Truer words were never spoken. Great point Carl.

What’s most interesting about this lead line is that John Boehner has been instrumental in launching the seige against this nation and our way of life. He’s voted for continual war funding at every turn, expensive bailout packages etc.
Worse yet it’s long since known the war on Iraq was launched on “cooked” intel and our incursion into Afghanistan at current levels is unwarranted and simply wasting our national assets in the form of more debt.

We’re reading the words of the epitome of a “liar incarnate” in this article.

What’s tragic is the current batch of “Demoncrats” and their leadership are cut from the same cloth.

It’s time for every last one of them to flushed from the halls of Congress and start with a new batch. If they don’t work out then we can continuously operate the handle until we get some clear water in the bowl. : |

Carl Nemo **==

Aren’t our soldiers coming home and asking everyone why we are putting them in harms way in a desert to guard poppy fields for people that do not want us there? Why have we spent over a trillion dollars and sent over 300,000 people around the world chasing down 3,000 alleged terrorists? Will the War on Terror ever end? Doesn’t this foment the same unrest?

It has been a stated goal of the very far right to spend us so deeply into debt that they would be forced to cancel social programs like Social Security in the name of “austerity measures” to rein in debt. We are well on that pathway thanks to both parities shared reckless spending.

Yes, I’m a “righty” so far as a Jeffersonian Liberal is considered on the right nowadays. I don’t recall mentioning Reagan or even giving him any credit for the collapse of the Soviet Union. That’s something you’ve come up with on your own.

It would be a good idea to stop blaming the other side and see both parties are guilty and in need of a shake down if anything is to ever change. If you are caught up in finger pointing across the aisle, then you are a part of the problem and not part of the solution.

Perhaps a read of America’s Great Depression by Murray Rothbard would disabuse you of your own fallacy regarding the efficacy of Keynesianism.

You’re correct – WWII was not the savior.

From the article you cited:

“By 2003, Mr. Bush grasped this lesson. In that year, he cut the dividend and capital gains rates to 15 percent each, and the economy responded.”

The tax cuts that supposedly boosted the economy were not personal income tax cuts.

And I again ask you to stop with the personal attacks. It is not helpful to discussions and just creates more bad feelings. Tempting though it is, I have not stooped to your level, nor will I do so. But meanness accomplishes exactly nothing.

Under “Keynesian fallacy” unemployment fell from 24.9% in fiscal year 1933 to 9.9% in fiscal year 1941. (fiscal years at the time ended in the summer, i.e. fiscal year 1933 began in July 1932 and ended at the end of June 1933. Than means fiscal year 1941 ended in June 1941, many months before WWII, so don’t give me that right-wing crap about the war ending the Great Depression.)

In eight years (between 1933 and 1941, before the advent of WWII) the economy grew at a rate above 15%. If you disregard the two years lost when FDR gave it to conservative whining and cut spending to balance the budget, the economy grew over the six positive years at better than 20%.

That to you know-nothings is Keynensian fallacy?

But perhaps in addition to all your other scholarly credentials… my, they grow at every turn… you can regale us with the nuts and bolts of the Keynesian fallacy that drives such belief in “spending our way out of debt.” Can’t use inflation, though – that’s reserved for the Austrians among us to show why we’re going bankrupt.

FYI – the difference between payroll tax receipts and offsetting trust fund expenditures for the entire period of 1992 thru 2000 (not just the so-called surplus years) did not produce a $1.54T savings to be turned into Treasury “debt”.

As if it was someone else’s money he was talking about.

A refresher course is in order.

Clinton inherited a $290-billion deficit from George Bush the Daddy. In the first year of his budgeting – which every single member of the GOP collective voted against – he reduced the deficit to about $250 billion, then $200 billion the next year. His next budget reduced the deficit to about $160 billion, then close to $100 billion. From then on out he had surpluses which he handed off the George Bush the Incompetent. That means his surpluses and deficits produced pretty much a break-even wash.

Now read the matter of the 1984 Deficit Reduction Act, below, to see how the debt increased. Griff said there was $1,54 trillion growth in debt during Clinton’s term. Since deficits and surpluses cancelled each other out under Clinton, that means there was a $1.54-trillion SURPLUS in payroll taxes, and that surplus was legally forced into Treasury instruments, hence the rise in Treasury instruments, i.e. debt.

And you know-nothings whine about such a surplus.