Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Last Minute Plea For The Libertarians

Ok, here's the last plea you'll ever read about voting for Bob Barr.


Can you look at this chart and tell when The Mommy Party (D) controlled Congress? Can you tell when The Daddy Party (R) elected a President? Or did they accomplish this through teamwork?


This is from someone named Kevin G. Hall, with the McClatchy Newspaper group.

WASHINGTON — As presidential candidates largely ignore the issue, looming fiscal challenges threaten to swamp the U.S. economy and erode America's superpower status, several of the nation's foremost experts on the federal budget warned Wednesday.
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Starting in 2017, Social Security will pay out more than it takes in from tax revenues. Over the next 75 years, that could add $4.7 trillion in present-day value to the federal debt.
However, that pales when compared with projected government health-care spending on retiring baby boomers, the more than 75 million Americans born from 1946 to 1964. Boomer retirement is projected to cost the Medicare system and state-managed Medicaid $33.9 trillion in present value over the next 75 years.
Unless changes are made to benefits and/or revenues, within the next three decades government spending on Social Security and Medicare could account for $1 of every $5 spent in the U.S. economy.
This is bigger than your fear that Obama is going to take away your guns. This is bigger than your fear that McCain will overturn Roe v. Wade. The BiPartisans are hammering away at wedge issues while this ticking time bomb is going to blow up and make everything else seem irrelevant.
Get ready.
Here are the same numbers upside down, just in case you had trouble visualizing us sinking into a pit. It doesn't account for the bailout, or the last two years of "George and Dick's Excellent Adventure".

No major presidential candidate has put forward a detailed plan to fix Social Security and Medicare's long-term finances.


Notice how Kevin G. Hall, of the McClatchy Newspaper Group, had to say "major"? That's because the BiPartisans have no way of fixing this mess without alienating all of their supporters who are lined up for swill and slops at the government trough. I love that sentence. Let's repeat it.




No major presidential candidate has put forward a detailed plan to fix Social Security and Medicare's long-term finances.

The Libertarians have a plan. It's called Starve The Beast. Shut down everything we can. Now. There is absolutely no reason to wait.

Many of them acknowledge that there's a pending problem, but they confine their remedies to vague goals they'll seek or modest halfway measures.

Yeah, a pending problem. A problem for our children and grandchildren. In other words, there's nothing that could interfere with this election. In the meantime, they're going to keep yammering about "investing in infrastructure" or "investing in education" or "investing in boondoggles". They never just spend any more. They invest.

Meanwhile, experts say, mounting pressures to spend ever more on health care, fewer active workers to pay taxes to sustain retirees' benefits and growing interest payments on the national debt all could combine to create an unparalleled economic crisis.
If spending on government retirement programs remains on its current course and revenues grow at their historical averages, interest on the debt could grow to nearly 30 percent of the budget by 2040, up sharply from around 9 percent now, the Government Accountability Office estimates.
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Despite such weighty fiscal challenges, politicians driven by short-term election goals focus on short-term problems. President Bush touts the now-shrinking annual federal budget deficit, the amount that annual spending exceeds tax receipts. The deficit fell from a high of $413 billion in fiscal 2004 to about $163 billion in fiscal 2007.
But that masks what's happened to the gross federal debt, the sum of outstanding debt issued by the federal government. Since fiscal 2001, the federal debt has soared from $5.8 trillion to $8.9 trillion.
Ignoring debt offers a false sense of security, Walker warned. He said that unfunded liabilities — costs such as Social Security benefits that the government has promised boomers but hasn't begun paying yet — grew by $3 trillion in fiscal 2007 to $53 trillion.

Please consider voting for Barr and other Libertarians. We're not the ones who got you into this mess, and we're the only ones who have already presented the workable plan for getting us out of it.

Go Bob Barr !

3 comments:

Sew daze said...

I voted today. I did vote for three libertarians. Congressional seat 8 and 9 and for some school board position of some sort.

It is all because of you, Mr Whited. But sense nobody answered my question as to who BOB Barr was, I could not vote for him.

Browncoat Libertarian said...

Bob Barr is the Libertarian canditate for Prez...you should have seen him on the ballot and voted for him. But now, sadly, without the fembuttx vote, he stands no chance of winning! Dman you fembuttx. DAMN YOU! LOL

:^)

cosmo said...

I sent in my ballot for Bob Barr a few weeks ago. It looks like he got almost 500,000 votes in the general election, which was a close 4th behind Ralph Nader.