Democrats & Liberals Archives

Maybe the problem is that after four years of Obama policies, the economy is still weak.

Your article states, “The drop in gross domestic product was driven by a plunge in military spending, as well as fewer exports and a steep slowdown in the buildup of inventories by businesses.”

So is Obama going to raise military spending?

I choose to echo Winston Churchill when he said; “I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.”

Or, Frederic Bastiat who wrote; “Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.”

“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.”

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2012/06/01/the-myth-of-european-austerity

The disappointing GDP report partially reflects concern over future austerity and sequestration. Defense spending contracted a lot, possibly in anticipation of cuts in the next few months; but there was also an anomalous draw down in inventories, and Hurricane Sandy probably played a major role. Meanwhile, many of the other numbers looked solid, and that conclusion is reflected in the muted response by equity markets.

In the coming quarter, the recent end of the payroll tax holiday will act as a brake on the economy, and so will real defense spending cuts (once they finally happen). But that’s ok. It’s like tapping on the brakes, as opposed to slamming them to the floor, which was what was threatened with the fiscal cliff scenario. Those stimuli needed to end sooner or later. It’s the responsible approach, even if it means slower growth than we’d all like to see (say, 1.5% instead of 2.5% GDP growth), and if tapping the brakes is spread out over a year or more, it will help put our fiscal house back in order in a timely fashion.

C&J-
I think the better way to put it is that he will likely reduce it at a slower pace.

Royal Flush-
The economies that tried the “austere our way out of economic trouble” approach have failed, the IMF itself, which recommended the austerity, has admitted as much.

Ah, but you’ve got a dogma to uphold. Sorry.

Borrowing for prosperity is not a universal solution. It’s not appropriate at all times. I’ve never held so universal a rejection of austerity as you have give me of Keynesian stimulus (at least when that stimulus is not a tax cut. Somehow you don’t put two and two together on Bush’s tax cuts, though they were all called stimuluses)

I don’t understand your quote Doughboy, if austerity was not tried…how could it fail? Are you reading your comic books again for information?

When government borrows a dollar to put 50 cents in your pocket so you will pay a tax of 5 cents hardly makes sense. No matter how much water you pour into the leaky bucket, it will not raise the water level if you don’t fix the leaks.

Liberals (and the EU) advocate a larger bucket, more water, and even more leaking holes in the bucket. And then, they scratch their heads and asses wondering why the bucket doesn’t fill. Stupid is as stupid does.

The fundamental flaw in your economic assumptions, Royal Flush, is that you assume taxes make money disappear. The money does not simply disappear. Most of it circulates back into the economy. Furthermore, the taxes can be consciously directed by a citizen’s government to address the needs of the citizenry.

Do a simple thought experiment. Consider countries with no taxes. By your logic, they should be the strongest economies. However, those countries are the weakest and poorest ones in the world.

Gun ownership is very, very high in such places.

Next, consider countries that have high taxes. By your logic, those should be weak economies. However, nations like Germnay, France, Switzerland, Finland, and the Scandanavian nations have the strongest economies in the world, AND actually have greater social mobility than the US.

Gun ownership is very, very low in those places.

Royal Flush-
You make no ****ing sense.

First of all, the money to pay for the deficit spending comes from other countries. It has to. The government doesn’t simply issue IOU, it pays those folks real money. That’s what the debt ceiling is about.

Now where does that money go? It goes to businesses that do work for the government, doing things from paving roads to designing and building those drones that fly over Central Asia.

Those people, in turn, pay money into our economy through their spending.

It goes to government employees at all levels, who, like the contractors, pay into the economy through their spending.

It goes to healthcare companies, senior citizens, the disable, and the unemployed, who-guess what- pay it back into the economy.

In other words, trillions worth of that money go right back into the economy. It’s a feedback cycle, not simply a single transaction.

Austerity almost always puts the brakes on the economy. The question is, is the economy going fast enough to afford to lose some speed.

These economic figures tell us the simple truth: it’s not.

Royal Flush-
As for austerity having not being tried, Am I wrong, or did we pass a whole mess of austerity measures in 2011 as a condtion of extending the debt ceiling?

I know it’s not real austerity by your rather biased estimation, but if we actually look at real spending, it’s there on the schedule, signed into law. The reduction in Defense spending, in advance of the sequestration is real, and now amount of the failure of your memory or attention to catch that fact changes it.

I’m sick of your side’s fiscal relativism. It’s time acknowledge what has, and has not happened.

phx8 begins with a statement not backed by facts or criteria…”nations like Germnay, France, Switzerland, Finland, and the Scandanavian nations have the strongest economies in the world.”

In fact, a quick google search will prove his statement to be incorrect.

He then equates the lack of gun ownership with a strong economy…to be believed by his brain-impaired fellow liberals.

He compounds his inaccurate reporting by imputing that I believe no taxes are necessary to fund government having taken that assumption from the same (brain-numbing) thin air in which he found his other “facts”.

He declares…”you assume taxes make money disappear. The money does not simply disappear. Most of it circulates back into the economy. Furthermore, the taxes can be consciously directed by a citizen’s government to address the needs of the citizenry.”

Well said “comrade”. The money that disappears from my pocket magically appears in someone else’s pocket, after having been reduced substantially by government. My tax money has been “consciously directed” (translation…confiscated by force) to a fellow “comrade” more deserving of it.

Poor phx8, he inadvertently allowed his Marxist philosophy slip into his comments.

Wow…what an example of flummery the Doughboy has given us. Let me sum up.

“the money to pay for the (United States) deficit spending comes from other countries.

“It (the borrowed money) goes to businesses that do work for the government.”

“trillions worth of that money go right back into the economy.”

And…magically, the borrowed money never has to be paid back. More comic book crap Doughboy.

Then, to add fuel to his smoking brain, he writes; “As for austerity having not being tried, Am I wrong, or did we pass a whole mess of austerity measures in 2011 as a condtion of extending the debt ceiling?”

WOW…we have tried austerity and it doesn’t work. Just imagine how demented one must be to write…we increased our borrowing limit to reduce our spending.

I rest my case. Liberals are mentally impaired.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window

Rhinehold, I recall the first time David Remer and I discussed the “broken window parable”. It was a rousing debate.

RF,
“The money that disappears from my pocket magically appears in someone else’s pocket, after having been reduced substantially by government.”

How does the money become substially reduced?

Ever hear the phrase ‘no taxation without representation’?

In one sense, taxes represent “forcible confiscation” because we pay taxes for what “We, the people” determine to be necessary, regardless of whether we agree with every single one of those uses. The penalties for not paying are harsh. In another sense, it is not forcible at all, because we vote. We have representation in the government. We are free to stay in this country, and we are free to go. Here, we have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Staying means participating in the society, in the government, and benefitting from everything our government provides.

As for the relative strength of national economies… Are you saying the US has the strongest one in the world? Because if you really believe that, it undercuts everything else you say. Perhaps you are a much, much bigger fan of the Obama administration than you care to admit? Or are you merely confusing biggest with strongest?

David Mamet said:

My grandmother came from Russian Poland, near the Polish city of Chelm. Chelm was celebrated, by the Ashkenazi Jews, as the place where the fools dwelt. And my grandmother loved to tell the traditional stories of Chelm.

Its residents, for example, once decided that there was no point in having the sun shine during the day, when it was light out—it would be better should it shine at night, when it was dark. Similarly, we modern Solons delight in passing gun laws that, in their entirety, amount to “making crime illegal.”

Since phx8 brought up gun I thought I would equate this to what Democratics think.

Also, from Stephen Daugherty’s link, his shortest piece ever:

We’re being more austere than we need to be,” he said. “The economy isn’t growing that fast and you don’t want to be taking away stimulus now.”

On a side note to Royal Flush.
Am I to understand the term “Doughboy” to be a distortion of Stephen Daugherty’s moniker? If so, I, speaking only for myself, would encourage you to show some respect for the moniker and perhaps use another term to show your frustration with his posts. I frequently use the term Democratics because I have found it does get under Stephen Daugherty’s skin. :)

We’re being more austere than we need to be

We are now spending double what we spend just 12 years ago…

Again, I don’t think the word austere means what Stephen thinks it means.

Defense spending is up more than 70 percent in real terms since 2001 and the U.S. spends about five times more on national security than the next-closest country. In fact, the U.S. spent $928 billion on security in 2012. If we can’t cut military spending now - with two wars winding down and a mounting pile of debt - we don’t really have a society worth fighting for anyway.

Weary Willie,
In England, there are @ 35 gun-related deaths each year. In the U.S., there are @ 30,000.

The English still have guns, of course. But hunters have their weapons kept under lock and key at a gun club. Individuals can apply for a gun for self-defense, but need to prove to a judge that they are under a very real threat.

The English see many of the same movies as us, and they have access to the same video games, yet their society does not experience all those gun deaths. Crimes still occur. It’s just that people are less likely to get killed when they happen.

The most likely victim of death by gunfire is the gun owner or family member. Each year, 19,000 of those 30,000 gun-related deaths are suicides.

phx8 asks…”Ever hear the phrase ‘no taxation without representation’?”

Well yes, that does have a familiar ring. What we have now, for about half our adult population, is representation without taxation.

You named, “the strongest economies in the world” not me. You still fail to produce the evidence for your statement and attempt to change the subject.

Weary Willy asks…”Am I to understand the term “Doughboy” to be a distortion of Stephen Daugherty’s moniker?”

I consider Daugherty to be boyish in his political thinking and one who is always seeking free Dough…thus…Doughboy.

I would never write that Daugherty is frustrating…just intentionally misinformed.

From: http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/us_defense_spending_30.html

2013 Budget in billions

Military Defense $701.8
Government Pensions $878.5
Health Care $916.1
Welfare $422.3
Interest on debt $247.7

I don’t know why I bother sometimes explaining the nuances of my arguments. They’re lost on intelligence-insulting hacks.

Folks who haven’t noticed that I have never denied that the money will be paid back, that I have always said that deficit spending now will require austerity later, both in tax increases and in spending decreases.

What I’ve said though, is that austerity is unnecessarily punishing in times like those we’re going through now, and should be put off for the times where the economy is strong enough to carry the burden.

If you can’t read, or comprehend what you read well enough to recognize that is, and always has been my position, then your comments are going to be correspondingly lacking in relevance to my main points.

The simple fact is, just the starting austerity from the sequestering tax cut has been enough to send us back into economic contraction.

Never mind all the hare-brained cuts the morons in the GOP have planned, the ones that have already gone through are already taking a healthy economy with lots of job growth and economic growth otherwise, and dragged it into contraction.

It is explicitly the drop in military spending that is blamed for the contraction, for the most part, a historic drop. If Republicans were right, and this sort of austerity didn’t do any harm, we wouldn’t be talking about a contraction here, not of any kind.

But as this recent drop shows, such austerity does have an effect.

Republicans continue to believe that the calculus of fiscal economics will overcome the arithmetic of it, that the secondary effects of their dream policies will counteract their primary effects. But so far, tax cuts have not triggered economic or fiscal rebound, and spending cuts, in this case, have not created one either. They’ve only dragged the economy down, where otherwise the private sector would have had it improving.

It’s time for the Republicans to face facts: the Laffer curve was a con-job, meant to get middle class Americans to become complicit with deficit spending that comes at their expense, but does not profit them much on either side of the equation. Rich people just don’t want to pay taxes, and rather directly ask people for tax cuts, with predictable results, they resorted to some sort of voodoo economics, which, as it turns out, is no better than fiscal superstition. Neither Bush nor Reagan’s cuts created economic booms, and both burdened the economy with further deficit and debt by their actions.

The jobs markets did not get monumentally better in either Reagan or Bush’s first terms, and both did not do well compared to their predecessors Any appearance of economic boom on their part has to be measured from the bottom of their mediocre first terms. Clinton’s job creation was much better than either Bush or Reagans.

And if you point out that he had a booming economy to help him? Boom! Thank you! You just made my point!

The economy has to be fixed first. It will get people paying taxes rather than drawing benefits. It will encourage those we could realistically expect to get back into the economy to return, and again become good taxpayers again.

Also, and this is key here, you can be austere, push down growth in order to pay off debt much better if you have some growth to spare. If you cut spending in a time of economic weakness, you not only face the risks of contractions like we’re going through right now, but you also create political resistance to austerity, as people’s need for assistance grows, and the political price for denying it to them grows with it.

Yeap, the liberals insistence on cutting military spending is jumping up and biting them in the ass. But that doesn’t matter to them. After all, all Bush’s fault.

Stephen
So the best way to get out of financial hard time is to spend more than what is coming in. Then borrow and spend even more.
I’ll have to remember that next time sales slow down at the factory or store.

At 701.8 billion for military defense, conservatives recognize and call for the elimination of waste.

Rhinehold writes; “the U.S. spends about five times more on national security than the next-closest country.”

Part of the rationale for spending so much is that we have accepted the role of planet policemen. When we agree that we don’t want that role will another nation step into that role? How will that affect our security? Or, can the planet do without being policed by anyone, for any reason?

I would ask Rhinehold if our spending in Government Pensions, Health care, Welfare, and interest on debt…all of which are at least “five times more than the next closest country” should also be reduced?

Doughboy writes; “Folks who haven’t noticed that I have never denied that the money will be paid back, that I have always said that deficit spending now will require austerity later, both in tax increases and in spending decreases.

What I’ve said though, is that austerity is unnecessarily punishing in times like those we’re going through now, and should be put off for the times where the economy is strong enough to carry the burden.”

Why is it for a liberal that spending is always urgent NOW…and austerity can be practiced LATER. Could Doughboy describe the austerity we experienced the last time the economy was strong enough to carry the “burden”. It certainly hasn’t occurred anytime during the buildup of our $16.5 Trillion debt.

Why is government on a “budget” a burden? Hell, we don’t even have a budget.

Weary Willie-
Glad to see you’re admitting that you just use that term to annoy me.

As for what Mamet says? Gee, making crime illegal. What a thought. Since people are going to murder, lets not criminalize murder. Since people are going to steal, lets not criminalize theft. We’ll see far fewer reports of those crimes, then!

We make crimes, crimes, so we can punish people for them.

As far as the stimulus goes, it worked fine. When we enacted it, you saw a substantial increase in the GDP, and the back of the recession was broken. If anybody thinks a recession killing almost a million jobs a month was going to resolve itself, I’d like to ask them how. They assume that it was some sort of market correction, and neglect the dysfunctional state of Wall Street and other avenues of finance. They neglect the credit crunch and the breakdown in the derivatives market.

And why not? acknowledging those things would compel changes in policy it’s against their laws to change. They are the ones who have decided that now, after their laissez faire policies have become discredited in the public’s eyes, is the perfect time to double down on them. They are the ones who have decided that now is the time to impose austerity, when history and contemporary activity in Europe has demonstrated that austerity in times of economic troubles is ill-advised.

If anybody’s decided it would be better for the sun to shine at night, it’s conservatives, because they expect after their credibility and popularity was dashed on the rocks of the Bush Administration that people will be more eager than ever to avail themselves of their policies, a number of elections and public opinion polls notwithstanding. They’re even underwater in parts on gun control now, something that surprises even me at this point!

Ron Brown-
The severity of the cuts is a result of the sequester. The sequester is a result of the debt ceiling compromise, meant to bite Conservatives in the ass if they didn’t come up with a deal. The debt ceiling compromise is a direct result of the debt ceiling fight, which the Republican and Republicans alone decided to have. Democrats would not have refused to pass a clean increase, now would they?

So, QED, the immense drop in defense spending is a direct result of the Republican’s playing chicken with Obama over the debt ceiling.

As for deficit spending? You pay it back when you’ve got the economy to support it. You raise the taxes you have to raise, cut spending back. I keep saying it, and you folks keep ignoring it. Am I not the spendthrift Democrat you would like me to be? Are you simply arguing against me as if I were?

I think people are going to notice you’re not arguing with the person who is actually responding back.

Rhinehold-
I know what austere means. Question is, do you understand that regardless of what you’re doing, austerity costs the economy something? The IMF, after trying to squeeze the blood from the stone for the last few years, has concluded that economies engaged in austerity, which includes both tax increases and spending decreases, have generally grown slower than they were expected to, contracted in many cases. Greece, in fact, having undergone the most austerity, has deviated furthest from its predicted growth!

Rather than save Greece’s economy, use the confidence fairy’s magic dust to sprinkle investment upon the landscape, the austerity has made it more difficult to start up businesses, more difficult to get the customers needed to reward entrepreneurs and send consumers around with disposable incomes.

You can’t pay bondholders back at the expense of everybody else and expect growth. One way or another, you’re putting money in the hands of America’s creditors, rather than in the hands of people driving the economy. Now if you have enough economic juice to spare, that might work. But if you don’t? You’ll see the kind of recessions you saw in the Seventies and eighties, and the one in the early nineties, driven by drops in government spending, rises in interest rates, and other monetary troubles.

The irony is, for all their complaining of the economic damage of the Fed’s policies and fiscal stimulus (which Republicans were fully willing to support in the form of tax cuts, even as late as Early 2008) The Republican’s policies are the only thing really hurting the economy right now.

Will the GOP let the economy heal, or are we in for years of slow growth just so the GOP won’t cripple our economy by pitching a fit with some critical part of the system?

“Paul Krugman is a noble man. If he could, with his bright mind, he would free us from the costs of our foolish economic decisions, many of which he has recommended. He is the blackjack player, deep in debt, who knows he can outsmart the house.

On our behalf, with his infallible system, he’ll keep doubling his bet every hand until he wins back our money — unless he hits the house limit or a run of bad luck empties his pockets first. That is not an uncommon fate for the adversaries of austerity.

Genuinely bright people built Las Vegas on the arrogance of such men.”

http://www.cnn.com/2012/06/07/opinion/castellanos-austerity-cure/index.html

“On June 17, the world will come to an end, as it often does. Ripples from Europe’s unraveling will begin traveling to America. Greece will have an election. Greeks will vote to make Germans work until they are 67 so they can retire at 50. They will vote to make someone else pay their bills, fund their holidays and support their benefits.

They will be lectured about this by an American president who asks his own nation to make China pay its bills, fund its holidays and support its benefits. We can only hope he does it from the Hellenic state of California, which has also attempted to outsmart austerity. Remarkably, it hasn’t grown jobs, just debt.”

Stephen
The severity of the cuts is a result of the sequester.

Sequester didn’t happen. Remember, the Republicans caved to y’all in order to keep taxes from going up on everyone.

As for deficit spending? You pay it back when you’ve got the economy to support it.

Tell that to your bank when they want repayment for loans you have out.

You raise the taxes you have to raise, cut spending back.

The problem here is that taxes are raised but spending is never cut.

I keep saying it, and you folks keep ignoring it. Am I not the spendthrift Democrat you would like me to be? Are you simply arguing against me as if I were?

Maybe Stephen it’s because you keep coming off as a spendthrift Democrat.
Nobody in financial trouble has ever spent themselves out of it. What make y’all think that the government can do it?

Ron Brown-
I’m afraid they never got around to dealing with the spending cuts, just the tax cuts.

On the subject of what I tell my bank?

Well, I’m not a sovereign nation with millions of citizens whose economic potential I can tap to pay back my creditors. That’s one reason people are still willing to loan us money. Also, I don’t think a bank would object to a debtor improving their economic situation. I think my creditors would love it if I had more money to pay them back with, yours as well.

As for your next problem? You don’t necessarily have to reduce government spending absolutely. You can reduce its growth sufficiently that your revenues grow faster than your spending, which sets up the conditions we saw at the end of the Clinton Administration.

As for your last comment?

I love these nice neat little aphorisms. Pardon me, though, but didn’t your party just support and defend a man for President whose entire business was based on running up huge amounts of debt on a company’s behalf to supposedly pay to restructure and rehabilitate it?

Okay, bad example. But really, all kinds of different companies issue debt in the form of bonds in order to pay for things, in order to expand business and do other things. Americans improve their lifestyles and their wealth everyday by paying for cars and houses with debt financing. In fact, it’s a rare exception when people don’t pay for a car or house through debt financing.

So, people endebt themselves all the time in order to improve their lives, and businesses endebt themselves all the time to improve their bottom line.

The key is your ability to pay it back.

Also, if your alternative is decades worth of weak to recessionary economic results, I don’t see how you’re really saving money. What you gain by not having the debt you lose by not having the prosperity to get out of your current situation.

And really, part of the reason we’re deeper in debt is that we have far less revenue coming in than we were counting on at this point. If revenue grows, the budget situation improves, so long as spending is kept disciplined.

But you know the problem is, folks like you are wrapped up in a fantasy. The first part is that the Republicans have been responsible, or can be responsible by chasing tax cuts and keeping defense spending up. The Second part is that Democrats are especially irresponsible. Of course, a look at the Clinton Administration, and the conditions that Democrats insisted we should continue to encourage, would tell you otherwise. We were in favor of what worked.

The problem here, is that coming off of the fiscal stupidity of the Bush Administration, the Republicans both needed scapegoats, and needed to look like they were the more responsible people. Unfortunately, they chose to treat emergency spending, meant to salvage an economy in distress, as some sort of superpork, as something they could equate to Bush’s undisciplined spending.

God, so much of Republican rhetoric these days seems to take the form of trying to equate what we are doing with what Bush did, so Bush can come off as just being normally mediocre.

It’s bull****. We don’t need to be trying to resolve our debt problem when we can’t keep our economy stable doing it! The economy is the source of that which we need in order to not deficit spend!

We go chasing austerity downwards, trying to adjust to downward sloping revenues by instigating more economy-shrinking cuts, or we can face that the first and more serious problem we have is our economy. Then, when we have the economy fixed, we have a solid foundation for putting the fiscal house in order. You can reduce spending, and the robust economy will be able to replace that activity You can increase taxes, broaden your nets, and get more revenue with smaller percentage increases.

It’s time to abandon foolish consistencies about debt and deficit, and start fixing the economy that is necesssary to power and absorb the impact of the ultimately necesssary austerity.

I have no party Stephen. I didn’t like Bush anymore than I like Obama.

It’s interesting, that after a short respite from WB we still see the same fools defending the same liberal idiots. Obama is one stupid son-of-a-bitch that would have never been elected 20 years ago. He has no knowledge of the Constitution. The Democrats are managing to fall apart; Menendez is a pedophile and Obama’s choice of the RHINO Hagel seems to be falling flat. The economy is in real trouble and the ignorant Obama lover SD is trying to blame it on spending cuts. SD is also an ignorant SOB. But what the hell, let’s continue to blame it on Bush. How about this, “IRS: Cheapest Obamacare Plan Will Be $20,000 Per Family”

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/irs-cheapest-obamacare-plan-will-be-20000-family

Frank-
Have you ever tried primal scream therapy? It’s pointless, but it’ll get that built up hatred out of you just as well as this rant you’re on.

As I usually try to do when confronted with your standard Republican shock-value claim, I read back to the source material.

From the looks of it, your reporter is badly misreading a set of examples which are meant to explain how the plan might work out.

First, the number in question is meant to be an average of what people are actually paying for bronze level private insurance. Second, though, if I’m not reading this wrong, the numbers involved in these examples are purely hypothetical, not based on any projections or hard data. They’re simply saying, if family X has five people in it, and they’re making Y number of dollars a year, this will be what they’re eligible for under Obamacare, this will be the assistance they get, this will be the penalty they have to pay if they don’t get it, etc.

And they’re saying that just for the sake explaining how it would work.

So, as usual, the fine people who brought us such marvellously accurate intepretations of the healthcare bill as Death Panels and 700 billion dollar thefts are at it again, with misleading, factually bankrupt arguments.

There’s a reason I factcheck you folks everytime you make a claim like this!

It seems like you’re the one who is ignorant, not me. Did you even bother to read the PDF with a mind to test the interpretation, or did you just trust they got it right?

Several things, jeez.

First, phx8, that you think France and Germany’s economy are thriving proves you to be as stupefyingly ignorant as your posts imply. Second, 30000 gun deaths quoted at Weary Willie but 2/3rds of which were suicide. Easy to skew the numbers, but the facts are that in the most gun-friendly locations in the US, the gun violence per capita is even less than in England. Virtually all of the mass shootings in the past several years have taken place in areas where these assholes who are on “medication” know there aren’t supposed to be any guns. Pandora’s box of weapons is open, and you can’t close it. The worst gun violence in America takes place in the places where LAW ABIDING citizens cannot easily carry a weapon to defend themselves. Irrefutable fact. Look at Chicago and at DC.

Stephen, here is just one piece of source material you love to read out of the thousands available that demonstrate that market fundamentals are broken and do not respond to traditional stimulus they way they have for decades. It’s the fallacious Keynesian endgame come unglued. You cannot spend your way out of this one. The only candle in the wind is the quietly developing US oil boom that may provide us with the energy exports to limp along. I will extend you the charity of assuming you can understand the charts.

As to your claim that republican rhetoric is about trying to be a Bush apologist… [buzzer sound] wrong. Many of the conservatives on this blog were genuinely and often harshly critical of Bush. We are simply pointing out that in the face of often MUCH WORSE ABUSES OF POWER, your side of the aisle is incapable of objective analysis. You project your blind party loyalty onto us and yet miss the obvious that is playing out before your very eyes. I can find fault with the Republican establishment all day long, and rail on about it. None of anyone’s posts I’ve read have implied to me that anyone cares about Bush’s reputation now, or then, or whenever. What I personally want, in my stupid efforts to get through to you, is for you to actually be objective about Obama’s actions, and you simply cannot. The worst I’ve seen (which is pathetic) is that you kind of wish we didn’t have the Patriot Act.

It’s ridiculous.

Yukon Jake-
I prefer to read source material like the primary sources- that is, the IRS document itself, rather than the CNS news reporters interpretation of it, the actual revenues rather than somebody’s interpretation of what happened.

That’s a critical part of doing your own thinking.

Republican rhetoric is most certainly about apologizing, if not for Bush policy, then what has followed as a kneejerk reaction meant to cleanse the party of his perceived stain.

I’ve posted documents from the IMF, from the BLS, from the BEA concerning where our economy has gone, and why. So, what do you post? Some guy on a financial website which has Tyler Durden, the fellow who blows up credit companies in an effort to create financial chaos, and reduce everybody back to hunter-gatherers.

He-he!

I loved that movie, by the way, because it showed you how buying into a conspiratorial mindset against the often dumb, difficult to endure system can end up making you just as much as a conformist in your own way, and just as much a fool as everybody else.

At least that’s what I’ve read out of it.

Long story short, my take on a lot of this conspiracy theory is that it is just as manipulative as the corporate narrative. Hell, often enough, it IS the coporate narrative, sold through plausibly deniable proxies.

Zion ends up being another layer of control. (another movie reference, by the way, I’ve got a million of them.)

What I would say is that you can’t apply Keynesian stimulus forever without going bankrupt on the debt. Now apply common sense. As a rational American who wants to see my country in good shape, does that mean I want to apply Keynesian stimulus forever?

Probably not!

I have a far more conditional view of government, a far more conditional affection for it than you think.

I’m not this marxist some idiots here think I am. I’m far from it. I grew up watching Russians queueing up in breadlines, for crying out loud. I’ve never really read anything by Marx with any kind of thoroughness, and no, I didn’t go to a university where Marxist theory was high on the list of approved ideas. It actually didn’t figure into much of what I was there for, anyways.

My perspective on ideology is shaped by my research into cognitive theory, information theory, and neuroscience. It boils down to something simple: there is no way to build a rule-based system for creating axioms, true statements, that cannot be turned against itself to create contradictory axiom that.

You cannot create a complete system of logic that cannot be made to contradict itself. That’s Godel’s Theorem, right there.

In other words, all systems built on logic are necessarily incomplete, and however well they work, however well they map to reality, they are always going to be approximations.

Good systems of logic can aid good judgment, but we have to keep our eyes open for sign that things aren’t as they seem to us, that our information is bad or our theory isn’t a good approximation of reality.

As for objectivity? You define objectivity from a subjective perspective, from your set of assumptions. Personally, I think it’s better to approach things understanding nobody’s completely objective, and demanding people conform to your idea of objectivity is pretty useless.

That’s why I like to depend on factual items that are symmetrical from multiple points of view. But the problem is there, I can’t even get some people to agree that some facts are facts, and it gets to ridiculous levels of revisionism, with people asking me to ignore what to me are some fairly obvious, glaringly obvious facts.

I don’t kind of wish on the PATRIOT act. But I just don’t count on anything getting done as long as the Republicans maintain their hold on the House. I’ve come to despair, for the time being, of the Republicans letting certain policies get reformed, and only hold out hope that something can be done when the hard headed stubborn jackasses finally wear themselves, or that welcome they have with the American people out.

As for Gun violence? That seems to be one of those things that seem to inspire that kind of despair that something will really get done. Question you should be asking is this: how long before the despair at policy really changing piles up high enough to cause some sort of breaking point to occur in politics?

You know what really scares me? The way the Right seems intent on building and then breaking these points, such that we’re spun again and again into these policy decisions that seem to end badly every time. I mean, who’s bright idea was it to mess with the debt ceiling? And is it arithmetic that runs the show with your people’s brouhahah over the debt, or is it just free-floating anxiety, with the policy whipping back and forth in the waves of emotion?

We tried the Republican’s brand of austerity, and it didn’t work. We did something different, reducing growth in spending while increasing growth in revenues.

That succeeded. Why? Because arithmetic succeeds.

We need better intellectual guides than the bumpersticker nonsense meant to lure in the unwary.

So Stephen, It’s OK for the government to keep borrowing and spending because all they have to do is confiscate more money from the taxpayers to pay their debts. And what happens when the taxpayers run out of money?
Have you ever stopped to think that part of the economies problems are caused by our massive debt?

I mean, who’s bright idea was it to mess with the debt ceiling?
Seems to me it was Obama’s and his thugs. And the rest of the Democrats were very willing to go along with it.

We did something different, reducing growth in spending while increasing growth in revenues. That succeeded. Why? Because arithmetic succeeds.

Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at January 31, 2013 10:55 PM

Now there is a leap that could span the Grand Canyon. What “success” are you talking about? True success would be measured by the lack of need to increase our debt limit. Has that happened? No. Is it likely to happen during the remainder of obama’s term? No. Are we likely to increase our national debt by another $4 Trillion before obama is finished? Yes.

SUCCESS…you don’t begin to understand the meaning of the word in this context.

ARITHMETIC…your faulty conclusions indicate that you are missing either fingers or toes to count on.

Austerity?

According to monthly spending data from the Treasury Dept., total federal spending — which includes transfer payments and other federal outlays not counted by the BEA — increased by $98 billion in Q4 compared with Q3. And spending was up $31 billion when compared with Q4 2011. For the entire year, spending in 2012 was virtually unchanged from 2011, and was up $86 billion over 2010, a year when the government was still spending stimulus money in earnest.

Plus, the “fiscal cliff” deal worked out between President Obama and the Republicans actually added almost $50 billion to planned spending in 2013, and a total of $332 billion over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Almost half of the 2013 increase will go to pay extended unemployment benefits, which Democrats have long argued are highly stimulative.

Reid himself has said that unemployment benefits “help our economy because recipients spend the cash they receive on the things they need right away.”

In addition, even if the “sequester” should go through, federal spending will continue to climb.

In fact, if nothing else changes, spending in 2013 will be $3.6 trillion, an increase of nearly 2% over 2012, according to data from the CBO. That’s because the sequester’s “cuts” are actually just reductions in planned spending hikes.

Read More At IBD: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials-perspective/013113-642705-federal-fiscal-austerity-is-a-myth.htm#ixzz2JhuoBgBt

Ron Brown-
The real question is, what’s the biggest difference between Bush’s deficit, and the deficit for the year Obama came into office, besides the one time spending?

The fiscal picture is reliant on the revenue levels. Revenues dropped after 2008, thanks to the drop in the economy.

You ask, does the debt figure into this? I would ask in return, how would it figure into it? Are we experiencing high interest rates? No. T-Bonds posting high yields? No, we’re offering them below-inflation rates and they’re still parking their money there.

Financing? Well, the banks are back lending again, though not necessarily at previous levels, but it’s not interest rates that have them pausing.

It’s low returns on investment. Why? Because the average person can’t afford to spend as much money. It doesn’t help that defense cuts are forcing more people out of productive work.

What Republicans are trying is financial alchemy, quackery, even. I mean, why are we trying to solve a high inflation problem when our system isn’t experiencing that kind of core inflation?

If your theories were right, we would see a different economic outcome. Markets would be overheated, not undercooked. Interest rates and bond yields would be higher. People wouldn’t be investing in our bonds unless we offered them a premium on it. Prices on products other than food and fuel would be rising significantly faster than they are.

Rhinehold-
Your source is including Transfer payments. What do you think that means? Social security and Medicare, Unemployment (There are more people looking for work, according to data.)

But how does that make austerity a myth?

It doesn’t make the cut in defense spending a myth. That’s just the disingenuity of your source.

By the way, 2% increase in spending is laughable. That’s barely outpacing inflation, and that is nowhere near the yearly increase in outlays you conveniently forget from the Bush years. The average there was 7%.

The problem you face in dealing with me is that I am not as ignorant as the target audience of your editorialist. I know how fast spending was going up before, so I can dismiss your argument on objective grounds, on account of its misleading failure to follow the facts.

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But how does that make austerity a myth?

“austerity refers to a policy of deficit-cutting by lowering spending via a reduction in the amount of benefits and public services provided.”

1) This isn’t a ‘policy’, it is a one time ‘cut’.

2) This isn’t a ‘cut’, it is a decrease in the proposed spending increases. There is no ‘lowered spending’.

3) What public services, specifically, are being reduced?

It doesn’t make the cut in defense spending a myth. That’s just the disingenuity of your source.

We have been overspending on defense for decades, since the latter years of Clinton, yet a decrease in spending, largely due to the fact we are no longer putting troops in Iraq and reducing troops in Afghanistan, the ‘cuts’ are much less than the ‘peace dividend’ we should be getting.

It is no way ‘austerity’.

By the way, 2% increase in spending is laughable.

And there you have it. Nevermind we TEMPORARILY increased spending for stimulus packages that are no longer in effect, that money has to now be used for something else, or we are ‘starving our people’. What a ridiculous notion.

That’s barely outpacing inflation, and that is nowhere near the yearly increase in outlays you conveniently forget from the Bush years. The average there was 7%.

How and when do I ‘conveniently forget’ the overspending from the Bush years?

The problem you face in dealing with me is that I am not as ignorant as the target audience of your editorialist. I know how fast spending was going up before, so I can dismiss your argument on objective grounds, on account of its misleading failure to follow the facts.

The fact that spending was going up before doesn’t mean that we should be spending at that rate NOW, we shouldn’t have been spending at that rate then… And when a president runs for office decrying the spending of the man he is wanting to replace, only to spend more, faster, longer… Well, ignoring those facts does nothing to improve your credibility.

And Stephen, until we get to the point where we have paid back our debts, shouldn’t we limit spending to the inflation rate and only increase spending when absolutely necessary?

That is, of course, ignoring the fact that we increased spending 10-20 times the inflation rate for a few years, which we no longer need to spend and should be decreasing the amount of spending, don’t you think?

Let me ask this. When, if ever, should we decrease spending (not just lower the increased spending proposals)?

As for what Mamet says? Gee, making crime illegal. What a thought. Since people are going to murder, lets not criminalize murder. Since people are going to steal, lets not criminalize theft. We’ll see far fewer reports of those crimes, then!

What Mamet was saying is that Assault weapons have been illegal since the 1930’s. Politicians make laws on top of laws just to make themselves feel important and to think they are “doing something”. Now, specifically as to this assault weapons ban, they are passing laws by lying to the American People, brainwashing them into thinking they are banning something when in fact they are banning something entirely different. Cosmetics do not make a weapon an assault weapon. Just because it looks like an assault weapon doesn’t make it so. The politicians know this is true yet they insist it is a ban on assault weapons, weapons that have been illegal to own since the 30’s.

This round of assault weapons ban legislation is a power grab to undermine the 2nd amendment. It’s all too obvious. Anyone who supports this round of legislation is also willing to undermine the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

As far as the stimulus goes, it worked fine. When we enacted it, you saw a substantial increase in the GDP, and the back of the recession was broken. If anybody thinks a recession killing almost a million jobs a month was going to resolve itself, I’d like to ask them how.

Maybe a different approach would have achieved more substancial results, Stephen Daugherty:
http://mises.org/daily/3788

We will attempt intelligent and courageous deflation, and strike at government borrowing which enlarges the evil, and we will attack high cost of government with every energy and facility which attend Republican capacity. We promise that relief which will attend the halting of waste and extravagance, and the renewal of the practice of public economy, not alone because it will relieve tax burdens but because it will be an example to stimulate thrift and economy in private life.
Let us call to all the people for thrift and economy, for denial and sacrifice if need be, for a nationwide drive against extravagance and luxury, to a recommittal to simplicity of living, to that prudent and normal plan of life which is the health of the republic. There hasn’t been a recovery from the waste and abnormalities of war since the story of mankind was first written, except through work and saving, through industry and denial, while needless spending and heedless extravagance have marked every decay in the history of nations.

The stimulus you speak of was temporary. In fact, it didn’t go towards what we were told it was to go for, ie, “Shovel Ready Jobs”. Another lie. Sure, there was an up-tic in GDP, but it was short lived and many stimulus fed excursions went bust, ie, photocell manufacturers. Cash for Clunkers, an attempt to raise the price of automobiles was unsuccessful. The auto bailout was largely unneeded and results were negligible. The thought that “saving” jobs was a convincing argument is laughable. No Republican president could get away with saying he “saved” a million jobs. Another lie.

Your so called stimulus was simply another lie foisted onto a gullible public. The numbers you speak of are manufactured, perhaps the only successful manufacturing going on in this country. This president is copying the course of FDR and his great depression and we can expect the same results. I am convinced those results were just lies as well.

Sure.
Just keep creating new money out thin air.
Get ready for hyper-inflation.
And why has no on mentioned the reasons for the imminent end of the Petro-Dollar?
Possibly within the next 60 days?
That will do wonders for the falling U.S. Dollar.

At any rate, the majority of voters have the government that they elect, and re-elect, … , and re-elect, at least, possibly, until repeatedly rewarding failure and FOR-SALE, incompetent, arrogant, greedy, selfish, and corrupt incumbent politicians with perpetual re-election, finally becomes too painful.

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