The Republicans are the Problem

[1robin]

When I revived this thread I was hoping for some new information, now I see that I should not have even hoped for new posters. I debate religion mostly and just go to polotics when bored but I have noticed the absolute fact the left's arguments come in the form of cartoons, posters, and billboards to a greater extent than any group on any position on any topic there is.

 

[1robin]

It seems easy to forget, especially if you are a conservative, that the conservative former head of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, completely failed to recognize that we had a housing bubble until the bubble burst. Greenspan's educational background is in economics, he is a Randian Objectivist, and a self-admitted fool.

That may very well be true. I do not know much about him. However that does nothing to dismiss the fact that republicans did know it was going to happen, warned the democrats in at least one hearing and were called crazy for their efforts. Then it blew and the democrats blamed those same republicans for the problem as posters and Obama-ites are doing with Bush.

 

[Alceste]

When I revived this thread I was hoping for some new information, now I see that I should not have even hped for new posters.

If you want intelligent discourse, it pays to avoid saying silly things like "Unlike liberals, I [insert perceived virtue]". What kind of response did you expect with that kind of talk?

I will try again. It is a fact that the 2009 budget was a creation of Bush's administration, not Obama's. Do you agree or disagree? Please try not to dance around the question. It's a very simple one.

2009 United States federal budget - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"The United States federal budget for fiscal year 2009 began as a spending request by President George W. Bush to fund government operations for October 2008 – September 2009.

With projected receipts less than projected outlays, the budget proposed by President Bush predicts a net deficit of approximately $400 billion dollars, adding to a United States governmental debt of about $11.4 trillion. The actual spending signed into law in the final bill was increased by over $400 billion. And actual tax receipts totaled approximately $2.1 trillion, $600 billion less than the $2.7 trillion expected. The actual deficit in 2009 was $1.4 trillion.[3]"

 

[Alceste]

That may very well be true. I do not know much about him. However that does nothing to dismiss the fact that republicans did know it was going to happen, warned the democrats in at least one hearing and were called crazy for their efforts. Then it blew and the democrats blamed those same republicans for the problem as posters and Obama-ites are doing with Bush.

It's neat how even the things that Republicans do, like the deregulation that caused the housing bubble and the 700 billion dollar TARP bank bail-out that followed its bursting, get blamed on Democrats. I would ask how you manage to twist the facts around to mean the opposite of what they seem to mean, but I'm afraid it will give me a headache to read any more of your reasoning.

 

[1robin]

You really need to check your facts with sources other than right wing historical revisionists. You can look up unemployment figures at the Bureau of Labor Statistics web site. You will see that Obama did not inherit 6% unemployment. He took office in late January 2009, when unemployment was at 7.8% and going through the roof. Bush himself initiated TARP and asked for money to fund the auto bailout. Congress authorized the automotive bailout before Obama took office, but at the urging of Obama in December.

Just for the sake of time I will assume this is accurate. Why has a problem that existed for less than a year (5% in Jan of 09) taken more than 3 years and at least an additional trillion a year to show signs of improving? Why is the guy who had the problem caused by the domocrats less than a year blamed for the problem by the guy who hasn't fixed it in 4?

The original language didn't need to mention the word "God". It was already a blatant endorsement of state support for religious activities. It was Obama's decision alone to alter the language to take away what he perceived as a bogus issue drummed up by Fox News. It is utterly hypocritical for a member of the Tea-Party-whipped Republican Party to point a finger of blame at Obama for not getting his party to march in lockstep with his every decision. Both parties have dissension in their ranks, and he actually got very significant legislation passed in his first two years. He made some very unpopular decisions to bring it off, but that is what we expect of our presidents.

I thought you said he resisted the effort to take God out. His doing it alone is far worse. It worked so well when we took God out of schools it is no wonder he is following suite. Teen pregnancy sky rocketed and school shootings are now realities instead of the terrible prayer problem. Yeah let's copy that.

What a web of lies Republicans spin over the role of government in producing jobs. And the lies are even more hypocritical when spun by people who have government jobs or businesses that depend on government contracts. The main reason why the recovery has been so anemic is the loss of government jobs. The private sector has been experiencing steady job growth under Obama, but Republicans are trying to impose austerity measures on the economy that will drive us right back into severe recession. And your dig at people on unemployment as "unwilling to work" is just blaming the victims of the meltdown of the economy brought about by 8 years of Republican domination. Bush did a remarkable job, didn't he? It originally took three straight Republican presidencies after WWI--Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover--to bring on the Great Depression. Bush almost managed it again, except that Obama managed to stop the hemorrhage and save millions of jobs in his first year in office.

Even after all the millions who have given up hope are taken off the lists the unemployement numbers are still worse than he inherited even from the site you used. You are entitled to your opinion but not your own facts.

Your babbling rant is taking us off-topic. Let's just stick with the economy. Bush himself set up the TARP at the urging of Treasury Secretary Paulson. It doesn't matter whether you approved. Bush didn't like it, but he was staring into the abyss. Paulson, as is typical of Republicans, did not put many restrictions on, or build an audit trail for, the money that was handed out. It took Obama to restore some sense of accountability to the process and to administer the successful bailout of the auto industry, which Romney still argues should have been allowed to collapse.

Yeah he was starring into the abyss created by Carter and Clinton and made a very bad decision. He was later blamed for what he didn't cause by the man who made it worse and who's party actually did cause it, this lunacy has been adopted by the kool aid crowd.

 

[1robin]

It's neat how even the things that Republicans do, like the deregulation that caused the housing bubble and the 700 billion dollar TARP bank bail-out that followed its bursting, get blamed on Democrats. I would ask how you manage to twist the facts around to mean the opposite of what they seem to mean, but I'm afraid it will give me a headache to read any more of your reasoning.

What are you talking about? Do you get lost if you can't find a poster and instead have to make an actual case. I kid, I kid. Carter invented the housing problem, Clinton made it far far worse, and it was the fact that it was regulated very badly to a large extent that caused the issue in the first place. I have heard interviews with bank CEOs that said they were regulated into being forced to give loans to people who did not qualify for them because democrats use these programs as give aways to buy votes from people who's only knowledge about polatics concerns only which guy gives me the biggest check. There is a great trap to polatic's and both sides are guilty but to vastly different degrees. No one runs on what they will take away if elected. Democrats make every promise they can think of to get in and stay in power. They then actually give people some of what they promised. The republicans do this to very small degree in comparison but are the only ones who run at times on taking away things that are crippleing and destroying the country. The programs just keep accumulating and then they start stealing money out of one to fund another promise they made. They are now at the point that they have to be cut or this country will die. Instead of a tough minded buisness man that will do a little of this you want to retain a guy that passed the most expensive program in history besides borrowing money to pay his efforts to bribe congressmen and circumvent due legal process in an effort to put the most ineffecient organization in human history in charge of 1/6 of the economy.

 

[Revoltingest]

....Carter invented the housing problem, Clinton made it far far worse, and it was the fact that it was regulated very badly to a large extent that caused the issue in the first place. I have heard interviews with bank CEOs that said they were regulated into being forced to give loans to people who did not qualify for them because democrats use these programs as give aways to buy votes from people who's only knowledge about polatics concerns only which guy gives me the biggest check.

True all dat.
I recall the housing bubble becoming malignant under Carter, although the stage was set earlier.

 

[1robin]

True all dat.
I recall the housing bubble becoming malignant under Carter, although the stage was set earlier.

Long time no see, Revolting. I thought that Carter created the programs that led to the bubble specifically.

 

[tytlyf]

Carter is the latest GOP dupe card they are playing. Rush mostly. Please fact check people, just because someone says they are correct 99.7% of the time doesn't mean it's true.

 

[Alceste]

Carter is the latest GOP dupe card they are playing. Rush mostly. Please fact check people, just because someone says they are correct 99.7% of the time doesn't mean it's true.

I sort of half want to know what they're talking about but I'm afraid to ask. I fear it might be a law that prohibited banks from discriminating against minorities or something.

 

[tytlyf]

I sort of half want to know what they're talking about but I'm afraid to ask. I fear it might be a law that prohibited banks from discriminating against minorities or something.

I was referring to the Reich-wing Messiah Rush. He claims his talent is "on loan from god" and that he's correct 99.7% of the time. There's other things he saturates the audience with, but, it's kinda telling. Why does a person need to tell their audience he doesn't lie?

Sad world America is turning into. Sad world. Fight Dominionism!

 

[Revoltingest]

Long time no see, Revolting. I thought that Carter created the programs that led to the bubble specifically.

Carter is Mr Community Reinvestment Act, so you are correct. But I also view him as a link in the chain. Prior to Carter,
we still had institutionalized inflation, & income tax deductions for interest & real estate tax, both of which tend to inflate
real estate prices. I'm always amazed that people on the left & right will praise a subsidy which favors high wage earners,
but is reduced if the homeowner suffers a cut in pay, right when they'd need this subsidy the most. Strange indeed!

 

[Copernicus]

Just for the sake of time I will assume this is accurate. Why has a problem that existed for less than a year (5% in Jan of 09) taken more than 3 years and at least an additional trillion a year to show signs of improving? Why is the guy who had the problem caused by the domocrats less than a year blamed for the problem by the guy who hasn't fixed it in 4?

Robin, if you could put that in grammatical English, I might better understand it. I have little idea what you really believe, but you seem to think that a president can somehow just snap his fingers and make all of those people employed again. His first priority was to supply markets with credit again, which he did by continuing Bush's TARP and making it more auditable. With the permission of Congress to divert some of that money to the auto industry, he managed to save it from collapse, which saved millions of more jobs from being dragged down with it. The recovery has been weak, but Obama has had to fight an obstructionist House for two years, with Republicans vowing that their highest priority was not to save the nation, but to make him a one-term president. Just the same, the private sector has been generating jobs and is in recovery. What is dragging us down is the loss of public sector jobs such as school teachers. (Remember Romney criticizing Obama for the loss of jobs among women? Right. A lot of those were public sector school teachers.) What brought on shrinkage in government jobs was the refusal of Congress to pay any more money to save them--a deliberate attempt to "shrink" government and halt the recovery. At one point, Republicans blasted Bernanke, the Republican fed chair, for making noises that he would use his office to help restore job growth. Not all, but many Republicans have been engaging in a cynical game to ruin the recovery as a way to weaken the President. American families have been "collateral damage" in their little war.

I thought you said he resisted the effort to take God out. His doing it alone is far worse. It worked so well when we took God out of schools it is no wonder he is following suite. Teen pregnancy sky rocketed and school shootings are now realities instead of the terrible prayer problem. Yeah let's copy that.

What are you talking about? The Democratic platform? What does that have to do with teen pregnancies? Obama had nothing to do with the "God-less" wording. He just forced the plank to be rewritten when Fox News started making an issue of it.

Even after all the millions who have given up hope are taken off the lists the unemployement numbers are still worse than he inherited even from the site you used. You are entitled to your opinion but not your own facts.

Yes, I am entitled to the facts that you have been trying to deny. Unemployment has been coming down slowly, but only because of the fact that reductions in government spending have eroded the stimulus. This was predicted by economists two years ago, when Republicans took control of the House and started doing all they could to block Obama. The numbers peaked towards the end of 2009 and have been slowly dropping since them. The auto bailout worked even better than economists expected.

Yeah he was starring into the abyss created by Carter and Clinton and made a very bad decision. He was later blamed for what he didn't cause by the man who made it worse and who's party actually did cause it, this lunacy has been adopted by the kool aid crowd.

How could GW Bush be staring at an abyss caused by Jimmy Carter before Reagan took office? And are you forgetting the 12 years of Republican control over the White House between Carter and Clinton? It's as if Reagan and HW Bush suddenly disappeared. Then you mention Clinton, who left the country with a surplus headed towards a balanced budget. Bush turned that surplus into a $400 billion deficit in just 8 years. You are delusional if you think that can be blamed on Democrats.

Basically, your complaint is that Obama has not fixed the mess that Bush left him with fast enough. So you want to put the people back into power who caused the mess in the first place. That's insane.

 

[1robin]

Carter is Mr Community Reinvestment Act, so you are correct. But I also view him as a link in the chain. Prior to Carter,
we still had institutionalized inflation, & income tax deductions for interest & real estate tax, both of which tend to inflate
real estate prices. I'm always amazed that people on the left & right will praise a subsidy which favors high wage earners,
but is reduced if the homeowner suffers a cut in pay, right when they'd need this subsidy the most. Strange indeed!

Don't forget the taking us off the Gold standard which actually kept the government from printing money as fast it could make paper. I think FDR did that piece of brilliance that took the dollar from being worth $1.07 to in just a few years to being worth about $.17. Democrats must think there is no bottom to this stuff but we are staring at it now.

 

[Wirey]

Don't forget the taking us off the Gold standard which actually kept the government from printing money as fast it could make paper. I think FDR did that piece of brilliance that took the dollar from being worth $1.07 to in just a few years to being worth about $.17. Democrats must think there is no bottom to this stuff but we are staring at it now.

Didn't America come off the Gold standard under Grant?

 

[tytlyf]

Don't forget the taking us off the Gold standard which actually kept the government from printing money as fast it could make paper. .

Who and why was the gold standard changed?

"Adherence to the gold standard prevented the Federal Reserve from expanding the money supply in order to stimulate the economy, fund insolvent banks and fund government deficits which could "prime the pump" for an expansion. Once the US went off the gold standard, it became free to engage in such money creation. The gold standard limited the flexibility of the central banks' monetary policy by limiting their ability to expand the money supply, and thus their ability to lower interest rates"

 

[Reverend Rick]

Didn't America come off the Gold standard under Grant?

Nixon in 1974 I believe. The dollars became federal reserve notes.

 

[Old Scratch]

Didn't America come off the Gold standard under Grant?

Hahhaah hahahhhhh! Perhaps of government payments you think. In 1933, one of your Dark Lord's greatest minions, Franklin "Devil" Roosevelt,
the gold standard ended. But if fell upon My later friend, Tricky Dick, the gold standard to completely abandon. "Quantitative easing".....ahhh,
of My most successful & destructive inventions it is. But "fools with printing press" I prefer to call it! Booowhahahh hahahhaha hahhahhahh!

 

[Reverend Rick]

They had to let us buy gold bullion once again in 1974 as well. Gold was 100 an ounce back then. Now it is in the 1,600's

 

[1robin]

Who and why was the gold standard changed?

"Adherence to the gold standard prevented the Federal Reserve from expanding the money supply in order to stimulate the economy, fund insolvent banks and fund government deficits which could "prime the pump" for an expansion. Once the US went off the gold standard, it became free to engage in such money creation. The gold standard limited the flexibility of the central banks' monetary policy by limiting their ability to expand the money supply, and thus their ability to lower interest rates"

FDR took us off the standard. I do not know what the rest of what you posted means. It looks like it proves my point. The government (the most inefficient and corrupt organization in the us) should not be allowed to artificially stimulate anything or arbirarily fix interest rates outside of war time. Government is the problem not the solution - Reagan.