Naturally ... that is the end result of being able to purchase your own politicians - now improved with more corporate buying power!

...thanks to our radical conservative Supreme Court, which is the real legacy of Bush that's going to take forever to clean up. We'll eventually recover from most of the other things he did (I'm optimistic), but I'm not so sure about the Roberts Supreme Court. Their latest move to allow corporations to buy elections is especially outrageous.

You REALLY think our current national debt was "rung up over the last 8 years"?

Not saying that Bush was any model of fiscal conservativism but, Obama has presided over the single largest deficit increase - by FAR - in history.

Below is a Washington Post (read: Liberal, Democratic -supporting Anti-Bush/pro-Obama paper) graphic on the deficit between '02 and projected (favorably) to 2019






Just to keep it CURRENT: The Obama Administration's $708 billion war budget for fiscal 2011 (released February 1) is higher than the $680 billion Obama approved for 2010.

The 2010 Obama budget was already 4.1% higher than President George W. Bush's $651 billion funding for fiscal 2009.

Sure Bush started it but,...

Im so sick of this crap...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/ynews_ts1217

FIRE THEM ALL

Of course he did! He had to avoid having our economy totally collapse!

And how exactly did he pay for the wars he started? Oh yeah .. he kept them off the books.

At least it does show that he was handed a 236 Billion surplus. I also would like to know how much of the 09 number covers the bailouts that Bush initiated (although I agree they were needed).

Okay, let me elaborate.

It's important to understand that there's a big difference between running up a deficit during normal times and during an emergency. During normal times you'd be taking money out of the economy to do that (economists call it "crowding out private investment"), but during an emergency when the private and business sectors aren't spending money, the government is putting money *into* the economy to keep it moving.

And it would stop moving if the government tried to cut the deficit now. The longterm consequences of higher national debt are nowhere near as bad as a lost generation. When things return more or less to normal is the time to start cutting back. But then the economy will be able to withstand that.

This isn't just fantasy. You only have to look at, say, Argentina to see what happens when countries go on austerity programs in the middle of a crisis. It's a disaster. On the other hand, the chart I linked above shows how much worse we'd be without the stimulus.

The other point is that right now disinflation is the worry, not inflation. That means the economy slows to a halt.

As I've said before, there really is a big difference between your and my household budgets and the country as a whole. Macroeconomics is very complicated.

http://robertreich.org/post/358773967/obama-needs-to-teach-the-public-how-to-get-out-of-the

Excerpt:

"His political advisors are telling him to emphasize deficit reduction instead. And that’s what he did Wednesday night when he talked about a “freeze” on discretionary spending, and a “commission” to look for ways to cut the deficit.

I can understand why Obama’s political advisors are pushing him in this direction. Many Americans borrowed too much during the boom years before the Great Depression, and now they’re paying the price. So they naturally analogize their own plight to that of the federal government and the economy as a whole. The government is too deep in debt, they reason. Logically, that means the only way out of the nation’s economic doldrums is for the government to mend its ways. The government has to reduce its budget deficit just like American families have to reduce theirs.

This analogy is faulty, of course. If John Maynard Keyenes taught us anything, it’s that a federal budget is not at all like a family budget. In fact, it’s precisely because families have to pull in their belts that the federal government has to let its belt out. When consumers and businesses aren’t buying much of anything, the government has to fill the gap. That’s the only way to get jobs and get the economy moving again. Once the economy is percolating, the government can pull back. By then, tax revenues will soar, and the long-term deficit will shrink. (And yes, entitlement reform is probably necessary in the long term. But here again, it’s vitally important to separate the long term from the now.)

But if the public learns the wrong set of lessons — that tax cuts for businesses are good, and deficit reduction starting now is good — there’s no hope for getting wise policies out of Congress. The debate is framed all wrong."

The current geopolitical trends compounded by the greatest de-industrialization of our country - the most dramatic in the modern world history, will bring USA down to the third world country level.

One day we'll consider ourselves lucky If we'll end up with chinese type of socialist dictatorship.

Pay attention my friends....

This was a program developed by the Clinton administration to satisfy the tree huggers. We export all the manufacturing capabilities that made America a power to 3rd world countries so that they pollute their local environments instead of ours, then we become a "Service Provider" and all's good? Not! The rest of the world can't afford our services any longer because we can't afford to buy the products they make unless they're from a slave labor state like China and everybody knows the Chinese are tight as bark on a tree (they're saving up to buy America and have already made a substantial down payment).

I am currently employed in the services industry so to say and the trend as of late is to hire only part-time employees, no benefits, little money. I have a part-time co-worker who has to quit her job because she found out she has breast cancer and if she's working she can't get help from the government with her medical bills as she has no insurance. If Obama Care passes with a public option I'll quit my job the next day so I can sign up and then get my check from Nick every month. I'll just sit around, making records for fun and watch the rest of America swirl right down the toilet, but I'll have health insurance and my check from Nick. Y'all have fun.