The haughty John Kerry
So the haughty John Kerry now says that the S and P downgrade should be blamed on the Tea Party for opposing taxes.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/08/07/blame-game-vitriol-demonstrates-sp-disgust/
"I believe this is without question the Tea Party downgrade," said Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. "This is the Tea Party downgrade because a minority of people in the House of Representatives countered even the will of many Republicans in the United States Senate who were prepared to do a bigger deal."
Isn't it great when kept men like John Kerry (he married into wealth) give lectures to the rest of us peons on the need to pay even more in taxes, so our government can continue to run up trillions of dollars in debt? Has it never dawned on this arrogant slug that our debt problems come from spending money we don't have? Who spent all that money? It wasn't the Tea Party. It wasn't even the millionaires and billionaires that Democrats love to demonize.
Then there is this from the governor of Maryland, no less.
"We need a balanced approach. And the extremism, the Tea Party obstructionism here in Washington, is keeping us from restoring that balanced approach that America has always used of investing in the future, investing in job creation, and also being fiscally responsible at the same time," said Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley."
Yes, it's the "balanced approach", much heralded by President Obama. It's the new code word for higher taxes. And investing? That's code for spending money that has been squeezed from the tax-payers. Investing in the future (whatever that means). Investing in job creation, which the government does not know how to do unless it is creating government jobs and government agencies. It is the private sector that can create jobs-if left alone and allowed to grow.
Not to be outdone, here is Hollerin' Howard Dean:
"I think this is [the] Tea Party's problem. I think they're totally unreasonable and doctrinaire and not founded in reality. I think they've been smoking some of that tea, not just drinking it," former DNC Chairman Howard Dean said on "Face the Nation."
He ought to know.
But the award for hypocrisy has to go to Congressman Charlie Rangel (Yes, he is still in Congress and always will be). Here is what Charlie (who knows a thing or two about taxes) has to say on the subject.
Anytime you owe as much money as we do, it's abundantly clear that you cannot just cut your way out of it," he said. "We can't say all of it is going to be taxes, and Republicans can't say all of it has to be cuts. We have to come together as a family and say we need both."
I just love how Democrats use the English language. It's all about balance, investing, enhancing revenue, creating jobs and family. It's all about tax cheats like Timothy (Turbo Tax) Geithner and Charlie Rangel lecturing us on the need to give the government more money so they can run up another 15 trillion dollars in debt. These are the people who call themselves "job-creators" in a nation with over 9% unemployment. I guess they could always hold another census.
Pass the Excedrin.
Give us some numbers Gary. You and your Tea Party friends are indulging in the wishful thinking of a kid in a candy store.
ReplyDeleteWe know how much the debt is. Tell us how much money can be cut from the current federal budget, and what we are going to do without as a result. Then, figure out how much of a net surplus that will generate at current revenue. Then figure how long it will take to pay down the current national debt.
Just try it -- and then see if you can still blithely talk about all cuts and no taxes. Do the math like a man.
I will agree that it serves no purpose for John Kerry to be sniping about whose fault it is. Voters are sick of name-calling, your style and his, and are desperately longing for someone to run for public office who wants to get some work done, rather than scoring brownie point.
Hey, let's try talking about what the Democrats SHOULD be doing. Last I read, John Boehner was promising voters that Medicare and Social Security would not be touched. With Social Security, that should be true. Any honest man or woman would affirm that Social Security is covered by its own trust fund, unrelated to the general treasury. Of course, if the U.S. defaulted on the $6 trillion of T-bills (the safest investment for social security surpluses), then we'd have a real mess on our hands.
ReplyDeleteBut when it comes to Medicare, rising health care costs are the biggest single factor in the growth of federal spending. There are many stupid things the feds spend money on, but those don't add up to $4 trillion in savings, or even $1 trillion.
Democrats, if they summon up the courage to believe that the American people will respect hearing the cold, hard truth, for once, could really take the lead. Will they?
A combination of a balanced budget by October 2013, repeal of the tax cuts Bush financed with borrowing from foreign banks, a surtax to PAY DOWN the debt, properly presented, could be a breath of fresh air.
No, John Kerry won't do this. He proved in 2004 that he doesn't have the spine to be a winner. But the Democrats could beat the Republicans to the punch. And yes, there will need to be taxes as well as cuts.
The way to increase jobs, as any entrepreneur will confirm, is to give them an environment or even the prospect of an environment not hostile to business, fairly predictable, and where they figure they will be able to make a profit. That may mean a new plant, a new branch, a new product, additional investments to improve production or increase salable inventory.
ReplyDeleteThat means cutting taxes on them. The higher tax turns a mediocre prospect into a bad prospect, or a good prospect into a mediocre one. It means ending all these nonsensical rules and regulations that inhibits business from doing anything. In other words, get out of the way so business can figure out how to make a profit. That way they will buy things and employ more people... who in turn will pay taxes.
One Democratic Party way is to keep increasing the time unemployment benefits runs... like that will to create jobs. It is a negative incentive. Incentives and penalties work. You give incentives to stay on unemployment longer and people stay on unemployment longer. You tax the productive and they go elsewhere or do something else to avoid the penalty.
Every dollar that the government spends has to come out of the pocket of someone who had a better use for it. Does the government know better where to put resources or the 300 million Americans who make dozens of economic decisions every day? It is the arrogance of the elitists and statists who believe they can create (and then decree) the outcomes they believe best for everyone else.
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Siarlys, nobody is going to give you any sources anymore. All you ever do is to demean them and criticize them while you never come up with anything to support your own kakamami theories. Do your own research and stop demanding everyone else supply you with information so you can make a decision.
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Miggie, unless you have become an acolyte of some collectivist ideology, you really need to get out of the habit of trying to speak for everyone. Speak for yourself. You seldom offer ANY empirical backing for your ad hominem howling, and when you come up with statistics, they turn out to support the position you denied.
ReplyDeleteWhy is it that the only economically socialist person commenting here is the one who has to point out that you, Gary, Findalis, Anonymous 1, 2, and 3, and Bartender Cabbie, are unique individuals, fully capable of speaking for themselves? (I admit Squid is almost your clone, but that's the exception that proves the rule).
Setting aside the tired blackmail by which large-scale concentrations of capital have always tried to squeeze special subsidies from their hapless employees and feckle politicians, nobody opens a business because they are offered subsidies at taxpayer expense, unless it is a short term compensation for taking on extra expense. (E.g., if the city wants someone to move into an old empty eyesore in the middle of town, they may have to help with the extra initial investment, to persuade a business not to locate on a clean open field ten miles out of town. But there is a public benefit, a quid pro quo).
Businesses invest in production facilities because they think they can sell what they produce, and make money off it. Nobody ever walked away from a million dollars because they would only get to keep half of it. Businesses hire when they think they need more people to increase production, and believe they can sell the increase at a profit.
The difference between 25%, 35%, and 50% is not going to make or break a business. Now one could argue that if the tax were cut in half, the resulting savings would be INVESTED in new facilities. I'm perfectly willing to test that out. Tax exemptions should be allowed for any investment in new facilities. But, if they just sit on the cash, or buy themselves a fifth home somewhere around the world, they can darn well pay tax on it first.
Siarlys, how would you know, driving your school bus around, whether or not "The difference between 25%, 35%, and 50% is not going to make or break a business"?
ReplyDeleteYou've never had P & L responsibility or started a business. I have, and can state unequivocally, that it makes a tremendous difference. Having you or the government, or some presumed more enlightened person dictate where that profit should go superimposes their "superior" knowledge over the people who actually have the responsibility of producing goods, hiring people, and making a profit in the process. (That's the problem with the Obama administration as well. They are all professors but none of them have had actual business experience. Obama just completed his FIRST ever personal budget negotiation. Think of that! No wonder he did such an amateurish mess of it. He, like you, speculate but don't know what you are talking about.)
It is an elitist view that people in the government know better than the sum total of all the people interacting daily. It did not work in the Soviet Union and it is not working in the socialist government directed economies of North Korea, Cuba, etc. that still exist.
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Yeah, Miggie, you have all the prejudices of someone who boasts about having run a business that never got big enough to make you the man everyone turned to for advice. All you have established with your pitiful lament is that every time you paid your taxes, you wished you could keep more of the money. Did you ever decide,"Nah, I don't need another $500,000 to spend, not if I have to make a million to enjoy it"???
ReplyDeleteWhat nobody wants to admit is that all of us, investor, entrepreneur, speculator, worker... all of us are standing on a web of human relations and infrastructure and law, without which NONE of us would be so comfortable or so successful. That starts with, the railroads were remunerative as much because the government gave away all that free land to them (one square mile on alternate sides of the track) as because they provided a service. If you really had to do it all on your own initiative, you'd be sitting on a tree stump in the middle of nowhere without a wrench or an electric outlet. Quitchurbellyaching.