a 3.5 Trillion dollar Budget??


"Look what they've done to my party, Ma
Look what they've done to my party
Most of the time they were close to right
And now they're just all wrong, Ma
Look what they've done to my party

Look what they've done to Mr Jefferson, Ma
Look what they've done in his name
Well they twisted it and turned it
Like they're all insane, Ma
Look what they've done to my party

I wish I could fix the party I am in
Wish I could find a good fix
Well, if I just could find a real good fix
I'd never have to come out and look at
What they've done to my party

But maybe it'll all be all right, Ma
Maybe it'll all be OK
If the people don’t buy the fears
And Pelosi - Reid go away some day, Ma
Look what they've done to my party

Look what they've done to my party, Ma
Look what they've done to my party, Ma
Well they tied it up in a socialist bag
And turned it upside down, Ma
Look what they've done to my party

Look what they've done to my party, Ma
Look what they've done to my party
Most of the time they were only half right
And now they're just all wrong, Ma"

As my Lahti and I made our way to our small, cramped, dimly lit desk, nestled in the far left corner of the bunker I reflected on a conversation I recently had with my college History major daughter. The topic was England and Parliament and some of its most famous personalities. We came around to one of my favorites, Edmund Burke. So, I am declaring it Edmund Burke day, at least in the small, far left corner of the bunker. Burke once mused:

Bobby Jindal: Politics over People

With unemployment at the highest level in decades and likely to go higher Bobby Jindal, Louisiana’s Republican Governor has placed his own political fortune over the people of Louisiana. In refusing to accept Federal Stimulus money, particularly those dollars for increased unemployment compensation, an emergency measure designed to give those who need it, help. Jinadal joins Haley Barbour and South Carolina’s Mark Sanford as point persons for the GOP’s latest round of obstructionism.

While there is still great debate over the best method to resolve the current economic malaise in the country, Obama’s Keynesian approach or the GOP’s “supply slide” theory, one thing is certain: the GOP Governors have no intention of allowing the plan to succeed. The triumvirate of Barbour, Jindal and Sanford are seeking to gain power; as if this were ancient Rome and they were Augustus, Antony and Lepidus. Consumed with gaining power at the expense of the people they are supposedly representing.

Jindal’s insistence that the only way to solve the economic crisis is to “cut taxes, lower tax brackets and get the private sector spending” is déjà vu fantasy. Correct me if I’m wrong here but didn’t Bush, “cut taxes, lower tax brackets and get the private sector spending” and aren’t we in the worst economic position in 50 years? During the Bush Tax cut years, we created a mere 3 million jobs and the median income did not go up at all………yet Mr. Jinadal feels more of the same is the recipe for a turnaround.

Jindal, just as conservatives often do, plays the “grandchild” card on Meet the Press……”You’ve got another view that says all this spending is temporary yet its creating debt my children and grandchildren will have to pay” Mr. Jindal openly celebrates the Regan legacy of record debt in the eighties and more recently was silent when President Bush created debt (some of which was created to help Louisiana after Katrina) as if he were a drunken tourist on Bourbon street during Mardi Gras. Mr. Jindal’s repudiation of Obama’s Keynesian approach is understandable from an ideological sense, but from a practical sense, the Rubicon has been crossed. Jindal’s lack of desire to work within the solution with which he has been presented simply shows that he is far more concerned with The White House in 2012 than with helping the people of Louisiana. It is another example of the GOP’s desperate gamble to regain power………..regardless of the cost or harm to our country.