US POLITICS SPRING 2011: Let's just call off this country.

obviously
running for president vs. what you actually do as a president

can some democratic politician please please please capitalize on this bullshit?

http://www.kitsapsun.com/news/2011/apr/09/tom-philpott-budget-panel-may-cut-care-for-13/

The House Budget Committee, chaired by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), has told a veterans' group it is studying a plan to save $6 billion annually in VA health care costs by canceling enrollment of any veteran who doesn't have a service-related medical condition and is not poor.

Do you guys envisioning this economic "recovery" not think 2008 (and the bubble that preceded it) marked a sea change? My little sphere in which I've been carving out my living is now operating on an ENTIRELY different agenda, and I'm no longer going to match my earnings of 2000-09 in the same fashion. Shittier salaries with shittier benefits for many/most of us are the new reality.

may be a while before we get back to where we were before the financial world went to hell.

ie, I don't think this is happening in my lifetime. (Perhaps not after it either.)

we might get there once our society is not heavily dependent on a resource that is rapidly depleting. in other words, probably not in the next 20-30 years. there's always the chance of getting to the "happy" 1990s situation, but it won't (can't) last for long.

eg, I am turning down my 401k 'contribution' percentage, cuz I NEED THE FUCKIN' MONEY NOW.

Watching my parent generation lose a good chunk of their retirement money was pretty epic. Can't say i would be the least bit surprised if the same thing happens when my generation is supposed to retire.

the 'the economy will recover cause...it always does!' idea is pretty dangerous - not just does it allow us to cut spending when we need it most, but also prevents us from publicly thinking about what kinds of gov't policy we'll need in a world with a large population of long-long-term unemployed. the # of jobs that would need to magically appear for us to get 5% unemployment is pretty much insane. I wouldn't be surprised if, absent a world war, we never hit that again in my lifetime.

but also prevents us from publicly thinking about what kinds of gov't policy we'll need in a world with a large population of long-long-term unemployed

it also -insert stereotypical annoying enviro guy, sorry- prevents us from thinking about if an economic system that is based on neverending growth on a planet with limited resources is a good idea.

Can't say i would be the least bit surprised if the same thing happens when my generation is supposed to retire

moving my pitiful nest egg to FDIC insured accounts (not that that will even matter by then?) about 3-5 years before i think about retirement.

-insert stereotypical annoying enviro guy, sorry-

ZS i find yr enviro-guy perspective rewarding. also you do great gifs.

I'm trying to figure out wtf up with taxes. my mother's taxes have gone up (significantly) every year since Obama was elected and she's on a fixed income (her money comes from the , survivor's benefits from my father's 'alternative to SS' that government employees paid into for a long time) of like, $24k a yar or some shit. So she's super pissed at Obama and the democrats after years of supporting them. I can't even talk to her about it. I'm like, "I don't think that should have happened" but she does taxes for people every year so she's not making a mistake. Meanwhile, mine (decidedly more than that) seem to have stayed exactly the same.

I just decimated my 401k to buy a house (not as an investment, because we need somewhere to live and have no other good choice now). It wasn't a hard decision since it's not like I think it's going to accrue more worth in that account that it will as a tangible thing like a house. I'd frankly rather have a home paid off by the time I retire.

It seems unfathomable to me that we cannot raise taxes on the super wealthy right now and not give a tax cut to almost everyone else. Hell even 'everyone making under a million' could probably get it if they taxed the super wealthy as much as they should. Perhaps this Tea Party charade will fall apart in the next two years, but I have little faith that the Democrats would do the right thing if they were restored to both parties of Congress, WTF they couldn't even get a fucking budget done last year when they held all the power.

don't know anything all about those tax woes, but the senate gop filibustered the budget. the dems had 59 (59!) votes and that wasn't enough. the gop plays this game over and over again and never gets called on it

David Brooks wrote another idiotic thing the other day praising the Ryan budget and saying that liberal Democrats who think you can fix the budget by just raising taxes on the rich are wrong. But he did not address any of the evidence showing that Ryan's figures were wrong, that Clinton raised taxes and achieved a surplus(admittedly due in part to a tech boom; but the raised tax rates didn't hurt that); that years of trickle-down theory has never worked; and that the left also wants to reduce corporate welfare, defense spending, agri-business welfare, etc.

Josh:

I think Obama believes that America wants a president who uses his personal political power to simply gather together consensus mainstream ideas (but unfortunately he's letting the Republicans and the mass media define consensus and mainstream). I think he egotistically at times thinks he's being post-partisan but noone on the right or the left and maybe not the middle is buying that.

Thinking anyone in congress, the 'liberal' part included, cares anything for the poor or middle-class is a big mistake. All this "Oh the republicans are filibustering" and "Oh we have to have more than 59 votes we don't want to ram this thru" are just covering their asses for people that will still vote for them. Why would you raise taxes on you, your colleagues, and your biggest campaign contributors?

since weve had so little to lol about lately, the american spectator:

But in fact, the Indian wars are a very fitting historical precedent, because in significant ways the American Indians of the 19th Century are the precursors to 21st Century Islamist terrorists.

Indeed, just as modern-day Islamists terrorize the international frontier; so, too, did warring Indian tribes terrorize the American frontier. Historian William Osborn estimates, in fact, that more than 9,000 Americans were massacred by the Indians from the 16th to through the 19th centuries.

Now, obviously the analogy is inexact. Whatever their faults, the Native Americans were not jihadists bent on dominating and exterminating infidels. They were a largely primitive peoples who mostly lacked the Americans' appreciation for, and understanding of, private property rights.

http://spectator.org/blog/2011/04/06/the-19th-century-indian-wars-p

hahahah holy fuck

Whatever their faults

Whaaaaaaaaa

smdh

I forgot how the Native Americans in their religious extremism coined the term Manifest Destiny to justify conversion of the land to their own political, religious, and racial social structures in relentless acts of genocide. Oh wait maybe that was someone else.

Also i was unaware there were Americans in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Ayn Rand once said something very similar about Native Americans:

"[The Native Americans] didn't have any rights to the land and there was no reason for anyone to grant them rights which they had not conceived and were not using.... What was it they were fighting for, if they opposed white men on this continent? For their wish to continue a primitive existence, their "right" to keep part of the earth untouched, unused and not even as property, just keep everybody out so that you will live practically like an animal, or maybe a few caves above it. Any white person who brought the element of civilization had the right to take over this continent." * Source: "Q and A session following her Address To The Graduating Class Of The United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, March 6, 1974"

the similarity b/w that and the American Spectator quote speaks for itself.

That/those posts have pissed me off more than anything in the past few years. Really, John R. Guardiano/Ayn Rand, go suck an egg. Go get in a car crash and get paralyzed.

as for taxes and the Dems: may I remind folks that they had the chance to let the Bush tax cuts expire this fall, they didn't do that and thereby set up the situation we're in now.

that also speaks for itself.

randism is up there with scientology, in that if someone is a follower there is no real way i can subsequently respect them

* Source: "Q and A session following her Address To The Graduating Class Of The United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, March 6, 1974"

the record shows that the next Q was "ARE YOU FUCKING INSANE"

wow I have never read rand...had no idea that she went that far with her insanity.

that's nothing out of the ordinary for rand. the only wtf aspect is that she was speaking at west point.

That American Spectator thing is WTF on so many levels I don't even know where to begin.

Oh great, despite having already released a proposed budget, and having proposed Medicare changes via the Health Care plan, Obama is now gonna defensively respond to Ryan with proposed entitlement cuts on Wednesday in a speech. It would be nice if he followed up on this with calls for Congress to come up with a jobs plan(although that is apparently impossible now because the Republicans won't allow any money to be spent on the middle class and working class).

The neon line from Krugman's column today: "The House budget proposal that was unveiled last week...includes a plan to sharply cut taxes on corporations and to bring the tax rate on high earners down to its lowest level since 1931."

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/11/opinion/11krugman.html?hp

Turning the clock back to pre-New Deal era, done.

curious how high obama's gonna propose raising rich fucks' taxes on wednesday. hopefully capital gains and the estate tax goes up and it's not just one blanket hike on income, but a new set of brackets, going as high as 60% on the top-of-the-ponzi-scheme salaries

Way upthread a minority Liberal plan by rep Jan Schakowsky (Illinois) on the Budget Commission was mentioned and I see that Steve Benen on Washington Monthly's site was (naively) hoping Obama would also have it in mind this week.

Here's the link Benen linked to: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/16/AR2010111603833.html

how high obama's gonna propose raising rich fucks' taxes on wednesday

What's the source of this? Sounds like a fantasy about a guy who's in the process of raising a billion dollars.

cool. i think schakowsky's signed on to 'the people's budget' proposal

The CPC proposal:

• Eliminates the deficits and creates a surplus by 2021
• Puts America back to work with a “Make it in America” jobs program
• Protects the social safety net
• Ends the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
• Is FAIR (Fixing America’s Inequality Responsibly)

What the proposal accomplishes:

• Primary budget balance by 2014.
• Budget surplus by 2021.
• Reduces public debt as a share of GDP to 64.4% by 2021, down 16.9 percentage points from
a baseline fully adjusted for both the doc fix and the AMT patch.
• Reduces deficits by $5.7 trillion over 2012-21
• Both outlays and revenue equal 22.3% of GDP by 2021

http://cpc.grijalva.house.gov/index.cfm?sectionid=70§iontree=5,70

these solutions are way more popular than paul ryan's medicare-slaying ones are. and i think the math is better, too, since they don't rely on american enterprise institute "math" that would have unemployment going down to 2.2%

xp

xp-

I'm guessing Obama's merely gonna say again that the Bush tax cuts for the rich should end in 2 years. I doubt he has the courage to do the rest--raising the rate on dividends and capital gains; lifting the rate at which payroll taxes are collected; getting rid of deductions and loopholes that force taxpayers to subsidize deferred CEO pay and hedgefund mgr pay;

Unfortunately the "serious" folks in Washington and the media will never embrace plans that do the above and cut defense or farm-agriculture spending

curmudgeon, i think you're otm (but hope you're wrong)

(morbius, the "source" is my sullivan-fed wishful thinking ~

http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2011/04/meep-meep-watch.html

plus tax hikes being super popular, "totally" or "mostly" acceptable to 80+% of the public, according to answers reported on page 16 of this recent 'wall street journal' (!) poll

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704005404576176981643217882.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories

that's good re-election math)

Typical Obama will try to be bipartisan and will balance any request on rich people taxes with lots of ugliness that Republicans want and call it a compromise

Obama really, really needs to forcefully sell some sort of tax hike on the rich. As in "we MUST do this as a country, their tax rate is lowest it's been since 1931, etc." No one likes rich people, and he can always frame it as raising taxes on them so that they won't be raised for everyone else. Plus, with, like, 100 people holding all the money, it really wouldn't affect that many people. Again, perfect set-up is: "these hyper-wealthy types are *preventing* you from becoming rich like *them*!" Then he can pass out Obama 2012 torches.

also the "american people" the gop always blather about really really really want tax hikes on the rich

But there was a letter in the Washington Post saying that taxes should NOT be hiked on the rich because they are "the producers". Take that you middle-class and poor scum leaching off the hard work of those in the highest bracket!

Jerry Brown is laying down the law on this in California and apparently has a bunch of republicans swayed (unfortunately not the ones in state congress, but local leaders, republican sherrifs and DAs who can see exactly what the budget cuts are going to do to their offices and ability to get any work done). Maybe Obama needs to take some lessons from Moonbeam on how to stop equivocating and compromising and start being a pragmatist.

Progressive Caucus co-chairs Raúl M. Grijalva and Keith Ellison sent a memo to House Budget Committee Ranking Member Chris Van Hollen April 6

I would imagine House Republicans filter Keith Ellison's memos straight to the spam folder, though.

Is Maryland Democrat Van Hollen (ranking Dem on the House Budget Committee) allowed to let them go to the House Republicans

I would imagine House Republicans filter Keith Ellison's memos straight to the spam folder, though.
reason to vote next november

My brother-in-law is infuriatingly opposed to any tax increases on rich people. I don't know if he thinks he's going to be one of those rich people someday, or if there's going to be some sort of stealthy attempt to sneak the increases onto lower and lower incomes. I send him a lot of FB messages along the lines of "you are being used as a dupe and a human shield for a club that will NEVER have you as a member."

He made it clear that it's a more moral stance to let an old poor person starve or freeze to death than to force a rich person to lift a finger to help.

he's in the 20% minority. dems need to start pounding that fact home

not to be a big pisser or anything, but taxes on rich people alone aren't going to fix the hole entirely. the bush tax cuts are huge, but the biggest chuck of them went to middle class. and with medicare D, the old.

if we're going to go back to pre-bush levels, let alone pre-reagan, then yeah people like WmC's brother will be paying more. a lot of people will!