tagged w/ Voodoo Economics
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Was the Civil War a Pyrrhic victory?
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http://1lovejoy.wordpress.com/2011/01/31/the-republican-partythe-party-of-big-government/
Ever since I could remember, the Republican Party always accused the Democratic Party of being a bunch of ‘tax and spend liberals’. This strategy continues to serve the Republican Party well to this day. However, those in the know can rebuke this agreement to its core. If you are a conservative, you may want to take a seat before you continue to read this blog.
Since the advent of the twentieth century, almost all Republican administrations’ have expanded the role of government. By expanding the role of government, they raise the national debt to unparalleled proportions. Most people are under the illusion that Republicans reduce the role of government in our lives. However, I beg to differ because I have history and economics on my side.
First, The Reagan Administration ran the deficit up to it highest level. The reason is that he put all the money into defense spending and cutting taxes for wealthy Americans and Corporations. He called this theory “Trickle Down Economics”. This theory states that the very rich will benefit the most which will then give the economy a boost to provide for the rest of us poor souls. Needless to say that history proved this theory a disaster. In 1980 when George H.W. Bush (41st) was running as a Presidential Candidate for the Republican Party (he later became Ronald Reagan’s Vice President) he said that “Trickle Down Economics” was “Voodoo Economics”. How prophetic those words had become because on October 19th 1987, the stock market crashed (the day was soon to be called “Black Monday”). It took two years for the economy to recover. Consequently, George H.W. Bush became the 41st President of the United States and followed the same “Voodoo Economics” his predecessor had created. However, it was those same principles that cost him the 1992 Presidential Election.
In 2000, President Clinton’s Administration cleaned up all the damage that the Reagan-Bush Administration did to the American economy. The Clinton Administration used common sense and cut wasteful spending in all government departments. This truly was the age of a meaner, leaner government that the Republicans always preached about but was carried out by a Democrat. The U.S economy hadn’t had a surplus since President Andrew Jackson (the seventh President of the United States, a Democrat).
The economic future looked bright until the flawed election of George W. Bush (43rd). He inherited a surplus and he spent it just as fast as he could on two wars, expansion of more government agencies, tax cuts, and a bunch of tireless wasteful spending. And before you knew it, we had another record deficit that exceeded the Reagan-Bush Administration combined. Moreover, Bush 43rd Administration failed to do what was necessary to stop the “Great Recession”. In addition, Bush 43rd administration enjoyed a majority Republican Congress that approved all of his budgets with no questions asked.
Recently the American people elected a Democrat (President Barack Obama) to get us out of the mess that we allowed another Republican Administration to get away with. When will the American electorate learn that the real party of tax and spend is the G.O.P. and not the Democrats? As history as a guide, it does not look good for the Republican Party. And I didn’t even mention the S&L bailout involving the Bush Family when Bush 41 was President.
The current Republican Party is good on several issues; fighting the culture wars, starting wars, lowering taxes for the very wealthy and corporations, misinformation of facts, and raising the national debt. In a nut shell, that is the Republican Party. And we, the American Public are to be blamed. When things are good we elect a Republican but when things go shitty we elect a Democrat to get us out of our economic fix. We demand more from Democrats than from the other party in a shorter time. This is totally unfair at every level.
Haven’t we learned anything about the Republicans/Conservatives? They care about their bottom line. They will use whatever tactics they deem necessary to control power and get over on the little guy. Republican/Conservatives believe in the “Free Market”. They do not care if you suffer or get hurt. Wake up America and realized that Republicans/Conservatives think that you are “Suckers”.http://1lovejoy.wordpress.com/2011/01/31/the-republican-partythe-party-of-big-governmen... more
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That pungent stench of familiarity.
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At the 100th anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s birth, his most important legacy has gone largely overlooked. Reagan helped to put a caricature of politics at the centre of the national debate and it remains there to this day.At the 100th anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s birth, his most important legacy has... more
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By Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
Sunday marked the 100th anniversary of the birth of B-movie actor-turned-conservative president, Ronald Wilson Reagan. On the eve of the centennial, economist Yves Smith talked Reaganomics on the Real News Network. Smith argues that Reagan’s real legacy is the deregulation of the U.S. economy that set the stage for the economic meltdown of the late 2000s:
But [with] financial services, you have companies that have state guarantees. That’s the bottom line with the banking system. Ever since the 1930s, we in advanced economies have made the decision we’re not going to let the banking system fail. So if you don’t regulate banks, you have set up the situation that we have now, which is that you have socialized losses and privatized gains. And what have we seen come out of that? Financial crises. When we had a heavily regulated financial system, we had nearly 40 years of hardly any financial crises. When we started deregulating the banks, you saw increasing in frequency and increasing in significance financial crises directly resulting from that.
Spot of Tea?
Ordinary Britons are rallying to the defense of the welfare state. Faced with the deepest public spending cuts in living memory, citizens are taking to the streets to force deadbeat companies to pay their taxes, Johann Hari reports in The Nation. Their federal government has pledged to slash £7 billion in public spending. Cuts to subsidized housing alone will force 200,000 people out of their homes.
A group of friends in a local pub were galvanized by the news that Vodafone, one of the UK’s leading mobile phone companies, owed an astonishing £6 billion in back taxes. Calling themselves UK Uncut, the friends staged a protest outside Vodafone headquarters in London. The meme went viral. In the following days, several Vodafone stores were temporarily paralyzed by peaceful sit-ins.
Hari argues that the success of UK Uncut can teach American progressives a lot about how to build a grassroots counterpart to the Tea Party.
Persistent vegetative states
Big or small, liberal or conservative, state governments are screwed. That’s the upshot of Paul Starr’s latest essay in The American Prospect. Unemployment remains at recession levels and there is little political will to raise taxes. States can’t deficit spend like the feds do. So, the only option is public service cuts, which means firing teachers, doctors, firefighters, and other public workers.
Starr argues that the economic stimulus was a good start, but one that didn’t go far enough. As part of the stimulus, the federal government picked up a larger share of the states’ Medicaid costs. This was a good thing, in Starr’s view, because the extra federal dollars saved jobs while providing health care for the poor. Starr argues that state budget woes during recessions are so predictable, and the consequences so dire, that the Medicaid subsidy should kick in automatically whenever unemployment rises past a predetermined threshold.
Anti-union bill dead in CO
A bill to end collective bargaining for public employees in Colorado died in committee this week, according to Joseph Boven of the Colorado Independent. The bill would have abolished an executive order signed by former Gov. Bill Ritter, which gave state employees the right to organize. If the bill had been enacted, this kind of organizing would become illegal. This bill, sponsored by Sen. Shawn Mitchell (R-Broomfield), was just one of many attempts by Republicans to scapegoat public sector unions for what Mitchell calls the “financial Armageddon” facing state governments.
Smurfs rob Moms
“Smurfing” is money laundering slang for recruiting a lot of low-level accomplices to move money in untraceably small increments. But the word may soon have a new derogatory connotation.
Kevin Drum of Mother Jones reports that a kids’ video game, Smurfs’ Village, is depleting parents’ bank accounts, one wagon of Smurfberries at a time. Capcom’s game offers kids the chance to build the village from scratch. Along the way, they can pay real money for in-game resources. One mother was shocked to receive a $1,400 bill from Apple because her daughter bought innumerable imaginary props, such as $19 “buckets of snowflakes,” and a $100 “wagon of Smufberries.” The purchases require a password, but critics say it’s too easy for clever kids to circumvent the security. As Drum says, if adults want to waste their real dollars on virtual Farmville paraphernalia, that’s fine, but such a racket has no place in kids’ games.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the economy by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Audit for a complete list of articles on economic issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Mulch, The Pulse and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.By Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
Sunday marked the 100th anniversary... more
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A former adviser to President Ronald Reagan told a news radio program recently that Republicans "can't get the job done" with their redux of the 1994 "Contract with America."
"[If] you're exempting two-thirds of the budget and you're focusing only on non-defense discretionary, which actually is only about 500 billion or 15 percent of the budget, it's pretty obvious you can't get the job done," said David Stockman, a former adviser to President Reagan, in a recent interview with National Public Radio.(http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130126335)
"Some economic analysts have said that if you do that, that by the year 2020, the government wouldn't have enough money to spend on anything except for Medicare, Social Security and defense if it's lucky," summarized interviewer Guy Raz. "Do you think that sounds about right?"
"Yes, I do," Stockman replied. "We couldn't afford the Bush tax cuts when they were put in in 2001, 2003. Now, we're - eight years later, we're trillions in additional debt later, we're two unfinanced wars later, we're a trillion dollars of stimulus spending later, 800 billion of TARP, so it's pretty obvious if we couldn't afford them back then, in no way, shape or form can we even dream about affording them now."
Republicans and a group of conservative Democrats have, in recent weeks, championed the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy as a driver of economic growth, even as most economists show the program widening America's deficit by at least $70 billion per year over the next decade.
Story continues below...
Stockman told NPR that all Republican-proposed exemptions considered, the party's "pledge" to America would leave so little room for cuts that national parks like Mount Rushmore would have to be closed, even though the GOP's actual document [PDF link] carries pictures of public parks.
According to a recent CNN poll, a whopping 69 percent of Americans believe tax breaks for individuals making over $200,000 and families making over $250,000 annually should expire at the end of this year, as the Bush administration had planned.
Eighty-one percent favor extending them for Americans making less than that, which both parties largely agree with.
There is strong agreement between Democrats and Republicans on continuing the tax cuts for individuals earning less than $200,000 per year and families earning less than $250,000 – those making more are set to have their taxes return to Bill Clinton-era levels unless Republicans and dissenting Democrats get their way.
Under Obama’s proposal, individual income above $200,000 would be taxed at 39.6 percent rather than 36 percent come January – even the wealthy would continue to pay the same lower rate for their earnings below that figure.
President Obama has described Republicans' efforts to block the expiration of tax cuts for the wealthy as standing in the way of continuing tax cuts for the middle class.
According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, extending all the Bush tax cuts would yield economic growth worth only 10 to 40 percent of each dollar lost in government revenues. But the projections note that continuing the breaks for low income earners would be more stimulative as they would spend more of it than the wealthy.
The CBO added Thursday that extending the tax cuts for all but the rich would likely boost economic growth in the short-run but could hamper it over the next decade as the deficit would rise to 8 percent of GDP by 2020.
Stockman also told NPR that he believes taxes will have to be raised on the vast majority of Americans, whether they like it or not, adding that Obama is being dishonest when he pledges a tax cut for middle-class USA.
The economy is weak because of our irresponsible fiscal and monetary policies over the last 10, 20 or even 30 years, " he said. "And it's going to keep getting weaker unless we face up to the problem. So, yes, it's the chicken and egg. If we cut spending and raise taxes, it may slow down the economy even more, but that's unfortunately the choice that we face."
During an interview with Fox News Sunday, House minority leader John Boehner implied that American voters are not yet ready for real budget solutions, which is why the GOP plan leaves so much discretionary spending on the table.
"It seems that Boehner is content to leave the American people uncertain as to what the Republican's would do to help the economy besides extending the Bush tax cuts," CBS summarized.(http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/08/69-percent-rescind-bush-tax-cuts-rich/)
Republicans, long supporters of doing away with Social Security as a national safety net, could effectively end the program and mandate private retirement savings accounts based on the stock market, according to a Baltimore Sun analysis of the party's pledge.
"Buried in the twenty-one-page document is the real pledge: a discussion of 'reviewing' Social Security and other entitlement programs and a commitment to a program 'requiring a full accounting of Social Security,'" The Nation noted.(http://www.thenation.com/blog/155001/gops-pledge-america-would-end-privatizing-social-security)
"DC bureaucrat-speak, to be sure," John Nichols continued. "But it is not hard to translate."
He concludes: "Either the pledge is an outline for massive new debts and deficits or it is a roadmap to the privatization of Social Secuity, Medicare and Medicaid.
"To suggest otherwise would be to engage in what another George Bush once described as 'voodoo economics.'"A former adviser to President Ronald Reagan told a news radio program recently that... more
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