Obama Team Admits They Don’t Have a Plan to Handle Long Term Debt

 

From the Washington Examiner:

President Obama spent much of last year pretending that he had a plan to tackle the nation’s long-term debt crisis. He never released an actual plan, but he gave a bunch of speeches pretending that he had. And Obama pushed the idea that he was privately ready to cut a “grand bargain” on the debt were he not thwarted by intransigent Republicans. This was a narrative dutifully reported by the media, despite the lack of any formal plan. Now, the pretending is over.

On Monday, Obama unveiled a budget that added to the debt while using a series of budget gimmicks to claim deficit reduction. And today, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner conceded that the administration didn’t even attempt to do anything about the nation’s long-term debt problem.

 

 

“Why Progressives Keep on Losing”

A far-left writer named Ronald (RJ) Eskow recently wrote a piece, titled “Why Progressives Keep on Losing and the Right Keeps on Winning” at the Huffington Post.   You have to read it to believe it.  The one takeaway for me after reading that piece is that we will never, ever get along.  The divide between Conservatives and liberals is as wide as it’s ever been and will only get worse.  Any attempts at compromising with these people is foolish.  They need to be beaten (politically) and stopped.  Period.

Let’s get started with some of the brilliance laid out by Mr. Eskow (emphasis and comments mine):

Congratulations! The “grand compromise” will cut nearly thirty nine billion dollars in needed government spending, which proves how “serious” everyone is about reducing the deficit. The grand compromisers could have cancelled the next ten years of tax subsidies for oil companies and cut the deficit by forty billion, but apparently that’s not how serious people do things.

Notice how he criticizes the cutting of “needed” government spending and throws in the usual liberal cliche about oil companies.

Once again the unpopular views of a minority have been imposed on the majority.

Here he is saying that the unpopular views of the minority (Conservatives) have been imposed on the majority (liberals).  Where do I even start with that one?  Since when do liberals represent a majority in this country and Conservatives represent a minority?  November 2010, anyone?  Last year’s election was one of the biggest “shellackings” in history in favor of Republicans.

Why did Tea Partiers win such a major victory? Money, for starters. The Tea Party’s generously funded by billionaires like the Koch Brothers, and ultra-conservative policies are given “nonpartisan” ideological cover by right-wing billionaire Pete Peterson and his network of allies and paid savants. Corporate campaign financing, now made limitless by the GOP’s ideological packing of the Supreme Court, allows the mega-corporations of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to impose policies that crush the middle class and smaller businesses. And decades’ worth of funding for ad campaigns and “conservative think tanks” (an oxymoron, perhaps?) continue to lay the groundwork for destructive moves like the one we so last night.

I guess Mr. Eskow forgot about billionaire and far-left socialist, George Soros, who contributes millions to Democrats and funds Media Matters for America (who’s sole job is to attack and destroy FOX News).  As usual, it perfectly fine for liberals to be funded by far-left billionaires and their network of allies, including liberal think-tanks (oxymoron?), but it is despicable when Conservatives do it.

But it’s not as if progressives don’t have any cards to play. Their policies are very popular, while those of the Tea Party and the Republicans are equally unpopular.

Again, see election results of 2010. These “unpopular” policies beat the Democrats soundly in November 2010.

Say what you will about Rep. Ryan’s budget proposal, it’s a vision. By proposing to dismantle Medicare for people retiring in 2021 and afterwards, he’s laid out a radical alternative to today’s policies. By slashing taxes for the wealthy and proposing deregulation for all industries, the Ryan plan envisions a future America: one where the environment is despoiled, the poor go unfed, and the middle class faces a lifetime of financial insecurity following by an old age of sickness and penury.

The “wealthy” pay more in taxes than anyone and American industries are far from unregulated.

But, there’s hope!  Mr. Eskow has a plan:

Here’s a start: First increase Social Security retirement benefits by 15%, across the board, by lifting the payroll tax cap and imposing a financial transactions tax. Second, increase income taxes on a sliding scale that goes up to 60% for the highest earners in the country. (It’s been as high as 90% during periods of our greatest prosperity.) Third, add $500 billion to our stimulus spending over the next two years, and keep adding it until unemployment is down to 4%. Fourth, immediately add a public option, “Medicare For All” plan that’s voluntarily available to Americans of all age brackets.

Yep, nothing like raising taxes, throwing more “stimulus” money down the rabbit hole, and giving “free” health care to everyone to get our country on a sustainable path!

Before I go, I mentioned the historic gains made by Republicans in the last election:

PolitiFact Georgia checked with Tim Storey, an elections analyst with the National Conference of State Legislatures and a guy who knows about as much about political shifts at the state level as anyone around.

“It’s a much different landscape than it was prior to the election,” Storey said.

The Colorado-based Storey said Republicans gained 691 state legislative seats in the November election. Nationwide, they now hold 3,928 seats to 3,366 for Democrats.

“It was definitely historic gains,” he said in a telephone interview. “It’s the most GOP [state] legislators since 1928.”

Republicans had the momentum going into the election, he said, but some questioned whether the GOP could surpass its 1994 performance, when the GOP picked up 525 seats at the state level. They easily surpassed that number and saw the biggest party shift in legislative seats since 1966, Storey said.

The GOP tilt was even greater in the South, where state-level offices had been trending Republican for two decades. Still, when the election began, 14 legislative chambers in the South were controlled by Democrats and 14 by Republicans. When the dust cleared, 19 of the region’s 28 chambers were controlled by Republicans.

The 2010 election cycle in the South represents a “historic tipping point,” Storey said. For the first time since Reconstruction, the GOP holds a majority of chambers and seats.

The online journal Politico recently ran the headline “Democratic South finally falls.”

How anyone can see what happened in the last election and still say that liberals are the “majority” and that Republican policies are “unpopular” is beyond me.  It is the exact opposite.  It is the policies of Barack Obama and Democrats that are unpopular.  They took off their masks because they thought it was safe to show everyone who they really were and they scared most of the country to death, which led to the “shellacking” in November.  But, apparently there are many of the liberal side who disagree and are threatening encouraging Obama and Democrats further off the cliff.  I’ll take it.