Be INFORMED

Sunday, January 04, 2009

Republicans/Pundits Are Still Pushing For More Reagan " Voodoo Economics "

   This group of people have to be " stuck on stupid " to even remotely suggest that more tax cuts for the upper earners/corporations will help to fix our economy.

   But this is exactly what CNBC's Lawrence Kudlow is suggesting.

Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell is absolutely right to warn against Obama’s gigantic stimulus-spending package. McConnell says it “will be the largest spending bill in the history of our country at a time when our national debt is already the largest in history.” As a result, he says the bill “will require tough scrutiny and oversight.”
According to McConnell, scrutiny should include this simple test: “Will the yet unwritten, reportedly trillion-dollar spending bill really create jobs and grow the economy — or will it simply create more government spending, more bureaucrats, and deeper deficits?”
The Republican leader is drawing a clear line in the sand. Okay, good. But the GOP has got to do more. It must start talking about tax cuts to grow the economy. And it must get back to the supply-side by talking about lower marginal tax rates on individuals, businesses, and investors.

  Now, I'm all for tough scrutiny and oversight when it comes to spending hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to fix anything, but, where was McConnell's concern when 700 billion was apportioned to Wall Street with no oversight involved? Where was Mitch's concern while he and Bush ran this country over a cliff, putting our national debt at its highest levels ever?

   Tax cuts to grow our economy? We've had those tax cuts in place for some 28 years and the only economy that they have grown was the economy of the already wealthy, while fucking everyone else.

We don’t need bailout nation. Nor do we need the government picking winners and losers in a massive, Keynesian, new-New Deal spending extravaganza. And it’s not Obama’s middle-class tax cut that’s going to get us out of this economic jam. At best his vision is incomplete. But at worst his aversion to successful earners and investors is a real obstacle to full economic recovery..

   I suspect that the Republican/communist Party has found a way yet to keep their hands in the till, hence all of the bullshit ideas and the whining.

If we had an economy without rich people we wouldn’t have much of an economy. That’s why lower tax rates to reward the economic activists — the most prominent capitalists — are so essential.

In fact, the GOP has a great opportunity to challenge Obama’s Keynesian pump-priming by insisting there be a major tax-cut component in any new fiscal package. Republicans shouldn’t merely push for somewhat less government spending. They have to make a bold case that tax rates matter for economic growth and job creation. They must insist that any recovery package includes this key element. Shift the debate. Say clearly that a reenergized economy cannot occur without lower marginal tax rates.

  I'm surprised that Kudlow isn't pushing for even more deregulation to help fix or economy.

The whole debate in Washington is heavily skewed toward government spending on infrastructure. It’s all spending and virtually no tax cuts. For a more balanced and effective recovery policy, the GOP has to bolster its argument for spending discipline with a loud case for tax cuts.

  Have they not learned that more government spending coupled with the Bush tax cuts do not work?

Those " Soft on crime " Republicans, Starring George Bush

   Here it is folks. Another look at why George Bush and the rest of the Bush Crime Syndicate should be prosecuted for war crimes and a host of others.

   But first! See that little button to the right? Sign the damned thing already!!

Docudharma

Soft On Crime: Deterrence, The Death Penalty, and George Bush

by: buhdydharma

Sat Jan 03, 2009 at 14:51:19 PST

( - promoted by buhdydharma )
For all of my fifty years on the planet the Republicans have been the party of crime and punishment. Republicans were tough on crime, Democrats were Soft on Crime. From Nixon onward, this has been a major line of attack against all Democrats. Democrats coddled criminals like Willie Horton, for instance, while Republicans would have locked him up for life....or put him to death.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the administration of Republican President Richard Nixon continued the full-on attack against crime begun by Johnson -- but with an emphasis on law and order. Nixon's policy, however, came under attack, largely from liberals, who saw Nixon's law and order campaign as attempts to put down civil rights activists and antiwar demonstrators. President Nixon, on the other hand, used the rising public sentiment that criminals were out of control and city streets unsafe to assail members of the Democrat Party as being "soft on crime."

Though many Liberals support it too, the Republicans have always been the party of the death penalty as well. By far the most used argument being that facing the 'punishment' of death will deter people from killing others. The death penalty deters murder. Stiff sentences deter crime. Three Strike laws deter career criminals. It is not inaccurate to say that 'Soft on Crime' and deterrence through harsh punishment and penalty was one of the Right Wings great themes of the late 20th Century.

Republicans are tough on crime. Because being tough on crime....prevents future crimes. If you do not harshly punish crime, it just leads to more and greater crimes.

Which brings us to George Bush....and the various and sundry crimes that he and the officials of his administration have committed. And make no mistake, crimes HAVE been committed. From outting an entire CIA network, to the 269 War Crimes that have been documented to the outright confessions of Bush on Domestic Spying and Cheney on authorizing the torture program and the resulting homicides, there can be no doubt left that there is plenty of cause for, at the very least, a thorough investigation. In fact you see very little if any questions as to whether Bush and company have committed crimes. The debate now is over what to do about them.

Virtually none of the comments I have seen opposing the idea of appointing a Special Prosecutor to even investigate the crimes of the last eight years have centered on guilt or ignorance. Every piece of punditry, comment and column has centered not on the criminality and the crimes themselves....but on the politics of the situation. Not the crimes...not the victims. And certainly not what it means to be an American in an America that tortures. They do not want to think about that....they do not want to know. And so they dimish it to a "political matter" and refer to the false meme of "criminalizing politics" ....rather than as the politicization of a War Crime.

Some say it is revenge, not justice, that is the motivation for a Special Prosecutor. Is prosecuting crime, any crime, and punishing crime, any crime....just revenge? What about merely investigating whether crimes have been committed or not, is that revenge too? Or is it being....tough on crime?