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Sequester

I would have no problem with part of the foreign aid if we were cash rich and had a huge budget surplus, but we don't.......we are borrowing money in order to give it away. It's insane. I know the sequester cuts will have adverse effects on a lot of Americans, even members here......but in all honesty I don't think the cuts are broad enough or deep enough to prevent the inevitable. We, as a country, have denied the severity of our condition for too long......we've spent the past few years kicking the can down the road with talks of sequestration and "fiscal cliffs" and it hasn't gotten us anywhere.

I would compare it to a cut on your foot that gets infected.......you ignore it, figuring it will get better, but it doesn't.....pretty soon you know there is a problem there, but you don't want to go through the pain and expense of a doctors visit, so you put a Bandaid on it hoping it'll get better.....Little bit later the pain is obvious, you can see things are really bad so you head to the doctor.....Doctor says you've put the visit off for so long that the only option is to amputate your foot.....Wow, you need some time to think about that(raising the debt ceiling/fiscal cliff).....So you think it over, go back to the Doctor and he tells you that because you "thought about it" for so long the only option now is to amputate the leg to the knee......Oh No, I need to think about it(sequester talks)......Now do you go in and tell the Doc to take the whole leg or do you screw around "thinking about it" until you turn septic and the little infection kills you?

We've blown past the BandAid stage in America.......We've denied the problem for so long that there is no easy solution. We have went septic. Parts of the organism that is the United States are already dead and dying.......some people can smell it because it is near to us.......others have placed themselves so far above the rest of the organism that they see no problems, so there must be no problems.

I think the only way we will make a change for the positive is for us to face the suck now and run this train balls-out off the cliff. I'm tired of seeing "10 year plans" that everyone knows will have no effect at all in the long run. Doing cuts of 1% here and 2.5% there and 5% over there does very little outside of making politicians able to say "I voted to tackle the spending problem" while telling those that vote them into office that they will get every dime they can get out of the Government. Our Federal Government isn't big because it's healthy......It's big because it is bloated and dying. We either need to accept the full pain and suffering of the fix now or we can smile and pass it down a generation or two. I'd rather deal with it now.....when there are still enough of us around who remember what this country actually USED to be to help in the rebuild.
 
Tim, that is one of the best descriptions of what I think has been going on that I have ever read.

I am going to forward your post verbatim to several of my close friends and family.

The only thing I think I can add to what you said is, as painful as it would be to do something about it now, it will only be a far larger problem later and easier to do something about it now.
 
If this country was a company (which in essence it is with 314 million empoyees), all of the "CEOs" and board members would have fired. It would have declared bankrupcy and been divided off to it's creditors or have been bought out in a hostile takeover. Both of those are very real possibilities if our gov't can't get the financial isues resolved. Printing and borrowing larger and larger sums of money isn't going to work much longer.

I wonder if the sequester was more of a bluff than any real action? "Let's put half of the cuts on the military not social programs. No one in their right mind would allow it to come to pass. Surely, this will cause both parties to fix the real problems." (although there are those who would wish to see the military done away with) But both parties don't want to do a damn thing other than blame each other. So the sequester happens...and the blame game continues ad nauseum...

It's sickening...
 
Really good posts guys. I enjoyed reading them.

Doing cuts of 1% here and 2.5% there and 5% over there
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Remember that in DC speak when they say they cut spending they really mean they aren't increasing quite as much. If spending is due to increase 4% and the drop that back to 1%, they will call it a 3% spending cut. For everyone esle in the country, when we cut spending in our home we don't spend as much as last month.

I would also rather have some pain now than what will eventually be forced upon us. Unfortunately it will keep getting passed down the line because very few of the politicians on either side has balls to say that we don't have the money and we need to back it down. Austerity measures in Europe have resulted in riots there. Don't think for a minute that they don't know that.
 
MikeD said:
I find I have to try to find humor in all of this to keep from going mad.
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I wonder if Obama or his staff ( being totally tuned in to the new media thing ;) ) ever pay attention to videos (and other stuff) like this? Or if they automatically tune them out. I'd guess the later.
 
Is anyone else upset that the so called cuts, really mean, less of an increase in services, but they'll cut federal programs more than foreign aid or before they'll cut foreign aid?

Does anyone else find it upsetting that they would cut domestic stuff before stuff for foreign countries?

To me, it shows me where their priorities are.

And I was taught that while charity could be a good thing, it starts at home.

And you never take food away from your baby to give to someone else.

A lot of changes need to take place in the direction our country is going. I don't think anyone in their right mind would dispute that.

I think I could solve a lot of the budget problems myself.

completely stop funding to the UN. If the UN cannot fund the programs they want on their own, they don't need to do them.

give the UN an eviction notice.

period.

Far as I'm concerned, they're not welcome here anymore and have grown far too political, and corrupt.

make jobs here at home in the form of natural resources. There are plenty to be had from virtually every corner of our continent. That is just a start.

There is more, but my other idea's would be even less popular than the ones I've already mentioned.
 
John A. said:
Is anyone else upset that the so called cuts, really mean, less of an increase in services, but they'll cut federal programs more than foreign aid?

Does anyone else find it upsetting that they would cut domestic stuff before stuff for foreign countries?
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Yes, John, it irritates the hell out of me.

It infuriates me that we sent 240M to aid Egypt (Muslim Brotherhood, i.e. terrorists). I'm very tired of the US spending billions to protect corporate assets/interests and to try to make a bunch of people happy who really don't give .02 about us to begin with and would love to see us collapse.
 
And is why one of the first things I would do is start with removing the UN
 
John A. said:
And is why one of the first things I would do is start with removing the UN
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I'm in full agreement with you on this. That is something I've been wanting to see for some time.

Sent from my Mossberg 930 using Tapatalk2
 
Seems that the administrations strategy is to: "Make it hurt" for political gain. Here's a thought: Payback is a bitch. :evil:

A leaked email from an Agriculture Department field officer adds fuel to claims President Obama's political strategy is to make the billions in recent federal budget cuts as painful as possible to win the public opinion battle against Republicans.

The email, circulated around Capitol Hill, was sent Monday by Charles Brown, a director at the agency’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service office in Raleigh, N.C. He appears to tell his regional team about a response to his recent question on the amount of latitude he has in making cuts.

According to the partially redacted email, the response came from the Agriculture Department’s budget office and in part states: “However you manage that reduction, you need to make sure you are not contradicting what we said the impact would be.”

The response noted that the administration had already told Congress that the APHIS would “eliminate assistance to producers in 24 states in managing wildlife damage to the aquaculture industry” without additional funds.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/03 ... z2Mm2hGzja
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Here's another one that backs up what Gunny posted above. A park ranger says they were forced to make the cuts more visible and painful for the public. Obama and his minions are whiny babies throwing a tantrum. Dirty rotten &$&#@$%

Another federal employee has come forward to claim the Obama administration resisted efforts to ease the impact of sequester.

A U.S. park ranger, who did not wish to be identified, told FoxNews.com that supervisors within the National Park Service overruled plans to deal with the budget cuts in a way that would have had minimal impact on the public. Instead, the source said, park staff were told to cancel special events and cut "interpretation services" -- the talks, tours and other education services provided by local park rangers.

"Apparently, they want the public to feel the pain," the ranger said.

The National Park Service is among many federal agencies warning of a major impact from the sequester cuts, which took effect last Friday. The agency has warned of delayed access to portions of Yellowstone and Yosemite national parks, closed campgrounds at Great Smoky Mountains National Park, reduced hours at the Grand Canyon visitor center and other ramifications.

The Obama administration says these cuts must be made in order to make the $85 billion in cuts from Congress' failure to avert the sequester. At the NPS, the agency was dealing with an across-the-board 5 percent cut.

Republicans have claimed the administration is making some cuts in order to exaggerate the impact. Lawmakers this past week revealed a leaked email from the Agriculture Department in which a field officer appeared to tell his team that he was instructed not to contradict the bosses' warnings about the cuts.

At the Park Service, the alleged incident occurred in one region and it's unclear whether other divisions were given similar guidance.

But a Park Service spokesman told FoxNews.com he's "never heard of guidance given like that."

The spokesman said that like other agencies, the Park Service was absorbing a 5 percent cut in just seven months. It was also being forced to cut seasonal employees, which make up a big part of the department's labor costs. Doing this, he explained, would impact "interpretive programs and public events."

But he denied the claim there was any directive to make those cuts more visible to the public.

"There's not a ton of flexibility," he said, noting that most cuts will end up impacting visitors at some level. "Everything in parks is geared toward either the preservation of the resources or the needs of the visitors."

Joan Anzelmo, a former park superintendent in Colorado, also said that while it's possible one specific location was giving guidance to make sure the public sees the cuts, she doesn't think that was happening across the country. She also said any cuts to services and staffing would be made in large part because the parks budgets do not have much "wiggle room."

"I would be hard pressed to be able to make those cuts as a superintendent and not have an impact to the public," said Anzelmo, now a spokeswoman for The Coalition of National Park Service Retirees.

Nonetheless, memos have surfaced from National Park Service Director Jonathan Jarvis appearing to show the agency put a priority on telling the public how the cuts would affect them.

One Jan. 25 memo, which was obtained and published by the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees, showed Jarvis directing regional directors to carefully explain the "specific and tangible results" of the cuts as they submitted their cost-saving plans.

Jarvis wrote that agency officials expected the cuts to result in reduced visitor services, shortened seasons and other visible changes. "Parks must be specific in their description and include the number of visitors affected and an indication of the effect on nearby communities and businesses," he wrote. "All other organizations should describe impacts in terms of diminished performance and reduced administrative services and oversight."

Another memo, dated Feb. 26, railed against the "senseless, across-the-board budget cuts." Jarvis, in that memo, described "long-term and wide-ranging effects," while pledging to try to "mitigate" the impact.

The ranger who spoke to FoxNews.com, though, stressed that it was still just a 5 percent cut.

"It's obvious that they want the public to feel the pain in order to push this agenda that Washington wants," the ranger said. "A lot of these parks can absorb these cuts without the public's visit being affected."
 
Should be some good fires this summer........Feds probably already have someone all prepped to light a shitload to show us how bad it can be.....
 
I'm really pissed that tuition reimbursement for veterans has been cancelled but illegal aliens still qualify. That's a complete slap in the face to our military heroes.
 
Yes sir it surely is.

I cannot understand why our leaders are hell bent on doing as much damage as they can. It seems they do every bass ackwards
 
John A. said:
Yes sir it surely is.

I cannot understand why our leaders are hell bent on doing as much damage as they can. It seems they do every bass ackwards
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It's called manipulation. In simple terms, it's what a bully does to pick a fight with someone weaker.

In the political/government sense, if you do things that, over time, progressively make the people angrier, before long they will resort to violence to rid themselves of their antagonist. If you target that bullying at a specific group, then you can pit one group against another. Which is precisely what the antagonist desires, since that will provide him with the excuse to impose even more restrictions on the behavior of the targeted group, and thus gain even more control over everyone (not just the original targeted group) by portraying himself as the one who will save the nation from this "out of control" behavior. It's a dangerous game that sometimes backfires, and you end up with a violent revolution or civil war.
 
Very well said Gunny. One line in particular struck me for its importance......
.....by portraying himself as the one who will save the nation from this "out of control" behavior.
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Understanding this bit of political ego is critical to grasping what has happened in the past and preparing for the path this country is on. Everything that happens in politics revolves around power.....generally speaking it's either about getting more or keeping what you have for longer. Politicians, especially at the Federal level, want complete power. They have a psychological need to have people fawning over them, reminding them how important and smart and powerful they are. Much like a narcotic this results in the need for MORE.......They need more people supporting them, cheering them.......loving them. This is why you see politicians move from local, to State, to Federal levels. They are all bigger stages with more people to impress.

The need for adoration is key when you look at the drive for more power. The Federal government has spent decades slowly breaking apart the authority of the Constitution. Since the signing of the "Patriot Act" we have seen a steady stream of laws passed that have changed what were once viewed as God given Rights into permissions "granted" by the government. Both "parties" have participated equally in this......I have often said that they were working towards a common goal from opposite directions. The point being, we are at a tipping point in regards to the Constitution and our Rights. If this Government, especially the current administration, wished to go for a complete and total seizure of power I'm afraid that they would be willing to endure the loss and bloodshed of the fight. But the one thing the DO NOT want to do is to seize power by force. They want it given to them. They want to have a mentally and spiritually broken populous throwing themselves at their feet and BEGGING the government to save us from ourselves. They WANT us to NEED them. They want, more than anything, for the American public to let out a collective *sigh* and admit that the current crop of bureaucrats are far smarter than the men who literally risked their lives by signing the Constitution. As much as politics are about power they are equally about ego and narcissism.

Because of this I see the Obama administration using the sequester, as well as a few other events that should transpire this summer to up the "misery factor". As has already been said, the sequester is being carried out in a way that it affects the general public the quickest. Summer will see people being forced to change vacation plans as National Parks are closed to visitors and as Oli said.....I fully expect an enormous wildfire season as resources are spread and crews downsized. Current instability in several oil producing areas will soon be driving gas prices up, along with food costs and other consumables. People are going to be put on edge......which is exactly what the powers that be want. They need to be needed.......like a common street junkie they crave the high that for them comes not from a needle but from adoration heaped on them by a loving public.

Power that is taken can simply be taken back.......Power given willingly is nowhere near as easy to recover.
 
Tim, you did a better job of explaining this than I did. When you combine this with their sincere belief that they are doing what is best for the country, you're looking at a true monster. It allows them to perpetrate anything without any qualms whatsoever.
 
GunnyGene said:
When you combine this with their sincere belief that they are doing what is best for the country, you're looking at a true monster. It allows them to perpetrate anything without any qualms whatsoever.
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When you put these with a media who, through complacency or collusion, is willing to go to any lengths to feed the monster and win its favor you have an even larger problem. I've recently been studying the work of B.F. Skinner......his theories on the absense of a Freudian-type "subconscious psyche" controlling human behavior and the emphasis on behaviors being the direct result of conditioned responses are interesting when observing the world around us. I think we are seeing the results of a decades long conditioning program in this country......scary stuff.

"It is a mistake to suppose that the whole issue is how to free man. The issue is to improve the way in which he is controlled" -B.F. Skinner
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