BY WILLIAM C. HENRY Well, congratulations to the filthy richest 1% of Americans and their right wing Republican representation in Congress. And, much as it pains me to say it, if you didn’t phone, email or otherwise convey your feelings on the matter to your own Washington reps, you’ve gotten exactly what you deserve. Never before have those representing such a money-gluttonous immoral minority so thoroughly sodomized a moral majority of the working class. Never in the history of the Republic has the majority had to suffer such cowardly leadership on an issue so critical to their and the nation’s well being. Boehner and Obama both say the deal isn’t perfect. What a fucking joke! Isn’t perfect?! Folks, Mary Ann Bevan was a perfect 10 compared to this pile of dogshit.
Hell, what’s coming out of the Defense budget doesn’t amount to a teaspoonful from a ten gallon tub. And, yes, it’s truly despicable that literally NOT ONE RED CENT more will be coming out of the pockets of the rich. For Christ’s sake, how do you even COMMUNICATE with a political party so depraved that it looks upon eliminating acknowledged LOOPHOLES as a TAX INCREASE! All that being said, however, there’s a far, far deadlier disease about to be loosed in the land than this current colitis. In fact, it’s a pestilence that hasn’t even been ACKNOWLEDGED throughout this entire sordid affair. But be assured, it will, surely as night follows day, turn the lights out in America for good. And there’s little if anything that can be done about it short of precipitating a depression the likes of which would make the Thirties look like The Roaring Twenties, or printing greenbacks at a rate that would make Zimbabwe’s record-setter look like Ebenezer Scrooge handing out Christmas bonuses.
Folks, there is a 100,102,311 ton* gorilla roaming the halls of Washington and state legislatures across the land. Law makers and other “escape” artists 
have been aware of its existence for decades. But rather than risk their cushy jobs by exposing and consequently having to confront it, they have simply pretended it doesn’t exist. Attention America’s youngest and future generations: The current debt crisis is but a petit mal (you’ll have to look that up) seizure. It’s but an itsy bitsy blip on the radar of the real impending doom. Your lives, and your children’s lives, and their children’s lives (anyone living beyond this point is probably just wishful thinking) are going to experience a devastation heretofore unimaginable when that humongous gorilla finally starts beating its chest. All of you innocents cited above are going to be faced with 100 TRILLION DOLLARS in UNFUNDED LIABILITIES !!! I’ll make it easy for you, kids. In 5th grader parlance (may have to look that one up as well), that’s considerably more long green than the value of EVERYTHING produced in the entire WORLD in a year!!!
And how could that be, you ask. Volumes will be written on the subject, but the simplistic answer lies in three words: selfishness, appeasement, and cowardice, in that order. The selfishness lies in the demands of labor (rightly or wrongly) for long-time retirement security, aka pensions. Most of that “labor” consisted—and continues to consist—of government employees at the federal, state, and local levels. Plus, at the federal level you have to add on the projected Social Security payouts and the ever escalating costs of Medicare and Medicaid. Keep in mind that between the average Social Security recipient’s 65th and 68th birthdays he or she gets back everything they AND their employer had paid into the system over the life of their employment. From that point on, someone else’s money is keeping the tap flowing. The appeasement part lies in the politicians acquiescing to these demands without putting a plan in place to cover the payout when the “promissory” notes would come due. The cowardice part also lies with the politicians. Their pusillanimous postponement of the problem past the point of no return has resulted in a total avoidance of it altogether. Fearful of losing their jobs and their own pensions, they have decided to let it bury generations to come after they are dead and gone.
Please don’t misunderstand me folks. I’m no right wing radical by any stretch of the imagination. I’m a liberal to the core. I believe in fairness and equality of opportunity above all else. I know it will always be the Plutocrats vs. the Democrats. The Pentagon budget will remain an abomination for years to come. The middle class will continue to erode. And the poor and the underprivileged will probably just get more so. But I’m also a pragmatist and a realist. I know that even Johnson & Johnson can’t manufacture enough bandages to stop this kind of bleeding. Sure, we’ll probably find sufficient donors to transfuse us for some decades to come. But we’ll NEVER be able to wash the blood off our hands from having laid waste to the quality of life of the generations to come. Stains like that don’t just wash away.
*The weight of $100 trillion in one-dollar bills.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Fed up early stage septuagenarian who has actually been most of there and done most of that. Born and raised in the picturesque Pocono Mountains. Quite well educated. Very lucky to have been born into a well-schooled and somewhat prosperous family. Long divorced. One beautiful, brilliant daughter. Two far above average grandsons. Semi-retired (how does anyone manage to do it completely these days?) and fully-tired of bullshit. Uncle of the Editor-In-Chief.
1,685 = The number of Americans killed in action in Afghanistan
11,191 = The number of Americans wounded in Afghanistan.
0 = To date the number of financial industry kingpins indicted for having committed the most massive FRAUD in American history.