I despise the Tea Party-they represent to me a danger to the United States that is equal to any other the country has faced. A few million docile swine-being manipulated by some very unscrupluous men. They may not being wearing brown shirts physically-but they are of the same caliber of people who manned the ranks of the Brown Shirts way back when. I will continue to attack them at every opportunity-because they deserve the scorn and derison of those of us who actually have the clarity of vision to see through them.
Maybe what it is going to take is for the GOP to take the House and the Senate so that the Tea Party candidates can be exposed as being every bit an empty suit they say Obama is. But before we plunge off that cliff, we might want to play the tape all the way to end to see where it leads.
For the Tea Party to achieve a real measure of power – which I profoundly hope will not be the case – they would rapidly run up against reality: to retain any popular support, they have to deliver economic salvation, and deliver it fast, to the working and middle classes. All the anti-government rhetoric in the world, in the current economic crisis, does not change the fact that there’s simply no way to do that by wielding anti-government, anti-regulation axes. And since the President is not going away for at least two years and has a veto pen-that is not going to happen soon. The American public only has an attention span of about one year-and that is why the current administration is in trouble now. These are not normal times.
Even in a best-case scenario, it will take years to generate enough jobs to replace the 8 million lost since the start of the recession. Quite simply, the private markets alone do not have the ability to return the country to prosperity. And the odds are not good that the Tea Party goons can do that on their own. For one thing, a point I keep wishing to drive home to you, global economic trends and demographics are not on the Tea Partiers side. For the last 20 years or so, Americans have been outsourcing most of their industrial capacity to the developing world. Previous recoveries have happened by stimulating consumer demand, which in turn stimulates the industrial sector. But there really isn’t an industrial sector anymore, and consumers, seemingly having learned a lesson from the financial panic, are saving and paying down personal debt. Even if people weren’t saving, increased consumer demand would only widen the trade deficit with China and move even more money and jobs overseas. And those “brown people” they don’t like are out birthing them two to one.
Despite all their talk-Tea Partiers are not serious about slashing the federal deficit. All the cosmetic spending cuts you folks think you can make-it does not change the fact that the big ticket items – Social Security, Medicare, defense spending, homeland defense – they want to make exempt from spending reductions. That contrasts with cuts of 20, 30, in some cases even 50% in revenues taken in by, and consequently in spending carried out by, city, county, and state level governments. Until you restructure the Big 4 items above-you can’t make any real dent in the budget. And the day you take that on-stand by for a huge fight from more than just the usual folks you make into villains. What is really funny is that these guys want to exacerbate the situation by allowing the Bush tax cuts to continue which will punch an even bigger hole in the deficit. Tax cuts won’t generate additional federal revenue-not this time. (They never did before either).
The Tea Party can bemoan this all they want, and douche Teabaggers can continue to whine about the federal government; but, at the end of the day, if they become “incumbents” they will have to work out how to govern rather than simply rage against masturbation. ( How anyone can be opposed to that is beyond my ken). They will, in other words, have to change from being spoiled children to being adults in a complex world. And, unless they want to become as loathed as the current batch of incumbents they are attacking, they will have to work out how to use the tools at the federal government’s disposal to help get the unemployed back to work in an economic environment in which private markets alone aren’t up to the challenge.
And if Saint Sarah actually wins the Presidency? Well the government will get even bigger than it is now. You can take that to the bank.
Be careful what you wish for.
If we are anti government its because the government has proved itself to be unequal to the task of spending our money wisely.
The mantra from the left with the stimulus package was that money would go to “shovel ready” projects..
Where did that money go?
Since Obama just asked for 50 billion MORE for more shovel ready projects/
eh where did all the money go?
Thank you for proving my point.
There are two stimulus bills-and it was explained up front the differences between the two. First-was TARP, which Obama gets blamed for, but was passed under Bush. 47% of Americans forget that.
The second was the Stimulus. Guess what? Its only half done. 1/3 went to tax cuts-and those are not complete yet. The remaining money is only executed and that was by design. Most economists think it was a good idea to do it this way. In 2009, 80 percent of spending went to five programs: Medicaid, unemployment compensation, Social Security, the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund (which mostly pays for education), and student financial aid. To date, two-thirds of federal outlays have gone to help states’ pay for Medicaid, education and public employees through two programs known as the Medicaid Federal Medical Assistance Percentage and the Fiscal Stabilization Fund. Here is the clearest breakdown of spending I have found.
It is all there for your info-there is no hidden information. The fact that people ask helps me prove how ill-informed the critics are.
Right, but the selling point was that the stimulus plan would, hold on, to CREATE jobs…shovel ready..etc etc….
Not MAINTAIN jobs, not bail out states that cannot or will not
make the hard choices…
Like California with STILL an 19 billion dollar deficit.
What good does it for for the feds to bail out the states with borrowed money?
What happens next fiscal year?
Ponzi ring a bell?
Read the La Times and how many jobs 100 million dollars has created.
Well, I subscribe to the Krugman theory-the stimulus was too small. Plus it was never intended for the states to do what they did-which gets to Krugman’s second point the stimulus was not targeted correctly.
Nonetheless, we are not in the abyss we could have been -and as an aside the market has just about recovered all of it’s value. That the recovery is jobless-well the companies bear as much blame about that as the federal government does.
What a pathetic piece of analysis – even for a flaming liberal.
AA,
Then explain why that is so-don’t just call names and run. It is so……teabaggerish. If you are so smart-show us.
no no Skippy, the tea baggers stand and order you to deliver. They don’t much run. Why you presented a fine example in a wheel chair recently. Not much running there.
Whatever-without some facts to back up the assertion-I stand by my analysis. P.S. I’ll bet that scooter was paid for by Medicare.
so what. you live for that.
I have to quibble with a few points about the stimulus.
First, tax cuts aren’t stimulative, particularly in this atmosphere. If they were, the $150 Bush/Pelosi “tax refund” in early ’08 would have done something, but it didn’t.
Second, a stimulus might be effective economics without the massive levels of debt that the United States has been carrying for thirty years now. The dollars that are being spent in stimulus and tax cuts are eventually going to be surpassed in interest payments on the debt. In about ten years or so, interest payments are going to be a bigger percentage of the budget than defense. At that point, you’re screwed as a country.
Third, the problem isn’t taxes or spending as much as it is getting the two in line with one another. There have been a grand total of three balanced budgets since 1961 – one under LBJ and two under Clinton. – and they were largely due to juggling numbers.
Moreover, the balanced budgets of ’99=2001 wrren’t due to the wonderfulness of Clinton OR the Republicans. The tech boom increased revenue while things like welfare reform held down costs. I wouldn’t count on that happening again because there aren’t any bubbles around the corner and fiscal discipline has gone out the window.
But the Tea Party are only talking about balancing the budget by tinkering with 17% of it, which is fucking foolish and everyone with a passing aquaintence with mathematics knows it. I’d be the first one on the Tea Party bandwagon if I thought that they were serious, but they aren’t. Their platform – as much as one actually exists – tells me that they’re stupid, lying or both.
The United States has been in regular deficit spending since Kennedy was elected, and those deficits went wild under Reagan. Frankly, I’m shocked that you’ve beenable to get by for as long as you have.
Having said all of that, I disagree powerfully with Skippy’s Krugman school. Krugman’s answer to everything is to print or borrow money that you don’t have and spending it as quickly as humanly possible. While that might be fine as a short -term fix, it sets you up for more of the stagflation that was so popular in 1970s.
Since the United States has outsourced industrial capacity for thirty years, there really isn’t anything increased demand can do other than widen trade deficits. Therefore, no stimulus will create jobs in any meaningful way. But it will eventually add inflation onto your existing unemployment problem.
The first thing that the U.S has to do is start paying down debt before you default or annoy the rest of the world by inflating your way out of it. Tax cuts aren’t aren’t going to do that. They’ll only make the problem unimaginably worse. Taxes need to go up significantly on everyone, and they have to go up soon. Screw the job market. There isn’t going to be any kind of recovery until you demonstrate some seriousness about your debt.
Having said that, I haven’t seen any evidence that the Tea Party is serious about doing that. Saying that ObamaCare was a threat to Medicare, as opposed to the biggest tax increase in American history was a huge signal to me that they’re nothing more than ridiculous electioneers.
Are those enough facts, Curtis?
Your analysis deconstructed is:
I hate the Tea Party because they are Nazis
The problems facing the country are huge and hard to solve
The Tea Party can’t solve them because they are so hard.
If the Tea Party wins they won’t succeed because the problems are hard and they are stupid
Since the brilliant liberals currently in power can’t solve them – no one can.
Sarah Palin is stupid – (This is like saying Amen in the church or liberals)
I don’t really call your analysis – analysis – merely a statement of the problem and taking the typical liberal line that anyone who disagrees with me is either stupid or a nazi.
No one who is smart could possibly have a legitimate opinion that differs from the Huffington Post/Daily Kos orthodoxy.
That is what is pathetic.
AA,
Please see the post here. And the comment here-for a response.
Well Stalin,
What did that budget surplus in a Republican dominated House and Senate under Clinton look like to you?
Is that simple enough for you to understand?
Yeah it was a total and complete lie but it looked a hell of a lot better than what we have now. How long is what we have now sustainable to an economically aware brilliant savant such as yourself?
I am, mostly, apolitical.
Too many years in the U.S. Army.
I think that how one views the “Tea Party,”
and it’s adherents, depends on where one stands…
politically.
I tend to view them as Americans with a gripe.
Down the road it’ll be some other political group
garnering headlines.
Curtis-
With all dues respect, my Canadian counterpart has a better command of the facts than most Americans. The budget surplus was not a lie-it existed till GWB pissed it away. And that was due to a balanced budget and HIGHER taxes.
No Skippy it didn’t. A lot of things were “off budget” such as Social Security. Look for yourself. The money invested was stolen decades ago and replaced by IOUs and the polite fiction is that the social security accounts are fully funded. Dream on.
And if you believed him about that, what other things have you swallowed from big government and Stalin?
Actually, most of the ’99-2000 surplus existed because of a combination of higher taxes under the 1990 budget agreement, the ’93 budget and higher than usual revenue from the Silicon Valley tech boom. When the tech bubble burst, so did the revenue. The fact that this happened just as Bush started giving away all the money certainly didn’t help matters. But the surpluses were predicated on the idea that the tech boom would last forever, which made it a lie.
Social Security itself was never “off budget.” The unfunded future liabilities of the program are, but that’s also true of things like wars. The problem with Social Security has always been that what it takes in goes back out in general revenue and a T-Bill is left in its place. Unfortunately, T-Bills pay less than the rate of inflation over a 10 year period.
I’m a conservative. I don’t like pissing all the money away. Republicans, however, are little more than Democrats in drag and the Tea Party is even worse. They want a “tastes great, less filling” approach to budgeting, and that’ll be nothing less than the death of your country. You need a conservative party that’s just a little bit realisitic about how math works. The Teapublicans aren’t it.
The U.S government has been spending far more than it takes in for over fifty years now. Clinton and the Republicans achieved a surplus, but that was only by accident. It didn’t require any real sacrifice, and that’s what’s going to be needed for you to survive.
And I can’t restate this enough. The last Republican to balance a fucking budget was Dwight Eisenhower. I don’t see how you can be a conservative and still support a party that can’t even do that.
Republicans, however, are little more than Democrats in drag and the Tea Party is even worse. They want a “tastes great, less filling” approach to budgeting, and that’ll be nothing less than the death of your country. You need a conservative party that’s just a little bit realisitic about how math works. The Teapublicans aren’t it.
Amen to that!