patrick.net

egads101 says

Well, then the dems should also refuse to raise the debt ceiling until:

1. gay marriage is legal everywhere.

2. pot is legal

3. amnesty for the dreamers (illegals brought here as children, who go to college)

etc.

why the F not? if you repub a holes can threaten the economy if they don't get what they want, why not the dems, who control the senate and the presidency? They should have twice the right to play this way!

Dems are trying very hard to raise debt ceiling, I don't think they will ever oppose an idea of more spending. And I don't think they care much for pot or gays either... that's just a few weirdos who are into homosexuality in the bay area.

FortWayne says

Dems are trying very hard to raise debt ceiling, I don't think they will ever oppose an idea of more spending

Increasing the debt ceiling does causes exactly ZERO new spending to occur.

tatupu70 says

FortWayne says

Dems are trying very hard to raise debt ceiling, I don't think they will ever oppose an idea of more spending

Increasing the debt ceiling does causes exactly ZERO new spending to occur.

No, it allows government to spend us into debt slavery. If I give you a credit card and let you max it ... you'll max it out. And if I give you an increase in spending, you'll max that out too. It's common sense.

FortWayne says

Everything is negotiable.

And that's not new, our rights have been negotiable for quite some time... especially where NSA is concerned. So if rights are negotiable, laws are negotiable too.

Sure, but if you want the other side to give up a law they sincerely believe is very important, indeed necessary; a law fought they for against long odds, and frankly paid a large price in political capitol to get enacted, then you'd better have something VERY LARGE to offer in return. I don't know what that would be...a return to Eisenhower tax rates? It would have to be HUGE. Saying that you won't burn down the whole Government for one year, after which you will extort something else, is not offering anything in return.

What is our present condition? We have just carried an election on principles fairly stated to the people. Now we are told in advance, the government shall be broken up, unless we surrender to those we have beaten, before we take the offices. In this they are either attempting to play upon us, or they are in dead earnest. Either way, if we surrender, it is the end of us, and of the government. They will repeat the experiment upon us ad libitum.
-Abraham Lincoln, 1861

FortWayne says

No, it allows government to spend us into debt slavery. If I give you a credit card and let you max it ... you'll max it out

I have a credit card and I never max it out.

If you want to stop spending--put forth a budget with less spending.

I figure a lot of people have had a chance to cash-out on their house with this recent jump in prices coming so close to the last jump. That has shaken out a lot of activity. Now people will settle-in to their houses and stay put. So prices will steady for a few years.

Or is there always a group waiting to cash out? The investors will cash-out in force at some point. They seem to just move all over any market they involve.

tatupu70 says

FortWayne says

No, it allows government to spend us into debt slavery. If I give you a credit card and let you max it ... you'll max it out

I have a credit card and I never max it out.

If you want to stop spending--put forth a budget with less spending.

That's because you actually have to pay it back, politicians are spending our money so they don't have to care... they don't get to pay it back. They just get to enjoy spending it.

bdrasin says

Saying that you won't burn down the whole Government for one year, after which
you will extort something else, is not offering anything in return.

He he, but you must understand that the crazies that have managed to somehow shut down the government think that a temper tantrum is an effective and rational form of legislating. If you give in to their childish ways, they'll revert back to them again and again to satisfy their wants/needs, just like a baby that cries until it is picked up by it's mother.

The teabag morons' cause isn't noble, it's self centered as is everything that those mopes do. A lot of those teabag idiots are up for election in the next general election, and if the recent past elections are any indication of their future, they know that they have to amp up the hysteria, or they're back to irrelevant status, with no political future whatsoever.

FortWayne says

That's because you actually have to pay it back, politicians are spending our money so they don't have to care... they don't get to pay it back. They just get to enjoy spending it.

So, according to your analogy, the solution is not to put restrictions on credit card use. Your solution is to piss on the bill when it comes.

If you pay cash for a house, maybe all you care about is monthly positive cash flow with an asset you can sell years later for more than you paid.

It's like stocks, but with much higher dividends and an almost guarantee to be able to sell at a profit.

Whereas a goofball CEO and clowny board of directors can kill a company, it's very hard to kill a house. Even if the tenants burn it down you can rebuild with insurance money and make it even more valuable.

It's different this time.

APOCALYPSEFUCK is Comptroller says

Wow, what assholes. Housing valuations have never ever fallen. Everyone knows that.

Can we turn our focus back to Benghazi?

tatupu70 says

put forth a budget with less spending.

Ha ha ha! Good one!

Neither party will do that.

exfatguy says:"... burn it down you can rebuild with insurance money and make it even more valuable."

Don't give this crew any ideas. Wait! there's smoke coming out of my screen.

tatupu70 says

FortWayne says

That's because you actually have to pay it back, politicians are spending our money so they don't have to care... they don't get to pay it back. They just get to enjoy spending it.

So, according to your analogy, the solution is not to put restrictions on credit card use. Your solution is to piss on the bill when it comes.

My solution is to cut the government credit card.

FortWayne says

My solution is to cut the government credit card.

Which political party will advance your solution?

FortWayne says

My solution is to cut the government credit card.

Then you agree that we have to raise the debt ceiling, right?

tatupu70 says

FortWayne says

My solution is to cut the government credit card.

Then you agree that we have to raise the debt ceiling, right?

No, cut the spending and reduce the debt ceiling.

FortWayne says

No, cut the spending and reduce the debt ceiling.

So, you are in favor of US defaulting? Not honoring our debts?

You know you might be crazy if ...
the president of the US will negotiate with Assad, but he will not negotiate with you.

egads101 says

then the dems should also refuse to raise the debt ceiling until:

The Democrats should simply pass a bill stating that when the debt ceiling is reached, funding will be cut from the military first until military spending is reduced by 90%, and then funding will be cut from farm subsidies until such subsidies are reduced to 0%, and then funding will be cut from all remaining discretionary spending uniformly as necessary.

And before the Republicans get to try to filibuster it, Obama should issue an executive order preventing the use of a filibuster on this issue and mandating an up or down vote citing national security as justification. Any senator that objects gets a one-way ticket to Gitmo under the USA Patriot Act and the NSDA.

Unfortunately, Obama is such an evil fuck, he'd never do this. A real reformer would.

Dan8267 says

The Democrats should simply pass a bill stating that when the debt ceiling is reached, funding will be cut from the military first until military spending is reduced by 90%, and then funding will be cut from farm subsidies until such subsidies are reduced to 0%

Our whole economy is based on perpetual war and cheap HFCS. Be careful what you wish for.

freak80 says

Dan8267 says

white color crime

Wait did you mean "white collar crime" (i.e. corporate crime)? What is "white color" crime? I figure it's just a typo.

Freudian slip. The Daily Show did a good segment on this regarding New York City's stop and frisk policy. Basically, stop and frisk should be applied to white collar, financial crimes. If you fit a certain profile (male, white, balding, in a suit, in the financial district), then you should be stopped and frisked by cops. That's not prejudice, it's just good police profiling.

egads101 says

It will be very hard for the renter to come out ahead of the owner....

Yeah, if I ever saw numbers like that I'd buy in a second. In San Francisco, they've almost been the other way around.

John Bailo says

Shutdown Government is the Conservatives version of Occupy Wall Street.

Ow! Best analogy ever.

Dan8267 says

Unfortunately, Obama is such an evil fuck, he'd never do this. A real reformer would.

Yes, removing the power of the Majority from the House would be "real reform", LOL

Just as Americans in general do not have the habits of deference, so the conservative in America does not have them either. Ultimately he does not defer even to the country’s institutions. If one of these institutions, such as the Supreme Court, makes decisions he detests, he will defame that institution. He is as ready as is the common man to bypass the institutions he ought to defend … The America which Europe fears is the America of the Reaganites. The America once of the Scopes trial; the America of prohibition; the America of ignorant isolationism. The America then of ‘‘"better dead than red’’; the America of McCarthyism; the America of the last fundamentalists of the 1950s. The America now of the new evangelicals; the America of the Moral Majority; the America of a now ignorant interventionism; the America which can see homosexuals as a conspiracy; feminists as a conspiracy; perhaps even women as a conspiracy.

The America of fear. For it is in fear that the ungoverned and the unfree are doomed to live. And there was this America in control at Detroit. It is time that we reminded ourselves, and said aloud and more often, that it is from these people that nastiness comes. It is time that we pointed out to the neo-conservatives that democracy has never been subverted from the left but always from the right.

– Henry Fairlie, 1980.

FortWayne says

Everything is negotiable.

And that's not new, our rights have been negotiable for quite some time... especially where NSA is concerned. So if rights are negotiable, laws are negotiable too.

Okay, then in a few years, let's get a group of radical democrats in congress who threaten to defund the government and not raise the debt dealing, unless tax rates on high incomes (250K and up) go back to Eisenhower levels.

tatupu70 says

FortWayne says

No, cut the spending and reduce the debt ceiling.

So, you are in favor of US defaulting? Not honoring our debts?

They can pay the debt off while spending less on everything else at the same time. But if we let them raise the debt, eventually the only thing we'll be paying will be debt and won't be able to afford any services.

FortWayne says

cut the spending

that's easier said than done. What $1T+ would you cut?

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/year2014_US.html

Remember, each $100B you cut is going to fuck over ~5 million people, since without Uncle Sugar so much of our so-called economy would just dry up and blow away.

Bellingham Bill says

Yes, removing the power of the Majority from the House would be "real reform", LOL

I think you mean "minority" as the filibuster is always used by the party not in control.

Although some people make the case that the filibuster is necessary to prevent tyranny of a majority, there are two reasons I don't buy that. One, a super-majority can already end a filibuster and a super-majority is the real threat of a "majority tyranny".

Two, I have never seen the filibuster used to do anything other than evil, save for one case when Rand Paul used it to bring attention to the evilness of drone attacks and that case was ineffective. Filibusters have been used primarily for vileness like blocking the Civil Rights Act. The filibuster does not have a good track record for ethical use.

Bellingham Bill says

that's easier said than done. What $1T+ would you cut?

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/year2014_US.html

Your chart shows 529 Billion in Welfare alone. Then another 509 Billion under Vendor Payments (Welfare).

That's more then 1T and it took me less than a minute to find it, using the webpage you provided. That was easy! I could get to a total of 2T in spending by cutting education as well. With more time I could trim more of the fat and pay off the deficit in less than a decade.

Bellingham Bill says

FortWayne says

cut the spending

that's easier said than done. What $1T+ would you cut?

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/year2014_US.html

Remember, each $100B you cut is going to fuck over ~5 million people, since without Uncle Sugar so much of our so-called economy would just dry up and blow away.

But it has to be done, the later we do it the worse it will get. So might as well start now. I'd cut Welfare and Defense right off the bat and debt would be paid off pretty darn quick.

zzyzzx says

Your chart shows 529 Billion in Welfare alone. Then another 509 Billion under Vendor Payments (Welfare).

Congratulations, every city in the US blows up.

These welfare checks don't disappear into black holes, they result in demand all across the nation.

As for subsidized education, yeah, we could certainly cut that too.

Fuck people, this is a nation of the taxpayers, by the taxpayers, for the taxpayers. Everyone gets the education they can afford, and not one drop more.

Glibertarians simply discredit themselves by opening their stupid mouths.

Bellingham Bill says

These welfare checks don't disappear into black holes, they result in demand all across the nation.

They also create a nation of welfare queens who instead of rising to the occasion just sink to the bottom, because that is the easiest option.

zzyzzx says

Then another 509 Billion under Vendor Payments (Welfare).

That was medicaid you just eliminated, btw. People now get the health care they can afford, and not one drop more.

FortWayne says

They also create a nation of welfare queens who instead of rising to the occasion just sink to the bottom, because that is the easiest option.

How about you try living off of welfare for a couple of months, then come back here and tell us how "easy" it was.

tatupu70 says

FortWayne says

They also create a nation of welfare queens who instead of rising to the occasion just sink to the bottom, because that is the easiest option.

How about you try living off of welfare for a couple of months, then come back here and tell us how "easy" it was.

I've had neighbors who were on welfare. While I was out working all day long busting my back, they were partying all day. Government paid their apartment rent, their electricity, their food and healthcare. All they did is occasionally sell some of those stamps to get cash, or work part time for cash somewhere.

It might not be the easiest life from a perspective of a person who has a lot. But for them that's a lot eaiser than actually getting a job and working their way into something.

welfare is a patch on a broken system.

problem is the glibertarians don't have anything less dysfunctional in trade.

Their "more freedom" solve-all is fatally flawed by how the Monopoly board is divvied up and the fact that money is power, and lack of money is lack of power, and return to capital ("interest") will always win out over return to labor ("wages"), since interest never sleeps.

you want the fat-ass welfare queens to get a job, give them the real opportunity by making more societal and human capital available to them.

This would be a multi-generational project.

The conservative "got mine fuck you" mindset isn't going to solve things. Quite the opposite.

FortWayne says

While I was out working all day long busting my back, they were partying all day.

While you were out working all day, I got myself an education. Now I don't have to do manual labor outside all day.

yeah, not that I'd want to be a poor minority, but when you're in the middle you feel squeezed on both ends.

And it's true! PPACA's premium subsidies cut-off at $45,000, so if you make more than that, no partially-free ride for you!

and when you get into the high five-figures, the more the 25% marginal rate + 10% FICA + 9.3% state rate bites.

Meanwhile Romney is paying 15% (if that) on his multi-millions.