Democrats & Liberals Archives

It’s all very sad. Can you imagine how good this country could be if we had better democratic representation and if we had adults actually having adult discussions on the issues? This is like some horrific nightmare with a country held hostage by a bunch of adults with the mentality of 1st graders.

The results can be seen in the last few elections, where voters arguably voted to the left of where policy ended up.

Another example of a partisan abandonment of reality…

I suppose the 2010 didn’t happen?

The sad thing is that until a few months ago, your writing was much more enjoyable to read, even when I disagreed with it. Lately, it’s just the same article, rehashed, demanding the death of your enemy. Mirrored of course by the party you represent ignoring the will of many in the US for the betterment of your own agenda, unwillingness to deal with anything other than total control (dictatorship).

Do you *REALLY* think that the debt ceiling won’t get raised? Did you *REALLY* think that the fiscal cliff would get enacted?

If you did, the moron is you, not the GOP. When the administration has done everything to shut out the opposition to its agenda, they will use the means that they do have to make themselves heard. But they get no political win if they follow through, and they know that.

You are buying into rhetoric so easily, it’s understandable why you are such a staunch Democrat, oblivious to any of the party’s flaws…

When will the GOP stop trying to ruin the country I love?

Considering the progressives in the Democrat Party already have ruined the country *I* love, what does it matter now and why should I care? Before enacting many of the progressive policies since the 1970s (with LBJ and then Nixon) this country has started a downward spiral to being much less than it could or should be. Educational test scores have gone down, fiscal responsibility of the government is gone, individual rights are now passe… We went in a short time from ‘ask not what your country can do for you’ to ‘what can the government do for me’.

BTW, I just saw the President on TV telling housewives how great he was… He made the statement:

“My budget called for deep cuts in discretionary spending, but our approach must be a balanced one.”

Several things here…

1) It doesn’t matter what HIS budget was, it is what gets passed that counts. If he proposed cuts and they didn’t get into the budget, then the spending didn’t go down. Therefore, it wasn’t a balanced approach. (And considering the Democrats in the Senate are in violation of the law and have not produced a budget since 2009…)

2) There were no proposed CUTS. There were decreases in the proposed increases in discretionary spending. It’s how companies fool people into buying crap, they raise the price on something from 1.00 to 5.00 and then offer it at 2.00, claiming a 60% reduction in price! The company makes MORE money and people feel like they got a deal. That is what is going on here, they proposed increasing spending by three times inflation (or more) and then cut it to twice inflation. There is still increased spending, it just makes foolish people think that they actually cut something. And ‘you folks’ call this austerity.

3) Nothing can be saved of this country until SOMETHING is done about MANDATORY spending. All of this talk about discretionary spending is well and good, but until the 800 lb gorilla in the room is dealt with, it will eat up over 70% of our total budget in a few years.

4) By making the statement the way he did, he is admitting that he will be wanting to increase taxes again, either on further cuts for the ‘rich’ or (when that fails as it will) everyone else.

There’s a middle ground between Democrats and Republicans, and over the last thirty years, that’s been moving to the right.

Once again Stephen your wrong. It’s been moving left. In fact the Republicans are more like the Democrats were when I was growing up. The middle ground between them has been getting smaller until the Democrats decided to shift somewhere left of Ho Chi Mein in 2008 and try to bankrupt the country by wasting $2.8 trillion on stupid stimulus packages that only paid off Obama’s cronies.

It’s all very sad. Can you imagine how good this country could be if we had better democratic representation and if we had adults actually having adult discussions on the issues? This is like some horrific nightmare with a country held hostage by a bunch of adults with the mentality of 1st graders.

Your right muirgeo, that’s why we need to start voting all them 537 idiots up there in DC out of office. And replace them with folks that actually have some brains. There ain’t even the mentality of a 1st grader in the whole heap of them. It’s more like 3 year olds.
And the sad thing that none of either parties faithful will even try to hold their party accountable.

I think any member of congress that exacts or threatens consequences on another member of congress because of how that member votes should be thrown in jail for extortion.

Rhinehold-
2010 happened, but so did 2006, 2008, and 2012. Tell me, if the Democrats are winning more elections, especially the one following the 2010 election, what does that tell you?

As for what I imagine would happen?

I never imagined people would let the Iraq War drag on like it did. I never imagined that people would follow the debacle of Enron and WorldCom with such laxness. I never imagined that, confronted with the mother of all economic crises, that the Republicans would refuse to act.

Goddamn. How many times have I told myself, no, these people would never be that stupid, or that tin-eared, or whatever, and been disappointed?

We are not obligated to enact their bloody policies for them! We have won enough elections not only to keep the Senate, but increase our majority to about as good as the Republicans ever had. We were only TWO states short of the results of the last Presidential election. We’ve earned some right to push our political agenda!

But Compromise with the Republicans these days seems to be Grover Norquist style date-rape and nothing else. The bills we’re getting from Congress privatize social security, privatize medicare, cut social spending across the board, destroy the EPA and many other agency the right has become critical of, and that’s just for starters. These aren’t good faith attempts at compromise, these are wishlist items for an agenda they have only one house of Congress to implement with!

If you read your federalist papers, you will nowhere find the idea that somehow, a minority faction should be able to impose its special interests on everybody else. The system is supposed to work on building consensus, but these so-called constitutional experts keep on triggering the hostage situations, trying to do an end-run around the way law is supposed to be passed in the Congress.

I’m sick of all the manufactured crises. I’m sick of having to worry at all about whether my nation is going to go deadbeat because of their insanity, their stupidity. Conservatism should be about preserving the institutions we depend upon, not suicide bombing them to teach the most counterproductive lessons in fiscal discipline possible!

I want peace. But peace on their terms? They don’t deserve it. It would be contrary to the spirit of our Republic to let them extort their way to imposing their minority policies on the majority. What’s next, they blackmail us to get constitutional amendments passed? They blackmail us to get pornography outlawed? Where does the bull**** stop? When can Americans finally have some peace of mind about the economy, and business owners the certainty of knowing that there will never again be a time where the nation is at risk of intentional default?

I used to be very bipartisan. But the problem was, as the last decade wore on, more and more items seemed poor judgment to concede to, whether that was the war in Iraq, the fiscal policy that put us in our current position, or the financial regulations that ended up being too thin to save the economy from itself. Why should I buy the whole global warming hoax thing, or conceded policy on it? Why should I abandon what my reason tells me to be true, in order to satisfy folks whose policies don’t work out like they promise they will?

When the Republicans start measuring results by the facts and not their political litmus tests, I can be more relaxed with them. Until them it just makes no bloody sense.

Stephen

You just sort of have a template.

Obama was the first president to be reelected by a smaller plurality than the first time. But speaking of Democratic success, Obama was the first Democrat presidential candidate to win a majority (i.e. more than 50%) for more than thirty years.

I understand in some ways how your feel. After that ass-kicking Republicans gave to Democrats in 2002 & 2004 and even 2010, I kind of thought the same way you do, but in the opposite direction.

2010 happened, but so did 2006, 2008, and 2012. Tell me, if the Democrats are winning more elections, especially the one following the 2010 election, what does that tell you?

Tell me a lot of things because I don’t view politics as simplistic as you are making it. 2006 was a response to the war/Bush policies, that garnered no fruit as none of it was changed with the democrats who came into office. 2008 was more to do with things other than politics, had the financial crisis (that the democrats purposefully made worse) not hit when it did, it is most likely that 2008 would have seen a McCain win. 2010 was a big response to the roughshot implementation of Obama’s politics, most specifically ‘Obamacare’ and how it was implemented. 2012 also has many facets to it as well.

You can continue to view all of this in simplistic terms all you want, it is no skin off my nose. But when you lose in 2014 or 2016 and it swings back the Republican’s way (which it very well may do) how are you going to infuse that into your rhetoric?

I never imagined people would let the Iraq War drag on like it did.

Did you not learn anything from the history of Vietnam, Korea, Bosnia, Kosovo and the first Gulf War that we were still dealing with 12 years after the fact? This country has no intention of ever removing troops from areas they have been deployed, and they aren’t going to start in 2014 either. This has nothing to do with Left or Right, unfortunately, it is a mindset that in deep in both camps. The left approved and supported and continued to finance Iraq when it could have ended it at any time. It chose not too because as we have seen, deep down, they are no different than the hawks in the Republican party. They are mostly only vocal when it can gain them political advantage.

I never imagined that people would follow the debacle of Enron and WorldCom with such laxness.

LAXNESS? Are you freaking kidding me with that crap? The regulations and laws put into place to ‘deal with’ those issues have damaged this country’s financial abilities to the point we are now more heavily regulated than our neighbors to the north! We will never again see greater than 3%gdp in this country thanks to those regulations, most of them ill-thought out and creating more problems than they were trying to solve. Instead of just focusing on punishing people who broke the law, more laws were created to try to prevent those actions, which as we know will NEVER WORK. So we have nothing to show for all of the regulations put into place and a lot that we have lost because of them.

And then you come along and say we were ‘lax’ in our response? It’s confirmation that you really don’t know what you are talking about and just want everything in everyone’s lives regulated to be what you think they should be.

I never imagined that, confronted with the mother of all economic crises, that the Republicans would refuse to act.

You mean like the way the Democrat refused to act (until they won the presidential election)? Please, I’ve explained it all to you before, more than once, and you still refuse to accept that the Democrats are as much to blame with what happened as the Republicans were. Until you are willing to accept the responsibility of your party’s actions, no one is going to listen to your nonsensical railings of the other’s…

We’ve earned some right to push our political agenda!

And Reagan won with a REAL landslide in 1984, yet he was fought tooth and nail by the democrats in office then. He had to compromise and deal with them because they did represent the opinions and views of a section of the country. I know that sucks for you, to have to perhaps modify or alter the agenda to work with the desires of part of the country, but this is NOT a dictatorship, no matter how much you want it to be. Police State, yes. Authoritarian, yes. But not a dictatorship.

If you read your federalist papers, you will nowhere find the idea that somehow, a minority faction should be able to impose its special interests on everybody else.

Because the majority wasn’t supposed to be able to either. BTW, they aren’t MY federalist papers, they are OURs…

The federal government was designed specifically so that NO ONE could impose their will onto others except in specific, nationally focused, instances. It was a simple and beautiful idea that has been corrupted and thrown away so that people in one part of the country can tell people in another part of the country how to live their daily, local lives. It was a way to push the power of force onto those who one disagreed with instead of letting them live their lives in peace and freedom. The MAJORITY wasn’t supposed to be able to impose its special interests on everyone either, but you seem ok with doing that. You also don’t have a problem with the minority imposing their special interests on others when the democrats are in the minority… The president, house and senate were in charge in 2003, yet you still thought the left should be working to stop Iraq, wren’t you? Your duplicity is astounding…

I’m sick of all the manufactured crises

I’ll believe that when I see it…

When can Americans finally have some peace of mind about the economy, and business owners the certainty of knowing that there will never again be a time where the nation is at risk of intentional default?

When the country gets its financial interests in order and STOPS BORROWING MONEY. Then they won’t have that to use anymore would they? Simply being economically sound for once would go a long way to preventing you from having to ‘worry about things’ like that.

The problem is, until you are willing to deal with the issues that we are facing, instead of kicking the can down the road as this administration (and previous ones) have done and putting the costs of those actions onto our children, there is no way any of that can happen. 70% of the budget, Stephen… By 2017 (now sooner because of the estimates being way off…) 70% of the budget is going to ‘mandatory spending’, which is SS, Medicaid, Medicare and interest on the debt.

When you want to be a grownup and talk about the real issues that we are facing, let me know.

Meanwhile:

Planners of President Barack Obama’s second inauguration announced last week he’d be accepting big corporate donors this time around, looking for individual donations of up to $1 million, up quite a bit from the $50,000-per-person limit placed back in 2009. But why bother with the pretense of “hope and change” any more when coverage of expanding executive power, corporate cronyism, warmongering and engaging in the same behavior as his predecessors seems to fall on deaf ears anyway? (Or maybe it hasn’t, as the New York Times reports they’re having trouble meeting fund-raising goals for this year’s celebration)

So far, the Sunlight Foundation notes, they’ve wrangled in eight corporate donors, some of whom have business with the government

C&J-
What gets me about that narrative is that arguably, the 2002 and 2004 majorities went too far in the Tea Party Narrative. That’s where you get the spending increases, which you blame solely for the problem of our deficit.

But with this new narrative, oh, you didn’t go far enough because of those meddling Democrats!

As for your ass-kicking in 2010, yes, you beat us back quite a ways.

But just as you failed to take the Senate now, you failed to take it then. That’s why you need the threat of the debt ceiling driven default. You wouldn’t need it if you could dictate budget terms with both houses of Congress.

America has given the Presidency to Obama for a second term by considerable margins, despite all your efforts. It has increased the Senate Majority. It had increased the House Minority.

Yet Republicans continue to do exactly what they did during the last couple years, oblivious to the obvious message.

It’s time to redeem your party’s from the crazies, to break your party’s addiction to its fringe.

Only in Washington could you get away with referring to both spending hikes and tax hikes as spending “cuts.” Perhaps it’s time those inside the Beltway stopped getting away with it.

Government borrowing is a source of many evils not least of which is that for decades it made big government appear cheaper than it is. Could the federal government spend nearly $4 trillion a year if it had to raise every penny through taxation? Unlikely. A tax revolt would have been ignited. But let the government borrow a trillion dollars a year, more than 40 cents of every dollar spent, and government looks relatively inexpensive—or it did before things got so out of hand that everyone could see the looming danger. Most people pay no attention to how much interest the government must pay each year to its creditors, but interest payments have been running at over $400 billion a year. December’s payment alone was $95.7 billion.

Doughboy writes; “I’m sick of all the manufactured crises. I’m sick of having to worry at all about whether my nation is going to go deadbeat because of their insanity, their stupidity. Conservatism should be about preserving the institutions we depend upon, not suicide bombing them to teach the most counterproductive lessons in fiscal discipline possible!

When the Republicans start measuring results by the facts and not their political litmus tests, I can be more relaxed with them. Until them it just makes no bloody sense.”

We don’t need to “go deadbeat”, merely cut spending while raising the debt limit to pay for what has been authorized. The “fact” which Daugherty misses time after time is the unsustainablity of our current debt, much less an increased debt.

But, Doughboy doesn’t want to listen to or consider “facts” with which he disagrees. He lives in a magical world where debt never becomes overwhelming and destructive. His world regards deficit spending as “just” and “right” as long as it is spent on him and his breed.

His kind is common as dirt. Ask, but don’t give. Receive, but don’t contribute. Squander, and don’t save. Demand and don’t reconcile.

“The problem is, is that the way Bush has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt from $5 trillion dollars for the first 42 presidents — number 43 added $4 trillion dollars by his lonesome, so that we now have over $9 trillion dollars of debt that we are going to have to pay back — $30,000 for every man, woman and child.

That’s irresponsible. It’s unpatriotic.”

That bill for every man, woman and child under Obama’s ‘leadership’ is now: $57,776.

Rhinehold-
I think its time to stop pretending that its a fluke that more Democrats are getting elected. If you just had 2006, and 2008 was a wash, you might have a point. If 2006 and 2008 had turned out like they did, and 2012 had turned out like 2010, you might have a point.

But 2012 went the way that 2008 did, and in spite of the Republicans turning out their base groups rather well.

I think its time to stop seeing Democratic Party victories as an anomaly.

Perhaps a Republican will win in 2016. Perhaps. But while that might be consistent with an on again, off-again model of voter policy, it all depends on who they nominate in their primaries. If somebody like Chris Christie tries to run, but ends up hamstrung by the tea party, then they’re going to get the candidate they want at the price of the Presidency they want.

It all depends on whether Republicans are willing to soften the party lines enough to put on enough charm in order to defeat whoever the Democrats offer, which at this point, I can’t say I know for sure.

I don’t know the future. What I do believe is that Republicans are taking much more significant risks in order to get what they want, without really gaining much for that. They are becoming steadily more inefficient at winning office.

As far as the wars go?

There’s a difference between a place we leave some troops, and a place where we fight a long term shooting war. Korea isn’t shipping us home the bodies it was during the fifties, Vietnam I had assumed was a sharp enough lesson to teach people to avoid quagmires, and the Gulf War’s real battles were pretty much finished in 1991. Kosovo? With Milosevic out and the humanitarian situation resolved (no repeat of the Bosnia problem), I wouldn’t say that fight was anything like the Persistent, multi-year shooting wars we inherited from Bush.

As far as the reason why funding was continued, the simple fact is that it’s hard to avoid a certain political backlash if the cause of the end of the war is a domestic funding cut.

As far as Laxness goes? First, we should have gotten a more elegant law than the one we did, but they didn’t deal with the derivatives issue that helped make the overall situation worse. We did a bad fix on one part of the financial picture, and then let Wall Street do what it wanted.

The question you fail to ask is how much of that supposed growth you mourn the loss of was actual growth. You act like it all is, but did you hear on the news how many companies were “restating earnings” (code for “would you like to revise your bull**** story”).

We need to constrain the BS. We need to use reason, and acknowledge the evidence that yes, people do lie, do cheat, when they are not fearful of legal consequences. They will willingly stack up huge plates full of derivatives so they can outcompete each other, and they’ll do their best to avoid accountability. That is reality. Your expectations defeated, my expectations all too often fulfilled.

As for the laws not working, we had a long time without serious economic crashes, and its somewhat implausible that the BS starts up again, right after we deregulated. The question of whether we need to modernize and rewrite the laws for greater elegance is an open one, and a good one. The notion of whether we need to put new constraints on business is not.

As for the Democrat’s refusal to act?

There were some Democrats who voted with the Republicans to reject TARP. But they wouldn’t have mattered if Republicans didn’t reject TARP on a party line.

And none of it would have been necessary if Lehman Brothers had been unwound the way LTCM had been in the 90’s. By pulling the pin from that particular grenade, the Bush Administration just ****ed us. It was great politics within the GOP, but it was terrible politics outside it. I do believe, though, that both these events happened after Democrats voted funds to bailout AIG and the GSEs, and Democrats did support another TARP bill, and though the first iteration failed its vote, the second iteration was passed a month before the Elections (October 3rd, 2008).

As for what we earned?

I’m fine with compromise. I was willing to support HCR, even after we went to the Mandate, which I felt was a worse option than the Public option. I was willing to see Obama make the deals necessary to get Congress to avoid shutting down the government, and hitting the debt ceiling.

But there’s a limit to that kind of crap. The voters response obviously sends the signal that the people do not approve of the last Congress’s behavior.

As for the rest? No, if you read the Federalist papers, you’ll find they were very much in favor of seeing the general interest, that is, what the majority of people could support, made law, made Constitutional when the numbers were right. Any other kind of government has some small group imposing its will on everybody else.

As for this “stop borrowing money?” crap?

You evidently have no real appreciation for our fiscal situation. It’s not as simple as wish fulfillment. This is a ****-up it will take decades to recover from, and which your tax policy is a very, very significant portion of. Your logic is screwed up. If I show up, order a meal, and then say I’m going to collect less money from around the table to pay for it, I’ll be short some cash, just as as much as if I had ordered one more dish in excess of what we’d already had enough money to pay for.

The deficit grew from both the Revenue side, as they tanked, and the spending side, as we paid for more military and more Medicare.

If I had taken another bill from my wallet, and added to the kitty, that would mean the extra part of the meal was paid for. If I didn’t reduce the amount of money, but keep the spending the same, the meal would have been paid for. Long story short, it would have been paid for, so long as one side balanced with the other.

But you just want to see spending, and you are particularly, peculiarly focused on this kind of spending you don’t like!

As much as your preach yourself an advocate of freedom, when it comes people determining their own course, you’ll get in their way every time, if they’re not taking yours. And as far as fiscal matters go, you refuse to see that your own policies help make things worse, and it doesn’t make things particularly better to threaten or arrive at default.

I am a grownup here. I can live with the system not being as liberal as I want it to be, because I am at peace with the nature of our system. I might not always be at peace with the Republicans, or with you and yours, but I will at least not try to pull cockamamie bull****, trying to dislodge your elected officials or grind the country to a halt to get what I want.

Without the option to borrow, the government can only finance 60 percent of its operations and obligations in the short term. More than a third of that spending goes right onto the national credit card.

That sort of reliance on borrowing is why annual deficits are so high. It’s why total federal debt levels keep growing. It’s why the Congressional Budget Office describes our debt trajectory as “unsustainable.” It’s why it is so important to focus on spending — not just on our long-term entitlement obligations, but now. This year. We’re already spending so much that in near-term, 40 percent of it has to go on the credit card. That’s how utterly dependent on borrowing, and how utterly unable to reduce spending, our federal government already is.

Lots of the attention in Washington right now is focused on what President Obama will do next — specifically whether he’ll negotiate over raising the debt limit. He says he won’t, but he’s said that before and never followed through. Republicans, meanwhile, say a no-conditions debt limit hike is a no-go.

It’s an impasse. And it makes for juicy political drama. But in some ways it’s a distraction from the real spending and borrowing problem that got us into this mess. Because the bigger, more important question isn’t just what Obama and Republicans in Congress will do this time. It’s what, if anything, they’ll do to better manage federal financing — and prevent us from getting into a debt-driven hole like this again.

Doughboy writes; ” If I show up, order a meal, and then say I’m going to collect less money from around the table to pay for it, I’ll be short some cash, just as as much as if I had ordered one more dish in excess of what we’d already had enough money to pay for.”

Typical liberal/socialist thinking. Order the meal first and then decide how to pay for it. What is left un-said is that the libs sitting at the table have steak appetites and hamburger purses. When they can’t pay the bill they won’t work for the meal by doing dishes; but rather, will pander from other diners demanding them to pay for their sumptuous meal.

A sitting congress has the right and ability to change any previously authorized spending. Simply because a previous congress decided to be overly generous it doesn’t mean that a current congress can’t cut back.

I think its time to stop seeing Democratic Party victories as an anomaly.

No one is saying they are ‘anomolies’, however they are not as simplistic as you want them to be. Scaring people into voting for you does not equate to them wanting your policies…

right after we deregulated.

WHEN did we ‘deregulate’.

As for the Democrat’s refusal to act?

Again, you fail to mention the fact that stricter regulation put in place after Enron led directly to the numerous bank bailouts that we were facing and the Democrats in congress REFUSED to act on fixing that. Until February 2009, after the election was over and the new congress was put into place. If they had acted, as they should have and were begged to do, earlier then TARP would have been unnecessary, the bailouts would have been unnecessary, GM and Chrysler would have remained solvent and the US Government would not have gotten approval for nearly a trillion dollars in increased spending that was SUPPOSED to be temporary (yet we still continue to spend).

The ‘recession’ would have been more mild than the one that Bush had to deal with in 2000.

But, Obama probably wouldn’t have one the presidency so…

I was willing to support HCR, even after we went to the Mandate, which I felt was a worse option than the Public option.

He was dealing with the DEMOCRATS then, not Republicans. It’s dealing with Republicans that you have the problem with…

you’ll find they were very much in favor of seeing the general interest, that is, what the majority of people could support, made law, made Constitutional when the numbers were right. Any other kind of government has some small group imposing its will on everybody else.

Which ‘federalist papers’ were you reading? Please, show me. Link me the exact statements that you say suggest that the founding fathers wanted the will of the majority to override the rights of the minority on all things without limit.

This is a ****-up it will take decades to recover from

The way our government is dealing with it, yes. If they actually tackle the hard issues, they could deal with it sooner.

and which your tax policy is a very, very significant portion of.

What’s my tax policy again? Please, enlighten me with what you THINK my ‘tax policy’ is…

But you just want to see spending, and you are particularly, peculiarly focused on this kind of spending you don’t like!

LOL, that’s funny stuff…

You keep wanting to claim that the tax cuts are the reason we lost ‘revenue’. Let’s look at the facts.

“Take the Bush tax cuts. While they did lower government revenue temporarily and slightly—from $2 trillion in 2000 to $1.89 trillion in 2004—revenue soon bounced back, and in 2007 reached a historic high of $2.6 trillion. In nominal terms, that’s a 30 percent increase—in seven years—despite the tax cuts.

Trouble is, during the same period spending grew even faster, from $1.8 trillion to $2.7 trillion (a 50 percent increase).

The recession kicked the stuffing out of government receipts, which were about $2.5 trillion last year. Yet federal revenue is expected to rise to $3.3 trillion by 2015 and $4.3 trillion by 2020. That is a nominal 72-percent increase—in only eight years.

Spending, meanwhile, has continued to scream upward like a missile, rising from $1.8 trillion in 2000 to $3.8 trillion last year.

You seem to think you know what my view on the topic is, yet you keep misstating it. Let me explain it to you so you can’t be accused of arguing from a misinformed position again.

Ideally, we should be limited in our federal government to the things we are constitutionally required/allowed to do, everything else should be handled by the state. If we did that, there would be no need for an income tax, it could all be paid for by fees and services (like the gas taxes paying for roads, etc).

Since it is unlikely that we will ever see the wisdom of that again, we should keep spending to a minimum and taxation to a minimum to allow for more funds to flow within the economy for everyone to benefit from. Anything one generation spends should be paid for by that generation, there should only be short term deficit spending that is paid back IMMEDIATELY when it is needed.

Unfortunately, we have created a situation where we have gotten ourselves in a whole that is not going to be ‘easy’ to get out of. So we have to understand that ‘easy’ solutions aren’t going to be a part of it.

Until our debt is paid off, we should be cutting spending (not just increasing less) AND taxing everyone. No more negative tax rates, everyone pays. In addition, those programs that are growing exponentially should be either eliminated or reworked to be sustainable with a decreasing population.

Further, we should end the Department of Education and let the states handle their own educational issues (failure) stop criminalizing behaviors that none of our business and tax it when it makes sense (drug wars, online poker, etc) get our people out of locations in the rest of the world that causes US to be their military spending.

There are more things we could do, but that will give you an idea. You could even argue for some of those programs to remain and we would still be on our way to actually balancing our budget.

Unfortunately, the one thing that NEEDS to be done that neither party is doing is to reform/eliminate SS, Medicaid and Medicare. But both parties have a ‘hands off’ attitude to these programs, which will kill us and any attempt to provide any other kinds of services…

The problem is that neither party is willing to actually do that. As a result, we are going to see the same scare tactics from both parties and pass on the money we borrowed for our good times to our children and their children. Maybe a better generation will discover what they need to do to fix the problem, but it sure doesn’t appear to be anyone in office now.

As much as your preach yourself an advocate of freedom, when it comes people determining their own course, you’ll get in their way every time, if they’re not taking yours.

You’ll have to explain this one to me, since you are making no sense at all.

but I will at least not try to pull cockamamie bull****, trying to dislodge your elected officials or grind the country to a halt to get what I want.

Please… This election was called the ‘Mediscare’ election of 2012, you realize that. The left has engaged in much worse things over the past 40 years to get it’s agenda into place, let’s not pretend that your hands are clean…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70lkobYY0Hc&list=UUqcy4xPPVjmTnkg4kBaac2w&index=8

Royal,

Stephen would do well to read The Forgotten Man before he starts making himself look like those nosy busybodies that end up beating up the Forgotten Man in order to enact their view of justice…

http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=2396&chapter=226423&layout=html&Itemid=27

It is when we come to the proposed measures of relief for the evils which have caught public attention that we reach the real subject which deserves our attention. As soon as A observes something which seems to him to be wrong, from which X is suffering, A talks it over with B, and A and B then propose to get a law passed to remedy the evil and help X. Their law always proposes to determine what C shall do for X or, in the better case, what A, B and C shall do for X. As for A and B, who get a law to make themselves do for X what they are willing to do for him, we have nothing to say except that they might better have done it without any law, ‘but what I want to do is to look up C. I want to show you what manner of man he is. I call him the Forgotten Man. Perhaps the appellation is not strictly correct. He is the man who never is thought of. He is the victim of the reformer, social speculator and philanthropist, and I hope to show you before I get through that he deserves your notice both for his character and for the many burdens which are laid upon him.

Now who is the Forgotten Man? He is the simple, honest laborer, ready to earn his living by productive work. We pass him by because he is independent, self-supporting, and asks no favors. He does not appeal to the emotions or excite the sentiments. He only wants to make a contract and fulfill it, with respect on both sides and favor on neither side. He must get his living out of the capital of the country. The larger the capital is, the better living he can get. Every particle of capital which is wasted on the vicious, the idle, and the shiftless is so much taken from the capital available to reward the independent and productive laborer. But we stand with our backs to the independent and productive laborer all the time. [We do not remember him because he makes no clamor; but I appeal to you whether he is not the man who ought to be remembered first of all, and whether, on any sound social theory, we ought not to protect him against the burdens of the good-for-nothing. In these last years I have read hundreds of articles and heard scores of sermons and speeches which were really glorifications of the good-for-nothing, as if these were the charge of society, recommended by right reason to its care and protection. We are addressed all the time as if those who are respectable were to blame because some are not so, and as if there were an obligation on the part of those who have done their duty towards those who have not done their duty. Every man is bound to take care of himself and his family and to do his share in the work of society. It is totally false that one who has done so is bound to bear the care and charge of those who are wretched because they have not done so. The silly popular notion is that the beggars live at the expense of the rich, but the truth is that those who eat and produce not, live at the expense of those who labor and produce. The next time that you are tempted to subscribe a dollar to a charity, I do not tell you not to do it, because after you have fairly considered the matter, you may think it right to do it, but I do ask you to stop and remember the Forgotten Man and understand that if you put your dollar in the savings bank it will go to swell the capital of the country which is available for division amongst those who, while they earn it, will reproduce it with increase.

Royal Flush-
If you want to insult me over a metaphor, be my guest. Please proceed. Point is, we’re constantly deciding how to share out the price of government, even as we try and decide what to pay for off our menu of options.

You believe, as an article of faith for all intents and purposes, that tax cuts do not add to the deficit. You are wrong. Nearly every cut in memory brings new deficits on. Increasing taxes, though, has brought the system into balance.

We had record surpluses for the simple reason that we grew revenue collection at a greater rate than spending. Democrats, including President Clinton, voted for that plan. In fact, they virtually lost the 1994 election based on that. But it worked, for all the political cost it had.

Republicans tried a different approach, when they had full control. They increased defense and homeland security spending, they cut taxes, and the two lines on the graph crossed over in the other direction. Revenues fell, (despite your article of faith that they wouldn’t), spending increased (despite your belief military spending doesn’t count.)

It only gets more complicated than that because Republicans insist on blinding themselves to one side of the equation.

On that last point, let me be blunt: your side only controls one chamber. This isn’t simply a matter of whether Congress can cut back on what it said it would spend earlier. The question is whether this should be something a small minority of ideologues within your party should decide for everybody, regardless of how many elections they lose, or how low their numbers go, or whether this should be something your people have to work out in civil compromise with the Democrats who control the Senate.

No matter how right you think you are, the system the Framers designed was meant to force compromise, something you folks consider, ironically enough, antithetical to your true political faith.

The framers did not intend one faction in Congress to control everything by threats to the stability of the whole. Nor did they intend to see the Senate gummed up by its minority, either. Finally, they did in fact intend for the Senate and the House to act as checks on one another, and the wisdom of their approach is becoming apparent, as we see your side’s ill-gotten gains in the 2010 election put to such pathetically wasteful and harmful use.

Stupidity like that of the Republicans was what they wanted to protect against.

Rhinehold-
We borrow because somebody decided that the people should be given back the surpluse. Oops. Deficits returned. Well, now its a stimulus! How does it feel to support a fiscal stimulus? Is it just okay when it’s taxes?

Truth was, I didn’t think the economy needed the tax cut more than it needed the surplus, to pay down American debt and put this country on a solid footing for the future. But the downturn of the start of the last decade was a shallow one, three tenths of a percent. We could have and should have done better.

I voted for responsibility. I supported fiscal austerity when we were not in a recession, when we had the growth to absorb it.

The right has shown poor judgment in when to borrow, and when to pay for things in cash.

I love that quote Rhinehold because it rings so true. The far left wants those who pay the taxes to shut up and allow government to take whatever they need at the moment.

How often do we hear the Doughboys of this country thank anyone (who foots the bill) for anything. NEVER!

My wife and I both enjoy smoking tobacco. We pay a lot in taxes with much of it supporting the CHIP’s program. What do we smokers get in the way of thanks…Nothing. We are reviled by the left, considered third-rate citizens, and chastised by purchasing and using a legal product. These same hypocrites herald legalizing pot smoking, killing the unborn, giving marriage status to unnatural and immoral sex and call organized religion an opiate for the weak.

We had record surpluses for the simple reason that we grew revenue collection at a greater rate than spending. Democrats, including President Clinton, voted for that plan.

*sigh* No, there was never an actual surplus, let alone a ‘record’ one.

Nearly every cut in memory brings new deficits on. Increasing taxes, though, has brought the system into balance.

Again, wrong, as I have shown above.

your side only controls one chamber.

The Republicans (Neither Royal who this was directed to nor I are Republicans)

And because of that, they have a say. You want to shut them out. Which is why they are screaming.

We borrow because somebody decided that the people should be given back the surpluse.

There was no surplus

How does it feel to support a fiscal stimulus?

I don’t.

I voted for responsibility.

Oh, I thought you voted Democrat…. sorry.

I supported fiscal austerity when we were not in a recession, when we had the growth to absorb it.

You mean, the last three years? We haven’t been in a recession since 2009…

Of course, we did have a tax cut during a recession, which you seem to hate (but continue to support the majority of)…

Basically, your words and the actions from them do not match, Stephen.

Doughboy (an apt metaphor I believe, and only an insult if not true) writes; “You believe, as an article of faith for all intents and purposes, that tax cuts do not add to the deficit.”

Give up your night job as “seer” as you are ignorant about what I believe regarding tax cuts. Your kind conjures up an imaginary situation and then expounds on it. Nice work if you can pull it off…YOU CAN’T.

Here’s some more silliness from the Doughboy…”We had record surpluses for the simple reason that we grew revenue collection at a greater rate than spending.”

We had a congress that didn’t spend more than revenue received. When congress got sufficiently stupid, they began spending more than what government took in as revenue and decided to just grow the deficit to pay for it to make it appear that enough taxes were being collected.

Politicians wanted the votes garnered by spending but didn’t have the balls to raise the taxes to pay for it. The American voter would have raised hell over the necessary taxes and so were lulled into believing that all this spending was fiscally responsible.

When Doughboy can get HIS political party to increase taxes enough to pay for their spendthrift ways I will shut up. Until then Doughboy, live with the tax increase you got and live with cut backs in spending.

Extra for experts:

If we have a spending problem, and the deficit is too high, and the debt is too high…

Then why are interest rates so low?

Why, when other governments and big investors have a ‘flight to safety,’ do they turn to US Treasuries?

The truth is right there in front of your face. It’s in the business section of the newspaper every single day. Spending and deficits and debt are not of particular concern for big investors and people who have a clue about economics.

What are those low interest rates telling you? Think real hard. Come on. You can do it.

Hint:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/14/opinion/krugman-japan-steps-out.html?_r=0

phx8 asks…”Extra for experts:

If we have a spending problem, and the deficit is too high, and the debt is too high…

Then why are interest rates so low?”

He then answers his own question with silly nonsense by writing; “Spending and deficits and debt are not of particular concern for big investors and people who have a clue about economics.”

The answer to both is simple, interest rates are kept artificially low, not difficult to do for “experts”. And, big investors know that government will keep bailing them out regardless of how stupid their investments or management of money.

For the uninformed such as phx8, they look only at today and don’t believe a day of reckoning will ever come. In some weak minded individuals they convince themselves that since we are OK today, we will be OK tomorrow. They don’t know how inflation begins or ends. For them, my adage…”Today’s decisions are Tomorrow’s Reality” is just a fable. Poor things…just don’t get it.

phx8 links to an article by Krugman…who at one time, was valued for his economic acumen. He has since lost his crown.

This is the same guy who believed it was a great idea to construct a coin valued at a trillion dollars as a way to fund increasing the spending limit and bypass congress. This incredibly stupid idea has been denounced by Treasury, Federal Reserve and obama. Of course I must mention that fellow idiot Harry Reid thought it was a good idea.

Japan is experiencing inflation as expected. Do we really want to inflate the dollars in our pocket even more to play an extremely dangerous game?

Does either Krugman or phx8 have a clue why gold and silver prices are so high? Naw…it doesn’t fit with their schemes.

Royal Flush,
You write: “… The answer to both is simple, interest rates are kept artificially low, not difficult to do for “experts”. And, big investors know that government will keep bailing them out regardless of how stupid their investments or management of money.”

So it’s all a conspiracy theory. I see.

And “a day of reckoning” is coming? How Biblical.

And we should make economic decisions based on gold and silver prices? Sure. Okay. Of course. Whatever you say. That’s a great idea.

SD:

“The framers did not intend one faction in Congress to control everything by threats to the stability of the whole. Nor did they intend to see the Senate gummed up by its minority, either. Finally, they did in fact intend for the Senate and the House to act as checks on one another, and the wisdom of their approach is becoming apparent, as we see your side’s ill-gotten gains in the 2010 election put to such pathetically wasteful and harmful use.”

“ill gotten gains”? How so? Is there some vote fraud that hasn’t been reported that you know about?

So it’s all a conspiracy theory. I see.

No, there is no conspiracy theory at work, the FED sets the interest rate that banks lend each other money and the interest rates that are then used for lending money to consumers (with good credit) stays close to that.

And “a day of reckoning” is coming? How Biblical.

Not sure how it is biblical that mandatory spending is already over 60% of our spending each year, with it rising to 70% before Obama’s term is over, most likely more when the full effect of Obamacare kicks in.

That is going to have to be addressed someday. Not by the Republicans or Democrats from the look of things though.

Put aside the picture of leading lawmakers, usually so jealous of their constitutional prerogatives, asking the president to ignore Congress. What is striking about the letter is that every one of its signers — Reid, Durbin, Schumer, and Murray — voted against raising the nation’s debt ceiling just seven years ago.

On March 16, 2006, the Senate held a vote on a measure to raise the debt ceiling by $781 billion — the fourth such vote of George W. Bush’s presidency. Republicans controlled the Senate, and Democrats spent much of the debate railing against Bush’s spending. “When it comes to deficits, this president owns all the records,” said Reid. “The three largest deficits in our nation’s history have all occurred under this administration’s watch.”

Declaring themselves outraged by such spending, Reid, Durbin, Schumer, and Murray all voted against raising the debt limit. So did every other Democrat — including Sen. Barack Obama. But on Friday, the four lawmakers urged now-President Obama not only to raise the ceiling but to do it in a constitutionally risky fashion by going over the head of Congress.

former Congressional Budget Office director Douglas Holtz-Eakin, tallies the cost of last year’s new federal regulations, and finds that despite early talk of a deregulatory push, regulators had a banner year: The cost of last year’s new regulations came in substantially higher than any of the past dozen years. In terms of costs, the Environmental Protection Agency led the charge with $172 billion in new regulations. In terms of paperwork, ObamaCare took the gold, with Dodd-Frank financial regulation close behind. The report says that the health law resulted in the publication of paperwork requirements that will chew up about 44 million hours. The report estimates that Dodd-Frank will result a little more than 32 million hours of new paperwork.

As The Washington Post notes in a story on the report, there are clear winners and losers here. Big businesses, which can more easily afford the compliance costs associated with these rules, have a relatively easier time. But their smaller competitors often end up struggling:

Regulations appear to drag more on the bottom line of smaller firms than of larger ones, the study concluded after comparing compliance costs to the firms’ total stock market capitalization. As the report notes, “regulatory costs consumed 6.7 percent of Honeywell’s market cap ($50 billion), compared to just 1.6 percent for General Electric ($221 billion), even though GE reported higher regulatory spending. The same was true for energy, where ExxonMobil had the lowest share of costs/market cap, after reporting the highest regulatory burdens, $2.7 billion.”

That disparity can give big firms an advantage in the marketplace, says Sam Batkins, the Forum’s director of regulatory policy. “Sometimes a big company might want a big regulatory overhaul because they know they can absorb those new costs better than their competitors can.”

Remember this the next time Obama touts his commitment to a less burdensome, less complicated, less costly government: Despite promises to simplify the books, the Obama administration hasn’t gotten rid of burdens. It’s created them.

BTW, Stephen, still waiting the answers to these questions:

right after we deregulated.

WHEN did we ‘deregulate’.

and

you’ll find they were very much in favor of seeing the general interest, that is, what the majority of people could support, made law, made Constitutional when the numbers were right. Any other kind of government has some small group imposing its will on everybody else.

Which ‘federalist papers’ were you reading? Please, show me. Link me the exact statements that you say suggest that the founding fathers wanted the will of the majority to override the rights of the minority on all things without limit.

When you get the time.

Rhinehold-
The beauty of being a fan of primary sources, my good man, is that you get to see the stuff other people skip.

There were large mid-decade increases from the Housing boom, but the busts before and after, coupled with the fact that taxes were cut, meant that revenue growth overall was insufficient to keep up with spending growth.

As for this incident in 2006 you keep harping on, the question our readers should ask is whether the Debt Ceiling increase was in any danger of failing, much less being held hostage by Democrats who could have demanded concessions.

The answer to that question is “No.” It’s embarrassing, sure. But in that case, this was little more than a protest vote.

I’ve seen the ****ing numbers on both. The reason you can’t convince me that there was never a surplus, is because I’ve seen at least one year where even without the SS offset that was applied, the numbers balanced. The reason you can’t convince me that the 2006 Democratic vote was the same as the Republican’s current threat, is that Republicans were the majority in the House and Senate when they passed the debt ceiling increase. If Democrats actually thought they could stop it, as your theory would demand for equivalences sake, then they were complete morons.

And I’ve seen the actual revenue numbers! I’ve seen the huge decrease in revenue following 2001, figured out the rates of growth from the early eighties and everything. Whatever you believe, there’s no ****ing evidence that demands people’s faith in your supply side theories. Both big tax cuts had little immediate effect, and in fact were followed by greater, not lesser unemployment Reagan’s first term job growth, in fact, turned out to be half of Carters!

I’m not going to buy myths that I’ve seen the counterevidence for. I’m not going to follow you into your error.

As for this forgotten man?

My observation has been that your agenda, and that of conservatives have been less about remembering the forgotten man, and more about consigning them to further oblivion. Don’t ply me with this poetic bull****. Your policies are designed primarily to benefit an elite. You play at being populists, but the policies you support make rich men richer, and poor men poorer. You believe in some sort of magic feedback loop that somehow sets this right, but the truth, which you are either too partisan or naive to recognize is that this feedback loop is much weaker than you think, or even non-existent.

I believe its not the job of the government to remember the forgotten man the paragraph describes. It’s the job of the average person to have the balls (Or ovaries ;-) ) to stand up for themselves, and make sure it’ll be a cold day in hell before they forget what their interests are. This is not a form of government it pays to be passive towards.

Royal Flush-
It’s an insult whether or not its true. Try yelling “fatass!” at a passing chubby person, and see whether you get a positive response.

Why should people bite their tongue and not take offense? Why should they let you abuse them? What privilege did you gain, and how, such that you can be such a major *******, and not pay a social price for that?

I don’t usually bother with it, but you know something? You need to be confronted on it. You need to realize that you put yourself further and further behind with folks every time you act in this arrogant fashion.

That taken care of, let me address this.

My party’s “spendthrift ways” didn’t put us in this position, yours did. Your party decided to give people back the money they paid in taxes. Generous, but it screwed up revenue growth, and that meant stuff wasn’t paid for, that might have been. Then your side pushed the wars, pushed the medicare advantage program, and there is most of your spending. I’ve seen how enthusiastic your side is about cutting military budgets, much less increasing taxes, so I don’t see where you deserve to be left off the hook for these matters.

As for Japan’s inflation rate? They don’t have one right now, actually. They’re negative by .2% They’ve been in a deflationary trap since the nineties, which means that investments there return less than what people put in.

Too much inflation is bad, but too little means your economy is limping along. The trick is to balance growth and the inflation it brings with stabilizing austerity, like interest rate increases done at the proper time.

Too many here basically push a one-size fits all economic strategy. Things don’t work that way. I aim for consistent results, rather than consistent means. I don’t hate tax cuts. They’re just not some economic panacea, and sometimes they harm the fiscal situation.

As for high gold and silver prices, in a difficult economy, people hedge. Also, when prices go up in any commodity, other people rush in to buy, driving up the price.

Mike in Tampa-
Republicans pulled a kind of electoral fraud on people. They told people they’d be concentrated on jobs, and they concentrated on everything else instead. They used the voters, and then rewarded those voters by doing their utmost to create instability and uncertainty by threatening to shutdown the government and/or fail to raise the debt ceiling.

If you folks had really done what people wanted you to do, you would be cruising to electoral victories. Instead, you folks lost this last election. Republicans pulled a bait and switch.

Both big tax cuts had little immediate effect,

I find it interesting that you expect tax custs to have immediate effect when, in reality, they take up to two years to make an impact on individuals and businesses the way we deal with our tax code. Within two years, both tax cuts showed increased revenues well above GDP and inflation, rates of increases higher than before the cuts. Yet you discount that. The Reagan tax cuts (which were phased in over multiple years for pete’s sake) and the Bush tax cuts, and the Kennedy tax cuts all increased revenue within two years after implementation at higher rates than before.

And spending increased at an even higher rate.

But we don’t have a ‘spending problem’. Because, to a politician, there is no such thing as a spending problem unless they are trying to get back into power. (Ie, Obama’s quote while running for office compared to what he has done since in)

There were large mid-decade increases from the Housing boom, but the busts before and after, coupled with the fact that taxes were cut, meant that revenue growth overall was insufficient to keep up with spending growth.

And there were large near-end decade increases from the .com boom in the late 1990s, yet you want to claim it was the increased taxes that led to the ‘surpluses’ and other sound fiscal policy, not the boom that crashed the last year of Clinton’s time in office or the Republican’s shutting the government down in the mid 1990s to get the necessary spending cuts, as they are doing now…

Basically, you want to ignore part of history when it works against you and focus on part of history when it works in your favor.

As I said, you are going to have to do a better job of proving your point when you do nothing but leaves holes big enough to drive a truck through your arguments.

The reason you can’t convince me that there was never a surplus, is because I’ve seen at least one year where even without the SS offset that was applied, the numbers balanced.

Show me.

And I’ll show you the numbers as they are reported by the Treasury Department… You can look them up yourself at:
http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/BPDLogin?application=np

When taking total spending against total revenue, the US did not have a surplus in any year during the Clinton Presidency. Now, if you don’t count money we borrowed from ourselves, and money that was listed as ‘off budget’, and money we were obligated to hold on to for future retirement plans of government employees, then yeah, there was a surplus. Of course, if a business where to pull that, you would be screaming for them to be shut down and put in jail.

But the debt never, once, went down in the 8 years he was in office.

I’ll give you the numbers again:

End of FY 1997 our total debt was $5.413146T
End of FY 1998 our total debt was $5.526193T
End of FY 1999 our total debt was $5.656270T
End of FY 2000 our total debt was $5.674178T
End of FY 2001 our total debt was $5.807463T

Now, which year did the US have a surplus again, if our debt increased? BY DEFINITION, a surplus would mean that the debt didn’t increase and should have decreased, but there wasn’t a single year.

You mention the SS Trust fund that Clinton borrowed from to claim a surplus, but that isn’t the only thing that was borrowed from, other governmental pension funds included. These are in the form of intra-governmental holdings. The problem with borrowing against them is that we still have to pay the money back. And that is starting to happen THIS YEAR.

Basically, Clinton claimed a surplus because of accounting rules that you say should not be available to Bush when he put part of the Iraq war ‘off budget’ and was within a few billion of being able to claim a surplus.

Again, you want it both ways.

Unfortunately, allowing the federal government to keep using accounting rules to hide the true financial picture we are dealing with only makes things worse and prevents something from getting done.

My observation has been that your agenda, and that of conservatives have been less about remembering the forgotten man, and more about consigning them to further oblivion.

More fantasy that you want to be true so you claim it is. Explain, in detail, what ‘agenda’ that libertarians have that tramples on ‘the forgotten man’. Which I suspect you don’t even know who that is…

Your policies are designed primarily to benefit an elite.

Name one

You play at being populists

No, we don’t. We despise the populist because they are the direct enemy to the forgotten man…

but the policies you support make rich men richer, and poor men poorer.

Again, BS, name one.

I believe its not the job of the government to remember the forgotten man the paragraph describes.

Now THAT is easily observable in your politics. Screw the hard working person who asks for nothing from others for their own way in life, they don’t complain so who cares for them…

The sad part is that was what Kennedy was trying to say so many years ago… How much the Democratic Party has changed since then is beyond unbelievable, and directly the reason I am not one anymore. Because it is now inhabited with authoritarians like you.

Royal Flush,
Yes, when you say interest rates are being kept artificially low, you are promoting conspiracy theory.

You’re confusing the Federal Funds rate, which the Federal Reserve sets, with the purchase of various kinds of Treasuries by large investors and governments. The Fed can set an artificially low rate, but it won’t work for long, because no one will show up to buy T-Bills at auctions if the rate does not match the realities of the marketplace. In addition, various kinds of Treasuries are constantly bought and sold in the markets, and those markets are competitive.

The Federal Reserve does have the advantage of being the biggest, safest market in the world, and it can attempt to influence the markets for debt instruments temporarily through buy backs. But eventually the reality of the competitive nature of the markets will make itself felt.

The simple fact of the matter is that interest rates are low right now. They are low because prospects for inflation are negligible. Furthermore, rates are low because the long term prospects for growth are low. That is why governments and big investors are still purchasing US debt even though the real return- interest rate less inflation- is actually negative. Nothing beats the safety and liquidity of US debt instruments.

So, what do these persistently low interest rates tell you?

The threat is deflation. Not inflation. Deflation. We’ve already seen asset deflation in the housing markets.

One of the biggest difficulties with the current situation is that there are so few examples to offer guidance. The only large economy to have ever suffered the kind of economic collapse we experienced in 2007 - 2009 was Japan. (The Great Depression shared some similarities, and a few smaller countries have also seen such collapses, but it might be risky to apply the experience of small economies to the American one). And as far as Japan is concerned, the one thing we are really, really sure about is that we don’t want to repeat that experience.

Krugman, by the way, is a Keynesian. There’s nothing special about what he says. All he is doing is applying a proven economic theory to the present situation.
That is why he is able to make seemingly amazing marcoeconomic predictions and then see them come true. He’s right because his theory is right, and it has proven to be right in the real world.

As you are probably aware, gold and silver are non-performing assets. While they have some industrial value, they produce nothing, have no earnings, create no profit, and pay no dividend or interest; most of their price is driven by speculation, fear, and greed.

If you hear someone talking up gold and silver, chances are excellent you are hearing someone who does not know what they are talking about.

The reason I’m going on at some length about interest rates is that the debt markets are orders of magnitude larger than any other financial markets, they drive the world, and they are telling us something about the nature of the current problem.

For all the talk about the national debt, we could literally DOUBLE it and still be fine. Think about that for a moment. You hear a lot of people wringing their hands about the debt. Reality is telling you they don’t know what they are talking about.

Other countries have carried that kind of load and still paid off the debt without collapsing. Current interest rates tell us we could incur a lot more debt without significant risk.

That’s reality.

Now, whether we should do that is another question.

We’ve seen a long string of consecutive months of growth and positive non-farm payroll numbers, a huge bull market, and much much more that is positive, including a northbound housing market. And we’ve already taken steps to unwind some of the economic stimuli that created debt, such as ending the payroll tax holiday and a modest tax increase. The ‘fiscal cliff’ compromise was brilliant. It unwinds those stimuli in a serious of steps, which is precisely the right way to do it.

So it’s (low interest rates) all a conspiracy theory. I see.

And “a day of reckoning” is coming? How Biblical.

And we should make economic decisions based on gold and silver prices? Sure. Okay. Of course. Whatever you say. That’s a great idea.
Posted by: phx8 at January 14, 2013 8:43 PM

How many times have I heard liberals describe fossil fuel prices as artificially low? Yet, they decry my description of artificially low interest rates as a “conspiracy”.

The answer to your question is also simple. Gold and silver prices reflect economic decisions.

Doughboy writes; “As for high gold and silver prices, in a difficult economy, people hedge. Also, when prices go up in any commodity, other people rush in to buy, driving up the price.”

Gee, how perceptive. We all know that. What you fail to address is “why” gold and silver prices are so high and what are they hedging against? We all know…do you?

phx8 writes; ” Current interest rates tell us we could incur a lot more debt without significant risk.

That’s reality.”

Really? Is the interest rate on our national debt a fixed rate until the principle is all paid? You suggest that our “current interest rates” are locked in and the debt never gets rewritten at new prevailing rates. OH…how foolish. You obviously fail to understand what happened to home owners with variable interest rate mortgages when interest rates rose.

The liberal theory is that debt doesn’t matter and when inflation kicks in the debt is paid back with inflated (cheap) dollars. True, but the dollars in my pocket are worth less as well. But then, you don’t give a damn about that.

phx8 does not know a diddly about precious metals. Why is it that kings and rich people have for centuries acquired precious metals. It is because they have value. See how simple that is. Why did the US government have gold as its standard for decades, until the globalists changed it and allowed them to get the gold?

Much like Steven Daugherty he has his hands holding his balls and wants to call “hail mary” but he would sound like a soprano.

It is fun to watch all those words come out over the screen and have them say nothing. What sorrow.

hal farmis-
Smug ignorance of history is no substitute for a decent argument. Fact of the matter is, we got off the gold standard, because there are distinct disadvantages to having a monetary system where
A) your economy can only grow as large as your supply of Gold, and
B)trade imbalances can cause depressions, as gold goes over seas to back the dollars heading in that direction.

It actually used to be a common thing to talk about depressions, to see wide, wild swings in our growth.

It was a combination of the Depression, and the constraints the gold standard put on our system, and the later decay of the partially gold-based Bretton Woods system that spelled the end of the Gold standard. Most economists and business leaders haven’t looked back.

Rhinehold-
You know, I have a spreadsheet saved on my computer, so when you make your claims about revenues, I’ve got your number, and your numbers right in front of me.

Reagan passed his tax cuts in August 1981. Given your timeframe of two years, we find about one billion dollar’s difference in revenues between then and 1983, and the largest difference is about sixteen or seventeen billion dollars in increase in revenues the year before. Reagan, like Bush, only really picks up closer to his re-election.

Bush fares worse. Two years after his tax cuts, And things have gone strongly negative in terms of revenue growth. He doesn’t start ADDING to revenue, looking at FY2000 numbers, until 2005.

Tax Cuts just don’t do very much. They mainly add to the cash reserves of those who aren’t spending it all anyways. They don’t create new jobs, they don’t spend more, they save instead. Meanwhile, the rest of us pay for the deficits, for the most part, either in greater taxes later, in the services you reduce in the name of starving the beast, or in the monetary costs, either in inflation or interest rate hikes, that accompany the consequences of the deficits.

As for the amount of our debt, no it didn’t go down in absolute terms, but it did go down as a percentage of GDP under Clinton. It went up sharply under Both Bush and Reagan.

It’s mythology that these cuts are beneficial to the average person, to the economy as a whole, or that Democrats are worse in terms of constraining spending. For somebody who congratulates himself as a disciple of reason, you’ve not examined the foundations of your ideas closely enough.

As for your quotations, you’re typically selective. The other part of what I said was that the so-called forgotten man was the one who had to pipe up and make sure they were remembered when it came time to write policy. Passive people do not determine the agendas of the powerful. Politicians will respond to those who make it a point to intrude on their representatives’ bubbles.

Am I wrong? If you sit at home, and don’t vote, don’t write letters, don’t protest, what do you think happens in a system where the vote matters, where the squeaky wheel gets the grease? Maybe in some fabled fairytale land can you perfectly mind your business, and let some King or Queen decide public policy, but the reality is, in a Democracy, you have to be out there as an active citizen if you don’t want to be left in the dust by the system.

By the way, the two years when on-budget surpluses actually existed, were 1999, and 2000. Regardless of whether a fairminded review of off budget expenses or other issues would keep that number positive, can we not agree that moving that number in a positive direction is a good thing, and moving it the other way is not?

You argue equivalence, but the direction in which the policies go is quite different.

Royal Flush-
Oh, its a good question what they’re hedging against. It’s another question entirely whether what they’re hedging against will actually materialize. We have been priming the monetary pump like mad, and in any other time, we’d probably be getting double digit inflation out of it.

It’s the dog that’s not barking. The Gold Bugs have overinflated the market.

Speaking of inflation, they actually want a moderate amount. Sure, your money isn’t as valuable, but your debts aren’t as profound, either. It’s a product of an economy where speculative returns are positive. You only get deflation when everybody has to knock down prices to keep from going out of business. It’s the economy crunching down on itself. It also discourages financing of homes and vehicles.

Put another way, the main deflationary period of our economy recently was the Economic collapse and crisis. Are you eager to repeat that debacle?

Royal Flush,
Rising interest rates in the future may occur, but if they do, it will presumably be due to growth, maybe even overheated growth, and inflation may play a role too. Right now, the biggest investors in the world- banks, governments, billionaires- are investing and accepting interest rates that indicate they are unconcerned with that prospect, even over a 30 year period.

The fixed rate for Treasuries do not work the same way as variable interest rates for mortgages.

In general, the economic concensus is that some inflation- about one or two percent- is a good thing. Less than zero, and we enter a deflationary environment. That is very bad. Asset deflation destroyed the American middle class, partly because so much of its net worth was tied up by real estate, and partlly because refinancing after @ 2006 left so many homeowners underwater.

Since the economic collapse in 2007 - 2009, the economic growth has NOT been fueled by private debt. There has been refinancing, but not with the foolish terms prior to the collapse. We may be on slow ground, but we are on sure ground. Job growth has been almost exclusively limited to the private sector.

phx8

Our growth rate under Obama has slowed to a European style crawl. Obama calls that okay and blames the past.

Interest rates can go up for a few reasons. It seems unthinkable now, but rates for the U.S. could go up if lenders think that WE are a bad risk. This may happen if Obama keeps spending.

I find his behavior completely appalling. He is still playing the political game when he should be acting like a president. He wins in politics, but the country loses if we keep on spending. He is already taxing the rich. Now he will start taxing us. He is irresponsible, racking up debts and then just saying we need to pay the bills.

“and the later decay of the partially gold-based Bretton Woods system that spelled the end of the Gold standard. Most economists and business leaders haven’t looked back.”

They should look back. That paper we print without any backing is only borrowed time at work for the globalist’s

And look at the mess we are in. Of course Mr. Daugherty thinks we can spend ourselves rich. And of course economics is not Mr. daugherty’s forte. In fact he has exhibited ignorance about the subject. Others on this site have done likewise, eh phx8. Some of you guys just like to type something on the screen and see what happens. You really can’t believe some of this roadkill that gets spewed forth.

C&J-
Your boilerplate rhetoric has things backwards on all counts. It was your President who spent recklessly, without much of a peep from anybody. Why? Because he was emulating Reagan by cutting taxes and raising defense spending by immense amounts. It’s only after you lost elections, and needed to revive your party’s fortunes that you revised history to imply that Bush went out of control and did something you didn’t approve of. Never mind how much you howled and complained when we point this out to you the first time.

Obama, by contrast, has reduced spending from his 2009 starting budget, and revenue has grown under him. It’s not a cure for our deficit woes, but its certainly a good start.

You talk about European style governance, but the irony is, it’s the European countries that have attempted austerity as a means of dealing with the shortfalls caused by the financial crisis, and the general result has been an utter failure. Even the IMF, which was pushing this originally, now regards the policy as a failure.

You just talk about Europe because it’s become standard on the right to use Europe and its hybrid socialist/capitalist economies as boogiemen, in the absence of the old Soviet threat. The irony is, though, many of these governments cut back and engaged in full bore austerity, including the governments of the major debtor nations, like Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland and others. Even Great Britain got in the act.

Guess what? We’re recovering better than any of them, and all of them are deeper in debt, or at least not much further out of it.

So, yours is the European style, and I don’t say this in your pejorative fashion. I say this basically matching your policies to yours, and implying on pretty solid ground that your policy results will probably match theirs as well.

We need to repair the economy, and get back to matching our full economic potential before we start cutting back and seriously raising taxes. I know you fearmonger about taxes, but in case you haven’t noticed, Democrats have been very judicious about not letting tax rates go up on those who can’t afford it. You complain about the payroll tax cut fading out, but that was a replacement for a tax, which because of its origins as a stimulus program, your side was unwilling to continue. Perhaps we can get a replacement for that, but it will take the cooperation of the GOP, which seems to only like tax cuts when the rich get them.

Last, but not least, I have never heard Obama claim the economy is good enough. His consistent message, any momentary, misunderstood gaffes notwithstanding, is that the economy still has a ways to go on recovery.

Funny how you have to keep making up crap to get negative on Obama about. I never had that problem with Bush.

C&J,
It sounds like you think growth at a “European crawl” is a bad thing. Given the disaster of the Bush years and the failure of conservative economic philosophy, slow but steady growth sounds quite welcome. I much prefer it to the alternative you have supported in the past. How did those Bush years work out for you?

On a more general note…

Another victory for Obama with the Sandy relief bill. It passed the House. Once again, Boehner allowed the Democrats and a small number of Republicans to accomplish much needed legislation. It will happen again with the debt ceiling too. That’s what happens when you have great leadership. Even a gross and grossly incompetent opposition party can’t stop it forever. Roughly 180 Republicans voted against hurricane relief. Nice. They successfully making themselves worse than irrelevant… They’re about a popular as cancer. Oh, and a special thanks to all those wingnuts out there who trashed Christie’s chances of running for president. He was, by far, the best candidate out there for 2016, and thanks to the batshit crazy conservative movement, there won’t be a Republican left in NY or NJ.
Rick Santorum, anyone? Michelle Bachmann? How about Cain? You all must be very, very, very proud.

Stephen, My question to you is, Wasn’t it Obama who said in 2006 as a Senator and voted against it,”Raiseing the debt ceiling a sign of a failed leader,” is Obama a failed leader or just a hypocrit? he also said in his first run for the W.H. “the debt that the Bush administration accumilated is UNPATRIOTIC.” is his almost 17T in debt make him unpatriotic or just a hypocrfit again?

You know, I have a spreadsheet saved on my computer, so when you make your claims about revenues, I’ve got your number, and your numbers right in front of me.

So do I. Interestingly enough, I’m the only one willing to actually post them for everyone to see…

Reagan passed his tax cuts in August 1981.

To be phased in over three years, yes.

Given your timeframe of two years, we find about one billion dollar’s difference in revenues between then and 1983, and the largest difference is about sixteen or seventeen billion dollars in increase in revenues the year before. Reagan, like Bush, only really picks up closer to his re-election.

So, the policies that they put into place worked, just not quickly enough for you. According to you, a President should be able to put policies in his first year and see the fruits of those policies immediately.

Yet, when we get to Obama, we keep getting told ‘well he inherited a mess, give him time for his policies to make an effect’. Reagan inherited a mess, as did Bush. But they were supposed to have everything done immediately.

I love how you view national politics, Stephen, it’s like watching a 5 year old talk about nuclear physics.

So, let’e take a look at Reagan’s tax cuts for a second:

http://www.heritage.org/~/media/Images/Reports/B_1544_Chart_1lg_4/taxcuts2002.ashx

This is a link to a picture of a spreadsheet regarding those tax cuts and their impact on revenue, adjusted to 1996 dollars so they all match with inflation. Let’s see what we see.

Before the cuts, we were seeing around 48 billion dollar increases each year in revenue. As the recession took hold, those numbers decreased so tax cuts were put into place, spread over time. By 1985 we are seeing revenue increases above 50 billion dollars, and over the 8 year period the increases averaged 100 billion a year.

Now, would that have been possible without the tax cuts? Probably not. Maybe so. What we do know is that they DID increase over what they were before, so it is obvious that the tax cuts didn’t hurt in the long run, and according to the actuals, they helped double the increases we were seeing.

The same with Bush, while the revenues decreased with the recession and 9/11 reactions (a lot of people pulled money out of the economy for a couple of years after 9/11, in case you have forgotten) the tax cuts show large dividends as they approach 2004 through 2007.

Of course, the Democrats took over both houses of congress in 2007 and started enacting their policies at that time, and we see the direct result of that…

As for the amount of our debt, no it didn’t go down in absolute terms, but it did go down as a percentage of GDP under Clinton. It went up sharply under Both Bush and Reagan.

I guess this is as close to an admission that you were wrong that I am going to see from you, isn’t it Stephen. Yes, we agree that there were no surpluses during the Clinton years AND we agree that those years were still more responsible than Reagan, Bush I, Bush II and Obama.

Now, why is that? Let’s look at history. In 1994 a Republican house came into power on the promise that they would curtail spending. Once they did, they held Clinton’s feet to the fire on spending, going so far as to close down the government twice in order to ‘negotiate’ some spending cuts (not as much as they wanted, but at least some). Coupled with the internet boom, some sound policy decisions by Clinton and the Republican congress pushing their ‘minority’ agenda (as you would call it today) we saw some real progress in having a responsible government.

Bush started off that way as well, but when 9/11 hit all bets were off. Many in his party saw this as an imperative to deal with issues left percolating in the middle east for a decade. Military spending was on, wars were being fought. And while they should have both ended with in two years after being started, getting out of a war is just as easy as ending a failed government program. Too many partisans in the way to achieve anything meaningful.

Of course, you once again want to be simplistic on history and the economy, and you have every right to. But don’t expect those of us who actually understand what is going on to buy into that 5 year old’s view…

It’s mythology that these cuts are beneficial to the average person, to the economy as a whole

Then tell me why they are still in place? They were so bad, you say, why has the Democrats demanded that we have to keep those cuts for the good of the country? By your view, they should have been decommissioned four years ago, since they don’t HELP the economy, getting rid of them wouldn’t hurt it, would it?

or that Democrats are worse in terms of constraining spending.

Again, Stephen, who is in charge of authorizing our nation’s spending? It isn’t the president, it is congress. And history is very clear on who is worse at spending when both houses are controlled by the same party.

For somebody who congratulates himself as a disciple of reason, you’ve not examined the foundations of your ideas closely enough.

LOL, that’s funny…

As for your quotations, you’re typically selective.

In other words, you don’t want to address the issue. I get it, it’s not a winner for you, is it?

The other part of what I said was that the so-called forgotten man was the one who had to pipe up and make sure they were remembered when it came time to write policy.

Right, so we should operate our country on the ‘squeaky wheel gets the grease’ mentality. That’s nice…

Am I wrong? If you sit at home, and don’t vote, don’t write letters, don’t protest, what do you think happens in a system where the vote matters, where the squeaky wheel gets the grease?

In a system that is set up to protect those people from the abuses of the noisy busybodies, they shouldn’t have to. People should be allowed to focus on their lives, their local politics and making sure they are taking care of their family. Those people seldom have the TIME to protest, to write letters, etc.

Maybe in some fabled fairytale land can you perfectly mind your business, and let some King or Queen decide public policy, but the reality is, in a Democracy, you have to be out there as an active citizen if you don’t want to be left in the dust by the system.

That ‘fabled fairytale’ was the representative republic we put together. It wasn’t about a ‘king’ running things (like we have now with HRH Obama), it was about knowing that your rights were respected and sacrosanct. Not living in a country where your every choice is open to the use of force against you. The founders were very much against a democracy as you know because of just that reason.

By the way, the two years when on-budget surpluses actually existed, were 1999, and 2000.

Ah, the qualification… Of course, when Bush put some things ‘off budget’ to get close to a ‘surplus’ you scream bloody murder, but when Clinton does it… well, that’s ok! Typical.

Regardless of whether a fairminded review of off budget expenses or other issues would keep that number positive, can we not agree that moving that number in a positive direction is a good thing, and moving it the other way is not?

It most definitely is, and I have never said it wasn’t. Which is why I look to President Obama and am discouraged, as I was when Bush was spending too much. You seem to think I am defending or approve of Bush’s spending, I didn’t then nor do I now. But Obama has been worse. Had Obama governed like a Clinton, there would be little argument on that front. But he hasn’t.

You argue equivalence, but the direction in which the policies go is quite different.

Yes, it is different. Clinton pushed the numbers toward the black. Bush pushed the numbers toward the black. Obama has been pushing the numbers toward the red.

And to be fair, some of it isn’t his fault in the way you think. In another year or two our mandatory spending is going to be greater than 70% of our spending. We cannot operate without borrowing and there is nothing that can be done to stop that until we deal with those things that are causing that situation. It will continue to get bigger, especially with the addition of Obamacare. Bush at least tried to have a conversation about it, but the people were scared out of having that discussion. The 3rd rail, as it were. A good leader would stand firm and deal with those issues.

I haven’t seen a good leader in the United States in quite some time.

BTW, Stephen, I am still waiting on answers to the following:

* You said that we ‘deregulated’ during Bush’s tenure, yet hundreds of new regulations were passed during that time. Tell me exactly how and when we ‘deregulated’.

* Which federalist papers did you read that said that the founding fathers wanted the will of the majority to override the rights of the minority on all things without limit.

* Name one of my policies that are designed primarily to benefit an elite.

* Name one of my policies I support that make rich men richer, and poor men poorer.

They’re about a popular as cancer.

Or a parent telling a child they can’t do or have something that they want for their own good. People like phx8 throw a temper tantrum when that happens.

The problem is why are people in Idaho, Montana, Louisiana, etc responsible for the actions of those in New York who didn’t think to have insurance…? And if we bail them out, what is their motivation to get insurance for the next time this happens?

A large portion of that funding, from other states, is set to go to repairing the mass transit system in NY. Why is that their problem exactly? Especially after the horrible way NY handled the bailout of those services after 9/11…

There are some real questions here that you don’t seem to think need to be answered, perhaps it is that mentality of ‘don’t question it, just do it’ that rankles some people…

KAP, as Stephen said before, those are just ‘words’, it was a protest vote, it’s not hypocrisy since they were just expressing politics, not really going through with it.

You can evaluate the merits of that defense as you see fit.

Exactly Rhinehold, POLITICS. Democrats good, Republicans bad, and vice versa. Depending who is in power.

Rhinehold,
Am I understanding you correctly? You would turn your back on people because they somehow don’t deserve relief after a natural disaster?

I doubt you intend anything so hard-hearted. But if you side with those 180 or so Republicans in the House who voted against the Sandy relief bill, feel free to explain why.

Simple phx8 “PORK” which has NOTHING to do with Sandy.

You would turn your back on people because they somehow don’t deserve relief after a natural disaster?

Me? No, but the assistance given to them should be done voluntarily, not through forced conscript. There are many ways to help those that need it.

The majority of the aid is not going to those that need it, it is going to the state to help rebuild transit systems, etc. Should the people in other states be forced to help the city of New York?

Do you think it is ok to put a gun to someone’s head to make them help those who are suffering after a natural disaster?

KAP is absolutely correct. PORK.

I receive many telephone calls seeking donations for various causes. I always ask…are you a paid collector and if so, what percentage goes to the charity? Most times they are paid for their work and the percentage going to the charity is around 65 cents of every dollar collected.

Government PORK works much the same way. Legislators are asked to approve charity for some cause or other and reserve a significant portion of that charity for some other purpose…namely…PORK.

Stephen

You keep on telling me that Bush spent too much. But then you don’t want to stop spending.

If Bush got us all fat and bloated, why does Obama want to double to donut budget?

Whenever I tell you that we should go back to spending levels of 1999, you tell me that we cannot. So if you think Bush spent too much and you don’t want to go back to the spending levels before Bush, what is it you DO want?

I see that I am the 59th post to a thread initiated by an ideological loon. Those of you before me disputing his subjective blather are enablers. Stop it. Do you know what “waste of time” means?

I wrote an update on my efforts to try to prevent WW 3 here on this Website at the News Item Titled New Mexican President Wants to Focus on Economy at http://www.watchblog.com/democrats/archives/008273.html#comments .

We know that preventing WW 3 is most important, and the comment begins with the words: We know that the current American Government, or more correctly the Puppet English Colony of America knows that a future American Government could easily Evil, Despicable, and Detestable Dictators.

KAP-
My thoughts on this ridiculous argument of yours?

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.

I would rather have my President have a stupid position, and reconsider it, than be like the Republicans, and have passed a great many debt ceiling increases to keep the bills paid, and suddenly take on a more stupid position.

I thought the Iraq War was a mistake. John Kerry voted for it. But John Kerry reconsidered it, so I voted for Kerry over Bush, who didn’t revise his opinion to something smarter.

To use the debt ceiling to stop excesses of federal spending is like using a brick wall to stop a car instead of the ****ing brakes.

To use the debt ceiling to stop excesses of federal spending is like using a brick wall to stop a car instead of the ****ing brakes.

Unfortunately, the progressives have disabled the brakes…

Stephen, My thoughts on your ridiculous argument, I would rather have a President that takes a position and sticks with it to me that is a leader, then one that says one thing and does another. To me Obama is a HYPOCRIT and NOT a leader.

Stephen, My thoughts on your ridiculous argument, I would rather have a President that takes a position and sticks with it to me that is a leader, then one that says one thing and does another. To me Obama is a HYPOCRIT and NOT a leader.

Earlier this week, Fitch put the U.S. government on notice: Yes, it wants the debt limit raised without a major fight, but it also warned that the fundamental strengths of the country’s creditworthiness “are being eroded by the large, albeit steadily declining, structural budget deficit and high and rising public debt.” Without a credible medium term deficit reduction plan, the agency says, a downgrade of the U.S. credit rating is likely by the end of this year. Fitch isn’t the only agency to sound this alarm about unsustainably high debt levels. As The Wall Street Journal noted this week, all three rating firms “have implored lawmakers to lower the country’s debt relative to its economic output.”

That’s the real issue, the real reason we are having this ‘fight’ about the debt limit is not because Republicans are being thinkheaded (they are), it is because the Democrats are pretending there is no problem with debt and aren’t willing to do anything about it.

Rhinehold, thanks for the Fitch post. It is so true and the libs hate it. The reality is that the liberals don’t give a damn about our debt and merely want more “stuff” spoon fed to them by government at taxpayer expense.

I refer to Daugherty as “Doughboy” for a very good reason. He is a little boy who wants the dough from the government as he is unable to furnish the stuff he wants through his own efforts. He cares not a wit what it may cost others to satisfy his never-ending lust for the property of others. In a less polite society he would be called a leech. The bible calls it covetousness. Doughboy always writes as though he is advocating for others…what a sham…all the government goodies he champions for others are also for himself.

Sane people in the HOR understand that we must pay our debts. Money already spent is gone forever, however; money merely intended to be spent can be cut back. Cutting back on spending is not the same as defaulting on our debt. Liberals refuse to acknowledge the difference.

Rhinehold-
I don’t have to post it for everybody. The White House has already done that, and people who doubt my conclusions can look right at it, instead of settling for my sampling or yours of the data.

Personally, I think my conclusions hold up better than yours. Compare the increase in revenues between 1981 and 1984 to the one between 1994 and 1995. And yes, I am comparing Reagan’s first term to one year from Clinton.

That’s the point. Your calculus doesn’t add up to Clinton’s Arithmetic. Your assumptions don’t play out in reality.

You say,

So, the policies that they put into place worked, just not quickly enough for you. According to you, a President should be able to put policies in his first year and see the fruits of those policies immediately.

But you fail to register that I’m not talking about such small change improvements in revenues, especially with President’s raising spending very fast, as “successes”.

You also make excuses for Reagan and Bush, and say they were handed messes. Really? Comparable to What Obama was handed?

First, let me disabuse you of something: Carter’s mess was virtually cleaned up, as of 1981. Jobs came back in equal numbers to what had gone away (look through the BLS Numbers, add together the job losses and job gains, etc, if you want to check that conclusion) Carter’s recession ultimately cost him his job, being timed right in the middle of the election, but that’s not the mess that almost sank Reagan in his first term.

The recession that almost made a Carter out of Reagan, which yanked his approvals into the thirties, came entirely on his own watch, came almost together with this big tax cuts, and lasted for quite a long time. More to the point, it raised unemployment to 10.8%, and kept it above 10% for almost a year.

Reagan was saved by the relief of interest rates. His tax cuts had two years to recover the economy, and didn’t. As events which are more recent have a way of revising the math of voting more than distant memories, folks forgot about what came before, and celebrated the increases in the economy.

As for Bush 43? You must be joking. You realize, don’t you, that Bush didn’t see an actual increase in revenue his entire first term? And really, blaming 9/11 and the 2001 recession? That’s pretty bloody pathetic! He didn’t even have Reagan’s recession bearing down on him! He was out of that Recession by year’s end! The economy was growing, revenues should have been growing with it.

Instead, they shrink.

You also play a three-card monty with our readers, touting economic increases, but forgetting to tell the audience that both Reagan and Bush 43 increased their spending dramatically, both in terms of the years, and their administration’s terms. Reagan’s first term saw an increase of more than thirty percent in outlays!

(Let’s leave aside the matter of Reagan’s Tax increases!)

As for your history, get it right. The Republicans were elected in 1994, but they came to power in 1995. That’s how elections work. Their real first budget was that for FY1996. Democrats were responsible for FY1994. They increased taxes, constrained spending. But you know what? The economy was heading into a period of intense economic activity, so it bore up under the added burdens, and because of that, even if we don’t meet some standard of surplus under your definitions, even if we didn’t completely turn things back in terms of how much debt we owed, we were bending the trajectory of our budget and our debt in a better direction!

We were reducing that deficit. Do you agree with reducing the deficit?

We were constraining spending increases. Do you agree with that?

We grew GDP faster than we did our debt. Do you agree with doing that?

All these tricky-dick sort of nitpicks you come up with, seem to be for the purpose of discounting fiscal policy that moved things in the right direction, for the sake of fiscal policy that moved them in the wrong direction.

As for how you deal with my quotation? Again you botch the whole idea, and come out with an even more stupid conclusion.

The system is set up to protect people from nosy busybodies? First, I would say nosy busybodies are like lashes with wet noodles. It was more like we set up those protections to guard us against tyrants and political zealots. The Declaration of Independence didn’t complain about King George III peeping over our hedges.

No, the system was built to protect us against a government that would take its authority too far, at the expense of the law-abiding citizen’s ability to live in peace.

But that wasn’t all it was built for. You criticize my views as that of a five year old, so let me see how “five year old” this sounds to you.

The Framers came off of a period of great crisis, and the crisis wasn’t that they had a government that was too strong, but rather one that was too ineffectual. It was unable to pass laws, to effectively bring up an army, the interstate trade was a mess, everybody was printing money. What people wanted was a firmer hand on the tiller.

Ah, but that can end badly, can’t it? And some of the framers realized that. The checks and balances in the Constitution proper, and then the amendments thereafter, are a product of trying to create a government that had the power to act effectively where it needed to, and on the other side of things, butt the hell out where it wasn’t its business to intervene.

You seem to favor more of a tolerance for misgovernment, if you can forgo the evils of overbearing government. Others are willing to tolerate the evils of an overbearing government, if they can forgo the evils of a weak, ineffectual one.

But if you get the balance of when government is allowed, and not allowed to act right, then you get the strengths of both kinds of government, and less of the weaknesses. You get the strength you need to get things done, but with limits that permit you your freedoms. You get the freedom you need to live your life largely how you want it (no functional government can let you do whatever you want), but without the anarchy that makes such freedom pointless, even false in the real world (after all, if a gang takes over your neighborhood, are you really free?)

As for your questions?

First, the rules don’t have to reduce by number, just in effect. If your hundreds of new lines of regulation contribute to a laxer environment, it’s deregulation in spirit, if not in letters.

Second, give me a break. I never have promoted “the will of the majority to override the rights of the minority on all things without limit”. That’s just rhetorical BS. What they promoted was a government based largely on consensus, with mechanism in place to prevent minority factions from overriding the entire system.

Third, the Bush Tax Cuts. Take one look at the rates they set up, and take a wild guess at who got the biggest windfall. The Estate Tax. You have to have a considerable estate, or considerable land holdings for it to kick in. Again, the benefit is heavily loaded towards the elite.

There are more, but the tax policies just wave the red flag for those who look at actual rates.

Last one: If you support privatizing Social security, so people will end up investing part, most, or all of their social security deductions in the stock market, that’s a no-brainer. If you supported energy deregulation, there you go. If you supported taking the limits off of Wall Street’s behavior, there you go again.

Going on to the subject of disaster recovery?

I think it’s moronic not to help. We can’t really design a disaster proof society. Mother nature’s just too powerful. We will see necessary infrastructure, and well made, low-risk residential and commercial developments get hit, get destroyed. The longer things fester in their dysfunctional form, the longer the economy takes to recover.

Civilization requires maintenance, requires care. If we just fade back before any risk, we’ll soon find ourselves isolated from any reasonable prosperity. Put simply, **** happens, even to the best and most wisely built communities and cities.

You can fantasize about a world built by perfect reason which never suffers the consequences of an unwise or incorrect decision. Meanwhile, the rest of us will remind ourselves that civilization is human, and therefore fallible, and those that don’t take care of themselves don’t endure.

C&J-
What do I want? I want us to pay attention to what’s actually happening, instead of reading from some ****ing political textbook to get our ideas!

The problem is, your brand of politics is not only tone-deaf, it’s circumstance blind. You push policies, for rhetoric’s sake, that make no sense in the real world.

Austerity? Well, when we were growing, it was a good idea, we had strength in the economy to spare. But our economy must be the foundation of any return to fiscal balance, because with out it, you don’t have the money to put things back in balance.

Republicans seem to have a fiscal eating disorder, a binge-purge, starve-the-beast, governing through self-hatred of government sort of mentality. They don’t recognize that government feeds the economy, as much as it feeds from it, so the economy has to be healthy, in order to make our fiscal situation healthy. Just as exercising without eating can cause dangerous problems, inappropriate tax cuts can cause fiscal ones. But if we take too much from the economy, either in cut spending and jobs, or in increased taxes, it becomes a problem for the eocnomy, too.

Rather than torture ourselves, as the nations in Europe have, we should put ourselves back on the road to fiscal prosperity as quickly as possible, and then start austerity. More people with jobs means fewer people on assistance, too, fewer people drawing unemployment, more people giving back as they get back to work.

More people back to work means a faster growing economy. If you set your rates right, then, you’ll see a good increase in tax revenue.

But if you punish an economy with the expense of paying back debt, rather than doing more business, you will make a bunch of bond traders (like Rick Santelli) happy, but you won’t recover the economy, and that will put added pressures on the fiscal situation.

John Johnson-
Go to redstate, or free republic, or some other dittohead haven. This is a site founded for the purpose of discussions between people like me, and people like C&J. It’s not built to suit folks like you, who can’t handle anybody else getting to voice their opinions.

By the way, if you want to define waste of time, given your sentiments, why the hell are you bothering to even comment?

KAP-
I prefer leaders who fight to keep their actions correct, over leaders who fight to avoid looking like they were ever in the wrong. All people are fallible, will make mistakes, will make assumptions that aren’t backed by reality.

The question is, when the world shows you that you’re wrong, when the course you thought was right proves wrong or ineffective, will you have the guts to change course and do what you have to do, and take on the challenge of convincing people that was the right course, or will you instead try to spin and bull**** your way into not looking like you went back on a campaign promise or pledge to some dumbass lobbyist/politico?

I prefer people who take the responsibilities more serious than the rhetoric, the policy prioritized over the rhetoric and the politics. I prefer the people who figure out how to sell the right course of action when they change positions to accomodate reality, to those who are willing to **** up the policy in order to avoid looking politically inconsistent.

Royal Flush-
You refer to me as doughboy because you are not confident enough to attempt to win arguments without disparaging your opponent. You don’t have enough faith in your skills to address me as an equal.

The Republicans want to repair their reputation on fiscal matters, a reputation they destroyed through their foolish, though politically correct (as far as the GOP goes) actions. But this won’t be any more successful. Europe tells you that. They tried what the GOP’s attempting to force on us. They tried, and failed. The cuts gutted their economies, sent them into recessions that were deeper. And of course, with that, comes resistance to further cuts.

The economy’s got to heal. Your people are too impatient to prove yourselves to let that happen. That’s the irony.

As for “money that’s spent is gone forever?” If that was true, we wouldn’t have an economy. Every payment would mean a permanent reduction in fortunes. You fail to see these things in terms of cycles. You wave goodbye to the money, but in reality, it will come back next year, in somebody’s pocket, and they will spend it, save it, put it some other place in the economy.

The trick is the rate of flow in each critical place, in the economy, towards the government, and back from the government. Government, in order to preserve and promote the prosperity of the economy as a whole, must judge the right diversion and diffusion of money in terms of the economy as a whole.

It’s not something you can really fit on a bumper sticker, but policy in the real world often isn’t.

“Money already spent is gone forever,”

No, it is not, Royal Flush. It is circulating in the economy. You can get it back and retire some of that debt if you like. Just raise taxes.

It also should be noted about the Fitch analysis that it is concerned about development of a medium term deficit reduction strategy not an immediate or precipitous reduction of spending. The concern is to reign in government deficit spending as the economy improves but not to stall the recovery. Its a delicate balancing act.

Doughboy writes; “As for “money that’s spent is gone forever?” If that was true, we wouldn’t have an economy.”

How asinine! Have you never heard of “perishable” goods? Do we no longer need landfills and junkyards? How much of the $16.5 Trillion in borrowed money is still floating around waiting to be captured by your beloved obama dictated socialist government? Can we recycle money we spent in our stupid wars? Can we recycle money we spent in give-a-ways to other governments? Can we recycle money given to agriculture to not grow crops? I could go on, buy why bother giving examples to a fool.

Doughboy insists that reducing spending will crush our economy. He insists that there should be no limit to our debt. In reality, he is merely insisting that government continue to spoon-feed him at the expense of others.

Here’s a suggestion Doughboy. Eliminate the middleman and go door to door to your neighbors who you feel have more “stuff” than they need and insist that they write you a check. Knock on my door and you’ll get a swift kick in the ass.

Along comes Rich with some words of wisdom…”You can get it ($16.5 Trillion in debt) back and retire some of that debt if you like. Just raise taxes.

The hell you say! Tax every millionaire at 100% and you won’t get to $16.5 Trillion.

“Can we recycle money given to agriculture to not grow crops? I could go on, buy why bother giving examples to a fool.”

Royal Flush,

Why do you need to use insulting language? Particularly, when you are wrong about a very simple concept. What do you think happens to money spent by the government whether through tax revenue or deficit spending? Do you think the recipients and vendors destroy it? Sure, some of that money escapes our economy, particularly via the military in spending overseas. But, the vast majority is recirculated through the economy.

A tightly-packed stack of new $100 bills totaling $1 million would be about 4 feet high. A billion dollars, 4,000 feet high or equivalent to about three Sears Towers stacked on top of one another. That means a stack of $100 bills totaling $1 trillion would be 789 miles or 144 Mt. Everests stacked on top of one another. Now Rich, multiply that by 16. You can multiply…right?

$1 Trillion Would Buy: 41,999,160 NEW CARS

$1 Trillion Would Pay: A YEAR’S SALARY FOR 18 MILLION TEACHERS

$1 Trillion Would Earn: $12.9 BILLION OF INTEREST ON A ONE-YEAR CD paying a rate of only 1/29%

$1 Trillion Would Pay: ESTATE TAXES FOR 2,871 BILLIONAIRES

And Rich says it’s simple to pay off $16 Trillion of debt…just raise taxes.

Rich writes; “Royal Flush, Why do you need to use insulting language?”

I guess I caught something from David Remer when he was posting on WB. He couldn’t tolerate fools either.

Rich writes; “But, the vast majority (of government spending) is recirculated through the economy.”

Prove it Rich. Show me the $16.5 Trillion in debt that is being hoarded by someone or something.

Stephen, I prefer a President who says what he means and means what he says, not a President or any elected official at that matter, who changes his tune at any given moment. I prefer a leader who isn’t a hypocrit which we haven’t had lately and I include Democrat and Republican, both parties have their share of HYPOCRITS it just so happens YOUR PARTY has one in the chief position. Stephen I’ll ask you the same questions you posed to me, Will you do the same if YOUR PEROPLE screw up. I know republicans and democrats both screw up, Bush screwed up, but are you MAN enough to admit when Obama screws up? I doubt it. You haven’t guts enough or sence enough to know when DEMOCRATS are in the wrong.

I have an idea for my liberal friends. Let’s borrow a trillion and pay to send obama to some distant galaxy. A one-way ticket…of course.

Royal Flush,
The concept Rich is alluding to is the velocity of money. Here is a nice example from Wikipedia to help understand:

“If.. in a very small economy, a farmer and a mechanic, with just $50 between them, buy new goods and services from each other in just three transactions over the course of a year
Farmer spends $50 on tractor repair from mechanic.
Mechanic buys $40 of corn from farmer.
Mechanic spends $10 on barn cats from farmer.

then $100 changed hands in the course of a year, even though there is only $50 in this little economy. That $100 level is possible because each dollar was spent on new goods and services an average of twice a year, which is to say that the velocity was . Note that if the farmer bought a used tractor from the mechanic or made a gift to the mechanic, it would not go into the numerator of velocity because that transaction would not be part of this tiny economy’s gross domestic product.”

M2 & M3 measure this velocity.

The concept become important when it comes to various kinds of economic stimuli and brakes, such as tax cuts, tax credits, government spending v private spending, and so on.

It helps understand why the Bush tax cuts were so ineffective. The highest tax brackets did not spend the money. It was effectively wealth capture. By the same token, it explains why unemployment insurance is such an effective stimulus: it tends to get spent immediately, and re-enter the economy.

I’m not asking for judgments, just explaining a basic concept.

Thanks phx8…I am familiar with the concept and won’t argue about it.

With over $16 Trillion in debt the velocity of that much money should have sent our economy to the moon and beyond. It didn’t…why? Think of a sieve leaking with great velocity.

Your story about the farmer and mechanic reminds me of the “broken window fallacy”. I am sure you are familiar with it.

A hundred thousand people living on government largess, costing the tax-payers a hundred millions of dollars, live and bring to business as much as a hundred millions can supply. This is that which is seen. This is what liberals such as Daugherty proclaim is so good about deficit spending.

But, a hundred millions taken from the pockets of the tax-payers, cease to maintain these taxpayers and the businesses they support, as far as a hundred millions reach.

It is merely taking from one pocket and putting it in another pocket with no net gain.

“Prove it Rich. Show me the $16.5 Trillion in debt that is being hoarded by someone or something.”

I didn’t say it was being hoarded. I said it was circulating in the economy. It certainly wasn’t destroyed. Sure, some of it may the form of savings. What do you think happened to it?

Rich…see my comments above. I listed numerous examples. But, for you sake I will give a few more examples of borrowed money that will never return.

How do you recycle motor vehicles to their original value when worn out?

How do you recycle food that is eaten or worn out clothing to their original value?

How do you recycle worn out military equipment left in some God forsaken foreign land to its original value?

How do you recycle what was spent on some idiot that paid no attention in school, flunked out, and is now living on welfare?

How do you recycle the billions/trillions in lost home value to their original value?

Royal Flush-
I know it’s hard for you to understand, but currency circulates. The differences are in the rates and placements of that circulation. As much as you complain about debt going to China, what you’re essentially talking about is taking money that would probably be spent almost exclusively in economy, and send a great deal of it to China, and other countries, to pay them off, put money in their economies!

Money gets captured by the government, yes, but it also gets spent in our economy, through transfer payments like Medicare and Social Security, through government contracts, especially for the military (somebody gets paid here to assemble those planes, for example), or through the good and services that employees of the federal government either buy to run our country, or buy with their own salaries for their own needs.

So, when you cut spending and government jobs, you’re not doing the economy a favor. Because the economy is weak, and the deficits are there, more money is flowing into the economy than out of it, as far as the government is concerned. Your austerity will reduce that activity, and without the strength of a prosperous economy to make up for it.

You guys are borrowing trouble, instead of borrowing to improve the economy. You’re panicking about hyperinflation and loss of faith in our currency that not only hasn’t taken place yet, but shows no signs in the important indicators of our economy of even being about to occur. As a matter of fact, our dollar is trusted the world over, and we practically get paid by people to park their money in our treasury! (Where, in fact, it goes to fund the government our taxes don’t pay for).

Buy, you know, you just have to bring things to a head now, solve the deficit now, not like we did back in the nineties with a prosperous economy, but in this self-inflicted fiscal drag, which stalls a recovery we really shouldn’t be slowing down.

KAP-
What point to a man who believes everything he says, if he all too easily believes in the wrong things? Conviction and incompetence are a lethal combination.

Obama fulfills enough of his promises, but he’s also willing to be flexible enough with policy not to rigidly ramrod the country into one crisis after another, just to avoid some philosophical or ideological problem or contradiction. I want them to use the real world to gauge their results, not simply do political litmust tests to address the right or wrong of issues.

Stephen, When a person says what he means and means what he says dosen’t make him unflexible. It means he dosen’t flow with the whims of the few as Obama has done. One example is HCR a majority didn’t want what he gave yet he RAMRODED it through congress. Obama and his cronies are turning this great nation into a European style society that we have seen fail. If that’s what yoiu want then I can see why yopu are happy with him.

KAP-
I don’t know why you keep on insisting you know what I actually want. Has it occured to you that I’m not simply lying to get an unsavory agenda past you? That what I say I want and what I support are genuinely my opinions?

You’re just a partisan who sees the world strictly through a right-wing lens. You don’t even bother to consider whether something is right or wrong beyond the hackneyed standard of political positions.

What you don’t realize is that I’m perfectly willing to say Obama and the Democrats were wrong then. My consistency is in the policy angle of what is right or wrong. I don’t necessarily care whether the politics of it adds up. I just wish more people would wise up, and not play politics with the economy, and with this nation’s solvency.

I really much prefer to discuss things with people as adults, but far too often, we get into this political sort of adolescent bickering, and folks pretend that this a war their fighting, rather than a rivalry within a Democracy.

I’m constantly told what I believe by people who insist on ignoring me when I actually tell them what I honestly think. At heart I am a functionalist and a moderate. Yet people like you seem to think I’m to the left of Lenin!

I don’t consider being on any kind of assistance an ideal. But somehow folks like you think you’re right when you tell me I believe in being a leach on the system.

I don’t want to ban all guns. I’ve said as much But somehow, y’all think I want to do away with them all, have the government take over a disarmed society.f

I don’t want a debt-ridden, hyperinflated future for America, yet people again and again act like I’m some sort of Bond villain who wants to see America go down in flames.

It’s pretty ****ing tedious. You folks are clueless, fed a constant diet of propaganda that doesn’t even remotely resemble what everybody else sees. People think what you believe to be true are paranoid delusions. Nobody else thinks the government’s coming to get everybody’s guns. Nobody else thinks the President was born in Kenya. Nobody else thinks he’s a socialist. In fact, many of us look at him as being what a moderate Republican would have been in other times.

It doesn’t help that you guys run in ideological fear from any sources that could tell you the truth. And now the people who have fed you the BS for so long are getting desperate, so they’re feeding you more and more outlandish BS to get you more and more scared, so you don’t defect from supporting them, and as the ideological concentration gets more and more hardline, the conspiracy theories get more and more unbelievable to everybody else.

People look at the base of the Republican party, and see insanity and stupidity. Not because those citizens are themselves inherently insane or stupid, but because they’re believing things that folks know just aren’t true, and their leaders are getting away with doing the nuttiest, most insane things.

I never want my party to go that way. Better to lose an election or two every now and then, rather than become a party propped up by one ideologically driven fantasy after another.

I want my party in touch with reality for the practical reason that this is how good policy is made, and the political reason that a responsive, responsible political party sustains its power much more easily.

Stephen, Don’t you think us conservatives believe in things also. Sometimes we see the base of the Democratic party and see insanity and stupidity and YOUR leaders are getting away with the nuttiest and most insane things. Don’t you think we would like to see both sides come together and compromise on issues? Both Republican and Democrat need to quit acting like little children and start acting like adults, and don’t give me the crap that you democrats are acting like adults, YOUR NOT. Your side crys like little babies when they don’t get their way much like the republicans do. I would like to see both side get in touch with reality and that is how good policy is made. We CANNOT have a good Nation when all policy is one sided.

“You’re just a partisan who sees the world strictly through a left-wing lens. You don’t even bother to consider whether something is right or wrong beyond the hackneyed standard of political positions.”

Sorry the last was not a quote, just a paraphrase.

Mr. Daugherty writes; “You’re panicking about hyperinflation and loss of faith in our currency that not only hasn’t taken place yet, but shows no signs in the important indicators of our economy of even being about to occur.”

I don’t detect panic by conservatives, but rather, a realistic conclusion that a current debt of over $16 Trillion, likely to grow another $4 Trillion if the left has its way, is a threat to the future of our nation and its people.

Let me address it this way. Many people are panicking about Global Warming because there are signs that the world is warming and they extrapolate that into dire future consequences. Because you espouse this scenario, you want and insist that action be taken today to curb detriments to our future.

If that is reasonable, why is it not just as reasonable to understand the conservative position on debt and fiscal responsibility?

KAP-
Oh, I know you believe things. The problem is, you don’t anything moderate what you believe, not even reality itself.

I tried to get people like you to compromise, to admit mistakes, admit problems. I spent years doing this! But even as the failures stack higher and higher, rather than change your minds, you’re insisting on continuing the same old problematic policies.

I can compromise with conservatives just fine. It’s compromising with policies that don’t work I’m trying to avoid, because I hate repeating things that are wrong, just for the sake of pleasing others.

hal farkis-
Logic dictates that it takes more than just the exchange of subjects to bring truth value of a given statement. I don’t suppose you have any interest in explaining exactly why that statement applies to the reality of the Democrats.

Royal Flush-
Is it a realistic conclusion? Sure, it’s not the most ideal situation, and yes, we should start paying down that debt, or at least reducing its growth to where inflation and GDP outpace it, but if it really was a clear and present danger to this country, you’d see investors fleeing from the dollar and the treasury bonds.

But investors believe we will pay our creditors back. That’s why people charge so little, less than inflation even, to park their money in treasury bonds.

Ask yourself a question, concerning that 4 trillion: If Romney had won, would there be all that much less spent?

As far Global Warming goes? Man, this is what gets me. Over here, where you’re predicting that our national debt is a crisis-level problem that needs top priority, what evidence do you have? Anybody fleeing the dollar, investors refusing to pay for treasury bonds at current yield rates?

No, none of that. But you panic anyways.

But we have record temperatures, on a regular basis, across the country, we have the consensus of the specialized scientists who investigate the matter, we have all kinds of wierd weather, more intense storms and droughts, we have all these quirks of the global temperature that are working out as predicted, and no, it must be a hoax. No reason to do anything.

We have ample evidence that not only is warming a future problem, it’s a present problem, too.

No evidence that we’re experiencing a debt problem = panic. Plenty of evidence we’re experiencing climate change = hoax.

Of course we do have a real problem, right now: an economy that is far behind where it would have been had it not been for the financial crisis. That we have plenty of evidence for. And really, if we want to solve the fiscal problem, as history shows us, we ought to be improving the economy, because that undercuts the deficits- more revenue, less money going out to pay for unemployment and other benefits people need because they’ve been made poorer.

So, I think we have a better case for tilting policy towards taking care of the economy, and dealing with climate change, than we have for austerity to deal with the deficit. In fact, we have plenty of evidence, thanks to the unwitting experiments in Europe, that austerity in our current economic situation is ill-advised.

I believe in moderating policy based on results. Political ideologies are not ready-made solutions. We need to look beyond them, look beyond what our limited imaginations can anticipate.

Stephen, When are you going to admit mistakes? You have your liberal/progressive ideals that YOU won’t budge on so why do you think a conservative should give in to your way of thinking? I have yet to see you admit that Democrats have made a mistake, yet you have the gaul and audasity to critisize conservatives. Since 2006 all, I have heard out of you is Democrats good, republicans bad. Republicans should be like us Democrats BS. It’s time, Stephen, you grew up and smelled the BULLS**T your trying to push.

Daugherty writes; “In fact, we have plenty of evidence, thanks to the unwitting experiments in Europe, that austerity in our current economic situation is ill-advised.”

OH…Really? This excerpt is from: http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2012/06/01/the-myth-of-european-austerity

“And their solution is entirely predictable: austerity critics call for additional debt-fueled stimulus spending, despite the fact that trillions have already been spent to kick-start the European economy, to little effect.

However, it turns out that those blasting Europe’s experience with spending restraint omit some critical facts. Contrary to what you may have heard, spending cuts have largely been lacking in Europe’s economic crisis response. Instead, in most European nations, austerity has mostly taken the form of higher taxes. We shouldn’t be surprised Europe is struggling: when you raise taxes in a weak economy, it has a negative effect on investment and economic growth.

In fact, most countries in Europe are spending more today than they did before the 2008 crash, according to financial reports from the European Commission, the European Union’s executive arm. Yet austerity critics want to attribute the sluggish European economy entirely to spending cuts. France and the United Kingdom, for example, have made virtually no effort to cut spending; they’ve seen spending increase nearly every year over the last decade.

Many European nations have embraced the so-called “balanced approach” strategy, meaning a combination of tax increases and spending cuts. Unfortunately, that approach has disappointed. Those nations that have followed a purer course of spending restraint, like Estonia, have seen superior growth. On the other hand, while countries like Greece and Italy have cut some spending, they’ve undermined their progress by raising taxes at the same time.

Moreover, that “balanced approach” is rarely all that balanced. In most cases, tax increases have been larger and more quickly implemented than spending cuts. For example, only about 30 percent of the budget cuts the United Kingdom had slated to go into effect between 2010 and 2015 have been implemented, according to a May 14 report in the Wall Street Journal. The tax hikes, however, are securely in place.

Critics of “austerity” would have you believe Europe is suffering because they have embraced radical frugality, cutting public spending and turning away the poor and needy. The evidence proves that’s not true.

Yes, European nations are struggling with economic woes, but those woes don’t stem from spending restraint—they stem from a broad variety of factors, including high levels of taxation, fractious E.U. politics and the hard demographic realities of an aging population demanding greater levels government support.”

Royal Flush,

After reading your post on EU austerity, I went to the most recent Eurostat data on unemployment in the EU area. Since initiation of austerity in 2010, unemployment in the EU area has trended dramatically upward and industrial production down. Unemployment is now above 11%. This is what one commentator on the Eurostat site had to say:

“We are living in interesting times for economic theorists. To face the same crisis, the Euro Area and the United States are following very different paths. And I think it should be clear by now which one is going somewhere. Just compare these numbers [EU unemployment]with the US numbers and it’s not too bold to say that it’s not by reducing government participation in the economy or with austerity measures that economies thrive.”

We need to remember that while our economy is struggling, it is doing better than other western industrial nations in recovering from the collapse of 2008.

We should also remember that the most important factor in reducing our federal deficit is economic improvement, particularly reducing unemployment. No other factor comes close.

The focus of fiscal discussions should be on economic stimulation and jobs. If we solve that problem, we solve the deficit problem or at least make it manageable.

Mr. D.
As long as you are in denial of anything real and logical, it does no good to show you the error of your ways. You are so deep into the doo-doo that you cannot possibly see the truth. You know, that pesky word truth. Since you cannot acknowledge truth how does one present anything that has truth or logic. For you it just doesn’t work.

Rich writes; “After reading your post on EU austerity, I went to the most recent Eurostat data on unemployment in the EU area.”

And…promptly changed the subject.

Royal writes: why is it not just as reasonable to understand the conservative position on debt and fiscal responsibility?

Because conservatives elected George W. Bush twice. They not not only supported, but demanded that we borrow vast amounts of money from China instead of raising taxes to pay for a war.

Don’t forget, your side mocked John Kerry and called him a flip-flopper when he tried to change a bill that would have been exactly what you are asking for. Tax cuts for the wealthy would have ended and the true cost of at least some of the war would not have been put on the credit card.

Alas, conservatives brought out their flip flop sandals at their convention and relentlessly mocked a position that they now say is imperative to our economic future. I suppose this may be the reason many people believe that their position is not reasonable nor understandable.

I wrote a few more comments on my efforts to try to prevent WW 3 here on this Website at the News Item Titled New Mexican President Wants to Focus on Economy at http://www.watchblog.com/democrats/archives/008273.html#comments , and we know that preventing WW 3 is most important.

Economics… Tricky subject… Maybe the elite don’t want the general population to be made in the shade because that would be an extreme diminishment of their power. The people might decide to go with direct current batteries to heat the buildings instead of natural gas from fracking. The people might decide that being told who your new enemies are is nothing more than a stick hitting a hornets nest, and the people don’t want to be hornets anymore. The people might decide they really don’t need to own the bridge in Brooklyn. Etc., etc., etc…

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