What is the necessity of all the wars?  Are all the expenditures for
all of the wars we are in together with the Military Industrial
Complex that supports them EXEMPT from the process of balancing
the budget???????  And,———if so, why???????

The United States appears to be heading into a perpetual state of
war that is much the same as that written about by George Orwell
in “Ninteen Eighty Four,” and for much the same purpose.

Unless the people of the United States want to live a “1984” style
existence, that is generated by a perpetual state of war and total
control by the government to perpetuate total control for no other
reason than that of total government control that provides benefit
to the fe*w at the expense of the m*any, it is time for the American
Populace, the 70% Majority Common Population, to start taking
back control of the government of the United States apart from the
duopolistic backlash “1984” enabling governance of the Republican
Party/Democratic Party governance of “Big*Brother,” so that
resources are allocated for the greater good of all of the
population, rather than the greater greed of the “s*el*ect
f*ew” that profit from war and the Military Industrial Complex.

There IS no reason that the entire U.S. Budget cannot be allocated
to war ——it can be.  War, the Military Industrial Complex,
interest on the National Debt; and the fa*sc*ist interests that
benefit from war, the Military Industrial Complex, and a revenue
stream from the servicing of the National Debt CAN ALL be
allocated to war, and war related activity ——— Is this what
we want for the future of the United States?

It is up to the 70% Majority Common Population of the United
States, the American Populace, to decide whether or not this
is the type of world that the United States is going to perpetuate,
or whether or not the United States is going to CHANGE COURSE
———What say you?  Shall we have more of the same?  Or, is it
time for a change from perpetual war and a war related economy
that benefits the few at the expense of the many.

“My view, for what it’s worth, is that now is the wrong
time for spending cuts or tax increases—”

you are half right….do not cut spending…but do tax
the rich to get some of the hundreds of billions they
are refusing to reinvest in jobs and create jobs in
building infrastructure and maintaining the social
safety net…

This just in, Eugene, Obama offers up cuts in Social Security.

Surely, Eugene, you are one of the most gullible ‘journalists’ alive today.

I bet you’re still searching in the pile for “Change You Can Believe In”.

Let’s review, Eugene:

1. The Debt and Fair Taxes: Washington Post-ABC poll Washington Post-ABC
poll, Spring 2011: 72 percent supported raising taxes on the rich including 68
percent of Independents and 54 percent of Republicans. Obama twice
‘bargained’ to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. Obama never stepped
forward to lead on this issue - even with 72% of Americans supporting it. In
fact, he ‘negotiated’ the continuation of Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, not
once, but twice – first with McConnell and then again with Boenher.

2. TARP & Financial Bailout: Over 70% of us opposed the bailout. Obama
accelerated it with Geithner and Bernanke - both Bush carryovers embraced by
Obama.  Geithner is soon to receive his ‘bailout’ from the financial sector (as he
soon ‘retires’ from the Obama administration).

3. Health Care: 72% of us supported “a government­administered insurance plan
- something like Medicare for those under 65—that would compete for
customers with private insurers.” Instead he supported a private-sector, for-
profit health insurance ‘reform’ providing insurance companies fabulous
guaranteed profits – in the form of hundreds of millions of new ‘mandated
customers’. For the ‘mandated customers’ who cant afford the exorbitant
private sector for-profit rates, taxpayer money will pay the difference directly
to the insurance companies. The private for-profit insurance companies are
guaranteed by law an ‘overhead’ of 20%. This Obama did with Democratic
majorities in both houses and as a nominally Democratic President, effectively
flushing away six-plus decades of Democratic public policy.

4. Afghanistan: 64% of us opposed expanding the war in Afghanistan and
wanted to disentangle from Bush-era ‘War on Terror’ and ‘preventive war’
policies. Today, still over 60% of Americans oppose the war. More troops will be
in Afghanistan when Obama leaves office than when he ‘began the draw down’.
For the War Department, more money will be squirreled away in Defense than
when Obama took office – just this year, a six percent increase was injected to
‘absorb’ the 3% ‘cut’ they may get (to ‘fight the deficit’).

And, oh, Eugene, you may have missed the big kick in the butt Obama’s
Secretary of Treasury gave to the Democrats while he was in Europe:

In a speech while in Europe last quarter (reported in the Financial Times),
Geithner told the Europeans that the US had made “a fundamental shift”. He
added:

“When you have both the president of the United States and the Republican
leadership in Congress both embracing the same basic target for deficit
reduction…you have made a fundamental shift….” 

The message is: There are no Democrats in the Obama White House and darned
few left in the House and Senate, even though they carry the party name, they
are Republicans and apologists and shills for the wealthy and big corporations.
Eugene, those who are Democrats are systematically and purposefully excluded
from Obama’s White House.

Eugene, there’s no Easter Bunny, no Santa Claus and no Democratic Obama.

So, Obama has now offered up cuts to Social Security to the Republican bullies.
Why? Because Obama is a Republican, Eugene. Pull your head out.

Members of the American Common Populace need to learn who they
are as a class and culture, then, if they are in the Republican Party,
get out of the Republican Party and NEVER join the Republican Party
or vote for any
REPUBLICAN,  and only run Democratic Party candidates that will be
about taking over control of the Democratic Party for the 70%
Majority American Common Populace as a class and culture, which is
the only way to get liberal control back to the people of the majority
populace in the USA.  Since there are only two
political parties, and no likelihood of a third
political party for some time, control will only be able to be restored through the Democratic Party.

The Democratic Party needs a Tea Party
movement of the 70% Majority American Common
Populace as a class and culture.

Members of the American Common Populace need to learn who they
are as a class and culture, then, if they are in the Republican Party,
get out of the Republican Party and NEVER join the Republican Party
or vote for any
REPUBLICAN,  and only run Democratic Party candidates that will be
about taking over control of the Democratic Party for the 70%
Majority American Common Populace as a class and culture, which is
the only way to get liberal control back to the people of the majority
populace in the USA.  Since there are only two
political parties, and no likelihood of a third
political party for some time, control will only be able to be restored through the Democratic Party.

The Democratic Party needs a Tea Party
movement of the 70% Majority American Common
Populace as a class and culture within the
Democratic Party.

Members of the American Common Populace need to learn who they
are as a class and culture, then, if they are in the Republican Party,
get out of the Republican Party and NEVER join the Republican Party
or vote for any
REPUBLICAN,  and only run Democratic Party candidates that will be
about taking over control of the Democratic Party for the 70%
Majority American Common Populace as a class and culture, which is
the only way to get liberal control back to the people of the majority
populace in the USA.  Since there are only two
political parties, and no likelihood of a third
political party for some time, control will only be able to be restored through the Democratic Party.

Sorry but the somewhat rosy picture of Obama, ain`t going to be enough for me. No more!

The tax cut that was extended to the top 5% is, on average, worth $85,000/year. 

$85,000 per year

The average person on unemployment gets about $16,500/year.  And about 10% are unemployed.

Can you do the basic math?

If the tax cut for them was repealed, there would be $42,500 per (unemployed) person to pay that $16,500 and would leave over $26,000….

Yeah.  Each rich person gets a tax break that would pay the unemployment benefit of every out-of-work worker and STILL leave $26,000 to fight the deficit.

So…why are CUTTING unemployment benefits and refusing to retract that rich man’s tax break? Simple arithmetic tells us that it makes far more FINANCIAL sense to tax the rich and continue unemployment bennies.

But Mitch McConnell and Jeff Sessions will tell you it’s PATHETIC to tax rich people when you can cut poor people off…..

Latest polls show swing states (the ones that will decide 2012 are running 80% in favor of taxing the wealthiest Americans.  80%

@ssg13565: “Why is Obama the last to know?”

He knows exactly what he is doing.  He is serving Wall Street.

Getting re-eelected is a secondary concern.

Our welfare is far below either of those.

By the way, in a poker game, you cannot successfully call someone’s bluff if they already hold all the money on the table.  The guy with the most chips at the beginning almost always wins. 

Dems are notoriously bad poker players.

The median US income per family is now at 50K - that’s one fifth of what that poor 250K family earns.  I can assure you that 50K families are not serfs or ditch diggers and work very hard.  And the folks the Repugs want to soak are all those who will quite soon be on Medicare and Soc Sec.  Even top earners will be getting less than 50K in Soc Sec by the time the first 54 year old starts to draw even at 62. 

I don’t mind the prospect of having my Soc Sec means tested or having retirement age tied to something reliable like the New York life tables.  But the Tea Partiers are rolling the dice with somebody else’s bucks on the table. 

e.g. ask yourself who will be able to buy health insurance with Ryan’s “premium support” when everyone who reaches 65 will surely have multiple pre-existing conditions.  (Keeping in mind that 25% of adults are supposedly obese right now.)

I really do get tired of politicians pronouncing what “The American People” say or think or feel. 

My response to them is “... As If…”

“The president demands that Congress also eliminate “tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires ... oil companies and hedge fund managers and corporate jet owners.”

Thumbs up Mr. President…

I should hope that Eugene Robinson is a millionaire.

On another blog, one of the comments complained that a couple making $250,000 a year were not millionaires.

If that couple has been earning that kind of money for any significant time, what with 401K’s, IRAs, mortgage interest deductions, real estate tax deductions, capital gains tax breaks, etc., they surely ought to have a net worth of well over a million dollars.

If they have not reached that level of net worth, they must be doing something horribly wrong with their finances.

Now there is nothing wrong with handling your finances well, but the truth is that the very fact that you have accumulated that amount of wealth is an indication that you are not spending enough to boost the economy as much as people with lower incomes would if they had more money to spend.

The $250,000 couple is way on the bottom end of who we should be taxing more.  Given all the deductions I have mentioned above, they wouldn’t get much of a hit by rescinding the Bush tax cuts for couples earning over $250,000.  They can afford the minimal hit they will take better than someone living on $15,000 a year Social Security.

In truth, some non-millionaires who never fly on corporate jets would also lose tax breaks under the president’s proposal.’

My feeling after reading this article is that the author is one of those ‘non-millionaires’ that fears he will be affected if tax breaks are not renewed.  That puts his opinion, and entire article into perspective.

Cutting the bloated military budget, the 800-pound
gorilla in the room, ever taboo.  This is the
corporate welfare in the billions, the white collar
crime no one talks about when it comes to the half of
the discretionary budget spent on killing and
destruction that profits a few.  The force required
to maintain the disparity of wealth the empire’s
exploitation requires impoverishes us all, covered
with lies about democracy and freedom while it
enriches the bankers who have created a perpetual
indemnity (as long as we go along with it - Congress
has abdicated its role in the accounting of the US
budget, but it has the obligation to see to that
accounting, regardless) out of thin air.

“[Nearly 70% of the military budget] is to provide
men and weapons to fight in foreign countries in
support of our allies and friends and for offensive
operations in Third World countries .. Another big
chunk of the defense budget is the 20% allocated for
our offensive nuclear force of bombers, missles, and
submarines whose job it is to carry nuclear weapons
to the Soviet Union… Actual defense of the United
States costs about 10% of the military budget and is
the least expensive function performed by the
Pentagon…”
(Rear Admiral Gene LaRoque, U.S. Navy retired)

I don’t know.
He’s blinked so many times, as Reid and Pelosi have since they got the majority in 2007, and when they were in the minority before then, especially Reid.

I think Reid is the worst Majority/Minority leader since Trent Lott, and, from a pure parliamentarian view, may actually be worse. The last REALLY good majority leaders were Lyndon Johnson for the Democrats and Bob Dole for the Republican. (By today’s standards, Dole is a liberal, horrifying as that sounds, but he was BRILLIANT as a parliamentarian, as was Johnson)

Inherit The Wind,

Sigh, indeed.  You know it, I know it, the Republicans know it.  Every non-theological economist knows it.

Why is Obama the last to know?

I’m hoping it will happen, that Obama doesn’t blink.
I’m begging it will happen.
If I was a religious person I’d be praying it will happen.
Anyone with a lick of sense wants it to happen.
Bill Clinton told Obama it NEEDS to happen.

But it won’t.  Obama will blink first, again, as always.

(sigh)

In Robinson’s article he says:

“My view, for what it’s worth, is that now is the wrong time for spending cuts or tax increases — that it’s ridiculous to do anything that might slow the lumbering economic recovery, even marginally. But if there have to be cuts, then Republicans must be forced to move off the no-new-revenue line they have drawn in the sand.”

My response is:

You have missed Robert Reich’s book “Aftershock” where he explains that there will be no self-sustaining recovery until things like the Bush tax cuts for the very rich are revoked.

Far from not wanting to raise these taxes during a recession, it is actually essential to raise these taxes.

The Republicans have bamboozled even you.  Even Obama doesn’t seem to completely understand this, or he would be strongly making the case himself.

“Every independent, bipartisan, blue-ribbon panel that has looked at the deficit problem has
reached the same conclusion: The gap between spending and revenue is much too big to be closed
by budget cuts alone”

The trouble with this statement is that these so-called blue-ribbon panels have generally been
spectacularly wrong.

The budget gap can only be closed realistically by robust economic growth and lower
unemployment. Unemployed people don’t pay income taxes.

If the economy doesn’t grow at a faster pace, deficits will continue to increase, and will increase
faster the more we cut spending. Similar to the paradox of thrift.

Spending = Income…you can’t describe the economy any simpler than that.

There is no such thing as a contractionary expansion - the math cannot work under feasible real-
world conditions.