Romney & Bain

[catherine]

To say that the FY '09 budget was "the property of George W. Bush" is one the the most blatant, and oft repeated lies I've seen in a long time.

"Starving the beast" is a well-known Republican strategy, and results in budget deficits and other economic turmoil, at the expense of other programs. I remember Bush 43s first State-of-the-Union address. It was packed with all kinds of programs, like No Child Left Behind, etc. etc. He kept saying, "And we're going to spend money on this, and we're going to spend money on this." And that's not even counting the Iraq war expenses... And then there were the tax cuts.. didn't add up to me.

So I was wondering how a Republican could come up with such a huge laundry list of new programs AND cut taxes simultaneously, when I read about the starve the beast concept. It was clearly what he was doing. Risky business if you ask me, and who exactly profits?

http://www.forbes.com/2010/05/06/tax...-bartlett.html


ETA this Wikipedia quote:

Empirical evidence shows that Starve the Beast may be counterproductive, with lower taxes actually corresponding to higher spending.

That has been my observation having lived through Eisenhower through Obama administrations

[SteveinMN]

ETA this Wikipedia quote:

Empirical evidence shows that Starve the Beast may be counterproductive, with lower taxes actually corresponding to higher spending.

The main problem with "starve the beast" -- when the "beast" is social programs and not defense funding or corporate welfare -- is that it pushes natural behavior to the most expensive response. Cut medical benefits to poor people? The response is not going to be their ponying up for high-priced blood-pressure medicines. It's going to be visiting the ER pro bono to take care of the aftermath of poor (or no) hypertension care. Remove funding which is used to treat some kid who was unlucky enough to be born with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome? Makes a great soundbite. But so do the witnesses when this untreated "shy loner" shoots up a shopping mall or college campus. No, this does not always happen. But "starving the beast" the Republican way is akin to taking a couple of quarts of oil out of your car's engine and some gas out of the tank because you know the engine will use what's left more efficiently.

[Gregg]

Yeah you're right! They vilified Jimmy and he was right all along! Put on the sweater and turn down the thermostat! And he was laughed out of office!

Mr. Carter was laughed out of office for a lot of reasons, but he really did have the right idea about conservation.

The low hanging fruit for the conservation movement isn't houses or cars. It's buildings. Everything counts, but making small changes in big buildings has a large and immediate impact. Designing new buildings correctly is even bigger.

Electric cars are great, but that pesky storage problem is still there. Who wants a car that can only go 40 miles before it needs a charge? Folks with enough resources can buy one to run errands around town then pull it into their 4 car garage and pull out the SUV when they want to go somewhere farther away than the grocery store. People who can't afford to have multiple cars for specific uses or those who need a car to be more versatile than that or those of us who just think it would be silly won't be driving electric cars until the battery technology allows them to perform close to today's gas powered cars. Think of a 400 mile range at 80 mph. Even then there probably won't be a huge market until every current gas station has a charging station AND those batteries can be charged in about the same length of time it takes to fill the tank now. I don't really want to spend the night in a truck stop because it will take 10 hours for my car to charge.

"Within a year, I hope, we shall begin the manufacture of an electric automobile. I don’t like to talk about things which are a year ahead, but I am willing to tell you something of my plans. The fact is that Mr. Edison and I have been working for some years on an electric automobile which would be cheap and practicable. Cars have been built for experimental purposes, and we are satisfied now that the way is clear to success. The problem so far has been to build a storage battery of light weight which would operate for long distances without recharging. Mr. Edison has been experimenting with such a battery for some time." Henry Ford, January 11, 1914.

So who really killed the electric car? Do a little research and you'll learn about nickel metal hydride (NiMH) batteries, Ovonics, lithium ion (Li-Ion) batteries, the GM EV1 and the US Auto Battery Consortium. The three big players in the USABC are the very same three big players in the whole US auto industry. It seems its not so much big energy trying to keep you in gas powered vehicles as it is the auto manufacturers. It's a pretty twisted tale if you start looking into it.

[iris lily]

"... I remember Bush 43s first State-of-the-Union address. It was packed with all kinds of programs, like No Child Left Behind, etc. etc. He kept saying, "And we're going to spend money on this, and we're going to spend money on this." And that's not even counting the Iraq war expenses... And then there were the tax cuts.. didn't add up to me.

...

That program was Ted Kennedy's baby:


There’s probably not a better example of Ted Kennedy’s skills as a legislator than his work on No Child Left Behind, the law that Sen. Kennedy, Democratic Rep. George Miller, Republican Sen. Judd Gregg and GOP Rep. John Boehner worked on with the Bush administration in 2001.

Recall the context of those times. President Bush had won reelection after the nightmarish Florida recount and Supreme Court decision and many Democrats wanted nothing to do with him. The president nevertheless extended his right hand to Democrats, and one who took it was the biggest Democrat of all, Ted Kennedy. He came to dinner with the Bushes, watched a movie at the White House and generally started to work with Bush on reforming federal education law.

Throughout 2001, while Bush was getting hammered by many Democrats for pursuing tax cuts, Kennedy kept working on a center-out strategy with the White House and the Hill on education reform. Through painstaking negotiations, the foursome worked with Bush domestic advisers Margaret Spellings and Sandy Kress on the legislation.../COLOR] http://educationfrontblog.dallasnews.com/2009/08/ted-kennedy-and-no-child-left.html/
[/I]

And all of those spending programs was GW's downfall. We won't let that happen next time, I can assure you. We went along with him 'cause, well, he's a Republican President, and you are right, he absolutely gets the credit/blame for this monstrosity being the PRez and all. But his spending was not like that of a Republican. Never again.

[Lainey]

For a crowd that would have Mitt Romney brought up on capitol murder charges for a death caused by a disease he did not inflict and treatment he did not deny, by a company he did not control, through a deal he did not initiate... No, trying to dump a spending spree on a predecessor seems to be just a little white trillion dollar lie.

http://www.factcheck.org/2012/06/oba...nferno-or-not/

According to Fact Check: "..the nearly 18% spike in spending in fiscal 2009 ...was mostly due to appropriations and policies that were already in place when Obama took office."

[JaneV2.0]

If we're really concerned about deficits, we should consider how other countries avoid them:

http://www.gfmag.com/tools/global-da...#axzz25hoNerTK

It appears--if Norway and Sweden are any indicator--they do it with taxation. What a concept.

[Yossarian]

if Norway and Sweden are any indicator

Norway is an oil kingdom, stick with Sweeden.

[LDAHL]

If we're really concerned about deficits, we should consider how other countries avoid them:

http://www.gfmag.com/tools/global-da...#axzz25hoNerTK

It appears--if Norway and Sweden are any indicator--they do it with taxation. What a concept.

I also believe Sweeden implemented fairly comprehensive spending cuts several years ago.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/20...e-regeneration

[Gregg]

If we're really concerned about deficits, we should consider how other countries avoid them

If we're REALLY concerned with deficits we should stop racking up the part we spend on other countries. Maybe we could start with dissolving NATO. Wonder how the Sweedes would feel about that? And it looks like the Saudis of the Nordic North are running low on juice out there in the North Sea. It's going to be interesting to watch how Oslo deals with that little income drop.


deathofgiants.jpg

[Lainey]

C'mon Janev2.0, don't you know the revenue is going to come pouring in if only we reduce taxes even more?
It's Reagonomics, and voodoo economics, and now it's Ryanomics. Even zombies don't live as long as this myth.