Last night, I watched the King’s Speech for the second time and despite Timothy Spall‘s appalling (and historically inaccurate) portrayal of Winston Churchill, the film holds up, meriting the many honors bestowed upon it.
While the situation in the United States is not nearly so dire as it was in the United Kingdom in 1939, we need today what our friends across the pond needed then — and what King George VI gave him, a leader who will come before us and spell out the tough path that lies ahead and the choices we have to make. As our chief of state he delivers his speech on our nation’s growing burden of debt, he needs also conclude on an upbeat note, saying that we will weather this storm and the nation will emerge stronger from it.
The idea for the speech germinated when I saw a poll (linked by Glenn Reynolds) showing how little appetite there is for cutting government spending in specific areas. People may favor smaller government, but all too many are unwilling to specify where they’d cut. We need a leader who will come before the American people, tell us that we can no longer afford to live beyond our means and must make cuts even in cherished programs because, simply put, we don’t have the money to pay for them.
Not just that, as the recent negotiations over maintaining the tax rates established by the Bush spending cuts showed, politicians, at least those in Washington (but perhaps not in Springfield, Illinois or Sacramento, California) understand that the Americans don’t want to pay higher taxes, at least not in a recession.
It doesn’t appear, however, the president’s tough words notwithstanding that he will be delivering that speech any time soon. His budget will fall short of of his own debt commission’s savings plan:
President Obama’s 2012 budget request to be released on Monday will reduce budget deficits over the next decade by only a quarter of the amount proposed by the presidential debt commission in December, a senior administration official confirmed Sunday.
Whereas the debt commission’s mix of spending cuts and tax increases reduced deficits by $4 trillion over 10 years, the Obama budget will reduce the combined deficits by $1.1 trillion.
Instead of making the “draconian” cuts our elected officials need make, the president is only cutting anticipated increases. (For a good explanation of this, read this piece by Dan Mitchell.) Panning “the president’s proposal for a spending freeze,” House Budget Committee chair Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) points out that the freeze would come “off an extremely high base.” (Via Instapundit.) As would the “cuts.”
Looks likes we’ll have to wait at least two years for the President’s Speech.
I tried to explain that to someone recently. I think it’s a quality called “leadership” or something? Anyway, it seems pretty likely, at this point, that Obama doesn’t have it.
But, once the crisis hits (the greater one that is to come), we will get through it. As Churchill said, speaking of Churchill, “Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing…after they have exhausted all other possibilities.”
The Debt Commission was nothing but for show anyway, and a classic example of the cynical insincerity of the political “leadership” of the country.
1. The existence of the debt commission was intended to trick gullible members of the press and public that Dear Reader was serious about deficit reduction.
2. The existence of the debt commission gave Democrats an excuse to maintain their big spending ways “until the Debt Commission issues its recommendations.”
3. As soon as the recommendations were issued, Democrats denounced them as “unacceptable”.
The whole Debt Commission was nothing but a PR exercise and a waste of time.
And they wonder why the Tea Party is cynical and distrustful of the political class.
Obama is just doing his natural born thing. He has failed us, he is failing us, and he will fail us. If we can succeed in helping enough honest voters see this, his loss in the next election will enable a big time demonstration of “what aint there, aint gonna fail.”
What Obama has done over the last few years is spend our money like he earned it. But, with the Main Stream Media not doing their job as well as having to support “13% of the population who are too lazy and lack the ability to get out of bed and go to work , but instead wait for the “gubment check””, and, since the Great Society has turned us into slaves to China by Using the Rent-a-Center finance mentality of Instant gratification of Borrowing way more than what we need and with the Kenyan in Chief’s help we’ll all be living under Communist Rule. Obama, We will beat you….
Save the world…. Nuke Islam…
Obama is not serious about reigning in the debt; he quadrupled it with Porkulus, further increased it 4 times, then it exploded with ObamaCare. He’s just trying to appear like he’s moving to the center in his bid to be re-elected in 2012.
V the K is correct about the debt commission; it also was to serve as a means to get the VAT tax, but this changed when the Obama Democrats lost control of the House & much of the control in the Senate.
Furthermore, his regulations will further create more debt. To get rid of the debt, a starting point would be to get rid of Obama is 2012 as POTUS.
This is important. It’s really easy to campaign generically against government spending when all you have to do is rattle off anecdotes about wasteful spending here and there. But at the end of the day, most Americans want the government to spend more money on most issues, while of course wanting taxes to go down.
A couple of common sense things we should be doing to start fixing these budget issues is to stop giving tax cuts to people who don’t need them, pull out of the Middle East and cut defense spending in general, and end the war on drugs. These are mostly conservative policies that have been adding huge amounts to the deficit for decades while resolving none of our problems, and I think that would be a good start. It would make much more of an immediate impact than chasing down welfare abusers, I’d be willing to bet.
It seems to me that if conservatives are the ones that are going to be flailing around over spending and deficits, they should volunteer their own failed policies to be cut first.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, the military is already being gutted by the Obamacrats to the tune of $78 Billion. But spending on the education bureaucracy is being increased 11%. Billions more are being requested for high-speed rail that is not economically feasible. Billions more being wasted on Green Energy initiatives. Billions more being wasted on ethanol subsidies. The EPA’s budget has doubled since the Obamacrats took over.
And these items, unlike national defense, are not legitimate functions of the Federal Government.
But the real thing that needs to be tamed are entitlements. But since no politician is willing to deal with them, we’ll just continue throwing money onto the SocSecurity, MedicAid, Medicare fire until the economy goes all Zimbabwe.
And considering that even a return to the 70% income tax levels of the Carter Era will not close the deficit, we should probably lay off the class warfare, gut the tax code (66,000 pages) and completely start over with a 100 page simplified tax code, including a lower corporate tax because the USA’s Highest-In-The-Industrialized-World corporate tax rates is a huge factor driving jobs and investments overseas. If a 25% corporate tax rate is high enough for Sweden, it’s high enough for us.
I would also eliminate and make illegal any tax break that is available to fewer than 10,000 people, so the Democrats would be forced to stopusing tax laws to carve out exceptions for their crony capitalist buddies.
Speaking of the Fiscal Idiocy of High-Speed Rail.
A couple of common sense things we should be doing to start fixing these budget issues is to stop giving tax cuts to people who don’t need them, pull out of the Middle East and cut defense spending in general, and end the war on drugs.
Now watch how fast Levi flip-flops.
For starters, let’s impose a minimum 5% tax on all people, regardless of income level. Everyone’s tax bill would be a minimum of 5% of their taxable income. If you have any taxable earnings whatsoever, you pay 5% of them. If you have a refund coming, it is reduced by 5% of your taxable income. Any future tax hike would be applied equally and proportionally across the 5%.
This would tap the liar boys like Levi who whine and scream about how taxes need to be higher, but who themselves pay no income tax, and bring into the tax rolls the nearly 50% of Americans who currently have no income tax liability whatsoever. It would also nullify the billions in wealth redistribution that the government gives to liar boys like Levi who collect “refunds” on taxes that they didn’t pay in the first place, and
thus reduce a major government outlay. It would also make them think before voting in higher taxes, since they actually would have to pay the consequences.
Now watch as liar boy Levi tries to spin his way out of that one, claiming that tax cuts are “necessary” and that hiking taxes decreases economic activity.
I agree with ND30, getting the 47% of wage earners who currently pay no income tax (but consume most of the benefits) to pony up and pay into the system would be a major step forward. They might also become more concern with how their money is being wasted if they actually had a stake in the system.
I also think the rich should pay more taxes, but I wouldn’t increase their rates, I would… as stated earlier … eliminate tax breaks for special interests (i.e. those available to fewer than 10,000 people). Let’s also cut the death tax to something like 20% and eliminate the shelters that let people like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates dodge the estate tax while advocating it for other people who are merely rich and not ultra-rich.
But, like NDT, I doubt that Levi’s version of ‘fairness’ includes anything like getting more people at the lower end of the income scale to pay their fair share for the Government services they consume.
Apparently you missed the point of the thread – which was to demonstrate that entitlement programs are very popular and people don’t want to see them cut. That’s how we’ve ended up with people standing up in town hall meetings demanding that ‘government keep their hands off my medicare.’
Corporations are posting record profits, the stock market has rebounded nicely, and CEOs are still making money hand over fist. So how exactly is the corporate tax rate strangling the US economy? The wealthy have more of the money than they’ve ever had, why isn’t it trickling down yet?
High speed rail is an important government project in virtually every developed country in the world. I can’t read the article because I’m at work, but to dismiss a policy that’s been implemented successfully on a global scale as idiotic, especially while energy prices are soaring, is crazy. There are parts of the country where it simply makes sense. Obviously, no one is going to take a week to travel from New York to L.A. by train, but you could probably get between Milwaukee and Chicago quicker on a train than you could on an airplane.
Speaking of tax-grabs, a tax-judge in New York State has ruled that if you own ANY habitable residential property in New York that you can be adjuged a “New York State resident” for tax-purposes,and taxed on your entire income regardless of source. EVEN if you’re a legal-resident of another state and haven’t even set-foot in New York the entire tax-year.
It used to be that if you were a part-time resident that you pro-rated only your New York State-generated income against the number of days you actually were in-residence in New York. …Let’s sit back and enjoy the exodus of the yacht people from the Big Apple and the Hamptons as there’s a fire sale of high-end NYC pied-a-terres and vacation homes. They can join the stream of wealthy New Jerseyans streaming south to Florida to retire and escape NJ’s income and property taxes, and a combined Federal and State death tax of 54%.
Because jobs and investment are going overseas to countries with lower tax and regulatory burdens, dumbass.
So, I am guessing that Levi would support the 60-70% tax increase that would be necessary to (temporarily) maintain his welfare state utopia. Is that a correct guess?
What isn’t fair is how extremely the wealth distribution has skewed in this country in the past few decades. What’s the explanation for that? Did a few people all of a sudden become super productive and creative while at the same time most everyone else became lazy and stupid and complacent? Do you think that’s more plausible than the weatlhy capturing more influence over economic and domestic policies?
I think it goes without saying that the wealthy and powerful are much more responsible for the nature of the modern American economy (and are therefore more at fault for our current recession) than poor people – who have been dealing with massive increases for necessities like education and healthcare and energy. Trying to pump those people for money to balance the deficit isn’t just unfair, it’s immoral.
By the way, hearing North Dallas Thirty repeat over and over again that I’m entirely subsidized by the government and have never paid taxes in my life is illustrative of the general conservative attitudes about class imbalance. Conservatives like to think of themselves as the hard-working backbone of the economy and like to think of liberals as completely unproductive bottom-feeders who are leeching off of their efforts. North clearly imagines that there are millions of people in this country who are completely content sitting at home watching Oprah and soaps all day, and would rather pretend that these imaginary people are causing all of our problems than the real, tangible elites who are so clearly responsible.
Apparently you missed the point of the thread – which was to demonstrate that entitlement programs are very popular and people don’t want to see them cut. That’s how we’ve ended up with people standing up in town hall meetings demanding that ‘government keep their hands off my medicare.’
Actually, that would be because those people have been paying into Medicare their entire lives, a tax that they could neither avoid or mitigate or choose, and now the Obama Party wants to redistribute that so that shits like you, Levi, who haven’t paid a dime into the system, can have free health care with that money.
The government made these people a promise when it took their money. You don’t understand that because you are a pathological liar and fascist who says the government should be able to confiscate private property at any time for any reason and without any renumeration. You support the government lying to these people because it benefits you. Scum like you already commit massive fraud with Medicare and Social Security; you want your stealing from the elderly to now be legalized.
Corporations are posting record profits, the stock market has rebounded nicely, and CEOs are still making money hand over fist.
Really? Cite examples. Prove your point. Furthermore, realize this; an “economic rebound” will be defined by the terms that the Obama Party used during the Bush Administration, which means that anything more than 5% unemployment and the Dow at 14,000 means the economy is in a catastrophic depression.
Obviously, no one is going to take a week to travel from New York to L.A. by train, but you could probably get between Milwaukee and Chicago quicker on a train than you could on an airplane.
There already is a train between Milwaukee and Chicago, Levi. Just like there are already trains between DC and New York into which the government has plowed billions of dollars to keep operating and make “high speed”.
All of which people don’t take because they’re slow, irregular, and inconvenient, leaving you without at car at at least one end — and it’s particularly silly when you consider that Chicago and Milwaukee are only 85 miles apart, which you could drive in an hour and a half.
And why are they slow, irregular, and inconvenient? Federal regulations make high-speed rail impracticable due to incomprehensible safety standards and speed limits in populated areas — which, if you knew anything about the Chicago-Milwaukee corridor, you would know defines almost three-quarters of it. Furthermore, you can’t build additional tracks due to leftist NIMBY-ism and whining about “pollution”.
So your idiot Obama and his unicorn-powered choo choo are just taking advantage of the stupid — which would include puppets like you. Seriously, Levi, do you ever intelligently evaluate propositions coming from Barack Obama? You certainly haven’t yet.
Just to pile on Levi… More Levi train fail
Perhaps he should listen to Gov Palin? After all she’s smarter than he, and thus he should submit to being dragged into her future.
About those foreign train services that Levi envies almost as much as he envies Sarah Palin’s wealth, success, and personal happiness; the trains shut down when there is dew on the rails. Funny, I can’t recall ever missing work because there was dew in my driveway.
There does seem to be a deliberate plot by the progressive left to force people into mass rail transit though; air travel is being made miserable by the TSA, cars are being made uncomfortable and expensive by greenhouse gas emissions mandates, and domestic energy protection is being shutdown by drilling moratorium. It’s like the left is intentionally screwing over the rest of the economy so they can get their precious choo-choo trains.
What isn’t fair is how extremely the wealth distribution has skewed in this country in the past few decades. What’s the explanation for that? Did a few people all of a sudden become super productive and creative while at the same time most everyone else became lazy and stupid and complacent?
Oh, I see; so Levi’s argument is that none of the wealthy actually earned their money and in fact are thieves.
Well, Levi, answer this: from whom did Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, George Soros, Warren Buffett, Jane Fonda, and all the other Obama Party leftists who make more than $1 million per year — more than enough to class you in the top 1% of income — steal their money?
Come on, Levi. You say that none of the difference in income in this country is due to productivity and creativity. Apply your rules equally, class warfare clerk boy.
The reason this fiction holds such a tight grip on the failed clerks like Levi is because it allows them to believe that none of their problems are their fault. Levi isn’t a clerk in a Verizon store despite being a super-genius because of his tendency to lie, cheat, steal, and verbally berate his coworkers and managers; it’s because everyone hates him and wants to keep him down.
More Levi High Speed Fail.
HT/Planet Gore.
It is funny with Levi’s class warfare running neck and neck with his racism. Maybe the econimic issues are because brown people can’t count? We all know Levi believes they can’t handle democracy.
Well, that’s the tricky part. Because we have a lot of very good laws about child labor, the 40 hour work week, and minimum wage, it’s kind of hard for us to compete with a country like China, where people are forced to work 70s a week for pennies. How do we deal with that? Do we pressure China to institute labor reforms? Do we abandon our own labor laws? Should we tax companies more if they decide to take advantage of that cheap labor so that American workers are more appealing?
There used to be an element of patriotism in American business that I think has largely been abandoned in favor of the bottom line. The attitude seems to be that Wwealthy Americans are wealthy first and Americans second, so if they can save on manufacturing costs by removing economic opportunities out of their local economies, they’re going to do it – even if it means weakening the American economy over the long run.
I think those rates are perfectly appropriate on certain levels of income. High taxes create an incentive to re-invest your profits back into your business. If you make $15 million in a year with your business and if you might have to pay 60% of that to the government in taxes, you’re better off reinvesting more money into your business and opening up a new franchise or hiring 20 more employees.
“At some point, you have made enough money.”
So again, our little socialist punishes success. Anyone surprised?
Well, that’s the tricky part.
Only to economically illiterate idiots. This is not a black-and-white choice between excessive regulation and taxation and no taxation and regulation. Rather, it’s about lowering the burden on industry to the level where the higher productivity of American workers is not outweighed by the tax and regulatory burden.
It means enacting right-to-work laws, it means reforming tort liability, it means accepting that a pristine environment as clean as a surgical theater is an unrealistic objective, it means not treating common human respiration as a deadly pollutant, it means eliminating burdensome financial reporting rules that provide little benefit for massive cost (i.e. Sarbanes-Oxley), it means expediting approval processes so new plants can be built in months rather than decades, it means more domestic energy production, it means not clogging up our very efficient freight rail system with inefficient and unnecessary passenger rail. And above all, it means cutting our corporate tax rates down to the levels of our peer competitors. If 25% is good enough for Sweden, it ought to be good enough for us.
A tariff on Chinese goods and a free trade agreement with Colombia (opposed by Obamacrats) would be good too. We should be trading more with our friends and less with our enemies.
It is funny with Levi’s class warfare running neck and neck with his racism.
Long story short: People who are more successful than Levi (i.e. almost everybody) must be punished with 70% tax rates. That’ll teach ’em.
The truth, as we all know, is that no level of taxation will ever keep up with the appetite of Democrats for more spending. Case in point: California.
High taxes create an incentive to re-invest your profits back into your business. If you make $15 million in a year with your business and if you might have to pay 60% of that to the government in taxes, you’re better off reinvesting more money into your business and opening up a new franchise or hiring 20 more employees.
How?
You pay a massive tax on the purchase of new capital equipment.
You pay a massive tax on each employee to fund the Obamacare welfare state.
You pay a massive tax on any earnings from your investment.
You pay an even more massive tax amount next year on any productivity improvements that improve your bottom line.
It’s much easier to simply go somewhere else that won’t tax the bejesus out of everything that you do.
This is why Levi’s stupidity becomes even more obvious every time he opens his mouth. He doesn’t realize that businesses are taxed obscene amounts for each employee they add. He doesn’t realize that businesses are taxed obscene amounts for each piece of equipment they buy, each purchase they make, and each investment that they do. Indeed, the idiot Levi wants to INCREASE the tax on all of these business activities.
Levi is a parasite. Parasites kill their hosts. That’s why Levi needs to be dragged kicking and screaming into the productive class by forcing the little socialist to pay for his own health insurance and to pay a minimum of 10% in taxes of his income every year.
The attitude seems to be that Wwealthy Americans are wealthy first and Americans second, so if they can save on manufacturing costs by removing economic opportunities out of their local economies, they’re going to do it – even if it means weakening the American economy over the long run.
So in Levi’s fantasy world, the American economy is made stronger by artificially inflating the value of low-quality crap in order to pay higher benefits and salaries to political contributors.
Is it any surprise that people like Levi, who have an overinflated sense of their own worth and value, make this kind of assertion?
The attitude seems to be that moocher Americans are moochers first and Americans second, so if they can exploit wealthy/productive Americans and use up all the wealth, they’re going to do it – even though it means weakening the American economy over the long run.
Wealthy/productive Americans are, of course, right to hide their wealth from moocher Americans. Somebody has to have some wealth saved for the rebuilding of America that will one day come, and on that day, even moocher Americans will have to sit still for it being said that the Americans who preserved their wealth from the moochers were patriotic.
On a related note, Remember when the dumb Democrat trolls accused Foxnews of just making stuff up to suit their agenda? Turns out, it’s Dear Reader that just makes stuff up to suit his agenda.
One aspect of high personal and corporate tax-rates is that rather than investing in entrepreneurial or manufacturing businesses…and paying taxes twice…corporate and personal…the wealthy are just handing it over to the hedge-funds where the money managers game the Tax Code for a better R.O.I. as differed personal income. And lots of Venture Capital is migrating in the same direction away from small and medium-sized business direct-investment.
And it’s intellectually-lazy to state that “…millions don’t pay taxes”. They don’t pay Federal Income Tax at the lower income levels, but they do pay the FICA/Social Security and unemployment insurance taxes…and lots of property and local and state use and sales taxes. In-fact, Social Security is currently skewed so that the lower income earners pay-in “more” since the rates are capped at $106k.
None of which helps with General Federal Revenues. But one of the changes I would welcome would be a national sales tax IF it replaced the income tax.
A video on controlling the government’s spending problem, from Dan Mitchell of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity:
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2011/02/028360.php
At least jump to the last minute, starting at 6:00.
I’ve given the explanation; you just didn’t want to know it.
For everyone else: Big Government and its companions, Bailouts and Money Printing, have destroyed the value of savings, destroyed the value of wages, weakened entrepreneurship, weakened innovation, weakaned job growth… in short, they are what is destroying the middle class.
While Big Government stifles Main Street, its companions, Bailouts and Money Printing, re-distribute the purchasing power of average Americans to the favored clients of government – in recent times the unions (GM), Goldman-Sachs, and so forth.
Conversely, if we shrank government, halted bailouts and subsidies, ended deficits (but I repeat myself) and returned to hard money under market interest rates, the purchasing power of average Americans would start going up again. It’s really simple, when you see it. Big Government propagandists in media and academia (and, like Levi) are out to keep you from seeing it.
Well, history shows they aren’t. History shows that they *do not* result in the government’s favored clients paying more taxes: the Kennedys, the George Soroses, the Goldman-Sachs types do not pay more taxes. BUT, average Americans, including small business owners and new entrepreneurs, get crushed.
Which is the real agenda. I know you actually don’t give a damn about “skewed distribution of wealth” in this country, Levi. Because everything you advocate is what has caused it, and will continue to cause it. If you did care, you’d change 180 degrees and advocate the exact opposite policies.
There really are only two options to dealing with entitlements. There is the Chilean Model, in which entitlements are rationalized and the Zimbabwe Model, in which the Government just keeps printing money until the economy completely collapses. The Obama Administration is pursuing the latter.
The burden of entitlements on our society is unsustainable, simple demographics will explain why. Too many sick old people, not enough healthy young people. The retirement age was originally set at 65 because that was human life expectancy. Now, large numbers of people live for 20-30 past retirement age. Some say the answer is illegal immigrant labor, but that also ends up being a net drain on the social safety net; unless someone is seriously going to argue that our schools are so uncrowded, our emergency rooms so underutilized, our infrastructure so undertaxed that we can easily import an illegal immigrant population that exceeds the population of the city of Dallas, TX into the USA every year without any ill effects.
Yes, Wormtail/Peter Pettigrew was appalling as Churchill. And Obama is appalling as president.
He doesn’t give a rats ass about the private sector, he wants to grow government and only government. Either that or he is completely incompetent. Either way an abysmal failure.
In-fact, Social Security is currently skewed so that the lower income earners pay-in “more” since the rates are capped at $106k.
Not quite. True, the rate is constant as income increases, capping out at $106k, but the amount you can ultimately collect decreases proportionally (and drastically) as income increases.
Long story short:
The practical impact of this formula is that a worker with lower wages might expect to receive a social security benefit that replaces about 45% of those wages on an inflation-adjusted basis, assuming the worker retires at full retirement age. A worker with much higher earnings will receive a larger social security benefit, but it may replace only about 25% of covered wages.
Simply put, Social Security replaces 90% of your income up to $749 per month ($8,988 per year), 32% up to $4,517 per month ($54,204 per year), and 15% for anything above that — but the rate of taxation remains the same even as your benefits decrease.
Social Security is a wealth-redistribution system of epic proportion.
The minute Timothy Spall came on the screen was the moment I realized that this film wasn’t as great as everyone touted it to be.
Out of the 10 BP nominations, it ranks #9, right before Inception.
#21 Levi:
John Edwards, John Kerry, Any Kennedy, George Soros, Sean Penn, Jay Rockefeller, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, John Corzine, Timothy Geithner, to name a few: what business do they have to plow money back into? The idea that honest to God risk takers should have to take additional risk exposure through expansion is pure idiocy.
Levi has never had to face the business loan banking tribe when inventory loans are necessary to make payroll. On the other hand, John F’n Kerry knows where to dock his New Zealand constructed yacht to cheat the home state out of taxes due. The life of a true blue liberal limousine liberal is a slap happy one.
Levi has given a classic fascist rationalization for punishing. “The floggings will continue until morale improves.”
The idea that a number of productive people, faced with punitive taxes, could should and will *simply give up* seems to escape Levi.
aargh, “… for punishing -taxes-“
Pretending that there is an intrinsic property of government that destroys economies is such an obvious ploy to distract you from what’s really going on that it’s hard to believe that anyone could fall for it. The truth is that 90% of our elected representatives are effectively wholly owned subsidiaries of the wealthiest elites and industries, and they are sent to Washington to do the bidding of their campaign financiers. This mostly involves allowing lobbyists to write legislation for the industries they represent, abdicating government oversight responsibilities, and generally maintaining an aura of incompetence to further undermine government credibility. Needless to say, what we’re dealing with in the 21st century is not at all how government is supposed to work.
How incredibly easy is it to see what’s going on? People like Hank Paulson and Larry Summers move back and forth between positions where they’re crafting economic policy for the country and running multi-billion dollar corporations, and you’re telling me that all of our economic problems are because of social welfare programs? In modern times, it isn’t uncommon for a corporation to give millions to a party or particular politician, and then that politicians appoints an executive in that corporation to manage government oversight of that corporation’s industry. They’re doing this out in the open, and all you guys ever seem concerned about are the welfare queens?
This idea that the free market is too heavily regulated and that corporations are being crushed by government is patently absurd – and the quarterly reports of some of these companies, and the annual incomes of some of these CEOs, proves it. Nothing is further from the truth – it simply became a matter of economics that investing in politicians, lobbying firms, think-tanks, and media outlets was a better use of a company’s profits than expansion or investment or R&D. You can make a lot more money in the American economy by buying the refs and spreading propaganda than you can by doing silly stuff like improving products and innovating.
That’s not to say that all American industry is corrupt – but there are many quarters of it that are eager sacrifice the collective long term economic stability for their own short term profits; we have a fossil fuel industry that wants to ignore the global consequences of using their products,, we have a military industrial complex desperate to justify its own existence when we’re the only superpower, we have a healthcare system trying to maintain their profits despite our comparably poorer health and higher costs, and we have a financial services industry that is leeching money out of the system any way it can. These are industries fighting the gears of human progress, and they’re doing it by capturing the government.
And the most important part of capturing the government in a democracy is tricking people into voting for you, and thus the conservative movement was born. Avoiding regulation and getting away with all manner of crimes is made that much easier by convincing large swaths of the population that the government is the problem. I’ll never understand why people think it’s a great thing to put someone that says ‘government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem’ in charge of the government. How can someone with such an attitude run the government in an even halfway capable manner?
The past three Republican Presidents were Reagan, a corporate stooge if there ever was one, and the Bushes, two members of a wealthy political aristocracy that dates back a century. Fellas – this is the problem. To recap – it’s the CEO of Goldman Sachs being appointed to run the Treasury. When was the last time that the executive director of ACORN got appointed to run Housing and Urban Development? How are you not connecting the dots here? What else has to happen?
Wow. You jump from:
to:
all in the same post. So which is it? Do we owe them our fealty or not?
What’s more, Issa’s carrying out government oversight. Libs are fighting to stop him. Just like the typical racist liberal bastards over at Common Cause are trying to prevent Scalia and Thomas from doing their jobs.
Common sense and logic was never Levi’s strong suit, TGC.
When was the last time that the executive director of ACORN got appointed to run Housing and Urban Development?
We can do even better than that.
And that’s what makes your rants so hilarious, Levi. They are complete and total farcical lies, nothing more than your attempt to appear like a reasonable human being when you are in fact a vicious and desperate partisan who uses these screaming tantrums to attack people with allegations when you and your Obama Party are in fact doing these very things.