Madness

Just plain madness.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) abruptly withdrew from debt talks with the White House late Friday, ending renewed hopes for a grand deficit-reduction deal to raise the debt limit.

"I have decided to end discussions with the White House," Boehner said in a letter being sent to the entire GOP House membership.

Republican officials said a week of renewed discussions broke down as the White House insisted on revenues from new taxes.

"In the end, we couldn't connect," Boehner wrote.

With just days remaining to meet an Aug. 2 deadline to avoid a federal default, the speaker is working with Senate leaders to devise a new proposal to be presented to the House and Senate by Monday.

Madness.

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Madness.

Speaking with ThinkProgress today, Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA) offered a take on the reasons behind House Republicans’ obstinacy on the debt ceiling. Describing it as the “the party of denial,” Moran compared the current GOP to the historical, nativist “Know-Nothing party” that, incidentally, wanted to restrict types of immigrants and have daily bible readings in public schools. Moran said Republicans “don’t know enough to know what they don’t know,” including “how serious lifting the debt ceiling it,” or “the results of any of their own actions.” “They just don’t know, they don’t care,” Moran said, adding that “a majority of the House Republicans ran on the basis that government doesn’t work. And now that they’re elected they’re determined to prove it.”

Madness.

The more the sales drop, the more the corporations constrict to meet current demand, the more the corporations constrict by either not filling vacant positions, or reducing their workforces, and the greater the downward pressure on effective demand. We’ve experienced one ‘deflation scare’ recently, and we don’t need to replicate it.

If corporations don’t want their workers to unionize and bargain for better wages, then they should not lament the lack of consumers for their goods and services. The globalization of trade has heightened the rift between productivity and wages, where we once might have reasonably expected increased productivity to be at least associated with increased wages, that cord has been cut. It’s not likely to be reattached in the near future.

We, the people, now find ourselves being ‘info-mercialed’ in regard to all manner of dire crises — The Debt Ceiling! The Debt Ceiling! Government Spending! Government Spending! — while the real, tangible, and most potentially destructive crisis is literally right in our very own neighborhoods, it may be immediately next door or down the hall. It’s the unemployment level in our states and communities, while not a single JOBS bill has passed in our House of Representatives, and they’ve been all too busy symbolically “repealing” measures that might alleviate the situation. Increasing employment in these United States will require deeds — not drama.

And that's the real problem here. Unemployment is creeping upward again, and government budget cuts are already taking their toll as public sector layoffs send the unemployment rate soaring again. Instead of investing in economic recovery, state and local governments are being forced to divest... And we're now starting to see the results of that.

So what are we hearing at the federal level? "Austerity." "Feel the pain." "Tough choices."

Well, guess what? Here in Nevada, we're already seeing the results of "austerity". They're not looking pretty. And it seems few on Capitol Hill really seem to get that.