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February 10, 2009 - 1:04pm
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Treasury secretary speaks, Pork bill passes Senate
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Democrats getting mean. Now government resources are a privilege not a right. At least according to our new Secretary of Tax Evasion. Stocks tumble every time he speaks.
Where were you idiots during the past 8 years of pissing money?
Hens.
Waiting for our turn to complain all the time? Get used to it. What goes around comes around. Stupid is as stupid does.
Screaming at republicans...the problem is that the spending, however gross, since 2000 is trivial compared to the spending over the last 6 months and we are going to double it in the next six months....idiocy.
Does anyone think they are helping? Is anyone's life better for their efforts over the last 6 months? Do you feel more secure, is your job safe, your savings? ANYTHING?
Send them home....make them stop before it is too late. No more legislation, No more spending, no more vote buying...make them quit!
Are there not tar and feathers in DC?
These idiots have spent, guaranteed, rebated, stimulated, and vote bought over 7 TRILLION dollars since January 2007. That is about 3 years worth of total revenues from all tax sources...
They cannot keep printing money....they have to stop!!!
Make them go home and bother their neighbors....
Amazing though how US capitalism is happy to be on the dole.
How many more banking, auto executives etc are going to award themselves millions in 'performance' bonuses for stuffing things up? How long before the taxpayers ask for their money back?
They [liberals] haven't seen or heard anything yet. No wait, maybe they can try liberal talk radio again. Is Air America still being broadcasted? Tee hee!
You see they complained and whined every single day, except for September 11, 2001*, with little to stand on. Well, the other side has a lot more resources to voice their complaints daily. Day in and day out. Every single day. And the good news is that Woodrow Wilson (D) ruined it for them with the Sedition Act of 1918. Good fluck bringing that back after what has been said and done in the last 8 years. This is going to be entertaining.
* On September 12, 2001 they started back up complaining about all those damn flags people were hanging on their front porches.
The founding fathers must be rolling over in their graves. They knew of the perils of big government run amok, but did their children listen? No! The problem is not with the Democratic politicians or the Republican politicians. The problem is with us.
It is we the people who signed home mortgages we had no business signing. It is we the people who vote for ________ because of what we perceive he/she can do for (or give to) us. It is we the people who continued to purchase gas-guzzling SUVs and pickup trucks that we really didn't need. (Yet, we blame Detroit for our bad judgment.) It is we the people who've raised a bunch of spoiled brats who show no respect to their teachers, their parents and have no respect for themselves. It is we the people who have given up responsibility for our lives and have instead placed that responsibility for our well-being in the hands of a bunch of power-hungry, arrogant, short-sighted politicos who are really only concerned about their own careers.
The result?
Well, we have the liberals on the Supreme Court voting for eminent domain. Seems their interest in protecting the little guy ends if said little guy gets in the way of government interests.
We have eight years of George Bush Jr.--who supposedly is a Republican--in which spending goes through the roof. Yet, it wasn't until after his departure that the so-called fiscal conservatives in the congress finally grew a pair and sounded the alarm over pork-barrel spending vis a vis Obama.
The spending on entitlement programs is off the charts and still growing.
Government intrusion into our daily lives is more pervasive then it's ever been. Home owner's rights and gun owner's rights are under attack from the left. Privacy rights and abortion rights are under attack from the right.
The real problem is the people of the United States of America are children. Irresponsible, short-sighted, arrogant, phony, whiney, children who think the world (and the government) owes them something.
Everybody needs to wake the hell up. The US government does not owe you anything. It does not owe you a house. It does not owe you a college education. It does not owe you healthcare. It owes you nothing--that is, UNLESS you were wounded in battle defending this country. Then and only then do you have the right to feel a (limited) sense of entitlement.
But all of this doesn't matter now. The game is over kids. Rome is burning, and we lit the match. How can a country that has lost its way get back on track when the very people now running said country have yet to accept responsibility for their part in the derailment? But that's the politician's way, isn't it? And it's become the American way. Why accept your part of the blame when it's much easier to place the entire blame on the very unpopular last guy?
So, the delusion continues. There has been no change. "Hail to the new boss. Same as the old boss."
As I type, the House is debating the final bill from Conference. It is 1071 pages long. The Congress got the Bill about 2 HOURS ago. As Democrat Lautenberg noted, not a single member of Congress has read the bill...no one, yet the House is in the middle of a 90 minute debate and 90% of the Democrats WILL vote for it.
Jefferson wrote of this sort of stupidity over 200 years ago
"If the members are to know nothing but what is important enough to be put into a public message and indifferent enough to be made known to all the world; if the executive is to keep all other information to himself and the House to plunge on in the dark, it becomes a government of chance and not of design." --Thomas Jefferson to Barnabas Bidwell, 1806. ME 11:116
The left is spending over a Trillion dollars of our money, more than twice as much as the war in Iraq cost, on a bill they have not read, do not understand, and that will triple this years deficit and will insure next years is also well over a trillion.
It gives a whopping $13 a week in tax relief for some folk in the middle class, falling to $8 next year and creates 600,000 NEW jobs in the federal government and 33 new federal programs to be administered. It does not do anything but grow government.
Put another way...the cost of this bill is so much that every minute of debate today will cost us over TEN BILLION dollars, more than 100 MILLION a second. (edited to correct the math)
Finally, the Bill is still not available for any citizen to read, despite the promise from Obama of at least 48 hours between a bills availability and its vote.
It actually makes no difference what's in the bill. What's important is that money will be spent. When money is spent, that boosts economic activity. It almost doesn't matter how as long as it propagates throughout the economy. Furthermore, SOMETHING has to be done. Good, bad or indifferent, SOMETHING at this point is better than nothing. Doing is nothing is not an option. Much of economic activity is based on perception. So, it's important to generate a perception that SOMETHING is being done. And something is being done. That's all that matters.
If simply borrowing, printing and spending money made for prosperity, then the Weimar Republic, or Zimbabwe would be the worlds premier economies...
It's not that simple. Different times call for different solutions. Just like when you have an inflation, the tightening of credit and in a sense inducing a recession takes you out of an inflationary condition, injecting cash into an economy in deep recession gets you out.
The bottom line is this, doing nothing is by far worse than doing something, no matter how bad that something may be.
Not when that something has failed every time tried and makes things worse...I wrote way back in the summer of 2007 that the economy was tanking, that Obama would win the election on a promise of free stuff, that the DOW wold hit 7000 by summer (well on its way....remember that we had DOW close to 14000 at the time), that home values would drop 40% and that the dems would try to spend their way out of the mess with printing press money which would eventually lead to double digit inflation. The folk on those conservative political forums laughed at me. The left because I said the war would be a minor issue and the right was saying 'what recession, the DOW is at an all time high'.
A lot of that has already occurred. I never saw several trillion in debt as a possibility as I didn't think even the dems were that reckless.
Today I do not know how bad it will get but that Trillion is soon to be gone, as in printed and flushed down the toilet. Then what, print another trillion?
You sold your stupidity in the the first two sentences. Bravo.
Don't confuse the trolls with actual figures. It pisses them off.
Ok, so you're clairvoyant. What do you propose we do? Do you propose we do nothing? Do you propose we do something else and if so, then what?
Basic false logic...the false either/or argument where we either spend a trillion on pork or we do nothing at all. Even assuming action is really needed, more stimulus, no pork and real tax cuts might be a better mix than all pork all the time. Read the bill...shudder
I was not clairvoyant, I was paying attention at a time when folk were wrapped in pretense. All was well because home and stock prices were at an all time high, or BDS and the war would trump economic reality. Both were foolish dreams and both failed.
Can you be more specific? What do you mean by "real stimulus"? How would it manifest itself? When it comes to tax cuts, what good are tax cuts when no one is making money to begin with? 1/3 off 0 is still 0
Boy, you got some balls after posting it doesn't matter what's in the bill.
Tax cuts that return an average of $13 a week this year and $8 next are a joke. Stimulus is something that gets money into the economy THIS year and not three years out. Infrastructure spending is not stimulus when it takes many years to apply or when it is simple pork, like Nancy's mouse. Payback to political interests like unions or ACORN are also not stimulus but are bribes for services already rendered.
The DOW, in anticipation of The Anointed One signing the PorkFest today in Denver, is down another 250 or so...
It's because you predicted 7,000 several years ago, you bum!
Nothing to do with Obama, it's your fault.
One could read the writing on the wall...
Fine, what do you propose? Specifically, what do you consider stimulus? Specifically, what would you do and how would you do it?
Alex, you can't have your cake and eat it too. You yourself stated it doesn't matter what's in the bill just as a long as it is spent. You are in no position now to ask for specifics on anything as a means to promote an argument. You shot yourself in the foot along with the Son of Barbie. Specifically.
I would send rebates to every income tax payer the equivalent of 20% of their tax paid, including all businesses that file using the individual forms....immediate money into the economy
I would fully fund every bridge repair in the country if the work can be completed in 3 years of less and 50% for all others
I would fully fund the 3 US auto makers but only on the condition that the union accept contracts identical to the non union norm.
I would build 10 new nuclear submarines, buy 100 raptor aircraft, 4 new striker battalions, 100% of ammunition requirements, and a new light US infantry division over 3 years.
I would fund 2000 miles of French Style high speed passenger rail between major cities in the west.
I would overrule all obstacles and build an immediate 10 nuclear power plants using the most modern plants commercially available
Of that list only the rail and nuclear parts will cost more money in the off years than this year.
I would not give a dime to community organizers, health care scams or the states except as listed above.
It would cost less, employ more folk, and put more immediate money into the economy then the pork we just passed and it could be written in a 50 page bill understandable by anyone.
Hey Jim,
Fair enough. It seems that you still want to invest in the infrastructure in terms of bridges and rail and you would like the pork money to be spent on guns rather than butter. That's fair enough. I may not agree completely, but it's a fair plan. However, do recognize that spending money on unneeded military equipment is still pork spending, it just goes into different pockets.
Lamont,
I am not being contradictory. I believe that it almost doesn't matter how the money is spent as long as it injects cash into the economy. However, you can't just bitch and moan about plan A unless you have a plan B. Sitting around for the purpose of being a contrarian doesn't cut it. I don't mind you guys bitching and moaning about the current stimulus bill, but I would like to hear some alternatives, rather than just bitching and moaning.
Guns are a Constitutional role of government, pork is not...health care is pork, defense is government.
Unneeded military spending is a bogus concern as we are about the only nation in the world that has reduced the size and effectiveness of its military over the last decade. China and even Russia have vastly improved their military.
That's a very interesting position to take. Even though I don't agree with that premise, I can see its validity.
I don't see how that's the case. We ramped up our military spending quite substantially during the last decade and we spend more on military spending than the next top 10 military spenders COMBINED.
However, that's not even a topic I want to argue. I just want to make sure that we're on the same page. Please realize that military spending is still pork because it funnels money, in effect subsidizing the few corporations involved in that particular business.
You may feel that the stimulus requires THIS type of spending and if you do, that's fine, but it is pork. It just happens to be your pork.
I can find the case in the Constitution for defense. Pork was a government creation. Health care is not a responsibility of government as defined in the Constitution.
False argument for many reasons. Our military strength is 1/3 smaller than it was in 1991, we have hundreds fewer aircraft and ships in the arsenal. The cost of a top class fighter in the USA is many times more than in either Russia or China as the price of labor is too small a part of the product to consider there while it is a massive part of our product cost due to union requirements. Of the next 10 spenders combined, over half do not have a military that counts and those that do are outbuilding us at a very rapid rate.
Military spending produces a product, a tank, ship, division, or aircraft, that both exists and has a long term value to the country. Funding doggie parks, mouse protection and political payback does not provide that economic benefit or produce a product. It just keeps a politician in office.
Alex, I'm only bitching and moaning to show how pointless and disruptive all the bitching and moaning was during the last Administration. Why should the supporters of the last Administration be any different? Why can't we bitch and moan to the point it disrupts any sort of progress regardless. The distractors of the last Administration never did let up. Not once. Tell me, why should the distractors of the current Administration be any different? Why shouldn't we return the favor? The distractors during Bush were anything but bipartisan. And now they ask for bipartisanship? For what? The distractors during Bush were unable to prove a single allegation against the Administration. Not one thing they could solely convict the Bush Administration. Net result? Nothing positive. Prolonged progress in Iraq. Distraction from issues that needed to be repaired. An escalation of violence in Afghanistan. Since 911 the Democratic Party absolutely had no intention of exhibiting or even at least portraying bipartisanship. Give me one good reason why the current distractors of the Obama Administration should turn the other cheek. And I don't want to hear any sissy shit that it would be good for the country. I want to hear about the damage it causes to our country. What it does not accomplish. I want to hear current examples as painful as it might be to admit. I don't want to hear any bullshit. I've heard plenty of bullshit during the Bush Administration. You starting to see my point? Why the fuck should we not bitch and moan to the point that the Obama Administration ceases to function? Liberals have shown us exactly how it can be done with little or nothing.
I am not asking for bi-partisanship. Please, bitch and moan away. I'm simply asking for an alternative solution, which JimV actually provided. I don't have to agree with it, but I would like to hear it, rather than simply saying that something is bad, offer something you think is good.
I think that the worst thing you can have is bi-partisanship. There has to be a strong opposition to the ruling party. I prefer that opposition to be conservative.
Obama announced Babbling Biden as in charge of monitoring the 'stimulus' package. Before the announcement, a 5 minute event, the DOW was down 15...when done, down 50. Then Obama himself addressed the economic summit...DOW drops another 100. At the close, down 250.
Tomorrow Obama will announce his tax the rich and small business plans. I expect the Market to crater with a further 500 point DOW drop by the end of next week, then a slow up/down until Geithner produces the details of his $2 trillion printing press package next month and another BIG drop.
The markets have spoken. The new socialism is not being endorsed.
Although I'm against higher taxes on small business what is wrong with making the rich pay a fairer share? Even Warren Buffett thinks the rich are under taxed.
Would these be the same conservatives that ran up the national debt.
Yep, those same ones. Which is why I prefer that they remain the opposition party, rather than the ruling party.
Who defines that 'fairer share'? Is it more moral for folk who want the wealth of others to decide the program or those who make the money and want to keep some?
Yeah, darn those rich people. Creating jobs and shit like that. Tax them.
I was thinking more about this and the very rich are clearly making out way too well. And you can't credit many of them with creating jobs. More like losing jobs, in case you haven't noticed.
Consider the obscene salaries and bonuses many CEOs received during the Bush give-away years, especially those at the heart of this financial mess. Not only did many of them walk away with 7-figure gifts, the stock market is at half value - caused by them! So now they can invest at fire-sale prices and make yet more money on the backs of hard working people like moi. So Yes, I agree with you completely. Tax them until they can't afford to keep their $20 Million mansions! Just like all the normal people who are now out of work and unable to pay their mortgages either.
--Ethan
The very rich avoid taxes, and do it (unless an Obama cabinet pick) legally. The folk who get caught in this BS are the middle class and almost rich. Rich enough to steal from but not rich enough to avoid the government grab.
This isn't the French Revolution for Christ's sake.
Aye, there's the problem. Loopholes that favor the very rich. If I were the king, things would be mighty different around here!
--Ethan
Interesting story. My uncle, living in Florida, passed away some years back. With all the paper work with the lawyer, I found out, documented back then, that if you had a wife from outside the country, say Porta Rica, you were allowed approx $700,000 before the government started taxing the inheritance she received.
However, if you filled out a particular form, you were allowed approx $1.2 million before the inhertiance was taxed. So it pays to know the right person.
I thought that was interesting.
This is exactly the sort of unfair loophole we all hate, and for good reason. Personally I'm opposed to the government taxing more than once anyway - double-dipping if you will. When someone earns a bunch of money and has already paid income tax on it, they should be free to give it to whomever they want with no further tax taken out.
--Ethan
The income tax is a paragon to fairness compared to the property tax. That mess dates to a time when 93% of the population lived on or derived their income from farming or ranching. Ones property created wealth each and every year that the owner could and did access. Today 3% of the population is in that category and one does not derive ones living from ones home. In fact, one is taxed over and over and over again, on the exact same wealth. If the property tax taxed ones home once and then its increase in value as it occurred, it would perhaps make sense, but instead it goes back to the well forever. I lived in Maine. If I had stayed there the 30 years it would have taken to have paid off my mortgage, I would also have paid the price of the home 1.5 times in property taxes as well.
What we should have is a minimal head tax (say $100) where EVERYONE has a burden, a stake in the government. If one cannot or will not pay, there is no legal penalty, just a loss of voting 'right'.
Imagine if the folk with their hands out for goodies had to pay now and again....the nation would look a lot different.
Those conservatives had some help from across the aisle. Entitlement spending has gone through the roof. And look at all of the money we continually throw at education, yet it's still not enough.
I essentially agree. But, to be fair, that is a hard line to draw. Unless you are printing money (in which case I'm your new best friend), then someone earned that money and paid taxes on it before you got it.
No kidding. We are taxed when we earn it, and again when we spend it, and again when we die for whatever is left over. And don't forget inflation which is another type of tax that can be substantial. With inflation "tax" we don't have to earn or spend anything, we just continue to pay in the form of losses.
A friend of mine once computed what we really pay in taxes when all is accounted for, and it was something like 93 percent.
I wouldn't mind so much being taxed if we got value for our investment. But as it stands now the rich get richer and I continue to get poorer. I just turned 60 last October so of course my insurance went up again. And much more than previous annual increases because I'm now in a new age bracket. At the risk of pissing off the conservatives here, I really enjoyed Michael Moore's Sicko movie.
--Ethan
Today the latest exercise in deficit spending hit the street, the Obama budget....$25,500 in spending for every taxpayer...
If the left was to steal 100% of the income of every american making over $75K, they still would not raise enough revenue to fund this budget....
In a year there will not be any discretionary spending for 95% of us, the government will have stolen it or the economy will have eaten it...
Yeah, that was what I was referring to about paying off our own homes through sweat. This gives a better chance of paying off a good part of some dumbass's defaulted mortgage. I don't know about you guys but I can't wait to help out America. I can't think of a more patriotic duty than to pay off our own shit and then pay somebody else's shit.
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