Happy Birthday America!

Two hundred thirty five years ago we broke away from England and King George. America went on to become the most amazing country ever founded. Now it seems that I read reports that America is descending as the world's lone super power and it on track to become an also ran or average in a few decades.

There are entire genres of books dedicated to a post apocalyptic America, while I do read these and find myself looking at them as sort of a text book for preparation, I also firmly believe if it ever happened it would be a long ways away provided the dollar was never removed as the world's reserve currency. Then it would be a short fall into a more chaotic world.

That is something that the world doesn't really want though, they want clear leadership. They want the knight to come to their rescue when they need it. They want that knight to come from a shining city on the hill and that is America. It's very true we used to innovate everything here in this country, many things are now designed here and outsourced to other countries for production where they don't have the EPA hoops to jump through or the oppressive tax codes that prevent innovation and spur further production.

As I type this there is a debate in Congress about the debt ceiling. This debt ceiling is almost a boogieman or sorts as it is a limit Congress set upon itself not to go above. The GOP wants trillions of dollars in spending cuts while the Dems want tax hikes to fill the gaps. There is a clear standoff and it'll likely end with a compromise deal of sorts to temporarily raise the debt ceiling.

So what happened? Did the Founding Fathers foresee how far America would come? Did they see what kind of wreck our government would become, how corrupt, how singleminded it would become with partisanship?

I think they likely did. There are so many warnings in the Federalist Papers as well as specific amendments against an oppressive government to keep it in check. In many many ways the federal government has overstepped its Constitutional boundaries. It's massive now, spending more in a few hours than what our Founding Fathers had to spend in lifetimes.

Now what has evolved is that the more radical liberal Dems see the Constitution as an obstacle to be overcome or gone around while the GOP sometimes aren't any better at it. The true facts are that both sides are riddled with politicians who get elected and go on to become self serving leeches instead of servants of the people, no matter how well intentioned.

Both sides are just as bad, they both have people who benefit from backroom deals, fill bills with riders that benefit their districts, and enjoy the company of lobbyists way too much.

If I ever lost my sanity and ran for Congress the first thing I'd author and the fastest to be shot down was to replace the Congressional pension program with social security. Every single Congressman would live under the same rules they impose on everyone else, period!

No massive retirement program for servants of the people, they would then be inclined to go back to working for a living after serving and wouldn't impose rules that oppressed industry rather than using ideology as their guidelines. They would literally be servants once again as intended.

However I know that is a pipe dream as there are too many self serving politicians that would make sure the bill would never see the light of day.

America, baby we've come a long way, we've got many more good and great decades ahead of us. Yeah we're hitting a four year pothole now but hopefully we'll have lots of fiscal discipline come from this and many more good unforeseen things!