patrick.net

Vewy well said! Let's hope OWS can similarly let people know Tweedledum and Tweedledledummer just aint good enough!

Time to support the people as against the banks, becuase the economy is about people (with effective demand) and the planet. The FIRE sector (finance, insurance and real estate) is meant to be the service sector, not up on an altar as the 1%'s plaything. www.thedepression.org.au

Patrick: I'm gonna be straight. You, Krugman, and the Commenter only have it 1/2 right, and the 1/2 you miss is HUGE. Yes, Obamao/Geithner/ have given huge $ to the banks esp QE1 and QE2 -- but Pelosi/Reid/Obama have ramped up federal spending in ALL forms to unimaginably large degrees. Right now the new baseline is $3.6T, fully $1.4T MORE than taxes coming in. $1.4T is so large, it's the equivalent of giving $20k to 70 million people -- this is the overspending that's into its 4th year. And it's NOT HELPING the private sector create jobs.
As much as Obama wants income redistribution -- zero income taxes for many, tax credits for many, food stamps to 45million, housing vouchers, unemployment bft lasting almost forever, etc, etc.......it doesn't work. FDR's Treasury Secy Morgenthau who helped him design the failed New Deal learned and admitted that, to Congress in 1938. Patrick: You should read "FDR New Deal or Raw Deal" and you'll learn why excessive govt control and taxation of the economy DOES NOT WORK, DIDN'T WORK, AND WON'T WORK. Then maybe you'll simmer down with your socialist-leanings and start to realize that complaining how bad things are for the middle class. It's NOT because the govt is NOT doing enough. How much do you and Krugman want the fed govt to spend, of future paychecks of our children? Yes, that's what it's coming to. Overspending -- 4 years now of $5-6T, is effectively adding 5 or 6 FULL years of future income taxes at today's $1T individual income tax rates. Even just the interest on this debt will be so burdensome, that our children will become tax slaves, if they're lucky enough to have decent jobs. Why don't you semi-socialists get this? Oh, and we can't just raise taxes by $500B or $1.5T per year, to 'solve' the problem. Because that would instantly crush the economy even more. I hope you at least already understand that. And you can't just raise taxes on high-earners to 40% from 35% and have it help more than a trickle -- that would only raise $100B/year, a veritable spit in the ocean of our current annual deficit. You people are infuriatingly dense. Go ahead, vote for Obama again Patrick. You voted for him, you loved him, now you're getting frustrated by him -- but you never seem to get the big picture of why he's so dangerous. He's a marxist at heart Patrick, heart, soul and brain. I went to Occidental with someone who knew him, see his 5 videos on youtube johndrew25 and you'll learn how Obama preferred marxism over capitalism......so did FDR basically......and least they loved how Stalin was improving the russian economy in the late '20s. How'd that work out?

sbourg says

you'll learn how Obama preferred marxism over capitalism......so did FDR basically..

Sure, debt is a huge problem, but your ideological extremism clouds the picture. At this point, capitalism is a ubiquitous system of economic exchange, and there are capitalists everywhere except for North Korea (which is pretty trippy to read about). But the big "C" free market Capitalism you espouse has become a fundamentalist religion, whose believers can't be shaken from their faith despite overwhelming evidence that unfettered greed has crashed the system.

The American economy now is like a money balloon where too much of the air has been squeezed into one end. Too few people have too much money now, so they can't possibly spend it all. And since other people don't have enough to spend, that 1% can't invest their billions in any easily profitable way. So we sit amidst mountains of stagnated money and resources, with infrastructures crumbling and real people suffering, waiting for the "invisible hand" to save us. Whatever.

It sure seems that between the New Deal and World War II the US Government spent a hell of a lot of money to get things moving again and end the Great Depression. Free market "starve the beast" activists seem hell bent on creating a stratified class structure with landowning nobles and penurious serfs, but that is not what made this country great. If they finally win and we kill the welfare state, then the quality of life in this country will continue to erode, so that countries Wall Street likes to bash (Japan, Canada, France) will emerge as so much healthier places to live that the rich will probably end up moving there.

Ignatius Pugg says

The American economy now is like a money balloon where too much of the air has been squeezed into one end. Too few people have too much money now, so they can't possibly spend it all. And since other people don't have enough to spend, that 1% can't invest their billions in any easily profitable way. So we sit amidst mountains of stagnated money and resources, with infrastructures crumbling and real people suffering, waiting for the "invisible hand" to save us. Whatever.

+1, Well-stated.

The fundamentalists of the free market fail to understand that in modern economy, money is both debt and an asset. They want you to fully focus on the debt, but ignore the asset part -- which should tell you a lot about whose side they're on.

Ignatius Pugg says

sbourg says

you'll learn how Obama preferred marxism over capitalism......so did FDR basically..

Sure, debt is a huge problem, but your ideological extremism clouds the picture. At this point, capitalism is a ubiquitous system of economic exchange, and there are capitalists everywhere except for North Korea (which is pretty trippy to read about). But the big "C" free market Capitalism you espouse has become a fundamentalist religion, whose believers can't be shaken from their faith despite overwhelming evidence that unfettered greed has crashed the system.

Yes, that's a good answer to sbourg's blind fundamentalist religion.

We have forced wealth redistribution, but it's forced redistribution from the 99% to the 1%, due to their owership of everyone else's work, and their lower taxes on that redistributed income. Yes, the middle class actually pays a higher tax rate than the 1%, mostly because of the unreasonably low capital gains tax. This is obviously unfair and gives the rich a huge incentive to be lazy owners rather than productive workers, but sbourg doesn't seem to notice.

The right answer is to eliminate all income taxes on actual work and to increase income taxes on non-productive income:

1. Do NOT tax work.
2. DO tax lazy ownership.

The right answer is to eliminate all income taxes on actual work and to increase income taxes on non-productive income:

1. Do NOT tax work.
2. DO tax lazy ownership.

If Henry George were alive, I'd vote for him.

The current bunch of politicians are either ideological demagogues (Ron Paul) or outright liars.

Tobin Tax? Is that the idea of a tiny tax like 0.1% on stock trades? Seems like a reasonable idea. It would discourage ultra-fast trading, which just doesn't seem like productive work. It's definitely more like a casino at that point.

Well said, Ignatius.

There is no fix for broker than broke. welcome to the new normal.

sbourg says

Patrick: I'm gonna be straight. You, Krugman, and the Commenter only have it 1/2 right, and the 1/2 you miss is HUGE.

Sorry pal, Krugman is almost always 100% right. In particular he is in right in this case.

Yes, Obamao/Geithner/ have given huge $ to the banks esp QE1 and QE2 -- but Pelosi/Reid/Obama have ramped up federal spending in ALL forms to unimaginably large degrees. Right now the new baseline is $3.6T, fully $1.4T MORE than taxes coming in. $1.4T is so large, it's the equivalent of giving $20k to 70 million people -- this is the overspending that's into its 4th year. And it's NOT HELPING the private sector create jobs.

You dumbass. It wasn't Obama that instituted large deficits. Go back and look at the BushII years (wikipedia is your friend) and you will get the data. The deficit did increase because we need to stimulate demand after the economy cratered in 2007 (also the fault of Reagan, Bush, Cheney and all the right wing war-mongering loonies that effectively ran the show for the last 30 years).

Now here is Paul Krugman again, schooling you about the truth of federal budgets and deficits:

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/the-obama-spending-non-surge/

and

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/29/the-truth-about-federal-spending/

If you had been paying attention at all instead of listening to proganda by the 1% self-styled "job creators", you would know that that jobs are created by DEMAND for goods and servies, not by "job creators. The "job creators" are simply responding to demand.

I fully expect you not to pay any attention to facts, but those are the facts. Enjoy.

POSTSCRIPT:

The Bush budgets (and yes, 2009 is a Bush budget) increased from 2T to 2.9T in 8 years, that is a 50% increase. How is that working for you?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_United_States_federal_budget

The ratio of governmental spending to GDP is now 46.6%. Supply economics tax cuts under Bush have reduced Federal revenues $4 trillion over the last 10 years. This has resulted in having less jobs in the Country in 2011 than in 2001 accoding to the BLS. Supply side economics is a fraudulent scheme to help the rich and cheat the rest.

In no way did libertarianism have any involvement with the removal of Glass-Steagall and deregulation of the financial industry. This was blatant regulatory capture by crony capitalists.

bgamall4 says

The libertarians ALREADY FAILED. No one likes Geithner, as he allowed Paulson to spread bogus CDO's throughout the world with no regulation while he was Pres of the NY Fed. He is a Fed Troll to be sure.

Liberertarianism didn't fail, neither did Keynesiansim, or any other economic system. Crony capitalism pays lip service to all these philosophies and the men and women who dedicated their lives to them, then does whatever benefits those who pay for elections. What we have in place is the economic equivalent of a frankenstein monster stitching together elements of monetarism, Austrian economics, Keynesians, and the spleen of merchantilism. The way TPTB get what they want is convincing Libertarians to attack the Keynsian parts and Progressives to go after the Austrian parts, but the monster as a whole keeps moving foreward. If we just quit the bickering and attack the monster, we might get somewhere.

bgamall4 says

Of course it failed. Libertarians got what they wanted in the UK. You can continue to allow banks to be deregulated until the cows come home and you will get massive financial bubbles. You failed. Admit it. We have to put to death the idea that deregulation works. Regulation is sometimes overruled but Glass-Steagall worked for decades.

Firstly, I'm NOT a libertarian. I am a die hard behavioralist. Libertarianism is like communism. In both cases we'd have a utopia if their ideas could be translated into the real world, but neither belief system can, so we end up with tyrany when we try. Human beings bring an evolutionary mindset that won't permit either ideology to be implemented perfectly, or even well enough to function. As Shakespeare wrote in Julius Ceasar "the fault was not in our stars but in ourselves". If something can't be put into practice, it can't fail. The phony libertarian/keynesian/monitarist/merchantilist hybrid monster failed. If it hadn't, we'd still be blissfully unawares that the banksters rule our government. The fact that we know and are trying to reign them in (albeit unsuccessully so far) is proof it failed. Blaming individual economic schools of thought or the philosophers and economists that spawned them is what the cronies want. Attack each other, not the source of our problems, their capturing of our government and the wealth inequity that they spawned.

I agree we need to re-regulate the financial industry and a few other unruly players that threaten true capitalism, but to do that, we need to rescue out government and throw the crony parasites out first. Otherwise the re-regulation will be filled with massive loopholes and only serve to force small business to play by the rules, while larger competitors can write in their own exemptions, allowing them to crush what little competition they have and make the problem worse.

futuresmc says

Attack each other, not the source of our problems, their capturing of our government and the wealth inequity that they spawned.

I agree every word of what you said.

The biggest problem in America today is 'Legalized Corruption and a Broken Republic'.

bgamall4 says

Regulation is sometimes overruled but Glass-Steagall worked for decades.

What part of GS prevented consumers from believing homes values/prices appreciate at speculative levels of 10-20-50% ?
Even if we had GS, the bubble would not have been prevented since it started in 1997.

Consumers/Media call the current state of housing market as "depressed" even though it has gone back down to more reasonable levels. Does the current consumer and media believe home prices will go back up suddenly. Sure seems that way.

Furthermore, the Dems continue to point to mortgages as causes of the bubble, YET EVEN TODAY, not one has stated that HOME were extremely OVERPRICED to begin with...

Fact is ...even on Pnet, many who are pro-regulation dismiss the irrational behavior of buyers which stated this mess...

But they are just brainwashed in only seeing evil bankers and crony capitalism.

Boy I will say this and that is after the money printing party is over,the food stamps cut in half the extended unemployment benefits cut off,50 to 60% reduction in government pensions cut some with know pensions,medicaid and medicare cut off for most and a cut in social security just as the last jobs leave for cheaper labour the shit will hit the fan like no tomorrow.This country will be one big hell whole all created by the 1% and it will be one open sewer that the other 99% will have to live in a I bet most of the 1% have left this country for greener pastures.

I see alot of semi-socialists, big-govt-lovers, and 1% bashers, including Patrick. Most of you seem to blame the bankers, banks, other 1%'ers, and somehow you think liberty & freedom caused the housing bubble/crisis ? And somehow you think that the ginormous federal spending and intervention into the economy in the 1930s and 1/2 of the 1940s finally created 'demand' after 15 years so that 1945 finally saw improvement? Really? Is that how it happened in your worldview? So we should follow Krugman's advice to spend more and more and more, and maybe after 15 years we'll have a '1945 moment' again? Really? Fellas, after a few more years of this, we'll have a very tough time servicing the $20T or $25T debt, wouldn't you think? I think the Greek govt tried this excessive spending and if no one bails them out again, they'll finally default, explode and the big-govt-nanny-state will topple down. That will happen here, too, if this continues the way you all want.
Patrick: You can't have the govt basically confiscate the wealth of the 'lazy 1%'ers' and have that supply the revenue to help the deficit. Won't work and isn't Constitutional.....federal govt can't just confiscate property and call that a tax -- at least I hope not. It's time to leave this country if your idea gets implemented. I certainly would, and I'm not in the 1%.
All you 'anti-libertarians' who bash unfettered capitalism and its greed, FAIL to understand that 'freedom' did NOT cause the housing bubble/disaster. It was 99% govt-caused -- read this -- this woman is 10x smarter than Krugman:
http://theaffordablemortgagedepression.com/2010/03/11/origin-of-the-housing-bubble-the-national-homeownership-strategy.aspx

To Mr. "Justme": First of all, you should be banned by Patrick for swearing at people. It gives a hint of your intellectual status. And relying on Krugman is just weak. Yes, I read your 'stuff' by Krugman. He tries SO HARD to reach his conclusions that Obama/Pelosi/Reid and the current federal spending baseline of $3.5T is not very large -- he compares it to how high the GDP should have grown. Really? You can't make this stuff up, but Krugman tries. I 've read Krugman ALOT, the first time was 8-9 years ago when he was contemplating his naval and bemoaning the fact that the highest earners make a high multiple of pay compared to poor people. So what? Steve Jobs, Warren Buffett and Bill Gates have certainly created alot of good, high paying jobs under them, haven't they? So what if they make $100m/year or $1B/year. But Krugman seems to obsess on inanities. He is the most intellectually bankrupt 'expert' imaginable.

I beg to differ. Take the (formerly) great state of California, where I lived for 13 years til '87 -- it's a microcosm of our country, approx 1/10th of our country -- and the liberal utopian dreams, manifested by an all-powerful state govt, with innumerable state depts, regulations millions of state employees, with very high pay, lifetime bfts (just check out www.pensiontsunami.com ), not the mention the millions of illegals and the problems therefrom.........and govt overspending (and certainly not undertaxing)......all these reasons why businesses and job-creators are leaving the state. It has become, because of Democrats running the state for 40 years and their policies, a disaster of epic proportions. You really think the bankers are to blame, more important than all those other reasons? Really? Does that translate to Greece as well? Greece is going down the tubes. You don't think their semi-socialism, govt cradle to grave benefits, govt largesse and taxes so huge that many people give up and don't pay taxes. You think the bankers are to blame?

Thank you sbourg!

Justme, Krugman sounds like Biden with his zany philospy of, "We have to go spend money to keep not from going bankrupt." Now, I appreciate Krugman as a comedian, but not as economist. The last time Krugman was funny was when he wrote about the 'Theory of Relativity' impact on compound interest.

Keynesian theory died with the Obama's and Bush's administration. Obama, is amazingly, a much more worst president than Bush.

sbourg, just like I thought, you could not be bothered with facts. Instead you are attacking the messenger (be it Krugman or myself) as being flawed.

Come back sometime when you are ready to have a rational (that includes fact-based) discussion.

http://thoughtcatalog.com/2011/how-to-have-a-rational-discussion/

Everyone else can enjoy the facts as presented by Krugman.

To Justme: What fact did I ignore? First, you ignored ALL my facts in my first long Comment. Now you think I ignored your fact.....your rebuttal went like this:
"sbourg thinks the federal govt spending $3.5T now is too much.......I'll tell him that in the 8 years of Bush, fed spending went from 2.xT to $2.8T, and that will prove to sbourg that $3.5T now is not too much....because Bush increased alot in 8 years and Obama increased alot in 3 years......and I'll link a Krugman article saying $3.5T is not too much because if the GDP had grown what it was supposed to 'grow at', then $3.5T would not appear to be so much."
Is that pretty much your logic? Or is it more or less complicated? That's what you put out there.

Birchtree: You NAILED IT!! And it's not only zany Biden's backwards logic -- it's Pelosi's, Reid's, Obama's, Krugman's -- we'll stimulate the economy and get it back on track by ramping up unemployment ins, food stamps, big bucks to states we like so they can keep overspending, medicaid, fed dept of education, and on and on, and we'll call it STIMULUS. And we'll stop right before our fiscal disaster hits the wall!! Right before we look like Greece, Italy, Spain, Ireland, or Portugal. We're alot smarter than they are because we can PRINT MONEY!

sbourg, you are making progress.

Now, how about the fact that when there is falling DEMAND for product, businesses will fire people and not hire people? Can you agree on that one, too? Can you agree that falling GDP means falling demand? No rational businessperson will hire people when demand is falling.

Which begs the question, where is demand going to come from? Please answer that.

Yes, that is part of the puzzle, I agree. But it's a complicated puzzle and govt spending that borrows and results in higher future taxes --when taxes are already ginormous -- govt overspending simply kicks the can down the road and we've come too far now with $15T debt. If interest rates ever hit 5% on that, WE'RE TOAST. So why keep overspending to this monstrous degree. Has to be ramped down. $3.6T, then $3.4T, then $3.2T, each year until it's in balance with federal revenues.
And can't you agree with the economic principle that all taxes, not just over-taxes, reduce the vitality of the private sector, reduce the wealth-creation of workers in private sector, increase their working careeers, etc. Taxes are a necessary evil, not something that should overburden everyone as they do now.

sbourg,

Good we can agree that falling demand is a problem.

>>the economic principle that all taxes, not just over-taxes, reduce the vitality of the private sector,

Nope. It is not true that "all taxes" reduce the vitality of the private sector", if by vitality you mean total output. Even Phillips himself, of the famed and much misused Phillips curve, would agree with that. Did you see him on PBS on Thursday?

>>Taxes are a necessary evil,

Nope, taxes are a net positive in general. Without taxes we would still be ruled by feudal warlords and living at the end of dirt roads (and sad to say we have been regressing back towards that system from 1980-2011, at least).

>> --when taxes are already ginormous -- govt overspending simply kicks the can down the road

The problem has been and continues to be that the wealthy have been severely undertaxed since 1980. Here is the history of marginal tax rates:

http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=213

Of course the wealthy 1% are worried about the debt, since they may actually finally have to contribute what they should to pay it off. That is in a nutshell what all the jammering is about, but they hide behind lies and propaganda.

And then there is the capital gains tax rate, which has also been much too low (lower than what middle class people pay on regular income, and it is even a flat tax, not progressive at all)

http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=161

BONUS:

Krugman on debt, with a historical perspective. Look at the graph:

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/31/a-thought-on-debt-history/

And while I am at it, look at how median family income is severely lagging GDP/capita, starting around 1981

(you might have guessed , correctly, that early 1980s would be the timing, for Reaganomics reasons)

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/14/things-were-supposed-to-be-quiet-about/

I just love it when Krugman posts DATA like this. All the lies and all the propaganda just crumbles when counteracted with real DATA.

Patrick/JustMe/GaryAnderson, et al: According to you all, if we just taxed the 1%ers more, and stopped the greedy speculation by the banks with the money given to them by Obama/Geithner, then we'd be on our way to prosperity. Back in the boom-decades the highest tax rates were so much higher and our middle-class did so much better. Is that just about your thesis?
Never mind that those highest tax rates were paid by almost no one, our manufacturing ramped up with american ingenuity and europe/japan infrastructure destruction by 1945, and never-mind that correlation does not imply causation. Would you argue the high marginal tax rates were responsible for the boom-decades? If so, I'd like to see some causation, because of course they weren't the cause.
All this whistling by the graveyard, of you guys thinking if we just did x and y we'd be in much better shape, is sad. Don't you read about the financial crumbling of CA, IL, Detroit, RI, NY.......these are 'blue' areas dominated by big-govt, and big-govt pay/bfts, and illegal immigration problems, high regulations on small businesses, etc, etc. And nationally, the debt we're accumulating will come back to haunt us and crush us (hopefully just temporarily)......but the HUGE pensions promised, and being paid to govt workers will be cut drastically unless the pension assets earn 8% returns the next 10 years, which they won't.
You all really should read more variety: pensiontsunami.com, market-ticker.org, globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com, instapundit.com.
We're in BIG trouble, and it's NOT because the 1%ers aren't taxed enough. Even one of Obama's idiot economic-advisors admitted to me in an email exchange a few weeks ago, that it would not be smart to raise taxes on ANYONE much less the high-income-earners, during a period of economic trouble such as we're in now.
BTW, FDR did it in 1933, and much more -- read about the NRA -- and all his policies made the Depression much worse and much more lengthy. Didn't end until he died and Truman announced that he'd improve the business regulatory environment and be a friend of American businesses -- that's a fact.
So start reading more variety, and maybe you'll bash the 1%ers and bankers a little less. Start with: www.theaffordablemortgagedepression.com
to see part of the problem you've might not been aware of. Cheers!

sbourg says

You all really should read more variety: pensiontsunami.com, market-ticker.org, globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com, instapundit.com.

I read two out of these four (BR and CR) every day. What makes you think you know what I read, in general? I can't speak for Barry Ritholtz and Calculated Risk with authority, but my distinct feeling is that neither one of them agrees with your thesis on taxes.

sbourg says

Would you argue the high marginal tax rates were responsible for the boom-decades?

Strawman argument. Nobody claimed that high taxes were "responsible" for the boom. What *I* implied was that high marginal tax rates did NOT HINDER the economy as a whole, and was a net positive.

sbourg says

We're in BIG trouble, and it's NOT because the 1%ers aren't taxed enough.

More strawmen. Nobody said it was ONLY because the 1% were not taxed enough. It was also because the 1%, including bankers, were speculating like crazy with OUR bank deposit money, after first having corrupted congress and the regulatory agencies.

Also please understand that 30 years of unfunded tax cuts for the 1% is one of the major causes of the public debt, along with the illegal wars we entered into at the behest of George W. Bush. These are both unproductive debt. Debt incurred to stop depression, OTOH, is productive.

sbourg says

FDR did it in 1933, and much more -- read about the NRA -- and all his policies made the Depression much worse and much more lengthy. Didn't end until he died and Truman announced that he'd improve the business regulatory environment and be a friend of American businesses -- that's a fact.

That's not a fact. The depression dragged on because there was not enough DEMAND, and stimulus was too low. Once again, if you read Krugman, you would know that what stopped the great depression was the ultimate stimulus and DEBT program: World War II.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/oh-what-a-lovely-war/

And before you get in a tizzy about Krugman being a war monger, as if that was ever true, here is another one.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/24/anti-keynesian-switcheroos/

sbourg says

So start reading more variety, and maybe you'll bash the 1%ers and bankers a little less. Start with: www.theaffordablemortgagedepression.com
to see part of the problem you've might not been aware of. Cheers!

That link is to a web site dedicated to the very wrong idea that the government was the cause of the housing bubble.

This BS is what Barry Ritholz (loc. cit) calls THE BIG LIE. You can read about it here

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/11/the-big-lie/

So sbourg, pretty much everything you said in that last post is wrong. I fully understand how difficult is to throw off the yoke of 30 years of right-wing lies and propaganda, but it is time to do so.

Folks, enough with all this back and forth about too much government or not enough government. It's not the government that is at fault here. The government can share in some of the fault for laying out the drug/easy credit and the Kool aid but the fault lies with the real purpetrator and that is the entire American public. Americans all thought that they could administrate and speculate themselves a living and paycheck. All Americans actually believed that they were better than real work. 70% of the 99% hasn't really worked/WORKED at their jobs in 3 decades. They shuffled among papers and computer screens between coffee breaks and actually thought they deserved an $80K a year salary for doing it. NOT! The American Middle Class have all become Fat, Dumb and Happy and are totally addicted to football, pornography and consumerism as so stated by Paul Craig Roberts. We have the government we deserve. In fact, we have earned much worse from our complacent and greedy/lazy attitude. Lastly, Americans haven't done shit to earn good government, a safe country, fair laws or their freedoms. They have lived and totally survived as cattle and don't act like people anymore. So how do you handle a herd of cattle? Exactly the way we are being led to the slaughter house right now.

Raven Stole My Potato says

but the fault lies with the real purpetrator and that is the entire American public.

Sort of. The american public in general has fallen prey to 30+ years of relentless right-wing propaganda.

Yes, the public has imitated the richest 1% in pursuit of rents and business freebies, and they have responsibility too, but most Americans did not participate directly in the housing bubble.

The American public has not truly had a real government BY the 99%, FOR the 99%, for the last 30 years. Even Clinton was so constrained by the Republican loonies in congress that he could not get it all done. He did a great job under the circumstances, but not nearly enough.

referenced by sbourg: http://www.youtube.com/embed/HEQ6L2QIMUo&list=UUBo6wgTHF-8vzTjZ3_lEe0g&index=4&feature=plcp

Zachary,

Oh please. This is the kind of tripe propaganda that the Republican party is fielding against Obama?

"Obama does not look at America like the rest of us do, like a shining city on a hill...." [this is a reference to a speech by Ronald Reagan].

Barf. What absolute drivel. Can these clowns not argue about the substance of policy, instead of making this emo-porn propaganda speeches? I guess not. They have no substance, so they resort to misleading the Republican sheep with this kind of drivel.

justme says

The american public in general has fallen prey to 30+ years of relentless right-wing propaganda.

The public sucks. F--k hope.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/xIraCchPDhk

(George Carlin) Funny and with more than a few grains of truth.

What Carlin does not say is that the it is the STRUCTURE of our political system that is fundamentally unsound.

With an unsound structure, you get unsound results.

sbourg says

BTW, FDR did it in 1933, and much more -- read about the NRA -- and all his policies made the Depression much worse and much more lengthy. Didn't end until he died and Truman announced that he'd improve the business regulatory environment and be a friend of American businesses -- that's a fact.

That is a statement of complete and utter bullshit.

oh really, tatupu70 ? That's the best you can do -- swearing/name-calling ? That's the rebuttal of someone who has no argument to defend your position.

Zachary : That's your 'take-away' ? You are utterly clueless to think that 1 second of John Drew's characterization of Obama is simplistic to a degree you think makes no sense. This short sentence happens to be proven by everything John Drew (who I went to school with at Occidental, and who knows something about marxism) -- this short sentence is proven by everything John and I know about Obama.
Zachary: What do you know about Obama to the contrary? Answer: Nothing.

You're a know-nothing, who slams other beliefs with no substance. Nice going. I hope your middle-school kids learn more about defending their beliefs. You're a simpleton, a 'mud-thrower'. Hope you're happy, again, with your vote for Obama this year.

Patrick, JustMe, GaryAnderson, Tatupu, Zachary and you other semi-socialists out there: will your extra 5% marginal taxes on the 'rich', and $100B/year LESS spending on the military doing whatever you disagree with.....and more regulations on the banks.......actually produce your utopian vision? Are those your answers? Will they add up to a more prosperous middle-class in the private sector?
Really ??? If you think that........and apparently you do....you're all semi-retarded, and that's being kind. See how that's going for Greece, Italy, France, England, Spain, Portugal. Oh, I know.......you think Norway is perfection......well they drill the living daylights out of their resources, and they don't have an underclass of illegals.......so they're not a fair comparison. We can't copy them. Sorry... can't.

Freedom is the answer........smaller govt, smaller taxes, more energy independence by permitting energy-production, getting rid of illegal immigrants permitting our own citizens to get jobs, getting the federal govt OUT of the private sector.......etc.

You SEMI-SOCIALISTS have NO ANSWERS THAT MAKE ANY SENSE.