Cave Man
If Democrats have wanted a Ronald Reagan to emerge from the increasingly Carter-like chrysalis Barcak Obama was woven around himself, they may have finally gotten their wish through Obama’s soon to be infamous alms-for-hostages fiasco.
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In return for welching on his long promulgated pledge to terminate the Bush tax giveaways for the wealthy–designed to expire for the express reason that they were never affordable– Barack has pulled off another of his no-win compromises. In exchange for protracting unemployment insurance for the chronically jobless, Obama caved to the Republicans (never more resplendid in their villainy) and agreed to extend tax cuts to the wealthiest fuckers on the planet lest the GOP suicide bomb Washington by clogging up the Senate and allow all the tax cuts, including those for the Holy Middle Class, to expire.
This is quite possibly the the biggest face-palm moment in Democratic history. Wasn’t fiscal sanity, especially closing the deficit, the unanimous battle cry of the Tea Baggers? Didn’t the “Pledge to America” include words like “to whom much is given, much is expected”? So how the hell could the GOP have hoped to justify their gall? The promise  to prevent tax hikes made in their”pledge”mentioned “entrepreneurs” and “family-owned small businesses”. Which of these categories enfolds the board of Goldman Sachs, or Los bros Koch? And If liberals can’t get tax revenue from the rich now, while the Dems control Washington, what possible chance will they have two years from now when the Republicans are squeezing Obama’s nuts from the front instead of in a lame-duck reacharound?
This predictable capitulation is just the latest opportunity for President Obama to play the role of the loser that gets interviewed at the end of The People’s Court. He may as well begin all his press conferences with the words “Get off my back”. Obama’s logic is that had he not blinked, the Republicans would have cashed in every dime of their post election cred and let the tax cuts expire for everyone.  Democrats, he reasons, and not the Republicans who filibustered for the tax hike, would catch all the hell.
Does this make even a lick of political sense? Recall: the conservative tax cuts were supposed to swell our economy  like a goose’s liver, yielding the rich foie gras of economic prosperity. Now, Eight million job losses later, Obama is selling his soul for a tuppence to keep our millions of jobless from becoming millions of homeless as well. But what the hell are the nation’s caviar nibblers going to do with these tax breaks that they haven’t done in the past decade?
Given the Democrat’s inability to rally public enthusiasm for any cause that does not feature a balloon drop, the President may have been right to fold his hand. A month removed from his “shellacking” (never let ’em see you sweat, O), the President seems to have no recourse except to continue playing footsie with the Republicans in hopes of sunnier days ahead–or rather, gloomier days, when the Republicans will appear to bear more responsibility for the nation’s fiscal fuck-ups than he does.
In my view, both GOP and Dems have it wrong. News orgs seem to talk about the Tea Party like it’s some sort of political party but it is mostly a growing number of ticked off voters who don’t like the way their money is being spent. Clearly they have fringe elements in ’em but I think it shows a lack of insight to keep calling them ‘Teabaggers’.
GOP clearly doesn’t “get it” in spite of their victory because they just appointed the ‘Prince of Pork’ to the House Appropriations Committee. Dems don’t “get it” because central planning kills economies (see 1960’s China)…just like “eat the rich” (see Argentina’s collapse). Hell, I work with some of those rich people and if you think *they’re* gonna pick up this bill you’re out of your mind. They pay people to figure out the new loopholes! If that fails, they can afford to move money to other countries…they already *are*.
We just need to clean house entirely. Everybody in Washington needs new jobs…but not as lobbyists. Gotta love that particular revolving door: gov’t->lobbyist->govt->lobbyist
Please remind me why we should care about a random dirt country in the middle east when our home is falling apart?
Lee.
Gapminder preso:
http://www.gapminder.org/videos/hans-rosling-asias-rise-ted-india/
True, the Tea Party is a movement, not a party, and will likely not be a movement much longer when the new Republicans are forced to make real-world choices. We’ll see. There is no “central planning” taking place in this country, however, and I think a dispassionate view of the issue will show that the free market, with politicians aplenty in their pocket, is alive and well.
Your point about dirt countries is well made. Isn’t it interesting that we, the richest and most powerful nation in history have been fighting one of the poorest and weakest for nearly ten years and haven’t even achieved a stalemate? That’s some vantery, according to Captcha.
The Tea Party is not a movement. It is a cult. And it will live past their leaders making real world decisions because fuck liberals (also gays, blacks, Jews, Mexicans, etc). It might fade into the larger GOP body once they regain the White House, but I doubt we’ll see it completely vanish before then. They just have too much to hate.
But I digress. I came here to bitch about Obama (as well as commend you for a well written opinion piece). Boy did he ever fuck that one up. Especially if Barney Frank is to be believed:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/09/barney-frank-we-could-hav_n_794564.html
@JY What freaks me out about so much about the expansion of government is it costs so much to feed, and virtually none of the projects get evaluated as failed get cut. See http://www.expectmore.gov for the number of failed programs…boggles themind. People also tend to think they’ll be against “big business” due to additional regulation, when in reality the only players in the regulation creation game will *be* big business. They’re the ones who can afford the Washington lobbyists. Sure the markets are still free, but I’d like to see the pendulum start to swing the other direction from which we’ve been headed.
@Jody. Tea Party is an *idea*. Yes, some fringe elements are onboard. How many fringe elements do you find in the Dem or Repub parties? (Think abortion rights vs. open border nutjobs.)
You linked Huffpo. Am sorry, but that kind of hurts your credibility. How about moving up a rung and linking something from moveon.org or some other Soros-funded org? Frank is a party hack. I should link something from Limbaugh to counter, but he’s only a radio guy and I don’t buy his line, ether.
BTW, you missed my point about ‘eat the rich’ entirely…check out Argentina’s economic implosion: They tried the same thing with more controls than we will.
If you have a job at all, your taxes are going up, and mine are too. We should *all* be angry. (BTW, I’d prefer FAIR TAX. http://www.fairtax.org)
I only want to say one thing and I won’t rebut with those among you ( and yes, Jody, I’m talking to you) who feel the need to strike me down because I happen to be a republican/centrist. I have never been offered a job by a poor or middle class person. So giving tax cuts to the rich makes since if you look at it from the point of view that the rich are the ones who own the major businesses who hire people like you and me to run their stores and work in their fields. I know you think I’m scared of getting the “something for nothing” that the Demmies keep touting but allow me to kill your joy for you, there is no such thing as something for nothing. Somebody, somewhere has to pay for your “something for nothing” and that is the way it always will be. I’m not saying the Repubs are any better. But at least, they haven’t tried to get us out of economic crisis by “digging the hole deeper.”
The rich are hoarding their money due to the crap economy. And never in the history of it being tried has trickle-down economics actually worked. Cutting taxes has never helped to improve the economy.
In fact, the Bush tax cuts were initially Bush giving back all the surplus we got back to the people in good economic times. What do you think will happen if we keep them in bad economic times? I’m opposed to keeping any of it, to be honest. It’s going to fuck us all over in the long run.
Good morning Venomsamurai7, My dad has been self-employed / owned his own business for nearly 30 years. After paying his employees, taxes, and bills, he usually has around $0 left. He lives a lifestyle that would be considered the bottom of middle class if not actually poor. He works six days a week and gets up at 4:00 AM to get started every one of those days. He gets about a week off every two years for vacation. He grows his own food, hunts, and fishes not only because he likes it, but because he can’t afford the alternative. He has a congenital liver problem that he can’t afford the medicine to treat but can’t get the aid to cover the cost of. Oh well, I guess his death will just serve him right for not managing his money better through this “economic downturn.”
But, at the end of the day, my dad is proud that what he has, he earned and that he works for nobody but himself (and the government through taxes).
This is a win-win situation for the Republicans. It’s important to understand their political strategy in terms of their goals. They’ve made it clear that goal number one is to make Obama a one term president, so they’ve made a deal that guarantees even higher deficits that they can blame Obama for. It doesn’t matter that they were complicit, they happened under Obama, they’re his deficits. Their other goal, the long term one, is to “shrink government to the size that it can be drowned in the bathtub”. Which is why they’re so concerned with cutting taxes and only marginally concerned with cutting spending. They want lower taxes, and they want to kill virtually all government programs. In the short term they don’t care about deficits or the debt because the worse the fiscal situation, the more necessary it becomes to cut programs. That’s how their plan works: cut taxes first, then when that drives us into colossal debt you can tell people how spending on programs for the poor caused the debt and must be cut. Meanwhile, Democrats are still basically trying to honestly address the country’s needs.
You know Venom, I’ve been hearing Republicans bat around that “I’ve never been hired by a poor man” line, for a while now, the implication being that only rich people actually provide jobs. I am certain they are not suggesting that the opposite of poverty is the upper middle class.
S, to that point, I should like to indicate that I have held any number of low-wage jobs in my life, and none of my employers were “rich”, although a few were probably well off. Mostly I was employed by the managers of chain stores or franchise owners, none of whom were rolling in loot. In my freelance capacity I have worked for successful magazines and ad agencies, but none of the people employing me directly were rich either. Are you implying that you have only worked for millionaires?
No JY, but I am implying that while your direct supervisors may not have been “rich”, the companies they worked for were. I’ll grant that there are exceptions to the idea, but the fact remains that giving shit away just means taking it from somewhere else. The biggest problem we have now is that there are people out there who are using the system as a permanent means of income rather than a temporary means like it was designed to be. Taking money from the rich isn’t going to improve anything, it will just make things worse. By taking money from the rich people….you know what lets expand that definition real quick, lets include those in the middle class since you guys want to. By taking money away from the business owners, you force them to downsize, thereby causing more unemployment, not less. You aren’t going to force them to give up any lavish or well off lifestyle that they have already accustomed themselves to, you’re just going to make it to where they have to get the money from somwhere else other than profits. Gordon Gekko said it best in Wall Street, “Greed is good. Greed works.” Greed is what drives everything in this country and trying to force a greedy business owner to give up his money is like trying to force a fat man to give up his food. I know you all will disagree with me, hell it’s one of the reasons I comment on your blog JY, but all I ask is that you sit down and take a moment to think about the economy. Has taking money from the rich helped us in the past? Robin Hood stole from the rich and gave to the poor, but doing that only made Prince John angier and made him tax the poor harder. If you’re okay with that, then just keep on blasting me, but if it turns your stomach then get out there and fight to fix it.
Venom@ So basically “fuck the poor, its their own fault”? Yeah, you’re a republican alright.
Aww heck…just get a job with the gov’t – they’ve increased almost 600,000 jobs (state, local, fed) while the private sector lost about 8 million. Average salary of a fed worker (inc. benefits): $123k
@H-M. Dude, it’s never as simple as fsck the poor. I am not a Repub, but ask yourself how many “poor” people do you know who make “smart” decisions with their money?
I’d wager approaching zero. Of course the large part of their situation is their fault! I’m not talking about people who have experienced tragic life-altering events…those people exist, too…but they’re a tiny minority of the “poor” you’re talking about.
The vast majority of the lower half of the economic scale -consistently- make short-sighted crappy decisions, both personally & financially…and *no* they don’t work as other people who are successful. Perhaps you’re young and haven’t seen as much of life. I used to believe in a Utopia too…
*Yes* the system is fixed, but I’ve yet to meet someone who busted their rear end to remain a complete failure. They may not be rich, but what they have they ought to feel proud about.
Lee Mapson@ As someone who IS poor, not homeless level poor but definetly lower class, I can tell you that the whole aittude that the poor can screw themselves because its their own fault they dont have money, is incredibly offensive. There seems to be this idea that you’re only poor because youre lazy and dont want to work for a living, or expect to have everything handed to you. Yeah, because living on disability or social security is just awesome, not being able to eat for a full month is just awesome, not being able to find work, or getting fired from said work is JUST AWESOME. You know why I’m poor? Because no matter how hard I tried to get out of the mud, I’m still stuck in the same place I was 4 years ago, with no job, no money, and no hope. I have friends in the same situation as well, stuck with goverment handouts to keep them from starving because there are no damn jobs for them to get! NOTHING!
Is it the poors fault that they wont get hired due to the shitty economy? Is it their fault that they have to live on a budget one person cant live on, much less a whole family? NO! Its not necessarely the rich’s fault either, but cutting taxes for them really stings in the eyes for those of us who have spent, and most likely will spend our lives trudging through the mud at the bottom. So when we’re told that its our own fault and we deserve our misery, yeah, that tends to piss us off a bit.
But hey, what do I know, I’m just a poor loser!
@H-M: Having to be on disability sucks, and if you re-read my post you’ll find I have no grudge against people in that situation…it *does* happen. Statistically, it *doesn’t* happen 50% of the time, which was sort of my point.
I’m fairly successful now by some standards, but boy do I remember what it was like to be poor. (No, the $250k cutoff doesn’t affect me these days, and no, I can’t retire for the forseeable future…unless I leave my home in CA.)
You didn’t ask, but this is part of what happened for me:
My first job was cleaning office buildings. My second was as an office assistant. Third? Makin’ sandwiches at ToGo’s, where I made $3.12/hr. I graduated high school in 1989, right in time for the 90-91 recession (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_1990s_recession) so I hid out as a community college student. I found I couldn’t have a regular job and be in school at the same time…nobody would hire me for the hours I wanted. I made money on the side by doing some medical illustration for my landlord and a few other people. I was going hungry sometimes in order to pay the rent so I dropped out, finding a retailer during the Christmas season.
Re-enrolled when Christmas was done. Money was tight so I looked into doing nude modeling (Awkward! LOL!). Fortunately, someone in one of my art classes told me her boss needed a computer graphics artist. I interviewed and got the job…switched to night classes. The company closed after about a year and shortly thereafter, my g/f asked me to move to southern calif. so I went, landing a job doing cold call phone sales…worst job fit for me, ever.
There’s a lot more, but I guess my point is I have had some crappy situations/jobs trudging through the mud. I’m glad I didn’t have kids early on. It was easier in that respect…
Most of the people I met in low wage jobs sucked because of one or more of the following factors:
1) They hated their job and were unbelievably negative to the people around them.
2) Didn’t give a crap about the quality of the job they were doing.
3) Couldn’t see what they were doing as a stepping stone toward something better.
4) Drug/alcohol/party mentality was a very common weekend escape. I’m fairly libertine…do what floats your boat, just don’t hurt anyone but yourself and be prepared to pay the consequences should they come.
Bottom line it was fscking hard. It took about 12 years before I wasn’t living paycheck to paycheck. I had a family by then, too.
I can empathize being without a job sucks. I sincerely hope you find one.
Guys especially have trouble being jobless in our culture. Last 2 times I have been without a job I called everyone I knew and let them know I was consulting again. I “made” my job per se, so I wouldn’t have to “find” one.
BTW – I wouldn’t think to call you a poor loser…and I would caution you against the same. You’re articulate enough to formulate an argument and also know how to use a computer. That puts you ahead of a lot of people.
Good luck.
These tax cuts have been in place for ten years. Somebody show me a job they helped create.
And while you’re at it, go take a look at how much we spend on our military, and see just how much of that works its way back into our budget as well.
Then come back and tell me how being poor is the poor’s fault.
First of all, I never once in my entire statement said that being poor is the poor’s fault. I’m well aware of those among the “poor” who have had life altering experiences beyond their control, but I have yet to meet a majority of them. Secondly, Jody, yes let’s look at the spending on our military and see how many jobs thats created. More spending means more troops with higher wages, more of an arsenal so those factories are employing folks, and more vehicles so those factories are employing folks. War is one of the biggest industries in this country and it always has been. So why the fuck are you wanting to shut down such a big industry? You would probably say because it causes loss of life, well so does falling off a bridge, getting hit by a car, taking too many pills, etc. What do you want? To outlaw death? Do we need a Death Czar now? Yes I was raised republican but I was schooled in democratic thought as well by a good friend of mine. Not to mention that most democrats aren’t liberals and I can agree with some of their stances. Am I for the legalization of pot? Absolutely. Am I for legalization of abortion? As long as there is an age restriction tacked on with parental consent. Do I want there to be affordable healthcare and housing? Yes but not at the expense of quality. You guys hate me because everytime I log on, I come off sounding like the uber-republican. That is not my intent, I just have a hard time putting my thoughts in to words for people with opposing views. Have I been poor? I still live paycheck to paycheck working for walmart. Do I hate working for that company? No, why? Because they pay me to work for them. I know you guys hate my guts, but at least take the time to try and see what I’m actually trying to say instead of what you want to spin it into for your argument.
Haha did you actually just claim broken-window MIC horseshit, easily the worst material-yield-per-dollar-spent portions of the budget, as a successful example of state socialism while arguing against government social programs
Don’t know how to break this to you, dude, you’re not a Republican, you’re a closet commie with poor math skills.
Well it’s rather silly to call me a closet commie with poor math skills when I HATE communism in all it’s forms. Just cause I differ with the GOP on certain issues doesn’t give you the right to insult me, Ivan the Jackass.
You know what…I take what I said to you Ivan back. I realize that opinions are like assholes. Everybody’s got one and your’s always stinks worse than their’s. So you know what call me what you want. I know you’re wrong cuz you don’t know me personally. And insulting you just weakens any argument I may make.
I think I’ve actually agreed with exactly one controversial thing Obama has done since taking office (that being calling Kanye West a jackass), so it’s ironically appropriate that in compromising with his opponents on this issue (which, in my opinion, he should have done in nearly every other case) he’s yet again managed to do the wrong thing.
It’s becoming clearer and clearer that the Republican party needs to change its name to the “Plutocrats” (in the interest of being an equal opportunity offender, I’ve for years thought the Democrats should change their name to the “Nannycrats”). America really needs a third party that isn’t married to the Monied Powers on one side, or to the notion that Govenment is inherently good for its own sake and the more of it the better on the other. The Tea Party is, for some people, that Third Party (though deeply flawed in many ways, and probably not viable long-term… unless they wind up co-opting essentially everyone making less than a quarter-million a year who currently thinks of themselves as Republican, which probably isn’t going to happen).
Let’s not resort to name-calling or JY the Terrible will whip out his 18†pecker and cockslap the lot of ya!
Okay, back to beeswax. A few things that need to be kept in perspective about the tax deal:
1) this isn’t going to put any new money back in the economy. It is simply maintenance of the status quo. Middle Class people as well as… those other classes (I never hear them discussed) will simply pay the same taxes this year that they paid last year. I heard this called a “stimulus†by someone on Dianae Rehm’s show this morning. That is a poor analogy. Stimulus puts money in. This plan only fails to take it out.
2) It is possible that Obama is hoping to use this opportunity to make nice with new House boss and fellow coffin nail puffer John Boehner, not generally seen as a wing nut. With a new crop of hard right Tea Baggers coming into office in January, Obama may be making a shrewd move, throwing a bone to the more mainstream Republicans early to win favors later. Remember: Obama has to keep Congress from fucking with the healthcare reforms, and this could be seen as a little quid pro quo. Only time will tell.
3) Any way you slice it, the Republicans are talking out of both sides of their ass. This tax deal is trickle down economics, pure and simple, and will mean less revenue at a time when the GOP has been screaming about balanced budgets. Their political religion appears to be clouding the fact that no economist believes that growing our way out of our debt will be possible. Like it or not, tax hikes are coming. Meanwhile, an argument has still not been put forward to explain how the government will entice the wealthy to start investing in new enterprises and restart America’s engine. Ooo! Is that an automobile metaphor? I wonder what I could have meant by that.
However, there is another point of view that ties directly into the budget issue. The conservative philosophy is that the only way to really ensure budget cuts is to guarantee a smaller budget at the grass roots, namely, lower tax revenue.
This idea should not to be poo-pooed out of hand. You often hear about the simulative effect of having money burning a hole in your pocket. If the broke suddenly have dollars to spend, they will spend them. Well, no one is broker than the Federal government. Democrats and Republicans alike seem to chew through money like cotton weevils, and have for generations now. The Republican’s idea that it may be time to starve the beast is not merely cold-heartedness. It may be what the Democrats don’t want to face.
But of course, the devil will be in the details, and there is no reason to believe that the Republicans have really learned their lesson any more than the Dems. Fiscal responsibility is the GOP’s cloak of invisibility, and that emperor no longer has any clothes. Um… wait. My metaphors are mixing about as well as Hizbollah at a bar mitzvah. Ignore!
@ JY Thanks for taking the time to see both sides of the issue even though we, your devoted fans, seem to be talking out of our collective asses. Me included. Though I have to give props where props are due. Lee Mapson, you defended your point and even helped clarify what I was trying to say and Jody, (yes I can be grateful to a worthy adversary), you have done your research and have thoroughly defended your statements as well.
Alls I said was those upper class tax cuts have had ten years to provide jobs and we are at higher unemployment than ever. Not even George W with a GOP congress could make them permanent, and that’s because they knew they wouldn’t be sustainable…and they said as much. Now, ten years later, with the biggest deficit this country has ever been in, rather than consider allowing temporary cuts for millionaires to expire we are considering cutting services people depend on like Social Security.
And we have gone so far down the rabbit hole that people who will suffer under these decisions are defending them.
Further, a military budget is not a budget designed for long term sustainability. If it was the US would be in much better shape because we spend far, far more on our military than every other nation on earth. Literally ten times that of our closest competitor, China. Our military budget does not help local economies because so much of it is being spent overseas. To say nothing of the cost of the loss of life associated with waging open-ended, unwinnable wars.
These policies have already failed, in a very flagrant and obvious fashion. It’s just a matter of whether the public is ever going to realize it.
..which led to my big beef with Obama in my original post, which is that rather than acknowledge these difficult truths he is trying to negotiate with people who A) flat-out refuse to acknowledge reality, and B) have openly declared their intentions to destroy him.
@Jody: Upper class tax cuts =/= high unemployment! It is not a tax problem, it’s a *spend* problem…was under GWB and *still*…at least according to Obama’s deficit commission:
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/6076776/a_perspective_on_the_deficit_commissions.html?cat=3
You keep railing about the military as a cost center of the US gov’t, but I wonder if you checked out the actual numbers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget
Yes it’s high, and Yes we spend the most. You’ll also get me to agree we can find better things to spend money on than a new war…but in reality, most of our expenditures are entitlement programs and many are completely unfunded – a number which gets left *out* of the yearly budget I linked.
It’s getting worse, too. If we don’t fix this problem, *all* of our tax revenue will go to SS, Medicare & Medicaid by 2052.
https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://www.issues2010.com/pdf/Entitlements.pdf
(BTW, the deficit commission also famously said Obamacare’s costs: “count on large phantom savings” and the long term care will be “unsustainable”. It isn’t going to save us money!)
Nobody who has a job on the hill (if they’ve been there for more than one cycle) D or R seems to have any inkling of reality.
I cannot care about a particular politician just because of a special consonant anymore. Let them eat each other alive with their infighting. If we remain divided as an electorate, however, I fear for the future of our republic. Tea Party may not be “it” but the first cycles of a thing are usually messy.
@Venomsamurai7: Aye…props to JY…it’s easy to play armchair POTUS/general. Can’t wait to get my own kingdom! Until that day…guess I’ll just pretend and try to be as informed as possible. LOL!
Lee Mapson@ Yeah, thats great that you managed to work yourself up, what you dont seem to realize is that far from everyone can. Hell, most of us would love even having those crappy entry jobs, but nope, not even that. So yeah, it tends to tick us off when people say its wrong to have stuff like social security or disability because it encourages people to not work. Not finding work is the problem in the first place! Not with everyone, people will always find a way to abuse the system, but do you really think its fair to yank out the carpet for people who actually need it just to spite the ones who misuse it?
A military budget isn’t a budget designed for any stability. It’s a budget designed for killing shit. Historically the only powers that have experienced even short-term growth correlated with pumping funds into their armed forces have been the ones who simultaneously used same army to loot wealth from weaker nations. It’s really that simple, and really easy to observe in practice; there’s no secret mystery economics of the broken window that makes valued products and services appear from nowhere for this and only this least productive form of state-run universal employment.
The USA, on the other hand spends trillions of dollars on maintaining the largest most tech-heavy expeditionary forces in the world, uses them to invade shitholes without a single pot to piss in, and loses consistently. Figure that one out.
Not sure how the vanguard of the new right (or the old Republicans) are refusing to “acknowledge reality”, though. The reality is that two years ago in Boehner’s wet dreams he could never have imagined his party reascendant on a popular wave of Birch revivalism, that even with their poor grasp of economics the new-wave right can still figure out that quid-pro-quo is a losing game when dealing with a party who’s demonstrated willingness to give ’em everything they ask for for free, given time. The reality is neither they nor their putative opposition have any more of an idea how to unfuck a state than they do how to win a war – shit, nobody even has a good catchphrase, let alone a strong consensus on a definite policy, so the only goal left to be acted upon is direct personal power-hoarding while we all wait for circumstances to work themselves out unassisted by power of man.
@H-M: “…do you really think its fair to yank out the carpet for people who actually need it just to spite the ones who misuse it?”
Of course not! If you had read my earlier posts I don’t have a beef with helping people who have been hit by hard circumstances.
@Ivan: Your trillions of dollars figure is wrong, unless you want to grab years of data. With that same logic we’re spending trillions in entitlements.
I think we can *all* agree we want a rational, accountable government which isn’t blowing mindboggling sums on war, ok? Try reading some of the earlier links I posted.
Lee: Yeah, but America already pays some of the lowest taxes in the industrialized world. Of course, we get the least services as a result, but there you go. And you can file both out-of-control military spending and other expenditures under the same category. Tho I would be careful about what is considered an “unnecessary entitlement program”.
*All* our tax revenue will NEVER go to SS, Medicare and Medicaid. That’s a scare tactic solely aimed at getting those programs slashed. Tho I WOULD agree that we have the most inefficient health care in the world, and a single-payer or national insurance plan would save billions. But instead of even considering that we as a nation are too busy talking about what we should raise the new retirement age to.
As a nation we spend far too much on stupid shit like unwinnable wars and stuff designed to keep the money among the top 1 percent. Both parties have been thoroughly infected with plutocrats, I’ll give you that. But then that’s always been the story. We just have to work for what progress we can, and take what we can get.
@Jody: You’re not viewing the link I posted earlier. Fed deficit comm findings re: Obamacare = “phantom savings”. This deficit commission is bipartisan and was created by Obama.
No, you’re not listening to my point. Obama’s solution is “phantom savings”. Sure, whatever. Who cares when there are still far better systems out there that cost less and cover more. Our system is broken and the GOP – and several Dems – have no interest in fixing it. Those are the people he wants to meet half way.
The same goes for the tax cuts. They fix nothing, allow the flow of money to continue upward, and shall remain a political landmine that will have to be dealt with just in time for election season.
Obamacare is not the problem. It was a bandaid on a gaping chest wound. The plutocrats are letting ideology trump reality and they are dragging us all down. Things will not get better in America until the GOP stop voting the way North Koreans march.
Billionaires don’t make jobs, customers make jobs.
A billionaire won’t hire one person if he has no customers. What is he, Santa Claus?
And even a poor person can start a business if customers are lining up. Example A: drugs.
Ok a better example: Indian mobile phones. 😉
So saying the rich stimulate our economy is like saying that a dam stimulates water flow because of all the water that comes out of it. It completely neglects that a dam does nothing to create water, and in fact had to take wealth *out* of the system to become full in the first place.
‘The rich make all our jobs’ is an empty meme explicitly *designed* to keep us licking the balls of our masters.
The way I saw it, the deal is basically keeping status quo on taxes. I don’t like it, but I can understand the very real possibility that it could have turned out that taxes go up across the board and everyone on unemployment ends up on the street in January. It’s like President Obama is in the “damned if you do/damned if you don’t” scenerio, so I guess his choice was probably the best with what cards he was dealt.
Eh, next year will be more interesting. Let’s see what Congress does (or doesn’t do)when gas prices hit $4 in the spring. :p
Lee Mapson: Fair enough, we could probably stand to agree on a scale here, but I wouldn’t say it’s the war that’s beggared us. It helped push the federal deficit over the edge and pretty much everyone agrees that they always secretly thought it was a shitty idea now, but it’s the military’s perennial role as the biggest least efficient entitlement system of all that left our economy so weak and malaised it could be blown over almost instantly by just a couple dumb policies. When I talk about blowing tons of money invading shitholes for nothing, I’m not just talking about Afghanistan, we’ve been pretty much continuously at war with or building up for the next war with nowhere in particular since the Mexican-American
Figure that even in the best of times that’s somewhere between a quarter and a third of everyone’s tax money going just to camofare and pork, paying a vast swath of America specifically to work full-time producing nothing that will ever make a return on investment. And since the military will never ever ever ever be downsized in a significant and lasting manner, that’s a massive chunk of waste poisoning the economy that only grows no matter what you do with the rest of the tax code. Welfare and social security are pretty busted too, as is the way of most big policy in this country, but they’re among the least of the problems.