I'd love to see him bitch-slap that pompous ass Paul Ryan.

Yeah, the Democrats created this economic mess.

"Obama's 2012 platform "It's not my fault."

Naaaaaaahh. All he has to do is run a 10-second ad with photos of Palin, Romney, Bachmann, Paul and Gingrich and a voice-over saying: "If you think George W. Bush was a clown ..."

tkihshbt wrote:

... Democrats still failing to create jobs

Just a reminder: Republicans control the House. They ran on jobs, jobs and jobs. By my count, they have passed about 300 bills concerning abortion and nothing about jobs. That they're actively working to keep the economy bad (seriously, they're arguing against their own policies), is pretty galling.

TK, you ignorant slut.  Jobs are created by tax cuts for the wealthy.  This has been true since Reagan and is even truer today.  Bigger tax cuts for the very wealthiest is the way to bring jobs back to America.

Every out of work working man, woman and child (yes even children should be working in today's era of American freedom) is looking forward to the day when those tax cuts kick in and the wealthy Americans start trickling down on them.  Wouldn't you like a wealthy American to trickle on you?

tkihshbt wrote:

What's amazing about the tax cut talk is that last year, Bloomberg found that 3,000 of the top publicly-traded companies were sitting on about $3 trillion in cash. They had so much money just sitting around that they paid out more in dividends to their shareholders.

Businesses have an excess of money and they have no incentive to do anything with it because nobody gives a shit about the demand side of the equation.

I think that is why Obama is so reluctant to cut SS or Medicare.  No matter what side you are on I think it is clear that both sides are fighting just to fight.  They are playing election games.  Once that is over both sides will stop acting like they care about the budget and go back to what they do best, spending money they dont have.

I would just go with a flat tax, do away with child income tax break and down size the military.  Not paying $1,000 for every child under 18 in America would pull us out of debt pretty quick.  I know that a mother of 10 doesnt get $10,000 but I think you see my point.  Why does America pay us for having kids?  They would come out money ahead to pay some people to stop having them.

Last edited by APRTW (7/12/2011 11:07 pm)

JV wrote:

Max - I don't know if either party's motives relative to SS/Medicare are purer than the other's.  This (last?) year's reduction of the payroll tax struck me as a terrible idea, if one accepts the notion that SS is in danger of shortfalls.

That's not that different from what I wrote. In the Clinton Era it was about how to control spiraling health care costs and how to fund the pay-as-you-go SS as the population pyramid became top heavy.   Now, as the GOP's Tea Party wing have made it clear they prefer to axe SS, Medicare/caid, and maybe other 'entitlement programs' like public education, the Dems are far less willing to discuss honestly the sacrifices we will need to make to control health care costs and fund SS, then they were back in the Clinton era, because now the debate has become existential: will the New Deal and Great Society nation persist beyond the current generation?

APRTW wrote:

I think the GOP is unfairly using the debt issue to target programs they are against.  They are here and people have the expectation of having them.  IMO it isnt fair to pull the rug out from under them as some kind of debt reducing blackmail.  There is no reason other then greed not to close tax loopholes.  If they want to target SS and Medicare then that is fine but it is a different issue.  Tighten up the loopholes and maybe the other systems can be left alone.  They are just trying to snowball the issue.

It might be unfair to the use the debt issue in that way, but it is 100% intentional, at least in the eyes of some of us.  This OpEd is almost a year and a half old, but is spot on:

"But there is a kind of logic to the current Republican position: in effect, the party is doubling down on starve-the-beast. Depriving the government of revenue, it turns out, wasn’t enough to push politicians into dismantling the welfare state. So now the de facto strategy is to oppose any responsible action until we are in the midst of a fiscal catastrophe. You read it here first. "

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/22/opinion/22krugman.html

So they passed something that doesnt do enough to slove to problem and allows Washington to borrow more money.  If I am understanding it right the amount they allowed the ceiling to raise is basicly the amount they cut.  It will take them 2 years to spend the extra money and 10 years to pay it back.  This is a step in the right direction?

Go back to the Clinton era tax structure and end these stupid wars, and we are most of the way back to a healthy nation.

Maybe America will get the hint that the Tea Party has within it extremists who stop at nothing to see that all Americans live by their ideology.