House of Eratosthenes

On the debt issue, or debt ceiling issue, or budget issue, or budget deal issue, or the deficit spending issue…whatever ya wanna call it…Terri thinks my position is the conservative one.

She’s right, of course. That’s the problem.

I have this unrealistic viewpoint of budget issues: The way I figure it, companies and people and governments are all forming budgets for essentially the same purpose, and that’s to get all stressed out before the money gets spent instead of after the money gets spent. Of course they & we do this for different reasons…but that doesn’t matter, that’s essentially what budgeting is.

And so my unrealistic viewpoint is, however you define “conservative” with regard to the government’s budget, that’s what conservative should mean with regard to your household budget. What you call “liberal” with regard to the government’s budget, that word should have the same meaning when used to describe your budget too. “Middle of the road” just logically follows those two. In my world, that’s how it works.

I hope I’m out of step with everybody else. Because brother, let me tell you what…what I’m heard being described as “inflexibly right wing” within discussions of the government’s reckless-spending-issue…

Let’s boil it down this way. I get my paycheck and I have a stack of bills I have allocated to that paycheck. The way I see it, it is that paycheck’s job to pay those bills, because the next paycheck is going to have a whole new stack of bills up against it. So it’s like this: If I do a “right wing” job of managing that paycheck, you know what that means? It means I don’t spend a single nickel of it on bullshit, until I’ve paid every single nickel of those bills. And “bullshit” is anything that isn’t a bill, including food. Sorry, sweetie! You have to cook tonight even though I got a paycheck — no pizza delivery — because I haven’t gotten the phone company to answer their damn phone and take my money yet. I keep paying bills and paying bills, until there isn’t anybody left who’s willing to take money from me anymore…I figure up how much of what’s left to allocate for frivolous incidentals, like groceries, and I hold that out. And I put the rest in savings. Hopefully at least half of it will go in savings. That’s a “right wing” way of managing a paycheck as far as I’m concerned.

“Left wing” means I get sloppy and lazy. I go, “oh I’m rich because I haven’t paid my bills yet,” I start computing how much I can blow on miscellaneous crap, and I spend that first. At some point I get around to paying my bills, and I take a gander at my checkbook register to try not to overdraw the account, and hope against hope that one number’s bigger than another.

If I’m really lazy, clumsy and incompetent about it, I figure out aw crap I went over a little bit…then I have to pull a quick hundred bucks or two out of savings, so I can finish paying my bills. That’s a rather left-wing, liberal, overly tolerant way of paying my bills.

Or, maybe I let a bill go so the next paycheck can handle it. It’s still within the thirty days right? That’s left-wing. And I don’t say that to insult left-wingers, that’s just the way it works. That’s the direction we’re talking about — left-wing tolerates slop, right-wing requires strictness.

Anyway. That’s where I put the goalposts. Right wing pays bills and then savings and then indulges bullshit with what’s left over, if anything is left over. Left-wing indulges the bullshit first…might dip into savings a little tiny bit…but not too much. If it does, the savings will be replenished later. That, when I manage my household finances, is “left wing.”

Now. Let’s look at what has happened to our ideological positions with regard to managing the federal government’s budget.

Pffffffffft……..where to begin??? I guess we should start with right wing. What does it take to be an advocate of a “right wing” position on this particular issue? It would be easier to enumerate the positions that would not be right wing. Strident, shrill, uncompromising, and downright rude right wingers…Tea Party people…what makes them this way? Upon what are they insisting?

“Hey folks, would it be too much to ask that we at least track how many freakin’ digits are in the debt we’re racking up?” “Gah!!!! Shrill, strident, take-no-prisoners right-winger!”

Middle of the road means, I guess, go ahead and raise the debt ceiling and keep right on spending. Find creative new innovative ways to spend money. I call that liberal but the prevailing viewpoint says that’s middle of the road…for reasons that entirely escape me.

The government’s spending a trillion dollars more than it’s taking in. Every year. Would “Hey…let’s try not to make it two trillion” — would that be right-wing? Would that be unrealistically, uncompromisingly Tea-Party-ish?

The democrats wanted a stiff tax increase in this deal, to punish — er, I mean, make those “millionaires and billionaires pay their fair share.” I’d say no to that…but I’m a right winger. I suppose anyone who gave the slightest bit of resistance to it was a right-winger. Of course, Congress doesn’t have the authority to demand a certain amount of revenue for the government; all it can do is raise the tax rates, and hope for the best. Just like, at the kitchen table as I go over the household budget and realize I’m not making enough money, I can keep spending what I like and hope I can get a big raise next year. To pin my hopes on that, in managing my budget, is something I’d call left-wing. I’ll bet you’d call that left-wing too, as you manage your own budget.

When did that become a centrist position when we think about the federal government’s budget?

How far does Congress have to go — or any member of Congress, within that august body — to be considered “left wing” during deliberations about the federal government’s budget? Oh, my. Is it even possible? I haven’t even heard any one particular position called left wing. I don’t think anyone with a real voice and with real influence, has even kept track of it — I don’t think they’d know how to answer the question. From all I’ve managed to read and hear over the last few weeks, everything is either “right wing” or “mainstream/centrist.” And all of these positions, with very few exceptions, have to do with spending essentially as much money as has already been spent. Not my idea of moderate at all.

Well. I think my own opinion is as middle-of-the-road as middle-of-the-road can get. I think Congress should manage their budget the way I manage mine. And what would I do if my financial picture looked like the government’s? Hah! The mind boggles.

Raise the debt limit? Are you out of your freakin’ gourd? Try spending limit. No wait…try savings minimum.

I’d make Genghis Kahn look like Abbey Hoffman if they’d left it up to me. At least, by their standards of “right” versus “left”…

How far does Congress have to go — or any member of Congress, within that august body — to be considered “left wing” during deliberations about the federal government’s budget? Oh, my. Is it even possible? I haven’t even heard any one particular position called left wing.

No such thing, my friend. The media, being liberals to a man, feel that they are the “center,” and that the “center” is objectively correct (of course it is, since they’re in it!). Therefore anything to the right of them — which might include, on a given day, anyone up to and including Harry Reid — is by definition “right wing.”

This is simultaneously my ironclad proof of leftwing media bias and my number one complaint about leftists generally: they’re blissfully unaware of the fact/opinion distinction, and so they can’t see that there’s a continuum of political attitudes. For instance: I’ve gotten my Smart Liberal Friend (who really does exist) to admit that media bias happens, since like all leftists he can’t quit screaming about how biased “Faux News” is. However, I simply cannot get him to acknowledge even the possibility of left-wing bias. I ask him to imagine what left-wing bias might look like were it ever to accidentally come into being — hypothetically, theoretically, the way you describe some weird subatomic particle — and he Just. Can’t. Do it. It just doesn’t compute. Those neurons refuse to fire.

And that’s why the word “moderate” is so slippery, and why it should be banned from discourse as a threat to public order. See, for us — who understand the difference between “facts” and “opinions” — “moderate” means “somewhere in the middle” or “I haven’t really thought it through” or “I don’t have much skin in the game one way or another.” For instance, I’d say I’m a moderate on gay marriage. Having no religious principles, my objections to it are along the lines of not mucking with a tradition for no clear reason and a horror at the sheer amount of government paperwork it would entail. But I’m willing to be persuaded.

That’s not the left’s definition, though. To the media, i.e. the left’s propaganda arm, “moderate” means something akin to “useful idiot.” Moderates are people who are functionally liberals because they can be shamed into voting for the leftist agenda. On gay marriage (just to stick with a theme), they’re the nice old ladies who probably find the whole thing a bit icky and more than a little silly but who certainly don’t want to be a bother to anyone.

So no, there’s no “left wing” position, on the budget or anything else. There’s just right and various shades of wrong, sorted by utility (“moderate” to “extreme right wing Tea Party zealot”).
- Severian | 08/01/2011 @ 21:49
“Terri thinks my position is the conservative one.
She’s right, of course. That’s the problem.”

Except it’s NOT the problem. That is the solution. You’re a little hard core with the never borrowing based on expectations and you’re a little off if you think,
“And all of these positions, … have to do with spending essentially as much money as has already been spent. “, since all of these positions have to do with spending a solid percentage MORE than has already been spent.

The more people that think like you, the more likely this will stop. 87 freshmen in 2010 most of whom think like you.
Just think what that can mean for 2012.

Boehner is Boehner and he did a great job at negotiating his way through this battle. But he’s not the idealogue and that’s ok.
You’re not going to change the course of the ship as big as the US govt with one election that one you one house. BUT……
- tgoon | 08/02/2011 @ 07:20

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PositionsMonday, August 1st, 2011

Positions
Monday, August 1st, 2011