Obama, Daschle will destroy GOP by preventing government shrinkage?

http://oversight.house.gov/story.asp?ID=847

http://money.cnn.com/2008/03/25/news/economy/socsec_candidates_trustees/index.htm

Maybe Social Security would work . . .if the government stops 'borrowing' from it

Rocket River

 

Bush, Cheney will destroy the Democracy by preventing government shrinkage!

Oops, too late.

 

Once again Liberals attack the Military spending to justify their horrible budgetary habits. I won't give another lecture on the economics behind the Iraq War but some of you are completely uninformed on geopolitical issues like the world currency reserves and petro-dollar vs petro-euro. The single most important reason behind the Iraq war was Saddam Husein's decision to switch his currency reserves from US dollars to Euros for all oil transactions.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,998512,00.html

Back in 2000, the Euro's debut was very strong and many OPEC countries were seriously considering switching to Euro as the preferred currency for oil transactions. Iraq was the first country to do so and as a result the US sought intervention to protect its global interest. Yeah that sounds selfish but that is what you times have to do in order to insure the average Joe back home in America has a reasonably good living standard even though the country's entire economy is consumer driven without any real manufacturing contributions on a global level. If America's ability to print all these money is taken because foreign countries don't want to hold our currency as reserve to buy oil, then our entire social-economic system fails and Americans have to get in back of the line and start producing goods instead of just consuming and borrowing from countries like China and the likes.

So in short this military imperialism or whatever you may call it, helped ensure our economy doesn't reach the brink of collapse. The world is harsh place and sometimes you must make tough decisions to ensure your own survival. This reasoning in no way shape or form justifies the War in Iraq but it only provides a rational explanation to the real motive behind the current US foreign policy.

 

Where can one attain tapes of your "lecture" series? A homeless gentleman I stepped over this morning was shouting much the same thing, to all who would listen, and I am genuinely intrigued to learn more about your shared worldview.

 

You may have missed the headlines, but our economy is on the brink of collapse. There are no more investment banks. We have a $700 billion bailout for banks. The Dow plunged to 7500. Record unemployment. Record deficit spending under the GOP. Record trade deficit. Trillions of dollars have been lost in pension funds and retirement accounts. 20 banks haved failed and that's just the beginning.

 

Let's see what the Bush's treasury secretary Paulson says about the state of the economy. He thinks the current economic crisis is a "once or twice" in a hundred year event. It's that bad.

 

I was told we went because of Weapons of Mass Destruction...oh wait...

 

We wouldn't need a dollar backed by oil if we didn't run up massive account deficits, professor ghetto cheese. The same deficits that exploded under bush.

The same deficits that will continue to crush our economy should we pull out of Iraq.

 

Maybe I'm reading this incorrectly, but is there a reason we need to pay for SS through 2082 right now?

 

With all due respect, how can you trot out this crap after 8 years of mad, exploding government spending, debt, trade deficits, and a huge increase in government employees by that so-called "conservative," George W. Bush? The guy that cut taxes during two wars, a first in our history? Yes, you know, that Republican "conservative" and the GOP Congress that approved whatever he wanted.

The last Democratic President balanced the budget and had a growing economy during his two terms. Of course, this incoming Democratic President will have to deal with the Republican mess threatening to effectively destroy this country as the leader of the world politically, economically, and militarily.

I'm pretty sick and tired of this "Liberals attacking (fill in the blank)" BS, which is nothing but GOP talking points and far-right media talking head garbage. Seems to me that the American people just passed judgement on your apparent heros. They proclaimed that they failed, right there in the voting booth. Live with it. Geez, talk about living a delusion! I'm one of those liberals you're so afraid of and a strong supporter of the military. You'd be surprised at how many of us there are. We just don't believe in spending on things we don't need and, instead, spending on the things we do need.

 

The rank and file BBS-publican whining about how they're "real conservatives" and into fiscal responsibility reminds me of Palin on the ol' bridge to nowhere and the rest of the red state feeding trough which has persisted for the last few decades. They're "conservative" when the money doesn't go to them, otherwise, it's open season on the rest of our cash.

 

It seems like these angry BBS'ers only came out of the woodwork only when a Democrat got elected.

I think they were too busy gloating in 04 to care how corrupt and wasteful our government became.

 

Most overrated president ever.

 

Listening to republicans b**** and moan about fiscal conservatism is really annoying.

Seriously, STFU.

 

If you haven't watched I.O.U.S.A., please do. It's the most important film that you will ever watch.

If you don't want to watch the whole thing, here's the 30 Minute version:
<embed src="http://blip.tv/play/Adb1EJDaNg" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="320" height="270" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed>

 

of all the things i'm hearing, it really makes my head want to explode, its like seriously? are you guys seriously complainig?

you know its funny, I think just like a lot of other things that didn't fly in the election, particularly the socialist tag, this won't either. the electorate if not anything else is more informed, and they know what has gone on over the last eight years. it won't fly

 

Here's a liberal economist's view on the flick.
*********
IOUSA: Anti-Social Security Propaganda Flick



In case you've missed the hype, IOUSA is a documentary making the case that the U.S. budget is hopelessly out of control and that our current spending patterns will bankrupt our children. The film features such noteworthy characters as Alan "Bubbles" Greenspan, Robert "Don't Regulate Credit Default Swaps" Rubin, and former presidential candidate Ron Paul.

This film should be viewed as part of a larger effort to dismantle Social Security and Medicare, the country's core safety net programs. The reality is that our budget is essentially fine, it is our health care system that is out of control. But fixing health care would require going after the drug companies, the insurance companies, and highly paid medical specialists. But those folks are all powerful, so the IOUSA crew went after old people instead.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dean-baker/iousa-anti-social-securit_b_137050.html

If you want a near minute by minute debunking of its "facts" check here.
http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/IOUSA_viewer_guide_2008_10.pdf

 

I thought it was weird to see Greenspan telling people to save money when his low interests rates promoted anything but.

I still think everyone should at least watch the half hour version.

I highly doubt "our budget is essentially fine". There could be measures to ration healthcare, but the fundamental assumptions of our economy for the last 15 years has been shattered.

I'm assuming that that liberal economist is knee jerking to save his precious Social Security or other entitlement programs and not looking seriously at the business-as-usual numbers. Addressing those issues AND factoring in political inertia will be a Herculean task.

I don't like how those economists from a European group are cherry picking random facts in order to debunk for the sake of debunking. (nuh uh! that daughter will inherit a country "richer" than her parents!)

For example, his rebuttal about the last ten years of controlled inflation dismisses the influence of cheap foreign goods that we greedily consumed which allowed us to buy more with less. But the problem this holds is that it runs up giant trade deficits that are ultimately unsustainable. Our dollar became cheaper and oil prices ran higher to cope with export countries being pegged to our currency. So to say inflation was tamed mitigates factors the writers doesn't feel like addressing.

And the writers still assume that the government has not touched any of the SS trust fund for other forms of spending.

So even if the writers had a point somewhere, they're being pig headedly mean spirited and disingenuously lazy. (Brookings can be considered centrist, but there are enough accounts to consider it liberal) They remind me of the same analysts who brushed off any mention of a credit bust and didn't look at the facts.

Saving Medicaire and Medicaid is big, but it's not going to be fixed for good with the snap of the wrist or some plans from a European think tank. Even that would not address other account deficits to make the assumption that the budget will be essentially fine. Why didn't they mention reducing our reliance upon importing oil? Or how about cutting government spending and enforcing a balanced budget?

 

If that's the best that they can do, they should have just said that they accept it as written. Most of their "debunking" is completely unsupported.

 

The director responds to Baker's two paragraph dismissal: