A record 18.3% of the nation's total personal income was a payment from the government for Social Security, Medicare, food stamps, unemployment benefits and other programs in 2010. Wages accounted for the lowest share of income — 51.0% — since the government began keeping track in 1929.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Another BO Record!
Being As SImple As Possible
- How big a government do we want? For four decades, federal spending has averaged 21 percent of gross domestic product. An aging population and high health costs mean that average spending, as a share of GDP, will rise by a third or more in the next 10 to 15 years if today's programs simply continue.-- Who deserves government subsidies and how much? About 55 percent of spending goes to individuals, including the elderly, veterans, farmers, students, the disabled and the poor.-- How much, if at all, should social spending be allowed to squeeze national defense?-- If taxes rise, how much and on whom? What taxes would least hurt economic growth?
The president keeps promoting an "adult conversation" about the budget, but that can't happen if the First Adult doesn't play his part. Obama is eager to be all things to all people. He's against the debt and its adverse consequences, but he's for preserving Social Security and Medicare without major changes. He's for "tough cuts," but he's against saying what they are and defending them. He pronounces ambitious goals without saying how they'd be reached. Mainly, he's for scoring political points against Republicans.
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Birther Bush AWOL
If nobody recalled Bush being in the TX National Guard, might that have been a news story??
Dr. Chiyome Fukino, the former director of Hawaii's Department of Health, says she has personally viewed the president's original vital records and verified that he was born in Hawaii.
Does ANYONE that ever reads MSM news doubt at all that were BO a Republican, the required level of evidence would be quite simple??? Show the $#%$@ Birth Certificate!!!! There is no way the MSM would EVER take the word of ANYONE if they could raise any question on something like this against a Republican, and they would NEVER give up!!Former Hawaii Gov. Linda Lingle, a Republican, has been quoted as saying, "I had my health director, who is a physician by background, go personally view the birth certificate in the birth records at the Department of Health. We issued a news release at the time saying the president was, in fact, born at Kapi'olani Hospital in Honolulu, Hawaii. And that is just a fact."
Friday, April 22, 2011
How Bad Can You Hate Palin?
Monday, April 18, 2011
Willie Sutton on Taxes
BO and the Democrats like to lie a lot. If they want to pay for all of their vote buying attempts, the people that make from $50K - $500K are going to carry the freight, especially those that make from $100-$200K.
War is now Civil
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Paying For BO
If we had matched the 1982 recovery rate, today annual per-capita income would be $4,154 higher than before the recession—that's an extra $16,600 for a family of four—and some 15.7 million more Americans would have jobs. That's enough jobs to employ 100% of the 13.5 million Americans currently classified as unemployed. In addition, we would have provided jobs for 30% of both the 2.4 million discouraged or marginally attached workers and the 4.8 million who have totally dropped out of the work force since January 2008.
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Dayton Targets Job Creators in MN
Here we have a mild contrast in press treatment. Mark Dayton in MN has proposed taxes which would make MN the most "wealth unfriendly" state in the US, yet I've yet to hear that called "anti-wealth", or "anti-jobs" in the MSM. In fact, most all the news outlets of an MSM ilk, and especially "unbiased" MPR that draws deeply from the public teat finds it to be a generally positive idea.
Somehow, not so the idea that folks drawing salaries at the public expense, unsurprisingly major supporters of Democrats, government spending in general, higher taxes, and public largesse in most forms taking any sort of a cut at all.
Thousands of teachers, prison guards and students descended on the Wisconsin Capitol for a second day Wednesday to fight a move to take union rights away from government workers in the state that first granted them more than a half-century ago."fight a move to take union rights away". Huh? Can we just have "fight a move to steal more private property from wealthy Minnesotans"??? for the opponents of Dayton's tax plan?? Apparently what Dayton and the Democrats propose is ALWAYS about "the budget", if not "the children", or "the most vulnerable"??? I'm CERTAIN they would NEVER just target some group that doesn't tend to vote for them!!
Apparently, Walker and the Republicans just went out to "take union rights away" for no reason other than the standard Republican meanness of heart. Meanwhile, Dayton and Democrats in MN are working to try to improve "fairness", get "appropriate revenues from those most able to pay", etc, etc.
Could we just have the merest glimmer of an attempt to use similar rhetoric for similar things since we are spending public dollars to get this supposed "no slant, no rant" version of the news???
Never Smile At A Crocodile
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
The Budget is Least of Our Problems
These trends mean, just as it is suffering economically, the working class is getting cut off from the richest sources of social capital: marriage, two-parent families, and church-going. More people are falling into a lower class characterized by men who can't make a minimal living and single women with children. Murray argues that America can maintain its national power even if these trends continue. With a growing lower class "increasingly unsuited for citizenry in a free society," though, it will no longer be the country we once knew.
NYTimes Mythology
Here are two numbers to keep in mind when thinking about the House Republicans’ budget plan: They want to cut spending on government programs over the next decade by $4.3 trillion. And they want to cut tax revenues over the same period by $4.2 trillion.
Actually, the Republicans don't plan to cut ANY government programs over the next decade. They just aim to grow them a lot less rapidly than the Democrats. To claim they want to cut tax REVENUES is just completely stupid -- they want to cut tax RATES and INCREASE tax revenues. ALL the budget assumptions from BOTH sides make assumptions and projections about GROWTH. The fundamental disagreement is about "where does growth come from"? Democrats believe that taxes are a magic form of expense (to the people paying them) that will not affect behavior. While giving people benefits modifies their behavior to vote for those they see as providing the benefit, or increasing the minium wage encourages people to work, and more money given to teachers gives both votes for Democrats and causes the teachers to teach better, taxes are the ONE exception -- no matter how much you raise them, nobody is affected to try to avoid them. Taxes are the magic elixir of Democrats! (well, taxes, union campaign contributions and abortion).
We’ve seen this play before. President Ronald Reagan promised that tax cuts would spur more economic growth and pay for themselves. During his tenure, the deficit hit what was then a peacetime high of 6 percent of gross domestic product, and he eventually decided that he had no other alternative but to raise taxes to try to close the gap.
Remember who controls the budget. Democrats were firmly entrenched in the house from '55 - '95. Anyone that knows enough to ignore the three-card Monty of the Dems and the MSM realizes that "blaming the president" is just done to confuse the rubes. Revenues DID rise under Reagan as he had predicted -- but the Democrats made sure that SPENDING rose even faster. Even crazier, the "bi-partisan FICA agreement" was a goose that dumped golden eggs on the floor from the early '80s until the early '00s ... one of the reasons for the trouble in the '00s is that the cozy double Ponzi on top of the granddaddy of ponzi schemes (Social Security) of stealing FICA money from BOTH the elderly and the young at the same time is running out. Even scams that are "too big to fail" ala Madoff, have to come to an end. The 900lb invisible gorilla (to the NYT) in this whole discussion is the fantasy of FICA / medicare.
The Clinton years disproved the notion that higher taxes would inevitably stifle economic growth, or cost politicians their jobs. Taxes were raised in 1993, including higher income tax rates on the wealthiest. The economy was strong, and the stock market surged. Taxes were then cut in 1997 in a deal with the Republican-controlled Congress, but by then the combination of higher tax rates on the wealthy, a strong economy and a rising stock market was boosting revenues significantly.
"The economy was strong, and the stock market surged". Well, no more than the housing market "surged" under Bush. The stock market "bubbled", and it crashed in '00, and Bush came into office in a recession that double dipped on 9/11/2001 -- a small factor that the NYTs seems to have missed, even though given they are in the same city as Wall Street and the now absent WTC, one would think that at least that much of reality would have seeped into their lefty skulls. I guess the Clinton years proved that higher taxes don't inevitably stifle a stock market bubble in the same way that the Bush years proved that lower taxes and a housing bubble don't automatically provide a surplus. From where we are now though, the $167 Billion deficit in '07 that is 10% of what BOs deficits are running makes one wistful for those "failed Bush policies".
President George W. Bush and Congress undid that progress with $1.65 trillion in tax cuts, heavily skewed to high earners. The economic recovery of the Bush years was extraordinarily weak by historical standards. By early 2009, shortly before Mr. Obama took office, the Congressional Budget Office projected a budget deficit for that year of more than $1 trillion.
One has to be solidly in the left camp to think that "progress" is $1,65 Trillion in extra taxes over a 10 year period. BO and the Democrats must agree, because they haven't raised those taxes even now. One gasps just a bit to think that after 8 years of the illustrious Clinton, we needed a "recovery", but of course those are the facts, plus 9/11/2001. Were that to have happened on a Democrats watch, it would be the excuse to end all excuses -- no level of spending, no level of economic depth would be too much to escape the all-purpose coverage of the 9-11 excuse.
"heavily skewed to high earners" ... the people over $250K that pay 95% of taxes got 25% of the relief, the people under $250K that pay 5% of the tax got 75% of the relief. How is that "skewed"? If you pay over $50K a year in income taxes, your personal amount of tax relief was higher than that for folks that paid $1k. Get it? To a Democrat, that isn't "fair".
So did we have any elections in '06? Did anything change? Oh, wait -- Congress DID manage to get a budget through in both '07 and '08. What kind of congress was it??? Hmm, a DEMOCRAT Congress. True, Bush signed the budgets, but one would have to agree that he was the lamest of lame ducks by then and in '08, does one REALLY think it was going to help anything to shut down the government to negotiate with Nancy and Harry about lower spending?
So we don't quote the $167 Billion Deficit in '07 -- Republican President, Republican Congress created. We wait for the '09!!!! budget -- both houses Democrat creating and passing, Bush signing as a lame duck in a bad economy in an election year. Yea, the Democrats and the MSM know all about "fairness" ... not to mention propaganda!
Monday, April 11, 2011
Budgets, Deficits and Blame
P2P vs WTF
From Moose Tracks |
Budget Suicide
BO's Sorry Now
The Associated Press: WH: Obama regrets vote against raising debt limit
Being a Democrat means that "mistakes" are free. Oh yes, the MSM "reports it", but they don't make it an obsession --- "Dan Quayle ... misspelled potato". George Bush -- "Mission Accomplished, No WMD found, HUGE deficits". Has BO had any deficits yet?
Here is what the guy that was such a great perspecitve president that he made Chis Matthews leg shiver had to say on the subhject of raising the debt ceiling back in '06:
"The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. ... Increasing America's debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that 'the buck stops here.' Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem."
So do we have ANY nice headlines like "Obama Said Raising Debt Ceiling Failure of Leadership" ??? Why not? Did Americans quit liking sensational "Gotcha journalism"? Did our media decide that the president needed to be supported when there was an "important military operation under way"?? (Libya).
Could it be that they are just biases and they really get no enjoyment whatsoever in making BO's job more difficult -- something that they enjoyed IMMENSELY when W was in office? Nah, just listen to NPR, they are completely unbiased!!! They say it themselves, so it must be true!
Is there just a SMIDGE of a chance that BO was completely clueless then and he is completely clueless now???