Yes We Can! Long Island 2012The reality isn’t always spoken, as very often, an imaginary thought of one can become the truth in many folks minds when lies are allowed to continue unchallenged. Finance can be complicated, making the ease of telling lies regarding it even easier. People often believe what they want to believe from previous held biases or personal interest, irrespective of the basic reality. When you hear GOP leaders talk, we must assume this is the case, as they must not believe in voodoo.
The New Voodoo
By Paul Krugman
Published: December 30, 2010
Hypocrisy never goes out of style, but, even so, 2010 was something special. For it was the year of budget doubletalk — the year of arsonists posing as firemen, of people railing against deficits while doing everything they could to make those deficits bigger.
Read the full column here – http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/31/opinion/31krugman.html
How will this all end? I have seen the future, and it’s on Long Island, where I grew up.
Nassau County — the part of Long Island that directly abuts New York City — is one of the wealthiest counties in America and has an unemployment rate well below the national average. So it should be weathering the economic storm better than most places.
But a year ago, in one of the first major Tea Party victories, the county elected a new executive who railed against budget deficits and promised both to cut taxes and to balance the budget. The tax cuts happened; the promised spending cuts didn’t. And now the county is in fiscal crisis.
Now the federal government has a lot more flexibility than a county government: it needn’t, and shouldn’t, balance its budget each year. The deficits of the past two years have actually been a good thing, helping to support the economy in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis.
But Nassau County shows how easily responsible government can collapse in this country, now that one of our major parties believes in budget magic. All it takes is disgruntled voters who don’t know what’s at stake — and we have plenty of those. Banana republic, here we come.
Perhaps 2011 will be a year we start looking at the world as it is, not as we would like it to be. Is it a rational opinion to argue for policies that are hypocritical or are those folks just working on degrading our government and society? I’ll let you decide, but we can clearly do better. With some fundamental logic, these lies can be exposed for what they are, lies. Hypocrisy shouldn’t be a quality needed to be a politician in the 21st century. We can do better than this.
THis is such an interesting article and one that when I readit said WOW, how true. Glad you psoted it.