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Thread: The Republican Love Fest After the Tax Bill was passed.......

  1. #61
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    Quote Originally Posted by Alan View Post
    Phase 1 of 2.

    Fiscal irresponsibility is best exemplified in doubling 200 years of accumulated debt in 8 years. If Phase 2 results in reduced expenditures or economic growth counter-balancing the tax cuts I suppose the most accurate thing you can say about Republicans is that they maintained the status quo, although I suspect accuracy requires a higher standard of political discourse than we should expect.
    Everyone seems to forget the terrible times and the “recession/depression” of around 2008. The USA fared better than many other countries. Imagine if Trump had to face THAT coming into office! I shudder to think about it!

  2. #62
    Senior Member flowerseverywhere's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Alan View Post
    Phase 1 of 2.

    Fiscal irresponsibility is best exemplified in doubling 200 years of accumulated debt in 8 years. If Phase 2 results in reduced expenditures or economic growth counter-balancing the tax cuts I suppose the most accurate thing you can say about Republicans is that they maintained the status quo, although I suspect accuracy requires a higher standard of political discourse than we should expect.
    i did some reading on the cause and amount of debt during Obama’s terms and it is interesting to note there are several ways to calculate this and blame policies of one or another person. The bottom line is the debt increased significantly. But has that not been a rallying cry of the Republicans, deficit reduction? If it does not happen will you and other Republican backers accept the excuse “he did it first”.
    Do you think that the current administration and republican congress and senate will be held accountable for the numerous statements the president made?
    mexico will pay for the great big beautiful wall
    i have a plan for healthcare that will give more people better coverage for less money?
    deport all the illegal immigrants (he has given this his best shot and has achieved less illegal immigrants coming in)
    to LGBT “I’m with you”
    to DACA “I have your back”
    no more Muslims will be coming into,this country (he certainly gave this a very good try).

    The tax tax cut will be interesting to see how it pans out. Best case scenario is people will spend more money and save more, businesses will increase their workforce, give pay raises and bring offshore money Home and invest it in this country.

    Worst case scenario we io we will go to war somewhere, spend more and more money without fixing our infrastructure, have more climate related natural disasters, the rich will get richer and the poor poorer, there could be more terrible terrorist attacks, and the stock market love affair will end, and due to lack of affordable and accessible healthcare our life expectancy will decrease, infant mortality increase and preventable diseases like whooping cough, police etc. will be back due to lack of immunization because people won’t afford it.

    But out of course all we are hearing about is what crooks and liars were in the Obama, clinton and now the Trump camp and how much money is being spent on investigations on all the news networks.

  3. #63
    Simpleton Alan's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by flowerseverywhere View Post

    But out of course all we are hearing about is what crooks and liars were in the Obama, clinton and now the Trump camp and how much money is being spent on investigations on all the news networks.
    News has become entertainment. They provide you whatever information or opinion that motivates you to come back for more. Learn to trust your BS detector and you'll find that all those issues you mentioned are not as problematic as you've been led to believe.
    "Things should be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler." ~ Albert Einstein

  4. #64
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    Quote Originally Posted by frugal-one View Post
    What is a “real republican”? Evidently, not the current regime!
    That's a question I've had occasion to ponder over the last year or two. With Democrats, at least since the decline of the blue dogs, it seems fairly simple. You've got the identity-based faction and the smaller class-based faction to choose from. The GOP probably has six or eight distinct flavors under the big tent: libertarians, value traditionalists, fiscal hawks, defense hawks, free-marketers, nationalists, populists, constitutionalists and maybe a few others. It seems a lot messier to me, although a great deal more interesting than the other side.

    The question in my mind is whether a party that would nominate Trump (although I suspect an open primary system subject to hijacking may be primarily to blame) is still an acceptable political home for an old fashioned small-government, laissez faire conservative dinosaur like me. I suppose a "real Republican" or a "real Democrat" is anyone who calls himself one. You could probably argue that both Trump and Sanders claimed party affiliation as mere flags of convenience. But if I try to determine where a "real conservative" fits into the political ecosystem it becomes more problematic for me. Is it better to stay with the GOP as it is as the best bulwark against the coercive utopians of the left, or should we found a new party built along bedrock conservative principles?

  5. #65
    Williamsmith
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    Quote Originally Posted by frugal-one View Post
    You won’t get social security why? ... You didn’t pay into it and getting a pension instead??
    The jobs I worked before my career in Law Enforcement, I paid in to SS and the jobs I worked afterward, I paid in also. I have enough quarters to qualify for a payment but that payment will be reduced by some 60% , which leaves me with something like $25/mo.

    The pension, I paid into and am simply withdrawing from an annuity which will be used up in something like 10 more years however, the number crunchers called Actuaries have determined that people who performed my job will only live on average 17 years after their retirement. My anecdotal experience in the past 7 years tells me they know their stuff because one guy I retired with died one year later of colon cancer, another fell dead of heart attack while mowing his lawn at age 55 and a few others are currently battling chronic illnesses like diabetes and cancer, etc.

    Im not complaining. I believe in destiny. When your number is up, you can’t go to the end of the line. I’m very fortunate and I sympathize with those in tough spots. But I live for today and let tomorrow’s worries for tomorrow, I’ll take the tax break and be damn happy for it.

  6. #66
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    Quote Originally Posted by Williamsmith View Post
    The jobs I worked before my career in Law Enforcement, I paid in to SS and the jobs I worked afterward, I paid in also. I have enough quarters to qualify for a payment but that payment will be reduced by some 60% , which leaves me with something like $25/mo.

    The pension, I paid into and am simply withdrawing from an annuity which will be used up in something like 10 more years however, the number crunchers called Actuaries have determined that people who performed my job will only live on average 17 years after their retirement. My anecdotal experience in the past 7 years tells me they know their stuff because one guy I retired with died one year later of colon cancer, another fell dead of heart attack while mowing his lawn at age 55 and a few others are currently battling chronic illnesses like diabetes and cancer, etc.

    Im not complaining. I believe in destiny. When your number is up, you can’t go to the end of the line. I’m very fortunate and I sympathize with those in tough spots. But I live for today and let tomorrow’s worries for tomorrow, I’ll take the tax break and be damn happy for it.
    If it’s anything like a typical defined benefit public pension, it won’t be “used up” after a set period. The participants who die early in effect subsidize the methuselahs through what is charmingly called the “mortality credit”.

  7. #67
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    A good summary of U.S. debt by presidents:

    https://www.thebalance.com/us-debt-b...ercent-3306296

    "Reagan proved that deficits don't matter." Dick Cheney

    Ronald Reagan tripled the national debt and George W Bush doubled it again. And there was no 2008-style economic crisis to explain those actions.
    It's convenient to only look back 8 years ago, but it's not the whole picture.

  8. #68
    Simpleton Alan's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Lainey View Post
    A good summary of U.S. debt by presidents:

    https://www.thebalance.com/us-debt-b...ercent-3306296

    "Reagan proved that deficits don't matter." Dick Cheney

    Ronald Reagan tripled the national debt and George W Bush doubled it again. And there was no 2008-style economic crisis to explain those actions.
    It's convenient to only look back 8 years ago, but it's not the whole picture.
    Not to take away from your point, but the figures in your referenced article missed an important bit of data. The $1.62T deficit attributed to George W. Bush in 2009 was the result of the last budget Congress approved through the entire Obama era. It was passed by a Democratic controlled Congress and then held back until President Obama took office, awaiting his signature. I'm not sure why it's attributed to the previous President.
    "Things should be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler." ~ Albert Einstein

  9. #69
    Senior Member jp1's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Williamsmith View Post
    You sound like you are disenfranchised and indifferent.
    Am I Disenfranchised? Possibly. Indifferent? Definitely not. If I were disenfranchised AND indifferent I'd probably look like my friend A, a millennial who has never bothered to vote because he doesn't see much difference between the parties. I suppose I can't blame him since Bill Clinton had already turned the democrats into republican-lite by the time A realized there was more to the world than staring into his mother's smiling face.

  10. #70
    Senior Member dmc's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by jp1 View Post
    Considering that something like 32% of CA taxpayers itemize and the average itemization is $22,000 it's not surprising that our representatives in Sacramento would be looking for ways to deal with this. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out, and if successful, how long before every other blue state does something similar.
    i thought dems were against tax breaks for the rich.

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