David Walker, Comptroller General of the US
The US government is on a ‘burning platform’ of unsustainable policies and practices with fiscal deficits, chronic healthcare underfunding, immigration and overseas military commitments threatening a crisis if action is not taken soon, the country’s top government inspector has warned.
David Walker, comptroller general of the US, issued the unusually downbeat assessment of his country’s future in a report that lays out what he called “chilling long-term simulations”. These include “dramatic” tax rises, slashed government services and the large-scale dumping by foreign governments of holdings of US debt.
Drawing parallels with the end of the Roman empire, Mr Walker warned there were “striking similarities” between America’s current situation and the factors that brought down Rome, including “declining moral values and political civility at home, an over-confident and over-extended military in foreign lands and fiscal irresponsibility by the central government”.
In an interview with the Financial Times, Mr Walker said he had mentioned some of the issues before but now wanted to “turn up the volume”. Some of them were too sensitive for others in government to “have their name associated with”.
| I’ve thought the same thing for a number of years. Will anybody listen to this guy? |
| Found by Watcher. |
Famous historian Arnold Toynbee studied “the 22 recognized civilizations” that are known prior to modern times==they all ended the same way==too decadent and rich to fight for their societies.
Nothing new at all here. Will he be listened to? – – – – -no.
DUH!!
And rome burned as Ceaser played.
> “declining moral values and political civility at home, an
> over-confident and over-extended military in foreign lands
> and fiscal irresponsibility by the central government”.
What a crock of !@#$%^&. There is no way to objectively measure “declining moral values” or “declining political civility”. He basically pulled this out of is tookus. If he thinks current politics aren’t civil, then clearly he does not know much about history.
ECA, that would be Nero not Caesar.
Veni, Vidi, Vomit.
J/P=?
Hey, I just came back from the vomitorium, what did I miss?
Our infrastructure may be collapsing but our armies in the middle east, korean peninsula are strong and we have good credit.
We also have a great modern day Caesar in George Bush – strong, wise and our spiritual leader.
#3: I take it that you haven’t watched any American television programming lately.
Speaking of civility, I think Post # 3 clearly illustrates the lack thereof in American society.
America will fade into the sunset, and hopefully with a whimper, rather than a painful bang.
Um, maybe I’m just such a pessimist that for me this gives a reason for relative optimism. At least someone in power noticed.
Unfortunately, social security is well-funded. Maybe some equivalent of a corporate raider (nation raider?) will buy us out to raid our “pension fund” and sell off our assets. Have we deregulated the industry of government yet?
#5 – JP,
I came; I saw; I concurred.
Chalmers Johnson has been comparing the US to the Roman Empire in his book Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Empire.
#3 There may be no way to objectively measure moral decay, but it has only been during the Bush years where we have approved of immoral behavior: torture, rendition, holding prisoners indefinitely without trial, preemptive war, paid mercenaries, blatant war profiteering.
Another Roman Empire parallel: over reliance of slavery / over reliance of cheap foreign labor.
Bottom line, I believe the country is just one major enegy crisis or major recession away from collapse.
#7 – We also have a great modern day Caesar in George Bush – strong, wise and our spiritual leader.
Fuck that son of a bitch… We need a modern day Brutus.
#3 – Thomas,
There may be no accurate way to measure it. Perhaps just polling people to see whether there is improvement or degradation. Either way though, it feels right to me. I don’t think he pulled it out of his tokhes (proper spelling from the online Yiddish dictionary at http://www.yiddishdictionaryonline.com/).
To me, it’s simply annoying that people are paying more attention to P.H., B.S.&K.F., L.L., and so on — but are missing important video like this…
hhopper – thanks for posting.
Maybe not, while I see plenty of horses’ asses in the Senate, no actual equine members have showed up yet.
#9
You mean like the Science channel, Discovery channel or the History channel? You mean shows like Mythbusters or Our Universe? Yes, I have watched some American television lately. As with everything, it all depends on your choices.
#12
War profiteering has been around as long as war (even in the US). Torture is new…because we know about it. But it has been going on for a *long* time and by more countries than just us. Yes, the Administration’s stance on torture is disturbing and more an indication of this administration’s mistake rather than a sign of armageddon. Since we used mercenaries during Revolutionary War I suppose that means our “moral decline” started when we founded the country. Regarding the holding prisoners without trial, last I checked prisoners *of war* never given a trial.
#14
Learn something new every day. I did not know that tokhes was a yiddish word. Thanks!
Couldn’t they just cut off Social Security benefits in the future and problem solved?
The checks and balances of the PEOPLE have been given away..
I just looked up idiot in the Yiddish dictionary and the result was schmok.
Ha!
Thomas, yes the sins the government is committing are not new. Its the blatant unapologetic openess thats new, and no one in Washington (including the Democrats) are willing to do anything about it. That tells me they are all worthless, all corrupt, all moral failures.
If the “prisoners” in GITMO are “of war” then it is not an officially declared war, and even if you consider it official “war”, then they are protected under the Geneva Convention, and not subject to torture or trial without representation, or any of the other illegal and unconstitutional stuff going on down there.
Is not the record low approval of both the executive and legislative branches evidence enough of the moral decline of Washington?
#7
Dallas Wrote:
“We also have a great modern day Caesar in George Bush – strong, wise and our spiritual leader.”
Lets break this sentence down:
“We also have a great modern day Caesar in George Bush”
Well I will grant you that their are some similarities between GW and Caesar. They were both politicians. They both liked to start wars. Caesar was responsible for starting a civil war in his country and GW probably will be as well.
“strong”
I would more categorize this characteristic as bull-headed and stubborn to a fault rather than strong.
“wise”
Well this word is about as opposite as you could come up with to describe GW. He has demonstrated his ignorance and outright stupidity on too many occasions to count. I doubt you could find five people on earth that would describe GW as wise.
“and our spiritual leader”
Well he certainly is religious and loves to demonstrate this fact at the drop of a hat. Not an ideal behavior for the leader of a country that is largely based on the concept of separation of church and State. I guess you could say he is a spiritual leader in a “Jim Jones” kind of way.
nice! it isnt just me imagining show simial the shit is, its been real!!!
#21
If the GITMO prisoners are prisoners of war, they are not entitled to a trial since they are considered soldiers not criminals. Admittedly, the people held at GITMO are a special case which is not really handled by the Geneva Convention.
I agree that regardless of protocol (Geneva or otherwise) torture is abominable but it is definitely not new. What is new is rapid flow of information so that we know about it sooner. Every administration has done “black ops” which involve all kinds of activities that we probably do not want to know about it. I’m sure this goes back to the Revolutionary War and, outside the US, many, many generations.
> Is not the record low approval of both the
> executive and legislative branches evidence
> enough of the moral decline of Washington?
IMO, no. It is a sign of electorate not expending the energy and fortitude to correct the problems that have crept into the political process over the years. “Moral decline” is a wholly subjective phase that could mean all kinds of different things to different people. People in the US are not so much “less moral” (whatever that means) as they are politically lazy. The willingness to get involved in their local politics has clearly declined over the years as people feel they are simply too busy to get involved. *That*, I would agree is a disturbing sign but certainly not the sort of “sky is failing” sign given by the Walker. This guy’s parallels to the Roman Empire are also specious. Hadrian stopped the expansion of the Empire in 138 BC but Rome did not fall until 476. That’s over three hundred years. Roman did not collapse from over-expansion. It collapsed because of political corruption and turmoil (on a scale far above anything we’ve seen. Italian corruption makes our version look laughable).
I definitely agree with Walker that the US has been fiscally mismanaged for many years (believe it or not, even before both Bushes). You have to go back to the 1800’s to find a time when we did not have any national debt. What we need is to fix the spending problem and refocus on paying down the debt. The problem is that paying off the national debt is not sexy and generally does not get votes and *that* is the true shame.
That should read:
“Hadrian stopped the expansion of the Empire in 138 CE. (And obviously 476 is CE as well.). “
The comptroller is correct that the US government is run out of a cash account checkbook, with Social Security nothing less than a ponzi scheme. However, the analogy to the Roman Empire, morality and civility is way off base.
I think a much better example is England, which is a democracy like ours. It basically ran out of money to fund its empire and wars and had to withdraw. But it hasn’t been invaded by barbarians, suffered no “dark age” and the civil discourse is just as brutal as always. It just retrenched.
In terms of morality, is his position that Rome became less moral after it converted to Christianity than when it was pagan? Rome fell within 200 years of the conversion.
The great things about democracies are that they are self correcting, unlike the juntas that ran the Western Roman Empire. The only question is how painful the correction will be? Clearly George & Dick have taken us down the wrong road, but they’ll be gone in 1 1/2 years. We’ll see how long and how painful fixing all their mistakes will be.
I’m tired of the “superpower” status anyway. It hasnt been that much fun. Let some other country be the “world police”, as long as its not China.
I thought that’s what the UN is supposed to do.
#28 – hhopper – I thought that’s what the UN is supposed to do.
Unfortunately the U.N. is a tiger without teeth. They’ve got no armed forces of their own and the five permanent members of the security council makes sure decisions doesn’t interfere with their interests. It’s a perverted parody of how it should have worked.
Feh. All this ‘the sky is falling’ crap is just a variation on ‘everything bad happens to ME’
torture? as others have noted, this is nothing new. In prior days it was routine in the station-house of every American city. In a previous century it was ‘outsourced’ to the overseers on plantations.
moral collapse? I know conservatives equate morality with sex, but let’s be a little broader than that, shall we. In the last century, we have abolished legal segregation and the subordination of women. Thus, over half the population has seen its status dramatically rise. That is the height of morality, not immorality. Public corruption is on the wane as well – before campaign finance reform, bribery was rampant. Now it strains at the leash, but it is probably at its lowest ebb.
unjustifiable war? atrocity? over extension? Iraq and Haditha pale in comparison to Vietnam and Mai Lai. Even suppressing the Filipino Insurrection was bloodier than this fight, and no one even remembers that.
political incivility? check wikipedia or google Benjamin Franklin Basche’s ‘Aurora.’ this guy was calling George frikkin Washington a traitor. and so did a lot of people. in the 1960s, not only did we have a Vietnam War but also every major city had race riots, homegrown terrorists like the Weathermen were on the attack and National Guardsmen were gunning down protesters and rioters. the current pissing-matches ain’t nothing – the body count is purely rhetorical.
fiscal solvency? been hearing that song since the 80s. once those boomers get on the dole, tax increases to finance their benefits will follow. Old people all vote.
Immigration? People been crying about that since the Irish started showing up in the 1840s. the WASP-whining really kicked into high gear when the Southern and Eastern Europeans came in waves in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. and somehow the Republic endured.
Sure, there’s structural problems. I would say the growing paralysis of the Congress is one of the biggest. the filibuster needs to be abolished, term limits imposed, and gerrymandering dealt with.
This will all end with crying