Somebody take this monkey back to the Zoo and don't let him touch anything! http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hlkG9t2Z4m8UfIya6iQ3-TfTPhRwD8UJON580
Whoever takes over Bush is leaving his successor an enormous fiscal dilemma. The deficit numbers will mean pressure to allow some tax cuts to expire, especially the 35 percent bracket for wealthy taxpayers, which will revert to 39.6 percent at the end of 2010 unless renewed. I pity that guy (hopefully it is a guy )
S'okay, Hillary is going to give everyone healthcare, amnesty, and raise taxes. Just what this country needs.
Once the MISERABLE FAILURE leaves office, hopefully without causing any more unnecessary death and destruction than the fool already has done the repercussions of Bushes disastrous tenure will go on for years and years to come.
this whole fiscal mess that U.S. is into right now can be some what brought down if U.S. army returns from Iraq.....
Yep. And there is only one real candidate that can do that and did vote against us going to war in the first place. He is honest, intelligent, honorable, noble, has a proven track record, does not cater to special interest groups, knows Austrian economics inside-out, knows about fiscal responsibility, follows the Constitution and can turn this country around and steer it in the right direction.
Guru, Guerilla: I am for spreading healthcare throughout the US population one way or the other. Currently about 45 million in the US don't have health care insurance coverage of any type. that is roughly...... 15% of the US population....and the percentage is growing 45 million--roughly the population of the 27 largest nation in the world. about 1/3 larger than the entire population of Canada--which has universal hearlth care. How can an enormously wealthy successful nation have such an enormous population susceptable to regular and catastrophic illness and not be able to cover the population. It is a complex issue. The cost of health care in the US has risen far faster than the rate of inflation for decades. Clearly there is something wrong on the cost side. The Hillary response for universal mandated health care is estimated at somewhere around $100 billion/year.-> somewhere around $2200/person or less than $200/person/month. That is a budget cruncher no doubt. Add $100 million to the current latest Bush budget which was incredibly optimistic, false on the basic premise that it severely underestimates costs of the war in Iraq.....and that adds 25% to the estimated budget deficit. Hm....I'm still for it. What a great problem to tackle and to throw out for the public to debate and try and resolve vis a vis other costs.
When the government subsidizes ANYTHING, the cost goes up. I am totally against state run healthcare, that is mandatory, and features further garnishing workers' paychecks. We are living in a fascist corporatacracy. The collusion of government and business. Now people want to surrender their health choices to the government, where like public education, they will likely receive less for their money, and have their options limited by what is not covered (alternative care, advanced or experimental treatment) by the (sic) comprehensive care. This is the fundamental divide between so-called liberals and so-called conservatives. Liberal seem to believe we need to collectively provide for the general well being, Conservatives believe that we need to respond as individuals, to individual circumstances. I'm sure free stuff sounds good to the plebes, and certainly to the HMOs and drug peddlers. But look around the world. No one flocks to countries with socialized medicine to get "superior care" they don't get in their own countries. People still come to the US from Canada to get better, faster and more skilled treatment than they receive in their "free" system. America has a massive entitlement crisis, and the Democrats' solution is to add more entitlements. Someone smash me in the face with a baseball bat PLEASE!
Unlike the conservative theorists I have no problems with govt applied in a supportive fashion. Costs go up in all types of frameworks. Monopolies raise costs through the roof. Industries that have avoided or bought their way to unregulated or scarcely regulated oversight raise costs through the roof. Govt is slow beaurocratic and doesn't function in a tight competitive fashion but it is often the counterweight against unregulated industry chasing after the all mighty dollar. It is a long term positive to balance them one against the other to mitigate against excesses from one side or the other. Expanding health care is complex. My take on it is that for a civilized wealthy nation it is unique and criminal to have a system develop wherein an ever larger percentage and number of people without health care is an increasing problem for the nation. 44 million people is more than the population of most nations. That is extraordinary. There is no doubt that in the US health care of the highest level would be available to those that can afford it. Lower levels of health care should be made available to those with less money. The specifics would be hard to reach but afterall ....all tough issues always revolve around the details. Over the long term of history the American public education system has been one of the extraordinary strengths of the nation. Education available to all. Clearly it too has problems that should be addressed. It is the last thing that should be d!cked with. The movement to suck funds out of that system to fund religeous schools and other alternatives is a joke. People who want alternatives should pay for alternatives. Two of the greatest things about the US; public education for all; the wide expansion and usage of the GI education bills. Educate the population....only one of the most fundamental and critical aspects of a nation that needs to compete with the rest of the world.
This is the slickest line I have read today. You not only relegate conservatives to theorists, you refer to entitlements and welfare as something "supportive" Why is it that liberals always see the redistribution of wealth as never having a victim? I'm following you... Whoops! You lost me now! Care to name one rising cost industry that is not or is scarcely regulated? Make it two, just to be sure we're not dealing with an exception. That's law, not bureaucracy that is the counterweight. Bureaucracy is an overhead cost. We'll come back to this later, but the idea that government with the power of taxation and law, should be able to compete against it's own citizens is not positive. I disagree with the first part, and adamantly agree with the second part. Vehemently to both. But this is the middle class yes? Perhaps some of the upper class who do not need insurance because they can afford to pay on demand. But it's definitely not including those who qualify for medicare, correct? So the question has to be, why is it that the middle class (which is taxed, but not excessively wealthy) unable to afford the coverage that is given to medicare recipients for (sic) free? I'm having a hard time believing that you wouldn't be able to run better than Edwards against Obama and Clinton with this rhetoric. It sounds great, but the details are always "tough, difficult, complex" etc. State run education, yes. Federally run education, no way. I see. So only one form of universal education should be (sic) free and allowed? If people want to pay for alternatives, they should not be required to subsidize the system they are not going to use. You shouldn't have to pay twice to send your child to a private or religious school. As long as the government continues the welfare/warfare state, and the people are driven to consume by inflation and easy credit, the nation is on life support. You can only subsidize such a system by hiding debt overseas, and consuming the productive gains of foreign "others" who sacrifice and save for so long.
Industries that largely escape pricing oversight and controls and are monopolistic in nature--okay. Most elements of the wide distribution of telecom and cable television largely escape cost controls Monthly cable tv costs over a long period of time have risen dramatically faster than inflation. This is over the long run. Sattelite tv is a counter to cable and has served to somewhat control long term costs. Telecom largely escapes cost control oversight and is largely protected so as to mitigate competition over the long haul. Competition was the driving force to lower costs. Over the long term there was just AT&T--then an enormous number of competitors and now we are looking at very few landline competitors once again. When competition drops costs rise dramatically. Computer costs associated with operating systems and office suites of applications. Microsoft successfully took monopolistic control of both types of products. There is little govt oversight. Efforts at applying anti-trust were defeated. Operating systems and office suite products from microsoft continue to dominate world markets. Competing systems are offered at 1/2 and less than 1/2 the costs of these two products and can't compete for market share. Dominant costs for office suite products are in the $600 range for consumers and small businesses. Comparable products are in the $200 range and now Google (and some other competitors) are floating free alternatives. Still microsoft dominates the market. Drug manufacturers get signifigantly long periods of competition free rights to distribute their new discoveries through patent protection. In virtually every case for drugs when patents expire generic drugs compete at dramatically lower costs. Look from the business perspective the best thing to have is a monopoly. Develop that and you are in the catbird seat. Most monopolies exist and don't tear apart an economy....but one example has developed that is having a dramatic impact. The rising cost of oil over a 6 year period has roughly moved about 1% of the worlds wealth from oil importing nations to oil exporting nations. That is dramatic. Rising fuel costs are definately hurting the less well off in the US and those that heavily rely on fuel costs. Trucking and airlines are having their costs rise through the roof. Developing nations are suffering in far greater proportion because of the rising costs of fuel. Essentially the market can at various times and in various ways run costs through an economy that have every bit as dramatic an impact on an economy as inefficient govt spending. In fact it really doesn't matter. The other side of that is that lower market costs have every bit as much of an impact as dropping taxes. It has been said and said and repeated endlessly that the biggest tax cut ever in the states was the expansion of imported goods from other nations with products produced for lower wages. what I'm simply saying is that govt operations are not necessarily dramtically different from the private markets. When people rip all govt spending as negative and counter productive that is both theory and political It simply isn't true. Govt, while I acknowledge does not run economically, can at times operate in a very efficient way. Secondly, I absolutely never said a single thing about entitlements or welfare. Those are your words and typical of a deeply conservative economic polemicist that is putting words into my mouth. Here is a different example. Imagine if there were no regulations with regard to publicly held companies providing financial statements that are reviewed via GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles). Imagine how many companies would falsify financial statements. It would be extraordinary. Regardless of GAAP we continuously have examples wherein companies falsify their statements, suck cash out of consumers, employees, etc and scam the public. Enron of course was one of the big brutal examples of this decade. Its been going on for ages. Imagine if there were no regulations. Further I never said the govt should compete with citizens. I said govt serves as a counterweight against unregulated industry. That is so entirely different from your response it is ludicrous. That is one of the times where govt protects the citizenry. (If you are going to respond....respond directly to what I wrote...don't make up stuff and twist it) Finally, when it comes to public education I fully support it. It is primarily funded on a local level and not a fed level. I fully know that there are people who resent paying a portion of taxes (these are primarily local or state taxes) that fund public education. They are not only those that educate their kids in alternative fashions but also those without kids, those whose kids have graduated, etc. If there were a tax system that supported schools but credited in some fashion those that didn't use them....that would be fine....so long as it didn't ruin public education That is my caveat. Secondly, half of the argument against public education comes from conservative theorists who simply want to destroy the education system and destroy its membership's widespread support of democrats. That part of the argument is purely political and has no inherent value to the population. Possibly the public education system has been the best the govt investment in the population of any made at any point over the long history of America. Public education provides the underlying strength for opportunity for the underclasses and for individuals to rise through merit and achievement to become producing members of society. The counter argument on the politics of it is that the democratic party simply walks in lockstep with the education industry and supports anything it wants. Screw that part. Get good ideas and force public education to improve.
First of all, telecom and cable have massive capital costs. Long distance has been open market for quite some time, and now that alternative technologies like satellite and cellular have arrived, competition has entered the market. There are few land line competitors now, because people aren't using land line to communicate like they did 10 or 20 years ago. People are on mobile phones, they are texting, using email and chatting via the internet. You're in a very small view of things, if you haven't seen the massive shift to open source, and web applications. Small business owners are not confined to using MS products exclusively any longer. But many people I have seen argue from your position, don't believe in the marketplace long enough to allow competition and innovation to occur. The view is, Problem => Reaction => Solution. It's impatient, and demands intervention, which creates inequality. Right, but this is corporate fascism. This is where government and business collude to protect business at the expense of the consumer. I don't advocate that. I advocate a marketplace with low barriers to entry, so that the drug cartels and Microshaft are unable to limit competitors from entering the market. That said, I don't think we should ever subsidize one business (even the start up) over the established one. That's anti-capitalism. There is no incentive to succeed, if you know you will be punished for it. Like the progressive (or should I say) income tax system. This is a bizarre argument. You're arguing against the natural resource monopoly? I'm not sure where this is leading. Is the issue who controls the oil, or that we use oil? If you've watched the Sony Pictures documentary "Who Killed the Electric Car?", you'd know that a combination of business and government killed a program that could now have most Americans driving electric cars in major urban areas, significantly reducing the reliance on foreign oil. For some strange reason, there is a move to stop the development of nuclear power, by way of restricting licenses, which has also set back the energy industry. But this again, is a collusion between government and business. The free market cannot overcome the power of taxation and law every time. These forces are used to retard natural market forces that breed competition, innovation and lower prices. And those powers are used to benefit political and financial ends, not the greater good, or the economic freedom of the people. I can't agree with this at all. Again, the government controls the mandatory taxation system (which in and of itself is a monopoly), and controls the monetary system (the ability to create debt money by devaluing the currency) and the legal system, which limits the recourse of the people. When? When is it efficient? I'm not arguing for zero spending, I'm more pragmatic than that, but I dare say that there is little that government does, that could not be better done by the private sector. Heck, if you've argued that they should copy private sector attitudes and efficiencies! Like asking a dog to be a cat, because government doesn't solve inefficiencies by downsizing, they always try to solve it by spending increases and bloat! Yes you did. You're arguing that education is an entitlement. You're arguing that health care may be an entitlement. The notion that when people are poor, they should be subsidized, instead of being freed, to climb out of poverty, and not be dependent on the state for their well being. Deeply conservative? You bet. (l)ibertarian? You bet. I'm interested in vertical politics, not left right politics. The opposite of liberty is statism. Liberty occurs are the individual level, statism at the collective level. I don't have a problem with regulating fraud. But a consumer who buys a product without a label, or invests in a business, without having access to the financials is a fool. The marketplace doesn't protect fools. It enables people to make smart decisions. Again, companies that file falsely, should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. I'm actually against corporate ownership, I believe that companies should be susceptible to guilt and responsibility at the individual shareholder level. No hiding behind a "legal entity". But we have collusion, you only have to look at who donates to Romney, Giuliani, McCain, Clinton and Obama, to see it is Wall Street, and the major financial players. The government which has the ability to regulate law, and took the power to tax, has become the willing accomplice of business. It's my biggest issue with neo-conservatives and liberals. They want that paradigm to grow. They don't have a vision for people being personally responsible, or compassionate, or moral. They believe that goodness and good works have to come from the government, and it's this sort of thinking that is sending us into a fascist corporatacracy. You've arguing that public education should compete with private education. You've argued that the government can mimic the efficiencies of business. Why would it have to mimic the efficiencies of business, if it was not in a business itself? The government must protect the citizenry, and the individual, by enforcing the law. Law against pollution. Law against violence. Law against dangerous outcomes from poorly made products. Law against collusion. Law against fraud. You're halfway to being a conservative, and I salute you sir. The Democrats were the party of Jefferson, Madison and Jackson right? I liked those Democrats. They were classic liberals, they believed in individual freedom. The earliest American politician/libertarians. It's ludicrous to think that my objective, or the objective of conservatives as a whole is to destroy the education system. Maybe you get this from the notion of closing down the Dept. of ED. But you have to know that Americans were very well educated, and capable of amazing advances in science, medicine and technology without such an institution. The only way to force public education to improve is to privatize it, and force it to compete for funding and students. You have to trust the marketplace.
I also think it's funny that the budget only allows for another 70billion to fight out the rest of the iraq war...
Needless to say, there will be numerous calls for discretionary spending throughout the year, and IIRC, the Pentagon budget is 500+ billion.
LOL, Bush's economic management has been the worst i have seen by a president in my time. Not to sure what hes thinking. The economy is so weaker now then it was previously.