There Is No Government Shutdown

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It’s nothing but a political charade. I’ll start with a quick review of how government money works, and how the central government wants to use it.

 

A government sovereign in its own currency has no debt issues as long as it spends constructively and its spending doesn’t grossly exceed the productive capacity of the economy. That’s the basic premise of greenbackerism, including its current version, Modern Monetary Theory (MMT).

 

What we have today, however, are lies about alleged debt constraints. This is the deficit scare-mongering which is meant to conjure the right political environment for “austerity”. To the credit of the people, they haven’t let themselves be stampeded by this propaganda. The people consistently consider the deficit and debt to be lesser issues, compared to the quality of government spending. I.e., that it should be on programs which benefit the people as a whole, rather than which benefits corporations. We see how the Washington class and their corporate media simply impose this deficit-terror program against the will of the people.

 

Which leads to the second point, that US government spending is almost all corporate welfare, and simply goes down a destructive rathole. The only exceptions are pre-existing programs like Social Security, which the elites, including both Washington parties, want to gut.

 

I’m writing about this today to highlight again how the government’s ploys are all simply setting us up for further austerity assaults, when in fact there’s zero reason why the quantity of the deficit or debt, as opposed to its quality, ought to be an issue at all.

 

The so-called “government shutdown” needs to be seen in this light.

 

Every word that politicians, economists, and media pundits say about any alleged legal or “constitutional” restraints on spending is a lie. In general, we see how the system believes it has infinite money for corporate welfare, wars, weaponry, and the police state, and only starts claiming “budget constraints” where it comes to spending which might actually help some people.

 

In the same way, during this alleged “shutdown”, the government feels free to keep spending on those same malign and destructive things, but only claims its legal inability to spend where it comes to spending which might help anyone.

 

It’s a total fraud, intended, as I said, to further the “austerity” assault. Many of the programs now “shut down” are intended never to come back online again. Meanwhile, the two phony sides are wrangling toward their shared real goal, gutting Social Security and Medicare, which Obama will try to present as a Grand Compromise, while Republicans will put all the blame on Democrats. (But as usual it’ll be the Dems left making the affirmative claim, that some monstrosity is somehow a “good” thing. So it was with the health insurance bailout, AKA the right wing Heritage Foundation plan, AKA Obamacare.)

 

As always, the government does exactly what it wants to do and feels it can get away with, nothing more, nothing less. And why is the imperial executive so imperial and lawless where it comes to wars of aggression, assassinations, murder of US citizens without trial, GMO approvals, etc., but suddenly claims it can’t spend money because of the same Congress it otherwise ignores at its convenience?

 

There is no “government shutdown”. It’s pure theater.

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