j_b

Wouldn't it be faster to ask which of the last few administrations didn't have GS executives in charge of treasury? But of course, while you pretend to be holding your breath, no call for financial reform or convicting the looters coming from you. Like for unsustainable health care costs everything is fine until you blame public employees for this fiasco.

"No-no-no, look over there instead! the big government soshalists and the unions are gearing up the death panels"

Republicans on SEC voted against suing Goldman Sachs

Regressives are much too busy making up stories about how "big government" is responsible for the crisis they themselves created to worry about reigning in the looters on Wall Street.

So, as it turns out, progressives are the genuine republicans who invest in democratic ideals and give government the means of its policy. In the meantime, regressives are busily trying to recreate feudalism, all in the name of "freedom" of course.

I'm just surprised you didn't implicate Karl Rove here. You're slipping, my friend. Why should I bring up Rove when decredibilizing government to privatize everything and deregulate all economic activities has been the number 1 conservative strategy for 30 years?

I didn't say what you infer I said. I am entirely willing to concede that regressive propaganda about the state and science is having a big effect across the political spectrum. Just consider how many self-proclaimed liberals mouth regressive talking points about "big government" and "nanny state".

Not very surprising when virtually the entire media and right wing wage a 40 year long anti-government propaganda campaign. You can't spread lies about an essential institution like government forever without nasty blowback. We also won't discuss how the perennial anti-intellectualism/anti-science of the right wing and corporations contributes to folks distrusting scientists.

A little reminder for regressives with poor memory and/or misplaced intellectual honesty: STARVING THE BEAST For decades, a key part of the anti-government agenda of conservatives has been to cut spending on social programs. Their targeted programs have included: health care for the elderly and poor, welfare and food stamps, military retirement, drug abuse centers, unemployment compensation, aid to education, college student loans, nursing homes, employment training, childcare centers, housing subsidies for the elderly and disabled, and school nutrition. They believe that these programs have grown too large and cost taxpayers to much money. But attacking social spending has not been easy. Most Americans think that these programs do a lot of good and do not want to see them cut. Indeed, as another article on this site points out, most of us want the government to actually spend more on education, retirement, and health care – not less. So Republicans have developed a tactic for attacking social spending that they hope will not trigger the ire of the public – an indirect attack on these programs. The tactic? Tax cuts. The idea is simple: if we keep cutting taxes, eventually there won’t be enough money to spend on these social programs and they will have to be reduced. They call this tactic “starving the beast.” Taxes are what nourish government, and so if that source of nourishment is taken way, government must inevitably shrink. For anti-tax advocates like Grover Norquist, this is the ultimate purpose of tax cuts: “The goal is reducing the size and scope of government by draining its lifeblood.”1 Milton Friedman, the arch-conservative economist, speaking of ways to limit or reduce the size of government, offered this prescription: “How can we ever cut government down to size? I believe there is only one way: the way parents control spendthrift children, cutting their allowance. For the government, that means cutting taxes. Resulting deficits will be an effective – I would go as far as to say, the only effective – restraint on the spending propensities of the executive branch and the legislature.”2 So underneath all the Republican rhetoric about cutting taxes – all the talk about stimulating the economy and giving money back to hardworking Americans – there is another, deeper political goal: to strangle government social programs. But this is rarely discussed publicly. Conservatives focus the public’s attention on what they will gain from the tax cuts, not what they will lose by reducing social programs. This strategy was first tried in the Reagan administration. He came into office in 1980 promising to balance the federal budget. But he quickly cut taxes and raised military spending, creating huge budget deficits. (Sound familiar?) This made little sense to many people at the time and was not understood until Reagan’s budget advisor, David Stockman, later revealed that this was a conscious effort to “starve the beast” – a phrase he is reputed to have coined.3 The idea was to put increasing financial pressure on social programs in order to make it easier to cut them. And indeed, it had some effect, with domestic discretionary spending, falling from 4.5% of the economy in 1981 to 3.3% in 1988.3 A series of massive tax cuts during the George W. Bush administration revived this strategy and implemented it in a much more extensive way. These tax cuts cost the federal government over two trillion dollars ($2,000,000,000,000) in lost revenue from 2001 to 2010 alone.5 As economist Paul Krugman observed at the time, “‘starving the beast’ is no longer a hypothetical scenario. It’s happening as we speak. For decades, conservatives have sought tax cuts, not because they’re affordable, but because they aren’t.”6 The Goal: Massive Cuts in Social Programs So what kinds of drastic cuts in government social programs are conservatives really after? To see, we need only look at the 2007 budget proposal made by President Bush. His proposal covered budget goals for the five years from 2007 to 2011. Bush targeted programs such as education, housing, job training, environmental protection, community development, and children’s services for $221 billion in cuts. These would have been severe and unprecedented reductions in these programs. But it is important to see that these kinds of cuts in discretionary spending – whether they were in education or environmental protection – were only part of the starving-the-beast strategy. Anti-government activists were also out for much bigger game: cuts in mandatory spending for the large entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. These programs form the bulk of federal spending and they were the ultimate targets. The President’s 2007 proposal also hacked away at this kind of mandatory spending – detailing $65 billion in cuts for these programs. This included $36 billion to be taken from Medicare programs and $14 billion for Medicaid. Over $650 million would also have been cut from Food Stamps, thus denying them to over 300,000 people in working families.7 But as draconian as these proposed cuts were, they paled in comparison to the budget reductions being demanded that same year by some Republicans in Congress. The Republican Study Committee, a groups of conservatives members of the House of Representatives, proposed to establish an “entitlement cap” that would have limited the total federal expenditures for entitlement programs other than Social Security. This cap would have required that projected entitlement spending be slashed by $1.8 trillion over the next ten years. That translates into $766 billion cut from Medicare, $405 billion from Medicaid, $114 billion from federal civilian retirement and disability, $66 billion from military retirement and disability, $63 billion from unemployment compensation, and $50 billion from food stamps.8 The Committee argued that such these program cuts were necessary for the “restoration of the American dream.” They were obviously not taking into account the dreams of the elderly, the sick, the disabled, the jobless, and the poor who would have to pay the price for these truly staggering reductions in federal programs. Ironically, despite having advocated such deep cuts in spending, these conservative budget plans would have done little or nothing to reduce the deficit because they included a new round of large tax cuts – $1.7 trillion in new tax reductions in the case of the President’s budget. The Deficit Trap There is an obvious problem with this starving the beast strategy. On the federal level, cutting taxes does not necessarily require spending cuts: the government may only just borrow money and increase its debt to continue spending. And this is exactly what happened during the Bush administration. Along with this tax cuts, Bush also oversaw some large increases in government spending – mostly in the area of defense. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan cost an estimated 900 billion dollars between 2001 and 2009. This combination of increased spending and huge tax cuts caused budget deficits to soar during the Bush years. This led some conservatives to complain that Bush had abandoned the idea of limited government. David Brooks concluded in one of his New York Times columns that all this spending and the growing deficits heralded “the death of small government conservatism.”9 But these accusations were misplaced. They ignored one key fact: growing deficits were entirely consistent with the long-term plan to reduce government. The hope was that soaring deficits and a rapidly growing national debt would eventually force policymakers to reduce government spending – whether they liked it or not. From its very first days, the Bush administration embraced deficits as a good way to reign in government. In August of 2001, as the federal budget surpluses began to disappear and new deficits began to loom, the president had an unusual fit of candor and described these developments as "incredibly positive news," arguing that this would now put Congress in a "fiscal straitjacket."10 Republicans in Congress also came around to this point of view. As conservative Rick Santorum explained it, he first hated deficits, but then came to like them because they made it harder to pass any new spending bills. “I came to the House as a real deficit hawk but I am no longer a deficit hawk. I’ll tell you why. …Deficits make it easier to say no.”11 Clearly if the Republicans had remained in power in Washington and their program of massive tax cuts had continued, deeper reductions in spending for mandatory programs, even including Social Security, would eventually have become inevitable. Deficits and public debt simply cannot continue to grow forever. At some point, the federal government eventually has to start paying its bills. As Paul Krugman has explained, the crunch would most like come when baby boomers begin to retire and start making increasing demands on the Social Security and Medicare systems. At that point, the gap between the government’s income and its outlays would become alarmingly large. The government would have no choice but to either rapidly raise taxes or drastically cut spending. Given the difficulty of raising taxes, the most likely scenario – and the one anti-government conservatives would favor – would be for government to dramatically slash spending. "We're not talking about minor policy adjustments,” says Krugman. “If taxes stay as low as they are now, government as we know it cannot be maintained."12 He predicts that we could experience cuts of up to 40% on some of the largest government programs: "Social Security will have to become far less generous; Medicare will no longer be able to guarantee comprehensive medical care to older Americans; Medicaid will no longer provide basic medical care to the poor."13 more: http://www.governmentisgood.com/articles.php?aid=14

"Freedom" on the march according to the Heritage Foundation nutjobs: A federal appeals court to internet users: "Screw you"

I didn't know there were close to 50 millions morbidly obese life long smokers who can't afford health insurance in America. It'd be really pathetic if you actually believed your own drivel. Please tell us you aren't for real.

It's really not the fault of progressives if most of you are greedy racist hicks that keep falling for the propaganda about "welfare queens".

[video:youtube]nAgJ515txvQ

As if that Orwellian think tank could be trusted not to twist and spin the meaning of "freedom".

yep, all this talk about "entitlement programs" from libertarian wingnuts but not a peep from them about the return of the robber barons and their systematic refusal to give the state the means of its policies (taxation).

that was your plan all along. Remember the anti-government zealots' "let's shrink government so that we can drown it in a bathtub"? come on, grow a sack and own up to it. bullshit. Medicare is going bankrupt because it serves those that need it the most while private insurance ditches them, and because of skyrocketing health care cost that YOU refused to fix. SOcial Security is fine thank you, albeit with a minor fix or 2. Budget shortfall is almost entirely explained by lack of tax revenues thanks to the trickle down drivel and the deregulation driven recession that YOU pushed for all these years. repeating your lame arguments isn't going to do you any good.

As expected regressive nincompoops aren't happy with Obama reducing the deficit. First, they couldn't care less about deficits when they cheered on Bush digging us into a budgetary hole, then they claimed to care about the deficit when Obama became president (surprise) and now they aren't happy when Obama wants to increase revenue to decrease the budget deficit. Why don't you guys make up your mind? or is it that you will never be happy until you put another looter in the White House?

A novel concept for regressives: budgets depend on revenue AND expense. Upper-income people would lose tax cuts in Obama plan WASHINGTON — Fresh from raising taxes on upper-income Americans to help expand health insurance coverage, President Obama and Democratic lawmakers are targeting them again. When Congress takes up Obama's proposed $3.8 trillion budget this year, it will include extending President George W. Bush's tax cuts for middle-income families enacted in 2001 and 2003. Tax cuts for individuals with income above $200,000 and couples above $250,000 would be eliminated. The effective tax increase on the upper income would yield about $41 billion next year and $969 billion over the next decade, according to the Treasury Department. The White House says that would help reduce the $1.5 trillion budget deficit. http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2010-04-06-Obama-tax_N.htm?obref=obinsite

what else have you got beside lying, constant rhetorical hair splitting and insults?

why do you think the government put the taxpayer on the hook for $15 trillion in loans, insurance for deposit and investment, etc ... since February 2008? do you think they did it just so the looters could turn around and lend us back our money with interest?

I am sure Bob will like this story too: How Wall Street Made a Fortune off Alabama Sewers Matt Taibbi writes, quote, “On a sewer project that was originally supposed to cost $250 million, the county now owed a total of $1.28 billion just in interest and fees on the debt. The destruction of Jefferson County reveals the basic battle plan of these modern barbarians, the way that banks like JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs have systematically set out to pillage towns and cities from Pittsburgh to Athens.” What did the banks do? MATT TAIBBI: Well, basically, it’s a very long story, but what happened was the—Birmingham, the city of Birmingham in Jefferson County, they were sued by the EPA back in the early ’90s. They had a faulty sewer system. They were forced to build a new sewer system, and so they borrowed a ton of money to build this new sewer system. All the local politicians used about $3 billion of this money. They funneled it to all their buddies who were contractors. And then, when the rent came due on all of this, when they had to start paying for this, they didn’t want to do it, because raising rates would have been politically unpopular. So they went to Wall Street, and they basically refinanced their debt. And that’s what this is all about. And these deals for refinancing the debt were so lucrative that the banks basically fought over who would get these contracts. And the method for getting the contracts was to funnel millions of dollars to buddies of the county commissioners, who would then, in turn, follow the county commissioner around with charge cards and paid for their Ferragamo suits and Rolex watches. And that’s how Jefferson County ended up getting into a situation where they had $5 billion in debt on a $250 million sewer project. JUAN GONZALEZ: And the actual project was about $3 billion to build, or was it— MATT TAIBBI: Yeah, the initial estimate for this project was $250 million. They ended up spending about $3 billion on this. And they ended up owing about $5 billion in the end, after you look at all the refinancing and the interest rate swaps and everything. JUAN GONZALEZ: And you go through the various schemes that the banks came up with. Credit default swaps, was it? Or— MATT TAIBBI: Yeah, interest rate swaps. JUAN GONZALEZ: Interest rate swaps. MATT TAIBBI: Right. These are also derivatives. Again, there’s this whole galaxy of financial instruments that are basically unregulated, thanks to a law that was passed in 2000 called the Commodity Futures Modernization Act—credit default swaps, collateralized debt obligations, interest rate swaps. These are all derivatives. They’re all totally unregulated. So there’s no SEC or CFTC that’s really looking at these things. And so, as a result of this, a lot of these deals fly under the radar completely, and there’s no way to really enforce or prevent fraud in any of this stuff. JUAN GONZALEZ: And then the people who live in the county ended up paying sewer bills that, what, quadrupled in price? MATT TAIBBI: Right, and that was only one part of the cost. You know, the average sewer bill in the mid-’90s for a Jefferson County resident was between ten and fourteen dollars. The bill, by the time I got there a couple of months ago, was at least 400 percent of that. But I met people who had sewer bills that were as high as $200 when I went down to Jefferson County. And that’s—again, that’s one small part of the cost, because what happened was when Jefferson County failed to pay off some of this debt, their credit rating was downgraded, and their cost of borrowing across the board skyrocketed. So, as a result, their taxes went up, and they had to lay off lots of county employees. And so, it’s a—even beyond the sewer bill, it was a major catastrophe. AMY GOODMAN: Tell us the story of Lisa Pack, Matt. MATT TAIBBI: Well, she was a county employee. Again, she was a person who had a small, you know, sewer bill. But she was laid off. She was put on forced leave last summer, along with thousands of other county employees, and ended up basically living on, you know, $250 a week, along with thousands of other people. They canceled her, you know, health insurance. She had to pay for that now. And she is now so disgusted by the fact that there were so many people indicted in this scheme that she’s now running for county commissioner herself. And that’s something that’s a consistent theme of the financial crisis. People are so fed up that they have to run for public office themselves just to get the government that they want. AMY GOODMAN: And as many as twenty people have been convicted, public officials, involved in taking bribes in one form or another? MATT TAIBBI: Public officials and contractors. There’s a whole list of county commissioners. Almost everybody who has served in county government in the last decade got indicted or investigated in one way or another. But nobody—here’s the key part—nobody from any of the banks has been criminally prosecuted [inaudible]. AMY GOODMAN: Name the banks. MATT TAIBBI: Well, JPMorgan was the big one. The big player in this was a JPMorgan banker named Charles LeCroy. And there’s a hilarious record of—JPMorgan was taping their own phone conversations, and we actually hear this guy LeCroy talking about how he went to the county commissioner and said, “Just tell us how much you want, you know, for us to get this deal.” But he hasn’t been prosecuted for this. Nobody at JPMorgan has. They had to pay a fine, and they had to forgo a $647 million bill that they presented to the county, but nobody’s going to jail. And that’s—again, that’s another consistent theme of the financial crisis. AMY GOODMAN: They paid off Goldman Sachs to stay away? MATT TAIBBI: This is one of the—this is my favorite detail of this whole thing. When the county commissioner, Larry Langford, was first elected, he kind of put the word out that anybody who wanted to do business with the county had to go, quote-unquote, “see” his buddy Bill Blount, who was a local investment banker. Well, Goldman Sachs already had a relationship with this Blount. And JPMorgan wanted this deal so badly that they paid Goldman Sachs $3 million to disassociate itself from Bill Blount and leave the deal. And so, that was—you know, it’s obvious open-and-shut, anti-competitive behavior, but again, that hasn’t been prosecuted either. more: Wall Street Made a Fortune off Alabama Sewers

More Than 53% of Your Tax Payment Goes to the Military by Dave Lindorff he budget for the 2011 fiscal year, which has to be voted by Congress by this Oct. 1, looks to be about $3 trillion, not counting the funds collected for Social Security (since the Vietnam War, the government has included the Social Security Trust Fund in the budget as a way to make the cost of America's imperial military adventures seem smaller in comparison to the total cost of government). Meanwhile, the military share of the budget works out to about $1.6 trillion. That figure includes the Pentagon budget request of $708 billion, plus an estimated $200 billion in supplemental funding, called "overseas contingency funding" in euphemistic White House-speak), to fund the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, some $40 billion or more in "black box" intelligence agency funding, $94 billion in non-DOD military spending, $100 billion in veterans benefits and health care spending, and $400 billion in interest on debt raised to pay for prior wars and the standing military. The 2011 military budget, by the way, is the largest in history, not just in actual dollars, but in inflation adjusted dollars, exceeding even the spending in World War II, when the nation was on an all-out military footing. Military spending in all its myriad forms works out to represent 53.3% of total US federal spending. It's also a budget that is rising at a faster pace than any other part of the budget (with the possible exception of bailing out crooked Wall Street financial firms and their managers). For the past decade, and continuing under the present administration, military budgets have been rising at a 9% annual clip, making health care inflation look tiny by comparison. [..] http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/04/13-4

That is what happened under Bush, the guy YOU voted for twice so that he could start 2 unnecessary wars, cut taxes that we couldn't afford to do without, and bring the world economy into a depression. Good job, delusional jackass.

If you're not ready to admit you have a problem, you're not ready to get well. What does rock-bottom look like for the neoliberal fundamentalist, I wonder? Somalia is a deregulated/small government paradise to market fundamentalists like JayB so there is likely a way to go before reaching rock-bottom as far as he is concerned