Morning Must Reads: Performance

Poll: Plurality Of Voters Displeased With GOP House Majority, View Party As ‘Extremist’

In a PPP poll released Tuesday, 43% of voters said Republicans are doing a worse job running the House than Democrats did before being ousted in last year’s midterms. Meanwhile, 36% said Republicans were doing a better job than their counterparts, and an additional 19% said things are about the same.

The poll also found that a plurality of voters (48%) now say the Republican party is “extremist,” while 40% say the party is mainstream. The numbers were almost flipped on the Democratic side, with 46% viewing the party as mainstream, and 39% viewing it as extremist.

So much for the Tea Party.
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43% of voters think that House Republicans are doing a worse job now than the Democrats did, compared to only 36% who think the GOP has brought an improvement. 19% think things are about the same. 62% of voters thinking that the Republicans have either made things worse or brought no improvement to an already unpopular Congress does not bode particularly well for the party.

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http://publicpolicypolling.blogspot.com/2011/04/bad-news-for-congressional-republicans.html

Great minds….

Real Housewives of Wall Street
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“free money for sh!t”
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http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-real-housewives-of-wall-street-look-whos-cashing-in-on-the-bailout-20110411?print=true

Interesting chart. After 8 years of Bush being blamed for everything the long term trend since the Demos and the Empty Suit was elected has been up for Repubs and down for Demos.

“Why Isn’t Wall Street in Jail?”
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For the same reason Fannie & Freddie aren’t. Difference is the taxpayer is still on the hook for trillions with Fannie & Freddie

What a difference an election does make. Too bad she didn’t give that speech the Dems in 2008. She still might be Speaker

“There’s so many things at risk right now … but the fact is is that elections shouldn’t matter as much as they do, (there) should be some place on the spectrum where we respect each other’s views and all the rest.”- Nancy Pelosi

Of course Obama famously said elections have consequences and he won. So apparently they only shouldn’t matter when her party loses…

Hostage
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/toles?hpid=z4

Wanted: A Thoroughbred for 2012
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While Obama’s admirers may look at his cool and cerebral style and see a strong and decisive leader who understands the complex nuances of public policy, far too many voters see only mush.

From link above “beatable president”.

But for liberals, is this mush as bad as the arsenic the Republicans have to offer?
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From Robert Greenstein’s article, linked “didn’t love Obama’s plan.”
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To be sure, the President’s plan represents an important step forward in the debate. But it should be recognized that this plan is a rather conservative one, significantly to the right of the Rivlin-Domenici plan. While we worry about some particular elements of the President’s plan, we worry much more that the deficit-reduction process that’s now starting could produce an outcome that is well to the right of the already centrist-to-moderately-conservative Obama proposal, by reducing its modest revenue increases and cutting more deeply into effective programs that are vital to millions of Americans.

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The ideal situation for an actual liberal would be if we had the option of voting NOTA.
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None of the above

None of the Above (NOTA) or against all is a ballot option in some jurisdictions or organizations, designed to allow the voter to indicate disapproval of all of the candidates in a voting system. It is based on the principle that consent requires the ability to withhold consent in an election, just as they can by voting no on ballot questions.

Entities that include “None of the Above” on ballots as standard procedure include Greece (λευκό, white, but unrelated to a political party of the similarly-sounding name), the U.S. state of Nevada (None of These Candidates), Ukraine (Проти всіх), Spain (voto en blanco), France (vote blanc), Colombia (voto en blanco), the United States Libertarian Party and Green Party and the Florida affiliate of the American Patriot Party.[1] Russia had such an option on its ballots (Против всех) until it was abolished in 2006.[2]

When None of the Above is listed on a ballot, there is the possibility of NOTA receiving a majority or plurality of the vote, and so “winning” the election. In such a case, a variety of formal procedures may be invoked, including having the office remain vacant, having the office filled by appointment, re-opening nominations or holding another election (in a body operating under parliamentary procedure).

In Nevada, the candidate with the greatest number of votes assumes office regardless of votes for None of the Above. None of the Above acts as a repository for protest votes.[3]

The Green Party of California included NOTA in its original 1991 bylaws, to offer voters a choice of rejecting all candidates presented. After one round of successful elections in which a candidate in Southern California and all gubernatorial candidates were retired after the primary by NOTA, a lawsuit by the California Secretary of State led to the disallowal of NOTA in Green Party primaries.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/None_of_the_above
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That is, if and only if that meant we could go back to the primaries and find new candidates for both Democrats and Republicans.

Nobody left of Newt Gingrich wants to see any of the Republicans now seeking the nomination to win.

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Every now and then even liberals can’t help themselves and they blurt out the truth. For all you Socialism deniers on the left.

This is an illusion, of course. We are not the rugged individualists we think we are. After getting an education paid for by the government, if we live long enough, we all get retirement income from the government and health care paid for by the government. That is a very healthy dose of good old-fashioned socialism, but we remain the country that pretends to hate socialism. Homeowners and the entire real estate industry float on a massive government subsidy written into the tax code called the mortgage deduction. The federal government gives millionaires and billionaires tens of thousands of dollars a year to pay, $50,000, to pay for their housing, a subsidy that none of them need, and yet our rugged individualist self-image continues.

MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell

“up for Repubs and down for Demos.”
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If you think that’s going to continue, I’ve got a lovely bridge in Brooklyn you might be interested in.
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The Dems have done a mediocre to awful job over the last 3 years. The only thing worse is the way the GOP is doing it now. Not that a Tea Party cheerleader like you would ever admit it. You’d be accused of heresy if you did.

“After 8 years of Bush being blamed for everything the long term trend since the Demos and the Empty Suit was elected has been up for Repubs and down for Demos.”
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It was true until the Republicans pulled a Boehner and, already after just few months, the trend is reversing itself.

Tea Party infighting at a local level.

We’ve enjoyed endless schadenfreude over the last couple of years, watching the local tea party factionalize and bitterly fight over stupid crumbs. (The root of the rift seems to center around last year’s crowded race in SD-59 to replace Dale Volker). One wing features libertarians and birthers, while the other wing features Palinists and birthers. One would think they could at least find common ground on Obama being an Indo-Kenyan Communist usurper.
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The glibertarian tea party is run by characters such as Jim Ostrowski and David DiPietro. They claim doctrinal purity, outsiderishness, and expressing hatred at some “political class,” which they are both firmly members of.
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The Palinist tea party is run by tricorner-clad Rus Thompson. They are more closely aligned with the Republican establishment, but tend to skew more right-wing and somewhat less pragmatic than the GOP committees. The Ostrowski wing denounces the Thompson wing as “TeaGOP”.
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Meanwhile, 99.9% of western New Yorkers couldn’t give a crap about far-out glibertarian thought, nor about fringe wingnut theory.

“Difference is …”
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Did you miss the whole Wall St bailout thing? It was in all the papers…
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I know all you do is blame Dems and praise conservatives, but this is disingenuous, even for a sycophant like yourself.

“…trillions with Fannie & Freddie…”
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Care to link a comparison between what the banksters did compared to Fanny and Freddie jumping on the bandwagon when Republicans ran both houses and the white house, or are we expected to take your declarative statement as fact?

“For all you Socialism deniers on the left.”
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And again, a point goes zooming over Freep’s head….

You know you’re losing the argument when you have to resort to writing stuff like this.

I’ve been enjoying stuff like the Bedford County Tea Party Patriots fighting with the Bedford County Free Press.
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http://bedfordcountyfreepress.com/?p=17166
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It’s like watching the Judean People’s Front arguing with the Judean Popular People’s Front, but without the British accents.
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And what is it with the caplock and right wingers?

“This is like watching a hurricane from FL (Florida) moving up the coast slowly toward us.”

In one of the most stark condemnations of the credit rating agencies, a Senate investigations panel said the agencies continued to give top ratings to mortgage-backed securities months after the housing market started to collapse.
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The agencies then unleashed on the financial system a flood of downgrades in July 2007, the panel said.
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“Perhaps more than any other single event, the sudden mass downgrades of (residential mortgage-backed securities) and (collateralized debt obligation) ratings were the immediate trigger for the financial crisis,” the staff for Senators Carl Levin and Tom Coburn wrote in their report.[...]
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The SEC has been grappling with how to clamp down on the conflicts of interest embedded in the so-called “issuer-paid” model. Congress contemplated radical reforms for the agencies during the drafting of the Dodd-Frank law but in the end passed a sweeping financial regulation bill without them.
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Wednesday’s report includes emails from employees at both companies that illustrate the pressure that raters came under from investment banks.
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An August 2006 email reveals the frustration that at least one S&P employee felt about the dependence of his employer on the issuers of structured finance products, going so far as to describe the rating agencies as having “a kind of Stockholm syndrome” — the phenomenon in which a captive begins to identify with the captor.

“Forty-nine percent of those polled said they approve of the job Obama is doing as president, with 47 percent disapproving of the country’s 44th president.”
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Per the PI story/Flox poll.

Excellent article by David Cay Johnston about taxes. Explains how we got to where we are, who pays what in taxes, lots of charts showing relative income and associated taxes, and the trends since Reagan. Lots to think about. Refutes a lot of talking points.

http://www.wweek.com/portland/article-17350-9_things_the_rich_dont_want_you_to_know_about_taxes.html

RE pic:
a) Frank Gorshin on Star Trek!
b) BO’s true racial makeup

Man, that Rod Berket guy sounds like a real anti-free speech, anti-free press, unpatriotic d!ck.
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Why advertise a public meeting and then close the meeting to the public? That’s just idiotic.

9.2 should’ve gone here

Which point is that? The liberals are compulsive liars? Or that for months here liberals have been denying that Obama has taken us further down that road to completely destroying the most successful capitalist society in history?

That was fun! Please let us know when other interesting items pop up.

Liberal budget wonks didn’t love Obama’s plan.

Not all of them.*

Overall, way better than the rumors and trial balloons. I can live with this. And whatever the pundits may say, it was much, much more serious than the Ryan “plan”.
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Update: I should probably say, I could live with this as an end result. If this becomes the left pole, and the center is halfway between this and Ryan, then no — better to pursue the zero option of just doing nothing and letting the Bush tax cuts as a whole expire.
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Update update: I don’t want to step too much on the administration’s selling point, but progressives upset by the claim that there are three dollars of spending cuts for every dollar of tax increases should be aware that there’s a bit of creative labeling going on. As I understand it, they’re counting both interest savings and reductions in “tax expenditures” — subsidies through the tax code — as spending cuts. It’s a much more balanced plan if you look at the balance between revenue increases and non-interest outlays.

(*dunno if Krugman’s considered a ‘budget’ wonk…and he has a few caveats…)

I’m confused. How can you claim conservative to always take & follow marching orders from (pick your fav) Beck, Limbaugh, Palin etc and yet you write about how these same “lockstep” folks are arguing?

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It’s always amusing to watch liberals try to comment on things they can’t even begin to comprehend. Not that it is ever a barrier for them

Side note: there’s a link to a simple comparison of the Ryan and Obama plans in Krugman’s comment that some may find useful:
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http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/04/13/us/politics/comparing-republican-and-obama-budget-plans.html#

All these Polls you guys post say is that your man is worst then my man. I would be embarrassed to publish them.

“Which point is that?”
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The point is that everything from the Fire Department to food inspection is ‘socialism’. And that if we took away everything that was ‘socialist’ in this country, people like you would be the first in line to protest.
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The point is that you have no idea what you’re talking about when you run around like a headless chicken screaming “The Socialists are coming!” You sound like a teenage calling her parents ‘fascists’. You use the word without little understanding of its actual definition.

“I’m confused. ”
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Shocker.

And, add to that the salient point that it was actually Bush who started to ruin things. Lowering taxes, running a deficit. Starting two wars, and pawning them off on everyone else to pay for after he left office..

You know you are losing the argument when you post links like this.

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Wait a few minutes the Daily Kos will probably tie it to Repubs wanting tax cuts

MoronMom ignoring the ever hypocrisy and contradiction in the life of a liberal.

testing. testing.

can I post?

“And, add to that the salient point that it was actually Bush who started to ruin things. Lowering taxes”

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Liberals keep figuring if you keep repeating lies they are true. The left claims economic growth was horrible under Bush and tax cuts caused the deficit and yet record tax revenues were collected in 2006 and 2007. You math and logic get an “F”. Hate for conservatives “A”.
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“The point is that you have no idea what you’re talking about when you run around like a headless chicken screaming “The Socialists are coming!”
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And the point is you ignored what was posted and just tried to denigrate the messenger. O’Donnell blurted it out and it matches the cover from Newsweek when Obama got started. the Denials continue.

PS you forgot roads and teachers too that is standard liberal stock as to why we need a $1.5 trillion budget

On the bright side, birtherism generates more tourism dollars for Hawai’i...

Lost in this circus is that Trump is hardly the first Obama opponent to harbor these suspicions–or to act on them. The path his investigators are presumably taking is a well-trodden one. Others have already looked. And one of them agreed, on the condition of anonymity, to walk me through exactly what Trump’s private eyes will find. Here’s what I learned:
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When you go to Hawaii to investigate Obama’s birth, what you’re looking to examine are public records. They’re easy to find. Fly into the Honolulu airport, rent a car, and drive downtown to the state library. You can’t miss it: it’s practically in the shadow of the gold-leaf King Kamehameha statue in front of the Aliiolani Hale, the former palace. Once inside the library, head downstairs where they keep the microfilm. Obama was born (they tell us) on August 4, 1961, but you’ll want the August 13, 1961 edition of the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, because that’s when the birth announcement appeared. When you’ve loaded up the film, flip to the back pages, to the section of the paper called “Vital Statistic.” This is the record of births, marriages, and deaths provided by the Hawaii Department of Health’s Bureau of Vital Statistics. When you get to Page B-6, scan down the lefthand column–there it is, toward the bottom:

Mr. and Mrs. Barack H. Obama, 6085 Kalanianaole Hwy., son, Aug. 4

Congratulations! You’ve located the birth announcement. Nothing indicates obvious Kenyan-Communist plotting or the nefarious handiwork of Bill Ayers…

You’re wrong. I have no hatred. That’s the rights game. I just don’t like lies. And the econgomy was growing? How did the deficits come about then, i wonder? And of course, you completely evaded what i said about the wars.
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Better question: How come when Cheney says deficits don’t matter, Reagan proved it – you weren’t harping about cut spending. But now that the dems are in the white house, now it’s suddenly urgent. Isn’t it true that the deficit don’t really matter – but are good arguing points for the right?

I’m easily confused.
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Fixed.

“O’Donnell blurted it out ”
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Blurted what out? That we have a public school system, Social Security and Medicare? That is somehow news to you?
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I’m still trying to see what sort of epiphany you’ve discover in O’Donnell’s statements. It’s a straight up description of some very popular programs. And none of these programs are new. If it’s just now buggin’ you that we have a public school system, they why the hell have you been living in this country for however many years the planet’s been cursed with your presence. If your Ayn Rand fetishism drives you to be vehemently against anything even remotely resembling ‘socialism’, then you’ve been living in the wrong country for at least the last 100 years or so.

“MoronMom ignoring the ever hypocrisy and contradiction in the life of a liberal.”
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And I love it when Freep’s not in on the joke.

hehe

“And the point is you ignored what was posted and just tried to denigrate the messenger.”
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“Wait a few minutes the Daily Kos will probably tie it to Repubs wanting tax cuts”
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Not big on the whole ‘consistency’ thing, are ya?

Thanks Ivy,
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Very interesting, all the things we have been saying all along but this really summarizes it nicely and backs it up with data. I am anxiously awaiting the first troll to come along and start with their talking points and try to poke holes into this excellent piece.

Apparently Liberty U’s definition of obscene has expanded to include “materials making the school look bad.“

Last month, the Lynchburg News & Advance reported that Liberty University, the evangelical private school founded by Jerry Falwell and run by Jerry Falwell Jr., received almost half a billion dollars in federal financial aid money last year. After we pointed out that that was more federal money than NPR received last year, Liberty University apparently blocked access to the News & Advance website for at least one day. Yes, Liberty University is exactly like Communist China.
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Liberty University officials at first claimed they were unashamed of receiving so much government cash, but apparently they later thought it embarrassing enough to attempt some clumsy censorship.
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Not that Falwell admitted that that’s why he blocked it

“Most of the websites that are blocked have to do with obscene material, material that is inappropriate,” Falwell said. “It just so happened last week The News & Advance was blocked for a day or two. We’re a private organization and we don’t have to give a reason and we’re not.”
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Liberty’s decision last week to block The News & Advance website, http://www.newsadvance.com, was not related to the newspaper’s content, Falwell added.

I am trying to respond to 4.0 but the system wouldn’t let me even though I tried four different ways to do so.
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Wordpress is a very flawed organization.

freeinpa,

I just read your posting from Lawrence O’Donnell. What it tells me is that CONSERVATIVES are delusional. We have “socialism”. He is right. WE HAVE HAD SOCIALISM FOR THE PAST 70 YEARS! So unless you are over 80 years old, you know absolutely nothing first hand about “rugged individualism”.

Given that Socialism in this country is 70 years old, you can’t blame that on Obama. After all, he not even 50 years old and has been President for a little over 2 years.

I know conversatives worship at the alter of Ronald Reagan, but I suggest you look at the things he did while in office. If you did, you would realize, Reagan was a Socialist, too.

One of the birther things that amuses me is that they like to call this notice an ad that was put into the paper. I remember when I was young the Vital Statistics were one of the most read parts of the daily paper. It was practically the first thing my mother read in the paper. These were not ads, but official notices as pointed out above, provided by the Dept. of Health, Bureau of Vital Statistics.
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It was possible for parents to send in Birth Notices, which were little articles about the baby, additional information about family members, and other personal items frequently with a picture as well. These were very different from the official notice.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/04/13/2165958/fringe-of-democratic-party-wont.html

[quote]

Obama is consistently accused of “capitulation” — never mind that Democrats have gotten the better of Republicans in every deal since December, including the present budget deal, where the cuts are more accounting tricks than actual pain.

Democrats, including the president, have beaten back decades of Republican intransigence on healthcare, Wall Street reform and the supposedly “small government conservative” obsession with outlawing abortion.

Politicians rarely get credit for doing anything right, probably because people figure they rarely do. And many of the hard-won Democratic victories seem maddeningly incremental. People forget that when Social Security and Medicare were passed decades ago, many liberal proponents complained that the White House had been too timid, too.

In a fundamentally centrist country, Obama is governing as a pragmatic progressive. This, despite a media that’s endlessly fascinated by conservatives and their narratives, and a liberal movement that failed to keep up while the right built the media and political infrastructure to implement their agenda over the long term. [\quote]

I like the psuedo-birthers like Freep. They’re not saying he was born in Kenya, just that no one knows for sure. If only he’d show his long form blah blah blah.
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They hate Obama enough to suggest he might be illegitimate, but don’t have the guts to actually accuse him of anything.

You want to know what “Rugged individualism” sounds like?
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“Whenever they’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Whenever they’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there… I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad an’-I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry an’ they know supper’s ready. An’ when our folks eat the stuff they raise an’ live in the houses they build-why, I’ll be there.”
- John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 28

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That, last sentence especially is what O’Donnell is contrasting to.
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When was the last time you, personally ate even one meal completely from things you grew or animals you raised and slaughtered yourself or were done so by your family.
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Never?
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Same here.
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Every single meal I ever ate was inspected by the government driven across dozens to thousands of miles of government highways and sold in store or restaurant licensed and regulated by the government.
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Start slaughtering your own cows and pigs for breakfast lunch and dinner and you’ll be a “rugged individual”.
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I found out that my ancestors in Northern Ireland weren’t even farmers. One I found out was a horse appraiser and another I found out was a part of several generations of blacksmiths – not “rugged individuals” for at least 150 years or longer.

Speaking of Liberty U…
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Fundamentalist Liberty University Gets More Federal Money Than NPR
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http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/38348_Fundamentalist_Liberty_University_Gets_More_Federal_Money_Than_NPR
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OMG! SOCIALISM!

Freep,

2006 and 2007 tax revenues were highest only because the revenue increases on a yearly basis anyway because of increased GDP, and economic growth and inflation. Just to make things a bit more clearer:

http://www.factcheck.org/taxes/supply-side_spin.html

The tax rate cuts in 2001 and 2003 actually did decrease the revenue in accompanying years! Wouldn’t these tax cuts have been enacted revenue most likely (if you want to take history as an example, which I doubt you will) would have been more but without the deficit increases! See:

http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=200

(The site some how won’t let me add the link.)

“Our investigation found a financial snake pit rife with greed, conflicts of interest, and wrongdoing.“

The regulators who failed to crack down on the banks, including the Office of Thrift Supervision, are faulted for their cozy relationship with Wall Street, as are the major credit rating agencies, Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s. [...]
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The subcommittee, which spent two years on the investigation, based its report on thousands of internal company documents and emails, as well as hundreds of interviews and Congressional testimony.
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The subcommittee singled out Goldman (GS, Fortune 500) and Deutsche Bank (DB) as examples of Wall Street firms that reaped huge profits by marketing securities backed by subprime mortgages as safe investments to clients, even as the banks bet against these very same securities.

Oh, and this from a semi-wonk:

And I’d say it’s a well deserved flip of the bird. Republicans, as you can imagine, are less enthusiastic, and this bit of the speech undoubtedly accounts for most of the bile being tossed around on Fox and elsewhere today. But hey — sometimes the truth hurts. And all Obama did was speak the simple truth. In the past decade, Republicans slashed taxes, started two wars, approved a big unfunded entitlement, and presided over an economic collapse that cratered tax revenues and required massive government spending to counteract. That’s pretty much 100% of our existing deficit problem right there. All we’re doing now is trying to clean up the mess the GOP has left us.

http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/04/just-simple-truth

This blows away the freakishly incorrect number of the wealthiest paying all of the taxes for the rest of us.
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It shows the opposite.
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I’ll keep that link.

More interesting tidbits…
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http://www.marketwatch.com/story/senate-probe-alleges-goldman-mortgage-deception-2011-04-13?pagenumber=2

Toemageddon, 2011

Leave it to the news media to take something innocent a little out of proportion.

A PA representative from Butler County (in the western part of the state) has decided to hop on the birther bandwagon.
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Of course, introducing a bill is a far cry from passing it. This is just another of Metcalfe’s excesses. He also introduced an immigration bill like the Arizona one that is being held up in court.

http://blogs.mcall.com/capitol_ideas/2011/04/metcalfe-goes-all-birther.html

“WE HAVE HAD SOCIALISM FOR THE PAST 70 YEARS”
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And yet the left denies it and runs from it. When Obambi took over auto and the word socialism was raised, the looney left here went ballistic, when he forced ObamaCare on us, they again lost their mind (well what is left of it) again over the claims of socialism.

So what you are truly saying is the left is absolute liars even to themselves.

“And I love it when Freep’s not in on the joke”

I am The left is a joke

Like I said above, much like Stuart Zechman frequently did, that if not an actual, breathing liberal in the white house and more than small share of congress I would love it if Obama could get a scare from the left the way that Republicans have gotten a huge boot kicking them even further to the right.
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I wish Obama was as intimidated by losing to the left as he is of the Tea Party. Maybe instead of splitting the baby between the German Health Care system – which he ran on delivering – and absolutely nothing giving us a “middle ground” of Nixoncare/Dolecare/Romneycare and having it shouted down as a government takeover if he got a push hard enough from the left, we could have had a system like, say, Canada.
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With the stimulus package, he split the baby between FDR and doing nothing by giving us an anemic stimulus package that got half of the job done maybe we could have gotten three quarters of a New Deal stimulus package and gone from a potential of 25% unemployment going down to 8%,instead, going down to 4%.
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Maybe we could have forced the Tea Party to attack the defense budget themselves by holding our ground on the domestic programs.
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I do feel like change is coming, but, coming on the back of a snail with arthritis.
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We’ve waited since 1992 for this health care plan?
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We’ve waited since 1992 for gays in the military?
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Maybe we can have the kind of financial reform by returning to the Glass–Steagall Act by 2028 and have them prepared to handle things like derivatives by 2044?
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass%E2%80%93Steagall_Act
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Will I, now 40, live long enough to see the day that higher education is affordable and borrowed rather than dependent upon who much your parents house is worth and how much they earn?
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Change on the back of an arthritic snail makes me think not.

Now I get Hope & Change!! It means Obama lied And he Hoped you didn’t notice the Change.
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And the correct answers are a, c & e

Obama vs. Obama
April 13, 2011 10:28 P.M.
By Victor Davis Hanson

The president gave the sort of scare speech he not long ago warned against, and blasted the income-tax rates he not long ago agreed were necessary — in a context in which he has just presented a budget with a $1.6 trillion deficit of the sort he now says is unsustainable, and has warned about recklessly voting against raising the debt ceiling in a fashion that he himself had once done, in a larger landscape in which he had once damned attacking Middle East countries in optional wars, Guantanamo, renditions, tribunals, preventative detention, intercepts, wiretaps, Predators, and leaving troops in Iraq, and then embraced or expanded all that and more (this list is infinite and includes everything from drilling to campaign financing to earmarks).

These weird about-faces raise interesting questions that transcend the current politics of the deficit:

a) Has Obama in his past careers never been called to account and so reached a point where simply being Obama means that we are not supposed to apply standards of accuracy, memory, and consistency to him in the way we do to all others?

b) Or does an absent-minded Obama carelessly make up things up ad hoc as he goes along, forgetting what he said earlier, but secure that his hope-and-change delivery of the moment will so mesmerize the audience that no one will remember or care if at times he ends up saying exactly the opposite of what he had said earlier?

c) Or is he so blatantly partisan a politician that he has no principles at all and knowingly says things that are aimed at appealing to 51 percent of the public at any given moment, and therefore will always change with public opinion?

d) Or is he so cynical that he understands campaign rhetoric has nothing to do with actual governance, and so he is allowed to say something that he knows in advance that he is not bound to follow?

e) Or is he so bored with the trying job that he feels no responsibility to offer reliable, consistent governance, and so rashly throws things out and then hastens back to the more enjoyable PR aspects of the office?

Can anyone confirm that WI is laying off teachers and kicking kids out of college due to Walker’s budget plan?

Heard it on a forum, but no links were provided. I haven’t turned anything up, but I’m also not from WI and google tends to tailor searches the longer you use it…

“Maybe we can have the kind of financial reform by returning to the Glass–Steagall Act…”
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Amen and amen, brother.

“WE HAVE HAD SOCIALISM FOR THE PAST 70 YEARS”
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“And yet the left denies it and runs from it.”
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Not big on the basics of logic and debating, are you, Freep?

Man i love this, 3 different people call Freep out on his Hypocrisy and the fact that he spouts off *&^$ with no facts, and his reponse is…. LOOK over here new subject!!! Sigh

Dana Milbank is right about one thing. Now the public can view the cataclysmically insane budget of the Progressives to the merely insane one of Obama’s

Ellison and the progressives probably would have a better chance of influencing the weather than they would passing their budget, which they are floating as an alternative to the House Republican bid and President Obama’s plan.

Among the highlights: A $4 trillion tax increase over 10 years. An increase in the top tax rate to 49 percent. A $2.3 trillion cut in defense spending – and an increase in domestic spending. Oh, and they would revive the “public option” to offer government-run health care.

Even the most starry-eyed of the progressives know the proposal is as much of a non-starter

Obama, who outlined his plan 90 minutes after the progressives unveiled theirs, may find their proposal useful because it gives him a far-left counterweight to the far-right Ryan plan

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/if-progressives-ran-the-world/2011/04/13/AFD7YtYD_story.html

“I am The left is a joke”
.
That’s an awesome response. I’m still snickering. He might as well said, “Duh, Winning!”
.
Thanks, Freep! Made my day.

“it is beyond perplexing and greatly troubling that a political candidate can ascend to the highest levels of government without providing sufficient documentation verifying his or her place of birth or American citizenship.”
.
$50 bucks says he goes by ‘DarylinPA’ online.

If he focused on logic, his arguments would fall apart. Reagan, deficits, mattering, not mattering – it’s all just a shell game to the right. Say anything, say it loud, say it often enough, and someone who doesn’t actually pay attention to what is going on in the country will believe it.
.
I’m surprised he’s against public schooling; it plays right into his sides hands. Notice how it’s always the elite, educated public officials that are trying to ruin the country. Damn them, those thinkers.

“a far-left counterweight to the far-right Ryan plan”
.
Glad you agree Ryan’s plan is ‘far-right’.
.
From little acorns…

momento, his brother Daryl is using that.

If you Google – Wisconsin laying off teachers, you get lots of links to articles about individual school districts. I didn’t see one relative to the entire state, but didn’t look very far.
.
Here is a link about students in technical colleges and how Walker’s budget is affecting them. One example link. I used – wisconsin students leaving college for these.
.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/mar2011/comu-m09.shtml

Nice photo of two face. Obama’s speech was a joke. It was a campaign speech. He’s back to class warfare and blaming the Republicans. Why would Republicans negotiate with a clown like BO?
.
It’s been shown that “tax the rich” won’t balance the budget. Increasing taxes will take money out of the economy.
.
http://www.moneynews.com/StreetTalk/economy/2008/07/16/id/324574
.

“As President Lincoln pointed out, you don’t level the playing field by hurting those who are investing and creating jobs,” said Forbes, publisher of Forbes magazine.

Economic experts agree with Forbes that entrepreneurs are still vital to U.S. economic growth.

“More and more of the firms in the U.S. are service firms, and more of them are smaller, i.e., consulting firms, firms where people are the largest input into the production process,” Cheryl Asher, an assistant professor of economics at Villanova University, tells Moneynews. “Small businesses do create more new jobs in the U.S. than large corporations.”

If taxes go up during the next presidential administration, many small businesses may close.

“As a small business owner, I am taxed heavily enough,” Peter Miralles, president of Atlanta Wealth Consultants, tells Moneynews, adding that if the headaches increased, he would just close shop and go work in corporate America.

“Without limits on taxation, we become no better than the feudal system in the Middle Ages in Europe.”

Read more: Steve Forbes: Raising Taxes Bad Idea

“I like the psuedo-birthers like Freep. They’re not saying he was born in Kenya, just that no one knows for sure”
.

Prove my statement wrong! Or do you just suffer with intermittent bouts of birther tourettes? You can’t admit the truth so you just denigrate the source

The left always ask for proof of facts and what is the source of those facts for everyhting except ……..

PS, this article will explain to your Keynesian wrong headedness why the stimulus failed and why pumping billions more into the economy isn’t working.
.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/119173-three-reasons-the-stimulus-will-fail
.
Foreigners, therefore, now have much less capacity to buy US treasuries than they did a year ago even as the US Treasury plans to issue vast amounts of new paper.

Moreover, most of the US debt held by foreigners has a maturity of under 3 years so there is an impending refinancing problem of monumental proportions for the US.
.
.
3. Assumptions are not truths

The stimulus plan is based on 5 assumptions. The world has an endless appetite for government debt; government directed infrastructure spending on small to medium sized projects that private investors shun is a sound economic idea; increasing taxes on high income families and investors has no influence on their behavior; a one time check for people who pay no taxes and are behind in utility, credit card, auto and medical bills will lead to sustained increases in consumer spending; feeding incompetent corporate managements while starving competent corporate managements will lead to vigorous job creation. In the past 50 years, governments all over the world have pursued these notions at various times. There is no instance of documented, enduring, success.

Hugo Chavez looks far right to the Progressive Budget

“WE HAVE HAD SOCIALISM FOR THE PAST 70 YEARS”
.
And yet the left denies it and runs from it.”
.
So, if things which happened starting decades before Obama was born are socialistic then all people who support them are “Socialistis? right?
.
So, let’s take a few socialist agencies:
.
The FDA.
.
The Department of Agriculture
.
The Department of transportation.
.
The FAA
.
Who has supported the continued existence of these agencies.
.
In order:
.
FDR
.
Harry Truman
.
Republican Dwight D Eisenhower
.
JFK
.
LBJ
.
Republican Richard Nixon
.

Republican Gerald Ford
.
Jimmy Carter
.

Republican Ronald Reagan
.

Republican George H W Bush
.
Bill Clinton.
.

Republican George W Bush
.
Yes, relative to how things were when people grew their vegetable and grains in their yard and slaughtered animals that they raised, these are, indeed, socialist.
.
However, if you define socialism that narrowly, Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, Ronald Reagan, Bush Sr and W were all socialists.
.
The point is, Obama is no more socialistic than George W Bush or Ronald Reagan.
.
Make sense yet, or are you still confused?

Prove my statement wrong! Or do you just suffer with intermittent bouts of birther tourettes? You can’t admit the truth so you just denigrate the source

The left always ask for proof of facts and what is the source of those facts for everyhting except ……..

.
Freak,
.
If you read what was written about, we are asking you to for for a long, pleasant trip to Hawaii.
.
Bring your wife and kids!
.
Have fun.
.
While you’re there, enjoy looking at Obama’s birth announcement for yourself and, please do forget to write.
.
Hey, you may not like if when people tell you to go to Hawaii, but, you have to admit it is a lot better than when people tell you to go fck yourself, isn’t it?
.
Now, get your birther ass to Hawaii.

Momentomori,
.
just ditch the pseudo, Freep just showed his hand, he is a full blown birther.

“Hugo Chavez looks far right to the Progressive Budget”
.
I guess I missed the part of the plan which is about the government owned oil company in the progressive budget proposal.
.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleos_de_Venezuela

Prove my statement wrong!
.
Ok! I will!
.
http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/birthcertificate.asp
.
Birther!

It’d probably be more accurate to say we have an Oil Company Owned Governement…

Coming from Steve Forbes already should tell you that it will have bias, but just to make my point:
.
“Raising taxes — we tried that in the Great Depression. We tried that in the 1970s. We tried that in the 1990s. I don’t know why we have to run this bad movie again.”
.
Last time I checked (that was this morning) raising the taxes in the 1990s did not hurt the economy or the deficit for that matter.
.
During the Great Depression the deficit hawks were yelling just as loudly as the TP-ers are doing right now resulting in tightening austerity measures which resulted in a double-dip recession. So thanks for making the point that austerity during a recession is bad policy.
.
However proving my point further, austerity by taking money from the lower end of the income spectrum takes more money out of the economy than when you take money from the very high end of the income spectrum, $1.50 respectively to $0.37 per federal dollar spent.

“Raising taxes — we tried that in the Great Depression. We tried that in the 1970s. We tried that in the 1990s. I don’t know why we have to run this bad movie again.”
.
It worked during the Great Depression.
.
It worked in the 1970s.
.
It worked in the 1980s.
.
Steve Forbes is a trust fund kid idiot.
.
Here is a graph of economic growth during the New Deal:
.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gdp20-40.jpg
.
And here is the 1990s:
.

After a nearly sixty-year period of unprecedented growth, the United States experienced a much discussed economic slowdown beginning in 1972. However, around 1995, U.S. economic growth accelerated, driven by faster productivity growth. From 1972 to 1995, the growth rate of output per hour, a measure of labor productivity, had only averaged around one-percent per year. But by the mid ’90s, growth became much faster: 2.65 percent from 1995–1999.[7] America also experienced increased employment and decreasing inflation. The economist Robert J. Gordon referred to this as a Goldilocks economy-the result of five positive “shocks” – “the two traditional shocks (food-energy and imports) and the three new shocks (computers, medical care, and measurement)”[8]

Other economists pointed to the ripening benefits of the computer age, being realized after a delay much like that associated to the delayed benefits of electricity shortly after the turn of the twentieth century. Gordon contended in 2000 that the benefits of computers were marginal or even negative for the majority of firms, with their benefits being consolidated in the computer hardware and durable goods manufacturing sectors, which only represent a relatively small segment of the economy. His method relied on applying considerably sized gains in the business cycle to explain aggregate productivity growth.[9]

According to another point of view, the “new economy” is a current Kondratiev wave which will end after a 50-year period in 2040’s. Its innovative basis includes Internet, nanotechnologies, telematics and bionics.

.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Economy
.
The 1970s was not as easy, but, had progress between the two oil shocks:
.

In 1974, productivity shrunk by 1.5%, though this soon recovered. In 1976, Jimmy Carter won the Presidency. Carter would later take much of the blame for the even more turbulent economic times to come, though some say circumstances were outside his control. Inflation continued to climb skyward. Productivity growth was small, when not negative. Interest rates remained high, with the prime reaching 20% in January 1981; Art Buchwald quipped that 1980 would go down in history as the year when it was cheaper to borrow money from the Mafia than the local bank.[55]

Unemployment dropped mostly steadily from 1975 to 1979, although it then began to rise sharply.

.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history_of_the_United_States#Great_Depression:_1929.E2.80.931941
.
Hence, this is why I am calling Steve Forbes a trust fund kid idiot.
.
Have and facts to say that he is not psychiatric meltdown?

“If he focused on logic, his arguments would fall apart”

.
But I take comfort in the fact I can face the truth. Something you, MoronMom and the left do not even have a distant relationship. As evidenced by the posts you both evade admitting the reality and try to obfuscate about well “repubs do it too”

“.Not big on the whole ‘consistency’ thing, are ya”

From MoronMom who can’t even tell them self the truth

“enjoy looking at Obama’s birth announcement”
.

Gee I didn’t know an announcement was an official government document. Hey I know how you can be a distinguished scholar (Actually the only way) Go to Kinko’s and get an announcement you graduated from Harvard Summa Cum Laude

You are right Chavez is keeping the oil companies working , while Obama has shut down drilling. COntrol comes in many forms.. See if you can find that in wikipedia
.
“Hence, this is why I am calling Steve Forbes a trust fund kid idiot.”
.
Because someone was dumb enough to let you alone in a room with a computer and a connection to the internet

Rapid growth of debt and fiscal policy excesses in the 70s, 80 and 90s were responsible for the growth and subsequent market crashes. The National Recovery Administration was a mistaken substitute of central planning for market economics. The War ended the Depression not FDR’s New Deal

“The War ended the Depression not FDR’s New Deal”
.
WWII resulted in the biggest government stimulus ever (relative) so finally acknowledgement from the right that government stimulus actually does help to overcome recessions and depressions.
.
Awesome!

Let’s start out here:
.
“In the past 50 years, governments all over the world have pursued these notions at various times. There is no instance of documented, enduring, success.”
.
The first thing I can find, and I will not spend too much time on this is an eight year chart:
.
http://www.indexmundi.com/world/gdp_real_growth_rate.html
.
The world Economy is experiencing sustained growth.
.
“The world has an endless appetite for government debt”
.
Wrong.
.
The Keynesian theory is that during recessions, when nothing in the private, for profit sector is earning a good rate of return, markets do, absorb government debts. According to Keynes deficits are to be paid off if it all possible with high taxes and low spending during boom times.
.
“government directed infrastructure spending on small to medium sized projects that private investors shun is a sound economic idea.
.
“that private investors shun” is an absurdly misleading statement.
.
Infrastructure means:
.
Public roads – no inexpensive means to exclude people from driving on your roads, so, no possibility of making a profit
.
Fire department, building and equipment – no inexpensive means to exclude people from driving on your roads, so, no possibility of making a profit
.
Police Stations and equipment – no inexpensive means to exclude people from driving on your roads, so, no possibility of making a profit
.
Public water and sewage – no inexpensive means to exclude people from driving on your roads, so, no possibility of making a profit
.
Public schools building, staff and equipment – no inexpensive means to exclude people from driving on your roads, so, no possibility of making a profit
.
So, remove that part of it to read:
.
“…government directed infrastructure spending on small to medium sized projects..”
.
The US interstate highway system was a bad idea? This was a classic example of Keynesian Economics in the 1950s, ’60′s and ’70′s.
.
“…increasing taxes on high income families and investors has no influence on their behavior…”
.
Wrong
.
Increasing taxes on high income households has far less of a negative impact than hiring unemployed people has a positive impact.
.
“…a one time check for people who pay no taxes and are behind in utility, credit card, auto and medical bills will lead to sustained increases in consumer spending…”
.
Wrong
.
Keynesian Economics supports one to five year employment – 52 to 260 – paychecks spread out over time to stimulate the economy.
.
It was George W Bush who tried to stimulate the economy with a one time bribe to his pay off his Republican, wealthy donors tax refund to high income and some upper middle income households.
.
“…feeding incompetent corporate managements while starving competent corporate managements will lead to vigorous job creation…”.
.
The stimulus package sent money to Haliburton?
.
I don’t even know what this is supposed to mean. It is not related to reality is all I can tell you.
.
“Foreigners, therefore, now have much less capacity to buy US treasuries than they did a year ago even as the US Treasury plans to issue vast amounts of new paper.”
.
In economics not to be mistaken with a big load of right wing bulls hit which is what you have here, this decreased demand for an increased supply of T Bonds will be shown by a need to increase interest rates. Interest rates for T Bills are not going up significantly if at all.
.
Is there anything I can explain to you?
.
You seem like a very confused many, metldown.

…government stimulus actually does help to overcome recessions and depressions.
.
Not to mention price controls, higher taxes, a centralized, state-managed industrial policy that relied on domestic production of goods…

“This blows away the freakishly incorrect number”
.
Yes why believe the IRS after all it is a government agency. No instead use a number from “research” that can only be published in a cartoon.

.
Sounds about right for your level of intelligence

Seems like you are going to fail out of Katherine Gibbs too!

Psychiatric Meltdown and Freak in Pa,
.
The largest stimulus package in history, as Robert said, was World War II.
.
Nearly 100% of the things the government hired millions of people to produce were:
.
A)Used to blow up or shoot axis power soldiers.
.
B) Shot up or blown up by axis power soldiers.
.
C) People hired by the federal government – through no choice of their own- to shoot up or blow up axis power soldiers.
.
Ignoring the facts of the time, if Hitler was killed in World War One as a soldier, Mussolini never born, etc, etc .. the government could have built the entire US Highway system before 1945, and probably – if there were a political will for this – gone to the moon by 1950.
.
Post World War II stimulus packages have all been based upon the idea of stimulating the economy when you do not have very evil dictatorships endangering American sovereignty just hanging around ready to attack Hawaii and, hopefully, does not result in killing off one third of the males for an entire generation in France in the process.
.
(A little Off topic here, but, for what it’s worth, France lost one third of it’s male population in World War One and, again, in World War II, so, you might understand why by the 1950s and 1960s they were leaning towards being peacenics)
.
One can not state that WWII ended the Great Depression unless they support Keynesian Economics.
.
The previous school of Economics, The Neoclassical School of Friedrich Hayek would state that the end of WWII and the recovery from the Great Depression were a random coincidence.
.
That is why I, like PhD Economists, ignore Friedrich Hayek and, if possible, pay attention to Selma Hayek
.
http://s4.hubimg.com/u/859507_f520.jpg
.
(Maybe female PhD Economists and gay male economists like Friedrich better, but I’ll have to get back to you about that)

“As evidenced by the posts you both evade admitting the reality and try to obfuscate about well “repubs do it too”"
.
You, still, are confused.
.
“.. well “repubs do it too”
.
How about well “Benjamin Franklin, when creating the post office did it too”?
.
The Post office is Nationalized, government administrated delivery service.
.
How about public libraries?
.
There are a few private law libraries for attorneys still today, but, most of that is switching into online databases.
.
So, libraries, schools, the post office – all promoted by our founding fathers 90 years before the word “socialism” was coined – did it.
.
The point is: the Jeffersonian concept of a pure, rugged individual, the lone yeomen never existed outside of people’s imagination.
.
It’s more like, yo, man, I can’t pay my tuition, can the government me a loan than the lone yeomen.

“I am The left is a joke”
.
Another typp.
.
“I am The left’s joke”.
.
Yes, we all get a giggle at your expense daily.

“From MoronMom who can’t even tell them self the truth”
.
Weak comeback.
.
Pathetic attempt to make fun of the handle.
.
Try again.

“WWII resulted in the biggest government stimulus ever (relative) so finally acknowledgement from the right that government stimulus actually does help to overcome recessions and depressions.”
.
No runs no hits only errors. The war wasn’t a government stimulus but actually a duty the federal government is to perform. Fortunately we did not have the “cut & run” liberals of today we would be speaking a language other than English.
.
There were rare tax changes or regulations enacted while big business earned big profits, paid high wages and pumped out goods and services t the middle class. Full employment caused by the war and high savings due to the depression led to a burst of buying of homes, cars, appliances and other goods denied by the hardship of the war and depression.

“Yes why believe the IRS after all it is a government agency.”
.
Okay, please send a link to a study done by the IRS which includes real estate taxes, sales taxes and other state and local taxes.
.
If you can’t find one, then give up.
.

“Seems like you are going to fail out of Katherine Gibbs too!”
.
Weak comeback.
.
Try again.

“Gee I didn’t know an announcement was an official government document.”
.
Freak, you need a copy of your birth certificate to get a cab driver’s license, a realtor’s license and dozens of other things today.
.
Try to explain how Obama could have possibly gone his entire life getting driver’s licenses and so on without a birth certificate.

There is a reason economics is taught under “social sciences”. The results are to be mathematical precise and absolutely wrong on the result.

“”Hence, this is why I am calling Steve Forbes a trust fund kid idiot.”
.
Because someone was dumb enough to let you alone in a room with a computer and a connection to the internet”
.
You are saying that I am using Steve Forbes computer?
.

Freeinpa and his tired ‘liberals are lying to themselves’. Any argument – worst comeback ever.

“The war wasn’t a government stimulus but actually a duty the federal government is to perform.”
.
It was not done with the intention of being a stimulus package, but was.
.
“Fortunately we did not have the “cut & run” liberals of today…”.
.
No, we had “cut & run” conservatives who did not want us in World War II as we do today who want to cut & run away from Libya.
.
“There were rare tax changes or regulations enacted while big business earned big profits, paid high wages and pumped out goods and services t the middle class.”
.
What are you writing about?
.
Taxes were up to 90% during the second world war in the US and the federal government limited what food you could buy in a store, how much gasoline you could use and even, with my grandfather as one of the civilian volunteers, mandated that people turn off all of their lights during air raid drills or faced criminal arrest by an auxiliary police officer.
.
“Full employment caused by the war and high savings due to the depression led to a burst of buying of homes, cars, appliances and other goods denied by the hardship of the war and depression.”
.
Personal savings during the Great Depression was close to $0!
.
“Full employment caused by the war and high savings due the government spending money during the war after almost $0 savings during the Great Depression led to a burst of buying of homes, cars, appliances and other goods denied by the hardship of the war and depression.”
.
You know nothing about US History of the 20th Century.
.
Since the federal government required rationing of food, my father, then a boy – much like many other twelve year olds at that time – raised chickens in former barn used as a garage to get fresh eggs for the family since meat was limited by the number of coupons the federal government decided for you that you should have.
.
At the end of the war my grandmother took the chickens to be butchered. Other women saw the chicken meat and demanded that they buy it instead of her until the butcher told her that she brought the chicken there herself.
.
If the Tea Party were around during World War II, you would be cheering on the Mafia and other organized crime groups which ran black market goods, telling the air raid wardens to fck themselves and go to jail dressed like George Washington.
.
World War II was a very liberal time in American History.
.
Women went to work.
.
Blacks were, finally, sent into combat preparing them to fight side by side with whites a few years later.
.
Freak, you would have been joining the Bund if you thought like you do now back then.
.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_American_Bund

.

There is a reason economics is taught under “social sciences”.”
.
Because it is the study of human beings, not inanimate objects or non-human animals such biologists study.

No what I am saying is you constantly test positive for stupid. No matter how much you bold face or quote wikipedia. You remain a failure

And look, Freak, the Bund even had many American Flags as they wanted us to join Germany in the War instead.
.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:German_American_Bund_NYWTS.jpg
.
You like pretty pictures of American flags.

High Stakes Flirting with Debt Ceiling Caps: Add a Zero to the Last House-Induced Plunge
.
http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/2011/04/high_stakes_fli/

“You remain a failure”
.
Oh, yeah.
.
Well, you’re using Steve Forbes Computer while wearing a tin foil hat!
.
(I have no idea what these mean, but, Freak uses them as insults).
.
And you’ve got plastic freezer bags on your ears!
.
(Wearing leftover wrappings is, apparently, a serious insult in the wingnut community along with using Steve Forbes computer)

“No, we had “cut & run” conservatives who did not want us in World War II as we do today who want to cut & run away from Libya.”

.
Conveniently you skipped over Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, Iraq and Afghanistan. That’s right the left was protesting those. Or maybe it was that great union-based education you received. That’s right you dropped out.
.
“Personal savings during the Great Depression was close to $0!
.
My post said due to the Depression not during. So now you failed history, economics and now reading.

You are ten kinds of stupid not matter what you bold face or quote from wikipedia. You remain nothing but a arrogant numbskull continually trying to impress us with brilliance and all we get fro you is stupidity.

Actually, i didn’t say the repubs do it too. What i asked was, why were deficits not a problem when the repubs are in power, but only become a problem when a dem is in power.
.
Please re-read. I pointed out t hypocricy on the right. And waited for an intelligent response.
.
Might have been my mistake – but i still have hope you can explain why Cheney cansay Deficits don’t matter – but get shrill about the deficits now that Obama is in office.
.
Please. Enlighten me.

“because it is the study of human beings, not inanimate objects or non-human animals such biologists study.

.
It is not the study of human beings.

Economics-”The social science that deals with the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services and with the theory and management of economies or economic systems.”
.
Human beings- “of or pertaining to the social aspect of people

.
Which places you in this group:Homo erectus – extinct species of primitive hominid with upright stature but small brain.

“Conveniently you skipped over Korea…”
.
The War started by liberal Democrat Harry Truman
.
“… Vietnam, the Gulf War, Iraq …”
.
“..and Afghanistan…”
.
There was very, very little objection to the war in Afghanistan.
.
“The That’s right the left was protesting those..”
.
Harry Truman was protesting against himself?
.
Republican Eisenhower ended the Korean War.
.
Please send a link to:
.
1)When a significant portion (as in more than 25%) of self identified liberals protested against the Afghan War.
.
2)When Harry Truman protested against himself or had opposition among Democrats.
.
3) How a significant portion (as in more than 25%) of self identified liberals protested against the Vietnam War before 1968 when it became clear that we were loosing and had nothing to gain.
.
You’ve conveniently re-written history
.
Before 1968, there were extremely few people who objected to wars we were in and nearly all of the anti-war people before then were conservative Republicans.
.
Now, we have, once again, just like before World War II cut and run Republicans.
.
Where is your “support our troops” pin?
.
Where’s your American flag?
.
Why aren’t you running up and down the street shouting “ U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!”
.
Don’t you love America?
.
No, you only love the right wing of the Republican Party and nothing else in America.

-”The social science that deals with the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services and with the theory and management of economies or economic systems.”
.
Human beings- “of or pertaining to the social aspect of people.

.
You produce goods or services asocially?
.
I provide services and consume goods socially.
.
I guess you must be drinking alone.
.
Normal people don’t like to do that.

Wow, O’Donnell’s irony goes right over freeper’s little voices in his head.

freeper: Quick, I can’t refute the article Ivy_B posted. I will drop in an uncited statement and change the subject.

Adam, never mention Rick Santorum and animals in the same sentence. I gets him all aroused.

I was ignoring this story until Jon Stewart took on the absurdity of the overreaction. Leave to Stewart to shine a light on the shallowness of the traditional media.

Neon toenails. Think about it, we have a lavender Tellytubby and now toenail polish leading us into the Glen Beck, Rick Santorum fantasy world.

freeper: You like those NRO commentators. Why don’t you help Katherine Jean Lopez through her midlife virginity crisis.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-04-13/jennifer-block-on-bei-bei-shuais-feticide-ordeal/?cid=hp:beastoriginalsL2
.
“After a pregnant Indiana woman tried to kill herself—and lost her newborn—the state threw her in prison.”
.
http://mtcowgirl.com/2011/04/13/schweitzer-burns-gop-with-red-hot-cattle-iron/
.
Don’t always agree with Schweitzer, but he really knows how to get the attention of the opposition.
.
Schweitzer Burns GOP with Red-Hot Cattle Iron
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It was a bad day for a few hapless Republican legislators in Montana Wednesday. These young guns from the GOP, who had excitedly volunteered, upon entering the legislature, to carry some of the flagship legislation for the Tea Party, got their hind ends burned with a red-hot poker.

Indeed, their dreams of legislative glory ended in a blaze of smoke and fire on the steps of the Montana Capitol today as the Governor pulled out his branding iron and burned a giant VETO onto a pile of Tea Party bills. It is unlikely that the GOP will be able to override any of the vetoes.

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Boy howdy. That’s how we do it here in the west.

For the crazy, right wing, reactionary file:
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Original Fox headline was GWU Suicide Tragically Concides with Obama Speech.
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I had saved a posting from the Fox website that headed an article linking Obama’s speech with a suicide at the campus at the same time he delivered his speech. I thought that was pretty crazy. There had been some criticism. The article has been removed. Of course, no apology from Fox to either Obama or the family of the suicide.
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It is amazing how few mention that Fox and fellow right wingers are busy trying to rid themselves of many of the crazies they funded and pampered in preparation to try to find someone on the Republican side who might be actually electable.
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http://freethinker.co.uk/2011/04/11/teenage-rape-victim-was-forced-to-confess-her-%E2%80%98sin%E2%80%99-in-a-fundie-baptist-church/
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A 15-year-old rape victim was forced to stand terrified before her entire Baptist congregation in New Hampshire to confess her “sin” of having become pregnant.
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Tina Anderson is shown on March 23, 1998 with her newborn daughter.
What Tina Anderson wasn’t allowed to tell the congregation was that she had become pregnant after she was raped by a church deacon, a man twice her age.

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This fits right in with the beliefs of some reactionary Republicans about rape and the victims.

Can’t help but seeing Freep changing the subject after being pinned down by facts, subject being WWII. I don’t really see what Vietnam, Korea and Afghanistan gotta do with that, completely different era’s. Cuttn’ ‘n runnin’ birther!

Something one of our intrepid reporters at Swampland could follow-up on rather than the horse race:
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/04/mine-disaster-one-year-la_n_844724.html
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West Virginia Mine Disaster: One Year Later, Safety Overhaul Stalled
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Despite the widespread media coverage and passionate speeches, a bill that would have made it easier to shut down problem mines and increased penalties for serious safety violations was quietly defeated in early December. As The Huffington Post reported that month, the legislation died due to a combination of inattention, intensive lobbying efforts by a powerful industry and mine workers’ lack of political clout.
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Though West Virginia’s then-governor Joe Manchin pledged that he would “move quicker than the feds,” the state has failed to pass any mine safety package. His successor, Earl Ray Tomblin, did sign two mine safety bills but they were watered down almost completely — instead of requiring changes, they called for studies — reports the Charleston Daily Mail.
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In the past year, the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration has ramped up its inspections, finding 4,600 violations at more than 200 mines across the country. But mine safety advocates and reformers say that the agency still lacks crucial powers. MSHA could lose a court battle with Massey Energy over whether the Upper Big Branch mine owners can undertake their own investigation into the fatal accident.
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And though Massey has a history of environmental problems and dozens of mining deaths, the company’s executives have escaped serious punishment. Notorious CEO Don Blankenship retired in December and is due to receive a $12-million pay package. That same month, more than 18 top Massey officials refused to speak to investigators.

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/08/mine-communications-gear-msha_n_846561.html
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64 Percent Of U.S. Mines Lack Communications Gear: MSHA
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This is more important than The Donald’s latest publicity stunt. More people could die. The unions have been driven out of most of the mines. It is the owners who have the power. Another testament to the caring free market.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/14/goldman-sachs-senate-panel-accusations_n_848978.html
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Goldman Sachs Accused By Senate Panel Of Misleading Clients, Manipulating Markets

I just thought it might be worth it to mention how creatively teleprompters, Obama’s heritage, birthers, and contrasting views were all rolled into one.
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For some reason, I thought maybe there might be a flag behind him with 57 stars on it.
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Forgive me, please…

…oh, and a flag pin…

“The largest stimulus package in history, as Robert said, was World War II.”
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There are a multitude of factors that make the spending on WWII much different than Obama’s “stimulus” PS. As the article I posted earlier said, it’s not a matter of a lack of dollars, it’s a lack of confidence. Business doesn’t trust Obama, and he shows them time and time again that they shouldn’t trust him. Latest example: his speech on the deficit.
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Then there is the inescapable fact that in WWII almost 100% of the money spent went to jobs and companies here in the US. Steel, mining, smelting, forging, building each and every part of the equipment was done here.
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That is no longer the case. In fact, most, if not all of the jobs and materials are now coming from China and other countries. So, our spending, even when we do spend on building infrastructure, which very, very little stimulus money went to infrastructure, goes to China. Therefore, the money is not collected by a US company that hires an employee here, that pays taxes here, that invests his money here, that buys goods here, that buys US savings bonds. No, that money leaves the country and employs workers in China.
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So, stop wasting your time posting history and theory. The reality is what it is. You want to build things here and hire people here, then you are going to have to put up with some pollution (right now we are just outsourcing that to China also) and you are going to have to have cheap and reliable energy. We don’t have the will for either.
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Just enjoy being green and recycle something. Save some electricity and shut off your computer. Do your part to save the planet.

PS, As this summary states economic theories are constantly changing. Perhaps that is because situations and economies are not static and every era brings about a new set of circumstances. There are a few things that remain. If you take elements such as iron ore, rubber, cotton, sand, leather and apply some craftsmanship you can produce something much more valuable that the basic materials, like an automobile and that produces wealth.
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Government spending on cubical workers does not produce wealth; it destroys it.
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http://www.frbsf.org/publications/education/greateconomists/grtschls.html
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Economic theories are constantly changing. Keynesian theory, with its emphasis on activist government policies to promote high employment, dominated economic policymaking in the early post-war period. But, starting in the late 1960s, troubling inflation and lagging productivity prodded economists to look for new solutions. From this search, new theories emerged:

Monetarism updates the Quantity Theory, the basis for macroeconomic analysis before Keynes. It reemphasizes the critical role of monetary growth in determining inflation.

Rational Expectations Theory provides a contemporary rationale for the pre-Keynesian tradition of limited government involvement in the economy. It argues that the market’s ability to anticipate government policy actions limits their effectiveness.

Supply-side Economics recalls the Classical School’s concern with economic growth as a fundamental prerequisite for improving society’s material well-being. It emphasizes the need for incentives to save and invest if the nation’s economy is to grow.

“As this summary states economic theories are constantly changing. Perhaps that is because situations and economies are not static and every era brings about a new set of circumstances>”
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Well, all academic topics have this.
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Medical theories are constantly changing. Perhaps that is because situations and medicine are not static and every era brings about a new set of circumstances..
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Psychological theories are constantly changing. Perhaps that is because situations and psychology are not static and every era brings about a new set of circumstances…
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Name any topic, including the study of history and this statement is true.
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For medical, however, there will never be a time when they will discover that greasy cheesebergers, french fries cigarettes and whiskey are health food. What will evolve over the years is a better understanding of how much of what factors contribute to ill or good health.
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“Government spending on cubical workers does not produce wealth; it destroys it.”
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This article makes no such statement at all.
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“Monetarism updates the Quantity Theory, the basis for macroeconomic analysis before Keynes. It reemphasizes the critical role of monetary growth in determining inflation.”
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Monetarism has been incorporated into modern Keynesian Economics.
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Only a small percent of economists accept Friedman’s theories that nothing besides monetary policy matters.
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“Rational Expectations Theory provides a contemporary rationale for the pre-Keynesian tradition of limited government involvement in the economy. It argues that the market’s ability to anticipate government policy actions limits their effectiveness.”
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Rational Expectation Theory is a subset of Neoclassical Economics who never accepted Keynes. They are a small percent of PhD Economists. They are constantly re-writing algorithms to attempt to disassociate the success of government policies to attempt to prove that they are coincidental and not caused by government action and have done so with limited credibility.
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Supply-side Economics never existed in even one university in any country in the world. It was a theory developed among conservative politicians with the assistance of Milton Friedman and Arthur Laffer.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Laffer
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Supply side removed without any statistical evidence the fact that savings is not equal to investment, a tenant of Keynesian economics.
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When one “invests” in the stock market one does not purchase a building for a company, one does not buy a copy machine for the company. One just changes hands of stock for money. The Stock and Bond Markets – except for IPOs- are just a lateral wealth transfer adding no new capital to the economy.
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Keynes had shown two things ignored by the political theory of Supply side Economics:
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1) The largest source of capital comes from retained earning not new investment.
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2) Companies with the most retained earnings due to previous profitability attract the most new investment.
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So, as Supply side attempts to get as much money into the hands of people who will purchase stocks, bonds and other instruments of the secondary market to increase the value of stocks and bonds only Keynesians are getting the money into the hands of consumers so that the companies will remain profitable and that high profits will draw in more capital matching retained earnings.
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The 1970s shock to Keynesian Economics was the Oil Crisis of 1973 and of 1979 – 1980.
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Both Monetarists and Keynesians could use the anti-inflation tools, but doing so would cause unemployment or use the stimulus, which would increase inflation. They could not handle both at once. For both Keynesians and Monetarists it would be like trying both put out a fire with water and to keep a place dry. You could do one or the other, but not both.
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No economic theory to this day, including Supply Side even claims to be able to solve both recession and inflation at the same time. But, since they are both caused by an increase in oil prices - and hypothetically other commodety price increases - all economists support green energy to protect our economy.
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Psychiatric Meltdown,
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Please do not use hallucinogenic drugs while reading articles you post. You dreamed of seeing a statement that Keynesian Economics failed or is outdated and that government workers will ruin the world, but, it is not there.
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Also, during recessions, the government hires road workers, construction crews and other laborers, not cubicle dwellers .
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I studied Economics for four years – not just one or two articles here and there like you – so, if there is anything else I can teach you, I teach you at the only price stingy right wingers will pay for education: for free.
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Just thank Democrats when I am done teaching you or make a donation to the progressive Democrats congressional fund.