Matt Taibbi, in Rolling Stone, describes how Jefferson County, Alabama, borrowed itself into bankruptcy. Under pressure from environmentalists, the county decided to reduce its sewage plant outflow into the nearby river to zero, something no treatment plant in the world has ever accomplished. Unfortunately, getting down to zero required a sewage treatment plant equivalent to the Manhattan Project. The county borrowed an enormous amount of money from Wall Street, some of which even passed unscathed through the hands of the local politicians, and so, between the staggering debt service and the massive corruption, the county soon found itself defaulting on its loans and laying people off. Taibbi, of course, blames it all on a failure of capitalism and the greed of Wall Street bankers who lent the county the money. But this is more than the story of a little Alabama county, this is the future of the United States, with trillions and trillions of debt that can only be paid by debasing the currency or raising taxes to levels that kill the economy. Obama did tell Joe the Plumber that he wanted to redistribute the wealth, and it looks like he’s doing it, but the problem is, he’s redistributing it to China.

 

 

He liked to bring things home from work

A virtue, I will grant

The problem was he worked all day

At the disposal plant

But that was nothing to the stuff

The politicians got

Watches, cash and sweetheart deals

It all went in the pot

Enviro whackos egged them on

The river must be clean

We’ll kill dear Mother Earth, they cried

Unless we all go green

The whackos listened not at all

To engineers who said

A simple three stage treatment plant

Would be just fine instead

With money dangling ‘fore their eyes

The politicians lunged

And grabbed it all for them and theirs

And into debt they plunged

They hocked the town up to its ears

Taxpayers had a fit

The promises the whackos made

Were just a crock of s**t