George Rebane
From recent developments we again see that compromising your principles to play the ‘go along to get along’ (GATGA) game does not work. It looks like the two Republican strategies I outlined in 'Republican Rumblings' were spot on when we consider what went down at CPAC this week, and what the Repubs are doing to themselves and having done to them by the Dems in the GATGA game.
Rand Paul and other speakers at the conservatives’ conference definitely stated their firm preference to stick to principles no matter the short term pain. According to their lights and available evidence GATGA does not work within or without our borders. Look at what the established Republican leadership is doing across the country. Never mind, just look at the nearby race for California's 4th congressional district race in which the party’s establishment wants to weaken incumbent Tom McClintock who gets highest marks from conservatives for not playing GATGA. They will run Art Moore against him who in 2014 sounds like one step removed from a Democrat, and that small step is opposition to Obamacare in which he is today joined by many Democrats. (more here)
As predicted, the recently passed farm bill has now been rolled up tightly and shoved up the Republicans’ collective you know what. It took only about a month for the Dems to erase the much touted (by Repubs) but iffy $800M food stamp savings this year through a clever gaming of the ‘heat and eat’ gambit that for some reason they never saw coming. This involves the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (Liheap) – great name since it is a heap of lies. Liheap beneficiaries automatically qualify for food stamps, so state level Dems have started spreading around heating checks for amounts as low as $1 to one cent to increase their federal food stamp rolls and buy a bunch more votes. So the projected savings from raising the Liheap trigger to $20 is out the window when states send out checks for $20.01 and $21. The wealth redistributors' math is on the mark; for spending an additional $1 they receive about $48 extra dollars from Washington. Congressman Doug Lamalfa, call your office.
Detroit and Chicago will really show how liberals play the Chapter 9 (municipal bankruptcy) version of GATGA. Its short name is ‘Unions Win, Creditors Lose’. The banks which made those less than doubtful loans are either dumber than 2x4s with faces painted on them, or thought they had a GATGA wink-wink with the feds to bail them out when the cities go belly up. The unbelievable part is that they’re still making these loans even though towns like Detroit, Stockton, Vallejo, … are demonstrating that it is perfectly ethical to stiff the lenders (and taxpayers) when you get your tender parts caught in a wringer. It’s part and parcel of our new progressive culture.
Here in California we also have the Calpers and Calstrs version of GATGA that has been played by our double dummy or scumbag (take your pick) local politicians for decades. Calpers, claiming it made a mistake reading mortality tables, has raised annual contribution requirements by $1.2B. Calstrs, whose teachers can’t do math let alone teach it, have underestimated their contribution requirements and are now raising them somewhere between $5.3B to $5.7B annually. And we’re not even going to get into the unfunded liability totals for those pension funds, which have been covered extensively in these pages.
Going overseas to see how GATGA is working out there, we all know that Putin has been playing pin the tail on Obama with every turn of the diplomatic screw from the so-called Arab Spring to Ukraine crisis. NPR’s Mara Liasson this morning pointed out that all those problems can also be laid on Bush2’s back, since he didn’t go into Georgia with guns blazing when Putin rolled his army across the border and essentially annexed a couple of Georgian provinces.
But things took a definite turn for the worse when our president-in-waiting and then SecState Hillary took Obama's big red reset button to Moscow. That little plastic toy was supposed to demonstrate America’s willingness to enter a new round of GATGA with the latest version of the ever-insecure and corrupt Greater Trans-Ural Slavic Empire under whatever name it now presents itself. You’d think someone in that administration would have read a history book that was written before the Great Society kicked in.
That Putin loathes Team Obama from the boss on down is no secret. The best great white hope to assuage Putin resides in Dr Angela Merkel – they both respect each other and speak German in private. Merkel can talk to Putin about Russia’s legitimate concerns – e.g. the centuries old fear of being attacked from multiple sides through indefensible borders, and the shrinking Slavic demographics. Angela can lay out for Vladimir without any military overtones that he needs to change Russia from a corrupt thugacracy to some version of free or state run (a la China) market capitalism. I believe that Merkel can also dangle a future Russian membership in NATO (or its successor) if Putin can straighten out and fly right – in short, invite him to try a round of GATGA with the west which would cooperate by not setting up a grim array of NATO countries on its border.
Such a new geo-strategy makes all the sense in the world given Russia’s shrinking population that attempts to guard and develop untold riches in its trans-Ural regions. Those same riches are in the cross-hairs of China and pan-Islamism which easily unites under the banner of colonizing to spread the faith. (Look at the diverse sources of Islamic funding for maintaining and spreading Muslim conclaves throughout Europe and America.) Angela can have that conversation with Vladimir and act as a trusted go-between with the EU and America, especially now that our Chief Community Naif has more flexibility.
rebanesruminations.com 
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