I'll leave this as an open thread.
I think its clear what the comment should be about this story, and I'm sure some of you will come up with some award winning craziness
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
House Democrats propose $410B spending bill
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22 comments:
Contrary to realism's claim that socialism is not the left's philosophy, it looks like the Obammunist wants a state seizure of banks after all. Comrade Krugman is certainly clamoring for it.
The government is spreading its tentacles by bailing everyone out, whether they want the help or not. I wish I could bail out on the government and opt out of crappy programs like socialist security, medicare, and other ***regressive*** taxes toiling socialist worker bees have to pay. In the age of progressivism, all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
In other news, I can't believe Barack Hussein Obama is financing Hamas terrorists to the tune of almost 1 billion dollars. Wait a minute -- I can.
Now the Hamas government can spend all of their money to build Holy missiles. Good job, Democrats.
I'm not a Buchananite isolationist-- aiding allies can make sense when strategic considerations are involved. Aiding open enemies, enemies at war with our friends, especially when Americans are hurting, is INSANE. It is just another sacrifice for the common good. Why can we pursue our own good instead?
This insanity will continue until people drop the idea that morality means self-sacrifice.
Which do you think should be a higher priority right now for Barack Obama -- working in a bipartisan way with the Republicans in Congress or sticking to the policies he promised he would during the campaign?
Working bipartisan way -- 39%; Sticking to policies - 56%
Which do you think should be a higher priority for Republicans in Congress right now -- working in a bipartisan way with Barack Obama or sticking to Republican policies?
Working bipartisan way - 79%;
Sticking to policies: 17%
"That's actually an amusing result: a huge majority of Americans want Congressional Republicans to be "bipartisan," but don't want Obama to be. Overwhelmingly, then, Americans favor "bipartisanship" only to the extent that it means that Republicans support Democratic policies and abandon their own. "
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/02/24/bipartisanship/index.html
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/politics/20090224poll-results.pdf
Also:
On Health Care:
– CNN/Opinion Research Corp. found that 7 in 10 Americans “would favor a proposal that would increase the government’s influence over the health-care system in an attempt to reduce costs and expand coverage.”
– NYT/CBS News found that after the economy, health care is the domestic policy area that Americans “want the President and Congress to concentrate on MOST right now.”
– Fox News/Opinion Dynamics found that 66 percent of Americans that it is “the responsibility of the federal government” to “make sure all Americans have health care.”
On The Size Of The Recovery Package:
– WaPo/ABC News found that 63 percent believe that “more economic stimulus by the government will be needed” to improve the economy.
– NYT/CBS News found that 69 percent believe that the stimulus package wasn’t big enough and more money will be needed in the months ahead to stimulate the economy.
Ok, one more:
"61 percent said they trust Obama more than the GOP when it comes to economic matters, just 26 percent side with the Republicans in Congress. Obama's advantage on that question is bigger than George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, or George H.W. Bush ever had over the opposition party in the legislature on dealing with the economy."
You know what...it would be nice if you were right realism...infact, the country needs these people to be right..
problem is I'm quite sure they are not..
And the other problem is that liberal program failures take so many years to play out as failures most people don't have the attention span to put all the pieces together...so when the media spins the failures as something else enough people believe it.
Whereas conservative failures are evident within 6-8 years, apparently.
What we are seeing right now is not socialism.
Giving taxpayer money to private companies is not socialism
When the government purchases goods and services from private companies, it is not socialism.
Right, the economy is so depressed from the republican policies of the past 8 years that consumers and businesses are (finally) begining to act logically and starting to pay down debt and save money.
This creates a vicious cycle where the worse the economy gets, the less consumers and businesses want to spend or invest, which makes the economy worse, etc.
The government can act counter to this trend and spend money to stimulate the economy when nobody else wants to.
Conservatives deride the targets of the stimulus spending as "Pork" or "busy work", and they say that if this spending was really worthwhile and necessary that the free market would provide for it, but evey construction worker that is employed doing "busy work" is spending his paycheck on goods and services that aren't "pork" or "busy work", which stimulates the economy in a very real way.
The discredited economic ideology that you cling to has several flaws.
For example, you belive that taxing the wealthy at higher rates is counterproductive because you are penalizing and discouraging the hard work and ingenuity that lead to their material success.
The reality is, however, that the ability to game the system plays a much bigger role in obtaining wealth than either hard work or ingenuity. That is why we continually have situations where corporate executives get multimillion dollar bonuses after running their companies into the ground, while blue collar employees have their pensions taken away after 40 years of hard work.
I couldn't get past your stupid comment that Republican policies causing our economic problems...
I didn't know ACORN was a conservative group...
I didn't know Barny Frank was a Republican.
I didn't know it was Republicans who pressured mortgage companies to give people loans who couldn't pay for them...
Which republicans opened up fannie and freddie as a safety net for all these bad loans..
Which republicans told the other republicans who were yelling at the Republican Frank that fannie and freddie were about to go down for the count.
This isn't hard to figure out.
I know, it doesn't fit your template created on DailyKos or whatever lame ass site spews this crap.
the sub-prime mortgage industry started all this, period.
It's also clear which side pushed for all this.
"The reality is, however, that the ability to game the system plays a much bigger role in obtaining wealth than either hard work or ingenuity."
Wealth is created, not obtained. Progressive taxes hurt wealth creation by discouraging risk taking behavior. For example, suppose someone who has been making over 100K a year writing software wants to create their own software company. Why take the risky behavior when you already have the cushy job? You might lose everything. But if there is a big pot of gold at the end of the tunnel, some people will take those risks, and people will get hired as a consequence. This is why Eastern Europe achieved such stellar growth since de-Sovietization with flat taxes. If the progressive theory was true, the growth should have been concentrated in Western Europe, where the taxes are steeply graduated.
Instead of government controls, why not just print money and give each citizen, adult and child (and don't forget the undocumented workers, of course) $3000? There's your 1 trillion dollar stimulus right there. We'll all be rich! /sarc
I completely debunked your Fannie Mae/Community Reinvestment Act propaganda just a couple of days ago, and here you are repeating the same talking points again. Fannie Mae did not cause the subprime mess. THey did not get into subprime loans until much later. The name "Subprime" differentiates from "Prime" loans. "Prime" loans were defined as loans that met Fannie Mae's lending guidelines. "Subprime" loans, by definition, were loans that were ineligible for sale to Fannie Mae.
The Community Reinvestment Act was not the cause of the subprime mess either, for the following reasons:
1. The subprime problem did not become significant until Bush amended the CRA in 2005.
2. The VAST MAJORITY (approx 75%) of subprime loan were made by lenders that were not subject to CRA regulations. The CRA applies only to banks and thrifts that are federally insured. It does not apply to mortgage companies.
The question to ask is this: Did banks make risky subprime loans to make extra money or to comply with the CRA?
The CRA has been around for over 30 years, and yet there was no subprime crisis until now.
The CRA was strengthened in 1995, but there still was no subprime crisis.
In 2005, Bush weakened the law by making smaller banks exempt from following the CRA regulations. So, it wasn't until AFTER fewer banks had to comply with the CRA that the subprime crisis exploded.
As is noted here, only about one in four sub-prime loans were made by the institutions fully governed by CRA.
Also, as is pointed out here, independent mortgage companies, which are not covered by CRA, made high-priced loans at more than twice the rate of the banks and thrifts.
The fact is, anyone that is not an uninformed, brainwashed, propaganda-spewing wingnut realizes that the subprime crisis was caused by:
1. The absurdly low Fed Funds rate, which was set to disguise the utter failure of tax cuts to provide a real stimulus to the economy.
2. The ability of lenders to obtain massive profits from selling these risky loans to investors by repackaging them into unregulated instruments, thus insulating the actual loan originators from the risks inherent in these loans.
Being that you are just a propaganda-spewing dittohead, I doubt very highly that you will be able to address any of these facts in a rational manner. I've noticed that the typical wingnut response on this blog to any well-reasoned, factual argument is to most likely ignore it, or to call the liberal a "socialist", claim they hate America and then change the subject.
Why don't you prove me wrong for once?
Oh, that's right, today's Republican party is bereft of ideas or leaders. All you have left is talking points and talking heads.
Normally, in a well functioning free market, a lender will not lend money to a person that does not have the means to pay it back. But in the market that we had, thanks to people with an ideology like Jason's, a market which was warped and distorted by a lack of regulation, this was not the case. Please follow along carefully:
Lenders made insanely risky loans NOT because they were forced to by a meddlesome federal government, but because the company that made the loan could then package that loan together with similar loans and SELL IT for a nice profit to an investor.
Lenders weren't being forced to make subprime loans by some government regulation, they made them because they knew they could make a quick buck selling them, and if the borrowers defaulted, the original lender was not exposed to any potential downside.
The fact that republicans are still arguing these very basic points illustrates very clearly that they are not concerned with helping the country resolve the financial crisis they caused. They are only concerned with avoiding blame for a situation that clearly occurred because of their actions or lack thereof.
Wealth is created, not obtained.
That is naive, even for you.
For example, suppose someone who has been making over 100K a year writing software wants to create their own software company. Why take the risky behavior when you already have the cushy job?
You obviously are not an entrepreneur. Nobody starts their own business because they want to get rich. They do it because they have a passion for what they do, because they think they have a great idea, because they want to be their own boss. If somebody wants to merely "get rich", they become derivatives traders.
I wonder if you are really stupid enough to believe that there are really people who WOULD start their own businesses, if only the top tax rate was 3% less.
Under Bill Clinton's higher tax rates, more wealth and jobs were created, and it was spread more equitably across society. A fair distribution of wealth is important because it promotes social and economic stability and it leads to a more egalitarian, merit based society, rather than a moneyed aristocracy.
And regarding the Eastern European growth rates, if you love your "Freidman's Paradise" so much, you should move there?
Azerbaijan had the highest GDP growth in the world last year, IIRC. Why don't you want to live there? Maybe it has something to do with that whole "hub of trafficking in sex slavery for Asia and the Middle East" thing. Don't hold that against them, though - it's just capitalism in action, right? All government interference in the free market is wrong, according to J. Bowden, right?
China has a great economy too, I hope that is enough to compensate for the pollution, melamine laced baby formula and collapsing school buildings.
"I know, it doesn't fit your template created on DailyKos or whatever lame ass site spews this crap..."
game, stop babbling useless talking points
"the sub-prime mortgage industry started all this, period..."
you simple-minded sheep, that is only the ostensible reason, the final straw, that broke the camel's back
three decades of reckless deficit spending, started under reagan, did america in, along with globalist neocon "off-shoring" of our vital industries...clinton left you with a surplus and you STILL couldn't wait to squander it on foolishness, vice, and corruption, just like shawanda on welfare check day
"China has a great economy too, I hope that is enough to compensate for the pollution, melamine laced baby formula and collapsing school buildings..."
realism, don't get too far ahead of yourself, you know perfectly will clinton himself handed china most favored nation status on trade, setting into place many of the same ills you now decry
which site did you copy and paste that crap from, not worth responding to
I didn't know ACORN was a conservative group...
It isn't and ACORN had absolutely NOTHING to do with the current or any other economic crisis. And everybody knows that.
I didn't know it was Republicans who pressured mortgage companies to give people loans who couldn't pay for them
It wasn't, and it wasn't anybody else, either. Nobody pressured mortgage companies to make bad loans except their own company policy and the fact that they could lay off all risk on the market so that there was no downside to the loan makers to make those loans.
So you are offering yet another lie.
Progressive taxes hurt wealth creation by discouraging risk taking behavior.
That's odd. Our income tax system has been "progressive" since its inception and yet our country and its richest have become EXTREMELY wealthy in spite of that.
"which site did you copy and paste that crap from, not worth responding to..."
it would help, if you could use your stellar english skills, to specify who and what you're wasting time denying, having no grasp of the facts, as per usual
"It isn't and ACORN had absolutely NOTHING to do with the current or any other economic crisis. And everybody knows that..."
i don't know that, jim
"Nobody pressured mortgage companies to make bad loans except their own company policy and the fact that they could lay off all risk on the market..."
bullshit, it was MANDATED for banks to lend to unqualified lenders, based on their status as single mothers, "protected classes", etc., and, coincidentally, ACORN happens to have been intensely involved in promoting (read: forcing) "minority lending"...
how do we know this? because these pimps put ADVERTISING all over central brooklyn, proud of the fact!
and an entire, sleazy, woefully under-regulated parallel sub-prime network was spawned, and proliferated as a result...
and how do we know THIS?
well, look at any caribbean-american news publication of the time....even NOW, lol....or switch on the reggae, merengue/reggaeton, or r & b radio station in our area, and HEAR the endless "no money down" ads, from both above mentioned sleazy operators AND banks, not to mention spots from the race-based "community organizers" who ALWAYS, magically, escape your ire
the banks HAD to lend, or risked having their branches shut down, by said "community organizers"...
jim, if you're going to try to pull the wool over our eyes, at least be dignified enough to get your story straight
just ONCE....
"That's odd. Our income tax system has been "progressive" since its inception and yet our country and its richest have become EXTREMELY wealthy in spite of that..."
oh? really?
might i take that to mean, then, that you would be willing, as i am, to abolish federal income taxes entirely, and consider being taxed only on what we consume?
*counting the minutes, until you find a way to completely politicize the proposal, and bark "NO", so you can hide beneath your partisan little blanket...*
Realism,
That was pretty good.
it was MANDATED for banks to lend to unqualified lenders [sic]
This is untrue. CRA required lenders to give certain classes in certain areas an equal opportunity to borrow. There was no requirement that credit standards be lowered. That's why conservative lenders met CRA guidelines and yet maintained quality loan portfolios.
might i take that to mean, then, that you would be willing, as i am, to abolish federal income taxes entirely, and consider being taxed only on what we consume?
While I don't see how my comment relates in any way to a consumption-based tax model, in fact, yes, I have long been an advocate of that.
Hash--
If we give a coke addict money for rent, does he have more or less money to spend on coke?
The same analogy applies to funding Hamas. They will be spending a lot more on holy missiles, thanks to Barack Hussein Obama and the U.S. of f'ing A.
i think the truth is somewhere in the middle, hamas holds the cards, at this point, and i do worry about corruption at the pa
i don't have a problem with direct payments to hamas, at any rate, they filled a void the pa and fatah seemed unwilling to hold
besides, we've supported the biggest threat to world security for the better part of six decades, and are now financing, to the tune of several billions, netanyahu, the world's most murderous terrorist
when you look at it with an unbiased eye, a lousy 900 mil seems like fair turnabout...
i advocate the cessation of ALL foreign aid, anyway
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