What do we get if we add to those tax cuts the trillions thrown away on two - now three - idiotic wars over the past ten years?

q

Thanks TP but your underlying assumption is wrong. You assume the US is a We society. It's not.

The real tragedy here is the 55% of Amerikans too frigging stupid to figure this out, and their slavish obedience to the television god in their living rooms [and kitchens and bedrooms and garages and cars and waiting rooms and airport gate waiting areas and etc and etc]. Kill all television. When the drug is unplugged, some of those idiots will begin to wake up. But part of this tragedy is that most of the people who read this post will not understand its truth. Addiction blinds the eyes, whether it is addiction to heroin, alcohol or television.

I think we should nationalize and deport the top 400 families who are behind so much of our suffering. And their government lackies too. All three branches.

The Bush/Obama multi-trillion dollar gift to the richest few
has put 20% of us out of work. That's where our jobs went.

It is time that those who have caused the collapse of the USA to at least pay taxes!

"America didn’t have to go down this route of cutting taxes and hoping for growth to miraculously appear. There were other policy options available to policymakers."

Liberalism surely dies hard. This article is yet another devious propaganda attempt by liberals to buttress Das Kapital as it creaks and crumbles into the 21st Century.

Das Kapital requires two political wings, the predators (Repuks) and the apologists (Demoks). The Demoks are pretending to cover the progressive end of the political spectrum by offering alternative means to economik-growath.

These alternatives are supposed to make progressives feel better. But in fact evey alert progressive reads easily between the lines and sees that we don't need economik-growath, because Merkans plunder the earth at 4x the world average rate per capita. 3/4 of economik activity in the USA is wasteful, destructive and unnecessary. 3/4 of Merkans are enslaved to Das Kapital.

And the Demoks' role is to help keep them enslaved by the progressive deception. How much longer will we allow them to deceive us? Their ideology is doomed and most of the world knows it.

Did I just read or hear that 95% of Americans believe in God, making us more religious than Canadians and Europeans? If we have all of these citizens who believe in God (and probably the majority of them are so-called Christians, supposedly following the teachings of their savior Jesus Christ), why are we so greedy and selfish? Why do the countries with fewer people who believe in God not have a problem providing quality education, health care, unemployment, and retirement to their citizens? (These are rhetorical questions.)

>>>> - Provide 43.1 Million Students With Pell Grants Worth $5,500 Every Year For Ten Years

There are only 19 million students in US degree-granting institutions.

http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=98

The other alternative "factoids" are equally questionable.

Simpler to just state that the $250 Bn / yr could have been used to raise the standard exemption (by about $5,000) for all of the 100,000,000 US income tax payers.

Obama has been in office for over 2 years.

For the first 2 years, he had an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress.

Well. That was embarrassing! How to explain the continuation of Bush policies?

Luckily for the Democrats, the 2010 election gave the House to the Republicans, starting in January, so the Democrats promptly continued the tax cuts in December, telling us it was because the Big Bad Republicans were coming and made them do it!

And this author tries to call them the Bush tax cuts.

George W Bush Tax Cuts when the GOP was in power. HO HO HO!!!!!!!

They are back again and with the great American Wars.

We went from a surplus to a money bust.

The GOP has never been a progressive group but they get a A+ for Regressive Ugly Politics.

I estimate former President George Bush still has something like three tonnes of lipstick left on his dick. Someone contact the Guinness Book of Records.
Trylon

Look at the inset picture accompanying this blog. Those gathered around the chortling Bush Boy are all fat, happy, white folk who appear to be self-satisfied and, not to belabor the point, well fed. House members perhaps, although that looks Harriet Miers behind W. What have they done for their nation and their fellow citizens of that nation during the intervening ten years. My guess is -- nothing, zilch, nada of any worth.

We probably would have also avoided the bank bust in 2008 and not needed TARP. Bush & Co. and all of his congressional supporters broke the economy and broke the nation. They should be ashamed. And maybe tried for their crimes and imprisoned.

Instead, the Republicans aided by the Republican owned media are trying to blame this all on Obama.

One of the better republican candidates for president, Tim Pawlenty, just unveiled his economic plan: cut taxes HUGELY. No more taxes on estates, dividends, capital gains... Now why is it that there's no difference between dems and repubs? I kind of forget.

Democrat, Republican, liberal, conservative....

..moot terminology, with no bearing on reality......

Marx was wrong...

...Television, not religion, is the 'opiate of the masses'.....

Clinton, Obama, Bush 1, Bush 2, etc, etc, etc........
they are replicant-tigers with different stripes....

They are self-aggrandizing, political-neanderthals, or irrelevant ''statesmen''...
...... predators in sheeps clothing, absorbed primarily in the latest opinion poll.....

.............

The Bush tax cuts are now the Bush/Obama tax cuts! Obama had Democratic majorities in both the Senate and House when he caucused with Senate Republicans (while keeping Democratics in the dark) to craft a bill preventing Bush's tax cuts from expiring.

The amazing thing is the sheeple out there who still firmly believe the mantra of "cutting YOUR taxes" and that it applies to them; it applies to the fat cat corporate oligarchs standing behind them, laughing all the way to their (offshore) bank. The little guy (that's me and you) get screwed over big time, and the schleps who are dirt poor get it in the rear even worse. But still, they go on believing this crap. It reminds me of a song...
"...tax the rich,
feed the poor,
till there are no,
rich no more..."
I think the time has truly come for that approach. Call me a commie/socialist/whatever-I'm tired of seeing the working man getting screwed, whether by Bush or Obama.

USA Today wrote that every American owes $550,000 dollars as part of the national debt. They broke it down to include all non-defense government expenditures in Medicare, Social Security, etc. Not a word about the war profiteering MIC budget that is over half of all government expenditures.

Make the rich pay taxes!

I wrote this in response to nolo, but it appears as his two posts disappeared. Still posting it in case it mysteriously reappears.

nolo,
"That, and the lower salaries and other compensation paid to non-U.S. workers, offers a powerful incentive not to create U.S. jobs. The more we burden employers with mandatory costs for health care, pensions, etc., the more we incentivize employers to look outside the U.S. for workers. Unions in the United States raise the salaries of those who remain employed, but at the same time, they reduce the competitiveness of companies that have unionized work forces. Thus they promote an exodus to "right to work" states like South Carolina and to offshore locations."

Succinct and to the point. Unfortunately you don't seem to draw the proper conclusion from your own very well stated summary of the problem. The answer isn't to "free" business from the "burden" of providing a living wage, the answer lies in once again regulating trade, both international and interstate.

Except for these trade agreements, there's absolutely NO reason we shouldn't once again have tariffs and regulate which businesses are allowed to operate or even which ptoducts are allowed to be sold within the United States.

Perhaps the biggest con of the past 30 years or so is the notion that international trade can ever be FAIR without heavy regulation by the government (The people in case you forgot). Tariffs aren't new nor are they a bad thing. They're designed to do several things. Protect the domestic worker from essentially slave labor, protect the environment by ensuring environmental costs are taken into account, and to protect domestic manufacturing. Protectionism IS NOT A BAD WORD.

As far as interstate commerce goes, it wasn't all that long ago that banks weren't allowed to operate nationwide. As recently as the late 1990's as a matter of fact. There's no reason we can't abolish the practice of our corporations chartering in states such as Delaware or overseas simply because they have corporate friendly charter laws. Take a look at the Silicon Valley titans who's headquarters are in San Jose or Santa Clara and then look where they're chartered and tell me how one can call them a California business. Of course this means we would actually have to REGULATE business. Something you're apparently not willing to do.

As far as burden of health care, I agree that its a burden on business. Its also a much greater burden on the people. You want to free business of this undue burden? Then get your head out of your behind and advocate for true national health care for each man, woman, and child. Take the burden away by abolishing the parasitical health care insurance industry.

As for retirement being a burden. All I can say is, "Are you f'ing serious?" If retirement was such a burden as you suggest then the corporate executives wouldn't be getting retirement packages worth millions, sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars. No, it seems that to you only the piddling one or two thousand a month that the workers get is a burden. A hundred million golden parachute for a crappy CEO after just a few years - no problem for business. Twenty four thousand a year after 25 or 30 years work - Yikes! Can't have that. No siree, can't afford it.

In your first post you claim the Regan tax cuts resulted in a booming economy. How so very typical of so called conservatives. Ignore the fact that this "saved" money fueled the savings and loan fiasco and the commercial real estate bubble. That it pumped up the stock market (which isn't the economy). That it resulted in MASSIVE government deficits adding to the debt. Deficits people like you NOW claim have to be addressed by slashing government that provides for the people's needs.

The only thing you seem to advocate for is for both business and the rich to have NO rules so that they can reduce the people to abject poverty in order to increase their own wealth and power.

Go sell it somewhere else, 'cause we're not buying.

Les miserables has some good moments that might apply.

Naturally,
don't forget Clinton's, NAFTA craft-work.... a travesty for American labor...
or his policy w/Iraq, in the form of a UN-medical embargo and no-fly zone.

..this sacrificed many, many thousands of Iraqis, rather than disturbing Saddam...
It inflamed the Muslim world.
..setting us up for our yet unfolding, military disaster in the Tigres/Euphrates River valley....
...and beyond.....
He deliberately allowed Osama to freely exit from the Sudan, to flee to the Pashtun mountains of Afghanistan,
he initiated the technology-transfer of computerized, weapon/systems with China, and invaded the Balkans in another killing field....
and lied, in an utterly, bold-face to America, and the entire world, via television, about his obsessive, sexual/marital transgressions....
Don't elevate Slick Willy's pedastal too highly....

Just ask Monica, Juanita, etc., etc.,..or the one who got him impeached
finally..
..what was her name ?....
He dropped his pants for her...the ''big creep'' couldn't resist it, apparently....

there are just too many 'hussies' to remember, I guess....

OK, so he lied under oath.....so what, all politicians lie, don't they....
As they say on Oscar-night, what a great actor!....
[Like ray-gun Ronnie Reagan]
The only reason the Repubs took over the white house was America was tired of
being laughed at and scandalized.....The freakin' Clintons even tried to make off with some of the white house art/decor.....
Real winners......

http://www.facebook.com/pages/George-W-Obama/198592273491302?sk=info