Suggest more actions!

one "entry level" thing people can do is to check our schedule of events and look for public events to attend like Fiscal Wake Up Tour forums that hare happening in communities across the nation.

while the commandment to "get in touch with your legislator" gets thrown out on just about every issue, it really is very important on this one. leaders need to know that people care about this issue. it's not a given.

Your site might be more effective if you used css better in your html to use up more screen area on larger screens. A common size these days is 1280x800 (widescreen laptop), on which your pages waste roughly 50% of the screen area.

for an example of a blog that scales down to handhelds and up to 1600x1200, well, see my own blog ( http://the-edge.blogspot.com )

(message prompted by trying to read your site on my laptop, after someone posted a link to it on my blog)

Thanks for the suggestion. The site's still evolving, so we'll be looking at alternatives like that.

1. Get each legislator to pledge no deficit spending

2. Spotlight the budget voting and emergency appropriation votes

3. Any legislator who votes for deficit spending gets delivered a big bag of steaming BULLSHIT if they vote for it!  Video tape the deliveries and provide copies to the media in their home district. 

So you want to see the media cover these issues more?

Yes, but they only seem interested in controversy and outlandish behavior....the debt should qualify!

The "Facing Up" project is a good idea...I think people have tried to make the budget understandable before but the efforts seems to die from lack of interest. Looking at the email posts on this website, this seems to be the case here too...nothing for weeks. Too bad.

I think the alternatives listed under the various budget issues regarding Social Security, Medicare, etc. are too limited.

For instance,

*there is no mention of our bloated military budget and the problem with the amount of control the military-industrial interests have in the U.S....the money wasted in Iraq could have fixed Social Security with cash to spare;

*there is no discussion of the stranglehold large corporate interests and the rich have on our politics, our media, and our culture, leading to increasing disparity of income and wealth; the censoring of a full national dialogue about problems; the rise of powerful families that are globalists and have no allegiance to the welfare of any country (such as the Bush family in the U.S.); and a culture of consumption, rather than a culture of saving and investment

*there is no mention of the lack of discussion in the U.S. about population control and the many problems our exploding human population causes for our budget and other concerns;

*there is no discussion I could find about immigration;

*there is no discussion of the many cooperative ways people could band together to satisfy common needs outside of government and how our culture of competition and aggression makes this difficult to do;

*there is no comment about the lack of participation of most of our citizens in civic life and the connection our education system has to this;

*there is no perspective about where the USA finds itself in the normal pattern of the rise and fall of great civilizations (I would guess we are on the downside...all civilizations before us went through this same process if you bother to read history).

In short, our budget problems could be indirectly solved by creating a more rational, simple, and peaceful society; and by viewing our "budget" problems in perspective with other issues including those mentioned above.

But there seems to be no appetite for our so-called "leaders" to even mention these issues. Most of them are too "politically incorrect" I suppose in an age where it is more important to get re-elected than to speak the truth. Also, our values as a culture make it very difficult to address the issues underlying the difficulty our nation is having.

As long as the solution to our problems as a nation boils down to merely cutting up the economic pie in different ways or arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, people are going to remain cynical; and everyone is going to merely try to grab as much as they can for themselves instead of seeing our society in more cooperative terms.

So I wish you luck with the "budget" but would encourage you to take a broader view.

    As a means of dramatising the reality of the debt problem, I suggest that when the Fiscal Wake Up Tour forums are conducted, what could be included in the problem description would be a story  - the story being the Argentina story. This is not an area in which I have expertice, but I read an article years ago about Argentina which made quite an impression. What was emphasized was that at the turn of the century in 1900, the United States and Argentina were quite comparable in terms of economic status, standard of living, and potential for economic growth in the future. Like brothers, so to speak. Yet after something like 80 years, the US and Argentina were no longer even remotely comparable economically. WHAT HAPPENED? The article said that by Argentina's having followed Peron's populist policies instead of rational policies, they wound up with massive unemployment, defauting on debt and social unrest - a very bad situation. So the point would be to say that, if you think we are disappearing into the wispy realms of pure theory, you should realize that this problem DID materialize in Argentina, and you are very wrong if you think it can't happen here.        kj strack

Education is the only thing that will work.  Candidates will continue to avoid the hard choices as long as they feel an uneducated public will trash them if they propose real solutions.  People need to know that most of our federal spending goes to entitlements like medicare and social security or the military.  

Politicians who only talk about cutting some pork or raising taxes only on the rich are just not being honest.  But they are giving people what they want to hear, which is easy fixes. 

Taxes need to be on the table and people should have a better understanding of what their tax dollars actually buy.  Spending cuts also need to be on the table, but will be useless unless defense and entitlements are part of the conversation.

As I wrote today on my news blog, "There is little that any individual can do about the national debt.  But we should all be concerned about it because the hard decisions that will have to be made will affect all of us."

Politicians won't address this until voters demand real action, not window dressing solutions that only serve to mask the real magnitude of our dilemma.  

You can find the entire story at http://current.pic.tv/2008/08/11/an-inconvenient-debt/ 

Extremely interesting post.  It seems like there is some definite fear on behalf of the candidates.  And you're right, the approach to fixing the budget is going to have to be multifaceted.  This debacle didn't happen overnight, so fixing it can't possibly be quick.  We will most likely have to be open to both a raise in taxes and cuts in spending to balance the lot.  Education is surely key.