Put Jackie Robinson on the Platinum Coin
The extremists in the Republican Party (we refuse to call them Radical Republicans out of respect for the great historic Radical Republicans of Thaddeus Stevens's era) are once again making trouble for the nation by threatening not to extend the debt limit to pay the nation's bills. Remembering the havoc they caused in the previous G.O.P.- caused debt limit controversy which caused the nation's credit rating to be downgraded, just about every responsible economist in the nation says that a new "crisis" would have very damaging economic effects, including a worldwide depression in which our nation would obviously not avoid if that were to happen. Even the Corporate Behemoth is said not to be happy about extremist Republican gamesmanship in this matter. The behemoth is worried about "their" money, of course, and don't want their servants and sycophants in Congress playing chicken with it.
Anyway, it seems that President Barack Obama has one of two controversial choices in dealing with the extremists's threat to crash the economy, because a lot of the Tea Party crazies in the House of Representatives are serious about using brinksmanship to get their way about devastating the "New Deal" and the "Great Society": the president can either assert his right to apply the 14th Amendment in paying the nation's debts or he can get his Treasury Department to mint a platinum Trillion Dollar coin, or a bunch of billion dollar coins that would add up to a trillion, or enact whatever coin policy he and his new Treasury Secretary nominee, Jack Lew, want to apply, in effect, what the extremists in Congress may refuse to do: pay the nation's debts. If the president decides to go with the coin option, our suggestion for who should be on this trillion dollar coin or a thousand billion dollar coins is Jackie Robinson, the great Brooklyn Dodgers baseball player of the post-World War II era who broke major league baseball's color barrier in the National League. It makes sense, because this coin would break the similarly artificial debt barrier. Anybody who reads Commoner knows that we're not fans of the Obama Administration, but in this case we support the administration in not kowtowing to the Republicans, and we hope that Obama and Lew follow our advice about the late, great Mr. Robinson.
[revised 4/2013]
Anyway, it seems that President Barack Obama has one of two controversial choices in dealing with the extremists's threat to crash the economy, because a lot of the Tea Party crazies in the House of Representatives are serious about using brinksmanship to get their way about devastating the "New Deal" and the "Great Society": the president can either assert his right to apply the 14th Amendment in paying the nation's debts or he can get his Treasury Department to mint a platinum Trillion Dollar coin, or a bunch of billion dollar coins that would add up to a trillion, or enact whatever coin policy he and his new Treasury Secretary nominee, Jack Lew, want to apply, in effect, what the extremists in Congress may refuse to do: pay the nation's debts. If the president decides to go with the coin option, our suggestion for who should be on this trillion dollar coin or a thousand billion dollar coins is Jackie Robinson, the great Brooklyn Dodgers baseball player of the post-World War II era who broke major league baseball's color barrier in the National League. It makes sense, because this coin would break the similarly artificial debt barrier. Anybody who reads Commoner knows that we're not fans of the Obama Administration, but in this case we support the administration in not kowtowing to the Republicans, and we hope that Obama and Lew follow our advice about the late, great Mr. Robinson.
[revised 4/2013]
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