Boehner may be forced to choose between his country and his job.

That’s a no brainer.  He’s a republican.  His welfare is formost in his mind.  “I GOT MINE!!!SCREW YOU!!!”
is the rallying cry of the Right.

Go Right Young Man:

Q: Which nation’s current wars have created more refugees than any other? A: USA (source United Nations HRC)

Q: Which nation’s education system has fallen to 33rd in world? A: USA (source OECD )

Q: Which nation’s income and wealth inequality is at its greatest level since the 1920? A: USA (source Federal Reserve )

Q: Which nation is currently involved in its longest running war and has more active war fronts in its history? A: USA ( source, wake up and count )

Lafayette,

Your logomachy is frustrating in that you rarely get to the point.  Perhaps you’re unaware that you keep changing the subject.

You write of President Reagan and the unfairness of the U.S. tax structure.  I respond specifically to that and you attempt chide me for not addressing wealth distribution.  I address wealth redistribution and you attempt to chide me for not addressing social spending.  Your arguments may make sense to you, however, you leave me wondering if you understand your own theories and ideology.  It’s as if I’m having a discourse with an ill conceived series of slogans.

Let us try to keep this simple.

1. Can you point to a past or current socioeconomic system which equalizes wealth (no billionaires/millionaires) which did not lead to a murderous dictatorship?

2. Which nation’s economic system feeds more people on the planet today?

3. Which nation on the planet sees the poorest amongst us suffering from obesity?

4. Which of the world’s nations is it more likely that Oprah Winfrey could become a billionaire?

If you understand your own theories you ought to be able to answer each of the above in less than five minutes while using no more than 50 words.  If this proves impossible you may wish to rethink what you’re arguing for.

-

Refrain from believing that all who think unlike yourself must be stupid.  That habit takes the world of six billion people out of all realistic context.

IT AINT NECESSARILY SO ...

GRYM: Your “distribution of wealth” nearly always leads to dictatorships and the death of, literally, tens of millions of human beings.  Most often by cruel starvation.  History is so abundantly clear on this it’s odd to most people that some will continue that experiment.

Balderdash.

Communism, yes, has led to dictatorships. But I am not proposing Communism because of the evidence that, as an economic system, it has proven a failure.  Why is it that people of your ilk on the Right always pick up on the wrong historical facts?

Social Democratic values are the mainstream of present politics in Europe. Where exists high taxation and very large Social Investments to correct the very error which plagues the US – called Income Inequality. 

If you bother to look at the Gini Coefficient, you will see that most EU-countries are ten points lower in coefficient-value than the US. Which indicates, to an intelligent mind, that Income Inequality is less in these countries.

MY POINT

These same countries have Market Economies, are based upon Capitalism, have vibrant Right-wing and Left-wing parties, have now a long-history of democracy and have a standard of living that is at the very least equivalent or better than the US. 

On the other side of the ledger; the United States alone has lifted billions of people out of the most horrific abject poverty all over the globe.  The global effects of the engine of the U.S. economy alone, over the last 70 years, is like nothing the world has seen before.

I’ll grant you the above observations. Particularly as regards my father, an immigrant from Europe. Besides, the US is not the first to have integrated large tracts of land to build a common productive force of industry and commerce. It’s happened at least three or four times in human history.

America exited from the Second World War as the dominant economy in a world havocked by military destruction. So it was axiomatic that it would drive postwar growth. But that was 80 years ago and the wheel turns.

America today is one post of a multi-polar global economy and its dominance is largely military. It has a number of dominant New-Technology based industries, but its Old-Technology industries are losing jobs left and right.

Its currency is, yes, a reserve currency – for those who want to hold American debt. And its creditor countries are getting very tired.

There will be no “demise of America” on the international level. But, all politics is local. And in the matter of internal politics, the US seems anchored in postwar anti-everything-with-the-word-social-in-it.

You are blind to the advances made in this past half a century, which leaves Americans with far too much abject poverty, a middle-class that must bear the burden of a high-cost of living without any compensating increases in income and an Upper Class that refuses adamantly to give way on any progressive policies that would enhance the well-being of the nation as a whole.

POST SCRIPTUM

Good adversarial exchange and thank you.

Washington is dysfunctional as a RED Conservative Republican
EXTREMIST choice that is continually sanctioned by
Conservative/Moderate Right Republican Light
Democrat followers
following the DLC PNAC Plan.

No, Lafayette, it’s actually you who doesn’t get it.  And I intend no malice in making it clear.

Your “distribution of wealth” nearly always leads to dictatorships and the death of, literally, tens of millions of human beings.  Most often by cruel starvation.  History is so abundantly clear on this it’s odd to most people that some will continue that experiment.

On the other side of the ledger; the United States alone has lifted billions of people out of the most horrific abject poverty all over the globe.  The global effects of the engine of the U.S. economy alone, over the last 70 years, is like nothing the world has seen before.  Millions upon millions have been fed, housed and educated because of this massive engine.

With all of the above comes the Good, the Bad and the Ugly.  Nonetheless 100% real.

-

I am sincerely curious.  Which of the world’s nations is it more likely that Oprah Winfrey could become a billionaire?

SELFISH & IMMORAL

GRYM: The top 1 percent saw their share of the income tax bill climb even more dramatically, from 17.6 percent in 1981 to 27.5 percent in 1988.

You just don’t get it, do you.

You talk about the “awful taxes” that you must pay. I am talking about the distribution of income, which is infinitely more important. To wit, the fact that the top one percent garner 43% of all the wealth generated.

Are you blind to the unfairness of the distribution? Nope. You believe it perfectly normal that the top 1% should obtain 43% of the total wealth (and the other 99% of the population must share the remaining 57%). More so, you feel it is awful that the taxes of the top 1% of the population increased by 10%!

I cannot imagine an attitude more crudely immoral or unjust or selfish. Will wonders never cease ...

Lafayette,

It may come as a surprise that I agree with much of what you write.  It’s your conclusions which I find lacking.

Politics aside: The share of income taxes paid by the top 10 percent of earners jumped significantly, climbing from 48.0 percent in 1981 to 57.2 percent in 1988. The top 1 percent saw their share of the income tax bill climb even more dramatically, from 17.6 percent in 1981 to 27.5 percent in 1988.

Yes, contrary to what you’ve come to believe, the wealthiest Americans saw their income tax liabilities, in very real terms, rise dramatically after the U.S. congress lowered the income tax rates while eliminating several meaningful loopholes in the tax structure.

Let me write this another way. Nobody was paying 70% in income tax when the income tax rate was 70%.

-

Two bills passed in 1982 and 1984 together constituted the biggest tax increase ever enacted during peacetime.  These bills didn’t raise more revenue by hiking individual income tax rates though. Instead they did it largely through making it tougher to evade taxes, and through “base broadening”—that is, reducing various federal tax breaks and closing tax loopholes.

For instance, more asset sales became taxable and tax-advantaged contributions and benefits under pension plans were further limited.

What people forget about Ronald Reagan was that he very much converted to base broadening as a means of tax reform.

In 1983, for example, he signed off on Social Security reform legislation that, among other things, accelerated an increase in the payroll tax rate, required that higher-income beneficiaries pay income tax on part of their benefits, and required the self-employed to pay the full payroll tax rate, rather than just the portion normally paid by employees.

The tax reform of 1986, meanwhile, wasn’t designed to increase federal tax revenue. But that didn’t mean that no one’s taxes went up. Because the reform bill eliminated or reduced many tax breaks and shelters, high-income tax filers who previously paid little ended up with bigger tax bills.

-

Inequality of income:

I have, what I believe to be, an illustrative question.

Oprah Winfrey was “dirt poor” in Mississippi in the late 1950’s.  No flush toilets and no shoes.  Tell me, which of the world’s nations is it more likely that Oprah Winfrey could become a billionaire?  South Africa?  Russia?  China?  Saudi Arabia? Mexico?  Belize?  Turkey?  Ireland?  France?  What would be your answer?

After you lend us your opinion on this question we can discuss ways in which we might replicate parts of that system which, in very real terms, makes it easier for Oprah Winfrey to become a billionaire.

THE RICH GET RICHER AND …

As an American living in France (for quite some time) I am amazed at stateside attitudes toward the poor and downtrodden. It’s almost as if they did not exist, like turds on the sidewalk that disgust people as they tactfully walk around them - whilst wondering out loud why the city has not paid someone to rid the sidewalks of them.

This disregard for the poor seems endemic within our population as a whole and it is worthwhile wondering why. The columnist Lexington has come up with some interesting remarks about this social idiosyncrasy (as I like to call it):

Why is bashing the rich such an unpopular form of populism in America? The normal answer falls back on culture. Bill Galston of the Brookings Institution notes that Americans are repelled by the notion of inequality in worth or status. That men are created equal is, after all, “self-evident”. They are, however, far less perturbed by unequal wealth, a form of inequality that is the inevitable product of the free-market system in which most still profess an abiding faith. According to Tom Smith, director of the Centre for the Study of Politics and Society at the University of Chicago, surveys still show Americans to be more sympathetic than Europeans to the idea that unequal pay encourages people to work hard, for example, and less sympathetic to the idea that governments should try to smooth such inequalities out.

That said, you might think that the normal answer would no longer do in such abnormal times—after a great recession and with 14m people still looking for work. And, sure enough, every week brings a flood of complaints in the media about the rich getting richer while the incomes of the middle class stagnate or fall. A survey for the New York Times has just reported that the median pay for top executives at 200 big companies last year was little shy of $11m a year—a mouth-watering 23% rise since 2009. Joseph Stiglitz, the holder of a Nobel prize in economics, claimed in Vanity Fair that the top 1% of Americans were taking in nearly a quarter of the nation’s income and controlled 40% of its wealth, though others dispute his numbers.

Some others would call it “the American Dream”, that is, “by dint of hard work, you can “make it”. But, make it where?

Lexington gives a damn fine answer:

As to whether such disparities should matter, that question has puzzled philosophers at least since the Enlightenment. This column proposes no definitive answer this week. The point here is only that Americans do not seem to mind about the widening inequality of income and wealth as much as you might expect them to in current circumstances. By and large, they have preferred opportunity to leveling; equality of opportunity rather than equality of outcome. The trouble with this is that America is a long way from providing equal opportunity. Children born into the bottom fifth of the income distribution are nearly five times as likely to end their lives there as those from families in the top fifth. Indeed, social scientists are no longer sure whether it is still easier to climb the ladder in the “classless” United States than it is in the supposedly class-hobbled lands of Western Europe.

Therein lies the puzzle. Americans still believe tenaciously that the American Dream works. It just takes effort and all will be right. But grassroots America does not understand that the game has been rigged.

By Ronnie Reagan, when he brought marginal income taxes down from 70% to 30%. Which means that a huge part of the economic pie that goes to the top actually stays at the top of our social pyramid.

Or as my mother used to say, “The rich get richer and the poor get poorer”. Which demonstrated amazing prescience on her part … she never took a course in economics all her life!

GRYM: If your motive is to punish American
corporations and billionaires higher taxes
would be one solid way to meet that goal.

“Punish”? How so?

You don’t understand the pie-chart numbers here. Or, rather, you do not want to understand the numbers? I suspect the latter.

And I’ll quote the text in that link:

In terms of types of financial wealth, the top one percent of households have 38.3% of all privately held stock, 60.6% of financial securities, and 62.4% of business equity. The top 10% have 80% to 90% of stocks, bonds, trust funds, and business equity, and over 75% of non-home real estate. Since financial wealth is what counts as far as the control of income-producing assets, we can say that just 10% of the people own the United States of America.

They wont even feel a tax increase, unless it is of major proportions. Like bringing it back up to the 70% level where it was before Reckless Ronnie brought it down to 30%. The effective tax-rate, after deductions, today at the upper levels is just 23%. (And what have they been doing with their ill-got gains? Stuffing it into real-estate.)

The American rich - woe is us, poor us, poor us? Ya gotta be kiddin’.

Stop the blathering-in-a-blog.

A REAL SHAME

Interesting article, but it focuses on the symptom of dysfunction and not the cause.

It is brainless stupidity to think that reducing Government Expenditures during a period of economic contraction. Ask any economist with a brain.

If LaLaLand on the Potomac is the symptom of dysfunction, then what is the cause? It is the body-politic that cannot understand economic fundamentals.

It cannot assimilate the fact that we have undergone the worst economic recession in 8 decades and that, as recessions go, this will take the time necessary. That is usually 3/4 years before the economy starts creating jobs because Consumers (the same people who vote) start spending as they had before the recession.

Many people are still paying off the debt that they had accrued from the binge-spending before 2009. Unbelievable? Sorry, that’s what the Savings stats show. (See here, line 34. Personal savings reached a high in 2009 - when people needed to pay off their debt - and have been coming down in each quarter since. But not fast enough, meaning consumers are very wary of spending.)

When people save, they don’t spend. When consumers don’t spend, companies do not expand production to meet a nonexistent increase in Demand. Ipso facto, no jobs are created.

And the boneheads on both sides of the aisle in LaLaLand on the Potomac want to cut expenditures? Meaning deconstruction of jobs?  Stop the world, I wanna get off ...

MY POINT

Some of us have been wallowing in unemployment for two years now because Replicant Boneheads have a bee-in-their-bonnet about dogmatically contracting BigGovernment. They want control of the White House next year and no holds are barred.

The unemployed of America are not even on Replicant Radar screens, so oblivious are they to the economic pain afflicting us today.

So, some in America will have to suffer - more than likely those who have given up all hope of a recovery and, in their disgust, will not even vote next year.

That is the real shame.

Misfiteye,

I understand well how hard it can be for truck
drivers.  Both for independent operators and
employees.  At times it’s just as difficult for
your local roofer, baker, cab company operator
and restauranteur which make up the majority of
U.S. millionaires.

I would only ask that we keep in mind that
there are tens of thousand of corporations all
over the globe.  All competing for the same
thing.  Corporate taxes is not an “American
issue”.  It should not be thought of as such.

At this time India and China both have
economies that outpace the United States.  Each
India and China have produced more billionaires
in the past decade than any on the planet.  We
can easily imagine how pleased both India and
China are about this.

If your motive is to punish American
corporations and billionaires higher taxes
would be one solid way to meet that goal. 
Only, understand the effects of your
punishment. 

If I may ask a direct question?  How exactly
does helping an Indian Billionaire compete on
the global stage create a job in the United
States?  How would this raise your personal
income? 

-

Profits

Corporate grocery store chains, with revenue in
the billions, have a very tight profit margin. 
The teller, the stock-boy, the bagger and
maintenance worker have every right to complain
about pay (noting that nearly every one of the
above also complains of high payroll taxes). 
The profit margin for a grocery store is so
tight that if you fill your cart with $125 of
food and product but drop and break a large jar
of mayonnaise nearly all the profit from the
entire sale is wiped out.

If a grocery store in Main can purchase an
orange from California for $.4.3 or from Mexico
for $.1.9, from where would a savvy
businessperson purchase that orange?  The
answer, of course, is obvious.  Punishing the
grocery store operator would be
counterproductive.  It certainly would not
create another job in Main.

Who benefits from corporate profit? 
Shareholders and investors, of course.  Who
make up the bulk of shareholders?  Public
Employee Service unions, teachers unions,
retirees, the Teamsters and local
municipalities. - Very few shareholders are
individual investors.

-

I’m not here to argue that Wall Street
executives don’t place profit as their main
concern.  I’m not here to argue that those same
executives deserve the high income they take
in.  I’m here arguing that Wall Street is not
the only game on the planet.  Germany, China,
India, Britain and Turkey would be very pleased
if American corporate taxes were to be raised
significantly.  The very real effect would
raise profits for Germany, China, India,
Britain and Turkey.  Each of the above will see
a rise in domestic employment. - How, exactly,
does that aid your personal agenda and/or
wealth?

Note: The twenty wealthiest districts in the
United States are represented by democratic
congressman.  Some would have us believe that
one or another U.S. political party is to blame
for all of the above.  Some would have us
believe U.S. soldiers and Christianity are the
problem.  Being nothing but frank that’s not
very bright.  In fact that entire narrative is
myopic and small.  It solves nothing.

GRYM (with love and a laugh):
  You have a bunch of corporations located in Timbuctoo depressing the economy by taking too much profit, dodging taxes, not reinvesting, and shipping jobs overseas to Timbuctsu.  The government of Timbuctoo raises their taxes to plow some money back into the economy—jobs, infrastructure and social security etc. 
  The corporations get mad and move to Timbuctsu and depress that economy, which was already depressed. Soon Timbuctsu catches on to what’s wrong and decides to raise corporate taxes there, at which the corporations move yet again to some other more depressed location. Finally they begin to notice that now nobody has any money to buy any of their products. Furthermore, they can’t find anywhere to live without stepping over dead bodies.  What to do, what to do?  Pray for rain? Board their yachts and sail off to the edge of the flat world, while watching reruns of old movies?
  Believe me, GRYM. Nobody is that stupid.

Myronh said “Just who do you thing the Rich are going to sell their product to,or loan their money to in 3rd-World countries”

Corporations dont need individuals in third world countries to purchase their goods.  They only need their labor, resources, and addiction.

Bill Gate’s Microsoft giving 400 million of proprietary software to India, and free cell phones to the poor in Namibia is a business venture not philanthropy.  Do kids groveling in the dust in Namibia need phones to take picutures, listen to music, and peruse “apps”?

American’s addiction is already irreparable.  Haggar closing plants in South Carolina and moving to Mexico certaintly doesnt stop people from buying their clothes.  Its on all the shelves at your local Walmart

This article, ‘Why the Republicans Resist Compromise’, by Nate Silver, may interest you.  There are a lot of defects with the study, such as self-reported ideology, but I think the predicament of the ruling class comes through.  That is, they have huckstered to different segments of the population, depending on party, and now those huckstered to are demanding a payoff, which the ruling class can’t supply.  The Republicans, to satisfy their rebellious ‘conservative’ base, must try to kill Social Security and Medicare; the Democrats must try to preserve them intact, or they will suffer the same sort of revolt the Republican establishment has already suffered.  Meanwhile the wars must go on and the bankers must continue to reap where they do not sow.  However, arithmetic and simple logic forbid agreement.

At a certain point in a declining enterprise, near the end, the partners begin to fight for the remaining scraps.  What are your plans?

I drove truck for 15 years and one I learned was that companies know how to make a driver work harder.  Pay him less.

His bills and obligations don’t get any smaller, so he has to work harder to pay them.
************

My father told a story to me as a parable, about a man in his building who owned a business long ago making lipsticks.  The women working were paid by the piece.  One clever lady found a way to make them much faster and increase her income, and then all the women started using it. The owner, an evil, greedy bastard, then cut the piece-meal rate! He told my father: “They don’t need to make so much money”!

There you have it: The GOP line. Squeeze every last bit you can out of the workers: “They don’t need to make so much money.”  This is why Orren Hatch said the poor have to sacrifice to help the deficit.
“They don’t need to make so much money.”

I’m not a socialist but there’s something really compelling to Marx’s discussion of economic classes.  Those with the money, and the power, and the toys, and the “Trophy Wives” want to keep their exclusive club and not let in too many new members, and CERTAINLY don’t want the Hoi-Poloi to get too close:

“They don’t need to make so much money”.

In Jan 1973, National Lampoon printed a cover that said
“If you don’t buy this magazine we’ll kill this dog.”

http://www.flickr.com/photos/wsmonty/3634918376/

That’s the GOP’s message: If you don’t impoverish 95% of Americans, the richest 5% will pull up stakes and go elsewhere.

If that’s their loyalty to America, then they shouldn’t let the door hit them in the butt on the way out.

Let ‘em go.  Do you want to poor and a slave or poor and free?  They can take the 5 thugs on the USSC with them.

GRYM

“New taxes is rarely the solution. “

I drove truck for 15 years and one I learned was that companies know how to make a driver work harder.  Pay him less.

His bills and obligations don’t get any smaller, so he has to work harder to pay them.

So now you want us to believe that if the rich have to pay higher taxes they won’t want to be rich anymore?

The Bush tax cuts have been in place for about 8 years now.  Where are the jobs?

Tax cuts for the wealthy, bailouts for the banks, economic stimulus for the big corps. and what do we have to show for it?

Record corporate profits, 9% unemployment and companies are still cutting jobs, reducing benefits and increasing hours.

Are you sure there isn’t anything else we can do for you?

GRYM,

Just who do you thing the Rich are going to sell their product to,or loan their money to in 3rd-World countries?

If your philosophy is correct, then the logical solution to even encourage the Moneyed elite to invest in the good old US would be to eliminate all Corporate tax and provide supplements to the Corporation from the Workers pay-checks. I bet this would even be approved by the Tea-Party members.

Break the back of the US middle/working class by moving all the production over seas and the source of revenue for the rich is now dead, as it’s slowly dying now.

Henry Ford discovered that his workers needed to be paid enough so they could afford to buy the cars they produced. In so doing he not only enjoyed a happy and productive workforce, but the parking lot filled with employees new cars was a Marketing managers dream come true.

thethirdman, - “GRYM: Are you saying that if we keep this up, then most of the billionaires and
millionaires will move away from America?
If you throw in the soldiers and Christian nuts, you got yourself a deal.’ - ‘Well, a boy can dream, can’t he?”

-

In my mind yours is a fairly nasty and wholly bigoted sentiment. 

Yes, corporations, billionaires and millionaires, if the point is punishment, will simply take their investments and jobs elsewhere.  To you this would be an improvement.

I will disagree.

GRYM:
Are you saying that if we keep this up, then most of the billionaires and
millionaires will move away from America?
If you throw in the soldiers and Christian nuts, you got yourself a deal. 
Well, a boy can dream, can’t he?

New taxes is rarely the solution. 

I am not aware of any noted economist who will not attest that there’s serious spending and efficiency problem.  In my mind it seems either irrational or highly ideological to deny.

If the U.S. were to raise corporate taxes, while not simultaneously nationalizing all U.S. corporations, those corporations will certainly move.  100% guaranteed.  Those jobs, that revenue, no matter how large or small, will no longer reside in the U.S..  It truly is that simple.  Punishing corporations for sending jobs overseas will no longer be an issue.  Only in lowering taxes will corporations (and jobs) return.

The same can be said for “punishing” the wealthy for being wealthy.  In the United States, one of many “free nations”, any millionaire and billionaire is free to move their monies and themselves elsewhere.  As bad or good as American billionaires may be, they are just that, American. - There are others exactly like them in China, India, Russia, Kuwait, Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, Japan etc.  Most of the 190 nations on the planet will be more than glad to receive the added business and revenue.

The Progressive proscription for many problems (punish wealth) will lead quickly to disaster for who?  America and Americans.  It’s quite simple.  No one, not from all over the globe, will see benefit in investing or doing business in or with The United States.  Of course many believe that would be a good thing.  In fact the best of things to happen to the world.

-

The Congress should not raise a single tax until it can clearly show its usefulness in efficiency and balancing a budget.  Anything else, it seems to me, is ludicrous.

In my opinion, the question isn’t so much “What are we going to do?” but “How are we going to do whatever we do?” 
  Whatever we do ought to be both intelligent and successful.
  Violence usually proves to be stupid and destructive, especially when one’s opponent is already scared and on the defensive—and heavily armed.  So that leaves nonviolence.  What is nonviolence, anyway? What are its core values? Its weaknesses?  Its strengths?
  How is it done?  When it is successful, why is it successful?  Why are millions of people all over the world interested these days in trying to learn how to use it?
  Where can I find out more about it?  Who is Gene Sharp?  Richard Gregg?  What is the Albert Einstein Institute? What are “Peace Studies” departments teaching at places like Columbia and the Univ. of Colorado and elsewhere?
  What is the “AVP program” taught in many schools and in some prisons, and used to help solve “inner city” problems?  What are the results so far?
  Why did Gandhi, Mandela, Walesca, King and the Berrigan Brothers use non-violence by preference?
  To quote an old cliche: “Seek and ye shall find.  Knock and it shall be opened unto you.”

I think we all understand the problem.  The question is what we’re going to do about it.

“and now they’re coming for your Social Security money. They want your fuckin’ retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street, and you know something? They’ll get it . . . they’ll get it all from you sooner or later cause they own this fuckin’ place. It’s a big club and you ain’t in it. You and I are not in the big club. By the way, it’s the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long beating you over the head with their media telling you what to believe, what to think and what to buy. The table has tilted folks. The game is rigged and nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. Good honest hard-working people . . . white collar, blue collar it doesn’t matter what color shirt you have on. Good honest hard-working people continue, these are people of modest means . . . continue to elect these rich cocksuckers who don’t give a fuck about you. They don’t give a fuck about you . . . they don’t give a fuck about you. They don’t care about you at all”

- George Carlin

http://michaelfury.wordpress.com/2010/08/09/by-the-balls/

Inherit the Wind wrote:
“The Democrats cannot win by giving in yet again.”
Hey, it’s not “giving in” if it’s what they want to do in the first place, and this is what they WANT to do, just as WANTED to give tax breaks to the rich, fund the wars, and spy on us. The pretend hand-wringing before they “give in” is for the benefit of those who are somehow still loyal to Democratic Party.

Gerard, you made an excellent comment. I support everything you wrote.

“It’s complicated” is the excuse made to cover up dirty dealings.
Everyone knows what NEEDS to be done:
1) Bring taxation levels for the rich and corporations up to at least the levels the rest of us pay.
2) Get rid of loopholes and subsidies to the wealthiest industries: Big Oil and Banks.
3) Stop rewarding corporations for sending jobs off-shore and start penalizing them instead with sur-charges for exporting jobs.
4) Get us out of Iraq and Afghanistan.
5) Invest in rebuilding our infrastructure and adding NEW infrastructure (like sufficient high-tension lines to get power from wind farms in Texas and the North West to the rest of the nation).
6) Re-regulate banks and Wall Street to prevent them raping our economy again.
7) PROSECUTE the bastards who sank the economy deliberately.
8) Get rid of the MCA and the Patriot Act.
9) Stop wasting time on personal issues like abortion and gay marriage.
10) Realize that these things EASILY fund Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Education and…Planned Parenthood.

But “it’s complicated” because 99% of the GOP and 65% of the Democrats in Congress owe their allegiance to the special interests that want to KEEP these imbalances in place.

Yesterday, that total whore Orren Hatch had the fucking GALL to say that it’s the POOR who must make sacrifices to lower the deficit.  THE POOR!

The fact that that sell-out bastard can stand up and say that when the rich and the corporations are paying NO MORE than 15% in taxes while the rest of us pay far higher rates tells you why “it’s complicated”.

BTW, Orren Hatch is from Utah and a devout Mormon, just like Mitt Romney.

OH God someone please, start passing out free Heroin to everyone, this is just too
painful to watch anymore…

Dysfunction doesn’t even come close to describing, the clusterfuck that Washington has
become… It’s just like Obama to put his head in a vise, so he can turn around and claim
that he had no choice but to stab the American people in the back, one moe time…

Let’s be realistic, for a moment the only deal he should cut with Boner is to demand he
go to Alcoholic Rehab, so he can stop feeling sorry for himself at the expense of the
country…

All Obama has to do is tell the Repugnicans, that if they don’t raise the debt ceiling he
will bring back every single solitary soldier whose out there in some shit hole country
getting their ass shot off, bring them right back home to the USA,  within one second of
that date in August…..

That out to create some movement, in the Bowles of the small government true
believers.

This game is just another way to screw us up, so the ruling class can stay in power a little bit longer. But their arguments are becoming too transparent: Screw the working stiffs of this country. They will have to face the consequences at some point in the future.

From David Sirota in Salon.com:  “No, we are watching a sort of Orwellian dystopia. Indeed ... a regime that believes it can say one set of things over and over and over again, and then do exactly the opposite.

“Inherent in that ideology is the assumption that Americans—and particularly Democratic voters—are either too stupid to see the heist in process, or if they do see the heist, are too entranced by their president’s power/fame/celebrity/charisma to want to do anything about it, even if what’s being pilfered is Democrats’ Social Security crown jewel.”

The above embodies a gross misconception: That the “Government” thinks “Democratic voters” are “too stupid” or “too entranced etc.”  This notion is patently false. The “government” knows perfectly well that it has betrayed/is betraying all its constituents, Republican and Democrat.  Said con-
stituents have tried in numerous ways to make them-
selves heard, but the doors and windows of all
government buildings are shut tight. That is the
awful truth.  The “government” is running on empty” meaning is self-enclosed, willfully blind, deaf and
dumb because they think they can get away with it.
Closed circuits implode, eventually, from repetitive errors and self-induced excesses.

To pretend that the country is falling apart because its people are ignorant and passive is the wrong diagnosis. It’s nothing more than a sleazy, outworn “blame the victims” cliche.

The disease is bureaucratic rot, and pride based on refusal to admit the truth and self-correct in time to avoid disaster. The disease is the bureaucratic arrogance of arbitrary power.

Why is no mention being made of large cuts to the military budget? oops forgot that in a Police State we dont mention such things

These talks about the debt ceiling and deficit reduction have NOTHING to do
with the economy.  Do you really believe that these guys know with certainty
what will improve the economy?  We do know what would get rid of the deficit,
however—

1 Eiminate tax cuts for the wealthy.  That alone would get rid of the deficit in
10 years.
2. Stop the Endless Wars.

The two above items combined would cut the deficit in less than 5 years.

How many BAILOUTS FOR THE WEALTHY are working people going to be forced
to pay?  And these are indeed a form of bailouts. 

Did you get a bailout?  No. You’re still in prison, unable to make bail.  The 9%
unemployed are being targeted for cheap labor to replace the illegal immigrants
that corporations are no longer to enjoy with impunity. 

Please take Bernie Sanders new poll on Shared Sacrifice at—

http://1.usa.gov/4yeZKn

The reason ‘making a deal’ on the debt ceiling is so complicated is that it’s a shell game, and thus will be made as complicated as necessary to befuddle the marks (E. J. Dionne, for example).

Sometimes a system is so broken it cannot be saved.  We all know what needs to be done: The President and the Democrats need to say “ENOUGH! You cannot continue to destroy America to keep corporations rich and unregulated!”

Stop compromising and let the chips fall where they may. If McConnell forces the government into default to protect oil subsidies, the “Law of Unintended Consequences” will blow up in his and the Tea Party’s faces like the biggest shit-bomb of all time.

The Democrats cannot win by giving in yet again.  Didn’t the election of 2010 teach them that? They have been giving in since 1994 and all it’s done is sunk America deeper and deeper.

Time to lance the boil, Mr. President, as painful as that may be.