A Diversionary Crisis, Part Two

I remember Joe Scarborough of MSNBC's "Morning Joe," a former Republican congressman, saying that during George W. Bush's term in office, Republicans "spent money like drunken sailors." I'm sure he took some heat for that comment from both Republicans and drunken sailors. I like Joe Scarborough, and while I don't always agree with him, I respect him. Unlike some Republicans, he doesn't suffer from the "George W. who?" question, as some GOP members do, in an effort to distance themselves from the Bush presidency, and from the responsibility for some, not all, of the problems we are now facing. Democrats also have their fingers in part of the run up to the collapse in 2008, just not quite as much.

Shortly after Barack Obama took office, Republican members of Congress, much diminished in numbers by the results of the previous two elections, were able, with the help of President Obama, to turn one of their negatives, "debt," into one of their selling points. The President's push for health care, while admirable, but also inadequate in several ways, gave Republicans a chance for a comeback,** and they took the ball and ran with it. The President's poll numbers tumbled; likewise for Democrats in Congress. The GOP began to emphasize "debt," and while the Congressional Budget Office* said the new health care law would not add debt, but even possibly reduce government debt, the public remained skeptical. After being pilloried for "spending like drunken sailors," Republicans decided to regain the issue of fighting government debt. The "Tea Party" movement, largely centered in the GOP, held rallies around the country with supporters waving tea bags and carrying signs denouncing Obama and Democrats as spendthrifts, as well as some...ah... other names. The Republicans made headway in turning the debt issue back in their favor, and some Americans seemed to suffer from collective amnesia about the "Republicans spending like drunken sailors." Incredibly the Republicans were able to sort of hit the "reset" button, and the tremendous government debt was laid at the feet of President Obama, in spite of the previous eight years of Republican rule, with two wars unpaid for, homeland security unpaid for, tax cuts (largely favoring the very rich) unpaid for, and a Medicare prescription drug benefit unpaid for. Lost in all of this, both Obama's health care reform and the GOP's debt targeting, was the economy and JOBS! I don't know of a reputable economist who doesn't essentially say, "You can't cut the debt big time, until people have jobs and the economy is back on firmer footing." With unemployment hovering around 9% for quite some time, jobless people collect benefits, and they are not paying taxes. It's a double whammy!

* Interestingly, one of the things Republicans "claimed" they didn't like in the Democrats' health care reform, the insurance exchange, they now champion in Paul Ryan's Medicare proposal. On the other hand, Democrats liked the idea when they proposed it, but now scoff at Ryan's use of it. You don't think.....nah....politics has something to do with this, do you? Nah, couldn't be.

** The Congressional Budget Office, also known by its initials "CBO," is a non-partisan office that crunches and analyses numbers for Congress.

WORD HISTORY:
Control-This is another compound word, so I will deal each part separately. "Cont" traces back to Indo European "kom/ghem," which had the idea of "beside, near, together." This then gave Indo European "kom-tr(a)," with the notion of "together" being expanded to mean, "opposite;" that is, if you and I are standing together, we are opposite of one another. This gave Latin "contra," but now more with the meaning "opposite one another, as in opponents; against, a counter to something else," as in, "The defense "countered" the other team's quarterback by rushing him." The "rol" part traces back to Indo European "ret(h)," which meant "run, roll." A variant form, "rot-a," with a long "o" sound, gave Latin "rota," with the meaning "wheel." This then gave Latin "rotula" and then "rotulus," meaning "small wheel." "Contra" and "rotulus" were then combined into "contrarotulus," which was a small wheel used to check one account against another in times long ago, as it had duplicate account information on it to "counter, check, verify" the other set of information by simply rotating the wheel (yes, "rotate" is from "rota"), rather than having to look back and forth over other methods of record keeping, like parchment. Old French inherited a form of the word from Latin as "contrerole." The Norman dialect of French took the term as "contreroller" to England where it was borrowed into English in the late 1200s or early 1300s as "conterolle," and a verb form "controllen," meaning "to validate, to verify, to check for authenticity, to regulate." The development of the further meaning "have power over" is easy to understand. German too borrowed the word, as "kontrollieren," with essentially the same meaning, but perhaps with more emphasis on the "to check, to evaluate," meaning. German also has a form of "rota," which is "Rad," which means "wheel," and some sources say it came from a Germanic source tracing back to Indo European, others say it was borrowed form Latin, and still others leave the ultimate origin as unknown. I'm inclined to believe German got the word from Latin, as it is not common in the other Germanic languages, including English, even more especially, Old English, a time when the vocabularies of the various Germanic dialects were much closer.