It's Bush's fault ! (gee it is isn't it ?)
Nuff said !
Tom Ford
NO. 798
posted by Crestwood Independent at 07:52
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Nuff said !
Tom Ford
NO. 798
Contributors
Nuff said !
Tom Ford
NO. 798
Nuff said !
Tom Ford
NO. 798
31 Comments:
here we go with the "Bush is gone and everything he did poofs away like magic" thing that was in that other thread. Seriously, while I believe in delusions as much as the next guy, do you really believe the spending has nothing to do with the policies of the last administration and the condition they left the country in? There was a budget surplus when Bush took office.SURPLUS that CLINTON left. When Bush left were were heading into a depression. Can we not learn from Japan? Moving slowly or ignoring the problem leads to decades of no growth or further recession. The narrow, tiny little lense you insist on seeing this through would be hilarious if it weren't indicative of the republican view point. Scary. Just plain scary how the blinders actually do work.You look at just the smallest detail and scream"See??See how terrible he is?" But pull the whole picture out into full view, where rational people see "the big picture" and are able to grasp why this needs to be done, and you're still screaming "See? Lookit!" It's beyond scary. It's Sarah Palin kind of sad.
8:40 AM Blogger: May we assume you understand this graph? From your post it doesn't seem so, now does it.
"Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery."
Winston Churchill
Tom Ford
well said, 8:40 poster, very well said. But remember that these "screamers" you referred to are the same ones who yelled and shouted about Obama's pastor, Jerimiah Wright and how horrible he was, then a few months later started shouting about him being a Muslim in secret. Muslims don't HAVE pastors..Christians do. But that silly little detail doesn't matter, in this case.
This spending issue was painted this way for me by an economy professor: Picure a speeding car, out of control fast, heading for a cliff, sure to go off. Bush is driving. About a half mile or so before it reaches the edge of the cliff, Bush rolls out to relative safety, and somehow, by some sort of miracle, Obama gets into the driver's seat. Now the car is still speeding toward the cliff, and the car is getting faster, so Obama must feed the car more gas to get the brakes to start working,and start pumping the pedal like crazy, but everyone who hates that he's driving now at all has the opening to yell, "well, look who's driving! It ain't Bush!" They all forgot who started the car, put it into drive, and the timing of his Hollywood "roll out" to safety. That summed it up for me.
"One picture is worth 1,000 denials."
Ronald Reagan
Tom Ford
you just made my point perfectly. There is no one so blind as he who will not see. Thank you.
9:18 AM Blogger: I guess your so far into the Kool aid that there is no hope to change you.
To use your line, "sad, very sad." However, thanks for letting me live rent free in your head, I love it!
Tom Ford
This could be really fun ~ Federal Budget analysis comparing the past 2 administrations. Careful what you ask for...
Spend some time using the search bar on your computer and look for words like "Bush off-budget," "Bush discretionary spending," "Bush accounting gimmicks," etc. Bush was the clown prince of budget shenanigans.
All politics aside (if that's possible), look at federal budgeting history over the last 5 presidents and you'll be in for a real eyeopener with respect to where the growth has come from. Also, look at the party in control at the same time...
9:29 AM Blogger; Agreed (for once) It was the DEMOCRAT party that was in control of the purse strings since 2006!
Now recall your civics class where you should have learned that the Congress, and the Senate SPEND the money, the President can only suggest it.
Now fast forward to 2010 where the DEMOCRAT party has control of the whole shooting match, and what do we see ? Abstract glutinous spending, that's what.
Still think you can win this?
Tom Ford
Have a glance at this.
http://apnews.myway.com/
article/20100829/D9HT1DS01.html
Tom Ford
9:49
I suggested looking back 5 Presidencies ~ not 5 years ~ however, it appears that you want to keep your focus on the political side and not the profligate spending found when the party in-charge of Congress aligns with the party of the President.
It's simple when you copy/paste a chart from the"second ammendment" (your mis-spelling, not mine) site, without attribution and then view this as the answer. Life is not that simple, I'm afraid, but feel free to boldly go with blinders on...
to the 10:05 poster, and really to all the others trying to reason with Mr. Ford, I applaud your efforts, but please don;t think you'll get anywhere. He will see only what he wants to see, and facts are visable ONLY if they relate to his own opinion. Other facts are discounted immediately or are completely invisable. he summed it up quite nicely himself when he said, "still think you can win this?" It's not about God and country, not about us as a nation, as a people turning things around together, pulling together for a common purpose. This is not about mom's apple pie and saluting the soldiers. This is about winning and nothing more. It's about him being able to go to Denney's or wherever he meets his cronies and re-tell the story and talk about he won and told those damned liberals a thing or two. That's ALL this is about, make no mistake.
I agree and find it really funny that the very people who now warn against the horrors of socialism and the evils of it are the very same ones who wax nostalgic about WWII and the greatest generation. They were the greatest generation. Why? Because they had a huge, seemingly insurmountable thing to overcome. They pulled together, put all their resources together for the common good and common effort, and relied on one another to get through it. There was no room during he war for "It's mine and you can go to hell", which pretty much sums it all up now if you're a conservative. That very national mind-set could pull us back from the brink right now. But instead we have to snipe, fight, and shout at everyone to get away from YOUR stuff. They were the greatest generation. We, so far, are definitely NOT.
He still hasn't retracted his post about spending $10,000 on lighting. Even when wrong he won't admit it. When you only look at things in black and white you can't interpret things any other way. Both Democrat and Republican have had good and bad ideas throughout the years. It is detrimental to our community and our nation when you are so far to the left or right that you can't see a good idea. Maybe when should look to our youth where they are taught to use teamwork and play nice in the sandbox.
In the wake of a recession that began roughly seven weeks after President Bush took office, America experienced six years of uninterrupted economic growth and a record 52 straight months of job creation that produced more than 8 million new jobs. During the Bush presidency, the unemployment rate averaged 5.3 percent. We saw labor-productivity gains that averaged 2.5 percent annually — a rate that exceeds the averages of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Real after-tax income per capita increased by more than 11 percent. And from 2000 to 2007, real GDP grew by more than 17 percent, a gain of nearly $2.1 trillion.
As for Obama’s claim that Bush “turned a budget surplus into a deficit”: by January 2001, when Bush was inaugurated, the budget surpluses were already evaporating as the economy was skidding toward recession (it officially began in March 2001). Combined with the devastating economic effects of 9/11, when we lost around 1 million jobs over 90 days, the surplus went into deficit.
Rather than whine incessantly about the situation, President Bush proposed policies that triggered the kind of sustained growth that saw the deficit fall to 1 percent of GDP ($162 billion) by 2007. Indeed, before the financial crisis of 2008m Bush’s budget deficits were 0.6 percentage points below the historical average.
Now let’s consider Mr. Obama’s record: an unemployment rate of 9.5 percent, with 131,000 jobs lost in July, during our so-called Recovery Summer (Vice President Biden promised us up to 500,000 new jobs a month back in April). The overall unemployment rate, incorporating people who want jobs but did not look during July, is now 16.5 percent.
According to J.D. Foster, Obama’s “job deficit” — the difference between current employment and the jobs Obama promised to create by the end of 2010 – stands at a staggering 7.6 million workers. The 2010 deficit is $1.471 trillion, or 10 percent of GDP, while the debt is $9.2 trillion, or 62.7 percent of GDP. (From January 20, 2001, to January 20, 2009, the debt held by the public grew $3 trillion under Bush, from $3.3 trillion to $6.3 trillion; in 20 months, Mr. Obama will add as much debt as Mr. Bush ran up in eight years.) And let’s not forget that the Obama administration passed an $862 billion stimulus package and assured us that unemployment would not exceed 8 percent; instead, unemployment topped 10 percent – a figure higher than what the Obama administration said would occur if the stimulus package wasn’t passed.
Obama took the oath of office in the wake of a financial collapse that made every economic indicator much worse; it’s only fair to take that into account. But even here, in characterizing what happened, Obama has to present a cartoon image, distorted and disfigured, pretending that it was wholly and completely the fault of President Bush and Republicans.
It’s worth noting that Democrats were in control of Congress beginning in January 2007 -- and Congress is where legislation, including appropriations and tax legislation, is passed
Second, spending would have been much higher during the Bush presidency if Democrats had their way. To take just one example: Democrats proposed creating a prescription-drug program as an alternative to the one Bush proposed that would have cost a projected $800 billion over 10 years. The Bush prescription-drug law was originally expected to cost half that amount — and today it costs a third less than initial projections because it uses market forces to drive prices down
Third, Democrats bear the majority of the blame for blocking reforms that could have mitigated the effects of the housing crisis, which in turn led to the broader financial crisis.
As Stuart Taylor put it in 2008:
The pretense of many Democrats that this crisis is altogether a Republican creation is simplistic and dangerous. It is simplistic because Democrats have been a big part of the problem, in part by supporting governmental distortions of the marketplace through mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, whose reckless lending practices necessitated a $200 billion government rescue [in September 2008]. ... Fannie and Freddie appear to have played a major role in causing the current crisis, in part because their quasi-governmental status violated basic principles of a healthy free enterprise system by allowing them to privatize profit while socializing risk.
The Bush administration warned as early as April 2001 that Fannie and Freddie were too large and overleveraged and that their failure "could cause strong repercussions in financial markets, affecting federally insured entities and economic activity" well beyond housing. Bush’s plan would have subjected Fannie and Freddie to the kinds of federal regulation that banks, credit unions, and savings and loans have to comply with. In addition, Republican Richard Shelby, then chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, pushed for comprehensive GSE (government-sponsored enterprises) reform in 2005. And who blocked these efforts at reforming Fannie and Freddie? Democrats such as Christopher Dodd and Representative Barney Frank, along with the then-junior senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, who backed Dodd’s threat of a filibuster (Obama was the third-largest recipient of campaign gifts from Fannie and Freddie employees in 2004).
So Obama and his party bear a substantial (though not exclusive) responsibility in creating the economic crisis that Obama himself inherited.
Voters know it is Mr. Obama and Democratic leaders who approved a $410 billion supplemental (complete with 8,500 earmarks) in the middle of the last fiscal year, and then passed a record-spending budget for this one. Mr. Obama and Democrats approved an $862 billion stimulus and a $1 trillion health-care overhaul, and they now are trying to add $266 billion in "temporary" stimulus spending to permanently raise the budget baseline.
It is the president and Congressional allies who refuse to return the $447 billion unspent stimulus dollars and want to use repayments of TARP loans for more spending rather than reducing the deficit. It is the president who gave Fannie and Freddie carte blanche to draw hundreds of billions from the Treasury. It is the Democrats' profligacy that raised the share of the GDP taken by the federal government to 24% this fiscal year.
Second, spending would have been much higher during the Bush presidency if Democrats had their way. To take just one example: Democrats proposed creating a prescription-drug program as an alternative to the one Bush proposed that would have cost a projected $800 billion over 10 years. The Bush prescription-drug law was originally expected to cost half that amount — and today it costs a third less than initial projections because it uses market forces to drive prices down
Third, Democrats bear the majority of the blame for blocking reforms that could have mitigated the effects of the housing crisis, which in turn led to the broader financial crisis.
As Stuart Taylor put it in 2008:
The pretense of many Democrats that this crisis is altogether a Republican creation is simplistic and dangerous. It is simplistic because Democrats have been a big part of the problem, in part by supporting governmental distortions of the marketplace through mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, whose reckless lending practices necessitated a $200 billion government rescue [in September 2008]. ... Fannie and Freddie appear to have played a major role in causing the current crisis, in part because their quasi-governmental status violated basic principles of a healthy free enterprise system by allowing them to privatize profit while socializing risk.
The Bush administration warned as early as April 2001 that Fannie and Freddie were too large and overleveraged and that their failure "could cause strong repercussions in financial markets, affecting federally insured entities and economic activity" well beyond housing. Bush’s plan would have subjected Fannie and Freddie to the kinds of federal regulation that banks, credit unions, and savings and loans have to comply with. In addition, Republican Richard Shelby, then chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, pushed for comprehensive GSE (government-sponsored enterprises) reform in 2005. And who blocked these efforts at reforming Fannie and Freddie? Democrats such as Christopher Dodd and Representative Barney Frank, along with the then-junior senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, who backed Dodd’s threat of a filibuster (Obama was the third-largest recipient of campaign gifts from Fannie and Freddie employees in 2004).
So Obama and his party bear a substantial (though not exclusive) responsibility in creating the economic crisis that Obama himself inherited.
Voters know it is Mr. Obama and Democratic leaders who approved a $410 billion supplemental (complete with 8,500 earmarks) in the middle of the last fiscal year, and then passed a record-spending budget for this one. Mr. Obama and Democrats approved an $862 billion stimulus and a $1 trillion health-care overhaul, and they now are trying to add $266 billion in "temporary" stimulus spending to permanently raise the budget baseline.
It is the president and Congressional allies who refuse to return the $447 billion unspent stimulus dollars and want to use repayments of TARP loans for more spending rather than reducing the deficit. It is the president who gave Fannie and Freddie carte blanche to draw hundreds of billions from the Treasury. It is the Democrats' profligacy that raised the share of the GDP taken by the federal government to 24% this fiscal year.
Hey kids, ever hear of "less filling, tastes great?"
Remember we hired a guy for $9,000.00 to pump up the BOA members?
Well I just pumped you up for nothing! Now as all good little socialist experimenters do, let the insults Begin!
I just posted the story with "Nuff Said," my `good friends on the far left have introduced the venom into the post, and thus endeth the lesson in progressive / liberalism for today!
Tom Ford
what venom? I see no venom.
But since you actually took me seriously the last time I poster her, I will again post a link to Rachel Maddow and, if you are able/willing,please watch the footage and actually listen to what she says. It's 5 minutes of your day. It is older, from June, I admit, but there's no denying what she says as true, no matter who you are. Facts are facts, and here are some for you:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ALSi9B71xg
PRECISELY why I said that, braintrust. They had a mind set and abilities no one now is even close to. They are called the greatest generation for a reason. Did you actually READ what I wrote, or are you just spewing without any content? They were the ones able to put aside petty differences and pull together for the common good. They were the ones willing to ignore religious, political, and even racial differences to get a huge, ugly job done. This is something we don't seem to be able to accomplish now.
In no way did I "denigrate the greatest generation". I was setting them up as the example we should follow. Good God, at least read what's posted before you start getting hateful. You are unbelievable. Talk about venom. How dare YOU.
got to agree with the 7:40 poster. Nothing in any way bad said about that generation. You dropped the ball, Tom, and name calling...you won't tolerate from anyone else so why stoop to that over something that wasn't even said?
I think that you should abstain next time Tom. Seems to work for some.
went up and found what you got so angry over, Tom. Are you able to see print that I can't? What were you even talking about?
I read everythng, and I wonder...is unprovoked name-calling the new standard? It's okay now? Because if the owner of the blog does it, then we should all have the "right" to call anyone nasty names with no threat of him taking it down. I will throw mine in and start with "pompous know-it-all". Who's next?
I prefer taking the high road. It is certainly less occupied and the life view is way better while leaving the name calling to others.
then you sir, have one up on our blog host.
11:24 AM Blogger: Guess what, you were correct and I was wrong, I mis-read your post.
1. My complete apology.
2. I have removed my own post.
3. Even though I have only one eye, and part of the other one, I should have done much better than that. I now see you were praising them and not denigrating them.
Tom Ford
Interesting link.
http://www.real
clearpolitics
.com
/video/2010/08/30/
obama_i
t_took_
nearly_a_decade
_to_dig_
the_hole
_that_were_in.html
Tom Ford
2011 W-2 Tax Forms.
If this doesn't get to you, then check your pulse. You may be a flat line...
Should you want to verify this, go to http://www.thomas.gov/, enter "HR 3590"
in the search box and look for "CRS Summaries." This is what you'll find.
Title IX Revenue Provisions-Subtitle A: Revenue Offset
"(Sec. 9002) Requires employers to include in the W-2 form of each employee the aggregate cost of applicable employer-sponsored group health coverage that is excludable from the employee's gross income (excluding the value of contributions to flexible spending arrangements)."
Starting in 2011-next year-the W-2 tax form sent by your employer will be
increased to show the value of whatever health insurance you are provided.
It doesn't matter if you're retired. Your gross income WILL go up by the amount
of insurance your employer paid for. So you'll be required to pay taxes on a larger
sum of money that you actually received. Take the tax form you just finished for
2009 and see what $15,000.00 or $20,000.00 additional gross income does to
your tax debt. That's what you'll pay next year. For many it puts you into a
much higher bracket. This is how the government is going to buy insurance for
fifteen (15) percent that don't have insurance and it's only part of the tax increases,
but it's not really a "tax increase" as such, it a redefinition of your taxable income.
Also, go to Kiplinger's and read about the thirteen (13) tax changes for 2010 that
could affect you.
People have the right to know the truth because
an election is coming in November. So vote intelligently, based on your values.
But also adjust your tax withholding, or increase your savings, so that you aren't
surprised and put in a jam when your federal income taxes are due on April 15, 2012.
6:32
The amount reported will not be considered as taxable income. See the same referenced Kiplinger's article.
http://iwantyourmoney.net/index.php
A trailer from a new movie coming out this fall.
Tom Ford
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