The Real Deal: How We Came To The Budget Crossroads Part 2

Contrary to popular opinion, creating a deficit is easier than many people think. A deficit is the difference between how much money has been spent and how much has been brought in as revenue. Deficits happen all the time and are not usually a big problem, as long as the government has enough money remaining. But when the government spends significantly more than it brings in on a regular basis, not only does the deficit increase exponentially, so does the national debt.

During the final years of the Clinton administration, the government spent less money than it brought in, which created an annual surplus and the projected surpluses for that the second Bush administration. Government projections issued in 2001 showed that if we continued along the path of spending that we were on during the Clinton administration we would have potentially had upwards of half a trillion dollars in surplus.

Despite having only a multi-billion dollar surplus at the beginning of his term in office, Bush decided to fund two simultaneous wars, a multi-billion dollar Medicare drug benefit plan at the same time he cut top rate taxes, corporate taxes, the estate tax and many others that were aimed at the very wealthy. The tax cuts alone cost over $1.8 trillion, while the Iraq and Afghan wars (along with other defense spending) cost nearly $1.5 trillion. Bush continued to spend more money while systematically reducing the government’s annual revenue with more tax cuts, drastically increasing the deficit and the national debt.

                                               (New York Times)

And where did the ever-flowing stream of money come from? While the government was handing out money to the rich, it had to borrow, increasingly from other countries, namely China and Japan, to be able to continue funding the spending spree. The reasoning behind the additional tax cuts was based on the “trickle-down” theory in economics, whereby if the rich spend more with their increased revenue, and the money they spend will in turn “trickle down” to the less wealthy. This same theory was used as the basis behind the Reagan cuts back in the 1980’s. And as with Reagan’s cuts, Bush’s new cuts did the exact opposite to the economy.

The continued spending of the Bush administration, along with all of the tax cuts, dug the country into such a deep hole that it will take decades to bring the debt out of the red. One of the surefire ways to increase the government’s annual revenue reduce the annual deficit and in turn the dept, is to increase the taxes on the rich. Along with closing tax loopholes for large corporations and the wealthy the government could consistently bring in billions if not trillions of dollars that would have been given to the rich as if it were pocket change. And with a solid line of revenue, the government could put more focus on refining Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and helping create jobs to return the economy back to level ground.

Diving! Diving!

It looks like Herman Cain’s presidential bid may be slowing to an end. Before Politico reported the first accusation of sexual harassment faced by Cain, he had his rise in the polls just like the other forerunners. But, like most of them, his numbers started to drop after the second and third accusations came to light. Now with the most intimate allegation to date it looks like he may not be able to surface from this one.

According to the Cain camp, he is “reassessing” his 2012 presidential campaign.  But while Cain is deciding whether to throw in the towel or keep getting kicked around, numerous conservative politicians are hinting that he should wave the white flag and call it quits. At this point in his campaign he hasn’t proven very well that he can do much other than recite his “9-9-9” speech from memory. While his flubbed stance on Obama’s handling of Libya was only part of his failed attempt on a form of foreign policy, his flip-flopping on more conservative topics such as abortion lost him standing among far-right voters.

With the first primaries beginning in January, he might as well save himself any more shame and embarrassment and leave with his head still firmly attached to hi shoulders.

The Real Deal: How We Came To The Budget Crossroads

This is the first of a multi-part posting. I will continue to post on other topics between sections. 

Since the recent failure of Congress’s debt reduction supercommittee to come to a cross-isle agreement to cut $1.2 trillion off of the national debt, there has been more rhetoric coming out of the Republican camp blaming Democrats for failing to compromise. It’s true that they stood their ground, but it was the Republicans who wouldn’t budge on one of the most heated topics in today’s political scene: taxes.

The Republican party of the 21^st century has become the bully in the classroom and the personal bodyguard of the rich kids. They have insisted on continually increasing the amount that multi-millionaire and billionaires take from the government by spending invisible money to fund tax cuts for the wealthy and large corporations and then cry wolf when they are blamed for the increases in the national debt and deficit.

Ronald Reagan’s large across-the-board tax cut that brought the top tax rate down to 50% was the beginning of the Republican party’s tax crusade. Believing the word of supply-side economists that the wealthy would use the cut to invest more, and in turn boost the economy, the GOP continued on their quest to give more to the wealthy. But instead of boosting the economy, the new cuts brought the deficit to a new high because the country was still reeling from the recession of the 1970’s. And with the passing of another tax reform in 1986, the top tax rate was brought down even further to 28%.

When George H. W. Bush came into office he realized that things needed to be fixed to fight off the increasing deficit. Once in office he pushed the top rate back up to 31% and included surtaxes on yachts, jets and luxury sedans. The increase in the tax rate and the inclusion of the new surtaxes helped bring the economy back up from its knees. Despite his efforts to fix the quickly sinking economy, he broke off from the rest of his party’s belief system, which ended up costing him the election to Bill Clinton.

During his time in office, Clinton took the bull by the horns and worked to reduce the deficit in major ways. Instead of relying on the failed supply-side economic theory and pushing more of the weight onto the middle and lower classes, he worked to balance the government’s budget and started to pay off the national debt. In 1993 he pushed the top tax rate up to 40% and increased the corporate tax rate to 35%, which in turn brought the economy to a new high. Wages increase, over 11 million jobs were created and the federal budget was headed to a controllable level.

But in 1997 the GOP tax crusaders returned with a vengeance. Almost all of these anti-tax politicians had signed the now infamous anti-tax pledge created by Republican strategist Grover Norquist. They effectively brought taxes so low that the wealthiest 400 Americans now make a yearly average of over $345 million and they only pay less than 17% of their income in taxes. That number is not only 40% lower than it was over a decade ago, it is lower than a bus driver who makes $26,000 a year. These tax-rate cuts have not only widened the inequality gap between classes they have done nothing to help the economy, as was suggested by the creators.

                                          (Tim Dickinson, Rolling Stone Magazine)

It’s All In The Hair

It seems that Mitt Romney's hair is a very big thing these days. Some say that it is too perfect and stiff, while others say it’s just right because it embodies the motto of the Just For Men: Touch of Grey hair color treatment, “Show your experience and energy.” And it even has a name: The Mitt.

Yes, everyone wants to look good, and your hair is very important when it comes to looks. Ron Paul doesn’t even have much hair at this point in his life and no one is tweeting about how it makes him look old, and Michele Bachman looks like a housewife from Mad Men (she has spoken about how wives should be more submissive to their husbands). Focus on the important things like facts and opinions, real life impacts rather than tooting and hooting about how many hairs on Romney’s head are sticking out during a debate.

The Fox and the Newt

Everyone who has some sense of understanding when it comes to politics and the media knows that Fox News is almost as bad as the Republicans themselves when it comes to false information. While Republicans call every news outlet other than Fox the “liberal media” or the “liberal machine,” courtesy of the Hermanator, they tout Fox news and its crew of maniacal commentators who are driven to spread the false word of the Grand Old Party.

Studies have been done that reveal that people who primarily use Fox as their main media outlet are not only less informed and misinformed about politics and world news, they re also more likely to believe the false information that they are given. A recent poll done by Fairleigh Dickinson University surveyed residents of New Jersey compared people who watch no news at all to those who primarily watched Fox News. They found that "people who watch Fox News are 18-points less likely to know that Egyptians overthrew their government" and "6-points less likely to know that Syrians have not yet overthrown their government." In total, only 53% of respondents knew that Hosni Mubarak had been overthrown by the Egyptian people, and 48% knew that Syrians were in the process of trying to overthrow their own.

A study conducted by the University of Maryland last year showed that viewers of Fox News were “significantly more likely” to believe:

--Most economists estimate the stimulus caused job losses (12 points more likely)

--Most economists have estimated the health care law will worsen the deficit (31 points)

--The economy is getting worse (26 points)

--Most scientists do not agree that climate change is occurring (30 points)

--The stimulus legislation did not include any tax cuts (14 points)

--Their own income taxes have gone up (14 points)

--The auto bailout only occurred under Obama (13 points)

--When TARP came up for a vote most Republicans opposed it (12 points)

--And that it is not clear that Obama was born in the United States (31 points)

While viewers of Fox News are predominantly right-leaning conservatives and vote Republican, Democratic viewers are also likely to believe the false information given through Fox News but less so than Republicans voters.

Newt Gingrich is also making news with his comments on child labor laws. During an appearance at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government last Friday Gingrich called the laws “truly stupid.” He believes that the students who attend schools in poor neighborhoods should be cleaning the school rather than unionized janitors. With the Republicans in Congress blocking any attempt to even consider many portions of Obama’s new economic work package that would have created hundreds of thousands of jobs, Gingrich would rather put the adult janitor out of a job and replace him with a prepubescent schoolchild. With the Republican party’s ongoing tirade proclaiming Obama’s iron fisted sack of the economy, they continue to subliminally convince voters that they are the white knight of the people in some of the world economic times since the Great Depression.

Lies Are Facts, And Facts Are…Um…

As we all know Cain has been trying to play the blame game every time a new sexual harassment accusation came up. Recently, more and more Republicans across the board are blatantly lying, creating facts and twisting words all in the name of politics. Yes, politics has always been a dirty game, but the Republican party of the 21^st century has become a political monster if ever I have seen one.

Claims of Newt Gingrich’s consulting firm, The Gingrich Group (how quaint), receiving up to $1.8 million from mortgage lender Freddie Mac came to light recently came to light. When the media first became aware of the payment and started asking questions, Gingrich did what every modern conniving politician does and tried to soften up the facts and blame the government. During the CNBC debate on November 9^th, Gingrich claimed that Freddie Mac came to him for his “advice as a historian.” Funny thing is that his PhD dissertation in history was “Belgian Education Policy in the Congo: 1945-1960.” How Freddie Mac could have used a history lesson on colonial Belgian educational policies in the Congo during the Cold War is just beyond me.

During the recent Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii President Obama had a Q&A session where the moderator, Boeing Co.’s CEO James McNerney Jr., asked about impediments to foreign investment in the US. Obama answered by saying that the US is still the world’s largest recipient of foreign investments, but that the US has also “been a bit lazy…over the last couple of decades.” Despite the fact that Obama was talking about the lack of US investors trying to bring in foreign trade, the Republican party has jumped in the saddle and started playing with sound bites. Rick Perry has now brought the lazy comment to the limelight in a new ad that has recently aired (video at the end of the article).

On Friday, Herman Cain suggested that the Taliban are involved in Libya’s new government. Even after his flub on Monday when he was asked if he supported Obama’s foreign policy in Libya, he tried to pull another rabbit out of the hat and pulled out a pigeon instead. Since the US invasion of Afghanistan the Taliban have been disorganized and scattered throughout parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan. There is no evidence that the Taliban have spread out past this area especially into Libya.

And in other news, more of the same old claims about Obama’s healthcare law are now featuring celebrities. Pop and gospel singer Pat Boone, the national spokesperson for the conservative 60 Plus Association, is now the headlining voice in Ohio in the Republican’s campaign against Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown. The ad claims that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act involves a board of “unaccountable bureaucrats”, can “ration and deny certain Medicare treatments”, and “cuts $500 billion from Medicare.” The truth is that the 15 voting members of the Independent Payment Advisory Board will consist of doctors and other medical professionals, economists and health care management experts, and representatives for consumers and seniors. The law cannot ration health care or restrict benefits and the $500 billion cut is a cut in the overall growth of Medicare over the next 10 years, not a cut from any current Medicare spending.

Now lets see how lazy Rick Perry has been by not being able to put together a decent ad without having to use someone elses words:

Waterboarding Is No Surfboarding

Previously posted 11/15/11

Saturday’s CBS News/National Journal debate in South Carolina brought up some interesting facts about how the GOP candidates view personal liberties. We all know how they view abortion and anything related to women’s reproductive rights. Saturday brought out a new topic of interest: waterboarding.

President Obama has outright banned waterboarding as a form of interrogation sighting not only human rights violations but also the views of many top military officials who agree that waterboarding is a form of torture, and torture doesn’t make people sing.

Some of the most memorable comments include Hermain Cain’s support of “enhanced interrogation” techniques but didn’t specifically include waterboarding, which as everybody knows has been one of the most debated forms of said techniques. "I will trust the judgment of our military to determine what is torture and what is not torture," Cain said. Asked about waterboarding in particular, he replied, "I would return to that policy. I don't see it as torture, I see it as an enhanced interrogation technique" (Joshua Hersh, Huffington Post 11/14). As with almost all of the GOP “torture” and “enhanced interrogation” are not synonyms for one another, rather they are two completely separate entities.

Michelle Bachman made some very risqué comments concerning Obama’s oversight of the CIA. She told NBC’s “Meet The Press” that the President” is allowing the ACLU to run the CIA” in concerns to waterboarding (Huffington Post, 11/13). She argued in the debate that Obama’s ban on waterboarding was depriving our intelligence services from gaining needed information concerning the continued war on terrorism. And for all the times the GOP candidates have cited high-ranking military officials on topics such as these neither Cain nor Bachman ever mentioned the military’s thoughts on waterboarding.

Despite my Democratic, liberal views on politics I must applaud John Huntsman and Ron Paul on this topic. They were the only two candidates who are outspokenly against waterboarding. They both agree that it is not only a thoroughly ineffective form of interrogation but it also is detrimental to our country’s standing in the eyes of the world. "We diminish our standing in the world and the values that we project, which include liberty, democracy, human rights and open markets, when we torture," Huntsman said. "Waterboarding is torture. We shouldn't torture." (Joshua Hersh, Huffington Post, 11/13) Even Senator John McCain tweeted his dismay over the candidate’s views. “Very disappointed by statements at SC GOP debate supporting waterboarding. Waterboarding is torture.” (Rachel Weiner, Washington Post 11/14))

It seems that the GOP is not only the Party of the Rich (which will be discussed in a future post) but also the Party of Me Myself and I. They were willing to bring the country to its financial and economic knees just so they could give more money to themselves and the overly wealthy, without any concern for the rest of the country and its standing in the international market. If they were willing to do that, maybe we should all look more stringently at what our country may become if one of them becomes the leader of the world’s leading superpower.

And God Said, “Let There Be Pizza”

Previously posted 11/13/11

Everyone knows that hearing voices can be a bad thing. So how can Herman Cain explain how he heard God and he told him that he should run for President? How seriously should we take him? Say you heard a voice and believed it was God, and he told you to run for President, would you?

The man has had no political experience what-so-ever and here he is stating to a bunch of young Republicans in Georgia that the only reason he is doing this is because God told him to do it. He even compared himself to Moses! (http://m.apnews.com/ap/db_6775/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=kRuLxTt4) So did God give him the idea for his “9-9-9” tax plan? Because if he did, that is one of the largest loads any of the candidates has put forth as a potential tax reform. And if that’s the best that God can come up with, well then we should stop listening to him now because he seems to be losing his creative touch.

Sex, the GOP vs. Obama and Sharia Law

Previously posted 11/12/11


It looks like the November 8^th debate can’t be close enough for Herman Cain. That will be the next chance for him to talk about something other than his former restaurant association dealings. It will also be another chance for all of the GOP candidates to repeat for the umpteenth time that they will repeal Obama’s healthcare overhaul.

Michele Bachman has also been bringing back the concept of Sharia Law somehow making its way to become the law of the land, saying that it "would usurp, and put Sharia law over the Constitution, and that would be wrong" (Huffington Post 11/03/11 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/03/michele-bachmann-sharia-law-constitution_n_1074009.html) if it were ever considered in court. The case she was referring to was the recent ruling by a Florida appeals court allowing a conservative Republican judge (yes, a conservative Republican judge) to use Islamic law to decide an issue in a lawsuit between a Tampa mosque and some ousted trustees. Of all the things that the candidates have been complaining about this is the least of anyone’s problems.

Before we get back to The Hermanator, lets mention a few more examples of how the Republican Party needs to learn how to really connect with the country’s population. This past week, all 47 Republicans in the Senate voted against closing debate and voting on a part of Obama’s recent $447 billion plan that would help construction workers. According to the Labor Department, construction workers have a jobless rate of 13.3 percent. In addition, Republicans rejected a plan last month that was designed to create or maintain more than 400,000 jobs for teachers, firefighters and police officers (Rachelle Younglai and John Crawley, Reuters 11/03/11 http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/03/us-usa-congress-jobs-idUSTRE7A27QY20111103?feedType=RSS&feedName=politicsNews&ca=moto).

Now, back to The Hermanator. Since the second sexual harassment accusation was reported, Cain has had some trouble keeping his footing on this issue. First he vehemently denied any misconduct, which is perfectly acceptable for a man running for president. Then, after giving varying remarks on the topic, he decided to accuse Rick Perry’s campaign advisor, Curt Anderson, who was his advisor in a 2004 senate campaign, of leaking the accusations to Politico, who first reported the scandal. Cain also said he would consider legal action against Politico for starting what he has called a “smear campaign” (http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1011/67194_Page2.html). Now Herman, how about you put on your big-boy pants and play politics like all of the other candidates.