, 2010  [Emphasis is mine in all quotes.]

Propaganda pieces frequently launch off with threats of impending doom that sway the reader and make him cry or thrash about in anguish but usually there is some ‘solution’ to the problem that will save the day for all of us and this piece is no exception. He fails to mention the $12 trillion dollar federal national debt now running at $192,000[12] on average for every single taxpayer who makes more than $31,000. Herbert[13] is going to tell us have to avert this disaster:

The call for more fees and taxes:

“The states are in the worst fiscal shape since the Depression. The Great Recession has caused state tax revenues to fall off a cliff. Some states — New York and California come quickly to mind — are facing prolonged budget nightmares. Across the country, critical state services are being chopped like firewood. More cuts are coming. Taxes and fees are being raised. Yet the budgets in dozens and dozens of states remain drastically out of balance.”-- Invitation to Disaster By Bob Herbert

This is not news. Why not just raise taxes some more?? There are many reasons why certain states are crashing into the financial shoals and we might be impressed if some of them were mentioned in this propaganda spread.  Where is the comment on excessive government spending? The only hint that some of this mess was self-inflicted comes from this little snippet:

“State governments are not without fault. Very few have been paragons of fiscal responsibility over the years.”-- Invitation to Disaster By Bob Herbert

This paragraph then continues with:

“California is a well-known basket case. New York has a Legislature that is a laughingstock. But for the federal government to resist offering substantial additional help in the face of this growing crisis would be foolhardy. You can’t have a healthy national economy while dozens of states are hooked up to life support.”--Invitation to Disaster By Bob Herbert

Here we go! We have a problem that must be solved by throwing somebody else’s money into the snake pit before we learn what caused this and what must be done to ameliorate this sickness. We read nothing about punitive taxation of the sort that drives high income earners and businesses out of California and New York. We learn nothing about the wild spending habits of the political creatures that cluster in small groups in Sacramento and Albany to feed upon the taxpayers. We hear nothing about the millions of illegal aliens who infest these two states and require all sorts of social programs including free medical care and education and how these costs might burden the tax revenues. We learn nothing about the drug problems and phony drug rehab experiments that are costly and largely disingenuous and actually tend to exacerbate this problem with the bawdy tinsel and song fests rather than minimize it.

Herbie then solicits the opinion of an ‘expert’ on all this:

““Expenditure cuts [read spending cuts here, ed.] are problematic policies during an economic downturn because they reduce overall demand and can make the downturn deeper. When states cut spending, they lay off employees, cancel contracts with vendors, eliminate or lower payments to businesses and nonprofit organizations that provide direct services, and cut benefit payments to individuals. [Emphasis is mine in all quotes.]

“In all of these circumstances, the companies and organizations that would have [read SHOULD NOT HAVE here ed.] received government payments have less money to spend on salaries and supplies, and individuals who would have [read SHOULD NOT HAVE ed.] received salaries or benefits have less money for consumption. This directly removes demand from the economy.””—Quoted from the Center on Budget in Invitation to Disaster By Bob Herbert

Translated, this means the federal and state G.D.P.s should be maintained at previous levels with spending. So, the singular metric that drives up deficits and drives down tax revenues and discourages citizens and forces them to flee is spending cuts and this is the first thing Herbie wants to scratch off his little list. The argument presented by this ‘expert’ pleads for more spending in all cases and just amplifies the budget deficit mess. But, the states can wiggle out of this mess and get back to the normal process of more taxation and more spending if only we do what?

Print more money and give it to the states:

“The Obama administration has provided significant help to states through its stimulus program, and it has [NOT] made a difference. It prevented the crisis from being much worse….and… We need more responsible and less wasteful fiscal behavior from all levels of government. But the country is still faced with a national economic emergency, with tens of millions out of work or underemployed. We can hardly afford any additional economic shocks. Turning our backs on the desperate trouble the states are in right now is nothing less than an utterly willful invitation to disaster.”-- Invitation to Disaster By Bob Herbert [Emphasis is mine in all quotes.]

 Spend spend spend. We already have a disaster as our economy is collapsing and our currency is going to be debased one way or the other and inflation[14] is the major avenue. There is no evidence that the stimuli to the states have done anything as yet. Cash for clunkers[15], [$24,000 spent per car at a sales level of $35,000 or less], shovel-ready projects that never started, mortgage ‘adjustments’ for the ‘poor’ were tried then the recidivism rates hit 70%[16] are examples of this stimulus joke.  This folly and other phony measures have done nothing but waste federal funds and plunged us further into debt. The call for fiscal responsibility in these two states [CA and NY] is like whistling in the forest for a lobster and champagne dinner to suddenly appear on an old stump along with some mariachi music and a belly dancer for entertainment.

This never ends. This is just bawling for alms. This is begging and whining and glubbering and making a joke out of the whole process in terms of debt. This last resort to government handouts and more state spending is the very last measure we need to employ because both states and the federal government will add to their deficits and the depression we inherited from this debt-driven deflationary spiral[17] will continue to get worse. Many in the Obama administration and pseudo economists at the New York Times [such as their resident ‘economist’ Paul Krugman[18][19][20][21][22][23] ] insist that we can spend our way out of massive debt! Debt can apparently be minimized by adding more debt, a nostrum that only a Marxist, a Methodist or a Moron would suggest.

And, if, we did give CA a $20 billion dollar grant to ‘fix’ their budget problems just what would they do with it? How about some new studies on how to grow more marijuana or some free AIDS clinics or more green projects that are inefficient but expensive and will only add to the budgetary problems. Can we depend on California to get their budget deficit to zero in 2011? Or, will they just take more drugs and spend more and hike the budget deficit to $30 billion and crawl back to Obama sob stories and beg for more in 2012. What happens after the 3^rd or 4^th iteration of his nonsense? Drug addicts cannot be cured any more than pedophiles can and we can add to this sorry list of addicts and protosimian beings the liberals of the Democratic Party who can only spend money they don’t have. If we give them anything they will just spend it and beg for more next year. This is hopeless.

Look for a resumption of the 2008 depression we cooked up for ourselves with massive spending and the phony ‘affordable housing’ legislation to resume mid year in 2010. We have no hope of paying off this debt and people like Obama and Herbert think we can just ‘tax the rich’ and pay for all this.  Wait until the ‘main street’ folk find out that soaking the rich with massive taxes starts off at $31,000.

rycK

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