Skunks in da House, deficit and debt

[mikeyank]

An aside to Slim:

Empty your message box, as you cannot receive private messages at this time.

Pardon my interruption. Back to the debate.......

 

[slimvintage]

An aside to Slim:

Empty your message box, as you cannot receive private messages at this time.

Pardon my interruption. Back to the debate.......

Empty. Thanks dear man.

 

[tampa24]

You make a good point Slim. The president is not in charge of passing legislation. The only real card he has in negotiations between the House and Senate is the veto pen. Conservatives can hurl mud at him all they want about "not leading". All the while they are doing this, out of the other side of their mouths they are assuring their radical base that they will pay no attention to what he has to say anyway. They publicly grandstand by refusing to take his telephone calls. Then they claim he is not doing enough.

For conservatives the only thing Obama can do to "show leadership" is to cave on all of their radical Tea Party demands, convince his fellow Democrats in the Senate to cave, and then not veto their legislation. If he did...of course they would stop calling him a loser. Then they would be calling him a beaten, ineffectual loser.

Oddly enough, given such enticing choices...Obama is not giving Republicans the kind of "leadership" they seek.

It is the politicians in the House and Senate who are not doing their jobs. Yes. Politicians of both parties.

 

[cumrag27]

As bad as things might be, things can always get worse!

You make a good point Slim. The president is not in charge of passing legislation. The only real card he has in negotiations between the House and Senate is the veto pen. Conservatives can hurl mud at him all they want about "not leading". All the while they are doing this, out of the other side of their mouths they are assuring their radical base that they will pay no attention to what he has to say anyway. They publicly grandstand by refusing to take his telephone calls. Then they claim he is not doing enough.

For conservatives the only thing Obama can do to "show leadership" is to cave on all of their radical Tea Party demands, convince his fellow Democrats in the Senate to cave, and then not veto their legislation. If he did...of course they would stop calling him a loser. Then they would be calling him a beaten, ineffectual loser.

Oddly enough, given such enticing choices...Obama is not giving Republicans the kind of "leadership" they seek.

It is the politicians in the House and Senate who are not doing their jobs. Yes. Politicians of both parties.

Dear Slim and Tampa,

I have to agree completely with your analysis. For all 8 years of GW Bushes hand-over-fist increases in federal government, no one from either side of the aisle had the balls to say NO out of fear of being called unpatriotic, not supporting the troops, or wanting to promote socialism/communism and hurt big business. Both parties were complicit in this overwelming national debt and sat on their hands, just like GW Bush when he first hears of the World Trade Towers attack.

But, as bad as this all was, now we have a even more dysfunctional group of Tea Party ideologues who would rather risk having an international collapse of financial markets worldwide and throw the whole world into a depression wiping out people's savings and retirements, so they can go back home and brag that the refused to raise revenue(a good word, not a bad word) to assist with the debt crisis from those most able to afford to pay, instead of imposing on the ever shrinking middle class.

I wish I could be more hopeful about our future as a world leading country, but all three groups of these self-serving assholes don't care about the middle class or making our country strong again.

Sincerely disgusted Democrat,


Stimpy

 

[jtdestin]

Also:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...-or-not-loved/2011/03/04/gIQANC0vhI_blog.html

The pygmies in the legislature (Chinless Mitch and Cry Boehby) have been rolling their fried-egg eyes and bitching that Obama hasn't led, that he doesn't have a plan. Don't those idiots know that it's their J O B to get together with the dreaded Reid and Pelosi and whatever committees are out there, and present him with a plan he can sign? And that any intervention on his part has only taken place because they are running shit scared of the TP and have failed criminally in their duties?

Obama The Senate and the Congress all are failing us they are only interested in preserving their power. So its us the tax payers that have the privilege to pay for them to play.

 

[jtdestin]

Heres a song for my friends i dont thinks theress a end to this debate

http://youtu.be/gCV-YMD6oXA

One of my all time favorite singers and one of my favorite songs

 

[Smiley]

Great song. Thanks for posting it.

 

[jtdestin]

Neko case

Great song. Thanks for posting it.

http://youtu.be/hCWhkP6ccZs

NEKO CASE HAS A VOICE THAT IS SO SMOOTH EVERYTIME I HERE IT MY SKIN TINGLES LOL

 

[thomas1023]

Slim -

Nice graph, but here's the one to look at:

http://blog.heritage.org/2010/02/05/past-deficits-vs-obamas-deficits-in-pictures/

Amazingly, the deficits started to trend down, but, thankfully, back in 2008, the Dems took control of both the House and Senate (rememeber, all spending starts in the House). Amazingly, it start trending up. Bush passed before he left office the horrible bailout plan, which Obama joyfully used to buy US companies.

And just recently, 50% of US companies said they would drop health coverage - thanks Obamacare. Let see, we have no idea how much anything will cost under Obamacare, so, if I were a company and needed to pay a fine (remember, it's not a 'tax') of $700 (more or less) per employee or pay for healthcare for an employee - not much of a business decision there, pay the 'fine'. And how many trillions per year will it cost the government to insure all of those people? This, of course, was the plan all along to arrive at a single payer (socialized) health care system.

And, this assumes the US will leave Iraq and Afganistan, but, wait, we're now at war in Libya. This shouldn't add anything new to the deficit.

Looks like good times ahead with BO!

 

[tampa24]

A front page story on the March 28th issue of Investor's Business Daily showed plainly, with bar graphs, how big mine and Tampas state; Florida's shortfall is under various rates of return on investments. Florida's own estimate of its pension fund's shortfall is based on assuming that they will receive a rate of return of 7.75 percent. But what if it turns out that they don't get that high a return?
A 6 percent rate of return would more than triple the size of Florida's unfunded liability for its employees' pension. The actual rate of return that Florida has received over the past decade has been only 2.6 percent. In other words, by simply assuming a far higher future rate of return on their investments than they have received in the past, Florida politicians can deceive the public as to how deep a hole the state's finances are in.
Political games like this are not confined to Florida. State budgets and federal budgets are not records of facts. They are projections based on assumptions. Just by manipulating a few assumptions, politicians can create a scenario that bears no resemblance to reality.
The "savings" to be made by instituting Obamacare is a product of this kind of manipulation of assumptions. Even when the people who turn out the budget projections do an honest job, they are working with the assumptions given to them by the politicians.
The fact that the end results carry the imprimatur of the Congressional Budget Office-- or of some comparable state agency or reputable private accounting firm-- means absolutely nothing.
When Florida arbitrarily assumes that it is going to get a future rate of return on its pension fund investment that is roughly three times what its past returns have been, that is the same nonsense as when the feds assume that Congress will cut half a billion dollars out of Medicare to finance ObamaCare. (Gov. Scott is trying to fix this and is catching hell from all ends for it.)

Even if the income tax rate were raised to 100 percent on millionaires and billionaires, it would still not cover the trillions of dollars the government is spending.

Then and now, people with the highest incomes have had the greatest flexibility as to where they will put their money. Buying tax-exempt bonds is just one of the many ways that "millionaires and billionaires" avoid paying hard cash to the government, no matter how high the tax rates go.
Most working people don't have the same options. Their taxes have been taken out of their paychecks before they get them.

Despite political demagoguery about "tax cuts for the rich," in human terms the rich have less at stake than working people. Precisely because the rich have so many ways of avoiding taxes, a high tax rate is likely to do them far less harm than it does to the economy, on which millions of people depend for jobs.

Dear JT,

Thank you for taking the time to write out a well researched post. I agree with many of your points about the shenanigans of government in covering up debt. I also agree that is a completely bipartisan endeavor.

Here are a few points on which you and I see differently. Keep in mind please JT that I don't intend to personalize anything we disagree on. You are a great guy. As Americans and fellow Floridians we can disagree and still be be friendly, civil and courteous.

Let me begin with a quote from Wikipedia:

http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_Republican_Party

"The Florida Senate was dominated by Democrats until 1992,when a majority of Republicans was elected. The Florida House of Representatives turned Republican after the 1996 election. Since then the number of Democrats in both chambers have (sic) continued to drop. The Florida legislature became the first legislature in any of the states of the former confederacy to come under complete Republican control when the Republicans gained control of the House and Senate in the 1996 election. However in the 2006 election Democrats actually gained seats in the State House, the first instance of this occurring since the early 1980's."


The last Democratic governor of Florida was Lawton Chiles. He served from January 8, 1991- December 12, 1998. He died of a heart attack while in office. His lieutenant served out the remaining 3 weeks of his term.

So the Republicans have had complete control of the Florida house and Senate since 1992. Florida has had only Republican governors since 1999. It has one of the biggest Republican majorities in the country. So you talk about the current state of affairs in our home state from a partisan viewpoint. It was hardly those tax and spend liberals who got us to where we are.

So whose mess is Rick Scott (Our latest Republican governor with a 29% approval rating) supposed to be cleaning up after? Is he cleaning up Lawton Chiles' mess from 1998? Is he cleaning up Jeb Bush's mess from 1999-2007? (Yes. That Jeb Bush, GWB's brother.) Or is he cleaning up after Charlie Crist who served from 2007-2011?

Was Rick Scott handed a mess by the pinko, commie, tax and spend liberal Jeb Bush? Was it the 4 years of Crist? Was it any of the consecutive Republican governors of the last 12 years? Or was it the Republican dominated Florida House and Senate of the last 19 years?

There's a reason why Gov. Scott has a 29% approval rating. The guy is a crook. He got wealthy by founding creating big health care companies. Then it came out while he was CEO of one of them (Columbia/HCA) that they were willfully and deliberately defrauding Medicare and Medicaid. The government decided that the corruption and Medicare/Medicaid fraud within the company was so egregious that they slapped Columbia/HCA with one of the biggest fines in history.

The Fed fined Rick Scott's company a whopping......$1.7 BILLION!!

He claimed he had no knowledge of that culture of overbilling and charging for services not performed. Just like the crooks at Enron, he said that all illegality was done by underlings. So of course he had no idea what was really going on in his own company to increase revenues. Then he managed to walk away without criminal charges.

Then he used $70 million of his own stolen money to self finance the campaign for governor. Yes. That's right. In order to win the election here by a squeaker he spent $70 million of his own money. Here in Florida right now we have the best government money can buy.

Obviously I get peeved whenever I hear Rick Scott demagoguing about his concerns about Medicare and Medicaid. Yeah, he's really concerned about them alright. I'm sure he has everyone's best interest at heart.

The LAST thing I want to see is Rick Scott of all people "fixing" Medicare. Oh Joy!

My overall point being of course that Florida government mirrors the national governemt in many ways. More on that later.

 

[tampa24]

Bush passed before he left office the horrible bailout plan, which Obama joyfully used to buy US companies.

Was that a bad investment?

 

[jtdestin]

Dear JT,

Thank you for taking the time to write out a well researched post. I agree with many of your points about the shenanigans of government in covering up debt. I also agree that is a completely bipartisan endeavor.

Here are a few points on which you and I see differently. Keep in mind please JT that I don't intend to personalize anything we disagree on. You are a great guy. As Americans and fellow Floridians we can disagree and still be be friendly, civil and courteous.

Let me begin with a quote from Wikipedia:

http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_Republican_Party

"The Florida Senate was dominated by Democrats until 1992,when a majority of Republicans was elected. The Florida House of Representatives turned Republican after the 1996 election. Since then the number of Democrats in both chambers have (sic) continued to drop. The Florida legislature became the first legislature in any of the states of the former confederacy to come under complete Republican control when the Republicans gained control of the House and Senate in the 1996 election. However in the 2006 election Democrats actually gained seats in the State House, the first instance of this occurring since the early 1980's."


The last Democratic governor of Florida was Lawton Chiles. He served from January 8, 1991- December 12, 1998. He died of a heart attack while in office. His lieutenant served out the remaining 3 weeks of his term.

So the Republicans have had complete control of the Florida house and Senate since 1992. Florida has had only Republican governors since 1999. It has one of the biggest Republican majorities in the country. So you talk about the current state of affairs in our home state from a partisan viewpoint. It was hardly those tax and spend liberals who got us to where we are.

So whose mess is Rick Scott (Our latest Republican governor with a 29% approval rating) supposed to be cleaning up after? Is he cleaning up Lawton Chiles' mess from 1998? Is he cleaning up Jeb Bush's mess from 1999-2007? (Yes. That Jeb Bush, GWB's brother.) Or is he cleaning up after Charlie Crist who served from 2007-2011?

Was Rick Scott handed a mess by the pinko, commie, tax and spend liberal Jeb Bush? Was it the 4 years of Crist? Was it any of the consecutive Republican governors of the last 12 years? Or was it the Republican dominated Florida House and Senate of the last 19 years?

There's a reason why Gov. Scott has a 29% approval rating. The guy is a crook. He got wealthy by founding creating big health care companies. Then it came out while he was CEO of one of them (Columbia/HCA) that they were willfully and deliberately defrauding Medicare and Medicaid. The government decided that the corruption and Medicare/Medicaid fraud within the company was so egregious that they slapped Columbia/HCA with one of the biggest fines in history.

The Fed fined Rick Scott's company a whopping......$1.7 BILLION!!

He claimed he had no knowledge of that culture of overbilling and charging for services not performed. Just like the crooks at Enron, he said that all illegality was done by underlings. So of course he had no idea what was really going on in his own company to increase revenues. Then he managed to walk away without criminal charges.

Then he used $70 million of his own stolen money to self finance the campaign for governor. Yes. That's right. In order to win the election here by a squeaker he spent $70 million of his own money. Here in Florida right now we have the best government money can buy.

Obviously I get peeved whenever I hear Rick Scott demagoguing about his concerns about Medicare and Medicaid. Yeah, he's really concerned about them alright. I'm sure he has everyone's best interest at heart.

The LAST thing I want to see is Rick Scott of all people "fixing" Medicare. Oh Joy!

My overall point being of course that Florida government mirrors the national governemt in many ways. More on that later.

O Tampa my friend I do not take arguing politics personal (I do it for fun mainly to see how mad and one sided people get. If people look close and see what our so called leaders are saying and not believe what the news readers are spewing they will see that they all are full of garbage Republican or Democrat) yes I am conservative in my thinking when it comes to fiscal issues. But as far as politicians very few to zero do I think are doing anything good for the country or our State be they Republican or Democrat

 

[thomas1023]

Was that a bad investment?

Tampa - long time....hope all's well!

In my opinion, yes! I don't get a warm fuzzy feeling knowing the federal government has the power to fire a CEO of a company (isn't that the Board of Directors / shareholders responsibility?), and then, replace part of the Board of Directors, replace the existing CEO, have the new cars the Federal Government is purchasing be from this car company (think hybrid)....No, I really don't think that's a good idea for the Federal Government's involvement.

 

[Smiley]

Nobody thought it was a good idea, Thomas. It was a necessity. I believe in economic nationalism. We need an automobile industry.

We've lost our steel industry and we have to go overseas to get the majority of our steel. Is that sensible for the defense of our country? I don't think so.

One car company - Ford - is not enough. What if something happens to them in a dozen years? What if in twenty years we have to go to China and Korea for all of our cars? Would that be desirable?

Would you rather have had General Motors fail?

 

[cumrag27]

GM may suck, but it is at least on the road to recovery helping our economy overall.

Nobody thought it was a good idea, Thomas. It was a necessity. I believe in economic nationalism. We need an automobile industry.

We've lost our steel industry and we have to go overseas to get the majority of our steel. Is that sensible for the defense of our country? I don't think so.

One car company - Ford - is not enough. What if something happens to them in a dozen years? What if in twenty years we have to go to China and Korea for all of our cars? Would that be desirable?

Would you rather have had General Motors fail?

Dear Smiley,

I have never been a fan of General Motors. Although I have been a "car nut" for more than a half-century, i have always been turned off by their over-emphasis on short-term profits rather than R&D approach they had. Possessing more than 50% of the American Market for decades and being the wealthiest companies in the US, I could not reconcile why they did not put out "Mercedes-Benz type quality products throughout their car line. They produced only to the lowest-common denominator and created an opening for first VW and then the Japanese car industry to walk away with their market share.

Given GM's "lack-luster engineering-excellence history" over the decades, I still was horrified with the prospects of them not receiving a bail-out when they became financially insolvent. All I could think of was the thousands of jobs that would not be replaced and the national security issue that we have a permanent national need for their productive capacity and resident engineering knowledge should we have another WWII type military engagement.

I recently saw the current CEO of GM(having previously headed up Boeing) in an interview with Fareed Zakaria on CNN. I was extremely impressed with his common sense and commitment to make GM world class. Never in my lifetime has this been achieved by GM, despite Cadillac's former claim of being the "Standard of the World" advertising hype of old. I find him to be the right person at the right time for GM and the US and I am grateful for the bail out GM received.

At least on this subject Smiley, we are on the same page.


Sincerely,


Stimpy

 

[underwear fun]

US militarised??

Hey guys,

Can you help me understand?

I'm not from north America, and I struggle to get my head around why people from the United States seem to talk a lot about the importance of having a strong military to defend their country, like it could be invaded. And refer to the President as leader of the free world.

It seems that the US spends a disproportionally huge amount on military expediture.

Where has all this come from / how has this come about?

Undie

 

[tampa24]

Welcome Back Thomas!

Given GM's "lack-luster engineering-excellence history" over the decades, I still was horrified with the prospects of them not receiving a bail-out when they became financially insolvent. All I could think of was the thousands of jobs that would not be replaced and the national security issue that we have a permanent national need for their productive capacity and resident engineering knowledge should we have another WWII type military engagement.

It's for that very reason that I shuddered to think of what would happen to our heavy manufacturing industry if we let all the struggling automakers go under. If we are involved in a heavy military conflict that is conventional, (i.e. non nuclear) who is going to build all our tanks?

What happens if we have a military conflict with China and we have to buy all our tanks from China? Maintaining a strong domestic auto industry is not only a jobs issue...it also a national security issue.

Along those lines how much worse would the Great Recession be right now in terms of unemployment and suffering if we had let GM and Chrysler go bankrupt forever?

Nobody liked the idea of rewarding dismal performance by the automakers by giving them a handout Thomas. Great to see you back with us by the way. But just as with TARP we held our noses and did it. As far as the government having the power to fire or appoint CEO's of auto companies needing a handout, it's hard to find much sympathy for them. If the top management of these companies was so good then why were their companies going bankrupt in the first place? They were lousy managers. I doubt many people had much sympathy for the top management who faced a pink slip after having to ask for taxpayers to involuntarily contribute to their cause.

 

[tampa24]

Hey guys,

Can you help me understand?

I'm not from north America, and I struggle to get my head around why people from the United States seem to talk a lot about the importance of having a strong military to defend their country, like it could be invaded. And refer to the President as leader of the free world.

It seems that the US spends a disproportionally huge amount on military expenditure.

Where has all this come from / how has this come about?

Undie

Part of the reason Undie is that we are so over-extended in our treaty obligations around the world. You are correct in your assessment that the U.S. faces no invasion from foreign powers. I'll name just a few military obligations of the U.S.:

Japan was forced by the U.S. to sign a treaty at the end of WWII agreeing that they would not have a standing army of any consequence. That all but guaranteed that the U.S. agreed to bear all the responsibility for defending Japan from any outside aggression.

Although not spelled out officially we have more or less agreed to shoulder the responsibility of defending Taiwan from attack by mainland China. Only the deterrence posed by the U.S. military has prevented China from invading Taiwan and bringing it back under communist control.

We also have a similar military arrangement with the Philippines. They are a former U.S. colony. Presumably we would rush to their aid if attacked by China or some other aggressor. Again the deterrence of a strong U.S. military in the Pacific is what has kept the peace there for decades. For our allies at least.

Let's look at NATO. A strong U.S. military is the only thing that kept the Soviets from invading Western Europe. The individual countries there stood no chance on their own against any Soviet attack. When Stalin decided to break the Allied treaty dividing Berlin it was only the threat of the U.S. military that kept him from seizing West Berlin by force. Similar to Japan the Western European countries could pay for a much smaller standing army knowing that the U.S. would shoulder most of the burden.

As a member of NATO we agree to come to Canada's defense if they are ever attacked by Russia or any other power.

We have military commitments to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and many of the Gulf states. We have treaties agreeing to come to their defense if they are ever attacked by foreign powers.

We have a miltary commitment to Panama whereby if any foreign power tried to seize the Panama Canal that we would fight that war for them.

Let's look finally at Iraq. To paraphrase Colin Powell, we broke it so now we've bought it. Iran and Iraq fought a bitter war for 8 years. Iraq arguably won that war. Iran has dreams of another Persian Empire from the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean. We disbanded the Iraqi army that defeated Iran. We have left it with another "army" that is so weak that it can't even keep the peace within its own borders. Without the deterrent threat of the U.S. military Iran could invade and seize control of the whole country in much less than a year. Iraq right now is totally defenseless without the U.S. military.

Those are not even all of the commitments the U.S. has made around the world. I've just hit some of the high points. I don't agree with all of these commitments as a taxpayer and citizen, but those are the global realities as they stand right now.

 

[cumrag27]

Adding to Tampa's statement

Hey guys,

Can you help me understand?

I'm not from north America, and I struggle to get my head around why people from the United States seem to talk a lot about the importance of having a strong military to defend their country, like it could be invaded. And refer to the President as leader of the free world.

It seems that the US spends a disproportionally huge amount on military expediture.

Where has all this come from / how has this come about?

Undie

During WWII the eastern coastline and the Gulf of Mexico was frequently patrolled by German Subs. Supply ships crossing the Atlantic to help Europe were frequently targeted and sunk during the war. Then, when Pearl Harbor was attacked by the Japanese fleet and suicide Kamikaze pilots, the US even went on alert on the Pacific Coast feeling vulnerable to possible Japanese attacks.

This was extended later on to include the Cold War Era until the demise of the USSR. All through the 1950's and 60's, we felt vulnerable with the Russian Space Program and the Cuban Missile Crisis that was within seconds of becoming a full-fledged nuclear war with Russian Missiles installed in Cuba and aimed at strategic targets in the US in the early 60's. President Kennedy forced the Russian Supply ships to cease new installations of Missiles in their newly constructed missile silos in Cuba.

Then, there was the ongoing occupation of Western Germany and South Korea with Russia and China's support against the US presence. We had this concept that if we allowed countries to fall in communist hands there would be a domino effect with neighboring countries that would be swallowed up by Russian or Chinese Communist countries too.

I don't think we ever sought to be the "Police" of the world. But after placing troops in so many hot spots around the world, we reasoned we hated for American lives to have been lost in vain defending a country and this role just evolved over time.

Originally, we meant to help weaker countries while looking out for humanitarian and economic interests in the area, all in the name of diplomacy and furthering democracy over communist influences.

Obviously, this is a much abbreviated explanation of what led to our being so overextended militarily abroad.


Stimpy

 

[tampa24]

As far as the government having the power to fire or appoint CEO's of auto companies needing a handout, it's hard to find much sympathy for them. If the top management of these companies was so good then why were their companies going bankrupt in the first place? They were lousy managers.

Here's another thought along these same lines is an analogy that I think fits this situation. I'm referring of course to the top management making outrageous sums of money and bonuses while presiding over the death of their company. If we set the precedent that any big U.S. company could get a taxpayer funded bailout in times of trouble and the CEO's and upper management could all be assured of keeping their jobs...where would it end?

It reminds me of the story of the boy who is in court for sentencing because he murdered both of his parents. When it's finally time to face the consequences of his actions he tearfully asks the judge for sympathy and leniency...because he's an orphan.