Are Republicans holding the US back?

[Lantianguo]

Tax cuts did not work, do you really think rich people hire people because they have money? They hire people to increase productivity. Second, if tax cuts really work US will be swimming in jobs.

It appears the overwhelming preponderance of peer reviewed research supports the claim that that higher taxes reduce growth.

Hence, can it be logically concluded that lower taxes increase growth?

Only to a point. Remember not to extrapolate on data as if you're interpolating: if you tax at 0%, your revenue won't reach infinity.

It's called the Laffer Curve. If you're on the right-side, as most nations back in the 1970s were, then a decent tax cut will lead to a rise in net revenue. If you're on the left-side, as the US almost certainly is now (Clinton-era rates produced a higher revenue than Bush-era rates), then a tax raise leads to a rise in net revenue.

[Ashmoria]

ya but how old were you then? I was well over40 and recognize bs when I was being fed it.

I was 10. But still, my parents believed them, and they weren't even all that conservative.

I think they just didn't think anyone would have the audacity to lie about something like that.

it is hard to accept.

I thought they were wrong not so much that they were making it up.

[Wamitoria]

I was 10. But still, my parents believed them, and they weren't even all that conservative.

I think they just didn't think anyone would have the audacity to lie about something like that.

it is hard to accept.

I thought they were wrong not so much that they were making it up.

That's how my parents felt around 2005.

Then after everyone began realizing what the Bush administration was up to, well... let's just say that I could tell them that George W. Bush kicks puppies for a living and they'd believe me.

[Alien Space Bats]

Oh please. If you compare the spending of a typical conservative and a typical liberal, it won't be that hard to see who ends up spending more. I consider myself a moderate, and have sided with Republican and Democrat presidential candidates in the past, but don't even try to say that Conservatives spend more than Liberals.

So just what is the maximum amount conservatives think we should spend on national defense?

I mean, is there actually a number, like "15% of GDP"? Or is it flexible, like "Everything we can tax away from the poor and the working class without them actually rioting?"

Considering how much intelligence spending has grown since 9/11, and considering the degree to which the CIA has become the equivalent of another uniformed military service (save without the uniforms, because that would sort of defeat the purpose), would you be surprised to learn that we're probably spending a greater share of GDP on defense than we were at the height of the freaking Cold War?

And would you be surprised to learn that conservatives still don't think that's enough?

The primary reason for conservative presidents' spending is to protect American freedom.

I want to hear how American freedom was in danger in Iraq.

<pause>

No, seriously, I really do. I haven't had a good horselaugh in years.

At the time, we thought that Saddam was supporting al-Qaeda (I think that's how you spell it), but it turned out that Saddam was against Osama. 9/11 was originally thought to be Iraq's fault.

Who is this "we"? You mean people who get their news from FOX, or serious people who get their news and information from multiple independent news outlets?

Because I sure as shit didn't think that Saddam was supporting Al-Qaeda; I fucking knew better ― I fucking knew that Saddam and Osama hated each other's guts because any sensible person who'd been following events in that part of the world for the past decade and had an attention span of more than 30 seconds knew that. I mean, it really wasn't rocket science, and it really wasn't any secret, either.

Likewise, I knew that Dick Cheney's misbegotten efforts to blame Saddam for 9/11 were complete and total bullshit, for much the same reasons I indicated above. I knew that Cheney and his fellow travelers at PNAC (Project for the New American Century) were trying to pull off a bait-and-switch. And because I wasn't born yesterday, I didn't believe them for a second.

Neither did a whole lot of us, a/k/a the Iraq anti-war movement. We weren't fooled, so why in the fuck were you?

[Hathradic States]

No more than the leftist hold us back.

[Alien Space Bats]

My view is this: we cannot saddle the next generation with trillions of dollars in debt with no hope of paying it back.

So you wouldn't have borrowed money to defeat the Axis in World War II?

Because we never paid that debt off, you know.

<pause>

Seriously, the last time we were debt-free as a country was in 1837, when Andrew Jackson insisted on paying off the whole freaking National debt. The thing is, he crashed the economy doing it, and the government was forced to go back to borrowing money again.

So maybe it's all that land west of the Mississippi (i.e., Louisiana) that you think we shouldn't have bought, in order to remain debt-free?

Since it was big spending that got us into this mess, spending needs to be cut to get us out.

Actually, most of it was two wars going on at once and a really deep recession, since recessions cost the government tax revenue.

<pause>

See, that's the nasty thing that happens when the economy goes bad: Tax revenues decline because people lose their jobs and businesses stop making a profit. But the cost of continuing to provide government services doesn't go away just because the economy went bad.

As much as I hate analogies in which America gets compared to a household, one will explain the problem nicely here: Just because you lose your job doesn't mean you don't have to eat any more.

As it turns out, Federal spending per capita (i.e., per person) has actually gone down since 2008. So why do we have a deficit? Because tax revenue isn';t back up to where it was before the bottom dropped out.

What we need aren't spending cuts; what we need are freaking jobs. We need to put every American who can work back to work, and if we have to actually borrow money to do that, well then we should. Why? Because we have tens of thousands of miles of bad road and tens of thousands of crumbling bridges, and we have a million other things that need to be done because we haven't been keeping up on the maintenance (kind of like what happens to your roof when you decide you'd rather spend money on your gun collection instead of repairs). If we put Americans back to work fixing what needs fixing, our problems will pretty much disappear.

The American people want a solution where they can maintain all government programs as they are, but don't want to have to pay more money and don't want to hear about their nation being in debt. That is an infeasible solution. We cannot continue to spend big, our current status is unsustainable, yet all the Democrats propose is "higher taxes, higher taxes, higher taxes, dodge budget cuts, dodge budget cuts" any time taxes are raised Democrats always go on a spending rampage because there is more money flowing into the treasury. Then when people become too poor to pay the large taxes or you have the ebil corporations, businesses, and rich people fleeing the country in droves to avoid taxation, and tax revenue goes way down, the Democrats always want to raise more taxes. Republicans however simply want to cut spending, let people spend the money that they have and that they make to stimulate the economy. We were perfectly fine when we had lower spending, we should be perfectly fine to cut 2% of the budget. If we can't even do that, it's game over for every American.

You're wrong. What we have is a manufactured crisis: Taxes got cut, we borrowed money to fight wars (one of which was unnecessary), and we didn't keep up on infrastructure maintenance. All of this was done to "Starve the Beast": To create a public crisis in our National finances so that Republicans could demand everything you're demanding. The very people who made sure that we were going to end up with massive deficits are now the people who insist that we have to try and cut our way out of those deficits. Why? Because they want less government, and this is all a very clever way to go about creating the impetus for the cuts they want.

I say fuck 'em. We shouldn't play along with the Grover Norquists out there who've created this crisis in order to reap the policy benefits of it. We don't ever have to pay off the debt; all we have to do is create an economy that can grow faster than the debt, and we'll be free and clear of any problems. That's what America has done ever since 1837, and we can do it again.

[Greed and Death]

My view is this: we cannot saddle the next generation with trillions of dollars in debt with no hope of paying it back.

So you wouldn't have borrowed money to defeat the Axis in World War II?

Because we never paid that debt off, you know.

<pause>

Seriously, the last time we were debt-free as a country was in 1837, when Andrew Jackson insisted on paying off the whole freaking National debt. The thing is, he crashed the economy doing it, and the government was forced to go back to borrowing money again.

So maybe it's all that land west of the Mississippi (i.e., Louisiana) that you think we shouldn't have bought, in order to remain debt-free?



We need to balance the budget and we cannot balance the budget by taking from the rich to break even. We need a surplus. Since it was big spending that got us into this mess, spending needs to be cut to get us out. The American people want a solution where they can maintain all government programs as they are, but don't want to have to pay more money and don't want to hear about their nation being in debt. That is an infeasible solution. We cannot continue to spend big, our current status is unsustainable, yet all the Democrats propose is "higher taxes, higher taxes, higher taxes, dodge budget cuts, dodge budget cuts" any time taxes are raised Democrats always go on a spending rampage because there is more money flowing into the treasury. Then when people become too poor to pay the large taxes or you have the ebil corporations, businesses, and rich people fleeing the country in droves to avoid taxation, and tax revenue goes way down, the Democrats always want to raise more taxes. Republicans however simply want to cut spending, let people spend the money that they have and that they make to stimulate the economy. We were perfectly fine when we had lower spending, we should be perfectly fine to cut 2% of the budget. If we can't even do that, it's game over for every American.[/spoiler]

I suggest you educate yourself further on those of opposing views before you picture them as "the bad guys" and you as "the good guys" and accuse them of holding you back while complete ignoring what they stand for.

[/quote]

WE do not need to balance the budget.
We should not balance the budget.

Running a deficit is normal for corporations and governments, when ever the present value of money, exceeds the future value of money + interest.

Keep the deficit reasonable as a % of revenue.

[Alien Space Bats]

I hit "submit" instead of "preview", and then had to spend 10 minutes cutting down the quoted material. See above.

[Alien Space Bats]

Except the CIA had intelligence that there were Nuclear Weapons in Iraq.

Except they didn't, and they knew they didn't.

The White House pushed the CIA to reinterpret the intelligence to support their position that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. The CIA never had the slightest solid evidence supporting that position.

Take the famous story about yellowcake from Niger: The CIA sent Joe Wilson, a longtime diplomat, to check out a report they got that Saddam was buying hundreds of tons of the stuff secretly. Wilson — who knew several officials in Niger — went there and investigated; he came to the conclusion that the story was a total bust. The amounts being discussed were so great than local villagers would have seen convoys of trucks rolling through the area, and event unlike any they's seen in many years; no one reported ever having seen anything of the sort. In fact, the open pit mine from which the shipments were supposed to have come was closed and had been for a number of years.

Wilson came back to Washington and reported that he'd seen nothing. So what did the White House do? They leaked the story to the New York Times and then cited the leaked story as proof. When Wilson went public attacking the story, the White House retaliated by outing his wife as a CIA agent, placing her life in jeopardy and ruining her career (Karl Rove was probably one of those involved in that little escapade, but was never indicted for it).

Or take the aluminum tubes that were supposed to be centrifuge parts. The CIA had a metallurgist look at some that had been intercepted en route to Iraq; he judged them too heavy form use in that fashion, believing there were intended for the manufacture of conventional short-range artillery rockets (like the old Russian Katyushas used to fire). So what did the White House do? They ignored the metallurgist's opinion and cited the tubes as being for a centrifuge anyway.

This is how the whole affair unfolded. The White House demanded proof that Iraq was either working on or had WMDs. The CIA would investigate and come up empty, and the White House would either ignore the CIA or demand that the CIA change its findings to meet the wishes of the White House. The whole thing was bogus from Day One.

Oh, yeah... One more thing: Valerie Plame (Joe Wilson's wife) wrote a book, Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House, describing the whole affair from her perspective; the book subsequently became a movie (Fair Game). The movie inaccurately portrays Plame as involved in an effort to extract Iraqi nuclear scientists from the country upon having learned that Iraq had actually shut down it's nuclear program after the First Gulf War. The movie is incorrect in so far as Plame's involvement in the exfiltration of Iraqi nuclear scientists (she did not travel to Iraq), but otherwise the details of the operation are correct: The CIA knew that Iraq had ended its nuclear program years earlier and was simply holding onto the scientists and technicians who had participated in it so that they wouldn't leave the country to go to work for somebody else.

IOW, the CIA knew there was no Iraqi nuclear weapons program, and hadn't been since the early 90's.

[Tmutarakhan]

in WWII we thought Hitler was pretty awesome until the early '40s

Roosevelt saw Hitler as a threat to peace for a very long time. Most of America's leaders at that time did.

Whether or not the fringes of American politics or the isolationists did is a whole other issue.

Those fringe politicians who admired Hitler, and the isolationists who thought we could ignore him, were Republicans. They were a retrograde force then, too.

[Neutraligon]

Except the CIA had intelligence that there were Nuclear Weapons in Iraq.

Except they didn't, and they knew they didn't.

The White House pushed the CIA to reinterpret the intelligence to support their position that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. The CIA never had the slightest solid evidence supporting that position.

Take the famous story about yellowcake from Niger: The CIA sent Joe Wilson, a longtime diplomat, to check out a report they got that Saddam was buying hundreds of tons of the stuff secretly. Wilson — who knew several officials in Niger — went there and investigated; he came to the conclusion that the story was a total bust. The amounts being discussed were so great than local villagers would have seen convoys of trucks rolling through the area, and event unlike any they's seen in many years; no one reported ever having seen anything of the sort. In fact, the open pit mine from which the shipments were supposed to have come was closed and had been for a number of years.

Wilson came back to Washington and reported that he'd seen nothing. So what did the White House do? They leaked the story to the New York Times and then cited the leaked story as proof. When Wilson went public attacking the story, the White House retaliated by outing his wife as a CIA agent, placing her life in jeopardy and ruining her career (Karl Rove was probably one of those involved in that little escapade, but was never indicted for it).

Or take the aluminum tubes that were supposed to be centrifuge parts. The CIA had a metallurgist look at some that had been intercepted en route to Iraq; he judged them too heavy form use in that fashion, believing there were intended for the manufacture of conventional short-range artillery rockets (like the old Russian Katyushas used to fire). So what did the White House do? They ignored the metallurgist's opinion and cited the tubes as being for a centrifuge anyway.

This is how the whole affair unfolded. The White House demanded proof that Iraq was either working on or had WMDs. The CIA would investigate and come up empty, and the White House would either ignore the CIA or demand that the CIA change its findings to meet the wishes of the White House. The whole thing was bogus from Day One.

Oh, yeah... One more thing: Valerie Plame (Joe Wilson's wife) wrote a book, Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House, describing the whole affair from her perspective; the book subsequently became a movie (Fair Game). The movie inaccurately portrays Plame as involved in an effort to extract Iraqi nuclear scientists from the country upon having learned that Iraq had actually shut down it's nuclear program after the First Gulf War. The movie is incorrect in so far as Plame's involvement in the exfiltration of Iraqi nuclear scientists (she did not travel to Iraq), but otherwise the details of the operation are correct: The CIA knew that Iraq had ended its nuclear program years earlier and was simply holding onto the scientists and technicians who had participated in it so that they wouldn't leave the country to go to work for somebody else.

IOW, the CIA knew there was no Iraqi nuclear weapons program, and hadn't been since the early 90's.

Did you watch Hubris on MSNBC? This was all explained there.

[Gauntleted Fist]

When your country is almost single-handedly the reason poverty in the world has been reducing at amazing levels then yeah I guess pretty damn well. (China.)

That's not to give them a free pass by any means, but at least they don't have politicians out to actively fucking kill large portions of their population via starvation.

That's bullshit.

China reduced poverty precisely because it lessened the power of the central government by offering the citizenry some small measure of capitalism.

Indeed, when a tiny injection of capitalism is inserted into brutal and dysfunctional command economies -- magnificent results ensue.

In sum, if the communist party had not loosened its control on the markets a quarter century ago and allowed some modest free market reforms to take place -- millions would still be living on the razor edge of starvation.

Try harder next time to actually read what I wrote instead of responding to shit you make up that I didn't say.

[Gauntleted Fist]

in WWII we thought Hitler was pretty awesome until the early '40s

Roosevelt saw Hitler as a threat to peace for a very long time. Most of America's leaders at that time did.

Whether or not the fringes of American politics or the isolationists did is a whole other issue.

Whether or not a very large number of Americans admired Hitler was my point. They did.

Edit: To elaborate, Hitler's Germany was based off of the United States and our eugenics program. When he was in prison in '24 books like The Passing of the Great Race, which Hitler once literally described as "his biblbe", were what Hitler spent time reading. He became a huge fan of Davenport, Popenoe, Whtiney and Grant. America's greatest ethnological minds.

For example from Mein Kampf:

"There is today one state in which at least weak beginnings toward a better conception [of immigration] are noticeable. Of course, it is not our model German Republic, but [the US], in which an effort is made to consult reason at least partially. By refusing immigrants on principle to elements in poor health, by simply excluding certain races from naturalisation, it professes in slow beginnings a view that is peculiar to the People's State."

Hitler spoke proudly of how he followed our eugenics laws and programs. Of how he observed our excellent forced sterilization program and admired California's efficiency in eliminating social undesirables. Of how we debated whether or not the mentally incompetent deserved life and liberty because killing them to prevent their suffering was such a good, Christian thing to do.

Look, basically, Americans and American society at the time of the 1930s could not have been more friendly and conductive to Hitler being considered popular. He was beating us at our own game. And we loved it.

[Zokoria]

Yes. They are the ones that is turning America into a one-party fascist/Nazi state, only if Rick Santorum becomes the 45th President... With Rick Perry as VP...

[Alien Space Bats]

Did you watch Hubris on MSNBC? This was all explained there.

Yes, but I saw nothing on that program I didn't know already.

Really, the signs were all there at the time; you just had to be willing to keep your eyes open.

[Neutraligon]

Did you watch Hubris on MSNBC? This was all explained there.

Yes, but I saw nothing on that program I didn't know already.

Really, the signs were all there at the time; you just had to be willing to keep your eyes open.

At the time, I knew as you did that the two hated each other, and didn't really understand why we were getting into Iraq. I thought it would detract from our other war, and wondered what would happen if there weren't weapons of mass destruction. Then when people started mentioning terrorism as the reason we were getting into Iraq I got even more confused since I hadn't heard of any connection. Then I started hearing about a connection to Al Qaeda on the news. I must admit the order of events was just downright odd. I especially didn't like the fact that we were acting as the aggressor nation. I will admit I didn't know the rest at the time, I was just going into high school at the time and rather insulated. You are right though, the information was out there. Even now I don't quite understand how people think the war on Iraq was about terrorism, or how people believe it was justified.

[Alien Space Bats]

At the time, I knew as you did that the two hated each other, and didn't really understand why we were getting into Iraq. I thought it would detract from our other war, and wondered what would happen if there weren't weapons of mass destruction. Then when people started mentioning terrorism as the reason we were getting into Iraq I got even more confused since I hadn't heard of any connection. Then I started hearing about a connection to Al Qaeda on the news. I must admit the order of events was just downright odd. I especially didn't like the fact that we were acting as the aggressor nation. I will admit I didn't know the rest at the time, I was just going into high school at the time and rather insulated. You are right though, the information was out there. Even now I don't quite understand how people think the war on Iraq was about terrorism, or how people believe it was justified.

I'm no dove. I supported the First Gulf War because I felt that the U.N. had to stand up for the independence of a member state against what was a clear and unprovoked act of aggression (well, O.K., maybe minimally provoked, but my understanding is that everybody pretty much engages in slant drilling in that neck of the woods...); if the U.N. failed at that task, it was clearly going to go the way of the League of Nations.

But I also grew up during the war in Vietnam, and I was quite familiar with how often government officials lied about Soviet capabilities during the Cold War (the SOP was to claim that the Soviets already had every technology anybody wanted us to develop, and that it was a generation or more ahead of whatever we might have on the drawing boards, so we had to rush right out and invest billions in it immediately in order to catch up; needless to say, 99% of all such claims were complete bullshit). After a while your nose gets accustomed to the peculiarly pungent aroma of jingoistic bullshit; whatever kind of perfume they try to soak it in, it still always comes out smelling the same.

That's why I'm in no hurry to go kick down Iran's doors; there's just too much hyperbole and flim-flammery out there. It's pretty clear that the Obama Administration doesn't have hard evidence of anything, and without it they just don't want to start shooting; nor are they willing to follow the Second Bush Administration's lead and just Make Shit Up™. This is part of the reason why there's such a food fight over the Hagel nomination; it's a stand-in for the struggle between these two rival world-views. Republicans are pissed that we don't just "deal with Iran" the way we "dealt with Iraq": I mean, there ought to be enough intelligence out there that we could "sex up" into a case for regime change in Iran, right? So why the fuck are we holding back?!?

Democrats, OTOH, while far from dovish on the issue, don't want to Make Shit Up™. They went along with Bush II on that and it made them feel dirty, so now they want a smoking gun. Or maybe not even that; maybe just something definite that they don't have to lie to themselves about. But they're sure as Hell not going to invent intelligence, and so they're stuck.

All in all, it's just one more sign of the gulf between the Parties: Republicans assume they're right and then try to prove it; Democrats want proof that they're right before they'll act. The two approaches are irreconcilable: In the one case, truth is given and accepted; argument is then all about persuasion. In the other case, truth is discovered, and argument is how you get there.

[Bottle]

Well, yeah, I mean, "conservatives" are, by definition, holding back society. That's like...the point. Of conservativism. To preserve the status quo. That's what words mean.

The only way that conservatives wouldn't be "holding [whatever country] back" would be if you start with the assumption that there's no more progress needed. Which is probably why wealthy white heterosexual Christian males tend to be over-represented in conservative circles; from their point of view, maybe there ISN'T any more progress needed.

[Ecans]

^THIS

I like when political ignorant hipsters self identify. It makes it SO much easier to know who to avoid taking seriously.

What's a hipster? I haven't heard that word since the '70s. Does it still mean what it did 40 years ago? I like to know when I have been insulted...or praised.

[Jamzmania]

Stopped reading the OP early, mainly because it is initially completely biased against the GOP and has a complete lack of fair judgement.

A little piece to discuss before I leave: How can the GOP be holding America back if they haven't been in power for a decade or so?

[United Prefectures of Appia]

...How can the GOP be holding America back if they haven't been in power for a decade or so?

Dafuq?!

[Ashmoria]

Stopped reading the OP early, mainly because it is initially completely biased against the GOP and has a complete lack of fair judgement.

A little piece to discuss before I leave: How can the GOP be holding America back if they haven't been in power for a decade or so?

it what conservatives do. thats why they are called conservative.

[Desperate Measures]

...How can the GOP be holding America back if they haven't been in power for a decade or so?

Dafuq?!

I think people try to edit out Bush.

[United Prefectures of Appia]

Dafuq?!

I think people try to edit out Bush.

That, or it's a case of people suffering from Romnesia

[Greed and Death]

No Republicans are not holding you back they are doing what they should be doing as an opposition party.

If the Democrats had such nerve we would not have invaded Iraq.