Fightin' Words

For all of the technology and educational opportunities that most Americans have access to these days, it continues to amaze us exactly how many people choose to be obtuse when the facts don't agree with the outcome they wish to see.

Wednesday afternoon, after the President's direct and honest speech about the fiscal situation in which America finds itself, it became quite clear that the Congressional Republican leadership members were perfect examples of that sad truism.

What the President said on Wednesday is what we have been preaching from these pages, and elsewhere, for quite some time.

America IS a great country - but it's great because of many of the things Americans have done TOGETHER. As President Obama noted, those include a strong military, solid public schools and universities, our great highway system, Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid and more. These are all great commitments we've chosen to make as one nation, and as the President said, "We would not be a great country without those commitments."

The President acknowledged that we've borrowed too much as a nation, and that most of that destructive borrowing came before he ever set foot in the White House.

He also drove home a hard fact: no matter how much anyone tells you to the contrary, we cannot solve our massive monetary problems by cutting to death only TWELVE PERCENT of our total national budget without touching the rest of it. Even if we do only that, just cut... our budget problems will still not be solved, because WE NEED MORE REVENUE.

It doesn't take a genius to understand the difference between the President's plan and the Republican plan, as laid out by Rep. Paul Ryan. As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities pointed out recently, Ryan's plan calls for $4.3 Trillion in program cuts - and $4.2 Trillion in tax cuts, that would mostly go to the wealthiest Americans.

As President Obama laid out Wednesday, his plan calls for about $4 Trillion dollars in budget cuts as well - but it also calls for reinvestment in education, transportation, Medicare, Social Security and more.

Only a blind, insane, lobotomized fool would choose Rep. Ryan's plan over the President's. Still, the GOP leadership is doing just that.

Sadly, uncomprehending blindness to facts didn't appear to be strictly a Washington, DC phenomenon yesterday.

As we pointed out nearly a month and a half ago, Nebraska's Governor Dave Heineman and other anti-labor forces within the state of Nebraska still don't seem to understand the basic truth already laid down by the Nebraska Supreme Court many years ago: Either Nebraska has a Commission of Industrial Relations to mediate disputes between the public labor unions and employers... OR public employees of the State Of Nebraska will be allowed to strike. The original purpose of the CIR was to avoid strike scenarios and to give labor and management an independent mediator to work out their differences. When you have reached an impasse, the CIR is there to rule on the issues. Generally, neither side is happy with the outcome. The system works; the participants make not like the outcomes, but it works.

Yet, on Wednesday, the Nebraska Legislature held a hearing where certain members of the Legislature were trying to eliminate the CIR, by trying to justify it as a cost saving measure. Sadly for conservatives, even THEIR figures say neutering or eliminating the CIR would not be cost efficient. It may even cost taxpayers more in the end.

This isn't rocket science, people. If you start with the facts, you're almost always likely to come to a logically defensible result. If you choose to start from what you wish the outcome would be and work backward, blindly ignoring any inconvenient facts, you're either delusional or just plain stupid.