Romney cannot talk about today's economy. Romney's economic experience is from 20 years ago. The economy has changed over the past 20 years. Romney is out of touch.

President Obama's record tells us different. The whole progressive/liberal agenda that he loves is going to be his undoing.

His record of what? I constantly hear these broad attacks with no substance.

Details.

The President has been telling America what the Republicans have been doing. If Obama is being required to run on his record - then America should look at the Republican record, too.

Perhaps the Republicans are upset because their core beliefs and willingness to work for the benefit of Americans have been revealed to the public.

So when is the GOP nominee going to tell us what HE will do, instead of just complaining about what Obama has/hasn't done?

It's easy to throw stones, but you can't run this country on sound bites.

I'm not voting for Romney because he supports the "Ryan Plan" which promises more tax cuts for the rich and more pay cuts for American Workers, and Romney has signed on with Grover Nordquist who is the "confidence man" to the rich. Both Republican "plans" put the full weight of the Debt squarely on the backs of working Americans while Republicans plan to repeal minimum wage laws in order to lower our pay.

Republicans continue their mantra that "Obama is bad" because they think they can take America AWAY from "we the people" and elminate the fact that America is, and was always intended to be "by the people and for the people" NOT "by corporation and for corporations".

When you have a guy like Romney who believes that "corporations are people" you know for a fact that there is NO WAY Romney believes in the American People, who are nothing but "cash cows" to Romney.

Obama is the best thing to happen to this country since Bill Clinton, and Republicans' actions have ALL worked AGAINST the people of this country.

Obama / Biden 2012

In an interview with the Weekly Standard earlier this year, Mitt Romney said he learned this advice from his unsuccessful 1994 Senate race against Ted Kennedy: don’t get too specific.

Translation: "If I tell you what I really will do as President, you won't elect me."

If America buys this empty suit, we deserve what's behind the Ken mask.

Translation: "If I tell you what I really will do as President, you won't elect me."

I AGREE WITH THE ABOVE STATEMENT.

Mark - 82% of MSNBC readers know "voodoo economics" when they see it.

As did George W's daddy, but that particular strain of DNA seems to have died out of the GOP gene pool ever since.

Our current economy has been built on Republican economic theory over the last 30 years. How does the current state of the economy suggest Republicans understand economics? Is Romney going to continue with these successful Republican policies? Does anyone know?

If 'free enterprise' economics is so great - why did the economy collapse so many times over the past 30 years? Why are so many people concerned about retirement? Why is home ownership a burden instead of a goal? Why are so many people concerned about health care? Why has the country stopped manufacturing goods for its own economy?

Romney is a 'free enterprise' economist. Why is no one pointing out the shining examples of the success of 'free enterprise' economics? Why is Romney not using his campaign as an opportunity to educate America about economics? Isn't that what a leader is supposed to do?

Daily Kos:

In Ohio this week, Mitt Romney stood before a banner reading "Obama Isn't Working" and blamed the President for the shuttered plant he used as a backdrop. As it turns out, there are only two problems with this picture. Sadly for Romney, the drywall firm in question closed in June 2008 when George W. Bush was still comfortably ensconced in the White House. And as it turns out, Mitt's entire "Obama Isn't Working" theme has been lifted lock, stock and barrel from Margaret Thatcher's 1979 campaign in the UK.

#1 - Romney is much better educated than Obama.

#2 - Romney is much more experienced than Obama.

#3 - Romney is much more accomplished, successful, talented and proficient in achieving goals.

In what?

I just see more blanket statements.

Wow, according to the poll here on MSDNC 82% of the readers have never taken an economics class!

Actually, we are the smart ones. Sadly, the Republicans took their economics classes from W. Bush.

Is Romney going to continue with these successful Republican policies?

Well, it's been very successful for some Republicans. For everyone else, not so much.

The Shrub and his sidekick Dick the Darth Invader failed the nation fiscally when they started their unfunded Invasion Diplomacy.

The country doesn't need another bobble head leader.

Romney still cant" seal the deal" .The people just don't like or trust him or his wife, to tell the truth !

@spider-737231 -- Thirty years ago taxes were much higher than they are today. Thirty years ago there were more restrictive regulations on business than there are today. Thirty years ago there were not IRAs, 401k plans, or incentives to invest. Thirty years ago there were community banks and not many national banks. Thirty years ago people relied on bank savings, certificates of deposit, and even savings bonds to save money. Thirty years ago people that saved money actually had control of their savings. Thirty years ago there were pension plans. Thirty years ago the country manufactured most of what it consumed.

Thirty years ago the national debt was $907 billion. Today the national debt is $15.7 trillion. That means $0.94 of every dollar of debt has been created since 1980.

What changed 30 years ago? Our national debt has exploded and our national economy has grown weaker over the past 30 years. Why? Who has promoted deregulation, promoted lowering taxes, promoted incentives for investing instead of saving, promoted free trade to lower barriers for imports, promoted consolidation of banking?

Is Romney going to spin 'free enterprise' economics as the way to make our economy and country stronger and healthier? The record does not look very supportive.

Ruken,

Can't undestand the simple little first sentence?

'Business' is hardly specific, and neither are the numbered entries below it.

Blanket statements don't mean anything, says this observer.

JH-479998

President Obama has staked his fate on saying "Republicans are bad" over and over and over and over and over and over and over...

LOL! The President doesn't need to say anything. All that voters have to do is look at the last eight years under Dubya, look where that got us, and ask why would we would want to keep the same failed policies?

Ruken

It's hard to believe he'd [Romney would] be a "better steward" when he won't even present alternatives to the actions Obama has taken.

Once again, Romney's plan is the same GOP plan, only more "severely." For example, the Ryan plan of keeping the Bush tax cuts PLUS even more tax breaks for the rich is anything but original.

Even the so-called small business tax cut that Cantor is all about defines "small business" so loosely that most of it would be more breaks for Oprah, Paris Hilton, and Donal Trump. And the really big kicker is it ISN'T PAID FOR! Where is the Teabagger outrage about this?!

We still have deficit spending on war, the Bush tax cuts including the 2003 "trickle-down" breaks only for the rich, and we still have deregulation that allows your cable bill to skyrocket while your wages remain stagnate. The only things the president/Dems have been able to do since the 2008 election is try to keep the country from complete melt-down with a small stimulus and unemployment extension. Otherwise, what is different since the 2008 election other than ACA, or Dodd-Frank, both of which were so watered down as to be less effective (but both of which have been sorely needed)?

Unlike Dubya in 2004, President Obama definitely deserves a second term, and hopefully a congress that will work together and work with the White House for real change. Electing Romney, who is a plutocrat, would only add to the congressional problem of oligarchy rule of corporations and the rich. Electing Teapublicans in congress will only perpetuate the obstruction and gridlock currently preventing progress.

If Romney were to have a chance at victory, he should have broken from the Paul Ryan destruction and stuck with a plan of his own that would actually be a 'turn-around' proposal. He has failed to do so, or to show leadership time and again, and has alienated too many voters (Hispanics in particular) to pull ahead.

Once again, Romney's plan is the same GOP plan, only more "severely." For example, the Ryan plan of keeping the Bush tax cuts PLUS even more tax breaks for the rich is anything but original.

The only "plan" I had seen from Romney was his tax "proposal" which upon further analysis would make the lower 50% pay more and the upper 50% pay less.

Since then I haven't heard anything audible from Romney's mouth that could be construed as an actual plan of action.

This is so funny. This site is so pro Obama. This is where all the liberals hang out to bash any plan offered by anybody but the failed economic plan currently in place.

Then leave. Your internet traffic only increases MSNBC's web ad revenue.

Don't let the door hit you.

You know, we can say to you "the sky is blue" over and over again but if you keep coming back and saying "no, the sky is green" there's really nothing more to say. If you vote republican and are not in the upper class than YOU ARE VOTING AGAINST YOUR OWN BEST INTERESTS.

"The world needs ditch diggers too"

~Judge Smails

..

NBC keeps quoting polls like they are the gospel truth and then attempt to make those into granite statements of "what the public really thinks". Most seniors I know do not want bothered by these political polls since they are usually very lengthy and require excessive time participation and thus refuse to participate... The ones who are willing to answer the poll questions are usually activists and not typical average voters...thus the polls are not really representative and only satisfy a journalistic attempt to justify the stand they wish to make in the first place. NBC is constantly using this misleading procedure to fortify their journalism stand. A fair selection of interviewing truly random "people on the street" would be a far more accurate barometer of the public that any telephone poll but even then video editing can easily be used to slant the conversations.

theboys, it isn't the site that is Pro-Obama, it is simply the fact that many of the posters here are Pro-Obama.

Mitt Romney's campaign is so bad at optics it is laughable. Remember the huge empty gym-like room with only about 75 people all bunched in the front. Then he picks an empty closed warehouse (that closed in 2008 because it was outdated and obsolete) where once again he speaks in a vacuous room with a small crowd bunched in front.

Hey Truepatriot,

"LOL! The President doesn't need to say anything. All that voters have to do is look at the last eight years under Dubya, look where that got us, and ask why would we would want to keep the same failed policies?"

Can you please answer the following question:

What is it going to take for you to recognize that both Bush and Obama are progressives, and it's not an R or D that means anything?

Anyone who hates Obama but doesn't hate Bush or vice versa...

Anyone who blames Obama but doesn't blame Bush or vice versa...

Anyone who blames Republicans but doesn't blame Democrats or vice versa...

... lacks any credibility when it comes to debating politics.

@vglance -- If the government had been spending on more 'welfare' programs - then the largest current expenditures would not be Social Security, Medicare, and defense.

None of these of these three programs are 'welfare' programs - people actually paid payroll taxes to receive a benefit (that is why they are called entitlements) and defense spending is paid for with income taxes. Since these programs are specifically designed to be paid for with taxes - why are they problems?

FDR, the 'liberal' Democrats, and the 'progressive' Republicans designed programs that provided benefits and were paid for by tax revenue. Why is that irresponsible?

It has only been 'conservatives' that have promoted lower taxes, less regulation, incentives for investing over saving, eliminated barriers to imports, decreased regulation on business - without paying for what they promote. Don't try to foist the blame for failed 'free enterprise' economics on politicians that tried to govern responsibly.

The evil welfare programs make up a small portion of the government expenditures - and - the portion of the 'budget' consumed by these programs have not changed that dramatically over the last thirty years.

The national debt has not been created by the Federal Reserve, by over regulation, or by over taxation. Government did not abolish pensions. Government did not force people to buy houses (or force banks to make loans). Government did not force businesses to move manufacturing out of the country. Government does not force people use (or not use) medical services.

Your entire argument is based on fairy tale politics - not by looking at the real record.

Mitt Romney is a liar, plain and simple, period, end of story.

Mitt does not think of a lie as a sin, he thinks of it as a business strategy.

Suggesting Mr. Romney's "business acumen" qualifies him to be President is akin to saying a table possessing four legs qualifies it to run in the Kentucky Derby; it just doesn't pass muster.

@ Rod Every politician changes their story depending on if they are campaigning and if they are in office. If you think only Republicans do it you are incredibly naive. You can call it lies, flip-flopping or changing their position. It all boils down to the same thing.

I am a liberal Democrat, so I probably wouldn't vote for Romney anyway, but what prevents me from even considering it is that I have not heard one thing out of Romney's mouth that would provide any benefit at all to anyone who is not part of the 1%. Can anyone tell me anything he has proposed that would help someone like me? He doesn't even want to fix the roads I drive on. Who convinced Republicans that someone can get elected to run the country without even informing us what he would do if he was elected? (Eliminating Planned Parenthood is not something that would win my vote.)

Hey Wet Willy,

Take a look at this chart from FactCheck.org and see if you can repeat that last statement with a straight face:

http://factcheck.org/UploadedFiles/2012/04/JobsMenWomen.png

And no joe - Obama graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard Law and was editor of Harvard Law Review.. Don't be a curmudgeon.

Describe Romney...Pathological liar.

On the one hand, we have a President who seems to have a never held down a real job and studied Constitutional law only so he understands the easiest way to usurp our rights, and on the other we have a never walked down the street or met a middle class American in his life plastic man who agrees with the usurpation of our rights.

My vote will go to Ron Paul.

Running a company doesn't mean that one is qualified to run a national economy. Romney needs to sell ideas AND an economic team.

theboys ...This is where all the liberals hang out to bash any plan offered by anybody but the failed economic plan currently in place.

Tell us what President Obama's plan is, because the "failed economic plan currently in place" IS the GOP/Romney plan -- We still have deficit spending on war, Bush tax cuts including the 2003 "trickle-down" tax breaks only for the rich, deregulation, etc., and the Paul Ryan plan would increase all of these things including more defense spending.

J. Merle Stanley-2759623 -- Conservatives like you always focus on "community organizer" and leave out experience as a Senator and committees thereof, and of course ask for the president's grades though he graduate from Harvard Magna Cum Laude thus no need to ask about his grades, etc. That's because right-wingers cherry-pick, rewrite history, and often are down-right conspiracy theorists.

Do the homework on you own candidates, if you even know who they are. Romney's brief stint as governor is no more a big deal than the president's as a Senator--unless you praise him for Romneycare. And if you look more into the Olympics you will learn Romney's role has been overstated and only possible because of connections to Mormons in Utah. But his biggest claim to fame is Bain Capital, and he even lies about this.

In 1983, Bill Bain offered Romney the chance to head a new venture that would invest in companies and apply Bain's consulting techniques to improve operations.^[14]

Romney negotiated with Bill Bain to head up these operations with NO personal risk of his own in terms of capital, his job, or even his reputation. Read up on it, because it's not impressive. In fact, "the business is business, and what you do in business is not who you are" mentality is why Romney lies so shamelessly.

vglance -- Wow, just wow. Bush is a progressive? The far-Right has pulled the GOP off the cliff, so now Bush is a progressive, Romney is a liberal, and according to mental folk like Allen West, Democrats are Commies. I see, riiiiight.

Thirty years ago the national debt was $907 billion. Today the national debt is $15.7 trillion. That means $0.94 of every dollar of debt has been created since 1980.

Since there's no adjustment for inflation in those numbers, they don't mean much. A better measure would be national debt as a percentage of GNP (or other benchmark).

@no joe, no bo, nj -- The Federal government is not a business. Romney has a record for running a government.

Running Bain Capital is not equivalent to running a government. That is comparing apples and oranges.

Did Romney apply his business acumen as Governor of MA? What is Romney's record for improving the health of the MA economy - as the government's chief executive? If Romney is going to utilize the regulatory and political tools of the Federal government for improving the US economy - then he should have accomplishments as governor to back that up.

Why is business training of more value in a political arena than training in law or political science? Is Romney running to be Chairman of the Federal Reserve or is he running to be POTUS?

Poor Mitt. He was born on 3rd base and thinks he hit a triple.

@ redvirginia:

So you would equate a 6- to 10-year-old boy's introduction to the cultural mores of his stepfather's Indonesian heritage -- which cultural mores persist to this day in that nation -- with a conscious decision by a full-grown, 36-year-old man to put an Irish Setter on top of a speeding car for a 12-hour, 650-mile "ride" to the family vacation home, and then having the gall to tell Chris Wallace of Fox News that the dog "enjoyed himself"?

Good luck selling that load of tripe to anyone with an ounce of sense.

As to your assertion that Mr. Obama "got F in Economics 101," I'd love to see a citation to support that crock of bushwa.

But I think we've pretty much established that Mr. Romney gets an F in Ethics.

The election this year will focus on whether we can afford 4 more years of Obama.

Here are the Deficit figures for the last 5 Presidents - with a link to the official government source to verify;

Reagan (1981-1988) = $1.339 Trillion over 8 years, or $167 Billion per year.

Bush 1 (1989-1992) = $933 Billion over 4 years, or $233 Billion per year.

Clinton (1993-2000) = $320 Billion over 8 years, or $40 Billion per year.

Bush 2 (2001-2008) = $2.006 Trillion over 8 years, or $251 Billion per year.

Obama (2009-2012p) = $5.333 Trillion (Proj) over his first 4 years, or $1,333 Billion per year. That's $4.6 Trillion more than Bush spent in his first 4 years.

If Obama is reelected, he projects another $5 Trillion of Deficits in the next 4 years, or over $10 Trillion which our children and grandchildren will have as a 'millstone' around their necks for their entire lives. Running up huge debts is a great way to 'pander for votes', but somebody will have to pay it back (our children) - with interest. Here's the official government link - See Table 1.3;

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/Historicals

PS – Let's also look at the 'JOBS' picture under Obama;

The total average number of people employed in 2008 (Bush's last year, including losses at the end of 2008) = 136,790,000.

The total average number of people employed in 2011 (Obama's 3^rd year) = 131,359,000 – that's a LOSS under Obama of 5,431,000 net jobs. These are official government figures.

Here's the Link to official Bureau of Labor Statistics site on employment to verify - Compare jobs for 2011 vs 2008;

ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/suppl/empsit.ceseeb1.txt

Barry-NJ -- Agreed. The problem is Romney's economic team are from the Bush administration. He even has Robert Bork as a legal adviser -- Bork is one really scary SOB when you read his positions, speaking of which...

What Teapublicans want to do is go back to the 1950s (or the Dark Ages in terms of anti-intellectualism), when women were even more second-class citizens then they are now, not to mention rampant discrimination against Blacks, prayer in schools, and desire to repeal every iota of progress made since then. The religious-social positions are even less attractive then their voodoo economic policies. And we haven't even addressed the neocon perpetual warmongering policies.

We won't go back, we won't go back, we won't go back -- Obama/Biden - 2012!

The banner reads "Obama Isn't Working". Last time I checked Romney was touting the fact that he is unemployed so "Romney Isn't Working" either, yet he raked in 120 million dollars over two years according to his tax return. What a joke! I'll side with the President when it comes to our economy.

And no joe - Obama graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard Law and was editor of Harvard Law Review..

And as she stated .... Romney graduated from Harvard with a JD cum laude and a MBA / top 5% at the SAME TIME ...also while being married with 2 kids.

And what did they do with their educations?

Romney ended up starting one of the top, most envied and successful private equity firms in the nation managing over $4 billion in assets.

Obama received an advance to write a book on race relations and ended up writing a book of much more importance to him - a book on himself.

Don't be a curmudgeon.

Don't like having a bucket of water poured on your blankie ... don't like a bucket of truth and reality being poured on your vacuous Obama meme .... not no joe's fault reality ruins your Obama delusion.

Romney is a puppet, of the Republicans & Tea party. He keeps saying he will give even more tax cuts to the 1%, what about the 99%??? What, we have to pay for those tax breaks, so the rich get richer and we get poorer. I have not heard 1 thing that he plans on doing for the average person, all I hear is cut or get rid of all those entitlements, and give even more tax breaks to the rich.

He has no real plan on the economy, jobs, defense(god help us), health care, pensions. All he does is tell people what they want to hear, then he flip flops all the time, you can't tell what he really is up to.

My vote is for Obama, I don't trust him, he is all for the rich and to h... with the rest of us.

Hey GCHD -c can you understand the term "Investments"? Maybe they didn't teach you that in Grade School.

Romney's business experience consists of raiding corporations, selling off everything possible and sending the balance of the jobs overseas. Oh yeah, he'll be a big help.

Nerm_L -- I meant to respond to one of your posts up toward the top of the thread... The other problem with Romney's "retro-grade" problem is the new global economy. In the current economic system, companies are no longer national, and therefore no longer invest in the nation let alone local economies. The so-called "free market" concept (and don't get me started on that Biotch Ayn Rand and her atheist everyone for his/herself crap while freeloading) has to be completely re-examined and policies updated to provide incentive for investments we need NOW in the 21st century.

Laura's only accurate statement ....

My vote is for Obama, I don't trust him, he is all for the rich and to h... with the rest of us.

I agree with the assesment of Obama with the clarification that he cares about only the rich that bundle for him, pay $35,000 a plate to hear him speak, pay $10,000 for a picture with him ....

Obama cares only about Obama.

Conservatives like you always focus on "community organizer" and leave out experience as a Senator and committees thereof, and of course ask for the president's grades though he graduate from Harvard Magna Cum Laude thus no need to ask about his grades, etc. That's because right-wingers cherry-pick, rewrite history, and often are down-right conspiracy theorists.

His experience has a Senator is voting present 129 times. One of the few time he vote,it was against to rise the ceiling debt when Bush was president calling this anti-American. But when he ask the raise "his" debt ceiling he call anti-Americans to republicans that oppose Obama's increase ??????????????

We all wait, with much anticipation, to hear Romney's big picture economic vision.

Thus far, we have heard the same standard, supply-side, trickle-down methods that we have been hearing from Republicans for the past 30 years. This type of unregulated, laissez-faire economic policies historically result in endless boom and bust cycles, just like we have been witnessing. Both Democrats and Republicans are responsible for the gutting of regulations that led to our economic crash of 2008.

The bottom line is, the most successful economies in the world are mixed economies with relatively high individual tax rates. But who needs guaranteed lifetime healthcare, a good pension, affordable housing, or a decent paying job anyway when you can have all free market capitalism and its fruit: A few extremely wealthy people and millions upon millions of people struggling to get by on ever flat wages.

Roy Wilson,

One of the most important posts in years. Little else needs to be said.

Thank you for continuing to post it and please keep it up.

Deluded much, Bob?

From ABC News (2/8/2012):

Obama Trumps Romney With Small Donors

Nearly half — 48 percent — of Obama's $118 million haul in 2011 came from individuals giving $200 or less, according to a new analysis by the Campaign Finance Institute, a nonpartisan group.

Small-donors made up only 9 percent of the 2011 fundraising total for Mitt Romney.

Much of the firm's profits was earned from a relatively small number of deals, with Bain Capital's overall success and failure rate being about even. One study of 68 deals that Bain Capital made up through the 1990s found that the firm lost money or broke even on 33 of them.

Another study that looked at the eight-year period following 77 deals during the same time found that in 17 cases the company went bankrupt or out of business, and in 6 cases Bain Capital lost all its investment. But 10 deals were very successful and represented 70 percent of the total profits.

Doesn't sound like the way we want our country run, now is it?

Let's get back to the title of this article. People are confusing economic acumen with business acumen. This is really key, as economics is a completely different major in college, especially political economy, which is NOT in the business department. Understanding public policy, domestically and internationally, along with foreign policy, as well as law and appointing judges -- Romney is ill-qualified, especially in comparison to President Obama and VP Joe Biden.

RealAmericansFirst -- Excellent information.

We can see why the right-leaning SCOTUS overturned 100 years of precedence in favor of Citizen's United. (BTW, Robert Reich said he'd believe a corporation was a person the day Texas executes one.) We need to get back to limited and transparent campaign contributions if we want to have democracy at all.

As for Romney's background, most Teapublicans don't even know who candidates like Buddy Roemer are let alone Romney's real background, and no one knows what Romney would really be like if he became POTUS.

Roy Wilson - Bush didn't leave office until 2009, a fact you often seem to "forget".

And to all those who claim Obama never "worked":

From FactCheck.org:

University of Chicago Law School statement: The Law School has received many media requests about Barack Obama, especially about his status as "Senior Lecturer." From 1992 until his election to the U.S. Senate in 2004, Barack Obama served as a professor in the Law School.

Since when is being a college professor "not working" but being a vulture capitalist "is working"?

@ROY WILSON-336103 -- These are the numbers that show the true deficits (changes in debt by year) - not fuzzy accounting gimmicks that you are relying on.

http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/histdebt/histdebt.htm

And, please, don't give me the hackneyed 'you don't know the difference between deficit and debt' whine. The change in year to year debt is the actual deficit - not some fuzzy accounting gimmick.

Ninety four per cent of the national debt has been created since Reagan was elected. I seriously doubt you can make the case that Democrats are solely responsible for $0.94 of every dollar of the national debt.

'Free enterprise' economics really works - we just need to throw more money at it. Yeah, right, whatever you say ...

Hey Roy Wilson:

From CBS News (1.31.2012)

The CBO report shows that the deficit dilemma would largely be solved if the tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003 — and renewed in 2010 through the end of this year — were allowed to lapse. Under that scenario, the deficit would drop to $585 billion in 2013 and to $220 billion in 2017.

Ready to get rid of that pesky deficit? Great - you call your Congressman and I'll call mine. We can have those Bush cuts repealed by the end of next week.

Obama graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard Law and was editor of Harvard Law Review..

.... Romney graduated from Harvard with a JD cum laude and a MBA / top 5% at the SAME TIME ...also while being married with 2 kids.

Um, I believe Obama was also married while at Harvard... And of course, Ann Romney was working with the kids (at least when the nanny had the day off).

And what did they do with their educations?

Romney ended up starting one of the top, most envied and successful private equity firms in the nation managing over $4 billion in assets.

Oh, yes, making lots of money by buying control of a company, offshoring jobs and laying off people to reduce costs, temporarily boost profits, load the company up with debts to pay multi-million dollar "management fees", then spin it off loaded with debt, inventory depleted and understaffed, which often resulted in bankruptcy. Of course Romney always made money even when the companies he bought were destroyed, and that counts as "success".

Obama received an advance to write a book on race relations and ended up writing a book of much more importance to him - a book on himself.

Actually, two books, both best-sellers. I do believe having a best-seller does count as "successful", and he didn't have to fire anyone or offshore any jobs or bankrupt any companies to do it.

Some interesting background on Beth Myers - the woman Romney has picked to head up his VP search:

From CBS News (4/20/2012):

[Beth] Myers got her start in politics long before Romney came into the picture. After graduating from Tufts University in 1979, she went to work on Ronald Reagan's 1980 campaign in Texas, where she ran the voter contact program. It was the first year in which state parties were allowed to spend unlimited funds on get out the vote efforts, so the young woman found herself overseeing a voter ID effort that included 100,000 volunteers and contact with 3 million households, the largest in the state's history.

Each night Myers would collect reports from around the state - before the Internet and nearly before fax machines were ubiquitous - and summarize the campaign's progress. Her work left a lasting impression on her boss, Republican operative Karl Rove. Thirty years later they're still in touch, although his role at the GOP super PAC American Crossroads, which must be independent of the campaign, has limited their contact of late.

So Carl Rove's former staffer is picking the GOP Vice Presidential prospects? VERY interesting.

"Had the president’s economic plans worked, President Obama’s plans worked, it would have been open by now," Romney said of the facility, shuttered during the tenure of George W. Bush. "But it is still empty, and it underscores the failure of this president’s policies with regards to getting the economy going again."

Actually, thanks to recent data, the economy is going again, albeit at a slow pace. But the slow recovery is not necessarily Obama's fault. Yes, the government could be a bit more bipartisan to stimulate the economy faster, but the real thing slowing down the economy is the fact that we had a financial crisis. Financial recessions are hard to recover from, especially because they drain capital and patience from businesses and investors. In addition, workers have seen no net pay increases since 2000.

Romney is supposed to be a pragmatic businessman, who changes the equation when it doesn't make any sense. Unfortunately, that is not the case with him. He simply increases the variables of the same equation that we have used for 30 years: tax cuts+deregulation=economic growth and prosperity. This equation failed with Bush and his tax cuts, which did nothing to help the economy and actually hurt it due to increased interest rates because of the deficits. Romney has seen this, and yet he wants to enact Bush tax cuts 2.0. But instead of just keeping things at that, he wants to start on a massive austerity plan to ax domestic programs while beefing up our already over-funded military. That is not a pro-growth policy; that is a destructive policy. Nobody can deny that. Unless they want to be called an idiot....

OBAMA BIDEN 2012

RealAmericansFirst

Since when is being a college professor "not working" but being a vulture capitalist "is working"?

Good point. Perhaps it's the same confusion that poor moms need to be employed outside the home to learn the dignity of work, but rich stay-home moms are doing valuable work (even with the help of a cleaning lady, etc.). The hypocrisy and lack of the Rule of Reason will cause the GOP/TP to crumble from within.

Um, hello conservatives... The reason Bain Capital is named such is because Bill Bain started Bain Capital. True that Romney came in on the ground floor, but he headed up the expansion without any personal risk -- no capital, his position was guaranteed, and Bill even promised to protect Romney's reputation! Now we understand this is difficult to learn because Romney and the GOP establishment (including Karl Rove) are working 24/7 to promote Romney's business acumen, because that's all he's got, and even that is not impressive.

I personally have a huge issue with republicans not taking part in finding solutions with an agenda of just trying ton destroy any positive solutions put forth. This country would have been in a much better position today. Its not the job of any person in congress to just step out of the responsibility when they feel like it. The real issue should be that the GOP would rather tank our country because they didnt have full control of washington. Why dont people talk about that fact? They cant pick and choose when they are politicians. I do understand that this country needs real reforms and Obama put forth a lot of republican ideas that were rejected because they waznted him to fail..this president diod compromise with GOP and they rejected everything. The GOP won the midterms and people got duped because instead of GOP doing anything economically they chose to go after voter rights, woman and divide this country. Our politicians primary function is to serve the people who voted them in office and they chose to defend corporations that didnt need help. I cant believe that the GOP got this whole narrative and people off the actual topic. This generation of american have almost successfully lost control of its republic and that is a real shame to those who fought with their blood to get us to where we are before the GOP turned their backs on us. The GOP have seemingly successfully turned this country into a divided country and then try to blame the president for what they have done from day one. I have voted republican and democrat and its very difficult for me to vote GOP now that they have turned into something i just dont support. I have my own mind and could never be pulled so far to the right as they have gone. The worst part is that people that vote for them still have no clue of their real intentions in our age of information..they really must be living on the moon. What happened to country first? doesnt include the people i guess.

TruePatriot, you think it is better for a woman to just stay at home in a stagnant position, where she is just getting by sucking off welfare. Versus going to work and excelling in the work place, making a living for herself and her child, as government pays for childcare? Yeah, I can now see why you think Obama would be a better steward of the economy...because if you lost him, you would loose all of your give away's, and you would have to work for things yourself...

vglance

The average American has less than 3 months savings in case there is a disruption in their income. They buy material possessions beyond their means and are in total denial over it. They buy houses beyond their means and in equal denial. They only put in an average 2 hours of solid work in a given day (remember these are AVERAGES). And they refuse to cut back on an exponentially unsustainable health care system that artificially inflated our life expectancy by DOUBLE over the course of 200 years which is evolutionarily IMPOSSIBLE. And they refuse to raise the social security age back to above life expectancy which is where it was and was supposed to be when it was invented.

Please show me the site that says that Americans only work 2 hours a day on average. Ever heard about the 40 hour work week??? As for savings, low taxes doesn't necessarily help. The best way to encourage savings is to simply institute a consumption tax (or have the states raise theirs). That would help increase the savings rate in our country substantially. Our healthcare system is mainly unsustainable because premiums keep rising; if we had a single-payer system, we wouldn't have the price instability for healthcare that we have now. And you cannot put the Social Security age above life expectancy; then fewer people would get to enjoy any benefits. The best way to fix SS is to raise revenues and cut outlays. You don't need to raise the retirement age (although I would, to 70) or privatize the whole damn thing.

The country will only get better once we stop electing entitlement-friendly progressives. Doesn't matter if it's an R or D (Bush and Obama are progressives, John McCain, Hillary Clinton, Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney... all progressives-obviously some to a greater extent than others). We need a Chris Christie-type person not just as president, but all of congress. Since people would rather get entitlements, however, it will never happen. Mitt isn't much better than Obama, but at this point, it's who will do the least damage to our nation is the best we can hope for.

The progressive movement hasn't hurt us; it made us into an economic powerhouse. Welfare programs like unemployment and food stamps are barely enough to support families nowadays. And these so-called entitlements (SS, Medicare) have helped keep more and more seniors out of poverty, which is a huge accomplishment. Mitt would do far more damage than Obama, because he would dramatically increase income inequality while bankrupting both our Treasury and our economy with his trickle-down economic policies, which nearly destroyed our economy.

We are split between two societies. Societies that think short-term and emotionally vs those that think long-term and rationally. And the majority has long ago shifted toward short-term and emotional and while some people are now starting to recognize the devastating effects, most of them are too scared to think what would happen if we right the ship.

No rational-minded person looking out in the long-term advocates gutting welfare and entitlement programs. Those programs help keep millions afloat financially and keep our economy going. We have problems, yes, but they are not because of entitlements and wealthy. For 30 long years we wasted our potential, giving stupid tax cuts to the wealthy and deregulating our system. You know where that got us??? A ballooning debt, massive income inequality, and a large recession. To hell with pure free-market economics and supply-side theories. TO HELL WITH THAT. These programs have helped this nation economically, and will continue to help us. Without them, many would be thrown below the poverty line, and we would be finished.

"If I tell you what I really will do as President, you won't elect me."

Progressives twist that into a scare-tactic because the thought process is short--sighted. "He's got plans to destroy the country so he can't tell anyone." People of sound judgement and reason recognize that tough changes have to be made, not cuts that have no impact whatsoever on the deficit. And if you mention what they are, the average American who doesn't know how useless the Dept. of Education is, hears 'cuts' and 'education' in the same sentence and immediately thinks lower test scores. He won't be given the time, nor will the average American have the attention span to understand, to explain that the power and money will be better spent at a local level where they know far more about the needs of the schools than a bunch of corrupt and inept idiots in a building in DC.

What it's going to take to correct this country, which has lived an unsustainable standard of living off of promissory notes for over a century, is an amount of sacrifice that no one will agree to.

So we have a choice... destroy the country by continuously handing out entitlements, spending out of control, massive waste and corruption... or experience hardship, but restore self-discipline, work-ethic, resourcefulness, respect and accountability and save the nation.

You can't run on a platform of "We're all going to have to make great sacrifices..." when you're going against, "We will give you more free stuff..."

It takes pure evil, a disturbing amount of narcissism, in the heart of a person to not see this.

Who is giving people more free stuff???? Welfare comes out of taxpayer money, so it isn't free. Plus you have to be poor to take food stamps, and that ain't as good as you conservatives make it out to be. Your party had 30 years to do all of the above; 30 YEARS. We do have to make sacrifices, but those sacrifices don't have to throw us back into the Stone Age. We can restore accountability, and we already have a good work-ethic. We can fix our problems, but we don't need to reduce our standard of living back to square one. Do you know why many people use credit cards??? Because they are handy instead of cash. Do you know why our economy is slow???? Because wages haven't gone up with the cost of living, slowing down growth and recovery. Don't spout your conservative send-us-back-to-the-1800s rhetoric; we don't have to go back there. You are just another one of those right-wing idiots who hates progressives and their accomplishments.

OBAMA BIDEN 2012

President Harry Truman in 1948: “The Republicans … will try to make people believe that
everything the Government has done for the country is socialism. They will go to
the people and say: "Did you see that social security check you received the
other day—you thought that was good for you, didn't you? That's just too bad!
That's nothing in the world but socialism. Did you see that new flood control
dam the Government is building over there for the protection of your property?
Sorry—that's awful socialism! That new hospital that they are building is
socialism. Price supports, more socialism for the farmers! Minimum wage laws?
Socialism for labor! Socialism is bad for you, my friend. Everybody knows that.
And here you are, with your new car, and your home, and better opportunities for
the kids, and a television set—you are just surrounded by socialism! Now the
Republicans say, ‘That's a terrible thing, my friend, and the only way out of
this sinkhole of socialism is to vote for the Republican ticket.’" And That was 64 Years ago!!and they are still doing their same terrible exploitation of America and Her People!!! A vote for ANY republican is a vote against Your and Your Family's WellBeing. To MittTaxPittanceRommel and his Lying and Dangerously Deceptive opiate Politics? Just Say NO!

Mark L-464288 - you think it is better for a woman to just stay at home in a stagnant position, where she is just getting by sucking off welfare. Versus going to work and excelling in the work place, making a living for herself and her child, as government pays for childcare?

Sorry, Mark - government rarely ever pays for childcare any more.

Child Care Subsidies Drop When Families Need Them Most

The Republicans promised government subsidies would when they got Bill Clinton to go along with their "welfare reform" legislation back in the 1990's. But all that happened was they separated the welfare safety net into pieces that were easy to shoot down one by one (which they've done very effectively).

What you're really asking those moms to do is leave their kids with whatever babysitter they can afford off a minimum-wage job so you can say they're "excelling".

Now, explain to me one more time (real slow, because I just didn't understand it the first time) how Anne Romney was "working" all those years but all these welfare moms "aren't working"? Because, you know, Mitt was bringing home tens of millions of $$ a year, so I'm sure she never even got a night off.

Mark L-464288 -- WTF, when did I say any of that?

It's really about choice, whether staying home with pre-school children (which makes sense for many, especially considering the high cost of quality day care), or about control over one's own body, and other inalienable rights conservatives have major cognitive dissonance about. Romney's positions (on video from only months ago) in regard to the government tax payers paying for child care to force poor mothers off welfare to find low-paying degrading work that doesn't even cover transportation costs, versus how we should respect all working mothers, at least anyway women who can afford to stay home -- That my friend is class warfare.

And it's even more. It's right-wing social engineering from our tax code to Big Government making folks pay for drug tests and ultrasounds, to women having to prove to their employer they use birth control for medical reasons or be fired, to you name it. We thought you all leaned the lesson from the Terri Schiavo intervention to knock it off.

Throw the Teapublicans out!

It took the GOP to wreck our economy 8 years, it will POTUS Obama 8 years to fix it, It would be a lot shorter if the GNOP party would help instead of saying no to eveything

Judging from the amount of pro-Romney posts, which is just about ALL of the pro-Romney posts that are collapsed, I'd have to say there are a whole lot of things people just don't want to read, and don't want anyone else to read either. So we are "allowed" by Obama's indoctrinated lackies to only read things like Romney has money, (yeah, so?) We don't trust his wife..(umm..HUH?) These lib posters have as much respect for the Constitution as their "mis-Leader".

Keep sending your $$$ to Romney, Nothing like watching GNOP $$$ going down the Krapper, I wouldnt let Romney run a fry station at McDonalds much less the Great USA

OBAMA ALWAYS LIES!!!

No, but you prove that you RWNJ trolls do - no sources, no authorities, just keep repeating the TEA/RNC talking points of half-truths, sales pitches, and LIES.

The GOP / Tea Party are jackbooted neanderthal knuckle dragging goons. They are just like communist Russia, if you don't agree with them they want to cut off your head or hang you from a tree, just like STALIN did in the 40s

All politicians lie, but if Mittsy wins it will indicate that once and for all American voters will tolerate EPIC LYING.

The guy lies about what he has done, what he has stood for, what he is doing, what he stands for now and just about everything in the future that can be formulated as a lie.

He's scum. He will get the majority of the wealthy vote. Anyone not rich thinking about voting for him should remember the cookies: somebody, reportedly a republickan even, goes to the trouble to get him a plate of cookies and what does Mittsy do? He insults them. If you're not rich, Mittsy spits on you. And his economic policies will reflect that simple fact.

The never-changing drone of Republican "top Down / trickle down" economic philosophy has been pushed in this country by the GOP (and their wealthy patrons) since the first year of President Ronald Reagan's administration 31 years ago. And in all of the years it was forced upon Americans by a Republican occupant of the White House and/or of the Congress it has NOT resulted in economic growth, or in reduction of the national debt or expansion of the middle class. In fact on all three counts it has resulted in the exact opposite.

So what sane society would ever again put the party of "give it all to the wealthy and some will trickle down to the rest" back in control of the economy? Answer: A sane society wouldn't !!! An no sane voter making less than $250,000 per year would vote Republican and in so doing undermine their own economic interests and the interests of their own family.

"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and
expecting different results." ~Albert Einstein

Very well put, Robert. I believe an overwhelming majority of people in the United States agree.

That's a LONG List of plain B.S.... Especially the "so-called" verification???

Tony D

I need link to the websites of your resources, or you just blowing smoke. If you going to lie at least sound you telling the truth

Nerm_L "@ROY WILSON-336103 -- These are the numbers that show the true deficits (changes in debt by year) - not fuzzy accounting gimmicks that you are relying on....And, please, don't give me the hackneyed 'you don't know the difference between deficit and debt' whine. The change in year to year debt is the actual deficit - not some fuzzy accounting gimmick."

On that, we can agree, but you won't catch Obama agreeing with you - He'll talk about 'Deficits', not the real increases in Federal Debt.

I gave up trying to tell people that Clinton's so-called 'Surpluses' didn't really exist because Clinton never had a single year where the National Debt actually went DOWN, but media writers insist on talking about Deficits, so I fight fire with fire.

RealAmericansFirst "Hey Roy Wilson: From CBS News (1.31.2012) The CBO report shows that the deficit dilemma would largely be solved if the tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003 — and renewed in 2010 through the end of this year — were allowed to lapse. Under that scenario, the deficit would drop to $585 billion in 2013 and to $220 billion in 2017.............Ready to get rid of that pesky deficit? Great - you call your Congressman and I'll call mine. We can have those Bush cuts repealed by the end of next week."

Great Idea. I saw a recent estimate that indicated that almost all of the Deficits over the next 10 years would be eliminated if we just drop the Bush Tax Cuts, so I'm all for it. Most people seem to think the Clinton era tax rates were 'fair', so let's go beack to them.

The beauty is that the politicians only have to do what they do best - NOTHING. The Bush Tax Cuts expire automatically on January 1, 2013, so let's just make sure they continue to do NOTHING, and most of the problems would be solved.

52 reason why not to vote for Obama, there are many more but.........I don't want to make you fill too bad.

http://www.amazon.com/52-Reasons-Not-Vote-Obama/dp/162086018X

Have a nice weekend. No hard fillins for collapsing my comments I know how it works in liberaland.

One of those "you had to be there" kind of posts...

Our economy is like a stressed out lawn (for you garden and lawn buffs). A stressed out lawn has a deficit of grass and an ever expanding population of weeds. Relate these to money or people, your choice.

With this stressed out lawn/economy, do you:

1) Republicans: Remove all barriers to grass growing by treating the weeds and starving the weeds of water and nourishment? (which is how you got the stressed lawn in the first place)

or

2) Democrats: Feed and water (invest in) the whole yard knowing that a strong lawn will overpower the weeds AND the grass deficit AND provide a better long term solution? (i.e. invest in education, improve trade legislation, fix health care.... yes, spend some)

Ha... you really had to be there... made sense at the time!

Wife says I've gone over the edge. :)

We've endured almost four years of Obama blaming everyone but himself for our current economic anxieties. After all that time there is no indication that he has learned anything or is capable of formulating policies that address the staggering number of unemployed, rising energy prices, crushing debt or the impending collapse of our nations social safety net. Instead of showing leadership by crafting policies that address those issues he creates enemies lists upon whom he endlessly heaps scorn and blame. Obama has never progressed from being a smooth talking community agitator whose only skill is the ability to impugn others. Instead of displaying the courage and leadership to promote reforms that will require sacrifice from ALL of us, reforms promoted by democrats and republicans alike, he instead engages in angry rants charging that they are nothing more than Darwinian efforts by millionaires and billionaires to punish the neediest among us for their own benefit. America is made up of he most creative,industrious and compassionate people on the face of the earth. Since the birth of this country people all over the world have held the view that in this country, everyone has the OPPORTUNITY to become successful. All we need is a president, and congress that will allow us the freedom to achieve success. Romney has demonstrated that ability. Obama has not.

We’ve endured almost four years of the Republicans blaming Obama for our current economic anxieties. After all that time there is no indication that the Republicans have learned anything or are capable of formulating or supporting policies that address the staggering number of unemployed, rising energy prices, crushing debt or the impending collapse of our nations social safety net. Instead of showing leadership by crafting policies that address those issues they created in the first place, they have chosen to demonize and otherwise block every effort to recover this economy. After creating an economy that burns over $500 billion in unfunded spending and provides another $500 billion in less tax revenue income, the Republicans have never progressed from being smooth talking advocates for the rich at the further demise of the unfortunate. Instead of displaying the courage and leadership to promote reforms that will require sacrifice from ALL of us, reforms promoted by democrats and republicans alike, they instead engage in angry rants charging that spending for the poor was our true failure and that tax breaks for the rich is our only solution. America is made up of he most creative and industrious people on the face of the earth. Since the birth of this country people all over the world have held the view that in this country, everyone has the opportunity to become successful. All we need is a president, and congress that will allow us the freedom to achieve that. Obama has demonstrated that ability. Romney has not.

@ROY WILSON-336103 -- Obama talking about deficits is quite different that the Bush administration talking about deficits. Under Obama, there have been few off-budget emergency expenditures - the Obama administration has been using real accounting procedures. Under the Bush administration, large expenditures for military operations were authorized as off-budget emergency appropriations - the Bush administration used fuzzy accounting so they could claim smaller deficits. The year to year debt increases tell a much different story than the fuzzy accounting used for deficits.

Interesting that you highlight Clinton's surpluses. No, the budget did not achieve balance under Clinton - but - deficits were decreasing and headed toward balance. You will point out that it was a Republican Congress that achieved that. I will point out that it was Republicans and Democrats working together to balance the budget. And the deficits were lowered without slashing programs - without slashing Social Security and Medicare.

The kitchen table economics of the last four years have required millions of Americans to make difficult compromises. Those Americans did not have the luxury to walk away from the kitchen table and do nothing. It is time for Republicans to make difficult compromises, too, just as millions of Americans have done.

The Republicans could have easily gotten tort reform included in the ACA. I believe, the Republicans could have gotten insurance across state lines included in ACA. I believe the Republicans could have gotten real deficit reductions during the debt deal negotiations. The record indicates that Republicans are not willing (or able) to make the same difficult compromises that millions of Americans are making every day. The Republicans chose to walk away from the kitchen table and do nothing.

Will Romney make those difficult compromises - or - will Romney refuse to sit down at the kitchen table. Do you know? Does anyone know?

So far, Romney has not indicated he is willing to face the challenges, accept difficult compromises, or solve any problems the country faces. Romney has promoted more tax cuts - promoted slashing Social Security and Medicare - promoted eliminating ACA and not replacing it. Romney has basically said he wants to ignore the real problems - and do nothing to solve problems. Romney has said he wants to be another do-nothing slacker.

Wow an MSNBC poll that goes for Obama, what a surprise. Liberals with their hands out, gimme attitudes, and their take from them because they have worked harder and made more is the name of the game for the Democratic Party loyalists. Pretty soon the party will be over when there is no future generations left to steal from, and the wealthy just quit working because taxes are so oppressive. This country is going to collapse financially within just a few short years, and the world will see the end of the United States without ever having to fire a shot. We are our own worst enemy, led by our political elite.

@Tony D-373561 -- Yep, Obama has said many things and made many promises. Here is the real question.

Has Obama ignored the promises or has he made an attempt to fulfill those promises?

You are absolutely correct that Obama has not achieved what he promised as a candidate and even as President. However, Obama's record shows that he has attempted to keep those promises. The government (and country) is closer to what Obama promised than it was before Obama became President. Obama's efforts have shown progress toward the goals that he set. THAT is Obama's record.

Has Romney really promised to do anything? What goals will Romney set and work toward achieving? Do you know? Does anyone know?

Only a slacker would promise to do nothing. So far, Romney has promised to do nothing. Doing nothing appears to be the ultimate Republican goal - and - they have been fulfilling that promise very well.

Do nothing Republicans - promise kept.

"Tony D"

Your listing is a useless waste of space. It is riddled through and through with MISINFORMATION, DISINFORMATION AND FALSE INFORMATION.

If business acumen was all that was required to become president,....then the highest office in our country would be called "CEO". It's not as simple as running a business,..and the great men who have run our country in the past,...from BOTH parties understood that.

There is,....or at least used to be,....a LOT more to consider about running a country than the economy and the welfare of corporations.

THE NEW GOP IS UNIQUELY UN-AMERICAN.

Corporate greed and the pressure that has been put on all American citizens to earn, earn, earn has warped our values,...and turned brother against brother.

THE MESSAGE COMES VERY CLEARLY THROUGH THE IMAGES WE ARE FED EVERY DAY SINCE THE 80s, WHEN RONALD REAGAN HANDED US OVER TO WALL STREET AND MOM WAS FORCED OUT TO WORK (He had such a familiar and trustworthy smile,...didn't he ?): Fight tooth and nail to become wealthy or you and your family will be marginalized,....and you will struggle and suffer to serve the bottom line goals of corporate America ;

"Greed is good",...wasn't that the message of Wall Street ? Foreshadowing. Setting the tone for what was to come.

THE DOLLAR COMES FIRST !! PAY !! ....and the bar keeps getting raised,...higher,...and higher,....and higher, just for a basic middle class existence, because the top tier of wealth is NEVER satisfied ; they want it all !!

We need to take our country back from wealthy corporate interests and make it a government of BY THE PEOPLE and FOR THE PEOPLE. Our collective conscious and conscience has been bought.

Hey,...that sounds good,...we should put that in a document somewhere. Hey,...we did,...the constitution.

The right wing goes on and on about what is not constitutional about democratic ideology,....as they change our country from a government FOR THE PEOPLE,...to an economic concept only.

THE NEW GOP IS UNIQUELY UN-AMERICAN,...and ROMNEY IS UNELECTABLE.

We need a P-R-E-S-I-D-E-N-T,...not a CEO.

Vote FOR THE PEOPLE this November. Unite the 99%.

Vote Obama/Biden 2012.

timothy kaluhiokalani

...Since the birth of this country people all over the world have held the view that in this country, everyone has the OPPORTUNITY to become successful. All we need is a president, and congress that will allow us the freedom to achieve success...

The "opportunity" part is exactly what President Obama and the Dems have been fighting for. Having the same rules for everyone, with no unfair advantage given to certain groups (like tax breaks for investment bankers and hedge fund managers ONLY). A level playing field via affordable education (public education and PELL grants), affordable health care, consumer protections (Dodd-Frank), and so forth.

Please define "freedom" to achieve success. Is that abolishing the minimum wage? Is that deregulation and a zero corporate tax rate? Is that polluting at will? Because these sound like "freedom to achieve success" for corporations and the rich only, not the average citizen. Don't be so easily taken in with bumper sticker silliness.

Did you see the article the other day about 15% of the population now living in poverty? How are those people going to get into the middle class? They'll need education and training, decent paying jobs, health care, etc., and the nation as a whole (including the rich) needs infrastructure, energy, a clean environment, safe food, and on and on.

The Paul Ryan plan will "eat the seed corn" needed to invest in fishing poles for Americans to catch fish. Instead plutocrats like Romney want to decimate the working poor and middle class to give more fish to the rich who already have plenty of fish.

But the smart rich people (like Warren Buffet) know better. They know when the middle class does well, everyone does well including businesses and the rich -- who in reality depend on the middle class more than the middle class depends on them (supposed "job creators").

serfdom101 -- Excellent post!

Why do Teapublicans hate America?

If anyone has any doubts about Obama's impact on the economy, please read through this site: http://zfacts.com/

Remember that much of Obama's apparently poor unemployment numbers are due to the sheer severity of the recession, which started long before he entered office. Given that he has received significant opposition to any proposal to help the economy, so it did not recover as quickly as we hoped. Nonetheless, the bills he has passed have certainly had a positive impact. His record speaks from himself. 800,000 job losses a month to 200,000 job gains a month. Budget deficit has lowered (despite what Republicans may claim), though drastic cuts at this point would hurt vulnerable parts of the economy.

Nerm_L "@ROY WILSON-336103 -- Obama talking about deficits is quite different that the Bush administration talking about deficits. Under Obama, there have been few off-budget emergency expenditures - the Obama administration has been using real accounting procedures. Under the Bush administration, large expenditures for military operations were authorized as off-budget emergency appropriations - the Bush administration used fuzzy accounting so they could claim smaller deficits. The year to year debt increases tell a much different story than the fuzzy accounting used for deficits."

While I agree that 'the year to year debt increases tell a much different story (and better) than the fuzzy accounting used for the deficits', this fuzzy accounting is used by both Democratic and Republican administrations, and actually started under Lyndon Johnson (D).

As for 'on-budget' and 'off-budget' appropriations, that is a meaningless difference once a fiscal year is over, since both are included in the final spending (and Deficit) reported, and this is where I have a problem with Obama - His total spending has increased by almost $2 Trillion over the last 3 years, which accounts for most of the Deficit increases, compared with Bush's last fiscal year (2008).

bob-1805084

1. Education:

Romney Romney attended the prestigious Cranbrook School before receiving his undergraduate degree from Brigham Young University, in 1971. He attended Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School and received both a law degree and an M.B.A. in 1975, with no honors.

Brigham Young is Ranked #71, it is not a school with a particularly good reputation, essentially it is a Mormon Religious School.

Obama

In late 1988, Obama entered Harvard Law School. He was selected as an editor of the Harvard Law Review at the end of his first year, and president of the journal in his second year. He Graduated from Harvard magna cum laude

Clearly, Obama is better educated and more intelligent than Romney

2. Experience

Romney

He ran for Massachusetts Senate in 1994 but was defeated by incumbent Edward Kennedy
and made a run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, and was defeated by John McCain

Romney’s Bain Capital Caused Mass Layoffs, Sent Jobs Overseas

Thousands of Americans were laid off by Bain Capital at companies it purchased, managed, and, at least a quarter of the time, drove into bankruptcy

Obama

Taught at the University of Chicago Law School for twelve years—as a Lecturer from 1992 to 1996, and as a Senior Lecturer from 1996 to 2004—teaching constitutional law.

Obama was elected to the Illinois Senate in 1996, succeeding State Senator Alice Palmer as Senator from Illinois's 13th District

Obama's expected opponent in the general election, Republican primary winner Jack Ryan, withdrew from the race in June 2004.[64] Six weeks later, Alan Keyes accepted the Republican nomination to replace Ryan. In the November 2004 general election, Obama won with 70 percent of the vote.

November 4, Obama won the presidency with 365 electoral votes to 173 received by McCain.[104] Obama won 52.9 percent of the popular vote to McCain's 45.7 percent

To Date, All of Romney's "achievements" have devastated the lives of thousands of Americans. Without the money that he stole from the pension funds of displaced American workers Romney would be a huckster selling cars. Instead he is a huckster selling Mitt Romney.

Romney is a documented serial liar who will say or do anything at all to get what he wants. If elected he will continue what he has always done. He will make sure that those who are already wealthy become more so, and he will get the money for them by taking it from hard working Americans........just like he has always done.

AS an LDS member myself, I am appalled at the bald face lies that Romney keeps spewing !!!!!

We Mormons are supposed to hold ourselves to a higher standard than the rest.

@ROY WILSON-336103 - You are honestly claiming that Bush's 'accounting' ends with the FY2008 budget? You are honestly claiming that Obama's spending began on Oct. 1, 2008 - a full month before Obama was elected and four months before Obama was inaugurated?

You should be vetted for a position in Romney's cabinet. Romney likes fuzzy accounting, too. Your whole argument lacks any credibility.

Nerm_L

@vglance -- If the government had been spending on more 'welfare' programs - then the largest current expenditures would not be Social Security, Medicare, and defense. None of these of these three programs are 'welfare' programs - people actually paid payroll taxes to receive a benefit (that is why they are called entitlements) and defense spending is paid for with income taxes. Since these programs are specifically designed to be paid for with taxes - why are they problems?

Nerm,

Social Security and Medicaid are in fact welfare programs as they were designed to improve the welfare of the citizens. If you look up either of these programs, you will see that welfare is actually used many times in their own words. There is debate over the term welfare, especially between how we define it and Europeans. However, I'm going to assume based on the context of your quote, that when you define welfare, you mean it to be a free handout like food stamps. But here is where you go off the rails. You see, they BECAME handout-type welfare programs by no longer operating the way they were built, and I'll show you how.

And after I do, I'm hoping you will finally see the difference between the surface-level thought process you apply in your reasoning to the deeper understanding that I'm trying to get you to see so you start to re-evaluate your entire ideology.

Social Security - You know SSI is actually an insurance policy right? It was designed to pay out at age 65 in the rare chance you beat the odds and lived that long. No one expected back then to live that long, and therefore it was understandable that they may not have planned for it financially. Why did they not plan to live to age 65? Seems ridiculous because people live into their 80s and 90s. The reality is that when SSI was created, the average live expectancy for both men and women were LESS THAN 65. SSI made sense only if the age when payouts would start would be ABOVE the average life expectancy. NOT 25 years UNDER it like it is today.

Please take a moment to let that calculate in your mind for a minute. Because like every debate I have with you, Nerm, the math is always the issue.

The only way Social Security can restore its sustainability and restore its usefulness as a welfare program to mean improving the welfare of the people instead of giving away free handouts, is to restore the payout age back above life expectancy, which would be around 81.

Medicaid - The problem with medicaid is very similar to Social Security. People know that publicly run hospitals cannot refuse a patient. So why bother putting savings aside, not only for retirement, but to handle all the hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars necessary to cover the costs of all the late stage medical issues... dementia, heart attacks, by-pass surgeries, strokes, managed care... on and on and on...

People would rather take that money and spend it while they are young and able to go on vacations and enjoy themselves before the only fun they can have is remembering where they left their teeth and possibly finishing a game of canasta before having to go to the bathroom again.

Life expectancy has increased since 1970 for males and females in both racial groups. Between 1970 and 2008, White males’ life expectancy increased from 68.0 to 75.7 years (11.3 percent), while White females’ life expectancy increased from 75.6 to 80.6 years (6.6 percent). During the same period, the life expectancy for Black males increased from 60.0 to 70.2 years (17.0 percent), while life expectancy increased from 68.3 to 76.8 years (12.4 percent) for Black females.

This is not evolutionarily possible. This rapid acceleration in life expectancy is due to the magical wonders of modern medicine. Yet no one wants to do the math and have a serious discussion about how much all of this artificial inflation of L.E. is costing us.

After suffering a stroke in 2008, followed by numerous other physical ailments, my father's medical bills, including his managed care (he's in a VA home) have exceeded $500,000. You take the sum total of all the taxes he's paid into Medicaid and it won't put a dent into that. My father should be dead. He's been kept artificially alive by an ever-growing national debt that no one cares to think about because all they care about is staying alive, or keeping a loved one alive. He is cognitive enough to where you can have a conversation with him and he'll follow, and contribute, but you can't always believe his stories because he's got vascular dementia. But when the doctor calls and says he needs to go to the hospital for yet another emergency, who is going to say 'no' when the hospital isn't coming after the family to send a bill?

While you may not equate this much-needed medical care for the elderly as a handout because how cold could a person be to turn their back on the elderly... the reality is that the treatment costs money. There's no such thing as free. Doctors have to be paid, and paid a lot of money because their expenses are astronomical... med school, malpractice insurance, hours worked, stress, time away from family, demand for their skill, etc... Pharmaceutical companies have to be paid because of the costs to manufacture, research, develop, test, retest, and test again... Nursing staff, hospital overhead, supplies, machinery, equipment...

Again, progressives love to be passionate about their ideology and the utopia they think they can create, but they never do the math. Well, the real math. They never seem to have trouble agreeing to the fuzzy math they get from the media.

Now you can argue that there is waste and corruption and the costs of care can be drastically reduced if you cut it all out. I agree with you, but even if you cut out all the waste and corruption in medical care to 100% perfect efficiency (impossible, but let's just say you did for argument's sake), you still would be left with an unsustainable system of medical care for the very same reason that house values will only drop so far because at some point, you're still forced to pay for the raw materials the house is made of.

Medicaid is a handout, not necessarily from a direct dollar standpoint, but an indirect handout because we are lying to ourselves about the real cost of care and are not taking personal accountability to set enough money aside to cover the costs of care necessary to live to 80+ years old. In other words, the level of care does not match the money being put into the system, so it is unsustainable. And the gap difference is in fact a handout-type welfare.

Now Nerm, and anyone else who feels like collapsing this comment... whether you see the light now or not, whether you finally decide to start seeing the real reality of what we're facing in this world, what I wrote is the truth. Absolute truth. Indisputable truth. If you fight it, you are demonstrating to the world that you are part of the group of people in this nation that are unknowingly destroying it from within just like all the other nations that came and went before us who couldn't see the writing on the wall. Great Britain is the closest parallel, except their indebtedness was to US and ours is to China and the Fed.

@vglance -- The increases in life expectancy has been achieved by decreases in infant mortality. Fewer people are dying as children. Infant mortality and childhood death was more prevalent in the 1930s and 1940s - that was even before antibiotics were available and before childhood vaccination programs. Your conclusion that people are living longer misses that more people are living through childhood.

The decrease in childhood death rates simply means more people will be contributing to Social Security before they die, too. It is necessary to live through the years where contributions are required before you can receive benefits. And your level of Social Security benefit is determined by how much you contribute over your working life. Those contributors have built up close to a $4 trillion surplus that is stored in the OASDI trust. At present, that trust is collecting about $200 billion per year in interest.

If you want to claim that the OASDI trust is simply a bunch of IOUs - well that can describe any money that is loaned. The money is loaned on the promise of payback with interest - a promissory note is just a fancy IOU. A mortgage is an IOU - a car loan is an IOU - a student loan is an IOU. Failure to pay back that IOU results in a serious credit downgrade. If the government defaults on the OASDI trust - then the health of Social Security will be the least of our worries.

You are also conveniently ignoring why the government set up IRA and 401k legislation. Those (government sponsored) programs were specifically designed to generate tax revenue when people reached retirement age - to support Social Security and Medicare. That was Reagan's fix for the entitlement programs. The aging boomers should produce more than $1 trillion in tax revenue from those tax deferred retirement plans. The agreement was, that tax revenue would be used to support the entitlement spending required by the boomers.

Medicare is a totally different animal because the program has several parts - including a small defined benefit - a premium supported hospital care and long term care insurance - and a premium supported drug benefit. The largest Medicare expenditures are in the portions that are premium supported - the beneficiary continues to contribute during retirement through premium payments. The Medicare defined benefit has been totally covered by payroll taxes - the premium supported benefits are supposed to be covered by the premiums and a portion of the payroll contributions.

Basically your entire discussion is based on ignoring the reality of how the programs have been set up, the fundamental health of the programs, agreements made in the past to shore up those programs, and where the problems actually lie. Medicare is the killer - not because the program has been under funded - but because the healthcare industry has been too greedy. I seriously doubt that when the program was set up it was expected that healthcare cost would increase 20 to 30 pct per year. I cannot believe that the country (and the government) has allowed that rate of inflation.

You want to talk about numbers? Here are the real numbers. One out of every two current workers will be eligible for retirement over the next 20 years. On average, 10,000 people will be eligible for retirement every day, seven days a week, for the next 20 years. On average, 300,000 people will be eligible for retirement per month, every month, for the next 20 years. There is $17 trillion in retirement assets invested on the financial markets - mostly owned by people that will be eligible to retire over the next 20 years. The financial markets will be losing about $1 trillion a year, every year, for the next 20 years.

I am not that concerned about Social Security or Medicare. When the financial market collapses because there are more sellers than buyers - the OASDI trust will be worth a whole lot more than it is today. Deflation will make cash king ...

the fact is the US is bankrupt because of dubya bush. He took the country from surplus to record deficit. He inherited a balanced budget and $5 trillion of projected surpluses and turned that into $7 trillion of actual debt, a $12 trillion swing.

If you want a president who can actually brag about his handling of the economy, none can compare to Bill Clinton, he took bush 1's deficits and turned into surplus, added 22 million jobs in the private sector and reformed entitlements. bushie added NO new privated sector jobs, none, nada, zero!

Thank you Silverhawk for demonstrating why Bush was a progressive. Now go teach TruePatriot. He seems to not understand the concept of massive spending, government expansion and regulation being progressivism.

And Nerm, get out of the 30s and 40s and back to the figures I gave from 70s to 2008. Infant mortality rates haven't changed much at all since the 70s, but life expectancy has. If you cannot simply take a step back and think about all the incredible advances we've had in the last 30-40 years in medicine and technology to extend life, then wow, I don't know what to say other than it matches how out of touch you've been on your other posts.

It's impossible to keep you focused on the debate at hand. You're all over the place. You can take any set of numbers you want to make a case, but if the numbers are irrelevant, why do you do it? Why would you bring up infant mortality in the 30s when it has absolutely nothing to do with L.E. from the 70s to 2008?

TruePatriot,

Your wealth redistribution theory comes of the "treat the symptoms" type of thought process which is the hallmark of progressivism. "Aww that child didn't get a trophy and is crying and maybe even traumatized over the experience, so we have to force the coach to give everyone a 'participation trophy.'"

All we've been doing in society is treating the symptoms. "People are unemployed, so let's extend unemployment payments." "Our kids are not getting a good education, so let's throw more money at it."

Everything seems so simple in the eyes of a progressive when they never have to consider the long-term psychological and behavioral changes these short-sighted decisions create.

Why are so many people unemployed? Well, I go to job fairs to get new clients (I'm in the recruiting industry). And what do I see? I'm practically the only person in a suit and I'm not even there for a job. I look around and the majority of people are wearing jeans, ripped jeans, paint-stained jeans, jean shorts, sandles / flip-flops, wife beater tee-shirts, women wearing shirts that reveal their midriffs, shorts/skirts too short, on and on and on. It's an embarrassment. They aren't looking for work, or if they truly are, the effort they are putting in is worthy of less than min wage.

Statistics have shown that it's human nature to wait until the last few weeks of unemployment checks remain before they start putting in a real effort to look for a job.

You want to fix this country, if you truly care, you have to stop with the progressive mentality of treating the symptoms which serves only to further create lazy, unresourceful and incompetent people, and understand that we grow and prosper the most through experiencing not just failure, but the real consequences of the failure, not the soft landing bailouts that make people think, "Well, that wasn't so bad. I guess it pays to be irresponsible."

I am a social liberal and fiscal conservative. I am neither a dem nor a rep. I am neither a WSP nor a Tea Party member. I own a gun but I am not a member of the NRA. I am an Athiest but I practice Judeo-Christian principles because I live on this rock with 6 million other people so it pays to be nice and respectful to those around me. I think Mitt is not the answer to our problems but anything is better than Obama. I am neither wealthy, nor did I come from money. I had to work very hard for what I have and have no safety net in the form of family or a trust fund to fall back on. I had to learn self-reliance, personal accountability, resourcefulness, frugality and responsibility, and I did it through struggle and humility and a father that whipped my ass if I was ever out of line.

Now that all might seem alien to you and downright repugnant. Perhaps you think life should be all chronic and palm trees for everyone. But, you have no idea how off you are about me and what I stand for. You think I'm some radical right wing nutjob and all it does is further prove how out of site you are with reality.

The vast majority of people in this country are spending beyond their means, and they'd rather have their iPads and smart phones and label anyone who might put that lifestyle in jeopardy as someone who is suggesting we go back to the 1800s.

But in the end all of this doesn't matter. Because the smart people who think beneath the surface, who think long-term, who are far more sophistacted in their reasoning will be prepared and you will not.

Drunken sailors don't spend a lot, gotta get with the times.

Obama has faced obstruction from both Democrats and Republicans. Every indication is that Obama understands that entitlement reform is necessary, defense cuts are necessary, increased revenue is necessary.

Everything that Obama has proposed are steps in the correct direction. Democrats, Republicans, and especially lobbyist have opposed everything Obama has suggested. I am hoping Obama is reelected simply because he has been taking steps to work around Congress during a second term. Perhaps Obama will not carry through - but - so far the indications are that Obama will address the deficit during his second term. That would be a significant legacy for the history books.

I keep thinking I'm in Popeye's era.

Yep, alan - that's why you're supporting Ron Paul's 19th century solutions to 21st century problems.

@alan_static

What did bush spend money on can you tell me or are you just going to mis-state the facts and say it's all President Obama's fault just because.

I think is't Bush's fault and Obama's fault. Make no mistake, I have never voted for anyone who was actually elected.

Nerm,

If that is the case, that both parties are to blame for obstructionism, then why isn't Obama going after his own party as well? Why only bash Republicans when clearly both parties are to blame.

Alan, Cool. Who are you voting for this time. That way we know who won't get elected :-)

@alan_static -- You are quite simply misinformed. The current state of the country - the economy - the government - is the result of a grand experiment begun 30 years ago.

The national debt in 1980 was $907 billion. Today the national debt is $15.7 trillion. Ninety four per cent of the national debt has been created over the last 30 years. That means the $0.94 of every dollar of debt has been created over the past 30 years.

Over the last 30 years the country has witnessed rapid expansion of the financial services sector of the economy. We have witnessed tremendous deregulation - very large reductions in taxes - increasing incentives to invest. Thirty years ago there were not IRAs or 401k plans. Thirty years ago there were community banks instead of national banks. Thirty years ago the country manufactured most of what it consumed.

The Federal Reserve did not create the national debt. Over regulation did not create the national debt. High taxes did not create the national debt.

Everything Ron Paul has been campaigning against has not contributed to the national debt - and - has not caused the current state of the economy.

Colorado-Man - do you know how Romney made money?

Not by starting companies or hiring anybody.

Bain Capital bought up companies with assets and money in their pension plans. Then they sold off those assets and cashed in the pension plans. And they used that money to buy Bain Capital stock, thereby increasing the value of the managing partners' stock accounts.

Romney's $21.7 million 2010 income came from that Bain Capital stock without him ever lifting a finger. (Or paying any payroll taxes, but that's another article.)

You might want to think twice about giving Romney access to all Americans' assets and pensions.

I'm voting for the unelectable Ron Paul.

@JK1963 -- Obama has not been 'going after' Democrats because Obama has been able to twist their arms to get Democrats to agree to some of the things that need to be done.

Like it or not - Democrats have been willing to accept some politically distasteful cuts and limitations.

And if you think Republicans are the only ones that are fiscally responsible - Democrats reinstated PAYGO rules in 2010 that places the same limitations on government spending that a Balanced Budget Amendment would.

So far, Republicans have been all talk and no action. Democrats have already done some heavy lifting - by enacting PAYGO - by enacting cuts to Medicare as part of ACA - by enforcing the automatic cuts from the debt limit fiasco and failed Super Committee. If you want to bash Obama and the Democrats 'on their record' - then you better really look at that record.

Fair tale politics might make good TV advertising - but - it ignores the REAL record.

To create wealth, you have to add value to something... a product, a service.

Can you point out what "product or service" Bain capital added to the American economy? Or did they just steal the results of other people's "value added"?

There are a number of workers cheated out of their pensions by Bain who might want to talk about how much "value" Romney added.

Romney's steel skeleton in the Bain closet (Reuters)

Workers were denied the severance pay and health insurance they'd been promised, and their pension benefits were cut by as much as $400 a month.

What's more, a federal government insurance agency had to pony up $44 million to bail out the company's underfunded pension plan. Nevertheless, Bain profited on the deal, receiving $12 million on its $8 million initial investment and at least $4.5 million in consulting fees.

Before you go tripping down the path of "wealthy worship", Fed Up, you might want to look to see how they got it.

@Fed Up-2683606 -- A business that only looks at the money to be made will fail.

The function of a business is to sell products or services that people will buy. If the business does a good job of selling that product or service - they will make money. If the business has an exceptionally good product or service - or - if the business really invests a lot of work into that product or service - the business can make a lot of money.

You can 'invest' a trillion dollars into a business - and - that business will not make any money until someone actually does some work. The profits from a business is a reward for work - not the money that was invested.

Romney's record of success is based on someone else actually doing the work of running a business - someone else doing the work of producing a product or service - and Romney being able to skim off the rewards of someone else doing that work. That is why Romney is not a 'businessman'. That is why Romney's credentials of success are questionable.

Ron Paul wants a pony! Mitt wants what anybody else wants, only 2 hrs later.

Nerm,

Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't PAYGO only apply to NEW or EXPANDED entitlement programs?? That being the case, that is nearly the same as balancing the budget. If you start out spending more than you take in then you aren't really "paying as you go..." As for the boondogle of the health care which is now estimated to be far larger of an expense than originally sold to the American people, that certainly doesn't sound much like Obama is "twisting the arm" of fellow Democrats.

JK1963 - You need to quit getting your "facts" from Rupert Murdoch's propaganda machine.

From Reuters, 4/13/2012:

CBO cuts cost estimate for Obama healthcare law

The CBO, in an update to its budget outlook, now estimates that the overall coverage cost of Obama's Affordable Care Act will drop slightly, to $1.083 trillion over the next decade. Last year, the CBO estimated the price tag to be $1.131 trillion over the same period of time.

Only in GOP la-la land can a cost cut be twisted into a cost increase.

Being a successful business person doesn't translate into being good for the economy as president. Over the last 80 years we've had tow "businessmen" as president. One was Herbert Hoover and the Other was George W. Bush. What kind of shape was the economy in when those two left office?

The only solutions Romney is offering are more tax cuts for the richest of the rich and more deregulation. Been there -- done that. It lead to the worse economy since the depression.

Great chart showing the impact of tax cuts on American GDP.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_RPTAaOI4RN8/S2icwhGIK5I/AAAAAAAAAs8/4T7nArkb3es/s1600/percapGraph_3.bmp

Translation: The GOP's "tax cuts create growth" theory is a bust (for all of us).

JOBS are the key! ! In the 8 years prior to Obama; over 5 Million Customer Service JOBS in the Corporate & Financial Sectors alone were LOST?? Outsourced? In the month before Obama started we were losing 700,000 Jobs Per MONTH?? Call Customer Service; when you get 'em , ask where they are physically located?? (Phillipines, India, Indonesia, Etc.??) Those wern't the highest paying; BUT they were U.S, American JOBS, LOST, and now MUST be replaced?? The "so-called" Norquist Pledge signers, for "TRUE TAX REFORM"; just "AX THE TAX CODE", with its $1.1TRILLION in "breaks", Plus allowing 45% to pay NOTHING? Can't solve this MESS overnight??

with a screen name like "RealAmericansFirst", you have got to be an activist working on the Obama campaign. Pardon me if I don't pay any attention to your posts

Nerm_L

I have to agree and disagree. The debt was created by politicians in Washington not being satisfied with only spending the money collected through taxation, so they write their own rules and create it out of thin air. And who prints it for them? The Fed. The Fed is complicit, but it is the politicians spending more than we, the public can make, and be taxed on.

Ron Paul knows quite well that it is out of control spending that has created the debt, and he is going after that spending. We spent nearly a trillion dollars last year for welfare and healthcare for welfare. And for what? To subsidize American sloth?

As far as his views on the Fed, I don't think most people really understand why he, and many others, feel the way they do. I will try to explain how I see it.

Why Ron Paul is correct about the FED

Think of it in terms of a stock split.

Take a dollar bill, tear it in half, that is what happens every time the FED doubles the money supply. Except, they give fifty cents of your money to special interest, cronies, finance wars, or foreign powers.

Tear your 50 cents in half again.

And again.

Now you have 12.5 cents. That is why a green pepper in 1980 cost 12.5 cents and now it is a dollar, and it has nothing to do with how much we pay the sun to shine. The dollar is backed up by the full force of America, which as it turns out is the US citizens. Backed up through taxation. And because our government can't tax us 100% because it would destroy the economy, it is added as debt.

What is the point of earning 7-10% on investments, while at the same time the FED is devaluing your money by 15%?

In other terms, if you made $100,000 last year, you would only be able to buy $85,000 worth of products with that same money this year, in last years dollars.

If you actually believe that the things you state, or have heard as to what Ron Paul is running on, you are "simply misinformed" and maybe should do some independent research of your own.

Real,

If memory serves me right, weren't we promised that the cost would ONLY be $940billion?? Addiitonally, there was a CBO report issued on 3/16/2012, that shows the total cost over the next decade (taking into account the estimated number of people that will ultimately be dropped by their employer provided health insurance) that that number was nearly $1.76 TRILLION...

Far be it for me to address your insult, it seems that YOU are the one that loves to live in la la land!

@JK1963 -- PAYGO is a requirement that any new spending (either from expenditures or tax reductions) be offset by cuts to existing spending. The requirement is that the 'budget' (and deficit) not grow. PAYGO does lock the deficit at the current level - but - does not prohibit reducing the deficit.

Under PAYGO - if the deficit is reduced - the 'budget' (and deficit) would be locked in at the new lower level. For example, if the spending reductions from ending the wars were claimed for deficit reduction - PAYGO would lock the deficit at the new lower level. THAT is why counting the end of the wars as 'savings' was not a gimmick. PAYGO is exactly why the cuts arising from the debt limit deal are considered to be permanent cuts.

You are correct that PAYGO, by itself, does not require reducing the deficit - but - it also prohibits increasing the deficit. The only exception is for specific emergency expenditures, such as natural disaster relief, that would be one-time expenditures and not programmatic budget increases.

And PAYGO counts tax cuts as a new expenditure - so tax cuts also require offsets in existing spending. The Republicans fear PAYGO because renewing the 2003 and 2005 tax cuts could be considered 'new spending' and very real budget offsets could be required. Since the tax cuts only affect income taxes - the offsetting spending cuts would come from programs paid for with income taxes. At present there is not enough income tax revenue coming in to pay for defense - let alone any of the other programs - so defense spending will be the target for offsets to pay for extending the tax cuts. The Democrats have a very large bargaining chip to trade for agreement that extending the tax cuts would not be new spending.

For your information, PAYGO was allowed to expire in 2002 so that the 2003 and 2005 tax cuts could be enacted without the required spending offsets. The Democrats reinstated PAYGO in 2010. The fiscal restraints of PAYGO were not in effect from 2003 through 2010.

D McMillen - with a screen name like "RealAmericansFirst", you have got to be an activist working on the Obama campaign.

Don't you wish? Instead, there a millions of working Americans just like me out here. In fact, 56.7 million of us gave contributions of under $200 each to Obama last year (http://cfinst.org/Press/PReleases/12-02-08/Small_Donors_in_2011_Obama_s_Were_Big_Romney_s_Not.aspx).

But don't tell all your GOP friends until after November, okay?

Romney's slash and burn outsourcing vulture capitalist approach from Bain isn't exactly the type of economic experience the country needs.

ow you have 12.5 cents. That is why a green pepper in 1980 cost 12.5 cents and now it is a dollar, and it has nothing to do with how much we pay the sun to shine. The dollar is backed up by the full force of America, which as it turns out is the US citizens. Backed up through taxation. And because our government can't tax us 100% because it would destroy the economy, it is added as debt.

Did you ever think that that occurred because of the rise of the cost of living??? The standard of living rises along with inflation, although not always in tandem.

Freshieee

The cost of living is going up because of this, not the other way around. I think that is a very common misconception. The cost of living does not "have" to go up at all, and yet the Fed's money policy is to promote inflation to allow for the scenario which I described. If you make $50,000 a year and live comfortably and the cost of goods does not go up, you will be able to live comfortably next year also, and so on, and so on. We don't need inflation. Inflation is what caused the housing bubble.

And Obama has never even been able to make money producing anything.

Two best-selling books say differently. If you don't think writing a best-seller is "work", then feel free to try it yourself.

The debt was created by politicians in Washington not being satisfied with only spending the money collected through taxation, so they write their own rules and create it out of thin air. And who prints it for them? The Fed. The Fed is complicit, but it is the politicians spending more than we, the public can make, and be taxed on.

You might be surprised to find that the Constitution of the United States grants Congress the right to borrow money - and that predates the founding of the Federal Reserve Bank by more than a century. Moreover, most of that "borrowing" is done by selling "Savings Bonds" and "Treasury Notes", not by borrowing from the Fed.

Economically speaking, sometimes it can actually be a good thing to borrow money, if that money is used to improve business profitability, or to recover from an unexpected emergency. Unfortunately, far too often Congress has borrowed money to finance tax cuts and corporate welfare, and not to improve profitability or cover emergencies.

CM-6969

You are very correct. And I did know that. Sometimes it is necessary to borrow money, and in fact, it builds a credit rating. The problem is that the idiots in Washington don't live within "our" means. Logic would dictate that during good times, the debt would get paid off so we have the ability to borrow if we need it.

One thing I do find kind of amusing is that Liberals want to keep spending, and Conservatives want to stop spending. If the house of cards that is our debt crashed and burned, it will be the rich and foreign countries that will take the hit. Making us all poorer. I wonder how wealth distribution will work out at that point.

Romoney has gotten a pass so far in this election year. Can't wait for commercials extolling the lousy job and tax raising Romoney did as Gov. of Mass. An extensive review of his time on the job at Bain Capitol. The slicing and dicing companies and workers all for the gain of Mittens(I GOT MINE)Romoney. And lest anyone forget Obama Care is just Romney Care. Why didn't Romoney have a problem with his mandate but sure as hell wants to protect the rest of the country now, teabagging to much I guess. The American voters won't be fooled again like they were by Dumbiyah. Romoney is just another clone and puppet of the 1%. The debates will unmask this fraud for all to see. Popcorn everyone!

John=737278

Please where were you during last 30 years? Reagan tripled deficit, GWB increased deficit by 80% those are not liberals by any means, get your facts straight first.

john-737278

Freshieee

The cost of living is going up because of this, not the other way around. I think that is a very common misconception. The cost of living does not "have" to go up at all, and yet the Fed's money policy is to promote inflation to allow for the scenario which I described. If you make $50,000 a year and live comfortably and the cost of goods does not go up, you will be able to live comfortably next year also, and so on, and so on. We don't need inflation. Inflation is what caused the housing bubble.

Didn't the cost of living go up even before the Federal Reserve was created???? It did.

And I'm pretty sure we need inflation, mostly because the money supply must be increased periodically to accommodate population growth. We've had inflation for centuries.

maksim tsionskiy

Congress spends the money, not the Presidents. Who was controlling congress? But if I made it sound as if I don't hold Democrats and equally Rebublicans responsible, sorry. The only difference I really see between the groups is into which pockets our money flows. As I see it they are both Liberal. What I meant by conservative is not spending every dime you get your hands on.

Freshieee

There is a difference between people demanding more payment for the goods they create and it being artificially created through the money supply. The Fed has a target inflation rate. But they don't include food and fuel in their calculations. Two things that have seen massive inflation, and the two things that everyone must buy.

@john-737278 -- The large inflation in food, fuel, and housing are simply because the Fed does not include them in the Fed's monetary policy. The financial markets can speculate to their heart's content in those commodities without worrying about the Fed tightening monetary policy.

The financial markets are gaming the system to keep a 'liberal' monetary policy while sucking wealth out of the economy through inflation.

The financial markets have been living on 'free money' provided by retirement investing - not Fed money. $17 trillion of retirement assets are invested on Wall Street - $5 trillion of that is invested in IRAs and 401k plans. People have been throwing money at Wall Street, quite literally, to buy anything and everything - irregardless of the fundamental health of the economy or the markets. People have been 'investing' on Wall Street so they could achieve a 'secure retirement'. That is what Wall Street promoted, anyway.

The economy has reached an inflection point. One out of every two current workers will be eligible to retire over the next 20 years. On average, people will be eligible to retire at the rate of 300,000 per month - every month - for the next 20 years. On average, that is 10,000 people eligible for retirement per day - seven days a week - for the next 20 years. Those people are going to expect to receive their 'secure retirement' that Wall Street has been promoting - and - creating inflation to deliver.

What is going to happen to Wall Street when there are more sellers than buyers? Economists have said that we need 125,000 new jobs each month to accommodate population growth. But the numbers also show that twice as many people will be retiring - and - will not be simply throwing money at Wall Street any longer. How long can Wall Street survive while losing $1 trillion per year for the next 20 years? Wall Street, as we know it, will not exist 20 years from now.

You have to love liberal logic, if those two words can actually survive in the same sentence. We have a community organizer in the White House that had absolutely no experience for the job, and yet Romney's experience isn't at least that qualified?

Bush started up massive spending, but the fact Obama has continued it, and increased it means nothing to liberals. Our spending is all Bush's fault, even when Obama is running the largest annual deficits in US history.

We are in multiple wars Obama promised to end in his first term, but even on that issue liberals give him a pass. Obama promised to close Gitmo, and not doing so is okay with liberals. Obama promised to end the Bush tax cuts, and when he doesn't liberals still blame Bush.

Obviously liberals do not have to make sense, have to justify their position, or even care about the condition of the country. When push comes to shove they will just blame someone else anyway. What a truly responsible group of people, and real class members of society.

Nerm_L

I agree that we are heading to an implosion. But part of what is fueling our problems is the Fed loaning money to the big banks at zero interest. Instead of loaning the money out to qualified borrowers and earning their money the old fashioned way through interest, the banks are investing it in the markets to get gains and are artificially ballooning markets using free money from both investors and the Fed.

You are right, investors keep dumping their money into the markets. And you are right, they will pull it out eventually. But anyone with a large enough portfolio will maybe not pull it out for any reason, because they can live off of entitlements. They will hold on to their assets and hand them to their children.

@john-737278 -- The sole reason the Fed interest rates can be kept low is because the 'core' inflation is low. The financial markets are making their money off of commodities that are not counted in core inflation. The financial markets are gaming the system so they can skim wealth from the economy through inflation outside the core measures. Current government policy and regulations are allowing the financial markets to game the system.

People are not 'investing' in the markets - they are saving for retirement. The 'investment' choices available in most 401k and IRA plans are rather limited - and - the savers do not have direct control over the investments.

The way 401k and IRA plans are set up - people MUST liquidate those assets by age 72. Simply leaving the assets on the market is NOT an option. 401k and IRA plans cannot be inherited - they MUST be liquidated. It is not possible to transfer ownership of 401k or IRA plans - you can only designate a beneficiary. Those 401k and IRA plans are deferred wages - not investment assets or property like stocks - and that is why they cannot be allowed to simply remain invested. Liquidated 401k and IRA plans will be taxed as wages - not as capital gains or as an inheritance.

The $5 trillion of 401k and IRA retirement assets 'invested' on Wall Street must be sold - there are no other options. The remaining $12 trillion are pension funds that will be required to provide defined benefit payments. If the $12 trillion can generate enough revenue to meet required payout - then it can remain invested. Otherwise those assets must be sold to meet payout requirements. Those pension funds face the same requirement that Social Security faces - to provide defined benefit payments.

How will the market sustain that level of payout when there are more sellers than buyers? Isn't more sellers than buyers considered a down market? Isn't that what causes market crashes? Everything suggests that investing on Wall Street is not going to be attractive in the near future.

I don't think selling everything at 72 is true. You must start paying taxes on retirement accounts starting at 70.5 and have all taxes paid over life expectancy. And you can transfer Ira's in stock without selling the initial stock. You simply must pay the taxes on the value.

I will agree that we are over-extended. Making SS and Medicare would help, but is not an entire solution. My In-laws have a million in assets in IRA's. They are 70.5. They have never touched any of the investments and lived off SS and Medicare. This cannot continue if we are to survive.

I think we are on the same page other than the Fed. The Fed doesn't include commodities in their inflation figures because they don't want people to have a total picture. And if you don't believe that the Fed is helping powers that be game the system, I think you are being a little naive. The heads of the Fed are appointed by the government, who is run by the corporations. They are all intertwined. I blame them all, not just one, and you can't fix the system without fixing all of it.

Oh and the system can't handle more sellers than buyers, and we will see another depression in our lifetimes.

@john-737278 - Maybe the rules have changed but IRAs were not transferable as an IRA and did require taking allotments to deplete the fund by age 72. The person owning the IRA (or their estate) was responsible for the income taxes. It was desirable to take small allotments over time to reduce the tax rates. There would be a tax disadvantage to transferring an IRA since the person receiving the IRA would also be responsible for paying income taxes on the fund - if the IRA was transferred as an IRA. Capital gains taxes have a clear advantage over paying income taxes on the fund so transferring an IRA as an IRA would not seem to be attractive.

A Roth IRA is different because the investment is made with after tax money. When I looked at Roth IRAs, they were little more than a mutual fund - with less flexibility and control given the owner. I never liked Roth IRAs so really have not kept up with the rules on them and really do not have any idea how they operate now.

The investment banks (and commercial banks, after deregulation) have been 'innovating' by creating products that do not affect core inflation. Derivatives, mortgage backed securities, commodities - are not included in core inflation because they are investments in 'volatile' parts of the economy. I believe Treasury defines core inflation - not the Fed. The political system has set up the means for Wall Street to game the system - not the Fed. The only real tools available to the Fed are interest rates for various types of lending made by the Fed and ability to buy debt. (That is where the printing money part comes from. Congress really prints the money by creating the debt in the first place.)

The Fed is limited to providing a moderating influence for banking. The Treasury is supposed to provide regulation for the private sector economy that uses banking - including investment banking.

The Fed regulates borrowing and saving - Treasury regulates commerce (which includes investing - the buying and selling of stock).

The Fed allowing commercial banking to borrow low interest money would not affect the stock market - if commercial banks were not allowed to also act as investment banks. The political system has diminished the ability of the Treasury and the Fed to coordinate actions that provide controls on the monetary system and the economy. The investment side of commercial banks and the real investment banks have been allowed to operate virtually unregulated.

The problem is not the Fed - it is the ability of the Fed and Treasury to work together along with the blurring of the separation between commercial banking and investment banking through deregulation.

Hopefully I explained that clearly enough to show why I do not believe the Fed is the problem. I do not believe 'getting rid of the Fed' - or - politicizing the Fed by allowing Congress oversight over the Fed will fix the problem. In fact, I think that would make the problem worse.

Ira distributions must start by the time you are 70.5 . You can take small allotments lets say $40,000 per year. You can directly transfer if you own stock to your trading account as stock. Retain all stock as stock minus selling what you need to pay the taxes. But you have to transfer all money out of your Ira's by guidelines set by minimum distribution.

I fully understand why you don't believe the Fed is responsible, but the Fed is involved in that, how do they have the money to loan to the banks in the first place. They create it in the scenario I described in my first comment, and every time they double the money supply, they take 50% of every dollar I, you and everyone else owns by making it worth less.

I don't necessarily agree with ending the Fed, nor do I agree with going in the direction of a gold standard. What I do believe is a complete audit should be mandated regularly because my money is worth less every year, and I have a problem with not knowing who is gaining from my misery. Like I wrote before, I don't think the Fed is entirely responsible, but they are complicit. You are right that Congress should not be in charge, and more and more, I don't think they deserve their jobs in the first place.

I really don't see an avenue out of this mess, other than a possible reboot, and there are way too many special interests to let that happen.

@john-737278 - The way the banking system operates, individual depository banks must maintain sufficient reserve funds, as set by the Federal Reserve. The individual depository or commercial banks deposit their reserves in a Federal Reserve bank. The deposited reserves are what the Fed uses for loans to other banks. The Fed also uses reserves of individual banks to buy Federal securities (Federal debt). The Fed does not actually create money out of thin air - it is using the required reserves of depository banks.

The Fed regulates borrowing and saving using the reserve requirement, the discount interest rate, and open market transactions using deposited reserves from individual banks. The Fed does not actually create money itself but does influence lending (and the creation of money) being done by commercial banks.

Since commercial banks are now allowed to also operate as investment banks - it is possible for commercial banks to leverage their reserves and assume risk beyond what is allowed by reserve requirements. Investment banks do not have a reserve requirement since they do not have depositors. The Fed can influence that behavior by raising reserve requirements; however, that would be extremely punitive for small and medium sized commercial banks that do not engage in selling securities.

Deregulating commercial banking has diminished the effectiveness of the Fed to influence the economy through the banking system.

It a brief ray of transparency records showed that during the financial crisis the Fed gave out over 10 trillion dollars in emergency short term loans to the banks and even foreign banks. This was not authorized by Congress, so where did it come from? They created it out of thin air and diluted our money. They got most of it back in a very short time frame, but they still did it. So, either the central bank had been saving and had that much money in reserve, which I doubt, or they printed it.

I don't want to eliminate the Fed, I want accountability. Especially if what they are doing is only benefiting a few and harming the whole. I don't think it wrong to want proof that what they are doing is in our best interest. I agree that deregulating caused a bunch of the mess we are in, but in order to correct the system, it has to go all the way through the top bank. Anything less will leave underlying problems in place.

@john-737278 -- You keep trying to build conspiracy theories that are simply not based on any reality. Fed intrabank loans are for 1 day. If the Fed had loaned $10 trillion over ten days - then the Fed needs $1 trillion in its accounts. The Fed did not create any money out of thin air. Creating money is what commercial banks do through lending.

Here is the oversight for the Fed - the Fed does submit to periodic audits.

http://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/about_12784.htm

Here is the Federal Reserves current balance sheet.

http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h41/current/

You are chasing red herrings that are designed to distract you from the real problems. Where ever you are getting your info - they are intentionally attempting to mislead you in an effort to disguise where the real problems lie.

I do know where the true problems lie, and I am not distracted. They lie at the feet of the Congress. They control the pursestrings and they are in denial and act out of protectionism of their constituents. They simply don't realize that there will be groups that will undoubtedly have to be hurt to correct our problems. On both sides of the aisle. And the longer they go in this direction, the more groups that will have to feel the pain.

And regardless of whether the Fed submits to audits, they are internal and not transparent. You seem to think that I hold them responsible for the entire mess we are in. That is not true, but they are involved. And really, with some of your points of view, blaming the rest of the system, I can't quite understand how you come up with the point of view that they are completely innocent and blameless. Some conspiracy theories are based in truth, and with my age, the more you believe the government, the more you will be disappointed in the end.

Name the last 10 MA governors dum-dum. 8 of them are Democrat.

And yet, none other are relevant as they aren't the ones currently running for POTUS.

@"rebelwithoutaclue" - John Volpe, Frank Sargent, Michael Dukakis, Ed King, Michael Dukakis, William Weld, Paul Cellucci, Jane Swift, Mitt Romney, Deval Patrick. 6 Republican, 4 Democrat (although Ed King was Ronald Reagan's "favorite Democrat). Prior to Deval Patrick, 4 Republicans served in succession (Weld, Cellucci, Swift and Romney).

good job,CS

Is there a reason no one explains that the plant that Romney spoke at in Lorain, OH, which we know closed during the Bush Administration, didn't re-open because they had opened another plant that was much more technologically advanced?

CS - I stand corrected I was making an educated guess which I would not do if I were writing a true article but will on here because I haven't the time for it during the day.

I don't believe Romney's business background can be considered an indication of his ability to run our country for the benefit of the people. After all, it's the corporations who have gone unchecked.

There's no money in being president, if you are relying on that salary. Why would someone who was probably able to run much of his business from the beach take on a 24/7 if he didn't stand to reap some gainful profits from the opportunity.

Success of corporations has NOT translated to jobs or tax revenues.

Yes Brad, Those are the facts, but nobody took Robme up on that, a Tad strange me thinks :)

Obama/Biden 2012

The unemployment rate in Massachusetts stood at 5.6 percent when Romney took office in January 2003. The rate was 4.6 percent when he left in January 2007.

We would take that nationally, wouldnt we?

So if Romney is to credit for his state's low unemployment, why is Obama to blame for higher national (i.e. all the states') unemployment?

Wouldn't that mean those states with sh*tty employment numbers just have bad governors?

Since when is an educated guess something you just pulled out of your ass.

Happy 420 day to everybody LEGALIZE NOW.

Brad - Because to the GNOP facts don't matter.....GNOP - "THEY CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH"!

The unemployment rate in Massachusetts stood at 5.6 percent when Romney took office in January 2003. The rate was 4.6 percent when he left in January 2007.

Without comparable national numbers, these figures mean nothing. If the US rate also dropped, then Romney just got a free ride.

People should make up their mind before the election. If you would like to keep SS, medicare, etc, you should pay more tax and vote for Obama. If you do not like to pay more tax, you should also forget about medicare, SS, healthcare, etc. and vote for Romney. It is impossible to have both low tax and balanced budget without killing medicare, SS, healthcare, etc. It does not matter what the politicians say.

There is no free lunch!

Romney is more like a used car salesman. He says whatever you want to hear to sell the car and then when you drive it off the lot, it blows up. Romney says a lot of nonsense, and a lot of what he says is an out and out lie. That crap about 92% of the people being un-employed being woman, is not true. Most of the un-employed are men as it is the predominatly male jobs that were exported out of the country. Someone like Romney who never had to struggle, to put himself through school, or start a business from scratch, or had to worry how to live from pay check to pay check, does not know anything about the rest of us. Obama's dad left his Mom when he was a small child, and she had to work to support him. He worked his way through school and got scholarships, because of his intelligence and hard work. Romney also went to Harvard, but he did not have student debt. His Father was rich, and his Father was a good man, who cared for people, unlike his son who is nothing like him at all.

Willard is just smarmy, with his phony smile and his phonier laugh. I don't trust people like that. There's a back stabbing, brown nose'r at work, Romney reminds me of. I couldn't vote for him, even if the Democraps nominee was Paris Hilton. I'm sure she has created more jobs than Romney ever has, just by producing those silly reality shows and marketing her fashion line. She certainly has more experience at starting successful businesses from the ground up, than Romney has. All he ever did was use somebody else's money to buy businesses in trouble and finish them off. Touting his experience as being relevant to bettering the economy is a joke.

And when Mitt and Ann were in school they didn't work. They had to sell off stock to survive, heavens. Don't you remember when you were in college and had to sell your stocks to pay bills? LOL. Yes he will say anything to sell the car , er, get the vote. He was strongly pro choice then he wasn't, he was strongly pro gay rights then he wasn't, he was for cap and trade now he isn't, he was strongly pro national health care now he isn't.

He "turned " the Olympics around with a boatload of Federal and State money.

Government is not a business, just like raising a family isn't a business. You don't run a family like business, there's no profit at the end the year is there? you provide services to the family food, shelter, education but you don't expect to make it all back.

Government provides services that no business in their right mind would provide, infrastructure, roads, bridges, water supply, sewer systems, hospitals, etc. Imagine if you privatized all those services!!!

This is a society , not every man for themselves , we help those that need it.

Romney is just out for himself, Just like in MA when he was governor, we were just a stepping stone. Or as they say in my home town of Medford: "he's a lying sack of shiiiite!.

You watch how he shifts position over the next few months. mark my words.. If did get Obama/Romney Care would be the first thing he takes credit for

kwl, Romney changes so much that chameleons come to HIM in droves for advice.

btrue - your massive mess in 2008 was due to the laggardly oversight powers executed by Sen. Chris Dodd and U.S. Rep Braney Frank - their Banking Committees should have seen it coming and they did nothing.

Barney Frank even said, about three weeks before the collapse, that Fannie and Freddie had a rock solid balance sheet and would make a good investment for anybody. LMAO what a clown!

crack a book ruble....The SEC regulates or is supposed to. And your boys gutted them just like they did MSM, EPA, DOJ, the list goes on. Educate yourself,boy. Stop embarassing yourself with this ignorance. The SEC sought to regulate derivitives and futures and your thieving bastards at the top stopped it. Many people in the SEC quit over it. Do you read anything other than comic books? Go play in the yard. The grown-ups are talking here.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were exempt from SEC oversight. The SEC could not do anything because they did not have the authority.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are the shining examples of how deregulated banking would operate.

Thomas Blue and Nerm - the Commodities Futures Trading Commission regulates derivatives and other futures investment vehicles. Come to think of it, the director of that bureau visited Bill Clinton Fed Chief Alan Greenspan and his #2 Tim Geithner in 1998 re: mortage derivatives are dangerous and could throw the banking industry into calamity.

Needless to say they ignored her and others after. Look it up.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/01/30/v-print/137029/commentary-three-female-regulators.html

Thomas Blue, Holy Crap Man are you good or what !!!!! Excellent Post's.

Give em Hell :)

Obama/Biden 2012

yes, rebel you are right,I'm pleased to say. But now that you're either screwed up and shown you're gright enough to do homework or accidentally entered a post showing a little knowledge, maybe it's time you started sitting at the grown-up table and talking to other grown-ups like grown-ups. I don't need to "look it up" because I knew that a long time ago. I make it my business to know who's stealing from me and robbing my country. And the banks have been doing it for a long time. Yes, the roots go to Clinton. If you look at my posts, I'm sure you'll see I don't give Clinton a free pass on the 2007-2008 debacle. But it extended on into bushco. ANd was grossly exacerbated by bushco. And in the end, that's ancient history now. What's really important is how do we fix it now? If you know that a lack of regulation caused this mess, then surely you know that further deregulation won't fix it. That's the TP cure.

@ myvote...

Thanks,pal. I appreciate the compliment.

Fed Up-2683606

Ah, the unsubstantiated class envy BS... guess Obama would never give his rich buddies direct payoffs (see Solyndra)... it would be tough to create a bigger deficit than Obama without giving every Welfare bum a car... you've drank the koolaid and really have no clue how the liberal wealth redistribution scheme sank the economy... giving houses to people who couldn't affor them.... oh, and its's soul... guess you're one of the "no child left behind"...

Well, considering the wealthy control at least 60% of the income in America, I wouldn't blame anyone who was envious. And asking the wealthy to pay more after they have profited significantly over the past three decades is COMMON SENSE. Obama didn't not cause the trillion dollar deficits; those were caused by the recession and the Bush tax cuts. Take an economics class and then you'll understand...

OBAMA BIDEN 2012

Thomas Blue is not your average poster - he is your average know it all though who in the end knows nothing other than the one minute soundbites he sees and hears on TV.

I forgot - he reads the cartoons in the paper, too.

Like Enron was? When you deregulate greed, you invite gross theft and disiaster.

Apparently Republicans only measure $ucce$$ one way. Being 'rich' is the only way to be $ucce$$ful to a Republican?

You are sick.

Nah, I think the disparity is getting bigger because a larger number of people have a no-working entitlement mentality, and of course, you make zero if you don't work... (because the gov't doesn't count all the goodies they give away to those bums as income)

The middle class is shrinking, and it is not because they are suddenly upwardly mobile. One of the major causes is the continual and relentless concentration of the wealth of the nation into fewer and fewer hands at the very top of our society. A real problem is the inequality of wealth distribution in the United States and the inequality of income distribution in the United States. According to the CIA's World Fact Book, 99 of 140 countries surveyed have a more equitable distribution of income than the U.S.* According to Politifact, as of 2010 the net worth of the nation's 400 wealthiest Americans was higher than the net worth of the bottom 155 million Americans.** The top 1% of U.S. of households now own about 43% of the nation's privately held financial wealth and they own about 35% of the nation's privately held net wealth.*** Between 1979 and 2007 the income of the richest 1% rose 275% while the income of the poorest 20% grew 18%.**** Since 1981 when supply side trickle-down voodoo economics came into vogue, the top federal income tax rate has been cut in half and the effective tax rate has been greatly lowered. With the tax code we have been helping put more and more of the nation's wealth into fewer and fewer hands at the very top. With this hyper-concentration of the nation's wealth, much of this wealth is now hoarded and/or is used only for speculation. It is no longer available to reinvest in the real economy, such as rebuilding the nation's infrastructure and for use in paying down the debt. Americans don't want welfare they want to rebuild the nations infrastruture and help pay down the debt. Romney, the 1/4 billion dollar man's plan is more tax cuts for the wealthy!

Yeah Fed Up, that's it...all those people who have been looking and looking for work just have a no-working entitlement mentality! That is why they can't find a job! Of course they should be able to get by on zero, and forget all that unemployment insurance that was deducted out of their checks for the many years they did work - no way should they be entitled to that! Boy, are you sure smart!

Trickle down does not work, because you do not get rich by spending your own money. You get rich by spending other peoples money.

Take Iowa for example. Mid-American energy wants to build another nuclear power plant here. But the government said that they wouldn't give them a grant for it. What do they want to do instead? Add $50 a month to the electricity bill of everyone in the state to build the plant. I.E. they want the money from selling the electricity, but they don't want to pay to build the plant.

It is interesting that the new nuclear plants in Georgia are only going to increase electric rates by 12% (about $10 to $12 for an average residential bill) over 7 years or 1.7% per year. The capital cost (principal and interest) is about $68 per Megawatt hour (MWh). Adding in all other costs of operating a nuclear plant the amount of total expenses for power is still less than the $80 - $100 per MHw for coal or gas, $160 per MWh for solar or the $130 per MWh for power from wood chips.

I do not know where the Iowa utilitity came up with their math; but, their numbers are about 5 times too high.

M. Carlson - good post! The disparity in income/wealth happened previously in our country - and the Great Depression ensued. Not sure why those on the right think this is somehow a good thing.

"Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it." - George Santayana

Why is it that every time MSNBC shows a picture of Obama he has a big smile sticking his hand out to people, while when they show Romney, it's in the most unflattering kind of photo they can get. Looks like a bit of psychological engineering go on from your left wing liberal pals at MSNBC. God forbid the media should actually do its job.

Monty Money is correct. Even the economist say the way to bring us back, is the same way this Country always came back. It will be the small businesses and the middle class making decent wage's and not being killed off by huge healthcare cost.. The corporate's have been making 5% over their standard earnings since 2007, which tells us the recession is good for them. Romney is a corporate man, and was first a CEO for Bain, later owning a large amount of that company. During Romney's time with Bain Capitol, he took on 12 business's and of those 12, only 3 were saved. Those 3 are are minimum wage jobs! the others were all dismantled, with lost job's, and closed factories, but Bain made a fortune off of taking them down. Romney started with bain as its CEO, later a large owner of the company. This man is FOR Corporate America. Yes, Romney could bring the corporate's back but we would be getting very low wages to have job's with NO insurance, and NO pensions, not the amount needed to have a middle class anymore. So its up to the voter's. If you want to get rid of the middle class, and mom and pop small businesses, which is what has always kept this country strong, then by all means vote for Romney. FYI, the rich truly believe small businesses are baseball, football, owners, Doctors, Hollywood, and the major fast foods corporates, including Walmart!! NO those are corporate's whom make multi- millions. Small jobs are John's coffee shop, Mel's cafe, small construction business's with 30 workers, etc. These are not Romney's priorities. They ARE Obama's.

gearjammer013.... I hate to tell you this, but that IS just Romney. He had an elevator put in from his private parking area with Bain, up to his office so he would NOT have to walk through the office and talk to people. He is NOT a people person. He is a spoiled rich boy and feels like the presidency is owed to him! he has said that it IS his turn now. That is wrong, its nobodies turn, its the peoples choice!!

It is not the rich that make a country prosperous, it is the middle class. No matter how rich you are, you only need so much housing, food, clothing, furniture, etc... before you're satisfied. Then, you just save your money. Twenty people making $50,000/each will do far more for a small town's economy, for instance, than one person making $1,000,000.

There are some people here that don't like either.

You are probably right, however, I am a liberal so I will go with Obama. I just wish there was a better choice if the unthinkable happens and Romney wins. The thought keeps me up at night.

You don't have to worry. Obama's not going anywhere.

Alan...other than the haters/teabaggers, I think almost all love or like him. I have buyers remorse with him but I like him a lot, even admire him. I just don't like some of his decisions and the hyenas make it really hard to address the real issues like why the hell Geithner isn't looking for private sector employment. What has he do to reform MSM and rebuild the regulatory agencies gutted by bush? What is he doing about flammable water from fracking? A shame the belligerant fools on this site can't STHU and talk about real issues. Rome burns and they discuss the plumbing...

And, am I the only woman who has taken offense to Romney's surprise that women are interested in the economy? It clearly demonstrates that if Mrs. Romney is finding this to be the big revelation, that she has had a fixed opinion for some time that the average women isn't smart enough to think past child bearing issues.

alan, Thomas and yasky - Alan - Boy, I sure hope so. Thomas - I wish Obama had been able to do more but it's hard when Republicans don't care about the Country but just want to make sure Obama fails. Yasky - No, you sure aren't the only woman who thinks that way. Their sense of entitlement is so apparent just by the comment they made that it is Mitt's turn.

Thanks Kim. You're right and I know that. There's no question that we would have seen much more of what Obama wanted had not the hyenas from the TP been nipping at his heels all the way. The irony is that if Obama had been allowed to get his agenda rolling and it was flawed or corrupt, we would know it. But since the hyenas (Boehner,Cantor,Ryan,McConnell,Bachmann) blocked everything he tried to do, they guaranteed that even if Obama is totally wrong, there is no proof of it. As much as I like Howard Dean and maybe Huntsman, I'm thinking that when you look at the alternative, Obama must get the benefit of the doubt. And it's truly regrettable that almost all righty's spend far more time attacking silly things like Obama's birth certificate or college transcripts rather than asking pointed questions like why does Geithner still have a job or why does Mr. Obama have crooked or failed execs from Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae working for him. This is a critical election and we need less noise and screaming and venom and more dialogue. The only thing that I'm sure of is that Romney lies every time he opens his mouth. That's most unfortunate because we don't really know what his core beliefs are- if he has any.

I don't like either, but majority of Obama haters on newsvine? Did I log in to the wrong site? Seems like good ole Feisty loudmouth and her cronies badger anyone with an opinion differing from their own. Obama probably will be re-elected, the Republicans didn't exactly ingratiate themselves to the black and hispanic communities. Is Obama as good as everyone here seems to think he is? Not even close. It will be quite a few yrs before we get anybody in either party that would make a good President

and Thomas, I think that was the best post I have read today

D McMillen - I like Feisty. She is just that, Feisty and she is funny. You guys shouldn't take her as seriously as you seem to. She is stirring a pot which needs to be stirred. The hate, racist, gun-loving crap coming from the left is truly frightening. Neither Feisty or I want to kill anyone.

she's almost as "funny" as Bill O'Reilly, and I think ya meant "from the right". I don't know how hateful or racist I am, I don't really hate anyone, dislike arabs because of experiences overseas, ditto racist, and I do own guns, but I don't know how frightening that would make me. I just don't like the President much, and I think he gets a free pass from some people on a lot of things, some of which Thomas mentioned. And like I said, I don't see any good candidates coming from either party for a long, long time. We kinda screwed ourselves with the two party thing, and elections are more like the Superbowl, with who's your fav party substituted for teams. Just sayin. And BTW, I have never killed or shot anyone outside of a combat zone.

D McMillen - You don't really think O'Reilly is funny, do you? You are right, I did mean right. I guess I wasn't including you in the comment above. You must admit, however, that there is a lot of violent, hate-filled rhetoric coming from the lunatic fringe, right?

Of course I admit it. There is a lot of violent, hate filled rhetoric coming from the lunatic fringe on both sides of the aisle. And no, I don't think O'Reilly is funny, I think he's a pompous jackass.

Ron Paul would cut government way too much that it would even endanger the consumer.

You mean the consumer with the credit card?

You mean the consumer with the credit card?

Nah I was referring to cutting agencies like the FDA.

When I meant endanger I meant it in the literal sense.

Ron Paul would have his hands tied on a lot of issues. But he would get us headed in the right direction by ending the wars, getting a budget, and putting a plan in place to start weening entitleists off the system and letting people keep their hard earned money. With that inflation would reverse, making a dollar go farther, and everybody wins! Except for those who can't imagine getting off the couch to earn a living! Auditing the FED would be great also.

alan_static

Ron Paul has a real plan to help the economy.

In his first year he would reduce federal spending by $1 trillion and would get rid of not one, but five government agencies, who else can say that. And then in the year after that he would ballance the budget. In his third and fourth years he would start reducing the total federal debt.

While I admit that high deficits and debt can hurt the economy, Ron Paul's plans are still terrible, especially in the short-term. Cutting the budget by $1 trillion (from where??) would kill thousands of jobs. While I admit that we need to reduce spending, we also need to raise revenues. Where are the revenues for Paul's deficit reduction plan?? And $1 trillion in a year???? And why do you have to eliminate the Department of Education??? Centralizing education is probably our only answer to fix our schools, because the states are forced to balance their budgets on the backs of teachers and students every year. Plus having 50 individual standards is not necessarily very practical.

How much would Obama and Romeny reduce the debt at the end of a next term? Probably nothing, in fact it will probably be trillions more in the hole. What's worse then a debt load to weigh like an anchor on the economy?

Technically, the economy will be heavily damaged (if not destroyed) if we enact austerity too early, because of the fragile state of the economy. Most economists say that. You cannot cut $1 trillion in a year and expect the economy to stay fine. Tens of thousands of people will be added to unemployment, and money that funds programs will be curtailed. Plus states will either have to raise taxes or cut spending in light of these cuts, causing many more jobs being lost.

OBAMA BIDEN 2012

Indrid cold,

You are dead wrong Ron Paul is the only one trying to save Social security. Take the time to look into the one that is trying to HELP SENIORS more than ANY other candidate including the president. He is sponsoring all these bills stop listening to the lies the media is feeding you.

Referred to Committee: Jan 07, 2011

H.R. 219: Social Security Preservation Act of 2011

Sponsor: Rep. Ronald “Ron” Paul [R-TX14]
Introduced: Jan 07, 2011
Referred to Committee: Jan 07, 2011

H.R. 151: Seniors’ Health Care Freedom Act of 2010

Sponsor: Rep. Ronald “Ron” Paul [R-TX14]
Introduced: Jan 05, 2011
Referred to Committee: Jan 05, 2011

H.R. 149: Social Security Beneficiary Tax Reduction Act

Sponsor: Rep. Ronald “Ron” Paul [R-TX14]
Introduced: Jan 05, 2011
Referred to Committee: Jan 05, 2011

H.R. 150: Senior Citizens Tax Elimination Act

Sponsor: Rep. Ronald “Ron” Paul [R-TX14]
Introduced: Jan 05, 2011
Referred to Committee: Jan 05, 2011

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/112/hr219

Freshiee

Much of the revenue comes from the "dangerous" policy of peace and stopping the wars. Bringing the troops home. Did you know over 350 military bases have been closed in the us since 1989 and there are many more on the chopping block? Did you know we have opened almost twice as many overseas? Did you know every time a base closes here the local town(s) are financially devastated? Think about all the tax money paying the military salaries that would be staying here instead of somewhere else. If we brought the military home it would be a boom to the economy (people spend eat and need a place to live ) add that to the fact that we are not borrowing more money to fight the senseless wars and you have about a trillion.

I'm all for reducing our stretched military, but we cannot move all of our troops out. Maybe a few, like 25%, but no more.

And revenues don't count from stopping the wars. That is just reduced spending. I'm talking about tax revenues. I know a better economy would work but I don't want the "dynamic growth will raise revenues" crap, no offense. I want to see if Ron Paul is the bold guy you claim him to be. If he is, he'd raise taxes. But all he wants to do is restore the "American values" of limited government, something that I find as insane. No country can survive with a limited government anymore; the days of that are long gone. A real leader would act in a balanced manner; Ron Paul does not, at least not on the deficit. Plus Ron Paul would never get anything passed without compromising his beliefs, which he is not famous for doing. Few Congressmen would ever agree to his plans.

A reduction in spending will help reduce the deficit of course it counts.

Btw why only 25% are you so snowed by the media and government propaganda you are fed that you think the world would fall apart if we weren't playing police man? If you look at what we have done since WWII NONE of it has turned out very well. Iran hates us because we overthrew the democratically elected leader and replaced him with a dictator- the Shaw. When the Shaw was overthrown he was replaced by a radical anti- American leader. There was no AlQuida in Iraq before we invaded it. Saddam hated Alquida and Iran all we had to do was let them keep each other busy. Now Iraq's constitution is based on the Koran and all the Christians (3 million) have either fled or been killed and we practically handed the country to Iran, they have more influence than we do. Look at how Afghanistan and our relationship with Pakistan is working out too. So we need to keep our military out there for this madness. When you are able to say what we are doing is worth sending YOUR children, YOUR brother, YOUR sister, YOUR mother or YOUR father to risk their lives and/or die for come back and talk to me and if you think what we are doing is making us safer you need to do a lot more research before we talk.

Btw why only 25% are you so snowed by the media and government propaganda you are fed that you think the world would fall apart if we weren't playing police man?

Personally, I don't like the fact that the US has to be the world's policeman. I'd favor the US being a member of a group of nations that form as the world's police (aka UN). The problem with withdrawing our troops wholesale is that it reduces our bargaining power, our prestige, and can anger some allies. I don't think that the world would necessarily fall apart if we stopped playing policeman, but the geopolitical status quo would be significantly altered. Nations like China, Pakistan, and Iran would have significantly more sway in the world, which could drastically affect both our economy and that of the world. I admit that the US shouldn't be the world's policeman, but we cannot withdraw our troops from every base all over the globe. It would alter the geopolitical status quo, which could cause political chaos. We are too intricately attached to the politics of the rest of world to be able to retreat automatically. Plus nations would see that as a sign of weakness, making it seem that America is declining. All of the things you said were correct, but withdrawing our troops will not make things any better. Tell me how the world will get better if we withdraw our troops, and maybe I'll sweeten the offer.

The propaganda of the military industrial complex has worked well on you. I will answer your question with a question. Please point out any policing (meddling) we have done since WWII that has worked. Maybe you would like to point out that Iraq hated AlQuida and now that Saddam is gone AlQuida and Iran have more influence on Iraq than anyone ESPECIALLY US. 3 Million Christians have fled the country and their constitution is based on Islam. Or how about when we overthrew the democratically elected government in Iran and replaced their elected official with a dictator called the Shaw that was overthrown and replaced with Radical Anti-American cleric. I could go on and on pointing out how our actions have made us less safe but I think it would be a lot shorter if you pointed out ONE instance where our meddling "made things better".

BTW (you need to stop eatingt the propoganda again) it is not a sign of weakness if you withdraw on your own terms. It WILL be a sign of weakness when we have no choice but to withdaw after every effort to keep these unsustainable wars is exausted and we have no choice but to leave. If you can't see that this is exactly what will happen you need to study histroy more because we are repeating it.

BTW you never told me if you are willing to sacrifice yourself or your own family members to perpetuate this failed foreign policy.

But then who would step in to manage the world's affairs??? America is too stretched militarily, I can agree with that. But withdrawing all at once would be too rash. And I hate the military-industrial complex as much as you do. I just don't see the sense of folding all our cards at once.

And I know that this foreign policy has failed. From our mistakes in Iran to the bungled invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan to the covert operations in the Middle East and Latin America. The only thing that we did after WWII that, in my opinion, had any credibility was Korea. I mean, the North Koreans invaded our ally, and we had to back them up because they were getting massacred.

And no, I wouldn't sacrifice anyone for this failed foreign policy. But frankly, I don't see the sense out of Ron Paul's foreign policy either. Both are at two extremes; full-on interventionism, and full-on non interventionism. There is a middle between the two, and that's what I think would be the best policy for America. Moderation is the key to prosperity.

There you guys go with the projection again.

It is foolish to think that we would not need to build up and develop weapons systems. We do need them and they do bring jobs. But we need to protect our nation and it will take new and advanced tech.

MRWSR, the US spent $707 BILLION dollars in 2011 for defense that was 43% of the WORLDS spending on defense. I believe that we do not need to be the worlds policemen and the US can still have a capable military on much less than that!

http://www.globalissues.org/article/75/world-military-spending

MRWSR - Ever hear of "doing more with less"?

The rest of America is very familiar with the concept.

Never said that we could not trim the budget, but we can not gut it. The protection of this country is the governments true roll, that they have seemed to forget. It should take the majority of our budget to spend on the millitary. It should not be overtaken by a safty net spending on a nanny state that is going to go deeper in dept for it.

You knock the wealthy, thank God for the wealthy. Have you ever worked for a poor man, other than those who are on welfare ect. In a way you do work for them since they take your money and give to them not to work.The government is doing a good job of distributing your money to them.

LEROY - Nobody knocks the wealthy - actually - I don't even know if you mingled with the wealthy - they don't give a crying ass about you

I have mingled with the wealthy - did you ever notice they marry within their own kind?

Ann married Willard - both came from wealthy parents, both went to same schools - both come from the same background - 1% do they even know or care about you?

And I have to tell - they know dam right well if you have money or not - saw it in Virginia and I'm sure it's across the country

Children of wealthy parents - marry their own

And as far as the government goes - get a grip basement apartment dweller - we are obligated as a country to care for the least of our own - it is christian and it is right -

and sir I have seen my children play with the rich and the poor and I will take the values of the poor any day

Imagine a company failing for poor business practices, and a workers union that reaps benefits better than 90% of americans. I'm not real impressed I have to pay these outrageous wages to my fellow americans! They should earn a normal wage with normal benefits like the rest of us. I didn't screw up, WHY should I have to pay?

excuse me, but you forget who made the workforce and safety what it is now. They are paid a living wage and receive the benifits they negotiated. Some don't draw from social security because the state hold a fund for retirement. You are so exagerating!! 90% really??

Stop being a drama queen.

JJ,

Your viewpoint baffles me. Instead of complaining that the autoworkers wages and benefits are too high, you need to recognize that normal wages and benefits are too low.

JJ-johnnyreb2874187

Imagine a company failing for poor business practices, and a workers union that reaps benefits better than 90% of americans. I'm not real impressed I have to pay these outrageous wages to my fellow americans! They should earn a normal wage with normal benefits like the rest of us. I didn't screw up, WHY should I have to pay?

In case you didn't notice, the auto industry supported around a million jobs beside their company payrolls. Manufacturers, steel producers, miners, mechanics, everyone. If the auto industry went down, a million jobs would go down with it. And the car companies are a staple of our economy. Not only would it hurt us economically, but the fact that America's industrial pride and joy had collapsed would drain confidence from investors and lengthen the recession. Paying the price for it now is better than risking the whole damn economy collapsing, isn't it??? And don't give me the crap that some other company would have bought or managed the auto companies like a venture capital corporation, because capital was scarce, confidence in businesses was low, and the companies were sinking rapidly. If our economy will be strong and powerful, you should be proud to have your money going to maintain it. So cut the anti-bailout crap and understand that it worked and it was for the benefit of the country. That, my friend, is pure fact.

OBAMA BIDEN 2012

Spoken like a true socialist. You must be on food stamps, welfare and get a free phone from the government too. I'll bet you are one of the 51% that pays no taxes and just wants more socialism from the chief socialist. Sure tax the job creators more, print more money and backrupt our country.

I'll bet you are one of the 51% that pays no taxes

Does anyone else notice that posters are seemingly inflating this number every time they post it?

Let me get this straight, for those of you who think Mitt Romney will do a better job, you believe that a man who made his money firing people in this country for profit will do a better job on the economy than the man who want's to close the tax credit loop hole for companies who send American jobs overseas.

Yea that's really good for the economy good luck with that.

Ruken,

I know, not too long ago, it was 47%. None of them ever admit that the only way to get those underpaid voters to contribute tax revenue , is to increase minimum wage to something over the poverty line, instead of way under it. Minimum wage started as a child labor law. It was supposed to be the least you could pay an 11 year old for part time after school. It was immediately perverted to become the most you have to pay an experienced adult for full time work. Minimum wage, the way it's being used, needs to be at least doubled, and 60% of minimum set as a training wage for kids under 18.

Sure tax the job creators more, print more money and backrupt our country.

How are we taxing the job creators??? Obama lowered taxes for the job creators and has told America that he does not want to raise taxes on them. And in case you haven't realized it, the wealthy are NOT the job creators. Middle class Americans are. The wealthy are investors who make money off of economic progress. Sure they create jobs through investment, but for decades we have given the "job creators" tax cuts and they did jack with it. JACK. We didn't get any benefits. They don't buy the products that make businesses profitable or create jobs; the middle class does. I don't @!$%#ing care about the "job creators." They have done NOTHING for us and yet we have still given them trillions in tax cuts. Now it's time time to wean them off. The wealthy need to pay more; for God's sake they control over 60% of the income in the country!!! Enough with this job creator crap. Enough with this trickle-down BS. ENOUGH. No more tax cuts; no more corporate welfare; no more free handouts for the wealthy. Enough is enough. Go ahead and tell your overlords that the American people are tired of giving tax breaks to the wealthy and getting nothing but income inequality and increasing debt in return. The freaking buck stops here.

OBAMA BIDEN 2012

Yet the 12 years that republicans had control of the house and senate from 1995-2006, businesses had near record peformances.

Technically, the dot-come bubble in the late-90s wasn't because of the Republicans. They were just lucky enough to not screw things up, like they did in 2010.

And business performances mean nothing unless it benefits the workers. Ever since 2000, workers have not gained any extra income or any fellow coworkers. Not very good for the GOP, eh???

OBAMA BIDEN 2012

PutAmericaFirst:

How do you explain what Congress allowed from May 1998-September 2005? I refer to an article in the Washington Post. The Crash: What Went Wrong http://www.washingtonpost.comwp-srv/business/risk/

Please respond.

I seem to recall that for 8 of those years we had a democratic president.

Rocket......It was only 6 years of a democrat president. My point is that it isn't republican or democrat. There is good and bad in both. People have to look deeper than who the president is. They have to look at the cause and effect of policy.

Carolyn.....Sorry, the link didn't work. I do know that much of the risk happened because of the lowering of the standards for mortgages. I look at it this way. Liberal policies created the root of the problem (toxic mortgage) and conservative policies allowed business to leverage the problem which magnified the effect and made a larger collapse.

That safety net has had a huge increase since Obama. Republicans want to cut it a little bit and focus on putting more people on the ladder to success instead of focusing on having them stuck in the safety net.

That safety net has had a huge increase since Obama.

That's called the recession. The increase in numbers of the poor due to the recession increased the number that qualified for assistance.

Stop attacking a consequence of the problem and fix the problem (recession).

For some reason, Conservatives don't understand what those higher numbers mean.

It means the safety net is working because millions are out of work because of failed Bush policies and now those people have no where else to turn which is why public assistance has swelled over the last 3 years. It's a pretty simple concept :)

It's hard to believe that people still believe that it is Obama that got us into this mess. How can you undo in 4 years what took 8 years to create? The Patriot Act, Corporations are People, Tax Cuts for the Wealthy, Citizens United; these are just a few of the blatantly anti-American decisions of the Bush era, yet people continue to defend him, and continue to condemn Obama. It's like your sibling burning down the house, he/she leaves, and you are cleaning up the mess and rebuilding, and your parents begin to question you why the house is in such a terrible state. Simply unbelievable...

livnletliv, what about obama approving the use of drones for surveillance in the US or the NDAA order he signend allowing the military to detain american citizens for an indefinite period anywhere in the world. I guess you enjoy losing more and more rights everyday. I understand they don't write about these things on MSN since it is the propaganda arm of the white house. I read it for laughs

Terry if the president hadn't approved of these things you would be bitching that he wasn't protecting country. GO TROLL somewhere else.

I'm no Hillary fan but she had the best Obama quote ever soon after he took office. Someone asked her opinion on a snarky barb at Mr. Obama and she laughed and said," If he walked on water, these people would accuse him of not being able to swim."

so true...

t's hard to believe that people still believe that it is Obama that got us into this mess. How can you undo in 4 years what took 8 years to create? The Patriot Act, Corporations are People, Tax Cuts for the Wealthy, Citizens United; these are just a few of the blatantly anti-American decisions of the Bush era, yet people continue to defend him, and continue to condemn Obama. It's like your sibling burning down the house, he/she leaves, and you are cleaning up the mess and rebuilding, and your parents begin to question you why the house is in such a terrible state. Simply unbelievable...

Welcome to Right-wing America...

OBAMA BIDEN 2012

Nice one, Thomas.

Obamas Hitler/socialist ideas is whats keeping the economy tanked and his 5 trillion deficit, continuos devaluation of the dollar is whats raising the cost of fuel,clothing,groceries and everything else'

its sad the see by these posts that America is going down the tubes by Fourth Riech supporters- you better look at the big picture and you will realize that this administration is destroying our constitutional way of life and taking away our freedoms and rights to choice.

Soviet Union,England,Spain,and Curently Greece has been tanked by socialism.

SOCIALISM DOES NOT WORK- HITLER was likeable just like Obama and decieved many to destruction.

We are a country bound by freedoms and liberties in the constitution paid for by the bloodshed of many-its sad that many of you want throw that away.

SOCIALISM IS CONTRARY TO OUR CONSTITUTION AND WAY OF LIFE.

First of all John, Hitler was not a socialist. He hated them, in fact. He was more of a fascist.

Second of all, how is Obama a socialist??? Obama didn't nationalize the auto industry, or the healthcare industry, nor did he embark to raise taxes on the wealthy by 25 percentage points. That, my dear friend, is socialism...

OBAMA BIDEN 2012

Obamacare is pure socialism. The idea that one group should support another is socialism. Charity by extortion is socialism. Obama represents this in the purest form. The confusion is he is a globalist and not an American. He would throw America under the bus to forward some vague global agenda.

For the most part anything that has "the mob" or majority rule is socialism. The mob votes for the minority to pay for majority. The majority votes themselves the wealth of the minority. That is why the founders hated a democracy and it is not mentioned in the Constitution. They founded a Republic NOT a Democracy.

We call it entitlements, welfare, medicare, minority scholarships, student loans, food stamps, bailouts, etc etc etc etc etc etc. The voting majority are deficit junkies either by entitlements, employment, contract work or bailouts. They are holding the minority of the country a financial hostage.

They vote in their minions to do their bidding and the extortion is blessed as all legal.

What you fail to understand is that for the last 3 GOP Administrations, the 98% has been subsidizing the top 2%, as they continue to accumulate more and more wealth, with tax cuts for the job creators, which cuts did not create jobs, but did provide additional trillions in funding for them to acquire more assets. This group now owns 40% plus of all of America's wealth and assets, while the Nation incurred over 50% of our National debt doing so.

Our current health care as administered by health insurance carriers costs American citizens twice as much as any other western industrialized nation. Unless a patient is in the top 2%, our health care is now number 40 in the world. You rant on and on about "socialism", yet fail to understand that that term really encompasses. Like it or not, Obama has faced reality, which is that health care has to be gotten under control Insurers, such as Blue Cross and others raising rates by up to 35% in one year for policy holders, revoking policies for specific groups, requires the Federal Government take steps to get costs under control. Right now, administrative costs for health care in the US run over 35%, compared to other nations which have gotten their administrative costs down to as low as 5%.

The way to do that is to require all Americans to have health insurance, and spread the cost, instead of the carriers simply insuring the healthy, and cancelling all the others. Face it, a 60 year old man earning 20K a year without an employer sponsored policy cannot afford to pay $980.00 a month for his individual policy, as well as eat, pay rent, and buy necessities. Our health care system is broken, and it needs to be fixed. As it is in a nations best interests to have a healthy population, and therefore, a healthy work force. To accomplish that, per capita health care costs have to go down, by insuring all, old and young, and provide better preventive care. Under the GOP model, the uninsureds go to the emergency room when they are very ill, and the cost to treat them is 10 to 15 times what is should be , had they sought timely care. Those costs are picked up by state, local and the Federal Government, out of general revenues. So, in a way, we already have your hated "socialism"or the uninsured. It is not cheap, nor effective, but apparently, you like it better under this current method.