That we could have a full-employment economy any time we want, if Congress were to just create the necessary jobs?

It's clear that Republicans don't give a sh*t about that, or creating jobs, and have directly tried in republican states, to destroy as many state and city jobs as possible. Had they not, we'd have an unemployment rate in the high sevens right now.

Had "Republicans in congress" (Learn this phrase Obama "Republicans in Congress&quot not filibustered over 300 bills, we'd probably have unemployment in the 5-6 percent range.

You might not believe in the government creating jobs, like republicans. But we could at any time, tax the top group enough, and create all the jobs we need. Hell, we've even got plenty of things we need to do, like roads, and bridges. Build now power grids, encourage solar and wind farms, buy up their energy on a guarantee. Create a potable water transfer pipeline country wide, to deal with what will be both surpluses of water in some areas, and deficits/droughts in others.

There's plenty to do--just stop voting for republicans folks.

IMO, they were like the emperor's new clothes which people said were there but weren't.

Let's see. We had a majority in the Senate. The Senate leader was Harry Reid (D-allegedly). At any time, Senator Reid could have informed the other Senators along the following lines, "I have been informed that our side does not have a sufficient number of votes for a cloture under Senate Rule XXII. So you can talk as long as you want. No one can force you to do so. But when you stop talking, for any reason, I will order the business of the Senate to continue. If you do not like my decision at the time, you can call for a role-call vote on the issue. Each time that you stop talking, I will fulfill my duty as the Senate Leader and order the business of the Senate to continue."

Did we have filibusters? Or did we just have people agreeing with color of the cloth, and how well the suit fit?

with the current senate leadership...Too worried about having to do the same the next time they are in the minority to force the Republicans to actually carry out their filibuster. So the nation suffers.

That isn't much considering he claims to be at such great odds with this Republican and Blue Dog Democratic legislature.

Something is fishy here.

and exceptionally well said.

The American public is not very sophisticated politically. At least the center swing portion of the electorate. The Republicans know this. It will be up to us to educate them in time. We'll have our work cut out for us but I think we will prevail.

I really do...and I hope you are right. Problem is, you are also right in that the general American public is largely unsophisticated politically. Sadly, (my feeling is) is that many have fallen prey/victim (mostly - just too damned tired to really investigate anything, anyway from working 2 jobs to make ends meet) to the *dumbed-down* mentality model and (it would seem to me) to follow (and most importantly believe) the deliberate slick soundbites they see on their TV screens in their busy lives and not question anything really beyond that.

Sadly (and realistically) that's probably all that they really have the energy for, truth be told here...and these bastards know it...which is why it mostly works!

...and by the way....I don't really think that this happened by accident! Smoke and mirrors work really nice on the exhausted along with the rest of the herd mentality who are either too tired or disenfranchised at this point to really give a shit...therefore, much easier to believe the particular hype which goes to those with the most campaign $$$$$ and leave it at that.

If *political scores* carried just a sliver of the weight, attention, stats and local enthusiasm of what popular sports do...then yeah, there might be a chance here. All boils down to what is considered priorities...bottom line - and I'm not really sure how you could go about to change that, honestly.

and so you see where we come in. We all know people at all of the political levels. And we know what a smoke and mirrors job the republican show really is. We explain it carefully to those who will listen. Many will reject it but surprisingly some will hear us and notice. And we will be able to get through to them.

Real democracy works that way and that is our task - real democracy. Not the shame of $'s which the Republicans claim is democracy.

I recall a situation years ago. I was handing out literature in opposition to draft registration (it was 1979 I believe.) I remember two young men passed me and gave us the usual dismissive reception. I was absolutely shocked when their mom followed and took all of our literature and asked me what she could do to help. She saw what they didn't. Probably because as a mom she risked having them go off to war in a draft and that was not something she could tolerate.

The point of my story is that you never know when you are having an impact. Sometimes you think it is pointless and it is not.

Though I try really hard not to - I sometimes get caught up in making blanket generalizations...but, you are right. Sometimes is is just the smallest of things - someone observes or overhears something etc. and it makes an impact. Thanks for reminding me of this.

a permanent ruling class. An oligarchy with a huge peasant class to serve them. I wouldn't accuse most Republicans of being in on that. Definitely most of their voters won't be. They will be part of the peasant class, they just don't realize that.

Before the housing bubble burst you already had a trend toward taking homes away from people. That's what promoting all those reverse mortgages was about. The one boost a lot of people I know got was when they inherited the family home. That is why they are doing as well as they are. So they encourage older people to swap the home for a pot of money and party. Fortunately some care more about their kids and grandkids.

They feel quite secure and are not concerned about the general welfare of us provincials in the US. They are winning in the global markets. We are losing in those markets.

We cannot challenge the oligarchy unless we stop buying the cheap stuff made in sweat shops and imported to the US.

There is a lot of austerity. The only austerity that is needed is for us to put a moratorium on buying things we don't need just because they are cheap. We need to pass on used kids' clothes, share garden tools if someone loses or breaks theirs, and do everything we can to avoid buying cheaply made imports.

The oligarchy makes its money from imports. Stop buying any you don't absolutely have to have. You'll save money in addition to helping our national economy.

can manage that and the town where the house is located is where the kids need to stay, OR the house can bring in enough money in a sale that the kid(s) can get a boost. We're doing that for our kid and grandkid, and we hope it helps them after we're dead.

Period. End of discussion.

set in motion by administration policies that would happen somewhere around March of 2009.
that way it would look like it was the cause of the new administration.

But around the mid -2007 to early 2008 time frame, it began to look like some of the greedy bastards were even greedier than most, thus pulling the crash into the Bush Admin.

My scenario went like this:
- Democrat elected Nov. 2008
- Crash - March & April of 09
- Republicans claim deficit (they caused on purpose) too high to employ typical Keynsian rescue.
- Republicans fight any legislation with everything they have.
- recovery is slow at best, non-existent at worst.
- Repubs campaign on "secret plan" (like Nixon) for president in 2013.
- If elected - huge tax cuts for rich, go after SS, Medicare and Medicaid in big way.
- Unions crushed nationally.

rurallib

Sound like a plausable scenario - look at US today...

Diclotican

They crave power.Hurting the country means nothing to them.

what they're messing with. There is no way people in this country will allow a oligarchy to enslave them. They think if they set it up right they can enforce their class structure and keep the peasants in their place. Not a chance.

You hear the OWS and 99% movement being accused of wanting to destroy capitalism. The 1% are the ones that will get that done, if they don't wise up. If it gets to the point where even middle class republicans wake up and violence is the only answer, that's what they will get.

If you push the pendulum too far, it comes back all the way. No telling what we'll end up with.

they already have. When the labor movement began at the end of the 19th century, owners of capital needed workers. Once everyone was comfortable with their hard won (union) benefits, even those who never belonged to a union, they became complacent and the owners of capital began to quietly make labor considerably less necessary. Between automation and outsourcing good paying jobs have been stripped from this nation. People who have jobs are afraid of losing them, so they will continue to work more hours for less pay and fewer benefits. China has about 1.3 billion people, of which only 300 million live a "middle class" life style. The other billion are dirt poor. China will continue to strip jobs from the industrialized nations until most of that billion are no longer poor. Obama puts $2 billion into the solar panel industry and the Chinese immediately react by putting $30 billion into theirs...crushing solar panel production not just here but all across Europe as well. The rich don't care, they don't make their millions and billions from American production. They make their money because we, the people, are too stupid to stop buying their shit. All of the western industrialized nations are being abused this way....

Scott Walker's "divide and conquer" is not new....the Republicans have been bashing the public sector unions for 2 decades at least. In case you haven't noticed, the American electorate has been dumbed down to the point that it can neither think nor imagine what life will be like if government is indeed small enough to drown in a bathtub. The bad times have only just begun....worse in coming and I doubt it will be corrected much before the end of the century, if indeed it ever is corrected.

that the people don't know they've been enslaved.

The destruction of the consumers in our society is not yet as obvious as it will become. At this point, the quality of the products Americans buy has declined. But we will eventually see that people can no longer purchase a lot of the imports that still seem cheap.

Wages in the US are not growing at a fast enough pace to keep up with the hidden increases in prices. I still have clothing that I purchased in the 1980s including sweaters that I knit in the early 1980s. The quality of the yarn that I could afford to buy then on a very, very modest salary was unbelievably better than the yarn that I can afford to buy or that even a working person with a decent income could afford to buy today.

That goes for most of the fabric from which our clothing is made. It's really bad quality compared to what we got twenty years ago. That is a subtle kind of inflation.

So, we are still buying lots of stuff but when manufacturers can no longer squeeze us on quality, they will raise prices and then the serious reduction in American wages will be noticed and we will be surprised by the inflation.

Their owners deliberately created this economy.

BTW, I don't limit this statement to Republicans. A good number of Democrats have the same owners, and have followed the same orders.

This will continue until corporations are ruled to NOT be people, and we eliminate corporate money from politics. Or until there is a massive bloodbath and a re-writing of all the rules.

nt

I call them traitors.

And with that inane ideology, I call them crazy and stupid too among other things.

It is pathetic that we have to turn to the UK's Guardian or Al Jazeera for headlines that address what is really going on in our country.

so it might make more sense to ask him that question.

The Republican/corporate-owned MSM here is just not going to cover progressive assertions like this. It is sad Michael Cohen has to go to a UK paper to get that headline.

David Gregory Dances with Rove and Chuck Todd is so far to the right , he makes Rove look normal.

Republicans have been crashing the economy since Ronald Reagan was president, and ALL OF THE BANK BAILOUTS are caused by Bush presidencies.

Nixon was supported by a billionaire who wanted this.

Prior to Nixon, televisions and other electronic equipment were not made in the Far East and then imported into this country. Gym shoes and other clothing items were made in the USA. Some trinkets and junk were made in the Far East, and were stamped "Made in Japan," but most items were not. Some automobiles were manufactured in Germany, England, Italy, and France, and then imported into this country, but not so many as to displace automobiles manufactured in this country in signifigant quantities.

In the months prior to Nixon going to China, Congress adopted special tax rules to benefit corporations (DISCs) that engaged in certain international transactions. Nixon went to China and American manufacturing jobs have been exported ever since. Reagan's tax policies accelerated it.

As the signs used to say, "Nixon's the one."

The refusal to tackle the long term problems that lead to US insolvency make shorter term spending policies that much harder to pass. And the supposed short term solutions Obama is coming up with, I.E. employment of teachers, look like requests for perpetual funding to me.

All of it is to carry out an agenda...

More federal employment vs less federal employment. And if you are being funded by the federal govt you are basically a federal employee...oh except the states are on the hook for benefits.

All the while both parties ignore the true job creation engine of our country, small businesses and entrepreneurship. Heck the DU guys know more about how to create a job than both parties. They created a website that attracted people then they figured out a way to get paid for that access. Now THAT is more of what we need. Yeah without us DU addicts aka consumers they wouldn't have a job, but without them we don't have a site! I sure do hope they are getting adequately compensated too.

It was teachers teaching them and federal employees' research that created the internet that the "DU guys" can thank for the money they are making from this site. Much like that worm Saverin, who runs from this country to save taxes after benefiting from programs other Americans' taxes paid for.

This article does an excellent summary of how these federal employees and teachers you malign create the entrepreneurs, and hence create jobs:

http://pandodaily.com/2012/05/12/what-eduardo-saverin-owes-america-hint-nearly-everything/

"We estimate the effect of class size on student performance in 18 countries, combining school fixed effects and instrumental variables to identify random class-size variation between two adjacent grades within individual schools. Conventional estimates of class-size effects are shown to be severely biased by the non-random placement of students between and within schools. Smaller classes exhibit beneficial effects only in countries with relatively low teacher salaries. While we find sizable beneficial effects of smaller classes in Greece and Iceland, the possibility of even small effects is rejected in Japan and Singapore. In 11 countries, we rule out large class-size effects."

http://www.hks.harvard.edu/pepg/PDF/Papers/PEPG02-02.pdf

Locally we doubled education spending in 10 years, increasing salaries substantially over our other government workers and decreasing class sizes. Yet our test scores are still at the bottom.

Teachers are obviously necessary, but we haven't proven that the extra funds we spend on extra teachers accomplish what we want them to.

the private sector jobs. Then one day the private sector jobs disappeared. Worker that used to make $65 per hour now make $14 if they are lucky. Millions of private sector employees are unemployed. Now the Republicans, and apparently you also, turn to the government workers and disparage them for making so much money. The REpublican solution is to reduce everyone's wages to bare subsistence. Sounds like you agree.

doesn't work!

and school performance.

My kids started school in Austria.

Every afternoon, the moms sat with their kids helping the children do their homework. That was in the first three to four grades in school.

In addition every Austrian child was entitled to three years of free pre-school with extremely well trained kindergarten teachers. That mean that the children were "socialized," in other words that they could adjust to the discipline and social pressures in the classroom once they started what we call kindergarten and first grade. Teachers were more than disciplinarians as a result.

Further, only the students who performed very well academically were encouraged to pursue the academic courses in what we would call high school.

The class size was, I believe, about 30 kids to a class at the most. And teachers were relatively well paid. Teachers also got help buying housing and other benefits.

Of course everyone had single payer insurance. That helped a lot too. Sick kids don't perform well in school. That's so obvious, it should not be necessary to mention it. But in this country -- if you are poor, your healthcare may consist of emergency rooms and the hours spent waiting in them for care that you should get from a pediatrician.

Another thing that can mean success for a child in school is good quality prenatal care for the mother -- the kind of care that helps spot a problem in the fetus that can be resolved before birth or a dietary or other habit of the mother that can harm the child. Too many American women do not have access to adequate prenatal care. In many cases, it's the children who suffer. And then of course we end up spending far more on special education than we need to.

Oops, subject has six letters in it - oh well.

It's not just about class sizes. It's about the level of teacher education - in Finland, no skating by on a Bachelors as you must have a Masters at minimum. It's about not having standardized testing and "teaching to the test". It's about giving teachers the power to teach based on a minimum curriculum and not on a national or state-wide set curriculum. It's about giving children continuity - kids go in at 1st grade and leave primary education with the same teacher. They don't change churches each year.

Of course that's only part of Finland's success. But education is key. They recognized this in the 1970s. Their natural resources to exploit was (and still is) trees. They figured out they can't sustain their population on an economy based on lumber alone.

In response to your final paragraph : we haven't proven that the extra funds we spent accomplish what we want... that is true. We're just spending the money in the wrong places.

Mark.

Germans have a very real phobia about high inflation. The last time they experienced a depression and then runaway inflation they ended up with Hitler and a nation in ruins....Not to mention a very guilty conscience.

Then there is the fact that the recession in Europe came about through the casino gambling on Wall St. It is not Germany's fault.

Put yourself into the shoes of the average German. They look around and they see a financial crisis caused by American bankers slicing and dicing credit obligations, mixing sub prime loans in with prime loans, and selling those derivatives as triple A rated bonds. Then they see that one of those investment banks, Goldman Sachs, helped Greece hide the amount of debt it had, in order to help Greece enter the EU. To make matters worse, Germans not only work hard and pay their taxes, they work until the age of 67. Greeks retire as early as age 52 and tax avoidance is a national pass time. So they ask, why should we bailout Greece, we didn't cause the problem....let the Americans do it, they created this mess. If I'm honest I have to say I agree with them. Not that I think the US should bailout Greece...I think the EU should probably oust Greece and let them figure out how they will survive.

The real lesson Americans can learn from Greece is that not paying taxes has dire consequences for a nation...austerity has never helped any nation out of an economic crisis, ever.

countries. Germany did that for reasons of its own -- in part because it thereby had a market for the excess that it produced, in part to hold the European market together, in part due to the manic overoptimism that the technological changes and the dot.com markets. All this was sparked by Greenspan's crazy right-wing economic theories. Unfortunately, Clinton and Bush bought into these illogical theories.

We see the results around the world.

And it will get much worse. Because conservatives do not yet recognize the stupidity of their economic theories. We'll be lucky if we as a country survive this at all.

I'm very pessimistic about what is happening.

The Republican leadership will be the last bunch to realize what has hit our country and our economy. That is because most of them are profiting and doing better than ever. I have a family member in that situation. I talked to her today. Her life is well insulated from the economic reality that most Americans live in. It's very sad really.

NO, no... no...no...no... no... no... no...




Someones cranky party, needs a nap.

fighting back hard enough?

but yes they did enable them. They always do.

they want to destroy social security and are willing to crash the whole system to achieve that.

that have done everything they can to blame everything from the Euro to China to lackluster support for President Obama when it was pretty damn clear, the Republicans in Congress, their "job creator" friends in corporate America, their goobernatorial meisters and legislatures that fire faster than they can print up pink slips, are to blame.

But the above are not the only ones to blame. Election fraud in states (think Wisconsin and Michigan) are tipping the scales of power in Republicans' favor, helping slow down job creation which in turn keeps the economy sluggish that corporate media is "reporting" is all Obama's fault - with the subliminal message that R'money will do better.

I guess the only job creators at the moment are Progressives. My children are employed by wealthy progressives. My 20-year-old daughter starting pay is $16.50 an hour with 100% benefits (Kaiser, health, dental, hospitalization, and 401K), and my son works in a house for the mentally challenged and for a corporation headed by a Progressive where, granted, he only makes $10.50 an hour, but that doesn't include his $100 per month gasoline allowance and other fringe benefits like paid holidays, double time if he chooses to work on holidays, going to Disneyland, Knotts Berry Farm, Universal Studios, all expenses paid, down to his meals.

The Republicans and the MSM are doing exactly what their corporate masters are paying them to do. So you can't say they are unaware--but I assume you forgot the sarcasm smilie.

Particularly if they know in advance what is coming down the pike due to their shenanigans. But they really do reap massive benefits from the misfortune of others, and it makes them happy to see their inferiors suffer.

Tax cuts and austerity economics

They're so blatant, including the wingnut SC Justices. They don't even care that what they do is obvious. They're arrogant, greedy, casual liars. Their morals are nonexistent. Unpatriotic to the extreme. Party over country. Always.

Supported an extension of the Bush-tax cuts for the super rich?

president. All they had to do was call up and say, we are broke and are going to go under without a bail-out. Now they could have made the same argument in 2005 or 2010. They are in the drivers seat. Can you spell extortion?

little fish. Greed masks their sense.

Inflated the housing bubble three ways:

1. Propping up a sick economy with easy money. Easy money policy at FED kept interest rates low. This was needed to prop up an economy that would have gone into recession without it. Tax cuts weighted mostly for the highest income tax brackets meant that the tax burden was being shifted to middle income people. They were finding themselves without as much money (median incomes were going down in the Bush years - for the first time in 50 years) and the only way they could keep them 'buggers' buying to support the economy was with easy credit and cheap money. So personal debt kept increasing as people tried to maintain lifestyles they were used to with declining incomes. Meanwhile GDP was growing at it's slowest rate 70 years( see: "The Aughts: the Lost Decade for Economy, Workers").

2. Not only ignored but fought efforts to rein in Predatory Lenders by 50 states attorneys General (see: Predatory Lenders Partner in Crime)

3. Deregulation. Phil Gramm, deregulator extraordinaire, slipped the Commodities Futures Modernization act 2000 in as a rider to the Omnibus Funding bill in the last few days of the Clinton administration (and just before the Congressional Christmas recess). The Omnibus Funding bill (an 11,000 page document) was a MUST PASS (ie. veto proof) bill before the legislature could leave as it was necessary to keep the Government operating. When Gramm slipped in the CFMA in as a rider - nobody in Congress even knew it was in there.

The CFMA had been held up in committee for about a year or more basically because Democrats were very suspicious of it. Gramm knew to get it passed he had to perform some pretty clever slight of hand legislative trickery. The CFMA made trading in Credit Default Swaps Legal and UNREGULATED. Credit Default Swaps were sold to investors in higher rate (i.e. riskier) Collaterized Debt Obligations (bundled mortgages). The banks explained to the investors (e.g. pension funds, sovereign wealth funds) that if the CDO tranche they invested in went into default the CDS would pay off so the investor would not lose any of his money. this was like Christmas in July...the investor got higher returns with NO RISK OF LOSS... or so it was sold.

Selling the CDSs which were sold as risk eliminators made high yield CDOs very much in demand by investors and their Wall Street Banksters. The banksters told mortgage originators they could buy all the high yield (sub-prime) mortgages lenders could supply. NOTE regular prime rate mortgages were NOT what the Wall Street Banksters wanted. They wanted high yield mortgages. Thus predatory lenders could 'flip' all the sub-prime mortgages they could write. So Predatory lenders were lassoing suckers and writing liar loans and all the alt-A (negative amortization loans - i.e. interest only payment loans, and baloon payment loans) they could get away with (cf. Predatory Lenders Partner in Crime - above).

The CFMA also included the notorious ENRON loophole allowing UNREGULATED trading of energy futures over electronic media. This of course lead to the ripping off of California residence to the tune of Billions of dollars the eventual collapse of ENRON. Thousands out of jobs and without any pensions!

The loose money policies were necessary to prop up an economy which was dieing slowly. It was flagging because tax cuts went mostly to the highest income people thus increasing the tax burden on middle income people who were slowly buying less. so easy money/credit was necessary to enable the people to keep buying - to hold off the recession. Because there was not really enought demand to keep businesses making money and growing, those who did have money were finding it hard to find good investment opportunities (the stock market at this time was not all that great except for home builders). So they were casting about for ways to make money on their investments. The only sector that looked good was housing (as long as the cheap money and loose credit continued).

Eventually the shit hit the fan when the housing bubble could not continue. Banks were holding massive amounts of bad debts (worthless mortgages) that alas, the credit Default swaps could not cover as AIG was going bankrupt trying to pay-off all the Wall Street Banksters CDSs! Hank Paulson went to Bush and Congress and said a bailout was necessary to preclude a collapse of the entire banking sector. Trillions of dollars in bad loans were held by banks which wanted the Taxpayer buy for ridiculous prices. TARP didn't allow for all THAT much of a bailout so trillions of dollars in bad loans still remained on banks books slowing the recovery which was to follow (albeit fought by GOP every inch of the way).

It was a spectacular disaster - a Trickle Down - Deregulation Disaster. Which dragged us into this REPUBLICAN DYSTOPIA.

for more details see: How did this Happen


BUT I DO NOT THINK THEIR INTENT WAS TO CRASH THE ECONOMY - I DON'T THINK THEY KNEW ANY BETTER.

They don't think far enough to see that concentration of wealth eventually leads to a slow growth economy with poor job creation because there isn't enough demand for the products businesses want to sell. They are paid to push deregulation and I think they really don't "get it" that regulation if necessary not only to protect us from greedy people who manage businesses (businessmen are, after all, just people. they are not perfect. They can be just as selfish and short sighted as anyone). A proportion of people (some of them managing businesses) are willing to cheat to make more money. Without regulations disaster is inevitable. But Republicans are paid to fight regulation and some of them may actually believe the deregulatory nonsense they are paid to repeat.

... but they have been fighting every effort of the Dems to rebuild the economy since then.

They didn't want it to crash until after the 2008 election, but they incompetently screwed up the economy so badly that they weren't able to control it any longer.

They were unsure that if they held on until 2009 or 2010 they might not have gotten the same bail-out. Crashing the economy is part of their cycle of destruction and looting.

baby in the bathtub by starving it. I call that a conspiracry.

when Greenspan kept the prime rate at zero (9/11 was his excuse). Combine that with the deficit spending and cheap consumer debt, a massive bubble was being formed that would eventually burst. Jonathan Chait (LA Times) said it may be better if Bush won in 2004 (in the long run) since this massive bubble was going to explode, it would be only just for it to do so no Bush's watch.

Here's the process they are going to use to get rid of all social progress...

Step 1: Crash the economy.
Step 2: Claim they can fix the economy if they only get major tax cuts. Tax cuts will be received.
Step 3: Crash the economy again.
Step 4: Claim they can fix the economy if we reduce Medicaid spending by 50 percent. Cuts will be received.
Step 5: Crash the economy yet again.
Step 6: Claim they can fix the economy if we reduce Social Security outlays by 50 percent (without, of course, changing the amount of tax taken out of the workers' paychecks). Cuts will be received.
Step 7: Yeah, you guessed it.
Step 8: Claim they can fix the economy if AFDC is block-granted to the states, who will be free to do whatever they want with the money. Block grants will be accomplished. Most states will use the money to reduce income tax rates.
I'm going to skip over all the remaining odd-numbered steps because they're all the same.
Step 10: Claim they can fix the economy if Medicare is cut by 75 percent.
Step 12: Claim they can fix the economy if...well, you get the idea.

What would be nice is if the Democrats could tell these morans on the other side of the aisle, we'll trade you cuts for the mass resignation of the House and Senate Republican Caucuses because every one of them knows exactly what they're doing, and it's the equivalent of putting cyanide in kool-aid.

...the Democratic push back was slow and soft. Harry Reid still uses his inside voice. They should have been grabbing headlines and every bully pulpit since 2008 pounding home sound bites about what Repubs have done to us.

Why only now are we dealing with the filibuster? The Reps are evil traitors, but the Dems are weak and seem to suffer from the vapors.

They deliberately implemented the policies that cause the US economy to crash. I don't think they saw it coming, however. Now if the headline said "did Republicans deliberately crash the US economic recovery" then that answer is yes. And it is this revised question that Reid and Axelrod are addressing. About time too.

That's all that matters to them.

Yes they did. All just so they could make Obama look bad.

And they called our side "sore losermen." SHEESH.

disaster capitalism.

Unless someone is an adept of conspiracy theories where the illuminati would gang up with aliens to smash the Twin Towers to dig a mine of kryptonite that was buried below ground zero, the theory any party would 'deliberately crash the economy' for party sake strikes me as -well, let's stay polite- weird.

If the economy tanks, it hurts everybody. Just a reminder: the world's economy is doing fine. If a country tanks, all people within that country lose out. Republicans hurting the US economy on purpose would just be outsourcing business overseas. What would be the point of inflicting permanent damage (loss of GDP) for a transient gain (4 or 8 years, with voter swing bringing in the other side after). Hurting the economy to gain power only makes sense if you intend to cling on to power eternally. Like burning a Reichstag for example.

There are different classical models to explain the current bust, Kondratieff, market exuberance, you name it. If one wants to play partisan politics, the current crash could be blamed on Bush when, as a President with a Senate of his side (2003-2007), he didn't act on the words of caution he did offer about Freddy Mac and Fanny Mae. In short, he talked the talk, but didn't walk the walk. But playing nihilistic partisan politics, Freddy and Fanny both hired the services of top party officials on both sides of the aisle at one time or the other (Newt Gingrich and Barack Obama among them)

In short, Did Republicans deliberately crash the US economy? : human error rather than malicious evil master plan.

where is that poster?

Last edited Sun Jun 10, 2012, 05:14 PM - Edit history (1)

I am no economist, nor have I ever played one on tv but here is the evidence as I see it. I DO believe the plan was to blow up the economy and here is the plan I think they used. It comes from Jude Wanniski, an economics advisor to President Regan, a supply sider who came up with the Two Santa Claus theory as a means for the republicans to control power in our government.

Part 1. When the republicans are in power in congress, (they control the purse strings of our tax dollars), they are to spend spend SPEND like crazy, not at all worrying about how to pay for that spending. This is the first Santa Claus.

Bush Jr. and his republican congress did this with a war in Iraq. When we went into it was VERY popular with the American citizenry, (we had to go fight them over there otherwise we'd be fighting them here and besides they were gonna drop a nuke on us if we didn't). There are other examples of Bush's wild spending spree that the citizenry liked but the war was the biggest money drain that went unchecked. This then is an example of the first Santa Claus and fit the Wanniski model.

Part 2 of Wanniski's two Santa Claus theory calls for tax cuts. The majority of the American citizenry are not rich or uber rich. The majority of our citizenry range from upper middle class to poor. When bush Jr. called for tax cuts for all Americans, the majority of the citizenry believed, (were preprogramed to believe) that they would be the beneficiary of something REALLY good. This then was the Second Santa Claus. The reality was the majority of our citizens got chump change in their pockets when compared to the billions of dollars the minority uber rich got from those same tax cuts. (Lest we forget, the uber rich can now use a small portion of that money gained from those same bush tax cuts to purchase members of our government...nice job there Santa!)

The bush administration had 8 years to basically pick our pockets using the plan laid out by an old supply side economist and they knew that the bubble would eventually burst...that too was in Wanniski's plan. Wanniski said that after the republicans lose power to scream like raped apes about the budget deficit. All them tax dollars, much of it used on the two unnecessary wars and a sizeable chunk now safely in the hands of the ultra rich left us with the mother of all budget deficits. And guess who brought that deficit to the attention of the good citizens of America...(hmmm so that's what a raped ape sounds like).

With the Dems in power, those who created the deficit made damn sure to point the finger at those who would do ANYTHING that would increase that deficit and call them wasteful. So spending tax dollars on any jobs programs was off the table.

Raising taxes would lower the deficit but how could the Dems raise taxes during a recession, after all raising taxes was bad because WE THE PEOPLE had no more in our pockets to give! (Gee Santa, what happened to that tax cut we got?). Besides thanks to the republicans cutting government jobs during the bush years, (see 'Who thinks the only good government is small enough to drown in a bathtub club'), and thanks to those in the 'happy jobs offshoring club', the Americans people now faced an unemployment crises.

So enter the Obama administration. Well they could not raise taxes, and yet they had this debt and oh by the way, the major automotive manufacturers were in dire need and the banks were in dire need and WE THE PEOPLE were losing our homes to those SAME BANKS who were in dire need and yet OBAMA COULD NOT RAISE TAXES and THE REPUBLICANS WERE SCREAMING LIKE RAPED APES ABOUT THE DEFICIT...AND WHY AM I SHOUTING???

So according to Thom Hartmann, the only recourse left 'conveniently' open to the Dems was to shoot one of the Santa Claus's. We could either raise taxes, (hmm, thereby throwing the voting citizenry in with the raped apes), or we would have to find the money 'elsewhere'.

Elsewhere of course being social services, things like cutting money from Medicare or Planned Parenthood or maybe the big Kahuna: Social Security. The republicans hate the notion of government spending on these social safety nets so this then was their plan to get us Dems to shoot a Santa Claus and where we are today.

Jude Wanniski outlined it and the neocons followed it and here we are, either we raise taxes to balance the very budget they unbalanced by playing Santa or we shoot the other Santa by balancing the budget on the backs of the middle class via raiding their social safety net.

Make no mistake about it, this was utterly premeditated.
For further study, please consider how the republicans have filibustered ANY Democratic plan to stimulate the economy since President Obama took office, how Mitch McConnel said from the start that agenda number one was to stop President Obama from getting a second term.

Furthermore from what I hear, there is a book coming out detailing how the house republican leaders got together early on and formed a plan to make sure that the Dems would be kept hamstrung from doing anything to increase jobs in America. I hear one of the examples in this book details how the House Dems put together a plan whereby corporatists who offshore jobs would no longer get a tax credit but if they brought those jobs back to our shores they would get that tax credit....maybe even get a bigger tax credit if what I heard on Thom Hartmann is accurate. Do you suppose the republicans thought that was a good idea? Hell no...why that would bring jobs back to America and those RE-employed voting citizens would spend the money they would get and that would stimulate the economy and.....well that wouldn't fit in with the plan-Jude Wanniski's plan now would it.

So if this was their plan all along, it would follow that the next part to this plan would see a bad economy being tied to the Democrats and a republican challanger to the White House screaming about the budget deficit and how he would fix things by cutting spending.... Wait a minute....I am not hearing the mittster talking about the deficit so much...maybe somethin.g derailed THE PLAN at this late point...

According to Thom Hartmann a group much louder (and much larger) than those apes took the stage. Unlike the screaming apes who were never even lewdly whistled at much less raped, this group was indeed raped-raped of the American Dream. We came to know them at first as the 99%ers who instead of screaming about their loss decided to go occupy places THEN scream about what changes they wanted to see.

The Occupy Wall Street (and many many other places), crowd likely never set out to stop the republicans version of Jude Wanniski's plan but they did stop them from screaming about the budget deficit.... This being a wholly different topic I will end my spiel here. The bottom line is, the republicans set out deliberately to blow up our economy by first spending off the surplus, then continueing that spending until we were into the red so far that whomever came along next would be unable to get us back to a balanced budget. To then scream about the deficit and pin that deficit to the Democrats. Lastly they were to ensure that those same Dems were kept from doing anything to pull our economy up by our bootstraps. This then was their plan, this was what they did, and this is where we are today and why we are there.

Need links?
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jude_Wanniski#section_2

http://m.thomhartmann.com/blog/2011/11/transcript-thom-hartmann-big-picture-has-ows-blown-republican-santa-claus-theory-20-oct

Anything to get the black man out of the White House.