We are all Socialist Now

[bucfan64 309]

New cover of Newsweek magazine says it all...........(and I hate newsweek)

 

[QUICKSTER 10]

what in the world why does it say that what is the artical behind it?

[buzzsawBeaver 12]

what in the world why does it say that what is the artical behind it?

 

I didn't know if this was a parody or not, but from their site, the article

 

 

 

"The interview was nearly over. on the Fox News Channel last Wednesday evening, Sean Hannity was coming to the end of a segment with Indiana Congressman Mike Pence, the chair of the House Republican Conference and a vociferous foe of President Obama's nearly $1 trillion stimulus bill. How, Pence had asked rhetorically, was $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts going to put people back to work in Indiana? How would $20 million for "fish passage barriers" (a provision to pay for the removal of barriers in rivers and streams so that fish could migrate freely) help create jobs? Hannity could not have agreed more. "It is … the European Socialist Act of 2009," the host said, signing off. "We're counting on you to stop it. Thank you, congressman."

 

There it was, just before the commercial: the S word, a favorite among conservatives since John McCain began using it during the presidential campaign. (Remember Joe the Plumber? Sadly, so do we.) But it seems strangely beside the point. The U.S. government has already—under a conservative Republican administration—effectively nationalized the banking and mortgage industries. That seems a stronger sign of socialism than $50 million for art. Whether we want to admit it or not—and many, especially Congressman Pence and Hannity, do not—the America of 2009 is moving toward a modern European state.

 

We remain a center-right nation in many ways—particularly culturally, and our instinct, once the crisis passes, will be to try to revert to a more free-market style of capitalism—but it was, again, under a conservative GOP administration that we enacted the largest expansion of the welfare state in 30 years: prescription drugs for the elderly. People on the right and the left want government to invest in alternative energies in order to break our addiction to foreign oil. And it is unlikely that even the reddest of states will decline federal money for infrastructural improvements.

 

If we fail to acknowledge the reality of the growing role of government in the economy, insisting instead on fighting 21st-century wars with 20th-century terms and tactics, then we are doomed to a fractious and unedifying debate. The sooner we understand where we truly stand, the sooner we can think more clearly about how to use government in today's world.

 

As the Obama administration presses the largest fiscal bill in American history, caps the salaries of executives at institutions receiving federal aid at $500,000 and introduces a new plan to rescue the banking industry, the unemployment rate is at its highest in 16 years. The Dow has slumped to 1998 levels, and last year mortgage foreclosures rose 81 percent.

 

All of this is unfolding in an economy that can no longer be understood, even in passing, as the Great Society vs. the Gipper. Whether we like it or not—or even whether many people have thought much about it or not—the numbers clearly suggest that we are headed in a more European direction. A decade ago U.S. government spending was 34.3 percent of GDP, compared with 48.2 percent in the euro zone—a roughly 14-point gap, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. In 2010 U.S. spending is expected to be 39.9 percent of GDP, compared with 47.1 percent in the euro zone—a gap of less than 8 points. As entitlement spending rises over the next decade, we will become even more French.

 

This is not to say that berets will be all the rage this spring, or that Obama has promised a croissant in every toaster oven. But the simple fact of the matter is that the political conversation, which shifts from time to time, has shifted anew, and for the foreseeable future Americans will be more engaged with questions about how to manage a mixed economy than about whether we should have one.

 

The architect of this new era of big government? History has a sense of humor, for the man who laid the foundations for the world Obama now rules is George W. Bush, who moved to bail out the financial sector last autumn with $700 billion.

 

Bush brought the Age of Reagan to a close; now Obama has gone further, reversing Bill Clinton's end of big government. The story, as always, is complicated. Polls show that Americans don't trust government and still don't want big government. They do, however, want what government delivers, like health care and national defense and, now, protections from banking and housing failure. During the roughly three decades since Reagan made big government the enemy and "liberal" an epithet, government did not shrink. It grew. But the economy grew just as fast, so government as a percentage of GDP remained about the same. Much of that economic growth was real, but for the past five years or so, it has borne a suspicious resemblance to Bernie Madoff's stock fund. Americans have been living high on borrowed money (the savings rate dropped from 7.6 percent in 1992 to less than zero in 2005) while financiers built castles in the air.

 

Now comes the reckoning. The answer may indeed be more government. In the short run, since neither consumers nor business is likely to do it, the government will have to stimulate the economy. And in the long run, an aging population and global warming and higher energy costs will demand more government taxing and spending. The catch is that more government intrusion in the economy will almost surely limit growth (as it has in Europe, where a big welfare state has caused chronic high unemployment). Growth has always been America's birthright and saving grace.

 

The Obama administration is caught in a paradox. It must borrow and spend to fix a crisis created by too much borrowing and spending. Having pumped the economy up with a stimulus, the president will have to cut the growth of entitlement spending by holding down health care and retirement costs and still invest in ways that will produce long-term growth. Obama talks of the need for smart government. To get the balance between America and France right, the new president will need all the smarts he can summon."

[Deleted Account 5,203]

The last paragraph of this article shows why Obama's stimulus plan is a giant crock of hooey:

 

The Obama administration is caught in a paradox. It must borrow and spend to fix a crisis created by too much borrowing and spending. Having pumped the economy up with a stimulus, the president will have to cut the growth of entitlement spending by holding down health care and retirement costs and still invest in ways that will produce long-term growth. Obama talks of the need for smart government. To get the balance between America and France right, the new president will need all the smarts he can summon.

 

Frankly, it's the exact antithesis of smart government to use a stimulus package to cure a problem brought on by too much borrowing and spending. Add in the fact that there's a mammoth amount of pork in this bill, and I become increasingly concerned about the liberal doctrine of spending.

[buzzsawBeaver 12]

The last paragraph of this article shows why Obama's stimulus plan is a giant crock of hooey:

 

The Obama administration is caught in a paradox. It must borrow and spend to fix a crisis created by too much borrowing and spending. Having pumped the economy up with a stimulus, the president will have to cut the growth of entitlement spending by holding down health care and retirement costs and still invest in ways that will produce long-term growth. Obama talks of the need for smart government. To get the balance between America and France right, the new president will need all the smarts he can summon.

 

Frankly, it's the exact antithesis of smart government to use a stimulus package to cure a problem brought on by too much borrowing and spending. Add in the fact that there's a mammoth amount of pork in this bill, and I become increasingly concerned about the liberal doctrine of spending.

 

perhaps the biggest thing to be concerned about is all this is only 3 weeks of this administration.

[fieldgeneral 10]

1 Why are you watching Fox News?

2. What would you do to simulate or fix this economy?

3. What other things would you do as President to help this country?

[Deleted Account 5,203]

1 Why are you watching Fox News?

2. What would you do to simulate or fix this economy?

3. What other things would you do as President to help this country?

 

1. I don't watch Fox News. Although Fox News is closer to center than CNN is. Try BBC.

2. CUT SPENDING, and take half the money from the process and rebuild infrastructure and build technology.

3. Not put pork in my stimulus package; not pack the cabinet with partisan cronies; not try to subsidize Planned Parenthood, not sell my soul to Acorn, not close Guantanamo Bay, not associate with racist ministers...

[bucfan64 309]

1. Why are you watching anything but FOX NEWS?

 

2. I would sell condoms and build frisbee golf courses, water parks, spend 89 million on re-sodding the national mall, spend 80 billion to clean out rivers and streams so that trout and other native fish would be able to swim farther up stream, I would spend 600 Million on new HYbrid cars for government officials.......................Ooops wait some genius has already thought of these things!

 

3. I would look at President Obamas first three weeks and I would do the opposite!

 

just kidding about those things above, but below are some interesting..............

 

 

FACTS

 

 

President Obama has already in three short weeks.

 

Pardoned the terrorist master mind that was responsible for the death of 17 U.S. Soldiers during the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole

 

Signed the Freedom of Choice Act which will help eradicate MILLIONS OF MORE INNOCENT American Children.

 

Suggested that Marijuana be DE-CRIMINALIZED and has requested that DEA officials STOP RAIDS on marijuana producers.

 

Requested that a popular CHILD PORN DEFENSE ATTORNEY be appointed to the office of Attorney General, a man who has stated that "there is nothing wrong with Child porn as long as it is used in the privacy of ones home."

 

Is using FEAR TACTICS to get congress to pass a SPENDING BILL that will do nothing but create HYPER-INFLATION. Shame on them for using fear tactics after blaming the Bush admin. for using the same tactics regarding terrorism. Shame, bad obama, bad...

 

Created a FAITH BASED INITIATIVE that will do nothing but bring more power and support to groups like ACORN. God knows we need more good honest organizations like that come election time next year.

 

Now here is the big question concerning the Faith based initiative, will the DailyKos and other liberals excoriate Obama for mixing politics and religion just like Bush did? Or does the Obammessiah get another pass from the hypocrites on the left? I am going to bet that suddenly KEITH OLBERMAN will think that this is a wonderful idea. and the execs at NBC, MSNBC, CNBC will embrace the idea for it's originality, After all it includes all faiths and don' t forget THOSE LOVELY FOLKS AT ACORN.

 

Oh yeah, Obama said that he was going to encourage all Americans to "Buy American," only to find himself in need of a change of words after some Europeans frowned on the phrase, wow, thats what I call REAL CONVICTION, or to put it in his own words.........

 

CHANGE!

[Guest BEAVERTAIL]

FACTS

 

 

President Obama has already in three short weeks.

 

Pardoned the terrorist master mind that was responsible for the death of 17 U.S. Soldiers during the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole

 

Signed the Freedom of Choice Act which will help eradicate MILLIONS OF MORE INNOCENT American Children.

 

Suggested that Marijuana be DE-CRIMINALIZED and has requested that DEA officials STOP RAIDS on marijuana producers.

 

Requested that a popular CHILD PORN DEFENSE ATTORNEY be appointed to the office of Attorney General, a man who has stated that "there is nothing wrong with Child porn as long as it is used in the privacy of ones home."

 

Is using FEAR TACTICS to get congress to pass a SPENDING BILL that will do nothing but create HYPER-INFLATION. Shame on them for using fear tactics after blaming the Bush admin. for using the same tactics regarding terrorism. Shame, bad obama, bad...

 

Created a FAITH BASED INITIATIVE that will do nothing but bring more power and support to groups like ACORN. God knows we need more good honest organizations like that come election time next year.

 

Now here is the big question concerning the Faith based initiative, will the DailyKos and other liberals excoriate Obama for mixing politics and religion just like Bush did? Or does the Obammessiah get another pass from the hypocrites on the left? I am going to bet that suddenly KEITH OLBERMAN will think that this is a wonderful idea. and the execs at NBC, MSNBC, CNBC will embrace the idea for it's originality, After all it includes all faiths and don' t forget THOSE LOVELY FOLKS AT ACORN.

 

Oh yeah, Obama said that he was going to encourage all Americans to "Buy American," only to find himself in need of a change of words after some Europeans frowned on the phrase, wow, thats what I call REAL CONVICTION, or to put it in his own words.........

 

CHANGE!

 

 

Everything seems accurate except for the Marijuana deal, I havent heard that. For anyone that isnt drinking the Obama kool-aid, anyone can see it has obviously been a horrible 3 weeks, I cant think of anything good.

 

BTW, add to the above that his cabinet members are getting slashed left and right. Next up, Pannetta.

[buzzsawBeaver 12]

http://www.cnbc.com/id/29164998

 

"The Obama administration is hammering out a program to subsidize mortgages in a new front to fight the credit crisis, sources familiar with the plan told Reuters Thursday, firing financial markets.

 

In a major break from existing aid programs, the plan under consideration would seek to help homeowners before they fall into arrears on their loans. Current programs only assist borrowers that are already delinquent."

 

 

 

translation, more for the welfare state, less for the working men and women who will pay for the things of those who don't work. As I read elsewhere, someone wrote, "when people work hard and the people who don't work or pay taxes have as much as the working man, what incentive is there going to be to work hard anymore?".

[buzzsawBeaver 12]

"It's time to fix the 401(k)

The 401(k) plan can be a powerful savings tool. But for more of us to enjoy a secure retirement, we need a bigger, better idea.

 

...A growing number of policy experts who study 401(k)s think they fall short. So why not rethink America's retirement system from the ground up? No, it won't be easy: We're in an economic crisis, and lobbyists for the financial services industry will fight like tigers for the status quo. But that doesn't make the task any less urgent. Some 78 million baby boomers are hurtling toward retirement. Their poverty, if it comes to that, will be a burden to their children and lead to calls for taxpayers to support them.

 

What would a better system look like? It would be universal and strike a more conservative balance of risk and return. Most of all, it would be designed for savers, not employers or money managers. Here are five principles for reform...

 

Getting a boost from Uncle Sam

 

A more ambitious approach would be a government savings match similar to what you get from your employer. If this sounds like a subsidy, it is - but then, so is the current tax break. The difference is that this one would take the form of a refundable credit. Unlike tax deferrals, such a credit can benefit even people in low brackets. Gene Sperling, a former Clinton administration official, has proposed a "universal 401(k)" in which low-income workers can get as much as a two-to-one match. Higher-income families may get a 30% match.

 

Economist Teresa Ghilarducci of the New School for Social Research goes further. To ensure that everyone saves from the start of their career to the end, she proposes a mandatory national savings account on top of Social Security. You'd kick in 2.5% a year and your employer another 2.5%. In one version, the tax credit would be a flat $600 a year for everybody.

 

Of course, the government can't just throw cash around (recent events notwithstanding). Paying for tax credits would likely mean trimming or eliminating the existing deferrals. Tough sell. No one is talking about touching existing 401(k) balances. But if you are a high earner able to contribute the max to your 401(k), you'd pay more taxes under Ghilarducci's plan. Before you throw out the idea altogether, though, consider this: You weren't always in your current tax bracket. A plan for moderate-income earners could have gotten you saving consistently from the first day of your first job. It could do the same for your kids.

 

2. Spread some of the risk - but not all of it

 

In any retirement system, your standard of living will depend to some extent on the state of the economy. Traditional pensions rely on a financially healthy employer. Even Social Security, as a pay-as-you-go system, depends on the productivity of current workers. But 401(k)s stand out for the way that they concentrate nearly all the economic risk on you alone.

 

With that risk comes a shot at high rewards. If you have an above-average income, it makes sense to have at least some of your retirement money in the market over your career. But many retirement experts think we need a third tier of savings in between Social Security and the 401(k). It would offer a better return than Social Security but less market risk than mutual funds and other investments. Just a portion of the money you now put into 401(k)s would go here.

 

Working out the details of this third-tier plan won't be simple. One approach would be to offer a straight-up guarantee. In Ghilarducci's plan, the mandatory savings would go into a single government fund invested in stocks and bonds. You would be guaranteed a payment based on a 3% annual return after inflation, possibly more if the market did so well that the managers decided they could safely distribute extra gains. "Historically, that's a very achievable rate of return," says Ghilarducci. Unfortunately, it is also a modest one - over long periods, stocks have generally beaten inflation by six percentage points or more....

 

5. How about a "retirement Fed"?

 

All of these proposals require some public oversight of your retirement investments. But when tax breaks are involved, that's inevitable - your current 401(k) plan is already highly regulated. The task is to make the regulation more effective. To see how the current rules fall short, consider the 2006 Pension Protection Act. It encourages employers to sign people up for 401(k)s automatically and to use target-date retirement funds and other diversified stock-and-bond portfolios as the default investments. Money markets and stable-value funds were mostly ruled out as automatic options.

 

In other words, the government has already started opining on what is and isn't an appropriate retirement investment. The bill has probably helped steer more savers in the right direction. Even so, the investment guidelines were left quite loose, and different fund companies offered wildly different asset mixes. When the market collapsed last year, investors who happened to be in plans that had nudged them into stock-heavy allocations suffered steep losses.

 

These are tricky issues. We need a visible public forum to thrash them out, and we ought to be drawing on the advice of the nation's top retirement and investing minds.

 

So why not create a quasi-independent Federal Retirement Security Board? The members of this "Retirement Fed" should represent a range of backgrounds and points of view - academics, small business owners, workers and money managers. The board's first task would be to set better rules of the road for those default plans and work on standards for expenses. But it could also develop proposals for that crucial third-tier savings plan. Getting retirement right is essential to our nation's economic health. Let's give it the attention it deserves."

[Guest JJBrickface]

I don't care who you voted for, there is no way you can defend the passing of this bill.

 

NOTHING in this bill involves CHANGE. Its the same old Washington BS, SPEND SPEND SPEND, WASTE, WASTE, WASTE. Can you tell that I am really frustrated?

 

In less than a month the Obama team has decided: to close a terrorist prison camp, send your money overseas to fund abortions, passed the S Chip bill which will give children insurance to families who make OVER $80,000 and is funded by making outrageous tax increases on tobacco which could essentially hurt farmers, wholesalers, and retailers.

 

I'm willing to give the President a chance but his liberal policies in the past few weeks is exactly why I didn't vote for him.

[parsons 178]

I don't care who you voted for, there is no way you can defend the passing of this bill.

 

NOTHING in this bill involves CHANGE. Its the same old Washington BS, SPEND SPEND SPEND, WASTE, WASTE, WASTE. Can you tell that I am really frustrated?

 

In less than a month the Obama team has decided: to close a terrorist prison camp, send your money overseas to fund abortions, passed the S Chip bill which will give children insurance to families who make OVER $80,000 and is funded by making outrageous tax increases on tobacco which could essentially hurt farmers, wholesalers, and retailers.

 

I'm willing to give the President a chance but his liberal policies in the past few weeks is exactly why I didn't vote for him.

 

Unfortunately, both parties are responsible for this mess and a stimulus package has to include spending........Conservatives saying otherwise did not take Econ 101.

 

As for me, I am a long time Republican who became utterly disgusted by the spending that occurred during the Bush administration. What disgusts me even more is Republicans who excuse the spending that occurred from 2001 thru 2006 while we held both houses of Congress.

Edited February 18, 2009 by parsons

[Guest JJBrickface]

Unfortunately, both parties are responsible for this mess and a stimulus package has to include spending........Conservatives saying otherwise did not take Econ 101.

 

As for me, I am a long time Republican who became utterly disgusted by the spending that occurred during the Bush administration. What disgusts me even more is Republicans who excuse the spending that occurred from 2001 thru 2006 while we held both houses of Congress.

 

I agree that spending was out of control the past eight years. No one is denying that you have to spend, but you can question what the money is being spent on. And most of this money is being wasted.

 

This once again proves that people the majority of people who vote don't even have a clue on what they are voting for. Obama voters failed to see that President Bush was very liberal when it came to spending and that Obama would be a carbon copy of that. But the media didn't say that, MTV didn't say that, so they had no clue.

[Deleted Account 5,203]

I agree that spending was out of control the past eight years. No one is denying that you have to spend, but you can question what the money is being spent on. And most of this money is being wasted.

 

This once again proves that people the majority of people who vote don't even have a clue on what they are voting for. Obama voters failed to see that President Bush was very liberal when it came to spending and that Obama would be a carbon copy of that. But the media didn't say that, MTV didn't say that, so they had no clue.

 

I totally agree with this.