Sunday, February 24, 2013

To sequester, or not sequester...that should not be the question!



If at first you don't succeed, stall, stall, again. For the 7th time since electing a house majority in 2010, the Republican House majority members are again threatening to shut down the government . The American people are tired of it. Beyond tired.  But these continued threats are part of a strategy to wear down the winning coalition of the election of 2012, by convincing the electorate that the more things change, the more they stay the same, and that, as a result, all this hope and change stuff is sheer nonsense. We must get on with the agenda of government dismantlement!

 Obamaquester...Boehnerquester? Whose idea was this sequester? Does it really matter? To run a government by blind cuts is a dumb idea.  It was conceived in part so that smart people in Congress would get together and make smart choices.  Instead, smart people are giving in to dumb choices, and because they cannot agree, the American people may be stuck with the dumbest of government cuts ever.

 The point is, if you don't believe in government, then you shouldn't be in it . If the way you are going to govern is to continually threaten to shut down the government you are helping to govern, there is more than a hint of irony here. There is an enigma that gets only more and more enigmatic as each successive crisis of political hostage holding unfolds in Washington. And these same guys refuse to negotiate with foreign hostage takers?

   A hostage is a hostage is a hostage, the same as crying wolf is crying wolf is crying wolf . Where is Dirty Harry when we really need him? Make my day? Bring it on...we are done with this sequential self imposed hostage taking. This plot twist is getting old, fast. The American people are undergoing brinksmanship fatigue.

  We can't have two competing Presidencies at the same time, and you can't run the country from only one house of Congress. We had an election last fall. The American people spoke. The Republican majority in the House has refused to listen.  So the political Hari- Kari process continues.

    If your goal is to end government as we know it by shutting it down, then in the immortal words of Nike...just do it...and accept the consequences, and the resultant blame. Or , as Lee Iacocca  once famously put it, "Lead, follow, or get out of the way!"