These are America's Locust Years

                            "Washington's taken its eye off the ball."
                                                 — President Obama, July 24, 2013 Galesburg

As I look at America's last five years, I see a rudderless country, drifting ever faster into the maelstrom. I see no serious effort on the part of President Obama or Congress to deal with the great issues facing America.

Instead, we are led by a president and two parties intent only on gaining/retaining power and distributing the spoils to loyal supporters. And as long as supporters get their "bread and circuses," everybody goes on living in a fool's paradise.

By "bread and circuses," I mean pensions, Social Security and our other forms of corporate and individual welfare. With apologies to Winston Churchill, I call these our "Locust Years."

Consider just some of the problems America is facing:

-- Social Security is going broke.

-- Medicare Part A is going broke.

-- Immigrants pour across our southern border.

-- Billions of dollars are spent buying foreign oil -- often from our enemies.

-- The Muslim world -- Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Syria, Lebanon, etc. -- is in chaos.

-- North Korea is developing longer range missiles, and threatens us and its neighbors with nuclear attack. Iran is trying to build a bomb.

-- A real unemployment rate (U-6) of 13.8 percent.

-- An overall unemployment rate among "young people" (ages 18-24) of 18 percent; among young blacks of 28.2 percent; among young Latinos at 16.6 percent.

-- Our cities and states are going bankrupt, and as they do, bondholders and public employees and pensioners face economic ruin.

What serious efforts are being undertaken to deal with these problems?
I see none; only bread and circuses.

The bankruptcy filing by the City of Detroit, is the first shoe to drop. Chicago's bond rating has just been reduced to Aa3 with a "negative outlook." A hundred other cities are close to bankruptcy.

24/7 Wall St labels California the nation's "worst run state." It's per capita debt is $4,008. It has a 20.7 percent budget deficit. Its unemployment rate is 11.7 percent, while 16.6 percent of its people live below the poverty line. Its S&P credit rating is the worst of all the states. Moody's says it is second worst.

Recently California voters passed a ballot initiative which raises sales and income taxes on people who make $250K or more. The Tax Foundation says that the state's increased taxes make it the country's third worst state to do business in.

In some respects, Illinois is in even worse shape -- though it lacks the honor of being labeled "worst." Illinois per capita debt of $4,790 is worse than California's.

It's budget deficit also is worse: 40.2 percent. Its unemployment rates is 9.8 percent and 15 percent of its people live below the poverty line. Standard and Poors gave Illinois the second worst credit rating.

And Illinois state pensions systems are $85 billion "underfunded." In January 2013, S&P downgraded Illinois' credit rating to "A- with a negative outlook." Moody's lowered it from A3 to A2 with a "negative outlook." And now Fitch has downgraded the state to "A- with a negative outlook."

Detroit's bondholders, employees and pensioners are demanding a federal bailout." Bailing out one city is possible. But what happens when Washington is called upon to bail out 99 more cities, and the states of California, Rhode Island, Illinois, Arizona and New Jersey (with it $6,944 per capita debt), not to mention Social Security and Medicare?

What if the Obamacare cost estimates, as is probable, were grossly understated? What if we can't really provide insurance for 39 million people (including 12 to 20 million illegal immigrants) without the government providing additional billions of dollars? What if there is no free lunch?

In 1948, Mr. Churchill penned "The Gathering Storm," the first volume of his history of World War II, and the events leading up to that tragedy. In the fifth chapter, "The Locust Years," Churchill described the five-year period from 1931-1935, the years when Hitler came to power, when the European Democracies still put their trust in the "collective security" promised by the League of Nations, when the United States and Europe were mired in the Great Depression and isolation, and when the British government looked with unseeing eyes on ominous events in Germany.

Mr. Churchill decried the lack of leadership of Britain's national government, in these words:

"Delight in smooth-sounding platitudes, refusal to face unpleasant facts, desire for popularity and electoral success regardless of the vital interests of the State, genuine love of peace and pathetic belief that love can be its sole foundation, obvious lack of intellectual vigor in ... leaders of the ... government, marked ignorance of Europe and aversion from its problems ... the utter devotion ... to sentiment apart from reality ... and fecklessness which, though devoid of guile, was not devoid of guilt, and though free from wickedness or evil design, played a definite part in unleashing upon the world of horrors and miseries ... beyond comparison in human experience."

Change only the word "Europe" to "the world," and Mr. Churchill could well have been speaking of America's last five years.

Unless America addresses its problems without delay, America will soon pay an awful forfeit for its lack of leadership, for its Locust Years, and for its policy of bread and circuses.

President Obama has lamented "Washington's taken its eye off the ball." But he and John Boehner are Washington -- Washington at its most feckless.

Posted Online:  Aug. 10, 2013, 11:00 pm  - Quad-Cities Online
by John Donald O'Shea

Copyright 2013
John Donald O'Shea