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WHO GOES INTO DEBT? NEARLY EVERYBODY.
"WAS" MAY LOOK JUST LIKE “IS.” BUT IT ISN'T
The topics of debt and default are much
on the minds of Georgia's congressmen as the
country nears an important Aug. 2 deadline.
Presumably, if Congress does not vote by then
to raise the national debt ceiling and autho
rize the federal government to borrow more
money, America will default on its obliga
tions. That development could result in Social
Security checks not being mailed, federal
installations shutting down, defense contrac
tors not being paid, and so on.
Georgia's Republican congressmen, who are
part of the House majority that will ultimately
decide this issue, maintain that no more debt
must be authorized. If that should cause the
country to default on its obligations,
they say that will not be a problem.
Many of the same members of
Congress who now say they can
not approve an increase in the
national debt for a Democratic
president voted to raise the debt
ceiling seven times under George
W. Bush. The debt ceiling was
also raised at least 17 times dur
ing the administration of Ronald
Reagan. The ceiling has been raised
under Democratic presidents as well,
including three times during the first two
years of Barack Obama's administration.
Alexander Hamilton, one of the founding
fathers and the first treasury secretary, once
said, "A national debt, if it is not excessive,
will be to us a national blessing.'' He believed
that America's ability to raise money by taking
on debt obligations—in essence, running up a
national debt—would enable it to finance the
construction of vital infrastructure like roads,
bridges and canals, as well as pay for the
defense of the country.
Hamilton's idea of debt as a way to finance
federal activities has been a guiding principle
of American governance ever since. Debt is
also a necessary part of keeping the American
economy in motion.
When I decided to purchase a new car
several years ago, I settled upon a model that
cost around $23,000 with all the taxes and
dealer charges added in. I could not pay cash
for the vehicle because I didn't have $23,000
that I could spare at the time. I didn't have
the $40,000 or $50,000 in cash that would
have been required to purchase a vehicle like
an Infiniti or a Lexus either. I don't know
many people who would have had that kind of
available money.
Instead, I did what millions of consumers
do: I took out a loan (which I've since paid
off) to buy the vehicle over several years.
Same thing with the house where I live.
When I bought it, I did not have the financial
means to pay cash for it. With the exception
of Miami drug dealers who carry around
briefcases filled with $100 bills, I
doubt there are many people who
have the ability to pay cash for
their domicile. In order to buy a
house, millions of Americans take
out mortgages, which requires
them to pay off long-term debt
over a period of 15 or 30 years.
Nearly everybody goes into
debt for one reason or another.
Many of the congressmen who now
insist that we cannot raise the national
debt ceiling are people who have charged
purchases on credit cards, signed multi-year
loans to pay for a car, or taken out a 30-year
mortgage to buy a house.
Debt can obviously become a serious prob
lem if it gets out of control. We do not want
the United States to fall into the same debt-
ridden hole that has turned the economies of
Greece, Ireland and Portugal into basket cases.
Still, debt is an obligation that most of us
take on at some point. Like it or not, it has
been an integral part of America's economy for
more than two centuries.
Tom Crawford rcravwlordJ--gareport com
Tom Crawford is the editor of The Georgia Report, an
Internet news service at gareport com that covers
government and politics in Georgia
istorical analogies can enhance our
understanding of both past and present,
provided we take care to distinguish
between superficial similarities and fundamen
tal sameness. Contrary to what you may have
heard, history doesn't repeat itself. (Would
that the same could be said of historians.)
An excellent case in point involves critics of
Georgia's Draconian new immigration laws
who have dubbed them the "Brown Codes,"
in an effort to link them to the "Black Codes"
passed by Georgia and other
former Confederate states in
1865-66 to redefine and codify
the subordinate status of newly
freed blacks. This comparison
works fine if we are talking
only about the discrimina
tory aspects of both sets of
legislation. If we look at the
overall thrust and intent of the
discrimination, however, the
differences are actually quite
striking.
The principal aim of Black
Codes was to restore white con
trol or supervision over black
life, especially black labor,
which of course, was critical
to the resurrection of Southern
agriculture. Hence, the Black
Codes provided for apprenticing
black children to white "mas
ters" on terms largely set by
the masters themselves. Tightly
drawn vagrancy laws were
aimed at forcing "free people
of color" to bind themselves to
white employers or face lengthy prison or jail
terms. Since the citizenship rights of former
slaves or their descendants were not constitu
tionally confirmed until the Reconstruction-era
ratification of the 14th Amendment in 1868,
in 1866 Georgia's "free persons of color" were
assigned to what was intended to be a perma
nently separate and racially circumscribed civil
category. They were granted certain limited
legal protections, however, because the i’dea
was to regain control of black labor, not to
oppress the formei slaves into taki y thei:
labor elsewhere.
It is true enough that undei both Georgia's
Black Codes of 1866 and its immigration
legislation of 2011, people were/are subject
to having their rights violated simply on the
basis of their racial appearance. Yet the Black
Codes were aimed at controlling blacks and
thereby assuring an ample supply of cheap
labor, while the new immigration statutes
effectively seek to expel or repel immigrant
workers and thus threaten to leave millions of
dollars worth of Georgia's crops rotting in the
fields this year.
This thoroughly predictable outcome
seemed to escape the comprehension of some
exceedingly business-friendly politicians who
have built their careers on keeping labor
cheap and abundant. Rather than offer a
constructive response to legitimate concerns
about illegal immigration, they simply could
not resist the chance to pander to anti-His-
panic sentiment by pushing through laws that
are clearly over the top, even by Georgia stan
dards. Their efforts to extricate themselves
from the increasingly narrow crevice between
rock and hard place on the farm labor issue
pose some interesting historical parallels.
Enforced with great vigor in Georgia-and else
where after Reconstruction was overthrown,
exceedingly stringent vagrancy laws aimed at
insuring a large supply of farm labor quickly
gave rise to a surplus convict population
whose maintenance costs amounted to a huge
drain on state coffers. This in turn gave rise to
the heinous practice of leasing convicts, typi
cally at a few pennies per convict per day, to
private employers (including Georgia governor
Joseph E. Brown) who had no stake whatso
ever in seeing to their health or providing
even minimally humane treatment in general.
Flash ahead 135 years, and we have gov
ernor Nathan "Let's Make a" Deal, the archi
tect of Georgia';. new iron-fisted immigration
policies, calling for the state's unemployed
ex-convict population (most of whom are
required to seek work while on probation) to
be pressed into service in order to alleviate
an estimated shortage of 11,000 workers in
the state's agricultural sector, said shortage,
of course, having been exacerbated in the
first place by Deal's anti-immigrant rhetoric
and legislation. A similar small-scale effort
with probationers fizzled a few years back
when, consistent with a region-wide pattern,
an I.N.S. crackdown decimated the workforce
at a poultry plant at Stillmore, GA, and early
reports indicating that an hour or so in the
vegetable patches makes the ex-cons posi
tively homesick for the ol' slammer don't augur
well for this more ambitious experiment the
second time around.
While they hardly merit commendation,
the proponents of the Black Codes at least
recognized their dependence on maintaining
a pool of cheap, docile black labor. Latter-day
boosters of Georgia's Brown Codes appear to
have overlooked a comparable dependence
among Georgia farmers, not to mention poul
try processors and doubtless quite a few con
tractors, landscapers, etc., as well, on cheap,
docile Hispanic labor. In the months to come,
Georgia employers—agricultural or industrial,
corporate or individual—who find themselves
hard-pressed to secure the labor they need
at anything like the cost they've become
accustomed to paying may well conclude that
Governor Deal's "final solution" to the illegal
immigration problem is infinitely worse than
the problem itself.
James C. Cobb
TSSSIS MMfcRM WML»
THIS WltK DtPT LIMIT PtBAClt'
EZSBEaEHS
--so WELL COMPROMISE--BY EX
TENDING THE BUSH tax cuts;
AMO MO MEED TO DISCUSS THE
IMMINENT DEBT CEILING PROB
LEM--I'M SURE YOU FELLOWS
WILL DO THE RIGHT THING WHEN
THE TIME COMES.'
PRESENT DAY*. MIDDLE-MAN INTE1&
CERTS A SHOCKING TRANSMISSION.'
--SO WE V£ DECIDED To HOLD THE
DEBT CEILING HOSTAGE--until
WE GET EVEN M ORE of WHAT
WE want;
v VJ / gasp; no one
by TOM TOMORROW
HE LEARS INTO ACTION—READY
ONCE AGAIN TO DEPLOY THE AWE
SOME ROWER of PRE-EMPTIVE
COMPROMISE!
BUT CAPTAIN ORANGE AND THE
HUMAN TURTLE FIND THEMSELVES
TRAPPED BETWEEN RIVAL FACTIONS
of THEIR OWN PARTV
AND THEN--rue CANT-MAN
ENTERS THE FRAY.'
UM--MAYBE WE SHOULD JUST DE
CLARE VICTORS AND GET OUT?
I’VE Got A PLAN--
... . —
\foRGET IT. RINO.' IT'S MY
WAY OR THE NON-FEDERALLY-
IFUNDED HI6HWAV
331
WILL MIDDLE-MAN OffER ENOUGH?
WILL HIS ARCH-RIVALS ACCEPT
SU6HTL1 LESS THAN THEY WOULD
HAVE PREFERRED? And—what
HAPPENS AFTER THAT??
WE TRIED TO SAVE the entitle
ments you rely on--But MID
DLE-MAN INSISTED THAT THEY
HAD TO BE SLASHED!
i—5’.V/
THE callous I
FIEND!
GASP.' WHO COULD HAVE
FORESEEN THIS?
iJy
[undoubtedly to be CONTINUED!
6 FLAGPOLE COM JULY 20. 2011
