Category Archives: Politics

Very good Opinion piece from the Weekly Independent.  I say good, because I agree with it….

With Congressional Republicans insisting that we have to attack the sickness of spending that, in Speaker John Boehner’s words, is afflicting Washington, it’s worth recalling some recent history.

In 1981, Ronald Reagan’s budget director David Stockman admitted to Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a Democrat from New York, that running up “strategic deficits” was a useful political tool because it “gives you an argument for cutting back programs that really weren’t desired and giving you an argument against establishing new programs you don’t really want.” Stockman noted further that strategic deficits can enable opponents of public investments to sound compassionate, providing them with opportunities to use phrases like “We can’t steal from our children to pay for our short-term desires” to oppose government spending.

Reagan had run on a platform of reining in government spending and waste and on promises to put our house in fiscal order. Reagan insisted that deep cuts in personal income and capital gains taxes would result in increased tax revenue for the government because of the wealth-generating benefits of the cuts—so-called supply-side economics. During the 1980 campaign, his future vice president, George H. W. Bush, mocked supply-side theory as “voodoo economics.” Of course, during his eight years in office, Reagan presided over an explosion in government deficits and a more than doubling of the national debt. But he also achieved two goals critical to modern conservatives: He dramatically shifted wealth from ordinary Americans to the very wealthy, and he made “deficit reduction” a useful code for hamstringing government efforts to help the less well-off.

When George W. Bush became president in 2001, he inherited large projected surpluses. Bush set about attacking those surpluses, passing large tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 that overwhelmingly benefited the wealthy and, in due course, wiped out those projected surpluses and replaced them with large projected deficits. Like Reagan, Bush accomplished two cherished goals in the process—further transferring wealth to the wealthiest Americans while putting Congress in a “straitjacket” with respect to critical investments in the nation’s infrastructure and social programs. As conservative columnist and Bush cheerleader Fred Barnes put it at the time, “The most important fan of strategic deficits in Bushland: Bush.” Like Reagan, Bush certainly succeeded, if success is defined as running up large deficits that constrain future efforts to address adequately the nation’s pressing social and infrastructural needs.

More:   The return of voodoo economics | Opinion | Independent Weekly.

This could be getting interesting…

Time will tell…

From the HuffingtonPost.com

The bipartisan panel appointed by Congress to investigate the financial crisis has concluded that several financial industry figures appear to have broken the law and has referred multiple cases to state or federal authorities for potential prosecution, according to two sources directly involved in the deliberations.

The sources, who spoke on condition they not be named, declined to identify the people implicated or the names of their institutions. But they characterized the panel’s decision to make referrals to prosecutors as a significant escalation in the government’s response to the financial crisis. The panel plans to release its final report in Washington on Thursday morning.

In the three years since major lenders teetered on the brink of collapse, prompting huge taxpayer rescues and amplifying an already painful recession into the most punishing downturn since the Depression, public indignation has swelled while few people who played prominent roles in the crisis have faced legal consequences.

That may be about to change. According to the law that created the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, the panel has a responsibility to refer for prosecution any evidence of lawbreaking. The offices that have received the referrals — the Justice Department, state attorneys general, and perhaps both — must now determine whether to prosecute cases and, if so, whether to pursue criminal or civil charges.

Though civil charges appear a more likely outcome should prosecution result, one source familiar with the panel’s deliberations said criminal charges should not be ruled out.

The commission’s decision to refer conduct for prosecution underscores the severity of the activities it has uncovered and plans to detail in its widely anticipated final report, the sources said.

via Financial Crisis Commission Finds Cause For Prosecution Of Wall Street.

I keep saying infrastructure spending is a win-win…

Infrastructure spending creates jobs, which increase personal spending and tax revenue that, in turn, reduces the deficit.  It’s just common sense- which is why it’s so hard for DC to get behind it.

Problem is, the Republicans have painted themselves into a corner.  Do they really want to be the party that allowed American roads, airports, bridges and railways to crumble?

Probably….

Lots of talk and not solutions.  That’s today’s GOP…

One area the Republican party’s anti-spending crusade puts them in a bind is infrastructure spending. Repairing roads and bridges, modernization, etc. have historically been bipartisan priorities — but they’ve also always cost a lot of money.

Ask Republicans whether they want to include transportation infrastructure in their calls for broad spending cuts, and you don’t get a very specific answer.

“We’ve got to learn how to prioritize and do more with less in all areas of government,” said House Majority Leader Eric Cantor at his weekly press conference today. “It just is what it is. In the terms of transportation, we’ve got to figure out ways how to leverage dollars, how to come up with innovative ways to address the nation’s ailing transportation infrastructure.”

There’s a reason for that. Ask instead how they propose to upgrade the country’s transportation infrastructure without new spending, and it turns out there’s no simple answer.

“I don’t think anybody would tell you that our nation’s transportation infrastructure is in a state of existence that we would accept,” Cantor admitted.

More:   Republicans In A Fix On Infrastructure Spending | TPMDC.