(no subject)
It never ceases to amaze me how the Republicans forget who got us into this mess
Castellanos may not have had anything to do with the Bush administration, I really have no idea. He certainly did have something to do with Mitt Romney, who ran like the rest of the Republican lineup on the promise of continuing the failed policies of Bush and Cheney (how did that work out for you, Romney?). How does somebody spend the election cycle trying to continue the policies of the past eight years that brought us to this point, and then turn around and try to claim that they know how to fix the problem? Nobody knows whether Obama will ride on his excellent approval ratings into a second term in 2012, and it may very well be that Obama has to make some unpopular choices that people will not appreciate in the short-term and that may cost him the next election. Still, if the people decide to vote for the Republicans in 2012 after what they did to us in the last eight years then we must be a stupider nation that we're given credit for. It would be like enduring a painful illness for eight years until a cure is found, and then stopping treatment after a while and letting the condition get worse because you don't like the taste of your medicine.
Paul Begala, who like Castellanos has an obvious bias toward one particular party, does a good job refuting this guy's argument here. For my part, I'll try to pick at some of the worst stuff below.
Taxpayers living next to a toxic waste dump is a bad idea. Taxpayers buying a trillion dollars worth of toxic assets is good idea.
Taxpayers borrowing a trillion dollars to buy those toxic assets is an even better idea. Though it is still Bush's fault.
Talk to Bush about that, Castellanos. I know that you don't like people blaming Bush for our current problems, but he's the one who is undoubtedly to blame for all this. Well, that is to say Bush is to blame along with the entire Republican party and the economic mentality that they've been cultivating since the bad old days of Ronald Reagan. When the government removes all oversight and regulation from an industry, that industry then does all that it can to obtain the most profit without getting in trouble. In the case of loan companies, this means giving a loan to any person who can sign a piece of paper. It also means formatting those loans in such a way that you can squeeze as much money as possible out of the debtor. This is where we get these "balloon payments," variable interest mortgages, and interest-only loans. Obviously it ended up working out quite badly for the creditors, because everybody defaulted at once when those huge payments came due, but I guess they were too short-sighted to see what they were getting into. If we just let all these people default on their mortgages, or if we allow the banks and credit companies to swallow that much bad debt, then we'll have a loss of wealth that will probably sink our economy for good. It's not a good thing that we have to increase our national debt like this, but cures for malignant diseases don't tend to be pleasant and that's what we have.
Obama isn't on the ballot next year, but Democrats in Congress are. You can make money betting they will lose more than 25 seats, but not as much money as by purchasing toxic assets with taxpayer dollars.
Hopefully the American people aren't that stupid. I certainly hope that we wouldn't give the reigns of government back to the Republicans after what they did to every part of this country over the past two Presidential terms of office.
Enhanced border security was a bad idea when Sen. John McCain and Republicans proposed it but a good idea now that Obama is for it.
The Republicans were talking about busting into factories that were suspected of employing undocumented workers, carting off anyone who looked Mexican, and shipping them back to their home countries without so much as informing their families where they had gone. They were also talking about building a giant wall, which is laughable since the cartels just pay off customs officials and drive their goods right through the checkpoints. Obama is talking about increasing the security at the border to keep people from importing the Mexican drug war into the United States, rather than just scapegoating honest immigrants and allowing the cartels to continue to use our country like one big gun store.
Washington was doing such a great job making things work before the meltdown that we should give it more to do, like running health care, the energy industry, banks, Wall Street and the car business.
No matter how bad the government has done, they're obviously much better at their jobs than the people who have screwed up all the industries mentioned here. Each one faces less regulation than they did before Bush, and each industry has used that lack of oversight to catastrophic effect. I honestly don't see how Washington could do any worse than Detroit has already done.
Next year, when this experiment in European-style socialism isn't working, the Democrats up for re-election will panic and make the spending this year look like an appetizer. To appear responsible, they then will raise taxes on "upper-income taxpayers" to the stratosphere, paralyzing investment and the economy.
No matter how many times I hear about the Democrats bringing "European-style socialism" to our doorstep, it never fails to make me laugh. Ask a European how much tax they pay, and you'll probably die of a heart attack. Needless to say, it's somewhat higher than what we pay here. They also have other things we don't have, like universal health care and bridges that aren't falling apart. That's what taxes pay for after all, infrastructure and other essential projects that end up saving us all money and making us more productive workers. What's the highest tax bracket at right now, something like 35%? Did you know that Reagan, that champion of low taxes on the rich, actually had a 50% upper tax bracket throughout most of his time in office? Later he lowered it to 28% by increasing taxes on those in lower brackets, but with the exception of that period tax rates haven't been this low since the Great Depression. In fact, all of the great periods of American innovation had tax rates higher than we have now. Think about how horrible it must have been to live during the Eisenhower era when we built all our roads and bridges (upper tax rates of at least 91%) or during the space race when we put a man on the moon (70%). Think about how bad it was for industry during the internet boom (39%). Maybe that's why our country is falling behind the rest of the world in innovation and creativity, we don't pay enough in taxes.
Obama's communications gifts are powerful and poetic -- but round-the-clock campaigning on "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno," "60 Minutes" and this press conference won't save bad policy.
I don't think that getting the message out to the people is a bad thing. I doubt that anybody wants to go back to the Bush era when you couldn't even get a brief press conference out of the President.
Castellanos may not have had anything to do with the Bush administration, I really have no idea. He certainly did have something to do with Mitt Romney, who ran like the rest of the Republican lineup on the promise of continuing the failed policies of Bush and Cheney (how did that work out for you, Romney?). How does somebody spend the election cycle trying to continue the policies of the past eight years that brought us to this point, and then turn around and try to claim that they know how to fix the problem? Nobody knows whether Obama will ride on his excellent approval ratings into a second term in 2012, and it may very well be that Obama has to make some unpopular choices that people will not appreciate in the short-term and that may cost him the next election. Still, if the people decide to vote for the Republicans in 2012 after what they did to us in the last eight years then we must be a stupider nation that we're given credit for. It would be like enduring a painful illness for eight years until a cure is found, and then stopping treatment after a while and letting the condition get worse because you don't like the taste of your medicine.
Paul Begala, who like Castellanos has an obvious bias toward one particular party, does a good job refuting this guy's argument here. For my part, I'll try to pick at some of the worst stuff below.
Taxpayers living next to a toxic waste dump is a bad idea. Taxpayers buying a trillion dollars worth of toxic assets is good idea.
Taxpayers borrowing a trillion dollars to buy those toxic assets is an even better idea. Though it is still Bush's fault.
Talk to Bush about that, Castellanos. I know that you don't like people blaming Bush for our current problems, but he's the one who is undoubtedly to blame for all this. Well, that is to say Bush is to blame along with the entire Republican party and the economic mentality that they've been cultivating since the bad old days of Ronald Reagan. When the government removes all oversight and regulation from an industry, that industry then does all that it can to obtain the most profit without getting in trouble. In the case of loan companies, this means giving a loan to any person who can sign a piece of paper. It also means formatting those loans in such a way that you can squeeze as much money as possible out of the debtor. This is where we get these "balloon payments," variable interest mortgages, and interest-only loans. Obviously it ended up working out quite badly for the creditors, because everybody defaulted at once when those huge payments came due, but I guess they were too short-sighted to see what they were getting into. If we just let all these people default on their mortgages, or if we allow the banks and credit companies to swallow that much bad debt, then we'll have a loss of wealth that will probably sink our economy for good. It's not a good thing that we have to increase our national debt like this, but cures for malignant diseases don't tend to be pleasant and that's what we have.
Obama isn't on the ballot next year, but Democrats in Congress are. You can make money betting they will lose more than 25 seats, but not as much money as by purchasing toxic assets with taxpayer dollars.
Hopefully the American people aren't that stupid. I certainly hope that we wouldn't give the reigns of government back to the Republicans after what they did to every part of this country over the past two Presidential terms of office.
Enhanced border security was a bad idea when Sen. John McCain and Republicans proposed it but a good idea now that Obama is for it.
The Republicans were talking about busting into factories that were suspected of employing undocumented workers, carting off anyone who looked Mexican, and shipping them back to their home countries without so much as informing their families where they had gone. They were also talking about building a giant wall, which is laughable since the cartels just pay off customs officials and drive their goods right through the checkpoints. Obama is talking about increasing the security at the border to keep people from importing the Mexican drug war into the United States, rather than just scapegoating honest immigrants and allowing the cartels to continue to use our country like one big gun store.
Washington was doing such a great job making things work before the meltdown that we should give it more to do, like running health care, the energy industry, banks, Wall Street and the car business.
No matter how bad the government has done, they're obviously much better at their jobs than the people who have screwed up all the industries mentioned here. Each one faces less regulation than they did before Bush, and each industry has used that lack of oversight to catastrophic effect. I honestly don't see how Washington could do any worse than Detroit has already done.
Next year, when this experiment in European-style socialism isn't working, the Democrats up for re-election will panic and make the spending this year look like an appetizer. To appear responsible, they then will raise taxes on "upper-income taxpayers" to the stratosphere, paralyzing investment and the economy.
No matter how many times I hear about the Democrats bringing "European-style socialism" to our doorstep, it never fails to make me laugh. Ask a European how much tax they pay, and you'll probably die of a heart attack. Needless to say, it's somewhat higher than what we pay here. They also have other things we don't have, like universal health care and bridges that aren't falling apart. That's what taxes pay for after all, infrastructure and other essential projects that end up saving us all money and making us more productive workers. What's the highest tax bracket at right now, something like 35%? Did you know that Reagan, that champion of low taxes on the rich, actually had a 50% upper tax bracket throughout most of his time in office? Later he lowered it to 28% by increasing taxes on those in lower brackets, but with the exception of that period tax rates haven't been this low since the Great Depression. In fact, all of the great periods of American innovation had tax rates higher than we have now. Think about how horrible it must have been to live during the Eisenhower era when we built all our roads and bridges (upper tax rates of at least 91%) or during the space race when we put a man on the moon (70%). Think about how bad it was for industry during the internet boom (39%). Maybe that's why our country is falling behind the rest of the world in innovation and creativity, we don't pay enough in taxes.
Obama's communications gifts are powerful and poetic -- but round-the-clock campaigning on "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno," "60 Minutes" and this press conference won't save bad policy.
I don't think that getting the message out to the people is a bad thing. I doubt that anybody wants to go back to the Bush era when you couldn't even get a brief press conference out of the President.