I am struck, yet again, at how f@%$ing dumb people can be. It has to be part of some plot to make sure a Democrat only serves 1 term in office. Either that, or they want to run the entire country into the ground.
Today the Washington Post carried this analysis of the recent decision to extend deep tax cuts on dvidends and capital gains. Basically, any cuts that were excluded from the agreement legslation will be put back in the next piece of legislation.
This runs on the heels of this whopper of a spending bill. I just don't get how they keep doing it. After all the bitching about pork fat and how wasteful it is, etc. they pass a $106 billion spending bill, $72 bil that goes to Iraq and $27 bil for Katrina. The rest that goes to pork and other sundry interests including sugar in Hawaii, farmers, and Northrop Grumman. And people wonder why I am so damn cynical!
This is also why I avoid the politics section of the Washington Post. I suffer from pre-hypertension as it is!
BUSH MUST BE IMPEACHED and his ilk removed from Congress.
Can we vote for President Bartlet?
Thursday, May 04, 2006
Bafflement
Posted by USWest at 9:04 PM
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5 comments:
I think your speculation that the Republicans want to bring the entire country down might be close for a lot of them. Their rhetoric is often about "starving the beast." "The Beast" (a biblical reference) is the US government which lives on money. If they can cut off its supply of money (tax cuts) and then put into a situation of untenable debt (high spending), there will come a day when government will have to stop most of its services just to pay the bills.
People with this nihilistic vision aren't 100% of the party. But they are a big enough and dominant enough portion of the GOP nowadays that they can block any attempt at fiscal responsibility.
Add to that the normal pressures to indulge in a little pork barrel politics, and you get a real "fox running the hen house" situation.
Remember when Bush was first installed as President? He declared "the grown ups are back in charge." OK, so let's treat them like adults and hold them accountable for their actions. Vote a straight Democratic ticket this November! Don't let any progressive friends say their vote won't matter! Encourage all the conservatives and Republicans you know to stay home.
Step 1: Vote Democrat
Step 2: Impeach Bush
Step 3: Liberty!
// posted by Raised By Republicans
Here is the irony- spending far above one's means is what brought the Soviet Union down.
// posted by USWest
USWest - I think that's an inaccurate characterization of what happened to the USSR. They did not spend themselves to death - that is a Reaganite myth used to justify bloated defense budgets here. They never tried to match us. The problem was that the consumer goods sector collapsed from total mismanagement. "Spending" is not exactly what the USSR ever did anyway.
But that's not why I logged in to comment!
I totally understand the Senate! Let's face it, fiscal discipline died in 2003 with the Iraq war and tax cuts. Deficits are ballooning. The president shoves through fifty- and hundred-billion dollar "emergency" bills for a war entering its fourth year, with no end in sight, full of no-bid contracts and zero oversight. As long as the super goody train is leaving the station about $300 billion overweight this year, why not throw on another $10 billion of spending that may actually do some good for local economies, if nothing else? I mean, why the f*** should a Senator vote for a $300 billion dollar+ deficit and get nothing for his state but higher gas prices and cuts in student loans?
// posted by LTG
Fair point. But the Senate has another tool it can use if it isn't happy: IMPEACHMENT!
There is plenty of evidence and more than enough grounds.
BTW: Having sat through a couple of documentaries on the Cold War, I don't think any one thing can be attributed to end of the USSR. For sure, they weren't able to keep up spending on defense (but tried to fake like they were) because of a collapsing economics picture at home. Gorby knew he had inherited a sinking ship which is why he pursued perestroika.
Are we really that different? Consumer spending is slowing, foreclosures are on the rise, inflation is up, fuel prices, etc.
You are right as well that a bunch of people who know that unlike the President, they have to run for election again, are going to bring home some bacon.
// posted by USWest
RE: Unhappy Senators impeaching Bush. The Senator can't impeach the President. The House impeaches. The Senate then votes on whether or not the President should be removed from office. In other words, the Senate can't do anything to the President so long as the House supports him.
I agree with LTG's analysis of individual Senators' incentives. If everyone is getting theirs, I'd be a poor representative of my state if I didn't get mine too.
The USSR collapse is indeed complicated. Spending in the sense we mean probably wasn't the dominant feature. They didn't even have a transferable currency at the time. I'd say that the dominant problem was the fundamental flaws of a command economy. These flaws imposed costs on society and government certainly and it's not TOO big stretch to think of that as spending. But even if we do think of these costs as spending in the sense we have it here in the USA, the scale of their debt was far far beyond what we face here in the US today.
The deficit policies of the Republicans are not likely to lead to a Soviet style catostrophic collapse. But they could easily plunge our country into a period of stagflation - especially with oil prices rising as a result fo their military adventures in the Middle East. As someone who grew up in the Great Lakes region, I'd just like to point out that the stagflation of the late 1970s and early 1980s were an economic Hell for the Great Lakes region. However, they were a glorious boom for Texas et al. This was the period of building booms in Dallas and Houston. This was the period when the TV Show Dallas depecited that city as glamorous. In my cynical moods I'm tempted to think that Bush and Cheney are intentionally creating a situation where stagflation is possible because their narrow interests will benefit enormously.
"Don't mess with Texas?" If ever there was a state in greater need of being messed with, I haven't heard of it!
// posted by Raised By Republicans
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