Jonathon,
“Why are we still talking about BUSH???

Liberals should be out there marching with conservatives!  Conservatives with liberals!  Let’s get over our party differences and start realizing they are ALL
against US!”
~~~

Ah yes, paranoia. Perhaps another symptom of the new mental disorder identified by Sirota, Selective Deficit Disorder.

Or perhaps Selective Deficit Disorder is just another symptom of a larger mental illness, yet unidentified but easily recognised. The Them and Us disorder.

Them and Us disorder has several distinctive symptoms, among them a screaming need to support any candidate who cant possibly win. And the ability to look past different views and lump them all together under the broud brush of ‘them’, or ‘they’. And as everyone knows, ‘they’ are the enemy. Another telling symptom is an inability to identify the individual thems, or directly reference what the they’s are doing at any given moment. (unless the they or them is a president) It is enough to simply say they are doing it to hurt US, because they are against US, which leads to the obvious question, who is the US?

For the US’s among us:

Deficits happen when more money is spent than is earned, so money is borrowed to pay the bill, then compounded as it is paid back. The problem comes when compound interest grows faster than payment on the debt, and the lender keeps lending. Pretty simple, as anyone who has ever fought the Credit Card nightmare can tell you. So seems to me if we want to solve our deficit crisis we need to stop borrowing money. Course that wont happen because we have far to many Corporates who like what they do. Like Corporate Arms manufacturers, and Corporate Federal Prison opperators, and Corporate military support back-up, and Corporate ... oh I don’t have room to list them all, sorry.

And for the al-Qaeda wonderers, The Final Draft:

“We are under attack by Afghan, Arab, Islamist, theoretical, ideologues of global Salafi jihad, and Maktab al-Khidamat, Qa’idat al-Jihad mujahedeen, who seek to eliminate jahiliyyah, restore sharia law, and acting on bin-Laden’s fatwa, abolish infidels and eliminate apostates. Which is why we need to attack the Taliban, which governs the Afghan border regions harboring al-Qaeda madrassas.

To which the Rove responded to Cheney and Tenet,

“This is far too much information.”

[He knows the base so well ]

So Bush was told to condense down to al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and invent the even simpler Global War On Terror. [GWOT] I doubt it was because Bush has a simple mind. Rather I think it was because everyone knew how easily the Bush base could be confused. And the object was to scare, not confuse.

There is a difference between primary, secondary and tertiary kinds of businesses. Primary like for food, water and living spaces. Secondary like manufactured items used in industry and general modern living. Tertiary are just for fun, no other value like gambling, movie going and such. They will be the first to fold as we are seeing. Though in times of trial movies help in assuaging the emotional pain. Then in the Great Depression of 20th century. And now too.

The more removed from our reality the better they will be for the populace.

ardee, no just bogi666

bogi666, September 20 at 1:35 pm

Did you ever post as ThomasG?

The purpose of the Pentagon is to protect and expand the world wide investments of the CORPORATE WELFARE KINGS. For these protective services provided by the Pentagon and its private contractors, which in turn are paid by the American taxpayers. The Mafia should have had it so good and they are called crooks.Now I suppose it hasn’t come to mind that this is a complex system and the CORPORATE WELFARE KINGS SHOULD JUST HIRE THE PRIVATE CONTRACTOR DIRECTLY instead of having the Pentagon act as their broker.

voice of truth - not really.  Some of the budget is discretionary and some is non-discretionary, like interest on the debt (got to be big given that for 30 years we’ve borrowed $500 billion/year from foreign sources) and things like Social Security… - in other words, committed funds.

Felicity

With your fallacious argument, where you seemingly propose that defense spending is “discretionary”, the only logical conclusion is that everything in the federal budget would also have to be described as discretionary.

Really, outside of the interest on debt, every dollar the government spends is truly discretionary, whether it be for bombs or butter.

voice of truth - “the Pentagon is not even close to 50% of the federal budget” however the Pentagon is well over 50% of the discretionary budget - but you knew that didn’t you.

Total outlays for ‘Murican military is 54% @ $1.449 trillion.
Baggers, those that can process propoganda and then willingly spread lies,  reference the combination of trust and federal funding which conveniently makes things a bit rosier then reality. Billions in supplementals are quietly passed. DOD details are frequently blacked out: FEMA, NSA, etc. No one really has a clue, other then the fact that the economy has rotated around the Pentagon for over 60 years. This is the socialism the baggers intend to protect, the facts are that “the goons” budgets could be severly slashed and ‘Murica would be safer in many ways. Not everyone can enlist for free Army healthcare.

Where were the “tea party activists” in their recent march on Washington, DC when President Bush and his administration lied to us about: (1) WMDs in Iraq; (2) tax cuts for the wealthy; (3) raising the federal deficit to $9 trillion; (4) illegal wiretapping of Americans; and (5) conducting torture in our name or what Cheney calls “enhanced interrogation”? Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and David Brooks were oddly silent back then. Only when President Obama made the effort to reform a corrupt health insurance industry did these tea-party activists and their propagandists crawl out of the woodwork like cockroaches.

ardee,

Like the Atlantic City casinos. I remember back in the 70s, we were told that revenues from gambling would eliminate the State income tax.

Well, here we are 30 years later, and we still have an income tax.

Why?

Well, the casinos are losing money.

Really? So, why then are they expanding, and building new ones? And why did Donald Trump just buy back into his namesakes? To give his daughter Ivanka something to do? (I’ve got something she can do! )

http://www.nerve.com/CS/blogs/theremoteisland/2008/11/16-22/ivanka_trump.jpg

Yeah, baby.
Boob jobs for all female Trump employees!

ADM, huh? Didn’t they get a shitload of subsidies from the government? If I’m correct, it was those government subsidies that facilitated the formation of ADM in the first place and allowed them to buy up all of the struggling small farms.

Fat Freddy, September 19 at 7:11 pm #

ardee,

I’m sure you understand that business taxes are ultimately paid by the consumer.

If you believe in the capitalist system then you must believe in the forces that drive down prices as well. Forcing corporations to pay their fair share, regardless of the form those payments take is, in my opinion, a key ingredient to a balanced budget.

The argument that the corporation will fail to flourish if so burdened is an old one and has led to the current condition wherein many, many cash cow enterprises are paying nothing back. Yet they do manage to indulge their top executives with millions, and, in many cases, billions off the top.

You are, I am certain, familiar with the expose of Archer ,Daniels, Midland, the so-called supermarket of the world, made public by that new movie with Matt Damon.(NPR.ORG did a show over the weekend that is quite informative, “This American Life”)

They (ADM) fixed prices for many years and reaped billions doing so. I think they are far from alone in doing so, as do, apparently, the FBI investigators who spent years uncovering the scheme.

I add this last as support for a change to a system in which our corporate entities are removed from their lofty position and unfair advantage, which leads to widespread abuse and loss of tax revenues.

ardee,

I’m sure you understand that business taxes are ultimately paid by the consumer. For most businesses, tax burden is second only to payroll regarding liabilities. Any business plan or model must take into account all tax liabilities. In fact, the complexity of the tax code creates a secondary liability of accounting fees on top of basic bookkeeping. Just determining the basic structure of a business, sole proprietorship, LLC (inc.), S-Corp, or C-Corp is based on the differing tax liabilities of each type of entity, to a large degree.

A simplification of the tax code certainly would be desirable with regards to businesses. Businesses should be encouraged (by the tax code) to reinvest profits, rather than paying high salaries and bonuses and borrowing money to invest and expand.

But politicians and businesses will only do what we allow them to do. I mean seriously, if a business can invest 10 to 20 thousand dollars in campaign contributions, and in return get hundreds of thousands in tax deferments, they are going to do it. They’d be stupid not to. Business taxes should be used as an incentive/disincentive steering mechanism. If it were, there would not be a need for something like cap and trade.

Good Grief, I take a day off and once again all the falsehoods, heresay and
simply made up facts start pouring out again.

To Rgyle, IRS tax stats can be found here:
http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/indtaxstats/article/0,,id=133521,00.html

Ardee, you will find that the vast majority of the top 1% of taxpayers do, in fact,
earn salaries, taxed at income tax rates, and are not all hedge fund managers. 
In fact, one only has to earn $410K to be in the top 1%

Night Gaunt, “Some numbers I heard recently”...  is not a real good way to start
a factual argument.  If I am going to be harassed for sources, which I have
supplied to all, then you should be too.  Besides, the top 1% earns less than
17% of all income, which is a LOT less than your fantasy 50%.

Bogi666, the Pentagon is not even close to 50% of the federal budget.  In 2008,
the Department of Defense spent less than $650B.  This is barely more than
what was spent by the Department of Treasury, of which most is interest on the
debt (>$400B), which is what this article is actually about.

Now, I am not feeling well, can I go back to sleep and know that you people
will at least ATTEMPT to stick to facts??

Night-Gaunt, September 19 at 2:33 pm #

Concerning the tax rate for that 1%. It is important to keep in mind that these people do not earn paychecks, their income is derived from a panoply of sources , all of them not subject to the variety of taxes us wage earners see deleted from our gross pay.

If we had honest representation I imagine we could make a case for changing the tax code to a flat tax, eliminating the volumes upon volumes of loopholes and actually forcing corporations to pay their fair share…if only we had such representation.

And where, Mr. Sirota, were the media when Bush/etal cut taxes.  The so-called journalists might have mentioned that the tax cuts were worth $1000/week to the top 1% and about $1.50/week to the rest of us. 

And then gone on to say that the idiocy of it all was that $52,000/year to a guy making $2 billion/year (if he’s a hedge-funder he’s taxed at 15%, by the way) is nothing - oh, maybe a weekend in the Hamptons.  The poor slob with his $58/year windfall?  A tank of gas maybe?

You’d think the media could cover just a bit of this kind of info.  Instead, they’re devoted to giving us hours and nauseating hours of theatrical, trivialized dystopian drivel.

Some numbers I heard recently concerning the top 1% of earners and the tax rate and what they own.

  Time   taxed   wealth owned in the country.
  1920’s   20%      50%
 
  1950’s   94%      20%

  1970’s   91%      38%

  2000’s   35%      50%

Remember that the 1950’s were considered some of the most richest time for the most people.

Please note: Obama administration and his supporters seems to have changed “Health Care Reform” to “Health Insurance Reform”. That way they can push senator Baucus bill I guess. What a bunch of slick politicians? I can’t believe he likes to have lunch with Gandhi (wrong article)?

Things that should be being done:

6)Outlaw the practice of fractional reserve banking (over time).
7)Eliminate the “legal trickery” associated with consumer mortgage and credit card contracts. (Simplify the language and content of these contracts.)
8)Remove restrictions for new, start-ups and provide graduated 5 year tax deferments (for all small business start-ups).
8)Hold ratings agencies accountable, and restructure their fee schedules.
9)Create a review agency for all new financial investment instruments.

Newt Gingrich is being raised from the dead it appears, juding from the deplorable intellectual dishonesty coming from the “fact hurlers” It’s amusing, because the attacks on the “welfare state” were quite effective in the Clinton era, as welfare is only appropriate for Defense, Financials and Wall Street. Debt is misconstrued with “deficit”, GDP is quoted like a chapter from Leviticus, and the “Free Market” as vicious oxymoron becomes the greatest lie ever told.
Any first year college student studying macro and micro economics wonders how pathetically stupid politicians, the press, and the majority of ‘Muricans must be. Government spending is the solution, not the problem, just ask Ronald “Massive Military Buildup” Reagan.

TheRealFish,

You wrote: “Stray Thought: I understand that “al qaeda” is Arabic for “the base.” Who said god has no sense of humor? Life is irony, Right?”

If you aren’t aware of it, the loose-knit cells of Muslim jihadists never, ever referred to themselves as “al Qaida”. That term was birthed by the CIA and it was in reference to the database that the agency maintained on Muslim activists. The CIA promoted/propagandized the term “al Qaida” because it was discovered by Luntz-like pollsters that it was simplistic enough for the dipshit Glenn Beck audience to mimic the expression. So let’s leave God out of this shall we? The joke that you perceive was the wiilful creation of the same sort of jokers who brought you the concept of “survivable nuclear war”, “we must destroy the village to save it” and “full spectrum dominance”.

***
If you are actually keen on the notion that life is irony, let me recommend a movie. “I Served the King of England” is newish, noirish and oh, so Czech in its ironic worldview.

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

Need more irony? A wonderful Czech film (the Czechs are the world’s masters at irony) is Zelery: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0288330/

Ray Duray, excellent explanation of the way taxes are allocated. Additionally, it it the wealthY, person and corporations[THE CORPORATE WELFARE KINGS], that derive the most benefits from tax revenue expenditures. The Pentagon and intelligence agencies use at least of half the tax revenues and the purpose of the Pentagon is to protect, world wide, the investments of the wealthy. The USG cannot be honest about the purpose of the Pentagon so they use the democracy, freedom, protect us from them as the official policy rational for the Pentagon’s existence.What’s important is the unofficial policy which is to protect business investments and THEIR MARKETS world wide with tax revenues provided by individual taxpayers, which some portion of which is paid out in dividends to the stock holders. JUST WHY ISN’T THIS WELFARE! iT IS.

Duh.

The ones who write the scripts of hate and fear these people (sincerely) parrot left their pens in their desks when that happened—because they’re the vampires sucking us dry that directly benefited from those very tax cuts.

Remember? They’re the ones Bush the Lesser joked about at some ‘04 election fundraiser thrown by uber-wealthy corporate leaders.

“You’re my ‘base’,” said our fartmeister frat boy Joker in Chief.

Stray Thought: I understand that “al qaeda” is Arabic for “the base.” Who said god has no sense of humor? Life is irony, Right?

Again: Duh.

Ray Duray:

Much of my research is talking to people here in Eastern Europe.  What I get is the oral histories passed down from generation to generation, not the sanitized versions from either eastern or western press.  It is just starting as I want to collect information as research for a future book.

voice of truth,

You wrote: “Ray, my data on who pays taxes comes STRAIGHT from the IRS website!”

OK, I went to the IRS.gov website and did a search, looked at a likely FAQ and basically toured the site. No joy. I couldn’t find the page that you relied on. Can you post the URL for us? Thanks.

voice of truth: Though I’m sure much of what you say is acceptably accurate, I
don’t have all the numbers at hand, nor do I trust the numbers as they are
presented/skewed. But I do smell the stink of scam, cheat, me first, too bad for
others.

Call them facts if you like, but facts change constantly and do not always
reflect the truth, rather, they often hide it. The fact is, facts are often not
reliable.

E.g., our corp tax rate may appear on some fact sheet to be as high as 39% (in
checking, I see US corp rates vary all over the place). But due to so much
revenue being routed to offshore accounts, and other book-cooking, exotic
shenanigans, the effective rate is a fraction of that. It’s in this max bux, mega
corporate chicanery that the disparity between money earned and dues paid is
greatest. Today, these large corps run the government, make/bend the rules,
while running roughshod over we the people. Beyond cleverly picking our
pockets, they, especially the biggest ones, could care less about our welfare. If
they did, why serve MBA stratagem fecalburgers at McD’s, or offer high risk (yet
somehow AAA rated) investments, among the myriad other lowest cost, highest
profit, marketing-spun products and services in today’s market?

The ideal they seem to be aiming for is straight thievery, which produces the
highest profit with the least effort (except for avoiding being caught or
resisted). That’s why it’s disguised. It’s a con job. No gun to the head is
needed. But the cost of that disguise, that trust development, does cut into
profits. Damn!

If this sounds horribly gloomy and cynical, relax. I’m only pointing it out as a
means of turning to something better, where the best of human character and
potential can be realized. And it can, when the will is there. If it’s not there,
suffer on until it is.

Ray, my data on who pays taxes comes STRAIGHT from the IRS website!  Hardly a right-wing bastion.  It is the truth, whether you want to believe it or not.  Of course, next year that will all change, as 36 million taxpayers become ensnared by the AMT.

As for Warren Buffet, he can say that because nearly all his income is counted as capital gains.  If he really felt bad about, he is more than able to write a check to the US Treasury.

As for the cap on FICA, that rises every year at double the rate of inflation or wage increase, which already equates to an effective tax increase, every year, on those who earn beyond the cap.  When you take into account that those who do reach the cap will never get anywhere near the return they “invested” in the Ponzi Scheme known as social security, I’m not too worried about it.

Regardless, my information is factual.  Choosing to ignore it is your issue, not mine.

Hey voice of truth,

Did you get lost on your way to the Cato Institute website?

You wrote: Unfortunately, nearly half of all households in the US pay ZERO income tax.

What a classic libertarian red herring. If you look at all taxes imposed in the citizenry, the rich are outrageously gifted with loopholes galore.

Warren Buffett puts it better than me. He noted that his effective tax rate is lower than that of his secretary. As he quipped, “well, if we were in a class war, my class is winning.”

When you start to get honest about FICA taxes as a significant burden on the middle class, then we can have an honest debate about taxation at the federal level. Your analysis that “(t)he top 1% pay now pay 41% of ALL income taxes, while only claiming 16.8% of all the income” is outrageous. What you’ve done is to dishonestly disregard the favorable treatment of capital gains while looking merely at salary, which for most sophisticated high net worth individuals is a small portion of total compensation.

I’m surprised you’ve tried to pull this chicanery here, or are you naively regurgitating propaganda you’ve picked up at the right wing websites?

Rgyle

I agree to a point (yes, I was getting a dig in on Charlie).  While I agree that the first 2 years of huge deficit spending by O (4x larger than any other pres) are due to the economics of the time, I also think that a) much of what he has spent in that arena is a total waste (stimulus, which didn’t; TARP, which didn’t do anything about the issue of toxic assets, the TA in TARP; Cash for Clunkers, which simply accelerated spend, etc.) and b) by his own calcs the deficit during “his” 8yrs never gets below 2x worse than any other president, and begins to rise dramatically after 2012.

As for the other argument, I am always for a safety net.  Unfortunately, nearly half of all households in the US pay ZERO income tax.  So you already have half the country supporting the other half.  Additionally, your argument about the 1% plutocracy is not truly valid.  The top 1% pay now pay 41% of ALL income taxes, while only claiming 16.8% of all the income.  I believe that to be a huge disparity.  In fact, the top 1% only paid 19% of all income in 1980, when the top tax rate was 70%.

Even worse, the top 1/10 of 1% (0.1%), which comprises some 140,000 people, actually pay 23% of all income tax.  Think about that.

How this relates to deficits is simple.  Even if you taxed the top 1% at 100%, you wouldn’t even put a dent in the debt.  It has to be through lowered spending.  And with this president (and ANY congress) that is never, ever going to happen.

voice of truth: Stuart was referring to a woman tax dodger, are you implying
Rangel is transsexual? Or did you just see an opening to get a dig on old
Charlie, the Democrat? Look, there’s greed and avarice and tax dodging on
both sides, though me thinks it leans heavily toward the anti-gubment, anti-
tax side.

And do you think that just maybe Bush/Cheney’s corporate sycophancy,
profiteer wars and top 5% tax cuts, along with the earlier, sneaky repeal of
Glass/Steagall by Gramm’s GOP majority (which Clinton signed) have anything
to do with that 8.4 trillion to 13.3 trillion debt projection, if not most of it?
Obama may not be getting at the real core solutions yet. But neither has he
created all this debt in just 8 months. Even the bungled bank bailouts were
started by W.

But really, let’s move on to a bigger picture than just the R/D politics show. It
runs deeper, like the moral, even spiritual, crisis of me/mine vs. we/ours. And
I’m no communist or socialist per se, just sayin’ democracy has to be a “we the
people” proposition, not a populist entertainment camouflage for the actual
“me, the top 1%” plutocracy.

Otherwise, we, the 95%, might as well run on down now to WalMart (be
courteous and don’t trample anyone) for that early bird special on Chinese-
made slave chains.

Starting with the first no strings attached bailout by outgoing president GWBush at $787 billion as the first give away to Wall st. The problem with the bailouts is 1) they haven’t fixed anything, 2)propped up Wall St. bankers who do not toil but they reap, 3)we are still on the brink of a total financial collapse, 4)we could get even larger “banks” that would be totally supported by us the tax payer while they still get to do whatever they want as per Wm Grieder‘s latest in “The Nation” which is a must read for a bad possible future. Nothing fixed but too much gained by those who really don’t do anything approaching real work.

The caller was referred to a “she” I believe.

Things that should be being done:

1)Bailout but dissolve the “too big” ones
2)Purchase all the toxic exotic instruments at their real cost. Make them all illegal.
3)Move back to regional banking
4)Either restructure or remove the Federal Reserve
5)Audit the FedRes first and foremost (Wm Grieder‘s idea)

Cody Cap, I have no idea where you get your data from, however…..

All debt figures through 2007 were calculated using data from Council of Economic Advisers, Economic Report of the President (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2009), p. 377, Table B-78, at http://www.gpoaccess.gov/eop/2009/2009_erp.pdf (March 11, 2009). Post-2007 debt figures and projections come from U.S. Office of Management and Budget, A New Era of Responsibility, pp. 114, Table S-1. From the end of 2001 through 2008 under President Bush, the public debt rose from $3.3 trillion to $5.8 trillion. From the end of 2009 through 2016 under President Obama, the public debt is projected to rise from $8.4 trillion to $13.3 trillion. These figures refer only to the debt held by the public (the amount borrowed from financial markets). They do not include intergovernmental debt, such as money borrowed from the Social Security trust fund.

Stuart, was the person that you spoke with, the one who felt they shouldn’t have to pay taxes, was it Charlie Rangel?

Hi C.C. Dillon,

You wrote: I’m studying the Russian revolution and would be more than happy to teach the lessons learned.

I’m keen to learn more on this topic. Where would you suggest I begin (or more accurately, continue)?

I found John Reed’s “Ten Days That Shook The World”
[ http://www.marxists.org/archive/reed/1919/10days/10days/ ] to be an excellent if somewhat superficial treatment of the 1917 revolution. And what’s not to like about being lazy and watching Warren Beatty’s “Reds” for a another nice breezy introductory glimpse of that era?

Perhaps the most significant thing I’ve picked up and charged part way into is Leon Trotsky’s “The History of the Russian Revolution”. http://bit.ly/1707qc

Free online version here:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1930/hrr/index.htm

What else?

StuartH: Exactly.

bane-richter: Even with China, we’re not able to repay for the wars. At least not
until we re-energize our own stateside manufacturing and get off the debt dope.
Follow the money god of the 5% and its expansion during, and expectantly after,
those wars, and you see that their devotion does not include the 95%. We are
being led by the moral bottom 5%. They know not what they do, but we allow
them to run the show. When the people lead, the leaders will follow. How do we
lead? See my prior post; (hint) it starts with ourselves. To start the change with
someone else is not only futile, it’s from a “victim” position. You like being a
victim? I don’t. So stop by not victimizing yourself. Most of the posts on here are
about somebody else must change, so I don’t have to be their victim. That’s
hapless and hopeless. It starts with myself.

What really is the deficit for? It is for the WELFARE PAYMENTS TO THE CORPORATE WELFARE KINGS.The money to finance the deficit is borrowed by the U.S. Treasury by issuing bonds.The proceeds of the bonds are then DOLED OUT TO THE CORPORATE WELFARE KINGS with the interest and principle paid by individual taxpayers. Ronald Reagoon established the legacy of huge deficits with this in mind and he made sure the corporate tax rates were reduced and/or eliminated. This process allows for rampant corruption. A deficit for the purpose of establishing a health care industry would not result in the corruption necessary to suit Congress because it would be so decentralized disbursing benefit on behalf of millions of medical care recipients instead of doling it out to perhaps several hundred or even a few thousand CORPORATE WELFARE KINGS.

I worked for a while at a job in Seattle in which 200 people were hired in one whack, for the 1-800 line that you have to call if you get one of those letters from the IRS saying that you are in big trouble. 

A lot of people on the other end of the phone were either angry or crying. 

Elderly people were the ones most often crushed under the wheels of this process, so I hope Obama makes good on his pledge to exempt them from it.  Do we really need to hold a lien on an old woman’s $1200 pickup truck because she was too distraught to file taxes while her husband lay dying?

One young woman called up, sputtering mad and incredulous that she had to pay taxes at all.  She was rich and living off the dividends from stocks.  When she was walked through the legal basis for the obligation, she became extremely indignant that she should have to be treated like everyone else and hung up. 

Many of those who are wealthy enough, tend to want exemptions from what everyone else has to deal with and thus, the Republican Party, under Bush - a trust fund baby himself - pandered to the indulgent rich. 

Sunning themselves on the decks of their megayachts, they only protest if their taxes might be increased to include them in creating a more equitable and civilized society.  War?  Most likely there is a way to profit from it.  To hell with the national deficit.  Who cares?  What does our live-in chef have for us tonight?

Yes, David, absolutely on the right track. Essentially, the false god of money has
to give way to something deeply real, inclusive and uniting within us. If not, we’re
all going down.

The amount of debt that is foreign held, is going to impact our quality of life, not money we owe ourselves.  One poster assumes that the military goons (trying to minimize the enormousness of their proposed baseline budget by dividing it by the amount of the concurrent gross domestic product (GDP)) somehow makes their haul believable. The press goes along with this lie forever. It’s like politicians who are afraid of being assassinated - they can’t touch military entitlements.
Bush started two wars and without China, never would have been able to pay for them.

This whole article is a piece of intellectual dishonesty.

From 2001 through 2009, Bush presided over a $2.5 trillion increase in the public debt, running deficits that averaged approximately $340B.  In 2003 and 2004, the deficit was approx $400B, this spending including the monies for Afghanistan and Iraq.  The deficit then decreased EACH year through 2007, which was less than $200B, before rising back to over $400B in 2008.

Obama, on the other hand, will run a $1.8 Trillion deficit in 2009 alone.  This will drop to a minimum deficit of $700B in 2012, then rise again each year almost $900B in 2016.

The actual data is from the US Treasury Dept, and the forecasted data I averaged the White House and CBO data (the White House is a lot rosier than the non-partisan CBO).

Now, we can argue about what the spending should be on (welfare v tax cuts, defense v health care), but the facts (not opinions) are perfectly clear.  Obama will increase the national DEBT by $4.9 TRILLION in 8 years, vs Bush adding $2.5 Trillion in his 8 years.  Additionally, whether you don’t care about the debt or not, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find buyers for government bonds, especially at manageable interest rates.  Now consider that in 2008, on a national debt of $11.8 trillion, the interest on that debt was $412B.  That is more than what was spent on the Depts of Education ($61B), Transportation ($56B, Veteran’s Affairs ($90B) and Agriculture ($95B) COMBINED.

Now, if you are going add 40% to the Federal Debt ($11.8T + $4.9T), what do you think will happen to the size of interest payments?  The only two departments that spend more than interest payments alone are Defense and Health and Human Services.  One other key thing to remember is that currently there is more being paid into Social Security than being paid out.  However, this money is “borrowed” into the general fund, which masks the overall size of the deficit.

So, like it or not, Obama is clearly the most fiscally irresponsible president in history.  And people have a right to be angry about that.  When deficit spending reaches the unmanageable levels that even he himself is projecting, then yes, he does need to figure out how to pay for even more redistributive spending.

And than there are the wars…on-going and the ones in the wings waiting.
Glad you are back on track, David.

Dems find themselves in a very difficult position.  The Repubs can be as crazy and irrelevant as they want and their base just goes wild with appreciation at their behavior.  But Dems are supposed to be the party of reason and progress and yet, they are also becoming the party of corporate largess and support for the status quo.  It is very difficult to keep up the public prattle about how concerned they are for our welfare and privately keep taking all that money.  I saw yesterday where Pelosi held a very expensive cocktail party for the very lobbyists who she is bashing with the public option.  How embarrassing (sigh)!

What we see happening is the emergence, from the closet, of something that has been happening for years.  Politicians are so emboldened that they no longer have to hide the corruption.  Remember back in the good old days when they would say, with a straight face, that all that campaign money wouldn’t influence their votes.  Now they don’t even talk about it any more.  Max Baucus drags this abortion from his finance committee and has the balls to talk about how progressive it is.  And without any sense of irony!  He gives the insurance industry a multi-billion dollar gift and wants us to believe it is really for our benefit.  “Bend over ... this won’t hurt a bit”.  And Obama got an ear full in the U of Maryland yesterday from the students who appear to know a lot more about health care reform than he thought they would.  I hope he was listening!

I have all but given up that the current political situation can be solved.  SCOTUS is about to green light direct corporate contributions to political campaigns which means any pretense at fairness will disappear.  Politicians won’t even have to ask for our meager contributions anymore ... just ask all the big companies to support their efforts.  Corporations will be able to buy the candidates directly and openly.  Can’t you just see the campaign ads ... at the end will be a list of corporate donors and the announcer will say ... “This political ad was brought to you by ... “.  And the candidates can sell ad space on their $3K suits and every other surface they have available.  Wouldn’t it be neat to see the GE logo on Obama’s lapel in 2012?  Then our transition to a corporate state will be complete.

Pelosi asks for some civility in the political discourse and Rep. Boner responds with talk about a revolution taking place.  These clowns don’t know what revolution is but if they keep this crap up I think we may just introduce it to them.  I’m studying the Russian revolution and would be more than happy to teach the lessons learned.

Good one Mr. Sirota.

You have to love “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, it’s so life-like.

Quote: “As the insurance industry’s Nurse Ratched lurks in the background, congressional Democrats cower in the corner, fearing the phantom menace of their own shadows. Standing next to the window, suicidal Republican leaders rant about “death panels” and threaten to splatter their electoral prospects onto the pavement below. Nearby, White House officials struggle with multiple-personality ailments as they mumble contradictory statements about the public option.”

The congressional democrats remind me of that quivering dude who FINALLY finds his voice and starts screamin’ “I want my cigarettes!  I want my cigarettes!”  And he just keeps it up and keeps it up…. until all the other “clients” get flustered and all in a bother, and eventually… all hell breaks loose!

Yes.  The natives are restless.  C’mon blue dogs, have your goddamn cigarette!