Arkansas Watch — It’s time to plant a garden

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

During the eight days Congress negotiated a budget deal to cut $38 billion dollars of spending, the United States borrowed another $54 billion. In other words, the cuts did not even make up for the deficit spending the week they were an issue. This shows us that Congress is rapidly making itself irrelevant.

Both numbers are a lot of money to you and me, but trivial compared to the $1.4 trillion dollar annual deficit or the even larger total debt.

The dollar is doomed.

This past summer I used this column to urge every modest household to buy and hold 50 ounces of silver as a hedge against the rising prices (read falling dollar) that were soon to come.

I hope some of you were able to do that. At the time I offered this advice, silver could be had for $18.50 an ounce. As I write this, it is over $41 an ounce, when you can get it.

But it is not just silver that is up. Everything is up but home prices and wages. All this is because the dollar is falling down.

It’s falling because Congress continues to spend, and the Federal Reserve obliges them by printing extra money. Inflation is a hidden tax that hurts the working class and poor the most.

The wealthy can end-run inflation because they have extra money over and above their needs that they can turn into stuff that goes up in value in response to inflation - like gold and silver.

The Democrats will keep spending until the dollar is destroyed. Unfortunately, so will the Republicans. In this recent budget showdown they couldn’t even draw the line at defunding Planned Parenthood, which is the nation’s number one abortion provider. That organization gets hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars every year. Supposedly, it does not go for abortion, but money is fungible. It may go in another columnon an accounting sheet, but ultimately it all goes to the same people killing the babies.

When a government is spending $1.4 trillion dollars more than it has each and every year, something has to be cut, right? If they can’t even cut that, then they are not going to cut anything significant.

Even allegedly “pro-life” politicians like our ex-governor Huckabee said it was “not worth it” to shut the government down over defunding Planned Parenthood. The “pro-life” leader thus gave the other members of his party moral permission to allow funding to continue. Neither beltway political gang has any intention of making the sacrifices necessary to prevent dollar collapse and all the misery that goes with it.

The foolish cry from the pundits was to not let a mere “social issue” like abortion cause a government shutdown when what people are really concerned about is the economy.

Virtue and morality were required to build our great national wealth. Vice andimmorality were required to undermine and destroy it. Only mediocre minds fail to see that the issues of prosperity and morality are connected.

Did the loss of 50 million younger entry-level workers since 1973 to abortion have anything to do with the current crisis in Medicare and Social security? Of course.

Did the scarcity of such workers put upward pressure on wages that contributed to illegal immigration and outsourcing of jobs? Of course.

Last time I advised buying silver. Now I say plant a garden, or expand your garden if you have one. We had better look to God and to our neighbors for help, because it won’t be coming from D.C.

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Editor’s note: Mark Moore is the lead writer for an Internet blog on matters pertaining to Arkansas culture and government, Arkansas Watch, and on Tuesday nights is the host of an Internet-based radio program, Patriots on Watch. He can be reached through The Times at [email protected].

Opinion, Pages 4 on 04/13/2011