Tax the rich, lose the rich

[bucs90]

None of that will result in a GOP House this fall. Americans will not go back to GOP fiscal policies that got us into this mess.

You're like a broken record.

Left wing housing loan policies are the root of this mess. You know it, the left knows it, and I will give you all credit for your unshaken will to deny this fact.

Bucs, only you loons "know" it. The mess was created by a GOP congress with Presidents Clinton and Bush's willingness to stay popular. The American people will not tolerate a return of the GOP under Boehner and McConnell.

HA!!!

Yeah, all those hard right Republicans like Chris Dodd (D), Barney Franke (D), Nancy Pelosi (D), Hillary and Bill Clinton (D), Maxine Waters (D), Jesse Jackson (D)???? They are the ones who led the Fannie/Freddie corruption in the early 90's all the way through 08.

But yeah, only "loons" like us on the right........and other loons like "historians".

 

[JakeStarkey]

Yup, urban legend, my friend. The GOP congress and the presidents of the time are the ones who are responsible. The American mainstream are not about to create Majority Leader McConnell and Speaker Boehner. That would be utterly loony.

 

[bucs90]

Jake................you may find this a little bit hard to read and accept. But here you go:

Hot Air Whose policies led to the credit crisis?

The left caused the cancer.
The left blocked the meds to cure the cancer.
The left denied responsibility for the cancer.

 

[bucs90]

Yup, urban legend, my friend. The GOP congress and the presidents of the time are the ones who are responsible. The American mainstream are not about to create Majority Leader McConnell and Speaker Boehner. That would be utterly loony.

The New York Times says otherwise: Hot Air Whose policies led to the credit crisis?

The left caused the cancer.
The left blocked the cure for the cancer.
Now the left denies responsibiity for it.

 

[bucs90]

Yup, urban legend, my friend. The GOP congress and the presidents of the time are the ones who are responsible. The American mainstream are not about to create Majority Leader McConnell and Speaker Boehner. That would be utterly loony.

But, just for fun, if you want to use your above logic that the persons in charge at any given time are directly responsible for anything that happens during that time...........then we can agree Obama and the Dem Congress are responsible for anything that has happened to this country since January 1st, 2009? So no more blaming Bush?

Or do you pick and choose your logic depending on the context and how it will affect the reputation of The Great One?

 

[The Rabbi]

Yup, urban legend, my friend. The GOP congress and the presidents of the time are the ones who are responsible. The American mainstream are not about to create Majority Leader McConnell and Speaker Boehner. That would be utterly loony.

But, just for fun, if you want to use your above logic that the persons in charge at any given time are directly responsible for anything that happens during that time...........then we can agree Obama and the Dem Congress are responsible for anything that has happened to this country since January 1st, 2009? So no more blaming Bush?

Or do you pick and choose your logic depending on the context and how it will affect the reputation of The Great One?

Anything bad that happened under Bush is Bush's fault. Anything bad that happened after Bush is still Bush's fault.
That is the position of the nutwingers here like Jokeyboy.

 

[JakeStarkey]

Your logic, as always, is fail because you can't think clearly.

The GOP was in charge for 12 years, sonny, and Dodd and those guys were not GOP, now, were they?

BHO and gang have been in for less than 2 years, so that is 1/6th of the time the GOP was in. Does that mean BHO and gang get 16 or 17% of the blame.

You are so silly, kiddo, but thanks for the poseur grins and chuckles.

Your thinking is exactly why the GOP is going to take the election like a head butt in the Republican nose.

 

[JakeStarkey]

<snip: nothing worthwhile>

,

Hi, RabidRabbit, I see you have been nibbling in the loco weed.

 

[Bfgrn]

The intellectual juice for Reagan's historic tax cuts came from Milton Friedman. He said that if you cut Government revenue, they will spend less. He thought he understood human nature. (This man is responsible for America's post 70s economic policy, so he better be right).

Unfortunately, he was wrong. The government didn't spend less under Reagan -- in fact, with a huge increase in military and law enforcement outlays, spending increased sharply over the Carter years. The consequences of Friedman's miscalculation were debt and deficits as far as the eye could see.

Same thing with investment in education. Friedman said that the government didn't need to invest in education because the market would deliver a utopian trickle of degrees to the middle class. Consequently, after Reagan began America's long divestment from education, the USA went from #1 to #12 amongst the #36 developed nations, and is woefully behind in the global competition for solutions to our largest problems.

Friedman also convinced Reagan that lowering taxes on the wealthy would lead to investment and jobs. It didn't. It went to the purchase of politicians and the Wall Street casino. As a result, middle class spending had to be kept alive on credit, while America's infrastructure and economy died.

Same thing with energy. Carter begged America to move into a less petro-intensive system. He warned that some day the demand for energy would outstrip supply, and your economy would be held hostage by terrorist states. Reagan framed him as a hysterical Lefty, and he crushed the alternative energy movement. He tore down the solar panels on the White House roof, and then he proclaimed that the market would take care of energy. It did the opposite. Big Oil bribed politicians to rig Cafe standards and crush the first big electric car movement. At every juncture, America's politicians expanded oil use. Now you are paying dearly for it.

The market mantra became a catch-all for anything America didn't want to pay for, invest in, or devote resources to.

"Don't worry, the market will take care of it. Let's go to Aspen!"

America tried to have its cake and eat it too. It got seduced by Reagan's voodoo. You believed that you did not have to pay as you go; you believed that you did not have to tend to big problems. You simply channeled all your resources to making a small group of people insanely wealthy -- and now it's time to pay (but you don't have any money, because the wealthy parachuted away with it. Trillions have been stuffed into dynastic coffers or moved off shore. Your great public sector is dead. You are living in a hyper-privatized neoliberal dystopia of concentrated wealth surrounded by rapidly expanding poverty).

You swallowed poison in 1980. The money is gone. The game is over. Nothing left to do but build prisons for all the poverty you created.

(the market didn't take care of it, and the price is your children's future)

Great post! ... Friedman is not the only bad actor in the flop called the Reagan revolution.


Wall Street Targets the Elderly

Looting Social Security

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

Wall Street’s approach to the poor has always been to drive them deeper into the ground.

As there is no money to be made from the poor, Wall Street fleeces them by yanking away their entitlements. It has always been thus. During the Reagan administration, Wall Street decided to boost the values of its bond and stock portfolios by using Social Security revenues to lower budget deficits. Wall Street figured that lower deficits would mean lower interest rates and higher bond and stock prices.

Two Wall Street henchmen, Alan Greenspan and David Stockman, set up the Social Security raid in this way: The Carter administration had put Social Security in the black for the foreseeable future by establishing a schedule for future Social Security payroll tax increases. Greenspan and Stockman conspired to phase in the payroll tax increases earlier than was needed in order to gain surplus Social Security revenues that could be used to finance other government spending, thus reducing the budget deficit. They sold it to President Reagan as “putting Social Security on a sound basis.”

Along the way Americans were told that the surplus revenues were going into a special Social Security trust fund at the U.S. Treasury. But what is in the fund is Treasury IOUs for the spent revenues. When the “trust funds” are needed to pay Social Security benefits, the Treasury will have to sell more debt in order to redeem the IOUs.

Social Security was mugged again during the Clinton administration when the Boskin Commission jimmied the Consumer Price Index in order to reduce the inflation adjustments that Social Security recipients receive, thus diverting money from Social Security retirees to other uses.

We constantly hear from Wall Street gangsters and from Republicans and an occasional Democrat that Social Security and Medicare are a form of welfare that we can’t afford, an “unfunded liability.” This is a lie. Social Security is funded with an earmarked tax. People pay for Social Security and Medicare all their working lives. It is a pay-as-you-go system in which the taxes paid by those working fund those who are retired.

Currently these systems are not in deficit. The problem is that government is using earmarked revenues for other purposes. Indeed, since the 1980s Social Security revenues have been used to fund general government. Today Social Security revenues are being used to fund trillion dollar bailouts for Wall Street and to fund the Bush/Obama wars of aggression against Muslims.


Paul Craig Roberts served as an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration earning fame as a co-founder of "Reaganomics."

 

[The Rabbi]

Are you really that gullible? I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
Social Security History FAQs Internet Myths II

 

[CMike]

Your logic, as always, is fail because you can't think clearly.

The GOP was in charge for 12 years, sonny, and Dodd and those guys were not GOP, now, were they?

BHO and gang have been in for less than 2 years, so that is 1/6th of the time the GOP was in. Does that mean BHO and gang get 16 or 17% of the blame.

You are so silly, kiddo, but thanks for the poseur grins and chuckles.

Your thinking is exactly why the GOP is going to take the election like a head butt in the Republican nose.

When did the dems take over congress?

 

[JakeStarkey]

Your logic, as always, is fail because you can't think clearly.

The GOP was in charge for 12 years, sonny, and Dodd and those guys were not GOP, now, were they?

BHO and gang have been in for less than 2 years, so that is 1/6th of the time the GOP was in. Does that mean BHO and gang get 16 or 17% of the blame.

You are so silly, kiddo, but thanks for the poseur grins and chuckles.

Your thinking is exactly why the GOP is going to take the election like a head butt in the Republican nose.

When did the dems take over congress?

With Republican President Bush in 2006, that easily vetoed bills he did not like. Both Congress and Presidency in 2008. Retain Congress and Presidency in 2010. The 3 to 5 senate seats they pick up will give the Dems an unreconciliation majority do as they damn well please thanks to the stupid-ass GOP neo-con leadership that somehow believe the American mainstream is stupid enough to go back to the bad old days.

Are you crazy? What is it about reality you don't get? We are here because of GOP thinking like yours!

 

[The Rabbi]

Your logic, as always, is fail because you can't think clearly.

The GOP was in charge for 12 years, sonny, and Dodd and those guys were not GOP, now, were they?

BHO and gang have been in for less than 2 years, so that is 1/6th of the time the GOP was in. Does that mean BHO and gang get 16 or 17% of the blame.

You are so silly, kiddo, but thanks for the poseur grins and chuckles.

Your thinking is exactly why the GOP is going to take the election like a head butt in the Republican nose.

When did the dems take over congress?

With Republican President Bush in 2006, that easily vetoed bills he did not like. Both Congress and Presidency in 2008. Retain Congress and Presidency in 2010. The 3 to 5 senate seats they pick up will give the Dems an unreconciliation majority do as they damn well please thanks to the stupid-ass GOP neo-con leadership that somehow believe the American mainstream is stupid enough to go back to the bad old days.

Are you crazy? What is it about reality you don't get? We are here because of GOP thinking like yours!

Jake, I would say you've already had your ass handed to you here. But that would imply that you actually made some coherent point and tried to defend it. I cannot dignify your posts with the words "coherent" or "point".

 

[JakeStarkey]

RabidRabbitt, you are talking out of your ass. Nothing you have said has made any sense. You are not Republican, your anarcho-libertarianism is simply "stupid", and you are too damn stupid to make a good point.

Step off, fellow, step off.

 

[daveman]

RabidRabbitt, you are talking out of your ass. Nothing you have said has made any sense. You are not Republican, your anarcho-libertarianism is simply "stupid", and you are too damn stupid to make a good point.

Step off, fellow, step off.

Ladies and gentlemen, tonight, the part of Internet Tough Guy will be played by JakeStarkey.

 

[The Rabbi]

RabidRabbitt, you are talking out of your ass. Nothing you have said has made any sense. You are not Republican, your anarcho-libertarianism is simply "stupid", and you are too damn stupid to make a good point.

Step off, fellow, step off.

Ladies and gentlemen, tonight, the part of Internet Tough Guy will be played by JakeStarkey.

Tough guy? That wasn't what I pictured:

 

[daveman]

RabidRabbitt, you are talking out of your ass. Nothing you have said has made any sense. You are not Republican, your anarcho-libertarianism is simply "stupid", and you are too damn stupid to make a good point.

Step off, fellow, step off.

Ladies and gentlemen, tonight, the part of Internet Tough Guy will be played by JakeStarkey.

Tough guy? That wasn't what I pictured:

Dood. Tinypic. That's not showing up.

 

[The Rabbi]

Ladies and gentlemen, tonight, the part of Internet Tough Guy will be played by JakeStarkey.

Tough guy? That wasn't what I pictured:

Dood. Tinypic. That's not showing up.

Guy in a strait jacket. I won't even dignify Jake with fixing it.

 

[daveman]

Tough guy? That wasn't what I pictured:

Dood. Tinypic. That's not showing up.

Guy in a strait jacket. I won't even dignify Jake with fixing it.

 

[NYcarbineer]

None of that will result in a GOP House this fall. Americans will not go back to GOP fiscal policies that got us into this mess.

You're like a broken record.

Left wing housing loan policies are the root of this mess. You know it, the left knows it, and I will give you all credit for your unshaken will to deny this fact.

That's nonsense. Lack of regulation is not the left's fault. It was the fault of Republicans plus Democrats acting like Republicans.