Our political system is broken -- and broke

Let's face it: our political system is broken.

Our legislators are in the pockets of special interests and they are ethically compromised beyond repair.

The Congress just voted to end the DC Charter School program that was working to help poor minority kids get a decent education in one of the worst school districts in the nation. According to the Wall Street Journal aptly titled editorial "Duplicitous and Shameful":

The waiting is finally over for some of the District of Columbia's most ambitious school children and their parents. Democrats in Congress voted to kill the District's Opportunity Scholarship Program, which provides 1,700 disadvantaged kids with vouchers worth up to $7,500 per year to attend a private school.

On Sunday the Senate approved a spending bill that phases out funding for the five-year-old program. Several prominent Senators this week sent a letter to Majority Leader Harry Reid pleading for a reconsideration. Signed by Independent-Democrat Joe Lieberman, Democrats Robert Byrd and Dianne Feinstein, and Republicans Susan Collins and John Ensign, it asked to save a program that has "provided a lifeline to many low-income students in the District of Columbia." President Obama signed the bill Thursday.

Why did they do this? Because they are in the pockets of the NEA, the national teacher's union.

"Opposition to vouchers is a top priority for NEA," declared the union in a letter sent to every Democrat in the House and Senate in March. "We expect that Members of Congress who support public education, and whom we have supported, will stand firm against any proposal to extend the pilot program. Actions associated with these issues WILL be included in the NEA Legislative Report Card for the 111th Congress."

What a joke. The Democrats are supposedly the party of the poor and disadvantaged -- unless it gets in the way of the union's interests and their copious campaign donations.

When will it all end?

The Congress is about to pass a $2.5 Trillion entitlement package on health care that will break the deficit -- we are heading toward a brick wall. What will follow will be new taxes of all types in order to pay for this boondoggle. And don't be fooled by the so-called $900 billion price tag on this health care bill. That number is based on accounting gimmicks and the prospect that we will somehow cut $500 billion from Medicare in the next several years.

Yeah, and pigs can fly.

In the meantime, we are on an unsustainable trajectory of debt and deficits. See this article by Karl Deninger "There is no way out of this box". Among other things, he writes:

We have used financial leverage to present to ourselves and the world a false belief and "visage" of prosperity that in fact did not and does not exist, with the continuation of this charade absolutely dependent on the unending ability to forever take on more and more debt compared to growth in actual economic output.

See the graph below. Can you honestly say we can sustain this? And why are we expanding it now even further?

Double click on this image to enlarge

We are in a bad way now and its getting worse. I hate to be a doomsayer...but...