Oh What A Reversal of Fortune: We’ve Met The Enemy & It’s Our Very Own Leaders

Once again, it appears that Shaun forgot to take his lithium and had gone on another anti-Bush rant based upon Media Matters talking points and postings at moveon.org.

Note to Shaun, in a few months President Bush will be gone and the Democrats will have full control of the government. President Bush has been unable to affect policy for the last two years. Trying writing at least one column where you discuss the problems with the policy proposals of the Obama Administration and the Democrats in Congress instead of just making escuses for them.

Does anyone really believe that Democratic politicians who give trial lawyers, the teachers unions, and environmentalist whatever they want can really fix healthcare, education, or energy?

If nothing else, Shaun should list the industries and career fields in the private sector that someone who be eager to go into because of the coming Obama Adminstration. The only one I can think of as trial lawyer but that field is massively overfilled.

Tax cuts have actually increased the revenue to the treasury, so there is more money to work with.

George Bush has doubled the amount of money spent for educations since Clinton left office. How that money is spent is the function of the Democrat lead congress.

Government spending is out of control, however, congress spends the money – not the president (although he should have vetoed a number of bills).

We could go through point by point, but why bother?

Jwest,

The Democrats in congress have had two years in which to defund the Iraq War. They took a pass both times when they had the chance. If ending the Iraq War today has very important, they could have cancelled the funding.

The Democrats have worked very hard to cloud the issue about constitutionality. Congress can zero the budget anytime it wants and there is nothing the White House can do about it. Yet, the Democrats in Congress seem more interested in pork filled farm bills and actually managing the budget process.

The message from the comments so far seems to be that accountability is dispensable if it's to the detriment of those you perceive as being from your "side". Not a very genuine response to inconvenient facts - but not unpredictible either.

Tax cuts, of course, do not increase revenue, and those with such a fundamental ignorance of simple math probably buy a lot of lottery tickets. Not a single supposed benefit of tax cuts for the investor class has panned out (except for the very rich of course). Debt skyrocketed because we borrow $1 billion a day to spend on tax cuts and war (but mostly on interest on the debt this very policy creates). The stock market has now sustained the longest period of no growth since the Depression, 8 years. The dollar has tanked, but the trade deficit has increased (guess they don't want Fords even when they're cheaper). Our manufacturing sector is mostly gone and with it the high paying jobs. The neocon cheerleaders are IMO, either complicit in wanting to raid the treasury for the benefit of the rich, or ignorant of the obvious.

Shaun's list is correct, but perhaps a simplification will tie it together. The "neoconservative" agenda is quite simple. As elucidated by Milton Friedman, it rests on three principles: "privatization," government deregulation and deep cuts in social spending. The Bush administration has been phenomenally successful in achieving this, by privatizing some of the last functions of government -security, defense and disaster relief- as a way of channeling public funds into private hands; turning regulation of industry over to industries themselves in order to "liberate" corporations from onerous regulations, but actually just allowing them to maximize their wealth at the expense of everyone's health and well-being. Corporate control of the media allows the neoconservative alliance of big government and big business to fleece us all in the dark. The Republicans, while claiming to be tax cutters, have handed us the biggest tax increase in history. It's the debt and the interest on the debt, because of which we now owe $31,000 each and a staggering $275 a month in interest on the debt for every taxpayer. ($429 billion interest in 2007 / 130 million taxpayers). That's without paying down a dime of the debt.

That's the neocon idea of a "tax cut". Cut the rate, borrow to pay for it, add the interest to our tab.

Shaun, this time you stumbled. Had Dubya been pictured with, say, Gerald Ford, it would work, but Cheney is not funny in any way imagineable. "Consider Cheney": Are you even able to smile, much less laugh?

* * *

"Tax cuts have actually increased the revenue to the treasury, so there is more money to work with."

They have worked in the past and could work again if permitted to. However, while the revenues increase, what happens when for every $1.00 in tax revenue Congress (in recent years, with tacit approval of the Bush administration) has spent more than $1.00?

* * *

"a way of channeling public funds into private hands"

That's where our Bush administration friends have not only imitated, but outdone the Dems, traditional for such goings-on: Not just _any_ private hands, enjoyed this channeling, don't forget, but certain _favored_ private hands. (Kind of like those who are favored for, say, prized Detroit city contract work.) And now it's on everyone's mind whenever privatization or contracting-out is considered in our future.

"Tax cuts have actually increased the revenue to the treasury, so there is more money to work with."

No one who believes this one is credible on any subject so far as I can tell.

People who deny credibility on all subjects based on one narrative on one complex issue, have no credibility on any subject so far as I can tell.

The problem with Bush tax cuts is that it concnetrates wealth at the top , in creasing income disparity and undermining the middle class.
This goes way beyond what's fair. It destabilizes societies and undermines the sutainability of a democracy.

Never underestimate feelings of resentment and disenfranchizement among the populace. The upheavals that causes can get ugly.

GIBSON: All right. You have, however, said you would favor an increase in the capital gains tax. As a matter of fact, you said on CNBC, and I quote, "I certainly would not go above what existed under Bill Clinton," which was 28 percent. It's now 15 percent. That's almost a doubling, if you went to 28 percent.

But actually, Bill Clinton, in 1997, signed legislation that dropped the capital gains tax to 20 percent.

OBAMA: Right.

GIBSON: And George Bush has taken it down to 15 percent.

OBAMA: Right.

GIBSON: And in each instance, when the rate dropped, revenues from the tax increased; the government took in more money. And in the 1980s, when the tax was increased to 28 percent, the revenues went down.

So why raise it at all, especially given the fact that 100 million people in this country own stock and would be affected?

OBAMA: Well, Charlie, what I've said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness.

What baloney. Following that logic, if we eliminate taxes entirely, tax revenue will swell to infinity. All problems will be solved.

In fact, what we've done is given ANOTHER $4.5 trillion of our kids' money to rich people, who paid a little of their gains to the government, allowing the crook in chief to claim that the rate cut increased tax revenue. This ignores the source of the funding (huge debt), which not only compromises the future, it compromises the present. Under this fabulous policy of valuing wealth over work, the stock market has been stagnant under GWB for the longest stretch since the Depression. Middle class income, in real dollars, has declined while prices of virtually everything is skyrocketing.

I have to assume those who buy this cut taxes/increase revenue fable are the very ones who are lining their pockets with our children's money.