Thursday, November 11, 2010

SO...

...the deficit's lower than expected and even lower than it was last year but we only find that out after the elections which the right made all about the "ballooning deficit" that they never complained of under the the two previous largest deficits in history, one under Bush/Cheney and the other under Reagan/Bush.

And also after the election the heads of the deficit commission appointed by President Obama, by the way—a conservative Democrat and a conservative Republican—came out with recommendations that included all the things the right was yelling for in the elections as well (tax reduction, cuts in Social Security and Medicare) as well as some the left was (cuts in defense spending) etc.

Interesting.

And in neither case was the main tool for raising revenue for the government even mentioned, i.e. raising taxes on the wealthiest so that they're back to Bush/Cheney levels, not to mention Reagan levels which were even higher, or Nixon era which were even higher, or Esienhower's tenure which were the highest.

Nope, the wealthiest will still benefit most from all the suggestions being officially considered to cut the deficit. And we will continue on the path to "third-worldism" that Arianna Huffington's getting a lot of attention for calling attention to with the title of her new book, though many of us have been writing and saying for years that the growing gap between the rich and the rest of us in this country was eliminating the so-called "middle class" giving us a societal make up, economically, akin to the so-called "banana republics" of yore.

Ah, rightwing Republicanism, ain't it grand.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

I seem to recall when the Republicans were the Left Wing Liberal Social Justice Party.

JFK broke with the Right Wing Dixiecrats on Civil Rights issues. JFK also cut taxes rather than the usual 'tax and spend' mantra of the Democrats.

Did the Republicans become the Right after Nixon inherited LBJ's Great Society debt and LBJ's explosion of troops in Viet Nam?

It seems the Republicans may have become the US Conservative Right during Nixon while Mao's Red Book wa required reading of the up and coming Communist. I seem to recall that Nixon ended Viet Nam after years of withdrawing LBJ's Saigon Express and the draft.

Spending TARP interest and loans repayments would increase the balance sheet giving the illusion that the defecit was less due to lower spending.
Obama's agenda of bigger central government will increase taxes and spending until the defecit will equal GDP granting us official Third World status.

We should be paying very little in Federal Taxes. We should not have a federal department for issues that have been state and local issues. This is government bloat that Reagan railed against.

Just like after Carter, it was Republicans who brought our economy back. It was the Republicans who brought back the economy after Woodrow Wilson and his selling out the nation to the Federal Reserve bankers.

The Republican label is not a guarantee of an honest individual, but a Democrat label is a guarantee of a 'tax and spend' representative.

Lally said...

I have no idea who wrote the above comment nor do I wish to involve myself in a thread with someone whose political and historical knowledge as expressed above is so obviously the result of a very limited rightwing revisionist perspective, but I feel compelled since this is my blog to point out to whoever is hiding behind the anonymous above that Nixon got elected on the promise of ending the war in Viet Nam but instead extended that war for more years and incurred many more deaths for U.S, troops as well as Viet Nam civilians than during the beginning of the active war under LBJ (the less active U.S, participation in the war began under Eisenhower)—and the only ONLY administrations that have cut the federal government down and spent less than previous administrations so far in modern times have been Democratic, Clinton's most of all, but Carter's to some extent and Obama's in other ways (he and the Democratic Congress enacted the largest "middle-class" (i.e. all the but wealthiest) tax cut in modern times). So the info in the comments above is almost entirely incorrect, that is where it can be discerned from among what seems like the rambling of a confused (and possibly impeded in some way) mind.

Anonymous said...

Budgets and spending are done by the Congress. Clinton was the beneficiary of a Republican Congress cutting spending.

Nixon,"Peace with Honor" but settled for just peace.

Confused Revisionist indeed.

I must have missed the Republican wing of the Klan and the GOP Segregationists.

Lally said...

Clinton cut the size of the federal government, not the congress. Actually Gore headed the effort and was successful, unlike Reagan and Bush Junior both of whom promised to cut the size of the federal government but grew it and thus were directly responsible for "big government" etc.

LBJ escalated the war in Viet Nam to an American war in August of 1964 (I was in the service at the time and was called in for special duty the night of the so-called Tonkin Bay incident that was fabricated to justify the escalation) and delcined to run for a second term four years later. Nixon won in '68 and was still waging that war in 1974. Do the math kid. And if the hectic and fumbled withdrawal from Viet Nam and subsequent executions and war camps for those who had worked for us and fought beside our troops was "honorable" you need more than a good education, you need help understanding the language you're using in your comments.

And yes, confused revisionist indeed.

Anonymous said...

Had Nixon just pulled out after the deaths of 70,000 Us service men, he would have truly dishonored the sacrifice of those draftees.

The subsequent mayhem was guaranteed after Dien Bien PHU fell to the French. I guess Pol Pot was also a GOP operative.

Obama and like minded individuals are attempting to bring Krushev's claim that we as a nation will fall from within to reality.

The nation seemed to be in far better shape until the Democrats got controll of Congress in 2007.

Anonymous said...

French fell at Dien Bien Phu that should have been.

Anonymous said...

US troops in Nam at end of the year

1966 (LBJ)385,000 and 60,000 sailors are offshore
1967 (LBJ) 500,000 troops
1968 (LBJ) U.S. troops 540,000
1969 (Nixon) 480,000
1970 (Nixon) 280,000
1971 (Nixon) 140,000
1972 (Nixon) fewer than 30,000
1973 (Nixon) March 29 - Last U.S. soldiers leave Vietnam; 8,500 American civilians, embassy guards, defense office soldiers remain

Do the math indeed. Nixon de-escalated the war to a conclusion and the supposed Democrat Left chastize him as if he started it with the ficticious LBJ Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.

Robert G. Zuckerman said...

I'm not up on the historical numbers or the blame game thing with regard to Vietnam. But to say that we were in better shape in 2007 is really misleading. The foundation of the house was dismantled then and in prior years and what's happened since is the house collapsing in some places and the current administration doing its best, and succeeding in many ways, in preventing the inevitable far worse outcome were it not for its actions.

Anonymous said...

Obama's claim to fame stimulus has done nothing to stop the increase in unemployment.

Since the Dems and Barney Frank have been overseeing FANNIE and FREDDY MAC's, they have both gone bankrupt (since 2007).

Once the Dems took the House and Senate, our economy has been undermined.

Lally said...

Oh gosh, how great everything would be if only the Republicans won the presidency and controlled Congress and the Supreme Court. Oh wait, that already happened and they turned the biggest surplus in U. S. history into the biggest deficit in U.S. history, widened the gap between the rich and the rest of us begun under Reagan, started at least one unnecessary war without creating a means to pay for it, oversaw and economy that actually went backwards for everyone but the rich (i.e. real wages decreased as did joblessness and the kinds of jobs available, etc.), did not take the warnings from the preceding Democratic administration about an imminent attack by Al Queda on the U.S. (or the FBI warnings that it could possibly come in the form of highjacked planes etc.) which led to 9/11, nor warnings about the levies in New Orleans, which led to the manmade catastrophe, not Katrina, whose eye missed New Orleans, and reacted to "Katrina" by doing nothing and even denying that anything very terrible had happened until days of news coverage made that lie obvious and then did so little that the damage still hasn't been rectified but their strategy successfully eliminated much of the working-class African-American community and lowered the percentage of African-Americans in that historically culturally African-American influenced city, destroyed our country's prestige and standing around the world, emboldened the terrorists and help them recruit many more when the wars these Republicans started didn't go the way they predicted and drained our treasury, et-endless-cetera.