Obama Plugs Economic Growth

I think things are ok. What would one expect from the most severe recession this side of the Great Depression?
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Consumer spending is rising, which is a very good sign, as it means that at least some people have more money to spend than they did before.
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And, for all those out there who are going to complain, remember that unemployment is a trailing indicator. There are no magic wands.
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I know. I know. Even though there are no magic wants, and it has never been accomplished before, Obama is expected to wave one and just magically make everything bad go away.
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Trouble is, GWB and the GOP left a very deep hole…

3.2% growth is very feeble for the first year of a recovery. Typically the first year sees 6-7% growth. But there is nothing in the Obama plan that might generate robust growth, this year or next. In 2011 it will be tough to avoid a return to negative growth, as interest rates climb and fiscal stimulus loses its effectiveness.

Yes, Obama hit it right on the head. Higher GDP is great news but to main street the better news would be more jobs and less unemployment.

Also, the best news of all would be that Arizona which is making its own laws like a country be allowed to secede already. That way no one has to deal with McCain, Brewer or Kyl any longer– lol . J/k

On a serious note though, and on the economy, things are getting better. Let us hope things get better, faster!

LM
http://theblindspotsofgod.wordpress.com/2010/04/29/criminals-use-technology-to-trackrape-and-kill-innocent-people/

I think it is a measure of the severity of the recession, and not supportive of any viable argument for mismanagement on Obama’s part. All supposed arguments in that respect hinge on conditions that have never been put in action, so are hypothetical at best. No one in US history has ever been entirely successful at engineering recoveries.
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It should be noted that other than the Great Depression, the only comparable instance, which showed intermittent and often elusive recovery, no one has successfully done it. To expect Obama to have done it, and done it well, might be more in the realm of political posturing than any basis in reality.
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None of the other recessions since the Great Depression even come close to this one, so they cannot really serve as examples of success in recovery management. I remember back in the ’60s and early ’70s Fordist economic cycle, people just accepted the 2 to 4 year cyclicity.

‘Typically the first year sees 6-7% growth.’
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You need to remember that there was nothing ‘typical’ about this recession. The economy GWB left for Obama nearly became a depression.
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Whether Obama’s repair of the economy he inherited is fast enough is certainly open to debate. I tend to believe those who insist that the stimulus has been insufficient. However, I recognize the reality that the same party that continues to advocate the policies that got us into this economic mess (the GOP) is loudly and aggressively doing everything they can to prevent further stimulus from being used.

Typically the first year sees 6-7% growth.
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This isn’t typical, as others have noted. The closest analog to the giant ditch that the Republicans drove us into during the last decade was the Great Depression, and the first year of the New Deal saw minimal growth but by 1935 it was something like 14%.

“I think things are ok. What would one expect from the most severe recession this side of the Great Depression?”

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You “think”, therefore you are wrong. Recessions since 1900 have been much worse than this recession. The Recession of 1981 – 1982 had unemployment rates at 10.3% at its peak in 1981, but then you also had very high inflationary rates and as the recession grew worse, interest rates reached nearly 20%.
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You also had a “banking crisis” with the near collapse of the S&L Banks. But, the banks on average failed more than during the Great Depression.
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You could compare the 1920 Recession with today’s recession. Unemployment was estimated at 11.8%, but there was also a 36% deflation which occurred. Prices plumented and many businesses failed as a result. Automobile production fell by 60%, and overall industrial output fell by 30%. The stock market crashed by 47%. And, Real Estate was virtually worthless. Sound familiar? The difference again today is that unemployment is less now than then, and Businesses in 1920 saw a decline in profits of 73%. So you could compare today’s recession with that of 1920.
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What saved the people of 1920, and also spurred the fastest recovery? Government spending was slashed by nearly 50% across the board. Taxes were reduced to all time lows, and businesses began to reinvest. Labor costs were also reduced because 1920 was after the end of WWI. GI’s were returning in droves, and there was no longer a threat by Labor Unions to strike. Businesses relaxed and people went back to work.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depression_of_1920%E2%80%9321
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_1980s_recession
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This recession is significant, but is a far cry from being near what occurred during the Great Depression, nor does it over shadow the Recessions of 1980 and 1920.
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You can read and understand history, and perhaps learn how those historical lessons teach you what to do in the future. Unfortunately Obama and his Advisors do not seem to read anything let alone history.

Time to quit blaming Bush.. look at FANNIE AND FREDDIE I can not believe that you people are so narrow minded you can’t see the forest before the trees.. The economy hasn’t changed.. the ONLY thing is right now people are getting their tax returns and buying things they need replaced it happens EVERY YEAR.. good bad and in-between..only usually at a BIGGER rate.. you would buy ANYTHING.. BTW I couldn’t stand Bush and his policies but after Obama even 3 of his die hard followers have caught on.. although they all live on their own.. pay their own bills and taxes.. most likely the biggest wake me up there is from this I’ll follow Obama he’s a saint attitude that seems prevalent on the TIMES.. I don’t get it.. I was a democrat and even I can see the truth, I saw it back in 2006 when I left the party..

‘Time to quit blaming Bush..’
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The economy was in the toilet at the end of the Bush administration. That’s history. Bush will always bear the responsibility for the results of his administration. There’s no statute of limitations on history.
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‘look at FANNIE AND FREDDIE…’
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Although I find the scapegoating of Fannie and Freddie unconvincing, I seem to remember that Fannie and Freddie existed during the Bush administration too. Are you saying that Bush couldn’t do anything about Fannie and Freddie if he had wanted to? Did he ever try?

Yep, 3.2% is slow growth for coming out of a recession. And the 3.2% number was below estimates. And the 5.6% number we ultimately had for GDP growth in the last quarter is a number that was repeatedly revised downward.

‘Course, ya wouldn’t know that from reading Altman’s post. All the news that fits our views . . .

So, the Democratic strategy now is to create bread and circuses by blowing up Goldman Sachs. And thanks to such machinations, the company has lost substantial market cap in recent days, and the market just had its first down week in quite a while. Hmmm . . . beating the daylights out of a pillar of the financial sector that’s leveraged more than 8 to 1 already, at the same time as Europe teeters? I can remember Jay Newton Small foaming at the mouth in late ’08 that TARP needed to pass before her 401k took to much of a hit. She doesn’t seem too upset right, of course, given that her party controls the White House. But wouldn’t it be “funny” if the Democrats blew up GS, just as Europe got crushed, and contributed to a double-dip just in time for November?

“Obama said 300 response vessels and aircraft were on site to curb the spread of the spill.”

If we have to keep supporting the military-industrial complex, can’t we make them, like, do constructive stuff like this as their main mission, instead of occupying countries?

The Recession of 1981 – 1982 had unemployment rates at 10.3% at its peak in 1981
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Actually, no. Unemployment stayed at 7-8% until the fall of 1981, when the Economic Recovery Tax Act was passed, with what was at the time the largest tax cut in American history.
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That kicked unemployment up to 10.8% in December 1982, falling only once Dole and the other fiscal hawks in the party got Reagan to repeal most of the ERTA cuts and raise taxes by what was at the time the largest tax increase in American history.
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You can see the official unemployment statistics here, just plug in the dates:
http://data.bls.gov/PDQ/servlet/SurveyOutputServlet

Typically the first year sees 6-7% growth.
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For more recent data, over the course of the last fifty years, we have only had one year in which the GDP growth rate was over 6%. It did come in the first real year of a recovery, in 1984, after we pulled out of the Reagan Recession.
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Here’s the data, see for yourself:
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http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=ny_gdp_mktp_kd_zg&idim=country:USA&dl=en&hl=en&q=gdp+growth

I’ll address things here, instead of making two separate arguments to different posters.
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One is that there is a bit of a game here in that the strategy is to attempt to minimize the current recession and maximize other recessions.
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The current recession is fresh enough to remind those who would minimize this one that of all of them, including the 1981-2 recession never had a component of widespread fear of slipping into a recession with much higher numbers for unemployment.
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Couple this with the claim that recessions long ago were solved by strategies that are championed by conservatives. This can be rejected out of hand as conditions (such as the 1920 recession) were so markedly different than today.
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Another is that while 9.7 percent unemployment is high, and the fact that the 1981-2 level was higher, it cannot really be used as an argument against the severity of the current recession. What is left out is the fact that the fear widespread throughout the financial world was that we were days from collapse and that it was so intense that GWB and Republican lawmakers as well were literally forced to abandon their “hands off” policy.
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In addition, the attempt to ignore what would have happened had Obama not done anything is as disingenuous as anything in this debate, as this was clearly never an option.
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Further disingenuousity is generated by claiming that doing nothing would have been better.
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Both Rusty’s and Icky’s “magic wand” approach to this whole thing is disingenuous as well as being deceptive in that the current recession has no comparison with other recessions that occurred after WWII. Again, there are no examples to draw from, not even from the Great Depression, where any president has ever managed a recovery successfully. True, some of the smaller ones may have been resolved through some management, but it is easier to solve small problems than big ones.
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Also, as a final point, many have used the DOW as a barometer to evaluate Obama’s failure.
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I think it is worthwhile to point out that it is very clear that at the minimum, the DOW has demonstrated more than ably that Obama’s measures are acceptable in the largest part

Oh sorry kevin, 10.8% versus 10.3%. Excuse me for my 0.5% mistake. Now I can roll my eyes and move on.

Maybe the reason the economy is not growing like it should it that Obama’s view on making money is that “there is a point when you have made enough money”.
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Excuse me, along with “spreading the wealth”, now he will determine just how successful You or I can be in life. When do you people wake up and understand what the Obama agenda is? That he wants Socialism to rule our economy and our Government.

My point there wasn’t that you were off by 0.5%, but that you were off by more than a full calendar year as to when the early 1980s recession was “at its peak.” And yes, that’s important.
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The worst in the early 1980s came not with the stagflation that Reagan inherited — as you can see from those numbers, unemployment from Carter’s administration through all of Reagan’s first year hovered at 7% or so. But then Reagan passed his trickle-down tax cut, and over the next year, unemployment jumped up another four percentage points, peaking in December 1982. Only when the Reagan tax cuts were rolled back did unemployment come down under 10%.
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So, yes, roll your eyes all you want, but the correction matters. In your false story, Reagan came in, passed tax cuts for the rich, and unemployment melted away. That is not what happened. At all.
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For someone who lectures other people about their need to understand history, you don’t seem to know a d@mn thing yourself.

Your tinfoil hat is on too tight.

Maybe the reason the economy is not growing like it should
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Let’s unpack this. The Dow has nearly doubled in a year, we’ve had three straight quarters of impressive growth, consumer spending has picked up with great speed, and the rate of job loss/gain has been a 180-degree reversal from what we saw under Bush:
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http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/Unemployment%20Chart310.JPG
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That “like it should” has no grounding in reality. The economy is growing at a terrific rate.

(quote)Maybe the reason the economy is not growing like it should it that Obama’s view on making money is that “there is a point when you have made enough money”. (end of quote)
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I thought it was amusing that the very same day Obama made that statement about “enough money”, Oprah Winfrey announced a $100 million commitment from Proctor & Gamble to support her new network. That is just seed money — as her network ramps up next year, there will be a lot more advertisers and a lot more money for Oprah.
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Since she is already a billionaire, perhaps Obama can lecture her on how much money is enough. Since she has enough, maybe she should just shut down all her TV and magazine and real estate activities and fire all her hundreds or thousands of employees. You know, give someone else a chance to make money too — because, as all Democrats know, capitalism is a zero-sum game and every penny she makes is making someone else poor. (sic)

Well, here’s a point that neither Rusty nor Jbaustian can refute:
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Wall street, and the marketplace, would have reacted negatively if Obamas decsions had been detrimental to either their ability to make a profit or to the economy in general
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Thanks, kevin, for posting the flaws in Rusty’s dialogue.
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As for jbaustian, I look at things like this:
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Even I can see that Obama hasn’t done everything right, but, I’m afraid you are using what I called the “Magic Wand Argument” in my post at 14.
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When I see these types of arguments, jbaustian, I can’t help but say that you’ve skated onto the ice of speculation, innuendo, and political talking points.
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Why do I say that?
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Because no president has ever successfully engineered a recovery, and particularly, no one has ever done so on a schedule.
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This is why I call it the Magic Wand Argument.

Also, your bs at 8.3 jbaustian, is just that.
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If what you said was true, the DOW, Nasdaq, and other markets would be crashing, or at zero already!
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Stick to facts…

As for spreading the wealth, and income redistribution in general, Rusty, I will take you to task again.
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Your tax base is far to small to pay for and maintain the infrastructure you use, be it health, transport, energey, or information technology!
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The people who subsidize your infrastructure are urban Americans, in other words, me!
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So you take my tax dollars, not the other way around Rusty.
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Go back to school…

kevin wrote: “Let’s unpack this. The Dow has nearly doubled in a year, we’ve had three straight quarters of impressive growth, consumer spending has picked up with great speed, and the rate of job loss/gain has been a 180-degree reversal from what we saw under Bush (end of quote)
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Okay, let’s unpack this. The Dow and other stock market indices are way up because they went on a huge cost-cuttiing rampage back in late 2008 and early 2009 — cutting workforces, cutting inventories, cutting workforces again, cutting borrowings, paying off short-term debt, and cutting the workforces again. They went through a couple quarters of liquidation, like giving away a free car when you paid full price for another one.
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So right now is a very profitable period for business, the ones that were not forced to close in 2008 and 2009.
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There have not been three quarters of “impressive” growth. Q1 of 2010 is the first quarter with GDP higher than the same quarter of the previous year — 2.5% higher than Q1 of 2009, and that was a horrible quarter. So there is no cause for celebration.
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Lastly, referring to job losses/gains, the worst period for layoffs occurred after Obama already had the election cinched. You will argue, But he wasn’t the president yet. Doesn’t matter — employers looked at the situation then, decided it was going to get worse with Obama as president, and just shut down factories and offices to get rid of everyone.
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Job losses were running about 25,000/month at the beginning of 2008; 150k-200k/month during the summer of 2008; then at these rates:
Sept -458,000
Oct -554,000
Nov -728,000
Dec -673,000
Jan 2009 -779,000
Feb -726,000
Mar -753,000
Apr -582,000
May -347,000
June -504,000
July -344,000
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Again, you might say that employers were just looking for an opportune time to shrink their payrolls. But that assumes that they expected business conditions to worsen and that there would be no recovery anytime soon. Had they thought the Obama policies would generate a quick bounce-back, they would have kept many of those workers on the payrolls.

“You will argue, But he wasn’t the president yet. Doesn’t matter — employers looked at the situation then, decided it was going to get worse with Obama as president, and just shut down factories and offices to get rid of everyone.”
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jbaustin, this is your opinion and has no basis in fact!
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Had this been true, since these policies would have affected those companies negatively, trading in those stocks would have reflected this! Instead, the DOW went UP.
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Anticipated adverse impactas are always reflected in a company’s stocks, just look at what’s happening to Goldman Sachs right now!
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And, lets get another thing off the ground here. Everyone knows that unemployment is a lagging indicator!

As another rebuke, jbaustian, the layoffs were triggered by a credit crunch which choked off the flow of capital in both the consumer and the business sectors!

Oh, the reason for the bold italics is simply this:
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Both of you are trying to mischaracterize events only a year ago, and you keep forgetting that all of us were there, too.
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Your disingenuous conduct deserves a very strong rebuke.

53 wrote: “When I see these types of arguments, jbaustian, I can’t help but say that you’ve skated onto the ice of speculation, innuendo, and political talking points. (end of quote)
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You’re partly right, I do speculate — but then, everyone does. No one has all the information on any subject, so we (humans, that is) do the best with what we have. The more we know, the better are the conclusions we arrive at. So, when I see that in the past, X led to Y about 90% of the time, I am pretty confident that X will lead to Y the next time too. If I’m wrong, then I incorporate _that_ info into my future decision-making.
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As for innuendo and talking points — that is 99% of what happens here in the Swampland, and I’m far from one of the worst perpetrators.
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In fact, I think I’m pretty straight-forward in what I say; I do not hide my true opinions. Thus, innuendo is nearly the exact opposite of what I do. I may not say ALL I know, but I do not hide the reasons why I do not say all.
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Lastly, talking points. What can I say, I pick ideas from many sources. I read a lot; when I find an idea I like, it gets incorporated into what I already know. Sometimes I might post something that I just heard 30 minutes ago, other times it could be something I’ve known or believed for 30+ years.
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But “talking points” suggests that I rely on someone else’s ideas for everything I do, and that’s just not true.
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I will admit to one thing — in the last 1-2 years I have learned a great deal more about fascism, socialism, and the progressive movement. So these are ideas new to me that now find a way into my writings. Not exactly “talking points”, though there are public figures currently discussing these topics.
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Well, jbaustian, at least you have admitted that they represent your opinions and not fact.
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The points I made are supported by not only the DJ, but are also supported by most economists.
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As for knowing socialism and fascism, I sincerely doubt it. I grew up at the start of the Cold War, and I know what is and is not propaganda. I also know what socialism is, as well as what communism is.
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We are not talking fascism here by any stretch of the imagination.
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Progressives are just that. Progressives.

I would like to make one comment about use of Wiki links as well:
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We all know that wiki links can be suspect, so I always recommend that readers of those articles also peruse the references at the end.
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If the references and the footnotes are consistent, one can accept the link as valid.

jbaustian:
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As far as what I do, my aim is to debunk those things that are clearly not in keeping with legitimate criticism of Obama’s policies.
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Let me give you an example:
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Rusty claims that Obama is out to do a Robin Hood on the rich to give to the poor with his railing against income redistribution. I place your claims of socialism in the same light. Why?
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Because we have been redistributing income since even before the Great Depression. Rural subsidies are fact and are no more socialist, nor any less socialist, than any other equity-based redistribution.
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The thing is, that this income redistribution I am referring to makes our country strong. The subsidy programs were invoked in order to give Americans in rural areas, particularly in the mid west and the great plains areas a chance to realize the prosperity that was enjoyed by the coastal regions prior to the Great Depression. The GD along with the Dust Bowl era was what triggered these concepts.
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They serve to keep America separate from other countries who have masses of rural poor, like China and India. To me, they are what makes, and made America great.
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The immediate above is my opinion, but I base it on facts.
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I point this out because Obama is no different and no worse than any other president. Hard times, such as this last recession, call for extreme measures, and sometimes that involves spending.
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However, what departs from fact here is that other presidents, mainly GOP ones, have run up record deficits (also a fact). It is very hard for anyone from the GOP to claim they own all the marbles of responsibility when they have contributed to the bulk of the national debt.
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We differ in our opinions, I give Obama the benefit of the doubt, you and Rusty don’t.
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But the difference is that sometimes, you and particularly Rusty try to pass rumor, speculation, and opinion as fact.
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I’m just point that out and explaining what my role, as I see it is.

jbaustian, I also saw in your comments a lot of honesty and that you probably sincerely believe some of these things.
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These are things to be respected. Thank you.

(quote)”You will argue, But he wasn’t the president yet. Doesn’t matter — employers looked at the situation then, decided it was going to get worse with Obama as president, and just shut down factories and offices to get rid of everyone.”
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jbaustin, this is your opinion and has no basis in fact!
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Had this been true, since these policies would have affected those companies negatively, trading in those stocks would have reflected this! Instead, the DOW went UP. (end of quote)
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The DJIA and other stock indices were declining gradually from October 2007 through the end of summer 2008, then they dropped off a cliff. It was only after a massive selloff that they started to rebound in March 2009, but only because the selling panic was exhausted. The DJIA now reflects earnings expectations for the next 6-9 months — about the same as current conditions, but further out there are storm clouds.

(quote) Well, jbaustian, at least you have admitted that they represent your opinions and not fact… (end of quote)
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No, what I’ve admitted is that facts influence my opinions.
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(quote) As for knowing socialism and fascism, I sincerely doubt it. I grew up at the start of the Cold War, and I know what is and is not propaganda. I also know what socialism is, as well as what communism is.
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We are not talking fascism here by any stretch of the imagination.
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Progressives are just that. Progressives. (end of quote)
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What I have learned is that socialism and fascism are closely connected — that fascism is an off-shoot of socialism, with nationalism mixed in. They are not opposites, they are similar in how they try to control economies and populations, with varying degrees of state ownership.
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Also, fascist parties have historically identified themselves as socialist, while socialist parties try to distance themselves from fascism, and try to make fascists out as mortal enemies. This is true insofar as there is only room for one party at the top, and even in democracies there is no room for two parties appealing to the same voter groups.
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“Fascism” has become the epithet of choice for the socialists — whatever and whoever they hate is fascist, I think this dates from the time of Lenin. Lenin wanted a socialist international, “workers of the world unite”, while Mussolini and other “national socialists” wanted to unite all classes within the nation, especially the workers and petit bourgeois. All of them attacked the bankers and industrialists, and they still do.
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As for the progressives, if you like I can post quotations by both Mussolini and Hitler praising the American progressive movement. And I can post quotes by American progressives praising Mussolini and Hitler.

You will argue, But he wasn’t the president yet. Doesn’t matter — employers looked at the situation then, decided it was going to get worse with Obama as president, and just shut down factories and offices to get rid of everyone.
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Are you f*cking kidding me? You seriously think that’s what happened?
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Do you have even the slightest shred of evidence of some dedicated capitalist out there who saw the impending socialistcommiefascist nightmare of the Obama administration coming and decided to give his private business a mercy killing to spare it the horrors that would come?
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And if businesses committed mass suicide because of what Obama was going to do once he got in office, then why have they been flourishing with Obama actually in office? The threat of his action was a doomsday, but the actual action he took has been better?
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Does all of your knowledge of capitalism come from the third-grade fantasy world of Ayn Rand?

As for the progressives, if you like I can post quotations by both Mussolini and Hitler praising the American progressive movement. And I can post quotes by American progressives praising Mussolini and Hitler.
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And all of those quotes will totally, completely, utterly refute the stubborn fact that the first set of people Hitler rounded up and sent to the concentration camps were communists and socialists.
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The Nazis aligned themselves with the German aristocracy, the major corporations, and the church and waged an aggressively militaristic campaign. If that sounds like “progressives” to you, you need to stop eating paint.
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You know less about history than you do about capitalism, and that’s saying a lot. Here’s what actual historians have to say about the idiotic Jonah Goldberg argument that fascism is an ideology of the left:
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http://hnn.us/articles/122231.html
http://www.hnn.us/articles/122473.html
http://www.hnn.us/articles/122247.html
http://www.hnn.us/articles/122592.html

I don’t see any facts supporting your opinions, jbaustian.
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For one, if what you say is true, (and that is a very big ‘if’), referring to the sentiments of Hitler in Mussolini 60 years ago, before the word “Liberal” was ever even used as an epithet is hardly appropriate.
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I could equally say that given the amount of racism I’ve seen in the GOP goes against everything that we fought for in WWII and be just as right.
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As for tossing Wright under the bus, maybe Obama deserves credit for something that conservatives refuse to do, and that is to toss the Glenn Becks and Rush Limbaughs under the bus for their nearly constant barrage of hate.
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One thing we don’t have to worry about is our image. On the other hand, until you and other conservative accept that for every right there is a responsibility, you will never be able to get away from the sticky generalizations that conservatives are hateful and intolerant.

Kevin:
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It seems to me that it is just not a good time to be a right wing crackpot right now…

Wow, where to begin:

1) Unemployment numbers were not kept until the Great Depression so recessions prior to the Great Depression is based upon speculation and hard to compare. Even today, you will see that employment statistics are about non-farm jobs only.

2) The recession of the 1920s began to improve by farmers moving to cities to take on factory jobs and letting big farms take over small farms and share croppers to become factory workers. It caused the destruction of many vibrant rural communities. The 1920s was when the first blues and country music were made as people mourned the loss of small towns. However, this over supply of labor sustained by an economic bubble as we now called it by buying securities on margin finally collapsed in 1929 as banks holding bad loans on farms, also, collapsed. All in all, the actual rote problems of the 1920s recession was not solved. It was postponed for about six years while domestic migration and a financial bubble coexisted.

3) The 1920s recession was all caused by overproduction in agriculture. It is a classic market failure since, when prices go down and farmers have a set cost, they plant more, not less for the next year.

a) Imagine you own a farm. You mortgage on your land and equipment is $25,000 per year. You plant on half of your fields and you bring in $50,000. So, in year number two, you double your output.

b) When you double your output as do all other farmers, the price plummets much further. So, you end up bringing in $20,000 and fall $5,000 short. Had you done less, you would have fallen further behind. The “free” market ends up solving this problem by evicting farmers and having banks own worthless farms (sound familiar – take away the corn and wheat in the back yard and it sounds like today).

4) You’ll all notice that consumer spending is regarded as a very good thing in modern economics. It is caused by things like the stimulus package. Ten people with $20,000 each to spend this week do not spend anywhere near as much of their money ten thousand people with an additional $20 to spend. Hence, putting money into the right hands creates spending and, hence, saves capitalism.

5) As for JBaustin, Hitler liked social Democrats and liberals for one thing: kindling for the ovens to prepare for Communists and “non-Aryans”.

Fascism isn’t about disliking how much you pay in taxes. European and Canadian democracy is about, for conservatives, paying more than you would like in taxes.

Fascism is about an obsession with war, “defending” your homeland against “impure” people, preemptive wars of “defense” (aka wars of aggression – just like how we invaded Iraq as J and others cheered) and being a “real” (German, Italian, Spaniard, Portuguese or, for that matter, American).

Hitler sent four out of five German soldiers to fight against the communists and only one in five to fight against democracy in the West. A “communist fascist” is like “Christian Satan worshiper”. It is a contradiction.

As far as comparing Fascists, to extreme fundamentalist religion to satan worship:

Communists and fascists both use secret police.

Satan worshipers and fundamentalist Christians both use ceremonies.

Communists and fascists both take varying degrees of control over private property for a greater cause (as did the US during World War II, as well).

Satan worshipers and fundamentalist Christians both have congregations.

Communists and fascists both engage in wars to expand their interests.

Satan worshipers and fundamentalist Christians both recruit people.

I could go on and on to say that opposite groups with opposite audiences and opposite goals have similar techniques.

Social Democrats are most similar to conservatives and moderates. That is Liberals/progressives and Social Democrats (all within varying parts of the Democratic Party) run for office, support free speech, run mostly very successful businessmen and attorneys just as Republicans do.

So, J, stop being a Christian Satan worshiper, stop inspecting your own colon with your face and realize that the ultra right of the Republican Party is or is near proto-fascist and Democrats are and will continue to be their opposition.

Your smarter than this.

If I thought you were dumb, I wouldn’t waste my time at all with responding to you.

Kevin: “Do you have even the slightest shred of evidence of some dedicated capitalist out there who saw the impending socialistcommiefascist nightmare of the Obama administration coming and decided to give his private business a mercy killing to spare it the horrors that would come? (end of quote)
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Let’s just get one thing straight — capitalists are few and far between, especially in the world of business. Most of them will grab a government handout without hesitation. Most will gladly join a government cartel. If the government is picking winners and losers, they want to be winners and will do whatever it takes. There are not many capitalists left in business, probably fewer even than in academia.
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(quote)The Nazis aligned themselves with the German aristocracy, the major corporations, and the church and waged an aggressively militaristic campaign. If that sounds like “progressives” to you, you need to stop eating paint. (end of quote)
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No, that’s mostly wrong. There were a couple industrialists who helped subsidize the party, but it wasn’t because they liked Hitler — it was because THEIR WIVES liked Hitler and wanted him to come to their parties. The husbands had to keep their wives happy, they looked on Hitler as a hobby, like some artist or poet.

So, let me get this straight:
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Your answer to our challenge that you provide proof to your Businesses Self-Destructed Because They Feared Obama’s Destructive Power is … a claim that there are few true capitalists. No evidence, not even an anecdote.
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And your explanation of the fact that leading businessmen in Germany — Speer, Krupp, Farben, Siemens, etc. etc. — stuck with the Nazis through to the bitter end, making frequent use of slave labor from the Nazi concentration camps and even winding up hauled before the Nuremburg War Crimes tribunal, was because they didn’t want to upset their wives?!?!? The corporate allies of the Third Reich thought Hitler was still just an artist and a poet, and what, being Chancellor and then Fuhrer was just some sort of performance art schtick?
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Sweet Jesus, you make Jonah Goldberg look intelligent.

I will admit to one thing — in the last 1-2 years I have learned a great deal more about fascism, socialism, and the progressive movement.
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And just where did you learn these things? Was it from know-nothing partisan hacks like Jonah Goldberg, Glenn Beck, and company? Or did you read actual, accredited, impartial scholars of fascism like Robert Paxton, Gerhard Weinberg, Walter Laqueur, Robert Griffin, Tody Judt, etc.?
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Because one of those groups has the academic training, the broad experience, the years working in archives and teaching on the subject, and the other group has nothing but an axe to grind.

I’m not sure. We’ve always had crackpots, but business is booming these days, largely because the cable news networks (one in particular) has decided to focus a wildly disproportionate amount of attention on them.
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A few thousand tea party folks show up somewhere and it’s phenomenally important news. Ten thousand liberals protested outside the NYSE the other day demanding financial reform, and the cable networks yawned.
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I remember when 300,000 people marched against the coming Iraq War in February 2003, and the networks dismissed it as nothing — and made sure to give literally equal time to the dozens of pro-invasion people who were out.

jbaustian:
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I’ve stayed polite through this whole thing, and will continue to do so.
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The problem as I see it right now is that you are trying any number of alternate, far fetched claims in order to make some sort of blame stick to Obama so that you can claim vindication.
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You’ve put forward the “Magic Wand Argument”, which is rendered ludicrous by the simple observation that no US president has ever engineered a recovery, let alone did it on a schedule.
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You’ve claimed he’s socialist, or worse, only to have that idiocy rendered DOA by the simple fact that we have been redistributing income to rural America for years.
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You’ve claimed he spent to much when in fact, the largest deficits and the bulk of the national debt was run up under GOP administrations.
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You’ve claimed that the business community, seeing Obama taking office and fearing his policies, laid millions of when the simple fact that the DJ went up, not down refutes this, as well as the other very simple fact that it was a credit crunch that starved businesses of short term cash and consumers of credit, forcing them to lay workers off!
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Now, jbaustian, you stoop to an utterly new low by claiming progressives are somehow tied to Hitler when in fact, your claims were never true in the first place, and further, were based on events that, even if fabricated, occurred 60 years ago.
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If that isn’t enough, then you resort to the trade in racial hatred for political gain by attempting to portray him as hating his own grandmother because of her race!
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I don’t need to say anything whatsoever about the implications concerning just who and what you are.
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Your ridiculousness stands as a monument to them…

Let’s take these one at a time.
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http://hnn.us/articles/122231.html
The Scholarly Flaws of Liberal Fascism By Robert Paxton (professor emeritus at Columbia Univ)
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Paxton has his own book, Anatomy of Fascism (2005). So he is naturally not going to look favorably on any thesis that conflicts fundamentally with his own.
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He defines fascism thusly: “A fascism that means no harm is a contradiction in terms. Authentic fascists intend to harm those whom they define as the nation’s internal and external enemies. Someone who doesn’t intend to harm his or her enemies, and who doesn’t relish doing it violently, isn’t really fascist. ”
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So because fascists are bad people, and American liberals/progressives are good people, they are therefore not fascists.
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Other than that, he focuses on the violent conflicts between fascists and communists, between Blackshirts and Brownshirts. And he looks at how the Fascists and Nazis destroyed independent labor unions — forgetting that Communists always do this too. Lastly, he downplays eugenics in the early 20th-century progressive movement — except it was pervasive throughout that movement for several decades, and it continues today in widespread birth control, abortion, and euthanasia.
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http://www.hnn.us/articles/122473.html
something something by Roger Griffin
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Paxton I could deal with, this article I cannot. It looks like it was written by some contributor or respondent here at the Swampland. So I will have to pass.
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http://www.hnn.us/articles/122247.html
Poor Scholarship, Wrong Conclusions by Matthew Feldman.
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“Fascism is definitely and absolutely opposed to the doctrines of liberalism, both in the political and the economic sphere,” proclaimed Mussolini in his co-written The Doctrine of Fascism from 1932.”
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True, but the liberalism he was comparing fascism to was the classical liberalism of John Stuart Mill, no the New Liberalism of John Dewey. Mill wrote about the liberty and autonomy of the individual; Dewey and his successors had a vision of “new” liberalism that was more collective. As Dewey puts it, ‘men are not isolated non-social atoms, but are men only when in intrinsic relations’ to one another, and the state in turn only represents them ‘so far as they have become organically related to one another, or are possessed of unity of purpose and interest’ (‘The Ethics of Democracy).
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http://www.hnn.us/articles/122592.html
Michael Ledeen Responds to Liberal Fascism
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This is the best of the critiques you’ve linked to, and one that I will have to analyze more carefully. Perhaps sometime Sunday….

I think not, jbaustian. I’m wasting my time. I had hoped that you had legitimate criticisms, but I see you progressed from the legitimate to the, well, psychotic is maybe a little too strong a word, given that you do have a book that shows that someone else thinks that progressives hug Hitler.
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BTW, this isn’t the first time I’ve seen a right wing crackpot come out all nicey-nicey and oh-so-reasonable, garner some appreciation, then start slipping into blathering idiocy.
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I’m sure that you could find another book by another author and claim that as proof. There are lots of ‘em. Gingrich and Limbaugh have written some, as well as others. I don’t know if Timothy McVeigh wrote any, but I’m sure it might be worth your while to see if he did.
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What I would say for sure is that you are not helping your cause shed it’s rather lowzy image…