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9 Comments

1. M.Toole:

   “And let’s not forget that William Jefferson Clinton – Democrat”. Is the REAL reason for the 10 trillion dollar defecit. He FAILED to go after Bin Laden and Al Quadia when he had a chance. At least GW had the guts to fight the war in their neighborhood. All I got from Jefferson was a good laugh and a smelly cigar. You need to get a grip

2. Les Nakamoto:

   M. Toole, you fail to recognize that most of the 10 Trillion dollar deficit was due to the tax cuts that Bush gave to the millionaires and billionaires, and the close to $1 Trillion that the Iraq War is costing us.

   And Clinton DID go after bin Laden with a missile strike, in spite of the fact that he was advised against taking action by the military and the CIA, who each told Clinton that the job should be done by the other organization because they didn’t want to do it. He and his administration did brief the incoming Bush and his administration, warning him that the primary threat to the American public was terrorism from Al Qaeda, but Bush ignored all the warnings for over SEVEN MONTHS before he took any action.

   Get your facts straight.

   Your argument assumes that Bush was so imcompetent that he couldn’t correct for what you claim to be Clinton’s failure, even though Bush had eight years to do it.

3. M.Toole:

   Les,

   My poor man. Where in my post do you get “Your argument assumes that Bush was so imcompetent that he couldn’t correct for what you claim to be Clinton’s failure, even though Bush had eight years to do it.”

   Would that be the Lib take on my truths?

   Remember, we could have had Osama in 96 when the Sudan offered him on a silver platter. Hmmm, what hurts more. The Truth or the typical Liberal slant. Clinton was and remains the typical Lib wuss. I stated before, will again, GET A GRIP

4. Christopher Thomas:

   Les says: “100,000 homeowners have been foreclosed on because Republicans refused to take action.” I wonder, why is it the role of government to intervene in the private contracts that individuals willingly make with their lending institutions? The homeowners defaulted because they could not meet the terms of the contracts they made.

5. Les Nakamoto:

   Note that both M.Toole and Christopher Thomas did not comment on the factual evidence regarding the competence and success of Democratic governance of the economy vs. the incompetence of the Republican governance, which was the focus of this post.

   Instead, M. Toole goes on a tangent to attack Clinton for not getting bin Laden (which George W. Bush also failed at, even though he had much more time and warning to do so), and Christopher Thomas goes after foreclosed mortgage holders saying that they couldn’t meet the terms of the contracts they made. He neglects to mention that some of the “terms of the contracts they made” were unilaterally adjusted by the banks without consent by the mortgage holders, when interest rates were adjusted so high that they couldn’t continue to make the payments; and when they attempted to refinance those loans, the banks have refused to do so.

   It should also be noted that Democrats pushed to allow mortgage refinancing on primary residences, which Republicans opposed. Funny, in earlier years, Republicans pushed through regulations that allowed the wealthy to be able to refinance second and third vacation homes so that they could get more favorable interest rates. Why is it that they oppose Americans attempts to refinance under more favorable terms on their primary residences? Could it be that they are just interested in forcing them out of their homes so that developers have more properties available to them that they buy greatly under value and thereby have a higher profit potential when they sell the home to someone else; taking further advantage of people who have already been taken advantage of by the banks who foreclosed on them and corporations who are outsourcing jobs to reduce the number of well paying jobs that would support working families so that they could afford those mortgage payments?

   Christopher Thomas is making his comments based on an assumption that readers believe that the economic circumstances of everyone who takes out a mortgage loan are either always the same or always improving over the life of a usual 15 or 30 year mortgage. Anyone with a connection to reality recognizes that economic circumstances change, and that not everyone has enough control over that to be able to continue with mortgage payments after they lose their jobs due to outsourcing or companies crashing because of poor managment by banks and incompetent and/or greedy company CEOs.

   Based on Mr. Thomas’s argument, he would claim that people who lost their entire life savings because of fraudulent accounting practices which wiped out their pensions and investments, are at fault because they can’t continue to make their house payments. I think there are several million people who lost their homes last year and could possibly lose them this year who would disagree with your assessment of the situation, and quite a few of them are Republicans (or used to be).

6. Christopher Thomas:

   Les:

   While all that is fine reasoning during the campaign–and even perhaps points out impostant trends which I’ll not dispute–the world is much different now.

   Pull up a graph of the Dow Jones Industrial Average from May 6, 2008 to Nov. 20, 2008, and note the following dates of Barack Obama’s ascension: May 6 (he took the permanent delegate lead in the Democratic primary over Hillary Clinton), Sept. 19 (took permanent lead in national presidential polls over John McCain), Oct. 12 (divulged his “spread the wealth around” socialist agenda to “Joe the Plumber”), and Nov. 4 (Election Day).

   Over that period, the Dow Jones lost 42% of its value. The loss after May 6 was gradual (-1,633 points in 4.5 months) as his primary victory became apparent in a Democratic year (Bush was unpopular.) The loss after Sept. 19 was steeper (-2,937 points over 3 weeks) because McCain was the final roadblock. Unlike in the primary, after Sept. 19 no one stood between Obama and the presidency.

   However, the day after “Joe the Plumber,” the market jumped 937 points, on the optimism that the revelation of his socialist agenda might still lead to his undoing (+1,174 points over 3 weeks.) And, of course, the market tanked after Nov. 4, when he was elected (-2,073 points over 2 weeks.)

   From May 6 (13,021) to Nov. 20 (7,552) = -5,469 drop. It is even lower today. That’s great hope and change for you.

   Further, in response to your critique of my earlier comments, you suggested that I was out of touch with reality. Les, everyone who signs a mortgage knows there is risk involved. Throughout the history of the nation, people have had their mortgages foreclosed–so why are these homeowners privilaged? I’m sure they would all suggest it was something beyond their control–Godzilla attacks, zombies, evil CEO’s, or account fraudsters. Where was the rush to help the Eron employees? Madoff’s clients?

   The sad truth is that risk happens, the world is uncertain, but there are far worse things than foreclosure–like socialism. And as for those people who have recently lost much of their life’s savings? How is taxing the hell out of them and the companies they invest in going to help?

7. Les Nakamoto:

   Christopher,

   Again you are making false assumptions which have been repeatedly refuted by facts.

   Just as when the stock market was doing well, didn’t mean that our economy was in good shape and reflective of good policy, (it was still collapsing and U.S. economic policy was terrible); the same is true that just because the stock market is not doing well, doesn’t mean that the it is reflective of bad policy.

   Most reputable economists agree with that fact. Most recognize that it is going to take a while and a big influx of capital to turn this around.

   Businesses by themselves aren’t going to do it. They are still laying people off and closing their doors. And for each business that lay off employees and closes their doors, they reduce the number of consumers available to do business with the remaining businesses.

   The only way to turn that around is to increase the number of jobs, and those jobs have to pay decent wages to be successful.

   The only entity large enough to accomplish that is the government, by financing public works programs to put people back to work. Once enough time has gone by, and the economy has been stimulated by workers spending their income with other businesses, the cycle continues and other jobs are created. The program has to reverse the trend caused by businesses which have been closing up shop here at home (in order to make their products overseas and employ foreign workers). What is so “patriotic” about sending American jobs overseas?

   Recall that after the first full year of the Great Depression in 1930, the unemployment rate was 8.9%. Republicans chose to stand aside and let the economy correct itself, and unemployment ballooned to 24.9%.

   Roosevelt introduced his New Deal in his first terms in office and reduced the unemployment numbers from 24.9% in 1933 (after Republican administrations under Coolidge and Hoover did nothing for four years), to 14.3% in 1938 when it jumped again to 19%, because Roosevelt had given into Republican pressure and did what they asked, attempting to balance the budget, before completely pulling us out of the Depression.

   But even those numbers don’t properly show the impact of Roosevelt’s programs. People who were employed through Roosevelt’s programs had jobs and income, but they weren’t considered employed at the time, because they were working as emergency workers. Roosevelt’s New Deal impact on unemployment was much greater than what the figures show. And while critics of Roosevelt’s New Deal claim that the only thing that got us “out” of the Great Depression, was the jobs created by WWII, they neglect to recognize the most important part of their own argument. IT WAS THE JOBS.

   Republicans like to think that War is the answer to get us out of the recession, they ignore the part about the jobs.

   Jody Seaborn of the American-Statesman does a nice job of putting the facts and figures together in her article here.

   http://www.statesman.com/opinion/content/editorial/stories/insight/02/15/0215newdeal.html

   The market is responding badly because the vast majority of the people still in the stock market are the gamblers who are betting that they can make money off of the down turn by taking advantage of people who lost their shirts when stocks dropped 85% of their value. When bad economic news comes out (poor jobs reports, poor earnings reports, poor consumer outlook), that has much more to do with the stocks dropping in value. And the gamblers are complaining because the rules are changing and they won’t be able to run rampant the way they did when Bush was in office. That has more to do with the stock market tanking.

   If Bush was still in office, or McCain won the election, the stock market might have gone up because the traders know that the rules wouldn’t change and they could still get away with stealing what little was left of small investors’ money. But that just means that the big investors are making lots of money. Of course the stocks would look good. That doesn’t mean that the majority of people wouldn’t be losing their shirts.

   And the stock market has been tanking regularly even before September when McCain claimed in the morning that the economy was fundamentally strong, and then did an abrupt about turn and said it was in crisis in the afternoon. Even the Bush administration claimed that they knew that the market and banks were close to collapse months earlier, but they never bothered to tell the Congress that action needed to be taken.

   But the market isn’t doing well primarily because of a long term problem that has been going on for well over thirty years. Jobs have been outsourced and average people can’t get jobs that pay a living wage. Large corporations have been off-shoring their headquarters to evade taxes and shift the burden of paying taxes on the middle class, property owners and small business owners. That’s why two thirds of major corporations pay zero in income taxes in Wisconsin and in the United States as a whole.

   And crooked corporations have been collapsing at a record pace during Bush’s Administration. Enron, HealthSouth, Tyco, MCI, Adelphi, MCI, Global Crossing, to name a few. Those happened long before Obama even decided to run.

   If the jobs aren’t here, you lose your consumer base to buy the products and services that those businesses are selling, and no amount of smoke and mirrors are going to keep that house of cards standing, when people don’t have the money to buy those goods and services. Look around on any street in America. Businesses have been closing their doors for years.

   This economic crisis is global, not just in the United States, and most of the global community are supportive of Obama, and weren’t in support of McCain or Bush. Other countries got caught up in the crisis because of the worthless mortgage backed securities that investment bankers and insurance companies were fraudulently selling as triple A rated and being sold overseas. The SEC didn’t do their job under Dubya, just as they didn’t do their job under Dubya’s daddy. But a lot of people made a lot of money selling junk. It’s the people who bought and held those “investment” who got burned.

   No amount of rewriting history or falsely claiming that Obama’s election had something to do with the largest crash in stock market value in history is going to change that.

   No one with any common sense is going to agree that there was some conspiracy or massive panic where everyone involved in the stock market was willing to lose trillions of dollars of value, (more than the entire GNP of the United States for a year and a half), and allow the market to tank with companies losing 40% to 90% of their value, simply because of a change in Presidents.

   Instead, it had everything to do with an economy that was propped up by a global Ponzi scheme, which was made possible by Republicans who pushed for deregulation every step of the way.

   The recognition that the stocks were worth far less than companies had claimed caused the initial sell off. And when that started, people who had bought their stocks on margin, using assets as collateral on borrowed money to leverage their investments, found out that they didn’t have quite as much money as they thought they had in the assets they held. When common stock investors found out that banks and the automobile companies were potentially going to go bankrupt they sold off their shares because they knew that only preferred share holders were protected against loss. That accelerated the sell offs.

   And you can’t even make the claim that people with millions or billions in tax cuts were investing in business to begin with. Many tax evaders were hiding TRILLIONS of dollars in secret offshore bank accounts. It doesn’t do the U.S. economy any good when the tax breaks are hidden away in a foreign bank, so giving them tax breaks made no sense in the first place. The U.S. economy is only about $13 Trillion now, so a minimum of a couple of Trillion dollars being stashed away so people don’t have to pay their taxes, is a major hit to our economy.

   And by the way, this “Socialism” that you keep complaining about was first pushed for by Bush when he and his Treasury Secretary insisted that taxpayers bailout the banks and insurance companies for their incompetence and greed. Taxpayers didn’t share in the wealth when the investment bankers and insurance companies were raking in the money from their Ponzi schemes, but we are paying the bill to keep them afloat now. I guess Bush and his administration are just ok with “Socialism” when they need a bailout, but didn’t want to share the wealth when they are raking it in.

   And while not all Republicans voted for the Wall Street bailout, many did. They just didn’t care to bailout the American people with the Stimulus bill. That’s why no Republican Congressman voted for the bill, and only three Republican Senators voted for it. I guess they figured the only ones worth saving were their campaign donors – the banks and insurance companies, and wealthy investors.

   And it was the Bush administration and a Republican Congress that didn’t do anything for former Enron employees. The first criminal trials for Enron executives occurred two years before Democrats took control of Congress.

   But keep complaining about what Democrats are doing, and obstructing the repairs they are attempting to make.

   Republicans just continue to show themselves as the Party of NO.

   No compassion for the people who have been hurt by Republican policies, No to fixing the problems that they created, No to working with the President, and No ideas.

8. Christopher Thomas:

   Les:

   You ask: “What is so “patriotic” about sending American jobs overseas?” The question should be: “Why do businesses feel the need to move overseas?” Perhaps this is the difference between a socialist and a capitalist. Businesses move overseas to make a greater profit. First, they flee an outrageous tax system which targets them with the highest corporate tax rate in the industrial world. You will claim that they need to pay for the services they receive. Fine, but if they can get the services they need more cheaply elsewhere, why not leave. Who wouldn’t go across the street if the prices of things were cheaper? Next, businesses flee excessive regulation and legal requirements which prevent them from making a profit. EPA, OSHA, all the initialed government bodies add rule after rule which makes it increasingly hard to employ people or expand. Consider why a business would want to locate in Wisconsin with our mandatory sick leave in Milwaukee, Our higher minimum wage, Doyle’s new 1% liability equals 100% damages courts and many others. Next, too often they struggle with unions which demand increasing wages and benefits with each new year. Why bother? Add to these, Obama’s job creating Cap and Trade rules which will add 40% to the cost of energy (for people, too) The great beneficiaries of this policy are India, China, and other developing economies who don’t give a crap about the environment and who ensure that carbon reductions made here won’t make any difference at all. (By the way, why not check out how successful the Cap and Trade has been in Germany) Finally, as if all this wasn’t enough, Obama will increase the taxes on capital gains–ensuring that anyone who makes money off private business won’t keep much of it.

   Les, businesses are not patriotic, nor are they social welfare institutions. They do do a great deal for the country by providing jobs which people can take or not. They also contribute a great deal more to communities by sponsoring the arts, schools, and almost every type of community event. Isn’t it sad that Obama is driving them away?

   More later.

9. Les Nakamoto:

   Christopher,

   It is nice to see that a Conservative has finally admitted that businesses don’t feel the need to be patriotic and support their own country, throwing all that out in favor of higher profits.

   I have nothing against companies making fair profits, as long as they are also responsible citizens of their communities and of this country.

   You claim that it is the high corporate tax rates that drive businesses out of the country, but the corporate tax rates are the same or less than they were when President Reagan was in office. In addition, as a proportion of taxes collected by the IRS, corporate taxes have fallen way below what they were during the Reagan years. Also, two thirds of all Wisconsin Corporations don’t pay ANY income tax AT ALL to the Wisconsin Department of Revenue (base on Wisconsin Department of Revenue records). And two thirds of all National Corporations don’t pay ANY income tax to the IRS. If they aren’t paying any taxes at all, then a high tax rate makes no difference. THEY AREN’T PAYING ANYTHING – PERIOD. The myth of high corporate taxes collected in Wisconsin is just that – a myth. It isn’t backed by factual data. This isn’t anything new. And there are tons of articles and research data to prove that:

   http://www.waxingamerica.com/2006/03/the_myth_of_hig.html
   http://www.forwardwi.com/category39/Business-Taxes-and-Costs
   http://weac.org/Libraries/PDF/Bullet8_Corporate_Taxes.sflb.ashx
   http://www.madison.com/wsj/home/opinion/438216
   http://www.legis.state.wi.us/assembly/asm77/news/press_releases/Corporate%20Tax%20Fairness.html
   http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-120492851.html
   http://www.uspirg.org/news-releases/product-safety2/product-safety-news2/wisconsin-legislature-enacts-combined-reporting-closes-corporate-tax-loophole
   http://www.taxjustice-usa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=165&Itemid=32
   http://www.wisconsinsfuture.org/publications/taxes/index.htm

   And the biggest reason for national corporations leaving this country is because of long term health benefits (insurance premiums), that they provide to their workers, NOT from taxes. That is the reason that GM gave for moving their manufacturing plants to Canada and oversea. Yes, that is correct, they moved because the United States does not have Universal Healthcare provided by the Government. Yet, the United States pays twice the amount per capita for healthcare as any other developed nation in the world, (approximately $9000 for each man, woman and child annually), yet we get less in benefits than citizens in CUBA. Why? Because the healthcare industry is paying more to employees to DENY healthcare benefits, than they do to actually PROVIDE the benefits that they contracted to provide.

   You complain about mandatory EPA and OSHA requirements which help to prevent deaths and illnesses due to exposures to toxins and dangerous conditions, yet these both reduce the long term health problems and thus healthcare costs which have risen out of control. Yet you want to get rid of those requirements. Can’t you see where your “logic” makes no sense?

   You also complain that the demand for higher wages drives businesses out of the country, where they can employ cheaper labor. While that is true, the answer to the problem isn’t to move a business to a country that allows slave wages. That only results in products which are of poor quality, and endanger the people who use them, while also endangering the lives of the people who work in those plants.

   You quote China and India as the “beneficiaries” of this demand for cheap labor, yet their countries have the greatest pollution, and the least labor protection. Their people are dying from exposure to industrial hazards at an early age, and the people who finally recognize it are leaving those businesses to find something that pays better and gives them better working conditions. They are going through the same pains of industrialization which we went through over 100 years ago, except that the size of their populations and their pollution problems far exceed what we went through. They’ll eventually be paying labor more for their work, but the jobs won’t be here.

   Ask anyone who has had to deal with outsourced labor from China and India, and you will find tons of horror stories, not limited to poor quality or dangerous products, or slave labor, including children, who are paid pennies a day for their work, with no benefits. What is fair about that policy?

   The reason that these businesses benefit by going offshore to outsource their labor and relocate their manufacturing plants and headquarters, is primarily because Congress, under Republican control, gave them taxpayers money to do so. So taxpayers get hit multiple times. Not only do they lose their jobs and the income tax base which the industry provides, but they have to pay for the privilege of supporting those companies who take their jobs away. What is fair about that policy?

   And it is the largest corporations with the largest tax avoidance attorney staffs which are able to benefit from the largesse of these policies. The small businesses end up paying for a higher percentage of the debt just like the middle class which is continually squeezed to make up for the fact that the multibillion dollar multinational corporations and billionaires aren’t paying their fair share. Corporate executives have had an increase in compensation by 4500% going back to more than 30 years ago, even while their companies are crashing and burning. Middle class Americans only doubled (100%), their cash income over the same time period, but that didn’t even keep up with inflation, so the average income earner is taking home about $5000 less per year than they did 30 years ago, when you calculate everything in 2008 dollars.

   So why is it ok for Republicans to demand such high tax cuts and benefits for corporations and high income earners, when the average American is getting screwed?

   The fact that you would support a corporation’s right to move overseas and still demand benefits from the country that they sell their products to and expect military and political support from when they need to push their agendas, only demonstrates the fact that you have no problem with redefining “patriotism” when you and the corporations you support, get benefits from the country that they and you yourself refuse to support.

   When you support your country, you have to support the people who make it work. Corporations have been taking advantage of average Americans from the time they were conceived, because the only legal requirement that they have is to make money for their stockholders, regardless of how they do it. That is the biggest failure of capitalism.

   If you want to correct the problem, you have to create a level playing field so that those who do the work get the benefits. Businesses that reward their workers fairly, do better in the long run than those who abuse or take advantage of them. (Unless, of course, they’ve created unfair Government policies which allow them to continue to remain in business even when they should be failing. That is the history of capitalism in this and any other country. Capitalists only embrace Socialism when they can profit from it.)

   Is it so much to ask for a company to treat their employees fairly? Is it so much to ask for companies to pay their fair share of taxes to the country that provides them with the largest share of their income? (The United States economy amounts to a little less than 25% of the entire world economy. It used to be more than 25% of the world economy, but the economic slowdown has reduced its share for the past several years, even before Obama took office.)

   Is this what “conservatives” demand? No responsibility for insuring proper and safe working conditions, or safe products, in order to boost their profitability? No responsibility for paying taxes to the country that consumes the majority of their goods and services? No responsibility for insuring that the communities in which they operate are kept safe from potential hazards as a result of their operation?
   No responsibility for the national security of our country because they are more interested in importing products that aren’t tested for safety or contamination, from countries that don’t abide by the same safety and environmental rules that we do?

   If you want to get rid of the unfair pricing that these companies have to compete against, then we should be banning products from countries and companies that don’t follow the same requirements that we demand of our own companies. That would put us on a level playing field, but Republicans have consistently opposed those policies, supporting companies who would rather thumb their noses at policies that protect Americans and American interests. Is that patriotic?

   Remember that during WWII, the only thing that save the United States from being taken over by the Axis forces, was the fact that we had greater industrial manufacturing capacity, which wasn’t exposed to attack from our enemies. Our opposition, in some cases, actually had some weapons and equipment that were far superior than what we had, but we succeeded because of sheer numbers, and a logistics capacity that out produced anyone in the world. (Examples are the Nazi Tiger/Panzer tanks which were far superior than the Sherman tanks which were easily blown up by the Panzers, while Sherman tank shells would bounce off of Panzers. Nazi helmets were also better designed than allied helmet designs, and if you look carefully, the current U.S. Military helmet designs are actually modeled after the Nazi helmets. The Nazis developed the first military jet planes, when the Allies were still flying propeller planes.) And that manufacturing capacity also led to the boom economy in the United States after WWII, when every other major countries manufacturing was destroyed.

   Today we hardly manufacture anything at all. Most of what we have in our stores is imported from China. When was the last time you saw a “Made in the U.S.A.” label? How does that make us stronger?

   We import most of our oil at a cost of $700 Billion every year, which goes primarily to countries that hate us. We have a trade debt of almost three quarters of a trillion dollars annually to Communist China (which more than doubled under Dubya.). We have to borrow money from China in order to fix our economic problems, because we don’t have enough business here at home to support our costs of existence. Yet Republicans oppose spending half that amount of money to fix the problems, so we don’t have to continue to shovel the money out the door, and had no problems with rubber stamping a war in Iraq which will end up costing us more than $3 Trillion before it is over.

   So, if you want to continue to argue that it is ok for corporations and the wealthy to abandon the United States in favor of higher profits for themselves go ahead and continue to do so. You’ve made it clear that all you care about is profit at any cost – as long as you don’t have to pay any of those costs. And those costs will end up being far more than just financial.

   Down the road, I just hope that the majority of the public will remember who really supported America and who didn’t.