Obama loves channeling the past. He does a particularly good Nixon. Now other Democrats are getting into the act. In this case, a group of weirdoes known as the Congressional Progressive Caucus are channeling East Germany as they release “The People’s Budget.” This budget is a response to Ryan’s budget and the budget Obama is expected to release, and like all things “People’s” this one is a disaster.
The Congressional Progressive Caucus is a collection of weirdoes who spend their time sniffing each other’s seats and feeling smug about their desires to enslave the human race. This group of pathetics includes male-prostitute enthusiast Barney Frank, crooks like Maxine Waters, Charlie Rangel, and Sheila Jackson Leigh, socialist Bernie Sanders, misogynistic anti-Semite Pete Stark, extra-terrestrial anal-probing enthusiast Dennis Kucinich, Hitlerian-lunatic Nancy Pelosi, and 68 more assorted creeps and freaks.
These fools claim their budget would eliminate the deficit in 10 years, even as they waste massive amounts of money. Of course, their numbers are fake and their budget would destroy the economy, millions of jobs, and the country, but reality does not deter them.
First, they propose tax increases. . . lots of them. Their budget:● Raises the social security tax to cover 90% of income, no matter how high.
This is guaranteed to slash employment and investment to levels not seen since the Great Depression. Ah... nostalgia!
● Raises the social security tax on employers.
● Creates three new tax brackets, with the highest at 47%.
● Raises the capital gains tax.
● Raises the estate tax.
● Raises corporate taxes.
● Creates a “financial speculation tax.”
● Imposes a “financial crisis responsibility” fee.
● Repeals the Bush tax cuts.
Of course, this alone won’t eliminate the deficit or destroy the country, so they also propose all-but eliminating the military. Indeed, the plan calls for “reducing strategic capabilities, conventional forces, procurement and research and development.” In other words, they want to stop military spending almost entirely. Thus, should we decide to defend ourselves in the future, it will be BOYB on hardware.
And what kind of progressive budget would be complete without wasting an obscene amount of money? In that regard, they are planning a $1.45 trillion splurge on "stimulus" (i.e. K-12 education, special education, broadband infrastructure, and housing). Of course, none of that is actual stimulus unless special ed kids are better at creating jobs than I realize. Also, let's not forget that you can't be a true progressive unless your plan includes enslaving the public. Hence, they also plan to turn the health care system into a government run single-payer plan, which will quickly devolve into a government-run non-payer, health indifference system. Krankheit macht frei! (Sickness brings freedom.)
Clearly, this budget is a joke. And what makes it all the more laughable are people like Jeffrey Sachs, a drooling idiot from Huffpo who licks his socks clean at night, who claims this is actually a “centrist budget.” Jeff. . . man. . . stay off the drugs.
In any event, we should remember this budget and remind people that this is what the Democratic Party has become, a collection of weirdoes who want to destroy the economy and the military. A vote for any Democrat is a vote for despair.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
"The (Stupid) People's Budget"
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36 comments:
It certainly is a joke, Andrew -- and a bad one at that. Of course, their propaganda people will boil those facts down to "make the rich pay their fair share for a change instead of balancing the budget on the backs of honest working people. It is all bullshit, of course, but as I mentioned yesterday, we know how it will be presented. Which is why Republicans and conservatives must do a better job than ever in exposing this. My expectation is now we will see the leftist media sponsored "push polls" making it appear Obama's plan is gaining traction and his popularity is in bounce back mode.
Jed, I agree. This budget is so laughable that I would think a five year old would see that it will lead to total disaster. But the media will run with the idea that (1) it makes the rich pay their "fair share" and (2) it eliminates the deficit in 10 years -- none of which is true.
This is the kind of thing the Republicans need to keep tying around Democratic necks. They should be pounding away that the Democrats want to take away the military's ability to fight, raise taxes on investors, raise taxes on workers and small businesses, and needlessly waste $1.4 trillion dollars on special education.
These people are crazy. Do you think they really believe this?
DUQ, I think they do genuinely believe this. Like the communists before them, they think that we would all be better off as low-level worker bees, doing day to day labor as the government figures out how to spend out money. That's why they are so dangerous, because they really do believe this garbage.
‘60s radicals and their spawn, and their decades old wish list. This is playhouse theater, juxtaposed against Ryan’s modest budget to give the appearance of extremism. When in truth all Ryan did was slow the growth of government down to around 2.4% per year, allowing the behemoth federal government to still grow. Just imagine if we froze growth at zero or at a “minus” -1.5% with a slight downward slide by .05% per year finally capping at –5%, 10%? Some would say draconian, some would say now you’re serious about saving America. I know you can’t turn a battleship in a bathtub, but we must be careful about buying into the Washington hooey, or in this case budgets.
Stan, I think this budget serves three purposes. First, they are using it to try to make Ryan's budget sound extreme by comparison, when Ryan's budget is by no means extreme. Secondly, they are giving Obama cover because anything he puts out in the next couple days as a budget will seem quite sane compared to this. And third, I think this is a genuine expression of what they losers would do if they got the chance.
What we need to do is point out how stupid and extreme this budget is and we need to tie it to all Democrats -- so they can't keep playing the game of pretending that there are good and bad Democrats.
These people are crazy. I like too how they are all weirdoes. I know you're kind of kidding, but take a good look at the list -- it's a collection of perverts, thieves, racists and antisemites. I wonder why that is?
Ed, Excellent observation and good question. I can only imagine there is something about wanting to be a dictator who tells everyone else how to live that brings out the kinds of people who think they are above the law and above issues like morality.
How anyone could think this is a moderate budget is beyond me.
Iced, It's delusional.
Is this some kind of hoax?
Oh indeed! Whenever you use Sheila Jackson Lee, Maxine Waters, and Barney Frank in the same sentence, wait for the punch line, and even if you don’t get the joke…remember to point, and laugh. These people are a disease that we’ve allowed to sicken our body politic. My point is all of these budgets grow government, one much faster than the other. I don’t want to get stuck in the narrative, and keep pulling on these bastards until they get real and truly bend the growth of government down.
Note: I like Paul Ryan a lot, the guy is bright, and shows great hope for the future, he’s moving in the right direction. However his cuts are Washington cuts, simply slowing the growth.
But, Andrew! We live in a post-national world! The era of international cooperation has arrived! Surely we don't even really need a military any more; we can just take care of the world's problems with UN-supervised coalitions and peacekeepers. So gutting the military makes sense...right?
LL, LOL! I wish it were. I truly wish that no actual politician would ever think to put something like this out, but they really are advocating this.
Stan, I agree about these people being a punch line.
I'm not sure I agree on Ryan. I think Ryan is making some serious cuts that will lead to the end of the deficit and the beginnings of surpluses, plus he's including tax cuts which permanently reduce the power of the government to grow. I also think that you just can't do much more than Ryan is offering without first showing the public that serious cuts won't cut them. Right now, despite the public's desire to cut spending, there are still serious limits, especially once you hit entitlements -- which is where the real money is.
I think if we tried to do too much more, you would see a massive public backlash that would result in us getting virtually no cuts and would give the Democrats the government again.
T_Rav, Yeah, you're right, my bad! LOL!
Actually, one of the interesting things about Egypt was that a lot of the Europeans began to realize that their "soft power" really mean "no power." So even they are reconsidering the need to have a strong military.
After Obama's failures in Honduras, his failures with China on Copenhagen and now Europe's recognized failures throughout the Middle East, it's starting to look like the open heart empty head approach to diplomacy is going away again.
Andrew: So many of these 60s rejects simply cannot get over their "glory days." They can't seem to get the idea that the world has moved on without them. They've cleaned up their outward appearance a bit, but inside they're just the same hippies living in the dawning of the age of Aquarius. A few of us woke up and went on to real lives, but they just can't let go of their past and their Marxist rhetoric. Unfortunately, they got a strong foothold in academia and became the heart of the Democratic Party.
You hit the nail on the head with your intro. Be very cautious about any political rhetoric that uses the words "the people's." The rallying cry of the radical left in the 60's was "power to the people." Even as a radical at the time, I used to ask the question: "Don't the people already have the power?" "The people" meant "us elitists." I guess even then I smelled a rat.
Your list of the movers and shakers in today's "people's party" belongs on a police blotter, not on a list of elected officials. Alas.
Lawhawk, "belongs on a police blotter" LOL! So true.
I think you're right that these people essentially got stuck in the 1960s and their thinking has never changed. They still see America as the bad guy standing in the way of the glory of communism in Vietnam while oppressing minorities at home so we can benefit from Jim Crow.
Looking at these people, you should definitely be commended for waking up to the truth because clearly, not everyone did. And in truth, I suspect there was always a difference between you and them. From the things you've said, I get the feeling you genuinely wanted to fix the things that were wrong with the country to make the country better, whereas they wanted to replace the country with their own elitist utopia.
And I agree with you, whenever you hear the word "People's" (as in People's Republic), that always means "High Oppressive Elite."
Andrew: Before I hitch up the team to head for the big city for food shopping, I thought this little admission by the mouthpiece for the Democratic Party, The New Republic, might cheer you right up. Headline: "Yes, Obama could lose in 2012--And that explains his budget plans." Naturally, the article suggests he probably won't lose, but at least admits it's a distinct possibility.
Lawhawk, That does make me happy, not only that they are starting to see the writing on the wall this early, but also that they are trying to pre-explain their next disappointment with him! :-)
andrew: jeff is ascribing to charlie sheen's reality of #winning. while the rest of us see he is doing nothing of the sort.
democrats can suck it.
Patti, "democrats can suck it." Yep. Well said! :-)
For the Record: Obama just outlined his "ideas" to cut the deficit. Tax the rich, tax the middle class, cut defense spending, wipe out Medicare. Hmmm. And here I thought he was supposed be putting out a "moderate" budget?
Enough is enough. If we cut our spending on three wars that are getting us absolutely nowhere, we could save a trillion dollars a year. Why are we in these so called wars anyway. The older folks have to pay the penalty with cuts in medicare because our government spends so much on war dollars and human lives. We are gaining nothing but putting us deeper and deeper in debt. We have to pay for the government judgements and we are losing so many young lives with no end in site and the costs keep mounting and mounting. This is wrong, wrong, wrong.
Barbara, I agree in part. I think we are wasting lives and money fighting in Afghanistan and Libya because we don't have a plan or a purpose at this point. I also think we should be out of Iraq by now as there's very little reason for us to be there.
That said, those don't add up to a trillion dollars -- nowhere near. Moreover, the budget problem is in entitlements that are eating more and more of the budget and are just not sustainable. That means we need to reform Medicare/Medicaid/Social Security. We need to fix these to keep them solvent and to make them work properly.
Also, we need to stop this fantasy that we can't make actual cuts or that we can raise taxes without hurting the economy. We need to stop raising taxes on workers and owners of capital. That just destroys the economy and reduces the number of jobs, wages for those with jobs, and tax revenues. It is counter-productive.
Barbara, to add to what Andrew said, I think it should be noted that in order to do something about the deficit dragging us down, everyone is going to have to take a hit. EVERYONE. At some point, Social Security, Medicare, and other planks of the entitlement system that no one's had the gumption to touch up to now will have to be not only touched, but whaled on with a sledgehammer. It may be done voluntarily within the next few years; it may be done farther down the road when the country is no longer able to support such things, by which point things will be a whole lot worse. But one way or another, it is going to happen.
T_Rav, That's true. And the choice is obvious -- reform it now to make it more efficient to hopefully reduce the level of cuts needed in the future, or do nothing and expect massive cuts in the future, or watch the system collapse.
Okay, Andrew--I'm going to spare the "Is It Real" thread--did the Republican leadership screw us over on the budget deal or not? Because right now I don't know what to think.
T_Rav, No, they didn't. The criticism is phony.
Is it? I mean, the CBO has weighed in saying it makes real spending cuts of less than half a billion; a lot of them seem to have come from programs that weren't getting new funding anyway. And National Review's gone so far as to call it "strike one" on Boehner's leadership and advise House Republicans to vote against it tomorrow. I would really like for this deal to make some real cuts, but some of what we were being told seems questionable.
T-Rav, For starters, people are not understanding the CBO numbers. They are falling for the headlines for a variety of reasons -- from stupidity to self-interest.
CBO is comparing the cuts to 2010, not the 2011 budget. That's a fake comparison because if they had done nothing, the 2011 spending would have kicked in, not the 2010. Even CBO admits that these cuts result in $80 billion less on what would have been spent in 2011.
Think of it this way -- if you get an automatic 5% raise each year and you and I agree to cut your pay 3% from that, that's a real cut because you would have gotten the 5%. But CBO is saying, "but it's still more than last year, so it's not a cut." That's slight of hand meant to embarass the Republican leadership.
Secondly, they are using various BS assumptions to make that figure work. Specifically, they are assuming that many of the cuts occur in programs where the money would not actually have been spent -- thus they should not be counted as a cut. But the truth is that's never happened in the history of man that allocated money wasn't spent.
Third, I find it pathetic that people who do nothing but criticize the CBO for failing to do accurate analysis are now relying on exactly that kind of analysis from the CBO to make their own criticisms seem relevant.
What this tells us is that many conservatives, sadly, are no better than knee-jerk leftists who will criticize without knowing what they are talking about and who will rely on whatever data they find even if they previously considered that data unreliable.
Fourth, read my responses to JG at the end of the Analysis thread from the other day to get a sense of what is going on. There are a lot of people who want to raise their profile by making fake and unfair attacks at the expense of hurting the ability of the public to understand what is really going on and at the expense of hurting the Republican ability to get good cuts in the future.
As an aside, check out the idiots praising Trump over at Big Journalism in a Trump thread today. They are precisely what is wrong with many on the right. They fall for political theater and don't grasp substance. They would fall for Karl Marx if he just said enough nasty things about Obama. It's the same problem with the budget issue. These same people see some headlines and start whining without using the little gray matter they have left.
Andrew, that's certainly understandable. As a rule, I trust the CBO's numbers--they aren't always given the most accurate information to work with, but they seem pretty impartial and analytical themselves--so I was taking them at their word here.
Your breakdown seems to make sense. Frankly, I haven't had a whole lot of time to look at all the details, but the criticism was coming from enough sources to make it plausible. Obviously, I should be digging deeper, but it's not like surfing the Net is the only thing I have to do all day (nice as that might be).
Like you, though, I have no patience for some of the Breitbart jokers who swoon over the latest guy to criticize Obama, no matter his past doings. I'll have to check out the foolishness over there. As for people tearing the party apart to score political points, I'm sure you don't have anyone particular in mind. ;-)
T_Rav, Actually, it's beyond just a couple people. This has become a full blown epidemic with every talk show host, blogger and presidential candidate I can think of falling for this garbage or promoting this garbage.
I think a lot of people are doing this intentionally because they make their money by being more bombastic than anyone else. This is the same garbage we saw during the healthcare debate when any rumor was taken at face value and each host/blogger competed to use the biggest possible words to express their outrage at this latest betrayal of all that is holy. . . blah blah.
Another group that is pushing this are faux-Republicans. These are people who just kept blasting Boehner throughout all of 2008/2009 because he "never had the courage" to stand up to Pelosi -- unless you count the fact that (1) he had no actual power and yet (2) he stopped 90% of her agenda. These people whined and screamed like children and started talking about the need to form a new party to replace the Republicans -- it was simply impossible to satisfy these people. Of course, it didn't take long for most of these self-described loyal, lifelong Republicans to out themselves by slipping up and say something like "this is why I've never voted for a Republican in my life, because they're the same as the Democrats." Well, it's the same people again automatically assuming all negative rumors to be true and then whining about the apocaplyse.
The other group are the presidential opportunists. These are people who wouldn't know genuine leadership if it bit them in the rear end, and they want to pander to whoever is loudest. And the loudest are the whiners out there buying into these attacks.
On Trump, you will be depressed. (LINK). They have no idea what Trump stands for or what he believes except that he's making clown-like attacks on Obama, which is enough to win their support.
P.S. T_Rav, The thing about CBO numbers is that the CBO is little more than a calculating machine. They are usually given the assumptions to apply and they follow those, whether they make sense or not. Thus, when the Democrats said "assuming ObamaCare makes the following savings and improves economic growth by X percent, how much will it save over 10 years," the CBO made no attempt to verify the assumptions.
That's why you can't trust CBO numbers unless you know all of the assumptions of their analysis and what they were trying to prove.
Andrew, in their defense, I would say that a lot of them (the blogosphere etc., that is) aren't posturing, they're genuinely infuriated at what's happening. A lot of the politicians are no doubt playing to the crowd (see also: Donald Trump), and in their anger, the crowd will applaud anyone who verifies their anger (see also: the people currently supporting Donald Trump).
I'll go with your summation of the bill. I want badly to believe that the Republicans are getting it right and not screwing up, and I liked what I saw at first glance. But I want to see what happens with the debt ceiling and the Ryan budget plan (actually, scratch that: what I really want to see is what happens now that relations between Obama and Ryan appear to have broken down entirely).
T_Rav, The blogosphere is what it is (talk about a self-evident cliche), but the pundits and politicians are another matter completely. That's who I'm writing about today in my article.
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