Footwedge;1103138 wrote:I was able to follow this until the bolded part. I have yet to read anywhere whereby "we are doing better" and have something substantiating that claim.

For eleven years we have heard the same thing. What has changed? Nothing has changed. And nothing will change. When Russia went bankrupt, in part because of their Afgan occupation, they went home and Afghanistan did what Afghanistan does. They are who they are and if they want to change, then only they can change. If they want to remain the same, then wish them well and GTFO.

I don't see China nor Japan investing in global police work. Yet, each of those 2 countries apparently had a trillion dollars plus laying around which they lent to the global empirists. Is there not a problem with this equation?

Moreover, why can't the MIC tell us what the mission truly is over there? The end game if you will. Please define victory...or at least spell out to the American people exactly what progress has/is being made. The truth is...there has been no progress made. None. COIN..or no COIN.

We are witnessing the inevitable occur in Iraq now. We brought home most of our troops and violence has sky-rocketed. Had we left Iraq in 03...or 23...violence would have skyrocketed. The same holds true in Afghanistan, Pakistan, or Whereveristan.

Yet, the most easily understood position and by far and away the most logical solution of withdrawal is espoused by only one presidential candidate...encompassing both parties. Yet, this sole standing candidate is continually labeled a foreign policy wacko....particularly by the media...which is owned by the likes of GE....one of the largest benefactors of endless wars.

My only logical conclusion is that the MIC cash cow will never let go of their vice grip hold on the Pentagon and Capitol Hill. The moral hazzard of such foreign policy is the continuing growing hatred for our once great country....and not only by the Middle Eastern bloc. Putin's Russia and even China are now picking sides...and it ain't our side. The bullseye on America and Americans continues to grow...and will never cease, until Ike's warning is finally heeded, and a permanent stop is imposed on the madness.

HitsRus;1103572 wrote:One of the things that the Bush Administration did in the aftermath of 9/11 was to analyze the causes of why we were attacked, and they came to the conclusion that failed nation states (like Afghanistan) were breeding grounds for terrorism and that it was a matter of our own national security, and that the immediate need was that these pockets not be allowed to fester. Moreover, they identified that the reason that we were 'hated' was that we had traded 'our principles of freedom and human rights' for stability by supporting authoritarian, repressive regimes. The Bush administration began tying foreign aid to improvements in freedom and human rights...and that has led to the recent 'Arab Spring'....they did that knowing full well that once loosed, the results might not be initially in our favor, but that with persistence and dedication to our core values we would prevail. George Bush never said it would be quick and easy...in fact he warned us that it would be long and drawn out.
Freedom loving peoples really do depend on America(see Eastern Europe)...and it is naive to think that withdrawing to fortressed borders is in our long term best interest.

It is easy to look at Iraq and criticize the results (which might be the results of poor administration rather than policy failure). But lost in this hindsight is the fact that Sadaam Hussien was a repressive dictator that had used WMD on his own people, had attacked his neighbors, and was continuing to defy the Gulf treaties, and stonewalling IAEA weapons inspectors. He was getting bolder and bolder. It is difficult to imagine what the world might look like had we not acted when we did. Imagine a nuclear arms race today between Iraq and Iran...with Israel in the middle. UGH.

believer;1105418 wrote:Agreed.

Frankly Bush policies have only stirred the pot of pre-existing political/religious conditions in the region. Radical Islam, Arab disdain for Israel (because the Jews are not Muslim of course), centuries of Arab-on-Arab rivalries, western over-dependence upon relatively cheap oil from the region, oppressive Arab dictatorships, etc. etc. have all combined to create a volatile political quagmire.

If anything Bush policies have at least forced the issue....for good or bad.

QuakerOats;1107139 wrote:Don't let Boatshoes see this; he might have a coronary:

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/03/04/obama-alinsky-love-song

BoatShoes;1107170 wrote:LOL. OMG! What will we do!??!?! Obviously the point of all this is to suggest that Obama really is...deeeep down, an anti-american evil doer socialist/marxist

You stick with your "vetting" of BHO through his participation in a panel discussion over a decade ago. I'll stick with the fact that we would have 1.3 million more government employees if President Obama oversaw a company with rising government spending in response to a recession at the same rate as Ronald Reagan.





And of course we'll keep in mind that Obama has sought lower tax rates than Ronald Reagan had for 8 years of his term, etc. etc. By any reasonable measure of actual policies implemented, Barack Obama has been the most moderate democratic president since WWII...and in many respects has implemented policies that are closer to the radical lunacy of modern conservatism than even Ronald Reagan. I mean Barack Obama signed into law the very same law we now know that Mitt Romney would have if he had been elected in 2008.

Keep worrying about silly pamphlets. I can only hope such distractions will allow your party to continue on its current path by the them November comes around. I can't imagine things will be very bad for democrats if Rick Santorum is ranting about Saul Alinsky's love song come October.

BoatShoes;1107170 wrote:LOL. OMG! What will we do!??!?! Obviously the point of all this is to suggest that Obama really is...deeeep down, an anti-american evil doer socialist/marxist

gut;1107207 wrote:That's a couple of cute charts that might trick an untrained eye. I don't know what the 1st chart is trying to show, but guessing it's being equally misleading as the 2nd. But there's something very glaring about the second chart that distorts the picture, I'll give you a few minutes to figure out what that might be...

BoatShoes;1107261 wrote:Should have deflated by CPI in second chart. Second graph is misleading cus it is not inflation adjusted. I fixed it. Present austerity is still astounding and no indication of rampant socialism in comparison to the Reagan years.

I wouldn't attribute the Arab Spring to Bush. Far from it. It was a street vendor in Tunisia. That was picked up by Egypt and the growth of social media. Not Bush, sorry.

QuakerOats;1107828 wrote:Amen to that, Hits. What greater accomplishment could there be than to deliver freedom to as many who are oppressed as possible.

And then we look at our current American president, and all I can see is a regime that is stripping us of freedom and liberty by the hour, right here. I can hardly believe what I see anymore.

QuakerOats;1107828 wrote:Amen to that, Hits. What greater accomplishment could there be than to deliver freedom to as many who are oppressed as possible.

And then we look at our current American president, and all I can see is a regime that is stripping us of freedom and liberty by the hour, right here. I can hardly believe what I see anymore.

gut;1107286 wrote:Not really. The other point I was getting at is the are % increase/decrease vs. the prior yr. They are almost ALL greater than 0, which means YoY increases in excess of inflation. The Reagan yrs, just eyeballing it, averaged around 3.5% average increases, while Obama is closer to 2.5-3%. But it's also misleading because the cumulative increase is what you want to look at, and Obama is starting off with big spike at the end of Bush, followed it with a big spike of his own, and just dipped below 0 for a decrease. This belies the fact that a 2% increase on top of a $1T+ deficit is multiples worse than a 4% increase on top of a $100B deficit.

Also, it's curious that this chart uses deflated GDP (as opposed to CPI-adjusted for inflation) and not sure the reasoning behind choosing 2005 as a base year. It also skews the picture to include GovtX in the denominator.

Wait a minute....Am I to understand you created this chart yourself?

Your "austerity" comment simply isn't correct. We are spending much more now as a % of GDP than in the Reagan years.

BoatShoes;1109142 wrote: But now, Cleveland Buck will come on here and say that "Nobody would have wanted the Feds to give the states grants to spend on things nobody wants and nobody needs" Well it sure seems like Ohioans might disagree...

In a recent New York Times op-ed piece called "The Austerity Debacle," columnist Paul Krugman notes how policies in Britain have failed to bring about an economic recovery. In doing so, he contends that the British government's decision to "slash spending" has led to a slower economic recovery as measured by real GDP growth than during the Great Depression. However, as will be shown, the present British government has implemented insignificant spending reductions and continues to run large budget deficits while the British government of the Great Depression followed "austerity" measures much more closely than the present government. Therefore, so far as unrelated historical events provide any evidence, the historical evidence in Britain supports the view that spending cuts bring about larger economic recoveries than deficit spending does.

For Krugman, austerity measures represent the source of serious economic problems in Britain. As a consequence, Krugman remarks,
[INDENT] It turns out that by one important measure — changes in real GDP since the recession began — Britain is doing worse this time than it did during the Great Depression. Four years into the Depression, British GDP had regained its previous peak; four years after the Great Recession began, Britain is nowhere close to regaining its lost ground.… Yes, there are some caveats and complications. But this nonetheless represents a stunning failure of policy. And it's a failure, in particular, of the austerity doctrine that has dominated elite policy discussion both in Europe and, to a large extent, in the United States for the past two years.

[/INDENT]
Based on a combination of economic problems in Britain and an assertion that austerity caused or exacerbated these problems, Krugman believes he has empirical support for his view that, during recessions, deficit spending promotes economic growth and cutting spending exacerbates economic downturns.


Interestingly, Krugman neglects to provide any data on British government actions. In particular, although he asserts that British policies have simply been to "slash spending," he neglects that Britain ignored the advice of free-market supporters by increasing tax rates significantly, such as raising the top marginal income-tax rate to 50 percent, the capital-gains-tax rate to 28 percent, and the value-added-tax rate to 20 percent. More damaging to his view, as can be seen on tables 25 and 27 of this Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) document, British spending has experienced no significant cuts and still represents a sharp increase compared to prerecession levels.


Although British spending as a percent of GDP fell mildly from 51.1 percent in 2009 to 49.8 percent in 2011, this level still signifies a massive increase in spending from 2007 levels of 43.9 percent of GDP. Similarly, although the British deficit as a percent of GDP fell from 11 percent in 2009 to 9.4 percent in 2011, this deficit still amounts to a huge surge compared to the 2007 level of only 2.8 percent and, with the exception of this recession, exceeds all other deficits in Britain since World War II. Though certainly Keynesians can look at these minor cuts in the scope of government spending as compatible with their theories of how reducing deficits affects the economy, they should emphasize for the sake of honesty that they believe a government that represents half of all the spending in an economy with an essentially record post–World War II deficit of more than 9 percent of GDP is being "austere" so that people who haven't looked at the data can make their own judgments on the merits of the claim.


Although critics of spending cuts can legitimately interpret British data to fit their theories, they cannot gain further evidence through the historical comparison made by Krugman to the Great Depression. As stated above, Krugman believes that British austerity measures have caused the recovery in Britain to be slower than during the Great Depression. In making this claim, he fails to consider the actual fiscal policy of Britain during the Great Depression. After leaving the gold standard in 1931, the British government balanced its budget and reduced spending as a percent of GNP every year until 1935, reducing government spending from a high of 28.8 percent in 1931 to 24.4 percent in 1935.[1] Although not ideal — because part of the reduction included tax increases — this policy succeeded in creating small budget surpluses every year from 1929 through 1936 (except for an irrelevant 0.2 percent deficit in 1932) — leading as Krugman mentioned to a faster recovery than the current British policy of a 9 percent-plus deficit as a percent of GDP.

Comparing the real cuts in 1931 to the 2010 "cuts," which entailed an increase in spending in real terms, it's clear that a historical comparison would better support proponents of spending cuts than Keynesian deficit spending.[3] It is truly a strange state of affairs when economists find it reasonable to use the word "austerity" to describe both Britain's balanced budgets and spending reductions in the 1930s and its extremely large deficits without any real spending cuts in 2010. It's also unfortunate that, in making this comparison, they neglect to mention that the balanced-budget economy experienced a stronger recovery.

In reflecting on British stagnation, Krugman laments that economic policy has failed to learn the lesson of the Great Depression. In particular, he states,[INDENT] Surpassing the track record of the 1930s shouldn't be a tough challenge. Haven't we learned a lot about economic management over the last 80 years?… I'm sorry to say, many economists decided, largely for political reasons, to forget what they used to know. And millions of workers are paying the price for their willful amnesia.

[/INDENT]


Indeed, it is truly sad that many economists have advocated bad policies, and Britain and other governments have continued to raise taxes and run large budget deficits despite experience that cutting spending in Britain worked better. It's also truly sad that some economists in describing this history have experienced "willful amnesia." For instance, Krugman says that he has read Lionel Robbins's The Great Depression (1934), but he apparently forgot (or ignored) Robbins's contention that Britain balanced its budget in 1931 — that is, before the economic recovery.


In ignoring the lessons from 80 years ago, the New York Times columnist advocates for less effective policies than those performed at the time, resulting in a slower recovery in the present. Although historical comparisons offer inconclusive evidence at best, Krugman chose to make this specific comparison to bolster his point when, in fact, the historical comparison between Britain during the Great Depression and contemporary Britain conflicts with Krugman's interpretation. Rather than advancing the Keynesian hypothesis, the comparison of British policies over time better supports the view that true spending cuts lead to more robust economic recoveries than the allegedly "austere" policies of Britain today.

BoatShoes;1109142 wrote: This graph here shows real government expenditures and investment (as part of the equation for gdp) as a percentage of overall gdp and shows a clear continuous downfall.

BoatShoes;1109142 wrote: And even if you include all government expenditures such as unemployment insurance, you can see that overall government spending did not grow in response to the recession at the rate it did under Reagan.

Cleveland Buck;1109382 wrote:http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/mar/8/govt-sets-record-deficit-february/#.T1j72L4JBNA.twitter

gut;1109425 wrote:
"...while Senate Democratic leader Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada has said he doubts his chamber will write a budget this year." :laugh:

Why ruin a good streak, Harry? How is that POS allowed to run the Senate?

ptown_trojans_1;1109432 wrote:If you can figure out a way to pass a budget that will get 60 votes, by all means come here to the area and explain it. .

gut;1109437 wrote:It's a fundamental path to, you know, fiscal responsibility. I have a tough time blaming Repubs for not signing off on $1.5T+ deficits.

The whole lot of them should be booted out this election. If your Senator/Rep/POTUS hasn't give you a reason to vote for them, then you absolutely should vote for the other guy. Because what's the definition of insanity?

ptown_trojans_1;1109440 wrote:The first part is universally agreed upon. The devil is in the details. Obviously D's and R's have different means to achieve debt reduction. How do you bridge the gap?