When the ratio of debt to income is out of balance in our households, we either need to raise the income level by getting a part time job that gives us the ability to service the debt or cut our debt by reducing our spending—in a perfect world we try to do both at the same time. The same is true of any organization public, private or government.
Here's the problem with the current so called National Debt Crisis—its not going to be cured by the Republicans' NO NEW TAX Plan, because it eliminates one half of the ability to solve the problem. They claim that by raising taxes on the wealthy that the economic recovery will stall. When Bush cut the nominal tax rate for the wealthy and simultaneously increased spending by several trillion dollars he forgot that someone has to pay the bills. Every dollar he spent on a needless war in Iraq and a Part D drug program that benefited the drug companies—was a dollar we didn't have and had to borrow because the wealthy sure has hell weren't going to pay for it. They were getting filthy rich with no-bid war contracts, but, what fun would all those big profits be if you had to pay taxes —I'll wrap my big fat capitalist ass in the g-d damn flag but somebody else can pay for the g-d damn war.
On top of everything else—he also signed the Republican bill that deregulated the banking industry. Fast forward to today ten years and trillions of dollars later and we have had a, "come to Jesus economic crisis". So, here's my question if cutting taxes is the answer to keeping the economy in a sustained recovery—why did the economy fail in the first place?
In other words if it didn't work when they implemented the tax cut and the economy failed so miserably—why will extending the tax cuts work now. Two words—it won't. The big lie is, extending the tax cuts will save the economy. It will not—it will have the opposite effect. Remember the trickle down theory; when the rich get really stinking filthy rich the benefits will eventually reach all Americans. Bush senior called it voodoo economics when Reagan proposed it and it still is voodoo economics today.
The Republicans are singing a one note song—that frankly I don't understand how anyone with half a brain could fall for. I guess no-one is really paying all that much attention, at least it didn't look like it this last election cycle. The Tea Bagging Rabid Republicans took their victory as a sign from the gods of hubris and greed that they have been given carte blanche to gut every social program in government while extending the entitlements for the rich. What is truly amazing is that a recent post-election poll showed that over fifty percent of Americans—like most of the the Health Care Reform Bill—which is what the the Republicans claimed was their basis of their victory—a ground swell of anti Obama Care sentiment. WTF were Americans thinking?
What is particularly galling is that this morning two proposals were introduced to break the dead lock over the tax cut extensions, both were defeated by a minority that blocked their debate by a closure vote. An idiotic Senate rule that blocks even the discussion of a bill unless it receives 60 votes.
And on top of that, in a, the American middle-class can go to hell vote—The Republicans said no to two million unemployed American families who are losing their unemployment benefits unless you give tax breaks on every dollar of income to 375 thousand families that make over a million dollars. Even David Stockman Reagan's Economic Advisor said that the extension of the tax cuts is economic suicide:
Here is an excerpt from a recent interview:
IF there were such a thing as Chapter 11 for politicians, the Republican push to extend the unaffordable Bush tax cuts would amount to a bankruptcy filing. The nation’s public debt — if honestly reckoned to include municipal bonds and the $7 trillion of new deficits baked into the cake through 2015 — will soon reach $18 trillion. That’s a Greece-scale 120 percent of gross domestic product, and fairly screams out for austerity and sacrifice. It is therefore unseemly for the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, to insist that the nation’s wealthiest taxpayers be spared even a three-percentage-point rate increase.
More fundamentally, Mr. McConnell’s stand puts the lie to the Republican pretense that its new monetarist and supply-side doctrines are rooted in its traditional financial philosophy. Republicans used to believe that prosperity depended upon the regular balancing of accounts — in government, in international trade, on the ledgers of central banks and in the financial affairs of private households and businesses, too. But the new catechism, as practiced by Republican policymakers for decades now, has amounted to little more than money printing and deficit finance — vulgar Keynesianism robed in the ideological vestments of the prosperous classes.
Commentary: The main reasons a Democratic Republic fails is that the electorate are uninformed or misinformed and fail to exercise their voice by voting. If you didn't vote you should be very ashamed. If you were swayed to vote against your own interests by the swill the Republicans were peddling—you should enroll in a remedial course for critical thinking. If you were just to lazy to get your ass to the polling place you should relinquish your citizenship and move somewhere else, there are millions of immigrants that would do a hell of a better job than you at being an American and practicing their civic duty. If you didn't vote because you were pissed at the President for his shortcomings—go f%*k yourself because you just f%*k'd everyone else that isn't an egocentric p$@?k.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
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