Comments on: Blame Obama and Boehner for the downgrade

By: BajaArizona

BajaArizona — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 11:03:54 +0000

The central fallacy of this article is the equivalence of Obama and the House Republicans, particularly the Tea Party freshmen. Obama is not a king, nor is he an emperor. The House of Representatives holds the purse strings. Obama had very little leverage, and was forced to make huge concessions to avoid a total calamity. The ones directly responsible for bringing us to the brink of that calamity are the Tea Party and by extension the senile apoplectic voters who elected them.

Obama did the best he could. The House did the worst they could. Please understand and report the difference.

By: BowMtnSpirit

BowMtnSpirit — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 13:56:07 +0000

@ OneOfTheSheep: YOU want war. GWB wanted war. Cheney still wants it. You believe that it is productive. You believe that we are doing something moral by invading these other countries, slaughtering the people there, blowing things up and increasing the militarization and surveilling of our own people.

I do agree with your statement that “no sane persons WANTS war.” Washington warned against it. As did Eisenhower. And Orwell. And many others.

You do not realize that producing bridges and water transit systems also brings dollars into the society. But when we’ve built those things, they remain, and continue to benefit. But as Orwell explained, that would unduly empower people, and this “we” must never do.

Your argument is depressingly oppressive. Take your Sparta elsewhere.

By: abkisa

abkisa — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 12:36:36 +0000

How can the entire blame be placed on President Barack Obama and John Boehner? Both men were dealing with a faction in the Republican party that doesn’t care about anything more than an ideology. The Tea Party and the idiots who put them into government in the first place are entirely responsible for the wasted time and poor result! There is no room in government for those not willing to compromise… that is the entire basis of our system of government!

By: robb1

robb1 — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 00:27:21 +0000

Tax outsourcing, tax limit loopholes and lower small business corporate tax rates.

By: CDN_Rebel

CDN_Rebel — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 23:34:06 +0000

Why do laymen bring up Keynesian economics failing during the recession? The whole idea of Keynesian economics is ‘save for a rainy day’, ie sock away money with federal surplusses during good times and spend heavy during bad times to make up demand. Clinton was doing that and Bush2 reversed him completely, giving away $3T in tax cut giveaways during his presidency and spending $2T on wars without raising taxes to pay for it – something unprecedented in the history of America. If you insist on bringing on Keynesian economics at least be intellectually honest about what the theory entails, not reduce it to ‘America spent a lot and we’re still in trouble’… it’s dishonest and detremental as well as confusing Americans about how best to get out of this mess. Just as an aside, to rollback the tax cuts and wind down the wars would cut deficit spending by at least $5T over ten years, not to mention the $1.2T already identified waste in defense and medicare over ten years. That’s $6.2T that no one has really put on the table – America wouldn’t have a problem really if they were!

By: JohnQSmith

JohnQSmith — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 22:49:16 +0000

Typical of the guy who wrote one of the windiest environmental tomes ever written (A Moment On The Earth) and a novel )This Magic Moment) that rivals the 100-page speech in Atlas Shrugged for verbose blather.

Gregg: This was not Obama’s and Boehner’s deal. The entire Congress had to vote on it. And if the Republicans are going to continue to vote “no” on any tax hikes whatsoever for the rich, we need to replace the Republicans. Reality is what it is; you so often come up with the quirkiest takes on cause and effect, and for reasons I have long been unable to fathom, people buy your bull****.

SPOILER ALERT — SPOILER ALERT — SPOILER ALERT –
By the way: the reason “This Magic Moment” won’t make a movie is that you took a potentially likeable premise and gave it an utterly depressing ending in which they both die in the end. Believe it or not, people don’t want crushingly unhappy, resolutely illogical endings.

And get rid of all those essays between chapters. BOOOORRRRRIIIINNNNGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!

By: ptiffany

ptiffany — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 20:14:57 +0000

This should not be relegated to an aside comment: “Of course leading indicators are an aspect of the market drop. Growth is slow. European debt may be in worse shape than European Union leaders are letting on.”

The pseudo debt “debate” covered up the reporting of a number of indicators that our economy is not recovering – far more important than a distracting political debate.

Growth has been below the breakeven point of ~3% for over four years. This means we’re still in the Great Recession. Oops! Since it’s more than two years, that qualifies as a Depression. Of course, Nobel Laurette Paul Krugman has been saying this for almost two years.

Real unemployment has been steadily increasing for over four years according to the United States Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the same BLS that reports the phony official unemployment rate under mandate of the Congress. Tens of millions of people are homeless or in the process of losing their homes. In addition to the human toll, our society is suffering in a number of different ways. This is akin to debating while our country is burning.

By: Steeljubei

Steeljubei — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 19:40:48 +0000

Social Security was intended to be a retirement program for those who did not have a retirement program in place through their employer. Far from an entitlement, workers pay a hefty fee into Social Security each payday, yet these funds were not put into a “locked box,” as Gore had recommended, but into a general fund for Congress to dip into.
The problem in the U.S. is the endless drum of war. In February the Pentagon rolled out a record base budget for fiscal year 2012 of $553 billion. Add interest rates to this type of spending, and it does not take long for one to determine where the debt comes from.

By: loveone

loveone — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 19:08:01 +0000

You hit the nail on the head when you talked about 3.9 trillion borrowed for WWII. How much have we borrowed for the wars we’re fighting now? High tech wars are much more expensive to fight than the previous world wars.

We have been fighting three or four wars (Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and the “War on Drugs”). Yet nobody has mentioned that we have to pay for them. In fact, GWB dramatically lowered taxes while starting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. At least in the Vienam war days there was a surtax. Where is the surtax now? Where is the notion of sacrifice in time of war?

GWB not only told everyone you could have your cake and eat it: he told us we don’t even have to pay for the cake in the first place!

This whole philosophy is where the problem lies. Someone has to have the courage to tell Americans they actually have to pay for things like these wars.

By: snpeebles

snpeebles — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 18:34:06 +0000

“Most Social Security benefits flow to the middle class, and must be trimmed; some flow to the rich, and must be eliminated.”
That’s either bad journalism or an attempt to prevaricate. Most Social Security benefits flow to the poor elderly, and the program is not the driver for our present and future economic woes. Rich, middle class, or poor, ALL american workers must contribute to Social Security so yes, even rich people deserve what they put in.