Will the US be like a rerun of the fall of the Roman Empire?

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Nothing scares a politician more than having to face a tax professional (which is an area of law that I am expert in, being an IRS Enrolled Agent), because we look at the numbers and think about the impact of the numbers before we think about our political desires. So whether you are conservative or liberal, you will be nervous when you get through reading this post.

Why is our country in a deficit - has anybody really truly investigated the truth?

In 1992 when I was an investigator for the CHAMPUS (Civilian Health and Medical Program of the Uniformed Services) of the Defense Department (Now called Tri-Care), I broke the biggest medical fraud case in history. It involved a 110 mental hospital chain with hospitals in some 11 states and involved some $72.4 Billion in medical fraud from that program alone. When I began tracing the other sources of government money originating from Medicare/Medicaid and the various state health programs, the number jumped to over $112 Billion. None of this money was recovered. None. All that happened was a bunch of greedy doctors going to prison for the rest of their lives. And I, along with the team of investigators that were assigned to support me in the investigation took a lot of heat from both sides of the aisle because a number of their higher paying constituents were going to jail. The irony of the situation was when Time Magazine came out with an article talking about their figure of $80 Billion in medical fraud going through the country's economy in a given year. We all laughed.

This case was just one case of 68 cases on my desk at any given time. The average case load per investigator was around 55. There were 105 investigators nationwide. The average case was worth approximately $64,468,487.39. Thus, by average alone, the total amount that the whole force was dealing with was $460,305,000,000. This, of course, does not take into account my case, which I excluded out. This also does not take into account the fraud that takes place in Medicare/Medicaid. And these are early 90's figures and yes, we had computers then.

Medical Fraud, like any other white collar criminal activity, is the easiest to prove, but it takes months to years to investigate. And by the time you bring the culprits to justice, the money is all gone. Now speed frame up to today and look at the practically non-existant fraud control parameters of Obamacare (and I did read the law - the entire law) and look at the population that it will serve - folks, we will go broke on that alone. While I have never doubted the altruisim of medical assistance programs, I question their effectiveness because they hurt the economy more than they help it because of the sheer uncontrollable greed that takes hold. And we will never posess enough manpower to control the fraud! That is why we have uncontrollable deficits in this country. Bush - Obama - it doesn't matter. What both sides need to understand is that, from a strictly financial point of view, the best solution to not having a deficit is by not having these programs at all. Fraud in Defense spending pales in comparison to Medical Fraud!

And now they want to do the dream act. Folks - we need a third party - I agree. But what we need is a third party of Certified Public Accountants, Enrolled Agents, and Enrolled Actuaries who are able to do the math and say NO!

I wonder if we're going to end up with a revolution like the Romanian Revolution, but instead of almost everybody turning against a dictator, we turn against Congress.

Well said! Hooah!! !!

Longshanks

It has been said their plumbing had a lot to do with the fall of the Roman Empire due to the insanity caused by lead contamination.

I'm willing to bet the wrangling of political pundits here will eventually have the same effect.

That has been so exaggerated. In fact, the amount of lead in the pipes was no different in the end of the western empire than it was at its height.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

"It has been said..." it wasn't a history lesson. That wasn't the point.

No. It will not be a rerun of the fall of Rome which was mostly caused by lead poisoning of Rome's ruling classes.

ruveyn

Sure it does, at least to a point. The example that immediately springs to mind: When George W. Bush tried to cobble together that "coalition of the willing," most of Europe essentially either told him to shove it or sent some kind of token force, that was pulled out of either Afghanistan or Iraq as soon as they could.



In the wet dreams of the more rabid neo-cons this might be the case, but if by "extraterritoriality" you mean things like military bases, it is almost the reverse situation. The US has to avoid pissing off Turkey, any number of those countries carved from the old USSR whose names all look like a random collection of Scrabble tiles, Saudi Arabia and probably even Japan and Italy. It is almost like they're held hostage vs. the US. And when a country wants a base gone, it goes. The US had a continuous presence from 1903 to 1991 (with a little blip in the '40s ) at what became Clark Air Base in the Phillipines. When the lease ran out and the two sides couldn't agree on terms for a new one, the US left. That's how an empire acts?

And could you list off some of these "standards" the US has imposed unilaterally on the world? Certainly the US was the driving force behind the current insane state of copyright laws, but I'd say that that is more than counterbalanced by the amount of knockoffs of everything from tires to clothing made all over the world about which the US does beans. And there is also our curious "alliance" with Israel, though who bosses who around is certainly open to question.



The Civil War decided the primacy of the federal government over state governments, so it is unclear to me where you're going on that one. Though I suppose The League of the South (link) would be right there with you on the imperialism score of federal primacy over state's rights.

Maine? Maine was territory administered by Massachusetts until 1820, when it gained statehood on its own. So its been in the United States as long as there has been one. And I suppose the answer to your question would be: the Constitutional system works far better for Maine than the Articles of Confederation did, when each state could create its own currency, place tariffs on state to state trade, etc.



If you wish to call everything that was done under the rubric of "Manifest Destiny" imperialism, I won't quarrel with you. But didn't Canada have its own variation on the same theme? If so, does this make Canada an imperialist nation? Or did British Columbia just magically spring into existence somehow? And are you prepared to hand back Quebec (though to whom precisely, I'm not so sure)?




Piffle. Who exactly is having a gun held to their head to watch the latest Tom Cruise vehicle, eat at McDonalds or listen to Eminem hoot like a baboon and grab his crotch? Note that I'm not claiming these exports are exactly edifying, simply that this garbage is not a replay of, say, the Opium Wars, where when China tried to restrict opium imports the British smashed them militarily and essentially commanded them to flood the market with Indian opium imports.



Drop the empire bit, and how is any of the above any less applicable to Canada?

Granted.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

1) Nice points. I like your style.

2) I like your avatar. Baldwin IV, King of Jerusalem, is a relation of mine in that we have a mutual direct ancestor, Fulk V, King of Jerusalem. Fulk was Baldwin's grandfather and my great (to the 22nd power) grandfather if I've numbered the "greats" correctly. Both were great military leaders. You are a man of taste, sir.

My very best,

Longshanks

The one thing I've noticed is that engaging in politics may hurt you and reading about politics too much may turn you into a paranoiac.

Go about your life, do your daily things, you will probably realize that it doesn't matter who is in charge, your daily life is not going to be affected all too much as long as the leader is not a tyrant.

Obama is not a tyrant. The US is not going to crumble to pieces. I think you are fine going about your daily business as usual which includes college.

Speaking of British accents... Didn't the British empire collapse too? It's certainly not what it once was.

I doubt you'd have much to worry about though. Your qualification would probably still be considered as a valid measure of your level of education.

For what that's worth...

Degrees themselves don't mean much any more though. If you can already get a job overseas without one and you're really that worried about the state of the USA, maybe you should just cut your losses and go back to China.



Why wait? Why don't you just do that now?

It's already the way the world works now, and always will be, so nothing will have changed after the collapse other than the level of safety that you have while you're trying to worm your way into the system. Right now it's awkward and uncomfortable, but later one false step will get you lynched by an angry mob.

It would be easier to do your worming while the mob is still being forced to behave.

The British Empire wore away and deflated. But the culture and civilization did not collapse. And there were few or no barbarians at the gates.

ruveyn

Funny, that's exactly what I thought when reading Alienboy's response...and I even have a foretaste of how that would work, from personal experience.

I'd never had many friends as a kid, and by the time 8th grade rolled around the few I had, had all pretty much either moved away or dropped me. So I was alone. And the sort of individual who gets their rocks off with bullying can somehow smell people like me out like a shark does chum in the water from miles away. I have no clue how they (both bullies and sharks) do it, but they're both frighteningly efficient at doing what they do.

When the harassment started, I first tried my own variant of appeasement, which of course was an utter disaster. Some kids who might have also been in my shoes could make jokes about it, and fob off the bullies that way. (I believe Chris Rock has actually commented something along the lines that that was how he got his start in stand up comedy, by dealing with bullies through humor.) But I'm in no way capable of going that route, either then or now.

So, anyways...after about two weeks I dug in my heels and started fighting back, even being the first one to throw a punch in response to nothing but verbal insults. And did I ever get the crap kicked out of me at first. But I suppose where Chris Rock learned how to be a comedian, I learned how to take a punch and keep going. Never really learned how to throw one all that well, in all honesty, but I sure as hell learned to ignore pain, blood and to never, ever, ever stay down if I went down. And after about two months of this, more of the fights wound up as "draws," not "losses." (Wins? Maybe one or two. At the absolute most.)

Not because I did anything special, just that I'd be on my feet and standing my ground when the other guy broke it off, which I NEVER did, even with a black eye and a bloody nose. Sometimes I'd even taunt the guy who had basically just put me through a meat shredder, when he walked away. Can't exactly give the story a happy ending, but I guess the kids picking on me (and it was more than one group) decided just about simultaneously all concluded that I was more trouble than I was worth, and went off in search of easier prey. (Which I know for a fact they found.) And I was back to being left alone.

Anyway, what ties this stroll down memory lane to your response? This: the code of conduct at my school -- as defined by the students -- considered one on one fights perfectly fine, but NOT two or three or four on one. I can't think of one instance of that happening, not just to me, but to anyone who went to my school. The rule was unspoken, but seemingly written in stone. In fact, in one case I was "involved" with one member of a pair of twins and actually started to gain the upper hand. His brother, when he saw this happening, did try to jump into the fight...but he was actually restrained by two of his friends (they sure as hell weren't mine) from intervening, who looked at this twin like he was masturbating in public. Pure disgust. Certainly not for my sake, but over the fact that this "code" was almost violated.

And what I've sometimes wondered...what would have happened to me in a school with an ethos less like High Noon and more like Lord of the Flies? Or if this unspoken rule had somehow been abandoned? These were groups of kids, and the only thing that kept them away from me while fighting their friend was an internalized code. Drop that, and at three or four or five to one I'd have been nothing but a smear on the pavement, certainly utilizing the tactics I unconsciously adopted.

Funny, I don't think I've even thought about those few months in a decade or so. But when I read what Alienboy said, it was like *ding*, and that bit of 1979-80 rose like scum from my subconscious to full-blown memory. Anyway, memo to Alienboy....be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.

No, it's a rerun of the Spanish Empire.

Spain was once the economic powerhouse of Europe. They produced the most sophisticated goods, the best steel, and ruled the seas. They then found gold in the new world and it completely destroyed spanish industry. Instead of making goods for trade, they paid for everything with loot from the new world. In the end, they defaulted four times in a row and became the poor men of western europe to this day.

The US was the economic powerhouse of the world. They produced the most sophisticated goods, the best steel, and ruled the seas. Their currency was the world's reserve, taken as good as gold even after 1971, and printed it until local industry was destroyed. In the end we will default and become the poor men of the west unless we learn the lesson herein.

My guess is we won't.

On top of that, Spain had engaged in non-stop (religious) war against the Protestant states of Europe, which left them militarily and economically spent. Kind of reminds me of what had, until recently, appeared to be very much like our seemingly endless conflicts in the Middle East and Central Asia.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer