Footnotes:

See Obama, and his “hope,” “change” and “we are the people we have been waiting for.”

Thus we get “gay” rights–are a lot of the practices of homosexuals things that produce a culture/mood that it really characterized by true gaiety?

Or, we get Bill Clinton arguing over what “sexual intercourse” means, or the meaning of “is.”

Or aliens who have come into our country illegally by sneaking across our boarders are not called “illegal aliens,” but are called “undocumented immigrants.”

This is how you start subverting reality, and create a culture of lies, because people would not accept what you are doing or want to do, if it were called by its true and correct name.

All of these various government entitlement programs are tied together, and affect, “potentiate,” each other.

Thus, if Obama’s reckless spending and the resultant drastic increase in the money supply causes inflation, Social Security and other entitlement benefits, indexed for inflation, will go up and, as job losses mount, more and more people will qualify for various entitlements, because they will be unemployed, under employed, or have family incomes below a poverty line that will also be higher because it too is indexed for inflation, so that even more of the federal budget will have to be devoted to paying for mandatory entitlements.

There is one major underlying problem—already in existence when Obama took office—whose effects are going to be hastened and magnified by Obama’s profligate spending, and are going to make the coming Obama economic train wreck even more severe than it was already going to be, and that is our already astronomical “entitlement spending”; major entitlements include Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Federal civilian and military retirement benefits, Veterans Benefits, Unemployment Insurance, Food Stamps, and Interest on the Public Debt.

While we have all probably heard mentions over the last several years of the crisis in “entitlement spending,” or in “Social Security” or in “Medicare,” it is rare to see detailed information explaining the exact nature of this problem, its dimensions and its probable effects in the general press. I believe one major reason for this is that this problem, created by Congress itself, is so horrific that our Congress—which, although aware of this growing problem for decades and through several presidential administrations, has not done anything of any consequence to solve this problem–does not want us to know just how badly they have failed us; they do not want to create a “panic,” or an “overreaction” caused by giving citizens detailed, concrete, meaningful information describing just when and how bad the onrushing day of reckoning is going to be, information which would provoke intense anger at them, and massive and, indeed, “panicky” and rightly so, calls for some sort of a solution; Obama’s “drunken sailor” spending advances that day of reckoning and it’s severity.

An “entitlement” is a right to a benefit prescribed by law; if you meet the requirements for an entitlement, you get it. Thus, when they turn 65, most people are “entitled” to Social Security, if your family income is under the “poverty line,” you are “entitled” to certain benefits. Congress does not have to analyze and justify such benefits each year, vote to set the threshold requirements and amounts of such entitlements, or even vote to appropriate funds each year, because they have set these ever expanding entitlement programs up to work automatically, independent of them, and not requiring any further inconvenient or controversial analyses, debates, justifications or votes on their part; they have created and let loose Frankenstein’s monster, a budget devouring “Golem.”

Two things need to be understood about entitlement to these benefits.

First, that the dollar amount of the “poverty line” is indexed for inflation, i.e. it moves higher each year, and thus inevitably includes under it’s umbrella of coverage more and more people who are “entitled” to benefits each year, and Social Security is similarly “indexed,” so that SS benefits also increase each year; thus, both the number of those receiving entitlements and the amount of their entitlements automatically increases each year.

The second thing that needs to be understood about spending for entitlements is how the amount of government money to be paid out each year for such entitlements is categorized within the federal budget. Government spending can be looked at as being of two kinds, “mandatory”–things you absolutely have to pay for, and “discretionary”—extra things you can pay for with the money left over after you have paid for mandatory items. Government payments for entitlements are “sequestered,” are “mandatory” and cannot be used for any other purpose. Over the last decades mandatory entitlement spending has risen to consume over 50% of the entire budget, constantly reducing the amount available for discretionary spending, leaving less and less discretionary money to pay for every thing else and, thus, less maneuvering room for the President and Congress.

A salient estimate from the last Bush budget:

“Human Resources” i.e. estimated expenditures for entitlements in the FY08 Bush budget, were an estimated 64% of all federal outlays (see Historical Tables, Table 3.1, Outlays By Superfunction and Function 1940-2013, and look at the section for “outlays by percentage” at http://tinyurl.com/5ya5wj). So far, I have not been able to find corresponding Historical Tables for the Obama budget. I am sure it is just a little oversight.

This truly is, and will continue to be an abject lesson in how the great accomplishments of little more than two centuries of spirit and will and plain old gumption can be reversed so quickly. But then, this is not the first time a clever politician backed by an ambitious team manipulated the people of a nation to achieve changes not in those people’s best interest.
It’s just that few of us ever imagined this could REALLY happen here.

The question I have is, even when enough people have a clear grasp of President Obama’s intentions of “CHANGE,” will the hubris of many of his acolytes allow them to admit to having made a mistake of enormous proportions?

As for me, I have tried hard to maintain optimism and avoid ODS (Obama Derangement Syndrome) as neo suggested many times, but this most recent trip of the President’s, during which he took every opportunity to denigrate Americans and our history, avoid any mention of our generosity and the good we have done in this world and pander to so many who wish us harm, did push me over that edge. And not even 3 months in……….