I always enjoy the bit in Planet of the Apes where a loinclothed Charlton Heston falls to his knees as he comes face to face with a shattered Statue of Liberty poking out of the sand and realizes that the eponymous simian planet is, in fact, his own — or was. Also the bit in Independence Day where Lady Liberty gets zapped by space aliens. And in Cloverfield when she’s decapitated by a giant monster. And in The Day After Tomorrow when she’s flash-frozen after polar-ice-cap melting brought on by a speech from Dick Cheney. I’ve been enjoying such moments since, oh, the short story “The Next Morning” in the 1887 edition of Life, illustrated with a pen-and-ink drawing of a headless statue with the smoldering rubble of the city behind her. The poor old girl was barely off the boat from France, and she’d already been pegged as the perfect visual shorthand for societal collapse.
But the United States Postal Service has now gone the Hollywood apocalyptics one better and produced a somewhat subtler image of civilizational ruin. The other day the post office apologized for its new stamp honoring Lady Liberty. Due to an unfortunate error, the stamp shows not the 19th-century Statue of Liberty that stands in New York Harbor but the 1990s replica that stands at the New York–New York Casino in Las Vegas.
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An ersatz statue of pseudo-liberty standing guard over the world’s biggest gambling operation: What better way to round out a week in which the Republicans pretended to pass the most historically historic budget cut in history while the president pretended to come up with a plan to address the debt? All while pretending to wage a war in Libya whose most likely outcome seems to be that the only Arab dictator to sleep soundly in his bed at night during these turbulent times will be doing so under cover of a NATO no-fly zone for the rest of his 75-year term of office. In such a world, the USPS, bless ’em, has come up with a far more plausible emblem of societal devastation than Hollywood’s space monsters and climate-change fairies.
After the revelations that the $38.5 billion 2011 budget cut will in reality either cut a mere $352 million from the 2011 budget or, in fact, increase it by $3 billion, it might be easier just to build a replica White House, Capitol, and Congressional Budget Office at the new Beltway Casino next to Caesar’s Palace. Vegas is no longer the world’s biggest gambling resort; America is. Barack Obama says we need to “win the future,” and one more roll of the dice should do it: a trillion dollars of chips on the stimulus came up empty but let’s pile another couple trillion on Obamacare, and “high-speed rail,” and “green jobs,” and “broadband access” . . . And all the while Wayne Newton is singing “Danke Schoen” in Chinese. But don’t worry, we’re not just throwing our money away. We’re playing to a system! The president calls it “investing in the future.”
How do you “invest in the future”? By borrowing $188 million every hour. That’s what the government of the United States is doing. It’s spending one-fifth of a billion dollars it doesn’t have every hour of every day of every week — all for your future!
Most of the “futures” we’ve “invested” in are already at record levels of spending. Obama and his speechwriters are among the laziest men in the republic, so they cite the same dreary examples every time. In all three of his State of the Union addresses, he’s brought up the highway system, and he did so again in Chicago at the end of the week. If the Republicans get their way, he said, “We can’t invest in roads and bridges and broadband and high-speed rail. I mean, we would be a nation of potholes.”
If the republicans were serious about our debt, they would have shut down the government the afternoon they were sworn in in January.
This entire back and forth about the budget is just a bunch of cheap parlor tricks being played on the nation. The only serious player is Obama. Boehner and the rest are just playing supporting roles.
We are MUCH better off than we were four years ago:
1) More people enjoy unemployment benefits than ever before
2) Record numbers of people don't have to worry about paying for food because they now receive food stamps
3) Record high gas prices will cut down on driving and thus create a better environment
4) A third "war for oil," or "war of choice," whichever you choose, in the Mideast will allow us to control the price of oil so that gas prices can remain high and the environment can continue to be saved
5) Record high deficits only indicate how powerful and rich we are
6) Record high debt accumulation in the last 4 years has shown how elastic our economy is and will inspire even more sustainable borrowing in the future
7) Republicans won big in 2010 and now we can ensure that Obama has someone to blame for 4 more years.
8) Democrats lost big in 2010, reaffirming more than ever that Americans wanted and needed government run healthcare.
9) American car companies are now American government owned rather than foreign owned
10) Re-election means Obama's dream of become a scratch golfer might be realized!
Vote for the EMPTY SUIT in 2012 because we need FOUR MORE years of this guy!
As for the Postal Service, think of the money saved in obtaining that photo of the Statue of Liberty - No forced union photographer escorted by his business agent and officials from Ellis Island. No Homeland Security escort needed to access said airspace. Just some cut-rate schmoe with a 8mp camera on the vegas strip. Put the USPS in for a cash bonus and time off award!
What a way to wake up on a Saturday morning! A cup of coffee, a highly taxed cigarette and Mark Steyn.
Thank you sir! Don't you ever change!! Should anything ever happen to Rush, God forbid, you need to be ensconced in his chair permanantly.
The best thing the House Republicans could do is refuse to raise the debt ceiling. It will force the government to live on what it takes in and, in the process, tear up the government credit card by making it too expensive for the government to borrow.
Disneyland has an audio-animatronic statue of Lincoln (or did years ago when I last went there). Perhaps they could build one of Obama, programmed to recite the same set of speeches he currently uses. Might put the Presidential speechwriters on the dole.
Whatever happened to putting science in its rightful place? How about math?
There is much about federal government that could be delegated to the states or the private sector. Airports could charge per-passenger fees and invest in their own repair and maintenance. States could turn the road system into toll roads. States that have bridges across a shared river could cooperate in the maintenance and repair thereof.
I would like to see institutes of higher learning have to guarantee the graduate who maintains a 3.0 or better average a job, within one year of graduation, or the university/college pays off the loans. It might put Harvard and Yale out of business, but better them than the students they purport to serve.
It should come as no surprise to anyone that these politicians pay for the present by mortgaging the future. They, afterall, gave us Freddie, Fannie, and Social Security.
Our descent from an at least passively forward looking society, to a people where the individual is aggressively consumed with their own instant gratification is nearly complete. The extent to which this has been woven into our culture is startling. Fiscally to the point where we borrow $188 million an hour you say? THIS is the best we can buy for $188 million/hr?
We can tinker and fuss all we want to with our finances - and goodness knows they need to be fixed, but unless the underlying societal Attitude is changed- we will be right back here again. It's like "dad" giving his child his credit card for emergencies and then having it maxed out. If he pays the bill but doesn't change her use of the card, or take it away, he'll be in the same spot next month.
So when the Tea Party tries to limit discussions on the social issues to laser in on the finances - OK, but we are treating the symptoms and not the disease.
If you didn't laugh, you'd cry, so once again, thanks for the laugh, Mark. But I like the idea of a high-speed rail line----one-way,from the White House directly back to Chicago. There's something worth "investing" in.
If you didn't laugh, you'd cry, so once again, thanks for the laugh, Mark. But I like the idea of a high-speed rail line--one way, from the White House directly back to Chicago. Now there's something worth "investing" in.
1) A "snake oil salesman" who advocates irresponsible levels of debt and deceptively uses the euphemism of "investment" to justify the expenditures?
OR
2) A generation of fools and suckers who buy this "snake oil" and can't discern the fraud?
Sloth. Slothful thinking is the mark of this age. A soft and foolish generation will suffer the consequences for their lack of wisdom and good judgment.
I don't blame Obama. I blame us. The problem is not our leadership. In a representative democracy like ours we get the leadership we deserve.
Obama is simply the reflection in the mirror of this gullible generation. Shifting the blame onto Obama is not the answer.
188,000,000 per hour works out to $52,222 per SECOND. Because the first number is larger than most people can process, the second one is better. If we can make the numbers accessible to people, we will go a long way toward winning this debate. A million seconds is 12 days. A billion seconds is 31 years. A trillion seconds is well over 31,000 years, or more than 5 times the span of all of recorded history.
Every time a Republican or conservative uses a large number, it should be translated into some creative way of revealing its scale.
Fantastic as always, Mr. Steyn! You have tremendous point-making skills.
I'm offering the following idea to Mr. Ryan for the first presidential debate for a consulting fee of only $5,000.
The topic is the budget, and the answers are one minute. Obama has rambled on for his minute about "winning the future" and has thrown in a "let me be clear", bonus references to the "folks", and a shout out to "the workers".
The moderator says, "Mr. Ryan, your answer".
Mr. Ryan says nothing. After looking at his watch for 30 seconds, says something to the effect that we, as a nation, just borrowed nearly $1.6 million and will continue borrowing more than $3.1 million per minute, and growing, indefinitely. Winning the future? I don't think so.
"That’s the choice, is it? Multi-trillion-dollar government 'investment' or a nation of potholes?"
Actually, it's a nation of potholes because of the multi-trillion dollar government "investment." As I recall, the governor of Florida asked the feds, pretty please, if he might use the funds for the latest Obama high-speed rail boondoggle to maybe fix the roads instead?
No dice. Politicians don't get things named after them for fixing potholes.
I agree that we need to make the $188 million per hour more relevant to the voter. I'd suggest that a better example would be that we're like a family of four borrowing approximately two dollars per hour, or 48 dollars a day, or $336 per week, or over $17,000 per year.
With no hope of ever paying it back. How long before your credit card company would stop lending to you?
You know, I wouldn't mind my kids (and me for that matter) going into debt for education as long as the kids actually acquire marketable skills. But more often than not, that's not what happens. How many more elementary school teachers do we need coming out of these education factories? And does anyone notice that those students were the lowest achievers in high school overall? And the debt a lot of them have! Rinse, lather, repeat, unfortunately.
While I know, Mark, that you won't run for President, it's the only scenario I can think of where you and that empty suit behind the teleprompter can get into a televised debate, which event would be entertaining and rejuvenating for the entire country.
When it comes to borrowing our example should be George W Bush and the Republican Congress from 2001-2006. As Dick Cheney proudly said, "Reagan proved that deficits mean nothing."
Has anyone traveled the roads in this country? Chicago, for example?
Obviously the president hasn't, or he would know that we already ARE a nation of potholes.
We have plenty of signs along our highways - including ones that read "Your tax dollars at work" - which often appear next to the biggest potholes. I guess our tax dollars go for the signs.
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