UPDATED:  JUL 20, 2008

WHERE HAS ALL THE MONEY GONE?
(LONG TIME PASSING…………) 

   From the beginning of the Bush Administration (which hopefully, is coming to a rapid close, our government has engaged in borrowing and spending TRILLIONS       of dollars!  All these years we have been schooled to believe that the Democrats were the worst offenders at spending US tax dollars for all sorts of pork barrel programs.  Yet, from the days of Reaganomics where Reagan borrowed Trillions to bring Russia (remember them, the Evil Empire?) to their knees, borrowing money from the Chinese or other world sovereign countries to finance that Reaganomics crusade (which Reagan made it to sound Biblically correct) was widely accepted as the right(eous) thing to do.  Righteous and Biblical in its message, Reaganomics sanctified and blessed emulating the Big-Spending Democrats who they branded long ago as reckless fiduciaries of the public trust.   

   So Reagan sold Americans on the belief that bringing Russia to financial ruin was paramount to our survival and took precedence over being prudent trustees of the National Treasury where our tax dollars get sent on that one-way trip to Washington every year in the spring.  That was the beginning.  That was when America fell and hit its head. 

   So what did Reagan do to bring the Russians to their knees?  He convinced the American people and the Congress to appropriate huge sums of money to build up our military forces, weapons systems, that sort of thing.  And if we needed more money for tanks and planes and bombs to threaten Russia with, it was okay for Reagan and Congress to break out the National MasterCard, Reagan told us, because “Deficits don’t matter.”  So we gave the military corporate complex Carte Blanc to provide us with dearly-needed services and hardware/software.  We needed to make the Evil Empire heel.   

   One borrow-and-spend gambit was when Reagan convinced us that we needed an anti-defense missile system, so we invested many Billions of dollars on that project.  It was called “Star Wars,” remember?  We shuddered back then in fear that the Russians might launch their missiles at us, so we needed Star Wars to knock all the speeding bullet warheads coming toward us at almost the speed of light, so that we could sleep better at night.  We never knew if it would work.  Star Wars was suspended in mid-development, so we will never know.  Of course Lockheed, Boeing, General Motors all got to feed at the trough during this borrow-and-spend feeding frenzy.  They and their kind build the planes, the tanks, the atomic warheads, Tomahawk Missiles (at a Million dollars apiece), and Halliburton got to serve all the corporate crusaders against the Evil Empire meals and to provide them with $500.00 hammers and $600.00 toilet seats.  Senator William Proxmire, D, Wisconsin, back during the Reagan years and his drunken borrow-and-spend Congress, was the author of his “Golden Fleece Award” which shined the light on gross mismanagement of government tax dollars for the most asinine reasons and often at 100s of times the cost of a rational product. Read more here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/16/national/16proxmire.html  

   But because these products were for Uncle Sam’s consumption, they were special.  Senator Proxmire said $500.00 apiece for millions of hammers Halliburton needed to build lunch room tables and benches, barracks overseas, etc., was ludicrous, and he tried to engage and enrage the American taxpayers that, hey, our tax dollars were in the hands of thieves who were stealing from the government who had to BORROW and SPEND Trillions more than we were taking in taxes to pay our bills.  That’s what deficit spending is.  Was a $500.00 hammer for Uncle that much better than a Wal-Mart version for $9.95? 

   During Reagan’s 8 years, we added a couple of Trillion dollars to our National Debt, and nobody seemed to muster much outrage at the $500.00 hammers and the $600.00 toilet seats we were buying.  Bringing the Russians to their knees was more important than questioning the good judgment of destroying the Evil Empire financially.  Ruskies were mostly atheists, too, we were told, so what did it matter, our means and methods?  Forget about how Reagan and the GOP were acting like the big-spending Democrats they like to demonize for it; they were right (eous) in their cause.  Besides, the Democrats TAXED you so they could spend like drunken sailors; Reagan, nor his Congress, raised our taxes, and told us not to worry if they borrowed the money to finance their large expenditures because, after all, it wasn’t any skin off our noses.  The GOP discovered that fear sells more hot dogs and B1 Bombers than praising Jesus or anything else.  As long as the taxpayers did not have to pay the piper in higher taxes, why should they care if our government, in our own best interest, borrowed money to protect us from the Evil Empire?   

   Enter George W. Bush.  He gave new meaning to the borrow-and-spend philosophy Reagan convinced us was the right thing to do when our own national security was threatened.  So here came 911 and evil the likes of which none of us had ever seen before when the Twin Towers were hit by our own commercial airliners and 3,000 innocent Americans died in an instant.  Terrorists hit the Pentagon, killing hundreds, and another plane crashed in a field in Pennsylvania as the passengers struggled bravely to foil the hijackers.  All of them died.  We knew who did it.  Osama bin Laden, leader of the terrorist group, al Qaeda, claimed it.  And Bush did attack Afghanistan where al Qaeda had training camps, and the world cheered us on.  I thought we would rout them with our armed forces and superior weaponry, but we did no such thing.  We diverted most of our armed forces to Iraq.  And the world thought we had lost our mind.   

   But George W. Bush convinced us that Saddam Hussein was in on attacking Americans and was golfing buddies with Osama bin Laden.  Scared us up real good.  So we occupy both countries now.  Afghanistan is getting worse as the Taliban regroups, and in Iraq, our troops are worn thin in the longest war in our history, and many soldiers and Americans try to figure out why we are still there.  I don’t know why.  The loss of life is still great, and the International Red Cross has branded us as nation that condones torture and is in violation of the Geneva Convention.  And our staying there is costing us Billions of dollars each week. 

   Billions!  George W. Bush put the borrow-and-spend monster into high gear.  At the end of his term our National Debt will have grown to 10 TRILLION DOLLARS!  Where has all the money gone?”  Osama bin Laden still has not been captured, Iraq is headed toward self-rule as a theocracy of Shiites (whose doctrine is closest to the theocratic government of Iran.  What have we got for our dollar?  Where is the bang for our buck for all this borrowing and spending?  I got news for those who think Reagan was a great president who brought the Russians to their knees.   

   The Russians are alive and well and solvent as a nation, thank you very much.  Got oil?  The Russians do.  While our dollar tanks against the Euro, the Japanese Yen, the British Pound, Russia paid off ALL its national debt and is solvent, not bankrupt, which is where the United States is heading because of Reaganomics, deficit spending, and war corporation cronies of the GOP Neocon buddies of George W. Bush and his awful GOP Congress for the last 8 years.   

   What Bush and his non-accountable Congress have done is what Ike warned us about.  He told us to beware close ties with the corporations who benefitted most from war.  Ike said that we should avoid getting into bed with them because it would get out of hand and ruin us.  And Ike was right.  It happened. 

   Now in the rubble of the mortgage meltdown, the devalued dollar, GM making noises of going bankrupt, thousands of jobs lost to overseas factories in China, Mexico, India, and Brazil, here we sit trying to make sense of it all and trying to proceed as best we can.  Merrill-Lynch issues stark warnings about the coming days in the Stock Market.  Pensions are being cashed in by companies to stave off declaring bankruptcy.  Millions of Americans have walked away from their mortgages because they cannot pay the subprime notes arranged for them by GOP greed that exploited masses of American families and implemented the same old borrow-and-spend philosophy of the GOP in control of our government.  We have been had.   

   We sniff the air for meaning like packs of hungry dogs amongst the ash cans of history of a better America.  One far better with promises of the future than now where those countries which America seeks to keep borrowing from, are slowly phasing us out.  Our IOU dollars are being replaced as the world currency and are giving way to Euros, Japanese Yen, and British Pounds.  In other words, nations whose currency is not backed by a worthless currency such as the American dollar are doing some self-evaluation and checking themselves for lunacy.  Why should they continue to lend more Trillions to a cavalier government like the United States who is hell-bent even to this day on borrowing and spending beyond sanity?  It’s as if 10 TRILLION of HARD DEBT is not enough.  We are seeking more self-destruction by getting ourselves into a borrowed financial hole where we will never recover.  The world knows this.  They are beyond nervous, the countries who have lent America money so that our government could our very existence now for many years.  

   How will we pay for schools?  Where will the money come to provide for Social Security and Medicare benefits if China ceases to lend us the money?  Deficits DO matter.  And as we ask the question, “Where has all the money gone?” we might just as well admit that we were victims sold down the river by a government we trusted.  And it told us big lies.  These elected officials were sworn to protect the American people and America.  The same ones who, like Reagan, Bush, and Cheney told us, “Deficits don’t matter.”  They DO.   

   And we are living proof.