The Madness of the GOP.

[hutch--]

Mike,

I agree Hutch, as long as that leveling of the field includes every wage earner. Even if it is a low tax rate. Just over half of the wage earners should not bear the burden of paying for the other 47 % non-payers.

Even if the figure was 47% which appears to be contentious, the total income from the bottom 47% is trivial in comparison to the sums NOT PAID by the super rich. When you keep screwing an economy by shoving the tax burden downwards to the poorer end of the population, you end up with massive debt, decaying infrastructure and social unrest from people who are poor, cold and hungry. You can keep trying to keep the lid on local security issues but unhappy hungry people have little reason to obey the law when it does not work for them, only for rich people.

I am fascinated that the conservative end of US politics only see the US as an economy. It has been one of the world's great societies but that is being eroded by the greed and indifference shown by the conservative end of US politics.

It needs to be understood that the facilities that make up the entire US economy were paid for by the hard work of millions of ordinary Americans, when some crapheap corporation treats the US like a sh*thole to make a quick buck from, they are stealing the hard work of millions of Americans that put it there in the first place.

[rags]

But this is also a two edged sword, Hutch.
At what point dont you allow people to keep what they earned?
Who gets to make the decision for you that you've earned enough and must redistribute the rest?
When our top tax brackets where above 75%, the people with the money found ways to keep it hid from
the taxman, thus out of the economy.

Hutch, yes you are correct that it was a great society.
Family mattered, and took care of each other, when family needed help.
Things started changing when the Federal government started stepping in and replacing it.

People became more dependent on the government to provide for things that the familial unit did.
There is no longer a need for a breadwinner in the family nor to be married. Uncle Sam would provide for you.

@Bill - I dont quite follow the logic of decreasing Federal expenditures==increased deficits. If you are not spending
money that you dont have, how does that increase what you owe?

[hutch--]

Mike,

Families are among the worst hit in the US, kick the guts out of their economic stability, send their jobs overseas, bring in labor from Mexico to do the on site local work and remove any safety net for the consequences of doing all of these things and you destroy America right in its heartland. Jobs have gone to China, Korea, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, the Phillipines and so on that should be done in the US by Americans and this leaves them with no way to support their families.

RE: The big end of town in terms of income, the rest of the world can manage higher tax rates for people on higher incomes yet the US and a few other western countries have kept delivering tax cuts to the massively rich who in turn take it overseas. Surely you know that Haliburton made a fortune in Iraq then left the US for Dubai. When you give tax concessions to the massively rich you shift the tax burden down to poorer people who are being shafted by job losses, fuel price rises, higher taxes and decaying infrastructure.

The solution to these structural imbalances is to make sure the super rich pay tax, remove all of the scams that are draining the health budget, reign in defence spending, only spend 5 times more than the rest of the world combined, not 10 times, and reconstruct the American manufacturing industry so that Americans have jobs and can spend their income back in the US again. Different western countries have different economic problems that require different solutions but the American one is mainly driven by greed from a foreign owned corporate sector, this must be brought under control before they finally suck the life out of the US so it can never recover.

[Bill Cravener]

@Bill - I dont quite follow the logic of decreasing Federal expenditures==increased deficits. If you are not spending
money that you dont have, how does that increase what you owe?

Seeking Alpha is the premier website for actionable stock market opinion and analysis.

Investors beware: If continued, the current trend in declining Federal expenditures will result in increased deficits, slower growth and a major stock market pullback.

Forgotten Math: How Spending Cuts Increase Deficits And Kill Markets

[donkey]

With Romney pretty much annointed as the GOP candidate its time to take a look at his advisory team. One of the best is ofcourse the co-chair of his judicial advisory committee Robert Bork. Is this guy ever a piece of work, he despises the civil liberties act calling it a moral abomination, he does not believe the constitution protects the right to privacy, equality for women or that free speech applies to anything but political views (ie science is not protected) or even that a couple has the right to use contraception. As a judge he ruled that a corporation has the right to demand that a woman be sterilized or fired. Yeah, this is the guy Americans really should have helping decide who will be nominated to the courts of the country, welcome back to 1480 and be happy with Mitt "de Torquemada" Romney (or else).

[dedndave]

i'd say that pretty much sums up all politicians, Edgar
they all seem to think of the constiution as "the enemy"

i remember George Romney (Mitt's dad) pretty well, having been raised in Michigan
i seem to recall he was more or less a mobster in office
of course, it appeared as though he did a lot of good stuff
but, Michigan's economy was booming back then, which made it easy to look good

he even looked like a gangster - lol


...and they wonder what happened to Jimmy Hoffa

[donkey]

i'd say that pretty much sums up all politicians, Edgar
they all seem to think of the constiution as "the enemy"

Too bad they don't take "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States" seriously. But that aside, Bork is a bit more extreme than most, he was rejected as a Reagan appointee to the supreme court and his rulings are bordering on medieval.

[hutch--]

Santorum would have been a better result for the Democrats in that he was a lot more rabid in his right wing conservatism than Romney. You could see from the states that he won where his support was coming from and this would have made Obama's job much easier in the upcoming election.

RE: The conservative loonie tune end of the market and their hostility to the US constitution, there is an oft forgotten term for such persons, it "traitor". The US constitution is the founding core document that enshrines the protection of the nation and all of its citizens and when it comes under attack as it has been in the last 10 years or so, those who perform this level of treachery need to be dealt with on the level of traitors. Instead of the kissarse to foreign capital, banking institutions and corporate sectors, such people need to be herded off to some gulag in northen Alaska scrubbing the moss off oil pipelines with a toothbrush (in their teeth) in winter until they have learnt that the US is for American citizens, not parasites sucking the life out of the country. If they don't survive the learning curve, who gives a PHUK.

[NPNW]

I hope the Republicans win so we see what happens on the Mayan Calender.

[Bill Cravener]

Here's the latest battle between the Democrats and the Republicans:

More than 7 million low and middle income students rely on loans to get them thru college. If Congress doesn't take action interest rates for student loans will double from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent on July 1st 2012. These student loans are subsidized by the government. The Republicans want to take the $6 billion cost to subsidize these loans from Obama's new health care law which gives the unemployed and low-income people greater access to health care. Obviously this care benefits lower income women and children yet these pigs (the Republicans) don't give a shit about the underclass. If they can't come to an agreement on how to pay for this it will also affect the Violence Against Women Act, which has expired and presently is operating on funds that will run out with the new fiscal year which begins Oct. 1st 2012.

Democrats on the other hand want to cover the $6 billion cost of keeping interest rates low by closing a loophole for high-income individuals who file taxes as so-called S corporations. Those earning beyond $200,000 a year, or $250,000 for couples, would have to start reporting some of their profits as income. I think it's very clear which Party is more for the common man, that is to say, the average citizen of the US of A.

Phuk Republicans!!  :tdown

[MichaelW]

The money from many of those loans ends up in the hands of scam artists, for-profit colleges that provide a substandard education. I have some experience helping a student at one of these "technical institutes" and the parts of the curriculum that I had contact with were a joke. In recent times their advertisements have included a statement along the lines of "credits earned are unlikely to transfer", and they apparently are still able to suck students in. I don't care about idiots wasting their money, but I suspect that many/most of these loans will end up being paid by our tax dollars. If our government were doing its job they would simply shut these operations down.

[dedndave]

yes - there are a lot of scammers
but - there are also a lot of people who genuinely need help, nowdays

i saw an article the other day about the food stamp program
the republicans would rather cut the food stamp program than cut military spending or raise taxes
(they know that raising taxes means raising them primarily for the wealthy)

the republicans site "the rise in the cost of the program" as a reason to cut spending (DUH)



they want to cut spending by 33 billion over 10 years, 7.7 billion over the first year - affecting the 46 million people who use food stamps
granted - there are a bunch of people who are cheating the system, but my guess is that it's a small percentage of the 46 million

if they want the cost of the program to go down - create some jobs !!!
flipping burgers at McDonald's or other minimum wage jobs don't count
stop sending all the good jobs overseas, dumb-asses

[GregL]

Bill,

I stand with you man, I couldn't agree with you more. I just hope the rest of the U.S. people wake up to what the GOP is all about.

[NPNW]

Paul Kruger?,

Said that they didn't need to do anything extreme to keep the economy going. If they would have just kept the 600,000 federal, state, county, fire, police, teachers employed over the last 3 1/2 years, and hired 700,000 to keep up with population growth, employment then they would have stimulated the economy. By the Republicans cutting all these jobs, it is forcing the economy down, and unemployment up.  The Republicans have tried everything to hurt this economy and the middle class.

This was on the Ed Show the last couple of days.