Arnold Ahlert

By now there is no doubt many Americans have experienced an all-too-familiar scenario at the checkout counter of innumerable businesses around the nation. In short, the last two generations of Americans "educated" in our public school system are utterly incapable of doing basic math equations in their collective heads. I bring this up because an appalling lack of mathematical skills accrues mightily to progressives and their ongoing "free lunch" mantra that resonates with people who can't imagine -- literally can't imagine -- that the wealthiest nation in the history of the planet could go broke. Or more accurately, is already broke.

One of the latest and most predictable bumper stickers Democrats are promoting is that Republicans "will end Medicare as we know it." A lot of Americans believe this crap, blissfully unaware that mathematical reality will end Medicare as we know it. It is simply unsustainable in its present form.

More to the point, Democrats know it, yet they continue to promote this lie, because they also know something else: they can demagogue the hell out of any plan Paul Ryan or and other Republican comes up with, completely secure in the knowledge that the overwhelming majority of the mainstream media will never ask the game-changing question:

What's your plan to keep the system solvent?

People paying attention already know the answer to that question. Democrats don't have a plan -- period.

Now in a better world, something, no matter how flawed, would beat nothing. But we live in a world with a hopelessly corrupt media, one that allows morons like Paul Krugman to opine that Ryan's budget reforms will "kill people," even as he is never challenged to offer up an alternative to that plan. We live in a world where Democrats can show a commercial of an old lady being pushed over a cliff by a "heartless" Republican, without ever having to acknowledge that their own, politically-calculated indifference to our impending national catastrophe will lead to every American being pushed over the cliff of national insolvency.

That indifference cannot be underestimated. It is, above all else, an unprecedented level of cynicism based on the premise that human ignorance should exploited, rather than extinguished. It represents an insatiable need for power, even if satisfying that need destroys the country in the process. It reflects the knowledge that people who lack basic mathematical skills cannot comprehend the macro-economics of multi-trillion dollar deficits, the debasement of our currency, or our current -- and inexorable -- date with economic suicide.

In short, people who can't make change without a calculator can still be counted on to continue believing in hope and change.

This column marks the first one of many I anticipate doing regarding numbers. After last month's jobs report -- the first time in more than three years the Bureau of Labor Statistics added jobs to their guesstimates, instead of subtracting them -- I am convinced one of the most corrupt administrations in the history of the nation will do everything possible to "goose" every economic indicator they can prior to the election in November.

And as I've said before, it is critical that American never forget that everything this administration is currently doing is constrained by the need to get re-elected. What they could do in four years after that constraint is removed may be irreparable.

Those are the stakes, plain and simple.