Election 2012 Is Comming

Phil,Why is it I dont hear you complaining about the cost increases in education? Eduction increases by percentage are far greater then those in health care.

Hooray for Florida !

I-95 will be jammed for the next month or so........Druggies and deadbeats heading North out of Florida ..


Florida is the first state - Hooray for Florida !!!!


Florida is the first state requiring drug testing to receive welfare! In signing the new law,


Republican Gov. Rick Scott said, "If Floridians want welfare, they better make sure they are drug-free.


Applicants who test positive for illicit substances won't be eligible for the funds for a year, or until they undergo treatment.


Those who fail a second time would be banned from receiving funds for three years!


Naturally, a few people are crying this is unconstitutional.


How is this unconstitutional?


It's completely legal that every other working people have to pass drug tests in order to get a J-O-B which supports those on welfare!


Forward if you agree!!


Let's get Welfare back to the ones who NEED it, not those who WON'T get a JOB.....

I AGREE 100%
And:

As these critical elections get closer, you will want to know the latest developments on key Conservative Caucus grassroots issues like:
•Stopping Barack Obama's "open borders" strategy and plans to turn millions of illegal aliens into citizens as fast as he can


•Turning back Obama's unconstitutional health care rationing measures and cutting back federal government power into all corners of our lives


•Curbing the power of government unions to squeeze taxpayers for massive salaries and obscene pensions


•Blocking President Obama's radical judicial activist nominees from taking lifetime appointments to the federal bench


•Preventing multi-national bodies like the U.N. or a proposed North American Union from stealing US independence


•Ending the billions spent on bi-lingual education and pushing for English as our Official Language

So many of our problems go back to special interest bedfellows. Solyndra is not only a shining example, but it will be the tainted cocktail that comes back home to roost.

This is the sort of thing I'm sick of.

JoeinNY wrote: This is the worst economics and fundamental lie perpetrated by I guess I would call them conservatives but really they aren’t conservative it all they are tax reducers and spending increasers… redistributors of wealth from the middle class to the rich essentially.. so not conservatives but republicans for the last two decades… Historically there has never been an inverse relationship between top tax rate and economic production.. that is with all other things being held the same decreasing the tax rate lowered revenue but doesn’t increase output.. this is backed up by logic as well at a certain level of wealth you simply cannot effectively spend or invest any faster… increasing wealth accumulation beyond that level simply takes money out of the economy.. the government as you well know never gets to the point where it can’t possibly spend or invest anymore.    Simply look at top tax rates and what was going on in the country at the time in the 50s and early sixties that top rate was %90 and it was the golden era of American dominance and competitiveness.. we were smashing the socialist soviet model.. and we were taxing at 90%.   We dropped it to 70 percent in the late 60s and 70s.   You talk about the pendulum and where it is at the extreme… 91 percent is actually the extreme left and right now there is a whole group of investor class billionaires who are paying 15% and that is by far the extreme right no matter how much right wing media says that lower taxes will increase economic output. http://home.adelphi.edu/sbloch/deficits.html

Joe, Your logic and reality seam to be in conflict. Compare the big government policies of jimmy Carter, Barrack Obama against the closest model of conservatism we have which was Ronald Reagan. Which worked? Which generated growth? And which increased government revenues?

On the logic side your reasoning says at a certain point the rich just idle thier money under a matress because they dont have enough time to deal with it. This is false, they always have their money invested in something to make more, this funds other business, If they dont have the time to manage it they hire others to do so resulting in more employment. the more they have the bigger they think, the exception is in times of uncertainty, then they find safer investments like gold and bonds. Government deficit spending only adds to the uncertainty.

Morfoot wrote: Bottom line is the banks are to blame for this whole banking mess and their mistakes. Now they are sticking it to the customers again by charging ridiculous fees to access THEIR money out of machines for the sake of convienance. Then on top of that come up with a 'Check Card' so they can do away with paper checks, the time and money it takes to process them to make it easier for THEM and now they are going to charge you a monthly fee to use the darn things. GREED! It makes the world go round and will be the end of us ALL!

The new $5 fee is a direct result of the government again medeling with the banks, the newest democrat inspired regulations decreased what the banks could charge per use of an ATM. It is not the governments palce to dictate how a private company runs its day to day operations. Those machines are not free to purchase or maintain, so the banks found a new way to charge to cover their costs. In response some democrats have called for a boycott of a private company. We now have the government deliberatly working against a private tax paying company. this is why our founders wanted limited government. When people demand regulation, this is what they end up with.

"By 2003, Mr. Bush grasped this lesson. In that year, he cut the dividend and capital gains rates to 15 percent each, and the economy responded. In two years, stocks rose 20 percent. In three years, $15 trillion of new wealth was created. The U.S. economy added 8 million new jobs from mid-2003 to early 2007, and the median household increased its wealth by $20,000 in real terms.

The 03 Bush tax cuts also generated a massive increase in federal tax receipts. From 2004 to 2007, federal tax revenues increased by $785 billion, the largest four-year increase in American history. According to the Treasury Department, individual and corporate income tax receipts were up 40 percent in the three years following the Bush tax cuts. And (bonus) the rich paid an even higher percentage of the total tax burden than they had at any time in at least the previous 40 years."
[/QUOTE]

This is the worst economics and fundamental lie perpetrated by I guess I would call them conservatives but really they aren’t conservative it all they are tax reducers and spending increasers… redistributors of wealth from the middle class to the rich essentially.. so not conservatives but republicans for the last two decades…
Historically there has never been an inverse relationship between top tax rate and economic production.. that is with all other things being held the same decreasing the tax rate lowered revenue but doesn’t increase output.. this is backed up by logic as well at a certain level of wealth you simply cannot effectively spend or invest any faster… increasing wealth accumulation beyond that level simply takes money out of the economy.. the government as you well know never gets to the point where it can’t possibly spend or invest anymore.    Simply look at top tax rates and what was going on in the country at the time in the 50s and early sixties that top rate was %90 and it was the golden era of American dominance and competitiveness.. we were smashing the socialist soviet model.. and we were taxing at 90%.   We dropped it to 70 percent in the late 60s and 70s.   You talk about the pendulum and where it is at the extreme… 91 percent is actually the extreme left and right now there is a whole group of investor class billionaires who are paying 15% and that is by far the extreme right no matter how much right wing media says that lower taxes will increase economic output.
http://home.adelphi.edu/sbloch/deficits.html

Conversely two things that do increase demand and increase economic output albeit in unsustainable ways are the lowering of the fed funds rate and increasing government spending. Again these things are unsustainable.. talking about increasing growth well spending more money than you are taking in is akin to your wife saying you lived better when she was managing the finaces because you got a new house and new tvs and new cars while you were maxing out your credit cards and that you are living worse now because you are saving money and paying back your debt. Talking about increasing tax revenues to record rates while you were running up three of the top 10 deficits in history is like your wife telling you she actually made more money when she was in charge because by spending 20000 a year on the card she was getting 200 cash back and you are not. These things aside government spending does increase demand every time by definition, and lowering the fed rate (when it is high enough to be an effective tool) does increase demand every time.

These guys weren’t stupid these last two are easily seen facts supported by history, logic, macro and micro economic theory. So if you really want to see for the first time in history an inverse relationship between tax rates and growth you decrease tax rates….. and wait for it… you also increase spending and you lower the fed rate.. then when economic output goes up … as it will because you unsustainably goosed the heck out of the economy.. you declare victory for your policies of lowering tax rates. Then of course the bubble that was a easily forseeable result of giving away money free of interest for way too long bursts and someone else has to come clean up the mess spends more money to bail out the rich guys and future generations are left to pay for the money you spent goosing the economy.

But wait if I was right there would have to be evidence that we increased spending and dropped interest rates around the same time we were decreasing those taxes.. I would provide you the charts but you would call whatever source I pulled them from liberal and dismiss them but look it up yourself anywhere you want facts are facts..

As for the rich paying a larger percentage of the total tax burden.. one would expect that to happen when
As of 2001, the top 1% of households (the upper class) owned 33.4% of all privately held wealth, and the next 19% (the managerial, professional, and small business stratum) had 51%, which means that just 20% of the people owned a remarkable 84%, leaving only 16% of the wealth for the bottom 80% (wage and salary workers)

By 2007 the top 1% controlled 42%, the next 19% had 50% and then 7 percent was split below the bottom 80%.
So yeah we would kind of expect that the rich were paying more.. what with them closing factories and and selling us stuff built with Chinese labor and us thanking them for it by decreasing their tax rates and lending them money at zero interest so they could lend it out and make money on it, did I mention we were also overpaying them billions to provide substandard services to our troops at the time..   

So which way did we really swing the pendulum..
I agree with Bruce that there is no real difference with what Obama would have done and a reasonable republican would have done with few exceptions.. Obama has had the tarp money paid back to some extent and Obama took a percentage of ownership in GM in exchange for the bailout so we wouldn’t lose 100% of that money either .. republicans would have given it back to the original shareholders erasing the losses from their investments at the expense of the tax payers. That is just going off historical data on what republican president have done in previous bailouts though this one could have been different but based on who gives them campaign money I doubt it.
Again there are reasons to give tax cuts.. even to the ultra rich but they don’t increase economic output on their own.. never have and I highly doubt they ever will. They do however increase the deficit and the debt, always have and always will.. regardless of bushes record revenue increase (cashback rewards) of 785 billion over 4 years .. four years during which the credit card balance kept going up and was about to head to the moon…

Someone's lost it. I know a lot of bank stock is down about a 1/10 or less than what it was. I guess if the banks didn't get bailed out, they'd have gone under. Maybe that needed to happen, but our government, either Dem or Rep wasn't about to let that happen. But, like the stock market, wealth has vanished, and it just isn;t on paper when money is tied to it.

It cracks me up about this Dem versus Rep debate. Despite all the fighting and finger pointing and stances both sides take, there really isn't much difference between the two sides or the outcomes. Other than Obama Care, I don't think McCain would have done much different than Obama has done concerning the economy and the wars, and I don't think Obama has done much different than Bush would have done had he had another 4 years, dispite all the promises Obama made before the election.

The Banks have no one to blame but themselves. When I went out and bought my first house in 91 I was told that I didn't quailify for a house that was 90k that I had to look for something lower. I had to run through background check that the FBI would have been proud of. I moved several years later to a nicer bigger house that I could afford.
Times changed and the housing industry boomed. Interest only loans were running full steam but unheard of ( at least for me) and why would anyone want one?I guess so they could keep up with the Jones's.
These people never thought of property taxes on a nicer house, maintenance, utilities, and etc lived paycheck to paycheck never giving thought to what if I lose my job. I on the other hand did just the opposite. The economy tanked because of 9/11 and now I'm ready to move as the area I live in has lost it's small town charm and is just another suburb of Atlanta. Brand new Strip Malls everywhere that are empty, have been for 3 years and some that might have a business or two in them. Foreclosed houses that are built on top of each other (so close that when you wake up and look out your bedroom window you can see what your neighbor is eating for breakfast) everywhere and I can't sell my house cause it's barely worth more than I owe and I have been here for 14 years and the market is flooded with new homes that have never been lived in that have been sitting vacant for years.
Now I have had to fight with the mortgage for months trying to get the ex off the loan and have gotten the royal run around to the point that they want to know where EVERY dollar spent in my checking account is going and what for and where EVERY deposit comes from if it didn't come from my employer. Even to the point where I asked them if I had a yard sell and sold a bunch of crap that I had to tell them what was sold and to whom so they could verify if needed that I was telling the truth. I told Bank of America that I'd fire them if I could and that I needed to remind them as they had copies of my divorce decree that I was in contempt of court as the EX was not off the loan by such and such date and that I could be thrown in jail for failure to comply if she so chose. How are you gonna get your money when I'm in jail over your refusal to grant me a loan assumption over a petty $100 deposit from a freaking yard sale and that B of A would be stuck with another foreclosed home? Needless to say I was approved a couple days later.

Idiots like these are why we are in the predicament we are in. Never ceases to amaze me but I know it's because of greed. It's very unfortunate because but those who've done it right, honestly and play by the rules are the ones who suffer the most it seems.

Bottom line is the banks are to blame for this whole banking mess and their mistakes. Now they are sticking it to the customers again by charging ridiculous fees to access THEIR money out of machines for the sake of convienance. Then on top of that come up with a 'Check Card' so they can do away with paper checks, the time and money it takes to process them to make it easier for THEM and now they are going to charge you a monthly fee to use the darn things.

GREED! It makes the world go round and will be the end of us ALL!    

Erice, I think you got Bush Derangement Syndrome!

The banks are losing big time. I've seen houses that sold for or were refinanced for around $600k during the peak, only to see them go as short sales or REOs now for in the $300ks. One house alone and $200k-$300 is lost. After a while that adds up to a lot of money.

I'm getting calls for "restrospective forensic enhanced field reviews". Lenders are having appraisals reviewed that were done 5-6 years ago to see if the appraiser had any culpability in the loss. These are for short sale and REO properties. I was just thinking about the fact that it may be a better alternative to let people live free in a home rather than moth ball it and leave it vacant. Some of these houses were really nice 5 years ago, but after they've been vacant a year or more, especially if they're in a rural area with no one checking on them, are really declining in condition. It's amazing how fast a vacant property can run down. That adds greatly to the loss beyond the change in market conditions. There's a lot of money being lost.

JoeinNY wrote: Of course they knew, but the ridiculously low FED rate (which created the demand) and the ensuing bubble was the only thing keeping the economy of the country moving.. despite the massive tax cuts that were supposed to provide growth.. if bush slowed that down he would have had to do what Reagan had to do in his second term raise taxes and restore some balance but lets face it bush was no Reagan. As for the CRA argument… is bullcrap… The government (us) was telling private companies – federally insured banks that if they wanted the unbelievable benefits of keeping their ability to guarantee that the people keeping money in their banks would have their deposits (and the return on those deposits) be insured by the government then the people (us) would not allow the banks to discriminate in their loan practices as they historically had been shown to do when left to their own devices. them out.    In all fairness there was some push from the FED using CRA to get banks to loan money because the FED was trying to prop up bushes tax cuts.. but again only 25% of the loans made during the bubble were made by the federally insured institutions (mostly small regional banks) subject to the big bad CRA and by and large those loans are not the ones defaulted on..

Joe you are right, the banks had a practice of discriminating against people who would not be able to pay them back. Banks are not charities, they are businesses looking to make profit. The government has the ability to hand out money to these people if that is what they want to do, just look at Solyndra for goodness sake. Instead they chose to change the behaviors of the banks, and force them to do what did not make sense. Government medeling was the start of the disease, the rest is just symptoms. Also you are practicing some revisionist history on the bush tax cuts, they lead to increased revenue, so the fed had nothing to make up for concerning them. The deficits were a result of increased spending, just like today, only Obama does it on steroids compared to Bush. Here is an excerpt from a February 2010 Washington post article.

"By 2003, Mr. Bush grasped this lesson. In that year, he cut the dividend and capital gains rates to 15 percent each, and the economy responded. In two years, stocks rose 20 percent. In three years, $15 trillion of new wealth was created. The U.S. economy added 8 million new jobs from mid-2003 to early 2007, and the median household increased its wealth by $20,000 in real terms.

The 03 Bush tax cuts also generated a massive increase in federal tax receipts. From 2004 to 2007, federal tax revenues increased by $785 billion, the largest four-year increase in American history. According to the Treasury Department, individual and corporate income tax receipts were up 40 percent in the three years following the Bush tax cuts. And (bonus) the rich paid an even higher percentage of the total tax burden than they had at any time in at least the previous 40 years."

Of course they knew, but the ridiculously low FED rate (which created the demand) and the ensuing bubble was the only thing keeping the economy of the country moving.. despite the massive tax cuts that were supposed to provide growth.. if bush slowed that down he would have had to do what Reagan had to do in his second term raise taxes and restore some balance but lets face it bush was no Reagan.

As for the CRA argument… is bullcrap… The government (us) was telling private companies – federally insured banks that if they wanted the unbelievable benefits of keeping their ability to guarantee that the people keeping money in their banks would have their deposits (and the return on those deposits) be insured by the government then the people (us) would not allow the banks to discriminate in their loan practices as they historically had been shown to do when left to their own devices. These private companies had every right to compete on their own for your investment dollars without the benefits of Federal Deposit insurance and there was certainly the ability for some private entity to insure their deposits… that was the state of the country till 1933. You do know why the FDIC exists right.. because left unregulated banks behaved badly and collapsed left and right stealing peoples money to the point where they no longer trusted banks and put their money under mattresses, the great depression and all that. Just like with this latest collapse there needed to be government intervention before the masses could trust the private financial institutions with our money. The reality is they were getting tremendous value from the FDIC insurance, basically the license to assure the public that their money was safe no matter how badly the bank mismanaged it.    Just another example of how regulation makes commerce possible.. but I digress. (ok one more digression – the last time we were asked to stop telling FDIC insured private companies how to run their business (relax regulation) that was 1982, the Garn-St. Germain Depository Institutions Act- the direct result was the savings and loan crisis and the need for a government bailout in 1989) . Hmmm I sense something of a pattern here, three periods of relaxed regulation, three times private companies behaved badly, three times the government bailed them out.   

In all fairness there was some push from the FED using CRA to get banks to loan money because the FED was trying to prop up bushes tax cuts.. but again only 25% of the loans made during the bubble were made by the federally insured institutions (mostly small regional banks) subject to the big bad CRA and by and large those loans are not the ones defaulted on.. The big problem is the loans pushed by national lenders that were not FDIC approved. Additionally the areas of the country that value inflated and collapsed was certainly not in your redlined districts, it was middle class property pushed into high class pricing that plunged.

The real issue was Bush appointed financial regulators without the resources and desire to enforce safe and sane practices.   The republican solution is once again to relax regulations and assume that this time we wont see a repeat of the history.. (fourpeat actually). That is not a conservative approach or a moderate approach it is an insane approach. It has only been a couple years,are we supposed to forget that the regulations we are blaming for our lack of growth were bipartisan regulations that actually stopped the economic collapse just a couple years ago.

In the end you create your own case for more regulation when you said the government saw what was going on but allowed it to happen, and I agree with you. You also said a business seeks to max out the rules to maximize profit, I agree there as well because it is not an individual it cannot be trusted to act in its own best interest much less the best interest of society.   So we agree there must be rules, and just as importantly they must be enforced or a business seeking to maximize profit will not see an impact to that profit so they will further push the envelope past those regulations.

Business does not create economic output and business does not consume economic output… your cavemen didn’t have no stinkin businesses. Humans create and humans consume, capital is at its core stored human labor. Businesses are a construct like governments are a construct. No business that adds a factory or a machine without there being a demand for the goods or services that will be created by that factory or machine because that does not maximize profit…
   
It is very sane and reasonable to argue that since nothing can create demand except consumers and we simply need to save and work our way out of this recession. That is my opinion and the only opinion really in line with traditional conservative economic theory (even though you “conservatives” love to call anyone not drinking the cool aid liberals). The only problem with that relatively conservative opinion in the eyes of the republicans is that argument doesn’t allow them to blame the fact that we haven’t gone from financial collapse to boom in 2.5 years on Obama. To blame Obama, Pelosi, and Reid you first have to pretend that we should be creating jobs at huge rate despite the fact there is this huge real estate market collapse that will take years of demand to work through. Once you pretend that is what should be happening you need to find a way to blame Obama that it isn’t happening.

You have to do this even though all the businesses are flush with cash and that they are correct not to hire a bunch of people to make stuff that no one has the money to buy.   All that they could come up with to put it on the Democrats is too many taxes and too much regulation. (Actually they were trying to blame it on the deficit and debt for a while but then they realized that the democrats actually wanted larger deficit and debt reductions than they did and the types of reductions that the people favor are the ones that hurt the republican support base.. so that didn’t play well so all they got left is taxes and regulation)

Problem is it simply a weak argument completely disputed by history and the basic laws of supply and demand. But it does let people blame the government and those damn welfare people and crazy liberals trying to destroy America for all their woahs. And as it is human nature to want to blame someone else it works to some extent. It also has the side effects of attracting a bunch of money from big donors so that doesn’t hurt.   

But, it won’t work enough to win a national election even with the best gerrymandering and voter suppression tactics money can buy.   

Because in the end is the country better off than it was when bush left office? yes

Are the republicans offering real solutions?… none that are running and hate only gets you just so many votes.

Why do I care..
I don’t mind people having differing views and opinions but we cannot abide this constant rewriting of history… our history is a wealth of knowledge and experience earned for us by those who came before us with great sacrifice… as our government was… we cannot let our history and government be stolen from us to serve only the elite investor classes goals of being able to own everything while risking nothing and producing nothing.   Even for the investor class that is a short sighted solution, it certainly doesn’t work for the rest of us
The only thing that makes me more angry than those that try to corrupt the history of this great country are the hypocrites who try to corrupt religion to put themselves in positions of power and authority


And yes things are slow around here this week.. seems we are experiencing low demand

Eric, as you point out everyone new what was going on for 2 decades these loans were written, I recieved approval two differnt times for loans of $100,000 more than I every would have been able to pay back. Those issueing the mortgages ceertainly knew what was going on, but they had a choice, face charges of redlining or write the loans and, and make massive profits. Not to hard when the government is backing them and you can not loose. You can not tell me we all knew what was going on, but the government did not. Not only did they let it happen, but they encouraged it. The managers at Freddie and Fannie made wall street sized bonuses throughout the process. The government absoulutely let this happen. Bush saw it coming and tried to curb it a few years ealier but was blocked by the democratic legislators. For every action there is an equal and opposite reation. you can not medel with the natural balance without creating unintended consequences. The government created the conditions for this crisis, the rest followed. This is clearly written between the lines.

there is no fcng way the government let the housing crises happen, you guys read black and white and thats it, when my wife was working for a title company she would bring the approved apps home, and one particular one sticks out, it was Shanikwa aka whatever...she made 46 grand and the bank was giving her a 350k dollar loan on a home, there is no Jewish banker on this earth going to let a loan like this go thru his branch, my wife was working with 700 other people at this title company mostly doing work for countrywide, Ameriquest, no big name banks because they werent pushing these loans thru.
she had stacks of these approved loans and I just shook my head going thru them.
do you really think it was from regulation or giving the poor person a place to live? these guys are smart, they are in a position and forecast what the end result will be and the banks just dont fcing give money away. read between the lines

Here is a great conservative writer in business weekly. The leftys will not agree with it but here is the main reason for the housing market crashed.



cigar clinton and housing crash :)


I am a    hehe

Didn't Starbuck's turn 40 earlier this year? That explains everything.