Impeach Everybody
Tuesday, October 8, 2019 18:17
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“Impeach Everybody”
by Brian Maher
“The president is absorbing a severe battering. From his left, Democrats seek to bayonet him out of office. They insist his sins against American democracy are of the mortal, impeachable variety. From his right, the war hawks and bugle blowers rage against him. They claim he has handed Turkey a permission slip to gobble northern Syria. Northern Syria is thick with Kurdish militias. Turkey packs a mighty hatred for these Kurds (we refer you to Professor Google for the whys and what-fors). And it is eager to shoo them as far as possible from its borders.
But the Kurds are true-blue American allies, holler the president’s party critics. The Kurds were instrumental in defeating ISIS, they remind him. Moreover, Iran and Russia will boss the entire region if the United States withdraws. No, America must get in back of the Kurds. By natural extension, American boots must remain forever glued to Syrian soil.
A “grave mistake,” Sen. Marco Rubio labels Mr. Trump’s decision. (The wrong graves will fill, we presume.) Abandoning the Kurds would constitute a “catastrophic mistake,” shrieks Rep. Liz Cheney. Mrs. Cheney is the daughter of “deficits don’t matter” Richard Cheney. Sen. Lindsey Graham styles Trump’s decision a “catastrophe in the making.” It is further a “stain on America’s honor.”
Just so. But here is one more “catastrophe in the making.” Here too is a “stain on America’s honor”: We are informed reliably – by the Congressional Budget Office – that the federal budget deficit surges to embarrassing heights. The Hill, in summary of CBO’s findings: “The federal budget deficit for 2019 is estimated at $984 billion, a hefty 4.7% of gross domestic product (GDP) and the highest since 2012, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said on Monday.”
The difference between federal spending and revenue has only ever exceeded $1 trillion four times, in the period immediately following the global financial crisis. The deficit, which has grown every year since 2015, is $205 billion higher than it was in 2018, a jump of 26%. A 26% jump over last year – at a time when the economy is expanding.
The Keynesian bible counsels governments to run surpluses during bountiful times… when the economic cup floweth over and the tax haul is heavy. Come the inevitable recession, the national strong box bursts with cash. This cash the government can then shake out into the general economy. There it coaxes and tickles the snoozing economic machinery into vigor… and lifts the economy out of recession. The cycle can then begin anew.
But even the old Keynesian religion – once considered profligate – binds too heavily in these liberated times. It has yielded to the heretic faith of Perpetual Deficit. The new canon permits the federal government to run deficits at all times, in all seasons… lean or fat. Can the nation rub along on the estimated $3.5 trillion it will lay out in federal taxes this year? Or the additional $3.3 trillion it gives in state and local taxes? That is, on a combined $6.8 trillion of tax money?
Only the iciest stoneheart – or a suicidal politician – would propose it. Too many snouts are in the trough, guzzling the overflow. To kink the hose would be next door to murder. The bureaucracies of Washington would take to rebellion. That is, the swamp would take to rebellion.
But it is not only the marshy bogs of the nation’s capital. We the People would likewise wail in protest. As we have noted before: We demand a shining military machine with every whistle and bell… heaping doses of Social Security… Medicare… a Rolls-Royce education… a million gaudy baubles. But we do not wish to pay for it all. Hand it over, we bark out one corner of our mouth. But don’t dare raise our taxes, we belch out the other.
Many of us say we’re heart and soul for limited government. But we are heart and soul for limited government… as long as it’s the other fellow’s heart and soul feeling the blade. Give me that tax break, says the one. No, give it to me, says the other. You can both go scratching, says the third. I deserve it more. A fourth files a claim of his own.
Meantime, the hard-luck farmer wants his back scratched. The hard-pressed businessman wants his belly rubbed. The overlabored teacher wants her apple. And millions more are hard at the business… All trying to work the angles, to get a bucket in the stream, to get a snout in the trough… to catch a penny. It is the evil of “special interests” when the other fellow gets his. But it is “democracy in action” when it butters our own parsnips. Of course… your editor is no exception. We enjoy having our own parsnips buttered – and in drowning amounts.
We conclude with a modest proposal: If the president is to be impeached… impeachment proceedings should commence against nearly all elected officials sitting at Washington.
Fiscal irresponsibility should be the charge. And We the People should be impeached for electing them…
Below, we show you how America endured the “forgotten depression of 1920–21.” What does it say about today’s economic wisdom? Read on.”
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“America’s Forgotten Depression of 1920–21″
By Brian Maher
“The year is 1921… America is less than three years removed from triumph on the Western Front. The twenties are set to roar… and the Jazz Age is in swing. Warren Gamaliel Harding sits at the presidential desk. And the nation is sunk in depression…
U.S. industrial production plunged 31% between 1920 and 1921. Stock prices plummeted 46%. And corporate profits, a crushing 92%. Unemployment ran as high as 19%. Storefronts nationwide gaped empty. It was the great bellyache of the day. Then suddenly it was over. The pain was acute… but the pain was brief. By 1922 prosperity was finding its legs again.
Welcome to the Forgotten Depression of 1920–1921: How America skirted depression in the early ’20s is a story seldom told. But had it been otherwise, the Forgotten Depression may have become known to history as the Great Depression. Why was it not? Because the economic doctors of the day let the fever run its course… and let the ailing patient recover on his own.
Despite the Progressive Era’s encroachments and WWI’s assaults, laissez-faire still had roots in American soil – roots both deep and wide. In the America of 1921 the stock market looked after itself… and buried its own dead. Business was mostly on its own hook. And banishing the business cycle was not the work of government.
Just eight years old, the Federal Reserve was still in knickers. Its role at the time was simple and it knew it – to provide liquidity to the banking system in the event of another banking crisis. It is inconceivable today. But the central bank sat idle as the economic machinery seized heading into 1921.
In the words of one economic historian, “Despite the severity of the contraction, the Fed did not move to use its powers to turn the money supply around and fight the contraction.” And if you can believe it – you may not – the Federal Reserve actually increased interest rates. That is correct. It raised rates to 6% in 1921… right into the teeth of depression.
Angels of mercy, no! Raising interest rates in a depression. Didn’t they know? Not until 1922, after the recovery was well along, did they reduce rates to 4% again. And once depression broke upon the scene, Harding broke every one of today’s fiscal commandments. Did he try to spend the country into recovery? Did he raise taxes on the rich? No and no.
Harding nearly sawed the federal budget in half between 1920 and 1922. He shriveled the national debt by a third. He slashed taxes A through Z. If Paul Krugman existed at the time, he would have screamed blue murder and set Mr. Harding down as an enemy of the people. But Harding followed a different set of lights than the good Dr. Krugman…
Imagine – if possible – a contemporary president taking this grim message before the American people: “We will attempt intelligent and courageous deflation, and strike at government borrowing which enlarges the evil, and we will attack high cost of government with every energy and facility which attend Republican capacity… Let us call to all the people for thrift and economy, for denial and sacrifice if need be, for a nationwide drive against extravagance and luxury, to a recommittal to simplicity of living, to that prudent and normal plan of life which is the health of the republic.”
Harding prescribed a medicine too bitter for modern America. But it was the proper medicine in the proper dose. Recovery was underway by the summer of 1921. Unemployment sank to 6.7% by the following year… and a vanishing 2.4% the year after. Industry was on the jump again. As one economic historian noted, “The economy rebounded quickly from the 1920–1921 depression and entered a period of quite vigorous growth.”
In summary, the budget was cut… the money supply fell… and interest rates rose. Deadlier medicine is scarcely imaginable to today’s economic healers.The great Jim Grant, who wrote a book on the Forgotten Depression of 1920–1921: “By the lights of Keynesian and monetarist doctrine alike, no more primitive or counterproductive policies could be imagined. Yet these policies proved so primitive and counterproductive the country was out of depression within 18 months.”
The facts are the facts. But for his efforts – or lack of efforts – Harding has been read out of history altogether. It was the saint FDR who “saved capitalism from itself” a decade later with his New Deal and assaults upon free enterprise. But history smiles upon men of action… even if the wrong action. Inaction makes for dull history. And idle historians. But if Harding had been the man of action FDR was, the 1920s might have been known as the Great Depression – not the 1930s. And the term “Roaring Twenties” would probably be as unknown today as Harding himself…”
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“The Forgotten Depression – 1921: The Crash That Cured Itself”
Source: http://coyoteprime-runningcauseicantfly.blogspot.com/2019/10/impeach-everybody.html
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