so who is resonsible?

Remember Durbin also excluded any raise in the retirement age.

First we are going broke due to over spending, yes reduced revenue collection is also an issue, but unless we want the WHOLE GDP going to entitlement spending and debt, we are over spending.

This just in...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell remained at odds on such key issues as the income threshold for higher tax rates and how to deal with inheritance taxes, among other issues. McConnell complained that Reid had yet to respond to a GOP offer made Saturday evening and reached out to Vice President Joe Biden, a longtime friend, in hopes of breaking the impasse.
One sign of progress came as Republicans withdrew a long-discussed proposal to slow future cost-of-living increases for Social Security recipients as part of a compromise to avoid the cliff. Democrats said earlier Sunday that proposal had put a damper on the talks, and Republican senators emerging from a closed-door GOP meeting said it is no longer part of the equation.
“I was really gratified to hear that Republicans have taken their demand for Social Security benefit cuts off the table. The truth is they should never have been on the table to begin with,” Reid said late Sunday afternoon. “There is still significant distance between the two sides, but negotiations continue.”

And here lies the reason for our impending bankruptcy:  “I was really gratified to hear that Republicans have taken their demand for Social Security benefit cuts off the table."

Reducing the amount of increase of COLA is a cut...off to Greece we are.

What I don't REALLY get is how Obama continues to avoid responsibility.

And this idiot is a doctor.

The following is from the New England Journal of Medicine.  Doctors, unlike "global warming" scientists are usually adamant about the scientific accuracy of that which presented for review.  We can smell out BS in a second.  I am aghast this was published.

This obvious politically partisan physician writes a lead article which is published in Medicines lead journal about gun violence.  He blames, extols, and proposes limitations of liberty for something (which I placed in bold) that he admits is rare and not increasing.

As the left always does, he intertwines good ideas, background checks with whole sale limitations of gun purchasers rights.  Why does the writer think Californians go to Nevada to buy guns?  Because they want them.

I personally don't give a rat's behind about guns, I care about liberty.

********************

We are learning how to watch the news through tears. All those children, and the adults protecting them. With an assault rifle. Up close. The survivors, eyes averted, are led to safety in daisy chains. Ambulances rush to the scene, but nearly all return empty. Loved ones go home empty, too.

We pore over the details, searching for the clues that will bring order to chaos and help us predict and prevent the next one. But these catastrophes are all different. We have found to our dismay that prediction is somewhere between difficult and impossible. Tailored interventions, designed for specific circumstances, will have little effect. We need to take a broader approach.

Sandy Hook, Oak Creek, Aurora, Virginia Tech, Columbine: “it can't happen here” places where terrible things did happen and 95 people died. Contrary to widespread perception, however, such events are uncommon. Their frequency is not increasing, and they account for only a small fraction of firearm-related deaths and injuries. On average, 88 Americans died every day from firearm violence in 2011, and another 202 were seriously injured. In 2012, for the first time, there will probably be more firearm-related homicides and suicides than motor vehicle traffic fatalities.

The United States has become an extreme example of what could well be termed “global gunning.” With less than 5% of the world's population, we own more than 40% of all the firearms that are in civilians' hands: 250 million to 300 million weapons, nearly as many as we have people, and they are not going away anytime soon. We have made social and policy decisions that, with some important exceptions, provide the widest possible array of firearms to the widest possible array of people, for use under the widest possible array of conditions.

The most egregious policies have been enacted at the state level — “Stand Your Ground” laws, for instance, which have been used to legitimize what many people still call murder. Justice Louis Brandeis rightly praised the states as the laboratories of our democracy, but in some of them, experimentation with firearm policy has taken a frightening turn.

We are paying the price of those decisions. Too often, our children and grandchildren are paying it for us. Payments will continue. Can we do anything to reduce them? I believe the answer is yes.


An argument could be made for a complete rethinking of the role that firearms play in the United States. That is the work of generations, however, and we can accomplish much without it. In the near term, harm reduction is the best approach. We can make specific changes to our firearms laws, on the basis of existing evidence, that will produce measurable benefits.

We should start by requiring background checks for all firearm purchases. When a licensed retailer — gun dealer or pawnbroker — sells a firearm, a background check is performed and a permanent record is kept. But perhaps 40% of all firearms transactions involve private-party sellers, who need not keep records and cannot obtain a background check. I have observed hundreds of these anonymous, undocumented sales; they can be completed in less than a minute.

Not surprisingly, private-party sales are the most important source of firearms for criminal buyers and specifically for persons prohibited by law from purchasing firearms. Such buyers do not volunteer their stories, and savvy sellers know not to ask. Private-party sales are also probably the main reason that the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, which requires background checks for sales by licensed retailers, did not reduce firearm-related homicides.1

Second, on at least two fronts, we should broaden our criteria for denying someone the purchase or possession of firearms. Among persons who purchase firearms legally, those with a previous conviction for a misdemeanor violent crime (e.g., assault and battery) are roughly nine times as likely as those with no criminal history to be subsequently arrested for a violent crime.2 With two or more such prior convictions, the risk increases by a factor of 10 to 15. Alcohol abuse is a leading risk factor for both interpersonal and self-directed violence, and firearm owners who abuse alcohol are more likely than other owners to engage in violence-related behaviors with firearms.3

What about purchases by the mentally ill? The current lifelong federal prohibition applies to anyone “adjudicated as a mental defective” — language that is offensive and ambiguous. For many reasons, including the ambiguity, the databases on which background checks rely are incomplete. More than one mentally ill mass shooter, including Seung-Hui Cho (Virginia Tech, 2007) and Russell Weston (U.S. Capitol, 1998), passed a background check and purchased firearms from a licensed retailer because their eligibility was uncertain or records were unavailable. We need better data and criteria that take account of the evidence that mental illness is treatable and that risk for violence is not increased substantially unless there is a history or threat of violence or a history of substance abuse.

We know that comprehensive background checks and expanded denial criteria are feasible and effective, because they are in place in many states and have been evaluated. California, for example, requires a background check on all firearm purchases and denies purchases by persons who have committed violent misdemeanors. Yet some 600,000 firearms were sold there in 2011, and the firearms industry continues to consider California a “lucrative” market. The denial policy reduced the risk of violent and firearm-related crime by 23% among those whose purchases were denied.4

We also know that state-level regulation is insufficient by itself, because firearms simply flow from states where laws are lax to states where laws are stricter. Some pathways even have names, such as the Iron Pipeline from the Southeast to New England. At gun shows in California, where direct private-party sales are illegal, such sales are almost nonexistent. At shows just across the border in Reno, Nevada, where private-party sales are legal, dozens occur, and a third of the cars in the parking lot are from California.

These proposals enjoy broad support. In fact, public-opinion polls have shown that 75 to 85% of firearm owners, including specifically members of the National Rifle Association (NRA) in some cases, endorse comprehensive background checks and denial for misdemeanor violence; 60 to 70% support denial for alcohol abuse. (It is deeply ironic that our current firearm policies omit regulations that are endorsed by firearm owners, let alone by the general public.)

And the icy hands of the firearm lobby may be losing their grip on the political process. The NRA is simply not able to drive election results as it has been thought to do.5 The Sunlight Foundation reports that less than 5% of the NRA's campaign spending in 2012 went to races that ended with the result it was seeking. Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York has repeatedly declared his intention to establish a well-funded electoral counterweight to the NRA to advance a “mainstream agenda” on firearm policy. President Barack Obama has appointed Vice President Joe Biden to chair a new task force that will develop “specific proposals” for policy reform legislation no later than January.

This time, the circumstances are different. The outcome will be different only if we make it so. The interventions proposed here will not end firearm violence in the United States, but they will reduce it, and that's a goal worth fighting for. If Sandy Hook, Aurora, and the others are what it takes for us finally to confront this challenge, they will still be terrible beyond description. We will still share responsibility for them. But it will be of some comfort to know that all those students, educators, moviegoers, and temple-goers did not die in vain.

Let's be clear

Sure, we can talk about revenue, both growth and rates, however make no mistake, just increasing rates without spending (entitlement) reform is throwing good money after bad.

Our PRESIDENT bears responsibility for the lack of leadership on the defining issue of our time.  There is no Senate budget, there is no willingness to tackle entitlement reform, there is just "tax increases on the rich".


He could have:


     Raised the retirement age.
     Pressured tort reform.
     Reformed the tax system.
          Split the difference with the Republicans regarding the upper rates.
          Reduced deductions.
          Broadened the base.

But he did not, he just demagogue.
The coming re recession is his.

*****************

Rep. Scott Rigell of Virginia is a lonely voice: He’s a House Republican conservative who argues that the government simply has to raise more revenue.


U.S. Rep. Scott Rigell, center In a week when Washington makes one, final effort to get to some kind of deficit-cutting deal to avoid the fiscal cliff, Mr. Rigell’s message stands out amid all the noise because of its startlingly unexpected nature.
Mr. Rigell, a businessman first elected to the House in 2010, says he has arrived at his position not by ideological calculation but by mathematical calculation; it represents what he calls in an interview a “data-driven conclusion.” And the data, he says, are simple:

The tax regime put in place by the George W. Bush tax cuts a dozen years ago has produced government revenue at an average of 16.9% of gross domestic product, through good times and bad, across the years since it was enacted. Only twice in those 12 years—in the relatively strong economic years of 2006 and 2007–has it produced revenues amounting to 18% or more of GDP.

Meanwhile, Mr. Rigell argues, even Republicans in Congress are unwilling to pass a budget that actually holds spending down to 17% or less of GDP. In sum, he says, Republicans have a position that locks in a permanent deficit by sticking with tax rates that will always produce less revenue than required for the government programs they are voting to support.

Their grandstanding about taxing rich people has allowed Democrats to avoid any real discussion about reform of the entitlements that are sinking the country. Neither the White House nor the Senate has put forward a coherent plan or a proposal worth voting on that addresses this issue, without which any talk of a long-term solution to the problem is impossible.
Republicans may have hit bottom last week when they sandbagged Boehner and effectively undermined any chance that he could force a more favorable compromise out of Obama. But Democrats are foolish to believe that no blame will ever attach to them just because the GOP has failed. Public cynicism about Congress and the political system is, at its heart, a bipartisan consensus about the governing class, not just anger about Tea Party intransigence. Unless Reid and the Senate Democrats do something this week to put the ball back into the House’s court, they, too, will shoulder plenty of the responsibility for what follows.

The problem with the Republican Party is the quality of the people who vote in their primaries and caucuses.

Republican politicians today have a choice: either change your base by educating and leading G.O.P. voters back to the center-right from the far right, or start a new party that is more inclusive, focused on smaller but smarter government and market-based, fact-based solutions to our biggest problems.

But if Republicans continue to be led around by, and live in fear of, a base that denies global warming after Hurricane Sandy and refuses to ban assault weapons after Sandy Hook — a base that would rather see every American’s taxes rise rather than increase taxes on millionaires — the party has no future. It can’t win with a base that is at war with math, physics, human biology, economics and common-sense gun laws all at the same time.

       

Because they control the House, this radical Republican base is now holding us all back. President Obama was moving to the center in these budget negotiations. He reduced his demand for higher tax revenues to $1.2 trillion from $1.6 trillion; he upped the level at which Americans who would be hit with higher taxes to those earning $400,000 a year from $250,000; and he made his own base holler by offering to cut long-term spending by lowering the inflation adjustment index for Social Security. It seemed that with a little more Republican compromise, Obama would have met them in the middle, and we could have had a grand bargain that would put the country on a sounder fiscal trajectory and signal to the markets, the world and ourselves that we can still do big hard things together. That will have to wait. Now the best hope is some mini-, crisis-averting, Band-Aid.

 

But...

 

Was 2012 the year when the democratic world lost its grip on reality? Must we assume now that no party that speaks the truth about the economic future has a chance of winning power in a national election? With the results of presidential contests in the United States and France as evidence, this would seem to be the only possible conclusion. Any political leader prepared to deceive the electorate into believing that government spending, and the vast system of services that it provides, can go on as before – or that they will be able to resume as soon as this momentary emergency is over – was propelled into office virtually by acclamation.

So universal has this rule turned out to be that parties and leaders who know better – whose economic literacy is beyond question – are now afraid even to hint at the fact which must eventually be faced. The promises that governments are making to their electorates are not just misleading: they are unforgivably dishonest. It will not be possible to go on as we are, or to return to the expectations that we once had. The immediate emergency created by the crash of 2008 was not some temporary blip in the infinitely expanding growth of the beneficent state. It was, in fact, almost irrelevant to the larger truth which it happened, by coincidence, to bring into view. Government on the scale established in most modern western countries is simply unaffordable. In Britain, the disagreement between Labour and the Conservatives over how to reduce the deficit (cut spending or increase borrowing?) is ridiculously insignificant and out of touch with the actual proportions of the problem. In the UK, the US, and (above all) the countries of the EU, democratic politics is being conducted on false premises.

Of course, once in power all governments must deal with reality – even if they have been elected on a systematic lie. As one ex-minister famously put it when he was released from the burden of office: “There’s no money left.” So that challenge must be met. How do you propose to go on providing the entitlements that you have sworn never to end, without any money? The victorious political parties of the Left have a ready answer to that one. They will raise taxes on the “rich”. In France and the United States, this is the formula that is being presented not only as an economic solution but also as a just social settlement, since the “rich” are inherently wicked and must have acquired their wealth by confiscating it from the poor.

Of course, the moral logic of this principle is absurd. The amount of wealth in an economy is not fixed so that one person having more means that somebody else must have less. But, for the purposes of our problem, it is the fault in the economic logic that is more important. The amount of money that is required to fund government entitlement programmes is now so enormous that it could not be procured by even very large increases in taxation on the “rich”. Assuming that you could get all of the rich members of your population to stand still and be fleeced (rather than leaving the country, as Gérard Depardieu and a vast army of his French brethren are doing), there are simply not enough of them to provide the revenue that a universal, comprehensive benefits system requires. And if all the French rich did stay put, and submit to President Hollande’s quixotic 75 per cent income tax, they would soon be too impoverished to invest in the supply side of the economy, which would undermine any possibility of growth.

Barack Obama knows that a tax rise of those proportions in the US would be politically suicidal, so he proposes a much more modest increase – an income tax rate of around 40 per cent on the highest earners sounds very modest indeed to British ears. But that is precisely the problem. If a tax rise is modest enough to be politically acceptable to much of the electorate, it will not produce anything like enough to finance the universal American entitlement programmes, social security and Medicare, into a future with an ageing population. There is no way that “taxing the rich” – that irresistibly glib Left-wing solution to everything – can make present and projected levels of government spending affordable. That is why Britain and almost all the countries of the EU have redefined the word “rich” to mean those who are earning scarcely twice the average wage, and pulled more and more middle-income people into high tax bands. Not only are there vastly more of them but they are far more likely to stand still and be fleeced, because they do not have the mobility of the truly rich.

NRA and small government ??????

It should now be basically obvious to everyone that the NRA, for all of its pious genuflecting in the direction of the Second Amendment, is not a civil liberties organization. Civil liberties organizations support neither preemptive surveillance on the sick nor perpetual pseudo-paramilitary lockdown in elementary schools. While the NRA and its allies may oppose gun control on the grounds that it inhibits liberty, their “solution” requires far greater government intrusion and coercion.
Such is the case with much “small government” anti-regulationism. The minimal state which the right so often fetishizes is, in fact, anything but. Any government which sees its essential function as security will inevitably have to continually escalate security in order to enforce its anti-regulatory position. To put it another way: the only way the so-called night-watchman state can function is with ever-increasing numbers of night-watchmen, armed with ever-larger guns.

"I think one of the most threatening places to be in politics is a black conservative," Mr. Scott says, "because there are so many liberals who want to continue to reinforce a stereotype that doesn't exist about America." What stereotype is that? "That somehow, some way, if you're a Republican you're a racist and if you're black, there's no chance for you in society.
"We have serious challenges in this nation. Some are racial. But in my life, the vast majority of people that have really afforded me the opportunity to succeed were white folks. Is there a better way to say that?"

I'M SICK OF THE NRA

I'm sick of the NRA and their sophomoric rant "guns don't kill people, people kill people". Who can't see the fallacy in that is an idiot.
 YES guns do kill that's what they do.
That's what they are made to do kill!
 I'm mad I have to put up with children being killed, parents having to identify their dead kids. Imagine for just a minute! close your eyes and think if that was your 5 year old daughter or 7 year old son, really close your eyes imagine, keep them closed for a full minute and put yourself right there, right now, and then open your eyes and say well there is nothing we can do?
 BS_____ There is something we can do. There must be something we can do. If we can have 50 "guards" at our airports to search grandma's and grandpa's reassign them to schools in this country. This crazy over reaction to plane safety, simply guard the cock pit door, stop the nonsense looking at us the passengers. That horse is out of that barn.
 Guard our children from us, this cannot happen again.  There is 40 grandparents, 40 parents who will live this pain for the next 40 years, holidays will never be the same, birthdays painful events, those people and their friends are living in hell for the rest of their lives.
 NRA  I am sick of your no compromise attitude, put marshals at gun shows, put people thru rigorous exams to own guns. You must do something the pain is just too great.
 I called each of my six grandchildren today and told them I love them and how precious they are. I wish their was more I could do.
Let's end this nightmare of guns.

Health Care

Everyone knows health care costs are simply rising to fast. Whether it's Obama care, medicare, or whatever it must be controlled. Most people see a doctor for simple things like colds or flue, or checkups, why not let nurses write prescriptions and see patients, open up small business's for nurses to run keep costs low for run of the mill problems most people have.
Do we need to see a doctor for everything. I know the good doctor is not for monopolies, but it seems to me the AMA could looosen the strings on prescriptions.
 Let's put all our thoughts together to see what we could do to lighten the load for the doctors who will be overworked under Obama care.

When the Edward Gibbon of the 22nd century comes to write his History of the Decline and Fall of the West, who will feature in his monumental study of the collapse of the most successful economic experiment in human history? In this saga of the mass suicide of the richest nations on earth, there may be particular reference to those national leaders who chose to deny the reality that was, from the vantage point of our future chronicler, so obviously looming. \
 

But for us, right here, right now, it matters that Barack Obama and George Osborne are playing small-time strategic games with their toy-town enemies while the unutterable economic truth stares them in the face.  Mr Obama is locked in an eye-balling contest with a Republican Congress to see who can end up with more ignominy when the United States goes over the fiscal cliff. It is clear now that the president will be quite happy to bring about this apocalypse – which would pull most of the developed world into interminable recession – if he could be sure that it would result in long-term electoral damage to his opponents.

 Supposedly from opposite sides of the political divide, the US president and the British Chancellor come to a surprisingly similar conclusion: it is not feasible to speak the truth, let alone act on it. The truth being that present levels of public spending and government intervention in the US, Britain and Europe are unsustainable. The proportion of GDP which is now being spent by the governments of what used to be called the “free world” vastly exceeds what it is possible to raise through taxation without destroying any possibility of creating wealth, and therefore requires either an intolerable degree of national debt or the endless printing of progressively more meaningless money – or both.

How on earth did we get here? As every sane political leader knows by now, this is not just a temporary emergency created by a bizarre fit of reckless lending: the crash of 2008 simply blew the lid off the real scandal of western economic governance. Having won the Cold War and succeeded in settling the great ideological argument of the 20th century in favor of free-market economics, the nations of the West managed to bankrupt themselves by insisting that they could fund a lukewarm form of socialism with the proceeds of capitalism.

What the West took from its defeat of the East was that it must accept the model of the state as social engineer in order to avert any future threat to freedom. Capitalism would only be tolerated if government distributed its wealth evenly across society. The original concept of social security and welfare provision – that no one should be allowed to sink into destitution or real want – had to be revisited. The new ideal was that there should not be inequalities of wealth. The roaring success of the free market created such unprecedented levels of mass prosperity that absolute poverty became virtually extinct in western democracies, so it had to be replaced as a social evil by “relative poverty”. It was not enough that no one should be genuinely poor (hungry and without basic necessities): what was demanded now was that no one should be much worse (or better) off than anyone else. The job of government was to create a society in which there were no significant disparities in earnings or standards of living. So it was not just the unemployed who were given assistance: the low paid had their wages supplemented by working tax credits and in-work benefits so that their earnings could be brought up to the arbitrary level which the state had decided constituted not-poverty.

The paradoxical effect of this is that the only politically acceptable condition is to be earning just enough to maintain independent life – and not a penny more. Everybody is steered by the penalties of the tax system or the gradual withdrawal of benefits into that small space in the middle between being “rich” and being (relatively) poor.

Capitalism is, by its nature, dynamic: it creates transitory disparities of wealth constantly as it reinvents itself. Fortunes are made and lost and, as old industries are replaced by new, the earnings that they create rise and fall. Punishing those who exceed some momentary average income and artificially subsidising those who fall below it – as well as providing for a universal standard of living which bears no relation to merit or even to need – has now reached the unavoidable, unaffordable end of the line.
So who will tell the truth – and then act on it? Who will say not just that welfare must be cut, but that in future MEDICARE will need to rely on a system of co-payments? That people will have to provide for their own retirement because Social Security will be frozen? That without a radical reduction in government intervention, the free and prosperous West will have been a brief historical aberration?

Mr. Obama says he merely wants tax rates to return to the "Clinton rates," but rates are already scheduled to go higher than that thanks to ObamaCare. There's the 0.9% Medicare surcharge on all income above $250,000, plus the 3.8% surcharge on investment income. The U.S. economy in 1993 also had far more growth momentum than it does today.

Bill Clinton agreed to cut the capital gains rate to 20% in 1997 but Mr. Obama wants it to be 23.8% at least. State tax rates are also higher than they were in the 1990s, especially in California, where the capital gains rate now is 13.3% on top of the federal rate. Combined that would be 37.1%. In Singapore, the capital gains tax is . . . zero

The Next Czar?

Should the president "go big" and bring in someone that will enable the budget to genuinely be balanced in ten years through new revenues, spending cuts, and entitlement reforms? Obama would need to find a successful executive with impeccable problem solving skills, unburdened by fealty to any particular economic philosophy. We have $9 trillion of federal debt forecast over the next ten years. The Budget Control Act (sequester) will handle $1.1T of that and expiration of the Bush Tax Cuts would chip away another $5.2T. Pragmatically, we need to find $2.7T in spending and entitlement cuts to get to surpluses and then another $700B or so to reduce the tax portion of the plan to 50% of the $9 trillion package. Finally, this guy will need to ably work with the president and members of the Republican leadership in Congress. Who could possibly handle such a high profile job?

WHO IS GOING TO CLEAN N.Y. and N.J.

Why do these people live so close to the water and then expect us the taxpayer of this country to pay to fix their houses, you chose to live there. We the taxpayer should not be responsible for your stupidity to live close to the water, you know bad things can happen!
 OH I forgot it's New York now.
 not New Orleans!!
 It's New Jersey now!

Who is going to clean up this mess, the government can't create jobs, so it must be handled by trickle down majic. I guess this money is okay because it is budgeted!!! Federal reserve clean up money that's different money. I like government when it can help ME, but not others that's wasted money.

Ryan  holds storm relief rally in Wisconsin, and Romney doing the same in Ohio, private sector fixing hurricane Sandy, news alert! wait for details!

THE REAL TRUTH ABOUT VOTER FRAUD

Over the past twelve years Americans have cast hundreds of millions of votes. Did you know in this time period there have been only TEN alleged cases of in person voting impersonation.!
The Republican National Lawyers Assoc. cites 375 cases of election fraud. 33 were found credible and none involved in person voter impersonation. Let me repeat NONE .
Do you what the penalty is for voter fraud? I certainly did not! It is up to five years in prison and $10,000 fine to cast one fraudulent vote. It is simply not worth the risk.
 The two biggest cases of voter fraud is miscounting of ballots and absentee ballots.
 The current concern of the right about voter fraud is just plain not wanting minorties to vote plain and simple because they mostly vote Democratic. 
30 states are are considering voter ID laws?
Tell me know who is trying to steal the election?
 Not having an ID card is most often related to age, race and economic status.
 To pretend you don't understand that and say you are acting in the best interest of the country doesn't even pass the laugh test!

THE HAWKS ARE FLYING AGAIN

We have no threat from Iran but of course the Hawks of the Republican party  are squaking again. Are we ready for more war, more sacrifice and more division.
 Didn't Iraq tell us anything about real or imagined threats. We have no threat from Iran let me repeat that WE have no threat from Iran. We can't be a real true leader without respect for morality, justice and equality.
 Have not the last TEN years of useless war not taught us anything. Let's hope we can someday be the nation that really seeks peace, not power. No more money for defense or is it offense I forgot.

terry, it's you he is talking about

Let me suggest something that many conservatives realized after the debate:Obama did not do that badly. For Obama. He was the same listless, droning, exhausted-of-ideas scold we have seen for at least two years now (and maybe three).

He was Obama. This is what he is. He is not quick-witted. He is not, as I think I saw Mickey Kaus note, a wonk. He has never been a wonk, a detailed-policy guy.

He is a guy who speaks vacuously of hopes and dreams and change and fairness.

He always has been.

The problem, for the liberals, is not Obama. This is what you bought. This is your guy. It wasn't his A game, but it was something close to his B+ game.

The problem was Romney, who was commanding, fluent, reasonable, articulate, sharp-witted, warm, occasionally funny, full of ideas, full of facts, full of thoughtful, detailed criticisms of Obama policy (who the hell expected him to bring up, as an afterthought, Dodd-Frank's failure to specify what a "reasonably qualified" mortgage applicant was, and how that chilled lending? Obama sure didn't!), and, therefore, ultimately, full of qualification for the job and yes, full of gravitas.

That's the problem.

Not Obama. I repeat: This is who Obama is. He has never been this brilliant intellect and keen policy analysts liberals have, in their BubbleWorld, dreamed him as.

The problem is not that Obama is or was awful. The problem is that he is what he always is -- adequate and hardly ever more -- and Romney is actually on top of things, an accomplished executive with a winner's thirst for victory an an A-student's understanding of what victory requires.

So part of the extreme emotional deflation of people like Sullivan -- who only a few years ago called me a "frothing Caesarist" (I take that to mean a lickspittle for a Man on a White Horse) -- is due to their having invented in their minds a conquering hero, an Eternal Champion, a Mussolini-like figure of incredible prowess in all matters including sexual ("Mussolini breaks a new horse every day, and a new woman every night," an old Fascist saying went).

And he's never been that. He's been a very average politician, whose only above-average skill is giving a scripted, TelePrompTed address to people who already support him.

So for people like Sullivan, this is a bit of a bitchslap to their entire fantasy worldview, the day they saw Obama As What He Is rather than What They Fantasized Him To Be.

And they're shocked by this. They feel their psychical mooring-lines stretching to the break.

This is partly Obama's fault, of course. He encouraged this.

But it is much, much more the fault of people who pride themselves on being skeptical realists who permitted their minds to run to the magical and to the (frankly, blasphemously) religious.

I hate to defend Obama at all, but I have to say to his Religious Zealot supporters:This is your shit. This is your deeply weird, Great Man on a White Horse worshipping psychological hangup.

THE DEBATES

I believe the debates will just reaffirm one's choice of President. The one's who support Romney will say he won and the one's who support Obama will say he won.
 Much like your choice of which news broadcast you watch CNN or Fox it just confirm your position of being " correct".
The debates are really for the undecided the truly undecided and therefore important in a close election.
 Romney's task will be  to erase the impression that he is a clue-less rich guy, a heartless hard line guy, and Obama will have to erase the impression as incompetent leader, a socialist at heart, that wants to fundamentally change America to a socialist country.
 Both will have to show their cards on how to get America's economy going at some reasonable rate.
But under debate rules they have to do so in under two minutes which is ridiculous.
 If we choose the most important position in America under this format shame on us!

Economy is Back - Housing Uptrend Sticks

Ken Heebner was on Kudlow today and said that the US economy is back for a variety of reasons with housing leading the way. He said the housing recovery is an economic "game changer" and is a trend that will be with us for quite some time. Heebner, of course, has been one of the nation's best stock pickers though he has underperformed during the Great Recession. I know the markets climb a wall of worry and we have a fiscal cliff, European banking crisis, and Iranian ambition to work through. Nonetheless, it seems that America is back and an anxious world would rather have their money here than anywhere else. We are very fortunate to have Timothy Geitner, Ben Bernanke, and above all, President Obama on the job.

After a delusional proclamation — General Motors “has come roaring back” — Obama said: “Now I want to do the same thing with manufacturing jobs, not just in the auto industry, but in every industry.” We have been warned.

Obama’s supposed rescue of “the auto industry” — note the definite article, “the” — is a pedal on the political organ he pumps energetically in Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan and elsewhere. Concerning which:

He intervened to succor one of two of the U.S. auto industries. One, located in the South and elsewhere, does not have a long history of subservience to the United Auto Workers and for that reason has not needed Obama’s ministrations. He showered public money on two of three parts of the mostly Northern auto industry, the one long entangled with the UAW. He socialized the losses of GM and Chrysler. Ford was not a mendicant because it was not mismanaged.

Today, “I am GM, hear me roar” is again losing market share, and its stock, of which taxpayers own 26 percent, was trading Thursday morning at $21, below the $33 price our investor in chief paid for it and below the $53 price it would have to reach to enable taxpayers to recover the entire $49.5 billion bailout. Roaring GM’s growth is in China.

Without a sustained recovery in national output to 3% growth or more and without putting millions more Americans back to work, there is no politically feasible spending reduction or tax increase that could balance the budget even if Ron Paul ran Congress. Tax revenues have remained below 16% of GDP for the last four years because the economy is in a slow growth rut. The growth deficit, not the budget deficit, is the great issue of our time.

The Reagan years offer an instructive history, because the economy's troubles in the 1970s and the steep drop in real middle-class incomes (some $4,000 per household since 2009) were so similar to today's. Reagan put pro-growth tax cuts and a rebuilt military ahead of his ambitions to balance the budget, and he was right.

After his tax cuts fully kicked in on January 1, 1983, annual growth averaged some 4% over five years, while employment gains were swift and long-lasting. The deficit fell in half from a peak of 6% of GDP in 1983 to under 3% in 1989.

EVERYONE CHIP IN, EVERYONE

Jim I don't know how long it will take for you to truly understand my position. I will again make it as clear as I can. I am NOT for taxing the rich only. I don't believe the rich are job creators any more; you are living in a different world today. Markets make jobs. Demand makes jobs.
Trickle down is OFFENSIVE to me.
 I got a job because their was a NEED. We need a middle class.
My vote is simple number ONE which candidate is the MOST LIKELY to get us in another WAR, Which candidate will cut DEFENSE? We spend so much money on defense, we have a NAVY that is 16 times larger than any civilized country on the planet. Cut defense is only part of the solution but a good start! Stop starting wars, stop foreign aid. Get rid of tax loopholes for companies that don't deserve it.

 We are over reacting in fear. We have not over promised the poor, we simply have spent the money in fear. To blame the economy on a 30 year school teacher/ fireman  pension is idiotic Jim! Jim I have made a living working for wealthy people in their pursuit of leisure time, so I am for people being rich.
 Please Please stop the madness and claiming I blame " rich folks", never once have I said that.
The way you make up deficits in a family or in a government is simply find more income, and save more expenses.
 I am for a tax increase on everyone.
Did you hear that I am willing to pay more taxes, and I am middle class.
My one personal gripe is the taxes are never LOW ENOUGH for conservatives.
 Let me ask you when your house is on fire and the firemen arrive and put it out do they send you a bill?
 No we need government.

OBAMA - RYAN TICKET !! GET ABOARD

A Obama Ryan ticket don't laugh! Here are Five reasons for a split ticket:

1. They are both smart.

2. Sends Congress a message we the people want you to work together.

3. Can speak to Congress and the people sharing the bully pulpit.

4. Yes there is one President but just over his shoulder could be another.

5. Biden is an idiot.

Interesting Pick

Ryan is the anti-Palin in that he is very substantive. He is a policy wonk - a rarity in the GOP. He puts Wisconsin clearly in play, should help a little in Michigan and could tip Iowa into the red column. But his Ryan Budget is used as cudgel against GOP House and Senate candidates, usually with success. Remember - his "courageous" plan permanently cuts taxes (especially on the top end), ends Medicare as we know it, and balances the budget in 27 years (!?). I have to think this will put Florida in Obama's column, which brings more electoral votes than Michigan and Wisconsin combined. The Catholic Church said his budget plan was immoral for the cuts to basic social programs. There will always be the poor, but we must help them or something like that. This move doesn't help bring along practicing Catholics into the GOP - a group that that has steadily moved to the right (along with white blue collar men). Democrats had been hoping Ryan would be the pick, but thought it was too risky for the ever cautious Romney. It will help Dems nationalize the Ryan Budget/Medicare cuts. Word was that both Boehner and McConnell did not want Ryan on the ticket for fear of what it would do to their members. This was the one VP pick who could "win" the House for the Democrats. You will soon and often hear, "Vote Democratic - Save Medicare". What are some non-partisan observations? There are plenty: He will make his race more serious. So much has been personal and petty ("Romney Hood", "Obamaloney"). Ryan will be all about economics and he knows his subject. He is socially conservative, but generally rejects social issue questions. He does not want to talk about Abortion, Planned Parenthood, Immigration or Climate Change. The GOP will have a chance to hand the baton to the next generation. Romney is old - compared to Obama, so Ryan can be the face of the GOP future. Ryan's elevated position as Veep or more likely his return to the House after a November loss, positions him well to move legislation. He is already the GOP's top economic dog, but he will be able to flex his muscles over the next two to four years. Grover Norquist will not be be able to tie his hands when Ryan might quarterback Simpson Bowles or an even larger compromise. After a win or loss at the VP level, he will be free to broker deals with the Democrats because he will have the confidence and trust of his caucus that he got the best deal possible. He will be able to deliver deals that Boehner couldn't and Eric Cantor rejected. Win or lose, obstructionism will not be a viable option in the next Congress. The conservatives love Ryan, but I like him too. He is not a Birther or a Truther and rejects that crazy wing of the party. The Tea Party likes him, but he is uncomfortable around them. He is a very establishment guy, much more concerned with policy than politics. If they can get him to concede to needing of 20%/GDP in federal revenues, you will see a lot of new taxes (VAT, Carbon/Energy), cuts to top income tax rates, elimination of loopholes and deductions. Perhaps even the whole elimination of corporate income taxes (effectively paid at the dividend level). Tax reform could increase revenues by 33% relatively quickly. That, along with some entitlement reforms (initially, just raising the ages on a phased in basis) will balance our budget and bring back surplus in 4 - 5 years. Paul Ryan is one guy on the right who just might be able make this happen. Lastly - he is no fan of Obamacare, but his knowledge of Washington and policy could grease the skids for effective implementation of our health care changes. If he is not proscribed from cooperating, he could effectively work with Obama much as Gingrich did with Clinton. We will see. Interesting pick. Interesting times!

Gosh...I think it is your fault.

So are our woes due to over promising or under taxing?   Terry....you can get mad over Capitol Gains taxes, you can get mad at anything you want...however, what got us into this mess, what is destroying our country, is over promising (for political benefit...do you get this?), government largess..local, state, federal.  

Our problems keep repeating themselves on a local, state and national level (Greece) and your ilk keep trying to blame the "rich".  So Terry...now don't obfuscate, don't not answer, try this one (call Beedie and Gorman if you must).  Are our problems because we have under taxed the rich or because we have over promised to the elderly, pensions, welfare and unions?

And if you are really vigorous and really want to answer a question, try this one....which political party, Liberal or Conservatives (Socialist or Capitalist) benefits most by promising (over promising) to those groups.  Now Terry...don't run away...answer this question.   Why are we in this mess?
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Budget crunches already have prompted Michigan lawmakers to authorize emergency fiscal managers, and led the mayor of Scranton, Pa., to temporarily cut the pay of all city workers to the minimum wage.
In a majority of the nation's 19,000 municipalities—urban and rural, big and small—stagnant property tax revenues, less aid from states and rising costs are forcing less dramatic but still difficult steps.
Moody's Investors Service recently said that while municipal bankruptcies are likely to remain rare, it warned of a "a small but growing trend in fiscally troubled cities unwilling to pay their debt obligations."
"We need help right now," said William Schirf, the mayor of Altoona, Pa. Crime in the city of 46,000 rose 11% last year, while the number of police officers fell 8% over three years because of budget constraints. The city has reduced the number of streets it is repaving and clearing of snow, and cut down on leaf pickups and removing dead animals, trash and bicycles from roadways.
Altoona officials projected a $3 million deficit for fiscal 2012. Under state law, the city can't raise property taxes—its greatest source of revenue—any higher. In April, Altoona was declared fiscally distressed under a state law, enabling it to restructure its finances. "We just don't have the income to match our expenses," said Mr. Schirf.
A study by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College found that annual pension payments for state and local plans more than doubled to 15.7% of payrolls in 2011 from 6.4% a decade earlier.
The Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government said local governments made roughly $50 billion in pension contributions in 2010, but their unfunded pension liabilities still total $3 trillion and unfunded health benefit liabilities are more than $1 trillion.
Local government cuts are one factor slowing the broader economic recovery, offsetting stronger private-sector growth. State and local government spending and investment fell at a rate of 2.1% in the second quarter, according to the Commerce Department, the 11th consecutive quarterly drop. Local governments also have cut 66,000 jobs in the past year, mostly teachers and other school employees.

"Cities are still going to be facing very rough waters for the next couple of years," said Michael Pagano, dean of the college of Urban Planning and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
There also was a backlash in Michigan after Gov. Rick Snyder won legislative approval of a measure that allowed him to appoint emergency managers for troubled cities and school systems—allowing collective-bargaining agreements to be tossed. Voters will decide in November whether to repeal the law.
To boost revenues, cities are increasing fees and property taxes—where they can. In Chicago, private investors are investing in public infrastructure projects. El Monte and Richmond, Calif., want to tax soda.
Towns and cities in energy-rich regions likewise are faring well. Just 100 miles north of Altoona, five hotels have been built in the past four years in downtown Williamsport, Pa., where natural gas companies have flocked to develop the Marcellus Shale. A new civic arena, residential housing and an airport terminal to provide direct flights to Houston are being planned. "Most citizens you talk to, they're very excited," said Williamsport Mayor Gabriel Campana, who refuels his natural-gas powered car at home.
But in far more cities, the outlook is darker. Although some suffer from specific problems—a bloated incinerator project in Harrisburg, Pa., and a bad real estate bet in Mammoth Lakes, California—most cities face falling revenues and rising costs.
Indeed, while housing is showing signs of improvement, real estate assessed values remain depressed, eroding property tax receipts, which provide 29% of revenue for municipalities, according to a Moody's analysis of census data. State aid, the biggest source of revenue for local governments at 34%, is falling and the growth of receipts from wage, sales and other taxes, which provide 10% of local budgets, is slowing.
At the same time, pension and health-care costs are rising despite efforts to restructure those benefits. The most vulnerable cities are ones that experienced drastic reductions in property values or are in states like California that limit municipal options to increase revenues. In addition, nearly a third of California cities require collective bargaining and prohibit outsourcing of administrative and maintenance services.
Since 2008, four California municipalities have filed for bankruptcy protection—Vallejo, Stockton, Mammoth Lakes, and most recently, San Bernardino, which declared bankruptcy Aug. 1, in large part because sales and property taxes fell after the real estate bust. The assessed value of homes in San Bernardino dropped to $10.3 billion in 2011 from $12.2 billion in 2008.
On top of a declining property tax base, the city has faced a significant drop in sales tax collections since 2005. Economist John Husing said San Bernardino's retail sales fell 30% during that period. Likewise, a decline in construction means less revenue from things like building permits and development fees.
While many municipalities nationwide have offset property-tax declines by raising tax rates, California's 1978 law dubbed Proposition 13 caps property taxes at about 1% of a home's value and forbids major tax increases unless a home is sold or rebuilt, though it permits taxes to fall if a home's value drops.
Residents in El Monte, Calif., 15 miles east of Los Angeles, will vote in November on a soda tax that could raise about $10 million annually. The city, which lost four major car dealerships that generated a large share of the city's sales tax revenue, cut nearly 30% of its workforce to help close a $3 million budget deficit but still faces $2 million deficit for the current year.
Local merchants oppose the measure. "I'm struggling to stay open and here they want to tax me even more. It's crazy," said Arthur Meier Jr., who owns Arts World Famous Burgers in El Monte.
Elsewhere, the cost of shoring up underfunded pension plans for public workers is going slowly. In many states, benefits are guaranteed and difficult to modify unless a city is declared "fiscally distressed." "Because of the guaranteed nature of benefits, there's no quick fix," said Thomas Fitzpatrick, an economist with the Federal Reserve Bank in Cleveland.
Steven Kreisberg, collective bargaining director at the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the nation's biggest public-sector union, said pension problems were caused by investment losses that can be gradually recovered, rather than due to overly rich benefits. "When you lose 20% of your assets in a single year that's what created the problem," he said.

Let's start talking

Opine on this my Liberal brethren.

I ask...what would you want if there was a sudden increase in crime by white, suit wearing men, in your neighborhood?  And you were one of them.  Would you support increased policing?
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Crime in New York City has dropped 80% since the early 1990s, a decline unmatched anywhere in the country. The change has yielded an explosion of commerce in once forlorn neighborhoods, a boom in tourism, and a sharp rise in property values. Nowhere were the effects more dramatic than in the city's poorest areas.
When the bullets stopped flying, entrepreneurs snapped up the vacant lots that had served as breeding grounds of crime. Senior citizens were able to visit friends without fear of getting mugged. Children could sleep in their own beds rather than in bathtubs, no longer needing shelter from stray gunfire. Target, Home Depot and other national chains moved into thoroughfares long ruled by drug gangs, providing jobs for local workers and giving residents retail choices taken for granted in middle-class neighborhoods.
Most significant, more than 10,000 black and Hispanic males avoided the premature death that would have been their fate had New York's homicide rate remained at its early-1990s apex. Blacks and Hispanics have made up 79% of the decline in homicide victims since 1993.
New York's previously unimaginable status as America's safest big city is now in jeopardy thanks to a rising campaign against its proactive style of policing. In 1994 the New York Police Department, led then by Commissioner William Bratton, embraced the revolutionary concept that the police could actually prevent crime, not just respond to it after the fact.
The department began analyzing victim reports daily to target resources to where crime patterns were emerging. Top brass held commanders accountable for the safety of their precincts. And officers were expected to intervene when they observed someone acting suspiciously—maybe asking the person a few questions, perhaps frisking him if legally justified. In so doing, they sent the message in violence-plagued areas that law and order was still in effect.

Such proactive stops (or "stop-and-frisks") have averted countless crimes. But a chorus of critics, led by the New York Times, charges that the NYPD's policy is racist because the majority of those stopped are black and Hispanic. Every declared Democratic candidate for mayor in 2013 has vowed to eliminate stop-and-frisks or significantly reduce them. A federal judge overseeing a class-action lawsuit against the NYPD has already announced her conviction that the department's stop practices are unconstitutional, the prelude to putting the department under judicial control.
Omitted from these critics' complaints is any recognition of the demographics of crime. Blacks were 62% of the city's murder victims in 2011, even though they are only 23% of the population. They also made up a disproportionate share of criminals, committing 80% of all shootings, nearly 70% of all robberies and 66% of all violent crime, according to crime reports filed with the NYPD by victims and witnesses, usually minorities themselves.
Whites, by contrast, committed a little over 1% of all shootings, less than 5% of all robberies, and 5% of all violent crime in 2011, even though they are 35% of New York City's population. Given where crime is happening, the police cannot target their resources where they're needed without producing racially disparate stops and arrests.
Critics also contend, among other charges, that the absolute number of stops—680,000—is too high and demonstrates illegality. But there were nearly 900,000 arrests and summons last year under the far more exacting standard of probable cause. It is not surprising that a police force of 35,000 witnessed 680,000 instances of reasonably suspicious behavior among New York's 8.5 million residents. If 25,000 officers in enforcement commands made just one stop a week, there would be over a million stops a year.
Violence continues to afflict minority communities. A rash of shootings during outdoor basketball games this summer should remind New Yorkers of what is at stake in the stop-and-frisk debate. The victims include a 4-year-old boy killed last month in the Bronx when two thugs started shooting at each other across a playground, and a 25-year-old member of the Harlem Youth Marines, an anti-gang group, killed during a shootout in June.

LIKEABILITY

• Likeability can be measured and is important in election. Remember who would you rather have a beer with Bush or Kerry, or Bush and Gore? The answer was Bush. I realize that being a leader is still about being competent and maybe Buffett would not be my favorite guy to have a beer with, I might still invest my money with a guy who is competent.  BUT
•  Let's try the likeabilty test:

      One says I will pay more taxes,................ one says "not a penny more"
      One says I should pay more, ....................one says I pay enough.
      One says middle class need a break, .........one says 'trickle down"
      One says WE did it, .................................one says I did it.

I like the Big O.

I'M MAD

The good Doctor and I met the other day for golf, and rather than spoil our day talking politics we agreed to just play golf. But of course it's hard not to discuss the " state of the union". Assumptions about each other's positions always come up because we have become a country of labels. You are non caring- rich loving because you are a republican and I am socialist because I am a democrat, it's all so easy then listening stops.
 The same I am sure in Washington. The fact is we are much more complicated than labels.
 I don't for instance care that Romney is wealthy, great in fact!
 I'm mad at the "game of taxes" which allows him breaks other Americans don't get!
I'm mad 40% of Americans have no skin in the game.
 I'm mad we need ID's to vote, if your choosing that simply to keep blacks from voting under the guide of voter fraud.
I'm mad both sides don't find common ground and do what they were voted in to do keep America working.
 I'm mad there is gerrymandering so congressmen don't have to work together.

• I'm just mad!!! We are better than this! Who will be the first to lay down the sword?

“If you agree with the approach I just described, if you want to give the policies of the last decade another try, then you should vote for Mr. Romney,” Obama declared in his June 14 speech in Cleveland.Romney hasn’t helped matters. When asked by NBC’s Brian Williams to explain how his plan differs from Bush’s policies, Romney offered up familiar talking points that could have come from Bush himself. Now, I agree with those points — exploit domestic energy, promote trade, keep taxes low, etc. And you could easily find banal throwaway lines from Obama that at least make it sound like he does, too.
But Obama has the distinct advantage of being branded as the anti-Bush candidate in the race.
Romney needs to explain to voters why he’s not Bush 2.0. Republican politics have been off-kilter for several years now because a large segment of the conservative base does not look back fondly on the Bush presidency. The mainstream media’s various narratives about the Tea Party ignore a vastly more significant and powerful motivation than the various bigotries and conspiracy theories typically ascribed to them. The Tea Party feels the GOP under Bush’s “compassionate conservatism” gave up the store to big government.
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Can we finally all agree that Keynesian economics is a flop? The politicians in Washington flushed about $800 billion down the toilet and we got nothing in exchange except for anemic growth and lots of people out of work.
Indeed, we’re getting to the point where the monthly employment reports from the Labor Departmentt must be akin to Chinese water torture for the Obama administration. Even when the unemployment rate falls, it gives critics an opportunity to show how bad the economy is doing compared to what the White House said would happen if the so-called stimulus was enacted.
But for the past few months, the joblessness rate has been rising, making the chart look even worse.
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Three years after our worst recession since the Great Depression officially ended, the U.S. economy is still very weak. The people most hurt by this weakness are the unemployed and the poor, and of course the two problems are related. We have 23 million people who are unemployed, involuntarily working part-time, or given up looking for work — nearly 15 percent of the labor force. And poverty has reached 15.1 percent of the population — amazingly, a level that it was at in the mid-1960s. The first priority of the U.S. government should therefore be restoring full employment. This is a relatively easy thing to do. As Nobel laureate economist Paul Krugman aptly put it: "It's like having a dead battery in a car, and while there may be a lot wrong with the car, you can get the car going remarkably easily, if you're willing to accept that's what the problem really is."
Most economists are well aware of what the problem really is, since it is so simple and basic. The economy lost about $1.3 trillion in private annual spending when the real estate bubble burst in 2007, and much of that has not recovered. State and local governments continue to tighten their budgets and lay off workers.
If the federal government had simply funded these governments' shortfalls, we would have an additional 2 million jobs today.
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Romney's Middle Class Tax Hike

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/a-tough-new-obama-ad-that----surprise----is-accurate/2012/08/02/gJQAuigQSX_blog.html?hpid=z4

I DON'T NEED TO SEE ROMNEY'S TAX RETURN

He has probably taken advantage of all the loop holes and dodges in the tax code and piling trust funds on top of trust funds for all the unborn Romney's, he has done nothing illegal, I am sure of that. The rich have many ways to shelter their income, which are unavailable to the working class. I am sure that is legal also.
By and large the tax filings of Mr. Romney will show nothing more than he is wealthy and pays less % than a middle class worker does. What bothers me the most is the man who has flipped on everything from gun control, abortion, health care, and is firm on " I followed the law"
That is like saying I observed the speed limit while driving by an accident in which people are injured laying on the pavement needing help.  I followed the law. Yes you did George! ignoring the big problem people are hurting and you are observing the speeding law.
George you worked in an industry that had terminals, and computers and manipulation of numbers for shareholders benefits, not factories or mines or small business with real payrolls and real customers, a business so few know about and those that do don't much want to talk about it. You were  loyal to no industry, no companies, just  to your investors, just to investors, people like him.
 It isn't about being anti-rich, I know many hard working wealthy people who have met payrolls, sacrificed for their employees, and made lot's of money which they are entitled to because they risked it mightly. This is about not just always looking  inward, it's about looking outward.
I made it great but you had help also,teachers who educated your workers, roads which got your product to market. The mantra " I followed the law" just doesn't cut it with me.

The Economic Debate is a Sham

The U.S. Economic Policy Debate Is a Sham By Betsey Stevenson & Justin Wolfers - Jul 23, 2012 Watching Democrats and Republicans hash out their differences in the public arena, it’s easy to get the impression that there’s a deep disagreement among reasonable people about how to manage the U.S. economy. Nothing could be further from the truth. In reality, there’s remarkable consensus among mainstream economists, including those from the left and right, on most major macroeconomic issues. The debate in Washington about economic policy is phony. It’s manufactured. And it’s entirely political. Let’s start with Obama’s stimulus. The standard Republican talking point is that it failed, meaning it didn’t reduce unemployment. Yet in a survey of leading economists conducted by the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, 92 percent agreed that the stimulus succeeded in reducing the jobless rate. On the harder question of whether the benefit exceeded the cost, more than half thought it did, one in three was uncertain, and fewer than one in six disagreed. Or consider the widely despised bank bailouts. Populist politicians on both sides have taken to pounding the table against them (in many cases, only after voting for them). But while the public may not like them, there’s a striking consensus that they helped: The same survey found no economists willing to dispute the idea that the bailouts lowered unemployment. No Support Do you remember the Republican concern that Obama had somehow caused gas prices to rise, a development that Newt Gingrich promised to reverse? There’s simply no support among economists for this view. They unanimously agreed that “market factors,” rather than energy policy, have driven changes in gas prices. How about the oft-cited Republican claim that tax cuts will boost the economy so much that they will pay for themselves? It’s an idea born as a sketch on a restaurant napkin by conservative economist Art Laffer. Perhaps when the top tax rate was 91 percent, the idea was plausible. Today, it’s a fantasy. The Booth poll couldn’t find a single economist who believed that cutting taxes today will lead to higher government revenue -- even if we lower only the top tax rate. The consensus isn’t the result of a faux poll of left-wing ideologues. Rather, the findings come from the Economic Experts Panel run by Booth’s Initiative on Global Markets. It’s a recurring survey of about 40 economists from around the U.S. It includes Democrats, Republicans and independent academics from the top economics departments in the country. The only things that unite them are their first-rate credentials and their interest in public policy. Let’s be clear about what the economists’ remarkable consensus means. They aren’t purporting to know all the right answers. Rather, they agree on the best reading of murky evidence. The folks running the survey understand this uncertainty, and have asked the economists to rate their confidence in their answers on a scale of 1 to 10. Strikingly, the consensus looks even stronger when the responses are weighted according to confidence. The debate in Washington has become completely unmoored from this consensus, and in a particular direction: Angry Republicans have pushed their representatives to adopt positions that are at odds with the best of modern economic thinking. That may be good politics, but it’s terrible policy. The disjunction between the state of economic knowledge and our current political debate has important consequences. Right now, millions of people are suffering due to high unemployment. Our textbooks are filled with possible solutions. Instead of debating them seriously, congressional Republicans are blocking even those policy proposals that strike most economists as uncontroversial. Raw Politics This inaction has no basis in economics. Instead, it’s raw politics -- a cynical attempt to score points in a phony rhetorical war or a way of preventing their opponents from scoring a policy win. The debate about the long-run challenge posed by the federal budget deficit has also become divorced from economic reality. The same panel of economists was almost unanimous in agreeing that “long run fiscal sustainability in the U.S. will require cuts in currently promised Medicare and Medicaid benefits and/or tax increases that include higher taxes on households with incomes below $250,000.” Only one in 10 was uncertain. None objected. Likewise, popular tax deductions such as that for mortgage interest didn’t fare well in the surveys and would be on almost any economist’s list of targets for reform. Yet neither party is willing to propose such policies. The consensus, of course, can be wrong. On the probable consequences of economic reforms, though, leading economists are more likely to be right than politicians running for re- election. Their solidarity needs to be taken seriously. Too much of what passes for economic debate in Washington is the product of faith, not evidence. It’s time to put economics back into the economic debate.

Do The Right Thing All The Time

No one I know is against wealthy people. What we are against is favoritism. Someone paying 18% tax, while a regular working stiff pays a higher percentage. (Ala the Buffett argument) ! Forget all the HOO HA just have a tax system that is fair.
To blame the unions and pensions of people who passed on wage increases for more pension money is wrong. To blame a  mother who taught school for 30 years that she is the problem is beyond understanding!
 Right now the biggest corporations in the United States pay a smaller percentage of income tax than the average American Family and that is a fact JACK. Wall Street spends a million dollars a DAY lobbying in Washington for tax breaks and special interests.
 Ending oil subsidies alone would save two Billion a year to tax payers.
 A great start would be term limits, no gerrymandering, and a promise to work with whoever is elected. Or in plain simple language we can all understand " do the right thing all the time" for the American people, not for your ideology.

You Liberals are going to have a hard time with this, but think, ponder then...think.

What you want, redistribution, will hurt the poor the most.  Trickle AROUND from the most successful always works...always has, always will.

Stated again,  having Buffet keep his money will be more productive than sending it to the government. 

What does Michael Jordan tell us about income inequality in the United States? The U.S. has greater income inequality than nearly all other developed nations, and the former basketball star earned far more in most years than the typical American earns in a lifetime. So is our system unfair and stacked against the middle class? First, some historical perspective.

"From the time of Pericles until the end of the 18th century in London—2,300 years," notes Harvard Prof. Lawrence Summers, "standards of living on Earth increased perhaps 100%." In the U.S. since 1790, by contrast, real per capita gross domestic product has increased nearly 4,000%. Quality of life, in other words, increased 40 times more in 220 years of American history than it had globally over two millennia. In 2012, a typical American in the bottom fifth of the income distribution has a far higher quality of life—and life expectancy—than the average member of the top 1% in 1790.

Critics today often point to the 1950s as the last years before American society became so divided between haves and have-nots. At the end of that decade, America's "Gini coefficient"—the most common measure of income inequality, running from 0 (least unequal) to 1 (most unequal)—was 0.37. Today it is 0.45.

But in 1959, more than 20% of families fell below the poverty line. In 2010 that figure was just over 13%. Real per capita GDP today is 270% higher than it was in 1959. A family in the bottom fifth of the income distribution today makes the same amount in real terms as a family earning the median income in 1950. So inequality might have increased, but so too—dramatically—has quality of life.

Even over the last two decades, while real income has essentially stagnated for the bottom fifth of earners, basic conveniences have become far more affordable. In 1992, only 20% of American families below the poverty line had a dishwasher—50% had air conditioning and 60% owned a microwave. When the Census Bureau last surveyed these figures in 2005, those figures were 37%, 79% and 91%, respectively. Critics who minimize the importance of these conveniences likely have never had to do without them.

And that brings us to Michael Jordan, who starred for the Chicago Bulls from 1984 to 1998. In 1986, the Bulls' median player salary was $300,000. The team's lowest-paid player made $135,000, and its highest-paid player made $806,000. The team's Gini coefficient was 0.36. But Jordan's superstardom increased the team's popularity and revenues, and by 1998 salaries looked different. The median income was $2.3 million, the lowest was $500,000, and the highest (Jordan's) was $33 million. The Gini coefficient had nearly doubled, to 0.67.

Jordan's salary of $33 million consumed over half the payroll, but everyone was better off. The median player in 1998 made more than seven times what the median player made in 1986, while the income of the lowest-paid player in 1998 quadrupled that of his 1986 peer.

Detractors would suggest that this situation is anomalous to sports, that many of today's wealthy inherited their money or acquired it without adding commensurate value to society. But consider another basketball player, Rashard Lewis of the Washington Wizards.

Lewis was the second-highest paid player in the National Basketball Association in 2012, making $22.1 million—even though he appeared in fewer than half of his team's games and performed poorly when he did. Is it fair that Lewis was compensated so handsomely? More pertinently, if his team could repossess a portion of his salary and redistribute it more "fairly" to deserving players following the season, would it benefit the franchise?

Perhaps it would in the short term, as the team could reward players and temporarily strengthen morale. But top players would be disincentivized to play for the team in the future, knowing that such repossession could also happen to them. And without an objective measure of overall player performance, the team could one day decide that even a high-performing player was overcompensated and therefore should see some of his proceeds redistributed to his teammates. The team would quickly become uncompetitive.

Certainly there are reasons for concern if lower-income Americans aren't able to save or acquire sufficient capital to pursue innovative ideas, or to see their children attend decent schools. They will suffer, and the country will lose out on significant intellectual capital and growth opportunities. But this should not be confused with inequality.

Equality is not a good in itself and shouldn't be analyzed in a vacuum. If we remember that, perhaps a century from now low-income Americans will pity the living standards of today's 1%.

Obama V. Clinton On Taxes. Dick Morris

President Obama is trying to re-write history when he says that his tax program is the same as Bill Clinton supported "when 23 million jobs were created."

It's not that way at all. Clinton's 1993 increase of personal income taxes on the top bracket to 39.6% had a very negative effect on the economy. It was only after Clinton's 1997 cut the capital gains tax - the opposite of what Obama proposes - that job growth really piled up.

When Clinton took office he did all the wrong things. He raised taxes sharply, hiking the top bracket from 35% to 39.6% and raised taxes on gasoline. The result was that the economy, which had been recovering, staggered. GDP growth dropped to 0.7% in Clinton's first quarter (down from 4.3% in Bush's last quarter) and stayed around 2% for the rest of 1993. Personal income rose 6.3% in 1992 under Bush but slowed to 4.1% under Clinton in 1993.

The tax increases Clinton passed failed to generate the revenue he had expected. The tax paradox set in. Martin Feldstein, former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, summed it up in his Wall Street Journal article, "What the '93 Tax Increase Really Did," published on October 26, 1995. He said taxpayers reduced their incomes when they saw the tax hikes coming. Feldstein writes that "the Treasury lost two-thirds of the extra revenue that would have been collected if taxpayers had not changed their behavior." Because of Clinton's tax hikes, real personal income fell by $25 billion. High income taxpayers, facing the prospect of a tax increase reported 8.5% less taxable income in 1993 than they would have if their tax rates had not changed. The tax paradox!

Then Clinton got wiped out in the Congressional elections of 1994, losing control of the Senate and the House - the first time the Republicans had run the House in forty years!

Clinton suddenly saw the error of his ways and began to hold down spending and push for a tax cut. In 1997, he and the Republican Congress combined to cut capital gains taxes from 28% (the rate to which Bush had increased it) to 20%. The result was electrifying! Real wage growth was 6.5% in the four years after the tax cut compared to minuscule wage growth of 0.8% over the four years after Clinton's tax increase!

And the tax paradox was again evident: lower rates produced higher revenues! In 1996, the year before the capital gains cut, the tax collected revenues of only $66 billion. In the four years after the cut, they averaged $100 billion a year. But, what was more important was the surge in economic activity that the capital gains tax cut generated. In 1996, before the tax cut, there were $261 billion in capital gains in America. In the three years after the cut, capital gains rose to an average of $440 billion. The increased tax collections and the greater economic activity were such that they pushed the budget into a surplus for the first time since the 1950s.

These facts may be "inconvenient truths" for Obama to face but they are the facts!

Mr. Obama keeps attacking Republicans for refusing to pass his latest stimulus-spending splurge. He seems to have forgotten that less than two years ago the GOP won a landslide midterm election by promising voters they would end the avalanche of spending and debt.
The only jobs plan that has any chance of passing the House and Senate before the election is a bill to cancel all tax increases in 2013. With White House support, this would fly through the House and Senate and eliminate one major antigrowth headwind, as even some Keynesian economists and the Congressional Budget Office are telling the President.

The dilemma for the White House is that calling off next year's tax increase would undercut Mr. Obama's re-election theme of redistributing income. His liberal base has become so obsessed with the politics of envy that it is demanding higher taxes no matter the economic or political costs.

The question for Senate Democrats is whether they want to jeopardize their personal futures, and their majority, by jumping off the same tax cliff. With the House poised to pass an extension of the tax rates for at least one year, Senate Democrats have to decide if they want to vote before Election Day to wallop an already weak economy with a giant tax increase.

Just the Facts

It's no news that lack of affordability is the main reason many small business owners don't offer health coverage to their employees. It's not that they don't want to provide it --  they do. But unlike big businesses, small firms continue to face premium rates that are unpredictable in nearly every sense -- except for the guarantee that they will always increase.


That's why June 28 was a day for the small business history books. The Supreme Court ruling to uphold the Affordable Care Act protects a number of benefits that are helping offset small businesses' costs as they brave the tumultuous health coverage market. Provisions such as rate review and Medical Loss Ratio (MLR) have already resulted in lower premium costs and cash back for small employers. Millions of small businesses in 42 states will get rebates for part of their coverage costs in August because their insurers failed to spend 80 percent of their premium dollars on patient care and quality improvement as required by the MLR rule.

On top of that, the law's health insurance tax credits for small business owners with fewer than 25 full-time employees are helping hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs who offer coverage save money on their health care costs. With those savings, they are reinvesting in their businesses and even creating new jobs. Now that the law's fate is no longer up in the air, eligible small business owners can look forward to 2014 when the maximum amount of the tax credit increases from 35 percent of their premium costs to 50 percent. And companies with with fewer than 50 employees are NOT REQUIRED to pay for health insurance for their employees, and if you have less than 25 you will get a tax credit to help pay if you choose.
So what's wrong with that. The fear campaign continues by the Republicans.
The answer is really simple the Republicans believe health insurance should not be provided by the goverment and every country in the world does now.

Been doing some Reading!

The first forty years after WW 2 the financial sector was 10% of GDP and 12% to 15% of corporate profits. Bankers were paid a little more than average workers. 2006 financial sector became 16% of GDP and 40% of corporate profit  and financial professionals were being paid more than anyone else.
 Example Merrill Lynch in 2008 generated 100 BILLION in revenue and paid 80 BILLION to its workers.  At the same time Merrill lost almost 15 billion and left a trail of empty houses and huge losses for its investors like pension funds for regular people.
More than half the stock trades now are held for less than 11 SECONDS.
Now trading is done by huge trading desks soley for speculation and those large positions often work large seesaws in the market place. New regulations are designed to stop such behavior! But of course the Republican party will tell they are not needed while they are collecting large donations from these banks.
 Few people realize that federal taxes of all kinds are roughly 15% of GDP is the lowest since 1950.
 Allowing the Bush tax cuts for all to expire on schedule would nearly balance the budget. Why isn't anybody talking that way. American's are so convinced we are over taxed now it's because the scorched earth Republican talk about taxes has stopped all sensible solutions.

Forward!

It is hard to discuss and debate idiots. 

OBAMA lISTEN UP BE BIG

If we can just get a few big things right today — a Simpson-Bowles-like grand bargain on spending and tax reform that unleashes entrepreneurship, a deal on immigration that allows the most energetic and smartest immigrants to enrich our country and a plan on energy that allows us to tap all these new sources in environmentally safe ways — no one could touch us as a country. Connect the dots for people, Mr. President — be the guy taking the risk to offer that big plan for American renewal, and Romney will never be able to beat you.

How a Leading Analyst Sees the Ruling

Erick Erickson is fundamental reading for conservatives.  This is, in my view, an outstanding analysis of Roberts' ruling.

Dear RedState Reader,

As you have no doubt heard by now, the Supreme Court largely upheld Obamacare with Chief Justice John Roberts writing the majority 5 to 4 decision.  Even Justice Kennedy called for the whole law to be thrown out, but John Roberts saved it.

Having gone through the opinion, I am not going to beat up on John Roberts. I am disappointed, but I want to make a few points. John Roberts is playing at a different game than the rest of us. We’re on poker. He’s on chess.

First, I get the strong sense from a few anecdotal stories about Roberts over the past few months and the way he has written this opinion that he very, very much was concerned about keeping the Supreme Court above the partisan fray and damaging the reputation of the Court long term. It seems to me the left was smart to make a full frontal assault on the Court as it persuaded Roberts.

Second, in writing his opinion, Roberts forces everyone to deal with the issue as a political, not a legal issue. In the past twenty years, Republicans have punted a number of issues to the Supreme Court asking the Court to save us from ourselves. They can’t do that with Roberts. They tried with McCain-Feingold, which was originally upheld. This case is a timely reminder to the GOP that five votes are not a sure thing.

Third, while Roberts has expanded the taxation power, which I don’t really think is a massive expansion from what it was, Roberts has curtailed the commerce clause as an avenue for Congressional overreach. In so doing, he has affirmed the Democrats are massive taxers. In fact, I would argue that this may prevent future mandates in that no one is going to go around campaigning on new massive tax increases. On the upside, I guess we can tax the hell out of abortion now. Likewise, in a 7 to 2 decision, the Court shows a strong majority still recognize the concept of federalism and the restrains of Congress in forcing states to adhere to the whims of the federal government.

Fourth, in forcing us to deal with this politically, the Democrats are going to have a hard time running to November claiming the American people need to vote for them to preserve Obamacare. It remains deeply, deeply unpopular with the American people. If they want to make a vote for them a vote for keeping a massive tax increase, let them try.

Fifth, the decision totally removes a growing left-wing talking point that suddenly they must vote for Obama because of judges. The Supreme Court as a November issue for the left is gone. For the right? That sound you hear is the marching of libertarians into Camp Romney, with noses held, knowing that the libertarian and conservative coalitions must unite to defeat Obama and Obamacare.

Finally, while I am not down on John Roberts like many of you are today, i will be very down on Congressional Republicans if they do not now try to shut down the individual mandate. Force the Democrats on the record about the mandate. Defund Obamacare. This now, by necessity, is a political fight and the GOP sure as hell should fight.

60% of Americans agree with them on the issue. And guess what? The Democrats have been saying for a while that individual pieces of Obamacare are quite popular. With John Roberts’ opinion, the repeal fight takes place on GOP turf, not Democrat turf. The all or nothing repeal has always been better ground for the GOP and now John Roberts has forced everyone onto that ground.

It seems very, very clear to me in reviewing John Roberts’ decision that he is playing a much longer game than us and can afford to with a life tenure. And he probably just handed Mitt Romney the White House.

*A friend points out one other thing — go back to 2009. Olympia Snowe was the deciding vote to get Obamacare out of the Senate Committee. Had she voted no, we’d not be here now.

Read my full thoughts here <http://info.redstate.com/egl40/c2.php?EGPB/175014635/257550/H/N/V/http://www.redstate.com/erick/2012/06/28/im-not-down-on-john-roberts/> .
Sincerely yours,

Erick Erickson
Editor,RedState.com <http://info.redstate.com/egl40/c2.php?EGPB/175014635/257551/H/N/V/http://www.redstate.com/>
  

Imagine That! The Dems Raised Taxes

Pelosi famously said that we have to pass the bill to find out what is in it, and now we know.  Taxes!

Do you remember that our President, the Senate Leader and the then-Speaker all assured us that they were not raising taxes and that they would in fact lower medical costs.  It turns out that the Court, which apparently did "find out what is in it" found taxes.  Translation: Obama, Reid and Pelosi lied.

Shocking, isn't it!

There is absolutely no evidence that costs are coming down or that they will go down.  The federal government is not well known for its cost effectiveness, and with its takeover of the health care delivery system it is only going to get worse.

My hope is that the Republicans will take this issue and run with it.  I trust the markets much more than the Feds, and I think that is a majority view.  If Obamacare stands costs will continue to rise and individual choice will be significantly constrained.

Vote the liars out.

Cheers,

Hags