Economy UP

“You chose a poor example to support your arguement.

If you want to brag about your economic success, you need to find another story.”

“I'm just saying we are at a top Bacpac. People are putting themselves at great risk with real estate. Many are making mega bucks as well. I wish I were one of them. I'm too conservative for my on good. Lots of good middle class working people are going to get burned.”

“That WSJ story is pretty lame, bateauxdriver. It's the rising cost of local government that causes real estate taxes to increase, not rising values. If governmental budgets stay the same, tax rates will fall in the face of rising assessments.

The idea of taxing long term owners at a lower rate than newcomers strikes me as fundamentally unfair. I’m generally opposed to real estate taxes for homeowners because it isn’t based upon ability to pay. It does however, make sure that large commercial and industrial property owners pay for some costs of local services.

The main reason we in NJ have some of the highest property tax rates in the country is that Christie Whitman cut income taxes by 30% as a way to promote herself to the national political stage. The result has been declining state aid to municipalities faced with the ever increasing cost of education (primarily). No politician in our state has the courage to do the obvious – raise income taxes and or sales taxes because it is seen as political suicide in the current climate.”

“I’m generally opposed to real estate taxes for homeowners because it isn’t based upon ability to pay.
VioLiN

That is my point Violin. I'm not as concearned about the people buying new cookie cutters for $500,000 and paying taxes out of the nose. I'm concearned for grandma and grandpa getting there house taken away because it is worth 5 times what they paid for it and cannot afford the taxes anymore. There is plenty of danger in this runaway real estate bubble.
In Louisiana we have a homstead exemption of $75,000. That rate has been the same for a long as I can remember. The first $75,000 of property is exempt from tax. It was enacted at a time when the average home was about $25,000. It still helps but the amount has not been indexed to inflation. I think most taxes should be raised with sales taxes, user fees and fair property taxes. Income taxes are the burden of the working man. I pay as little as half the taxes on the sale of long term stocks than I pay at my job. Like the saying goes the best money is old money.”

“The number of millionaires in the United States increased by 10% last year.”

“The key is to live simply. Buy enough home, but not too much. Don't buy cable TV and get rid of the cell phone. Buy store brands and shop at Aldi's.

I am willing to spend large sums of money to buy long-term economic security at my local bank.

The key to success in the Bush world - live like a cockroach and slash spending like Walmart.”

“huh...I shop at aldis, have a small house, dont even own a tv...

...and im still not a millianaire...whats wrong?”

“This is America.

If you want to be a millionaire start your own business. Take a risk.

If you want to complain that the government is ruining your life, continue what you are doing.”

“fine...loan me the $$$ to start my own buisness :)”

“If you want a business loan, try to impress with things like a good business plan, the right attitude, and the ability to spell words like "business".”

“I am not a bank. See your local banker.”

“gawd...i just got out of debt. i am not in such a hurry to get back into it again lol.”

“From violink's lind

“Indeed, Somerset County was the only one of New Jersey's 15 largest counties to see a drop in wages

Statewide, average weekly wages rose 2.8 percent, to $876. That's 20 percent higher than the national average, but the growth rate lagged the national increase of 4 percent.

*******

LOL, this guy really works hard to find bad news. Negativity as a political strategy is working for Liberals.”

-bacpac
11:11:00 AM
6/04/05


So the fact that the statewide growth in wages was less than the CPI is good news? (Falling real wages.) I don't get it.
last edited: 6/13/05 3:06:38 PM”

““The number of millionaires in the United States increased by 10% last year.”

- bacpac
7:51:47 PM
6/11/05


This is good news? For whom?

According to the Ninth Annual World Wealth Report, people with at least US$1 million in financial wealth [...]account for 0.2% of the global adult population and [yet they control] nearly one fourth of the world’s wealth.

This while 3 billion people live on less than $2 per day.

bacpac loves his aristocracy.
last edited: 6/13/05 3:26:40 PM”

“June 10, 2005

Losing Our Country
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Baby boomers like me grew up in a relatively equal society. In the 1960's America was a place in which very few people were extremely wealthy, many blue-collar workers earned wages that placed them comfortably in the middle class, and working families could expect steadily rising living standards and a reasonable degree of economic security.

But as The Times's series on class in America reminds us, that was another country. The middle-class society I grew up in no longer exists.

Working families have seen little if any progress over the past 30 years. Adjusted for inflation, the income of the median family doubled between 1947 and 1973. But it rose only 22 percent from 1973 to 2003, and much of that gain was the result of wives' entering the paid labor force or working longer hours, not rising wages.

Meanwhile, economic security is a thing of the past: year-to-year fluctuations in the incomes of working families are far larger than they were a generation ago. All it takes is a bit of bad luck in employment or health to plunge a family that seems solidly middle-class into poverty.

But the wealthy have done very well indeed. Since 1973 the average income of the top 1 percent of Americans has doubled, and the income of the top 0.1 percent has tripled.

Why is this happening? I'll have more to say on that another day, but for now let me just point out that middle-class America didn't emerge by accident. It was created by what has been called the Great Compression of incomes that took place during World War II, and sustained for a generation by social norms that favored equality, strong labor unions and progressive taxation. Since the 1970's, all of those sustaining forces have lost their power.

Since 1980 in particular, U.S. government policies have consistently favored the wealthy at the expense of working families - and under the current administration, that favoritism has become extreme and relentless. From tax cuts that favor the rich to bankruptcy "reform" that punishes the unlucky, almost every domestic policy seems intended to accelerate our march back to the robber baron era.

It's not a pretty picture - which is why right-wing partisans try so hard to discredit anyone who tries to explain to the public what's going on.

These partisans rely in part on obfuscation: shaping, slicing and selectively presenting data in an attempt to mislead. For example, it's a plain fact that the Bush tax cuts heavily favor the rich, especially those who derive most of their income from inherited wealth. Yet this year's Economic Report of the President, in a bravura demonstration of how to lie with statistics, claimed that the cuts "increased the overall progressivity of the federal tax system."

The partisans also rely in part on scare tactics, insisting that any attempt to limit inequality would undermine economic incentives and reduce all of us to shared misery. That claim ignores the fact of U.S. economic success after World War II. It also ignores the lesson we should have learned from recent corporate scandals: sometimes the prospect of great wealth for those who succeed provides an incentive not for high performance, but for fraud.

Above all, the partisans engage in name-calling. To suggest that sustaining programs like Social Security, which protects working Americans from economic risk, should have priority over tax cuts for the rich is to practice "class warfare." To show concern over the growing inequality is to engage in the "politics of envy."

But the real reasons to worry about the explosion of inequality since the 1970's have nothing to do with envy. The fact is that working families aren't sharing in the economy's growth, and face growing economic insecurity. And there's good reason to believe that a society in which most people can reasonably be considered middle class is a better society - and more likely to be a functioning democracy - than one in which there are great extremes of wealth and poverty.

Reversing the rise in inequality and economic insecurity won't be easy: the middle-class society we have lost emerged only after the country was shaken by depression and war. But we can make a start by calling attention to the politicians who systematically make things worse in catering to their contributors. Never mind that straw man, the politics of envy. Let's try to do something about the politics of greed.”

“The number of millionaires in the United States increased by 10% last year

in other words

the rich get richer
last edited: 6/13/05 7:26:55 PM”

“:(. Why is it we work so damn hard at decent jobs...are careful how we spend...and can still barely make ends meet? the economy "is up" means absolutly nothing to working class people who work hard- too poor to ever be comfterble and secure, yet work too hard(make just a tiny bit too much money) to get help when they need it(even though these are the people who are paying the most taxes-)?
last edited: 6/13/05 7:39:44 PM”

“Hey, bacpac's happy. That's all that matters.

Actually, if he's happy, I'd sure as hell hate to see what he'd be like if he wasn't happy!”

“In his farewell letter on retiring as public editor for the NYT, Daniel Okrent wrote this article:




EDITORIAL DESK
THE PUBLIC EDITOR; 13 Things I Meant to Write About but Never Did
By DANIEL OKRENT
Published: May 22, 2005, Sunday


AND so all good (and tense and terrible and exciting) things must come to an end. When I began in this job in December 2003, I had a list of about 20 topics I knew I wanted to address. In the ensuing months, I got to about half of those, and devoted the rest of my time and space to issues that exploded out of the pages of the paper and my e-mail in-box. The 10 I never got to are now hanging in a closet with about 50 others. What follows, you will soon see, is an all but random selection.

1. In my very first column I identified myself as ''an absolutist'' on the First Amendment. Apart from having come to realize that absolutism in the pursuit of self-definition can be a bit reckless, my thoughts on journalism and the First Amendment have changed considerably. I still cherish the First; I still think it's the cornerstone of democracy. But I would love to see journalists justify their work not by wrapping themselves in the cloak of the law, but by invoking more persuasive defenses: accuracy, for instance, and fairness.

As a corollary, in some arenas the First Amendment may not even be the most effective legal defense. The idea that Times reporter Judith Miller and Time magazine's Matthew Cooper may soon be imprisoned for not naming a source is nausea-inducing -- especially since the source remains free. (No one is suggesting that Miller and Cooper may have broken the law; the source may well have.) Reporters Glenn Kessler and Walter Pincus, both of The Washington Post, were represented by criminal lawyers in the same case and are today going on with their lives, while those who have depended on a First Amendment defense may soon be packing for jail.

2. Op-Ed columnist Paul Krugman has the disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers in a fashion that pleases his acolytes but leaves him open to substantive assaults. Maureen Dowd was still writing that Alberto R. Gonzales ''called the Geneva Conventions 'quaint''' nearly two months after a correction in the news pages noted that Gonzales had specifically applied the term to Geneva provisions about commissary privileges, athletic uniforms and scientific instruments. Before his retirement in January, William Safire vexed me with his chronic assertion of clear links between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, based on evidence only he seemed to possess.

No one deserves the personal vituperation that regularly comes Dowd's way, and some of Krugman's enemies are every bit as ideological (and consequently unfair) as he is. But that doesn't mean that their boss, publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr., shouldn't hold his columnists to higher standards.

I didn't give Krugman, Dowd or Safire the chance to respond before writing the last two paragraphs. I decided to impersonate an opinion columnist.

3. Question: What do these characterizations have in common?:

''At the first sound of her peremptory voice and clickety stiletto heels, people dart behind doors and douse the lights.'' -- Television critic Alessandra Stanley on Katie Couric, April 25. ''A semicelebrated hustler Ms. Lakshmi may be.'' -- Fashion writer Guy Trebay on Padma Lakshmi, Feb. 8.

''Le mot juste here is 'jackass.''' -- Book reviewer Joe Queenan on writer A.J. Jacobs, Oct. 3.

Answer: Each is gratuitously nasty, and inappropriate in a newspaper that many of us look to as a guardian of civil discussion. I'll put the chart that appeared in the Feb. 20 edition of The Times's T: Women's Fashion magazine, touting oxycontin as a status symbol, in the same repellent category.

4. Last July, when I slapped the headline ''Is the New York Times a Liberal Newspaper?'' atop my column and opened the piece with the catchy one-liner ''Of course it is,'' I wasn't doing anyone -- the paper, its serious critics, myself -- any favors. I'd reduced a complex issue to a sound bite. The column itself, I'll stand by; I still believe the paper is the inevitable product of its staff's experience and worldview, and that its news coverage reflects a generalized acceptance of liberal positions on most social issues.

For The Times's ideologically fueled detractors on the right, though, there was no reason to invoke this somewhat more complex analysis when they could paint my more incendiary words on a billboard: ''According to The Times's own Daniel Okrent. '' I may wish they'd live by one of the same standards they ask The Times to adhere to -- the fair representation of controversial opinions. But I handed them a machine gun when a pistol would have sufficed.

5. Reader Steven L. Carter of Bala Cynwyd, Pa., asks, If ''Tucker Carlson is identified as a conservative'' in The Times, then why is ''Bill Moyers just, well, plain old Bill Moyers''? Good question.

6. There are few traits more valuable to a great cultural critic than a consistent aesthetic viewpoint. But a consistent aesthetic viewpoint inevitably fosters blind spots in the field of vision. If a critic just doesn't like the work of a particular playwright (or painter or singer or novelist), both the playwright and the readers lose out. He never gets a fair chance; we never get a fresh take. How about term limits -- say, 10 years -- for critics?

7. If you've been noticing more and more unfamiliar bylines in the paper, it's no accident. Additional sections, the demands of The Times's Web site and its television operation, and generalized economic pressures have spread finite staff resources across the requirements of a much wider mission, and have increased the paper's dependence on freelance writers.

Now, I've got nothing against freelance writers; I've been one myself, and tomorrow morning I'll become one again. It's a respectable way to make a living (even if a fiscally preposterous one). Though Times freelancers agree to abide by the paper's ethical rules and professional standards, there's no way someone who's working for The Times today, some other publication tomorrow and yet another on Tuesday can possibly absorb and live by The Times's complex code as fully as staff members. Unrevealed conflicts, violations of Times-specific reporting rules and a variety of other problems have repeatedly found their way to my office over the past 18 months.

The economic pressures on all newspapers are real, of course, and no modern newspaper can thrive unless it commits resources to new forms of distribution. I'm sure The Times devotes a larger share of its revenue to reporting than any other paper in the nation. But the price of stretching a staff too thin, and of patching the weak spots with day labor, could be much, much more expensive.

8. In the Travel section, the Escapes section and the occasional travel editions of the Sunday magazine now called T: Travel magazine, why are the restaurants almost always delightful, the hotels hospitable, the views glorious, the experiences rewarding? This is a weird form of crypto-journalism; if the theater critics were so chronically uncritical, they'd be hooted off the stage.

9. It's a story, say, about the New York City public schools. In the first paragraph a parent, apparently picked at random, testifies that they haven't improved. Readers are clearly expected to draw conclusions from this.

But it isn't clear why the individual was picked; it isn't possible to determine whether she's representative; and there's no way of knowing whether she knows what she's talking about. Calling on the individual man or woman on the street to make conclusive judgments is beneath journalistic dignity. If polls involving hundreds of people carry a cautionary note indicating a margin of error of plus-or-minus five points, what kind of consumer warning should be glued to a reporter's ad hoc poll of three or four respondents?

10. Six months ago, I applied the adjectives ''arrogant'' and ''condescending'' to the culture editors who had so badly botched their radical revision/evisceration of the Sunday arts listings. Therefore, on the heels of last month's reintroduction of the vastly improved listings in the Weekend section, and the total remake of a coming-events page in Arts & Leisure, I owe them new adjectives -- like ''responsive'' and ''deft.'' They did a wonderful job.

11. Thank yous: I've mentioned my associate Arthur Bovino several times in my column, but at no point have I said that without him there wouldn't even be a public editor's office; the roof would have caved in months ago. Copy editors Steve Coates and John Wilson have at many points prevented me from making a fool of myself (when they failed, it wasn't for lack of trying). My old friend Corby Kummer, moonlighting from his job at The Atlantic Monthly, read and commented on all my columns before they went into the paper. Susan Kirby edited the periodic letters columns. Several score members of the staff of The Times were helpful, tolerant and pleasant, yet always true to the institution.

Mostly, of course, I have to thank the paper's readers. I especially cherish those whose periodic unhappiness with The Times, even at its most intense, is the byproduct of their loyalty to the paper, and their appreciation of its importance to their lives.

This attitude was best symbolized by a lengthy message I received my first week on the job, from the economist and former Wall Street Journal editorialist Jude Wanniski. His letter coursed through page after page of criticism of The Times's coverage of topics as diverse as its unquestioning acceptance of the assertion that Saddam Hussein gassed thousands of Kurds during the Iraq-Iran war (Wanniski maintains the Iranians were responsible for the atrocity) and the paper's abiding disregard for supply-side economics. At the end of this acidulous letter, Wanniski appended a P.S. ''Having said that,'' he wrote, ''it remains one of my life's great daily pleasures.''

12. I wish I hadn't made so much noise, in print and in various interviews, about how hard this job was. Dexter Filkins, in Baghdad, has a hard job; Steven Erlanger, in Jerusalem, has a hard job. By any reasonable standard, public editor is a walk in the park.

13. During a tense encounter with a group of writers 17 months ago, economics reporter Louis Uchitelle asked what I hoped my legacy would be. I really had no answer, but like any good reporter, Uchitelle persisted; like any unprepared news subject, I dodged.

But a response came to me on the subway that evening, and I sent it to Uchitelle the next morning. ''The true contribution that I can make to The Times,'' I wrote, ''will be the product of 18 months of policies restated, staff members angered, readers disgruntled, procedures revised, and all the other missteps and false starts that must arise from an effort as new, as untested, and as inchoate as this one. When I move on, my successor will know how to do the job, and the people at The Times will know how to deal with it.''

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Barney Calame.

Published: 05 - 22 - 2005 , Late Edition - Final , Section 4 , Column 1 , Page 12




"Op-Ed columnist Paul Krugman has the disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers in a fashion that pleases his acolytes but leaves him open to substantive assaults."

IMAGINE THAT!”

“There is an online debate between Okrent and Krugman that you might find informative arc, if you care to read it:

http://forums.nytimes.com/top/opinion/readersopinions/forums/thepubliceditor/publiceditorswebjournal/index.html?offset=0&fid=.f779788/0”

“My opinion is that Krugman destroyed Okrent.
last edited: 6/14/05 7:15:41 AM”

“http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=2352&ncid=2352&e=2&u=/csm/20050614/ts_csm/ataxing


Rich-poor gap gaining attention By Peter Grier, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
Tue Jun 14, 4:00 AM ET



WASHINGTON - The income gap between the rich and the rest of the US population has become so wide, and is growing so fast, that it might eventually threaten the stability of democratic capitalism itself.

ADVERTISEMENT

Is that a liberal's talking point? Sure. But it's also a line from the recent public testimony of a champion of the free market: Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan.

America's powerful central banker hasn't suddenly lurched to the left of Democratic National Committee chief Howard Dean. His solution is better education today to create a flexible workforce for tomorrow - not confiscation of plutocrats' yachts.

But the fact that Mr. Greenspan speaks about this topic at all may show how much the growing concentration of national wealth at the top, combined with the uncertainties of increased globalization, worries economic policymakers as they peer into the future.

"He is the conventional wisdom," says Jared Bernstein, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank. "When I'm arguing with people, I say, 'Even Alan Greenspan....' "

Greenspan's comments at a Joint Economic Committee hearing last week were typical, for him. Asked a leading question by Sen. Jack Reed (news, bio, voting record) (D) of Rhode Island, he agreed that over the past two quarters hourly wages have shown few signs of accelerating. Overall employee compensation has gone up - but mostly due to a surge in bonuses and stock-option exercises.

The Fed chief than added that the 80 percent of the workforce represented by nonsupervisory workers has recently seen little, if any, income growth at all. The top 20 percent of supervisory, salaried, and other workers has.

The result of this, said Greenspan, is that the US now has a significant divergence in the fortunes of different groups in its labor market. "As I've often said, this is not the type of thing which a democratic society - a capitalist democratic society - can really accept without addressing," Greenspan told the congressional hearing.

The cause of this problem? Education, according to Greenspan. Specifically, high school education. US children test above world average levels at the 4th grade level, he noted. By the 12th grade, they do not. "We have to do something to prevent that from happening," said Greenspan.

So are liberals overjoyed by these words from a man who is the high priest of capitalism? Not really, or at least not entirely.

For one thing, some liberal analysts prefer to focus on the very tip of the income scale, not the top 20 percent. Recent Congressional Budget Office data show that the top 1 percent of the population received 11.4 percent of national after-tax income in 2002, points out Isaac Shapiro of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in a new study. That's up from a 7.5 percent share in 1979.

By contrast, the middle fifth of the population saw its share of national after-tax income fall over that same period of time, from 16.5 to 15.8. "Income is now more concentrated at the very top of the income spectrum than in all but six years since the mid-1930s," asserts Mr. Shapiro in his report.

For another, some Democratic analysts believe that Greenspan's emphasis on education as a cure ignores other causal factors of inequity. Data show an income gap widening among college graduates, says Mr. Bernstein. The quality of US high schools has nothing to do with that, he says. Instead it's partly a function of overall monetary and fiscal policies. "Greenspan takes a very long term view of the situation," says Bernstein.

On the other hand, some conservatives label the whole inequality debate a myth. The media's recent focus on the subject stems from its liberal bias and clever press management by Democrats, they say.

Inequality studies often ignore the wealth created by rising house prices, for instance - and homes represent the most substantial investment by many, if not most, Americans.

Nor do US workers necessarily perceive themselves on the losing end of a rigged capitalist game. A recent New York Times survey found that while 44 percent of respondents said they had a working-class childhood, only 35 percent said they were working class today, points out Bruce Bartlett, a senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis. Eighteen percent said they grew up lower class, while only 7 percent said they remained in that societal segment.

When Democrats today raise the inequality flag, they are simply trying to attack President Bush's tax cuts, albeit indirectly, says Mr. Bartlett. "A lot of this is driven by the estate-tax debate," he says.

And as Greenspan himself points out, by many measures the economy is doing well. Unemployment is down, GDP is up. Inflation still slumbers. Current standards of living are unmatched.

"So you can look at the system and say it's got a lot of problems to it, and sure it does. It always has," Greenspan told the JEC last week. "But you can't get around the fact that this is the most extraordinarily successful economy in history."”

“The number of millionaires in the United States increased by 10% last year

in other words

the rich get richer
last edited: 6/13/05 7:26:55 PM”
crash bang
7:26:14 PM
6/13/05

Or it could mean that people who were not millionaires, became millionaires.

In fact that is exactly what it means. The less wealthy are getting wealthier.

Violink is one of the new breed of Americans who blames all the woes of the world on the United States government. Your government.

If a tragedy occurs it is the Government's fault. Placing the blame on the President is even better.

If the President actually does something tragic like having sex with a twenty year old intern in the oval office, it is excuseable and someone elses fault.

If something good occurs it is not good for everyone so it sucks.

My advice to violink is to keep looking for the worst in this country, because people are paying attention.

The greatest risk affecting the poor in this country is obesity and lung cancer.

Think about it.”

“The president getting head is a tragedy?

It might be wrong, and it might even be immoral, but tragic?

Get a grip man!”

“You get a grip.

As a married man....

Does your wife allow the help to have sex with you?”

“I guess we can all fuch our file clerks and the wife is fine with it.

Anyone else would be fired, divorced, and humiliated.”

“Many Americans worry about the economy, war, polictics, but what really matters happens at home.”

“Everyone knows how many Americans have been killed in the war.

How many Americans know the numer of Americans who have been killed in domestic violence?

Think about it.”

“Federal revenues are up 15% over last year.

Tax cuts need to be extended.”

“I came across an interesting claim in an article just now:

"The damage already done can be gauged from the fact that, at 5.7 percent of the gross domestic product, America’s current account deficit last year was proportionately the second-worst of any major economy in history. It was exceeded only by Italy’s 7.7-percent deficit in 1924 -- hardly a happy precedent, considering that Benito Mussolini seized dictatorial powers in January 1925."

also surprising to me was:

"One important fact ignored by the American media is that Japanese industrial wages are now among the world’s highest. Not only are they far higher than in China (between four and 15 times higher, depending on the region of China), they are actually 20 percent to 30 percent higher than in the United States. Yet Japan’s export industries have not only survived but thrived."

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewPrint&articleId=9540”

“feh to the first one but the second is interesting. I'd never heard that.”

“That's because the ones that get paid higher actually deserve the money as opposed to our overly paid union non-workers.”

“Why do you hate Americans, sarge?”

“I don't hate Americans. Just union-workers. Since unions are un-American as they don't stand for capitalism and the principles our country was founded on, I don't hate Americans.”

“It's also much more expensive to live in Japan. I remember hearing about some of the homeless people who lived in the city parks in Tokyo. Some were making over $50,000 a year in a white-collar job, but that wasn't enough to afford any kind of housing in the city.”

“Those weren’t homeless guys zac. Those were outlander workers who got drunk the night before after work.”

“WASHINGTON -- Even with a robust economy that was adding jobs last year, the number of Americans who fell into poverty rose to 37 million _ up 1.1 million from 2003 _ according to Census Bureau figures released Tuesday.

It marks the fourth straight increase in the government's annual poverty measure.

The Census Bureau also said household income remained flat, and that the number of people without health insurance edged up by about 800,000 to 45.8 million people.

continued...”

“"The rich get richer until the poor get educated."

--Sage Francis”

“"Buddha Bear can't hold his liquor."

--anonymous”

“sarge proves my point yet again.”

“BB that's a good one. Here's a concise one that pairs up nicely with yours.

"Payday someday!"

I used to think 'possibly in our childrens lives' but now, maybe 15 years.”

“Every kid being brorn in America right now is saddled with a debt of $145,000 due to our republican generated national debt. And they don't even get a house for that money, just a flag magnet that says "Thanks for supporting the republican part..... errrrrrr, the troops!"”

“It's not just the Republicans. It's both parties, the corporations, the lobbyists and it's the American people. The pols are only doing what they know best - Promise everything to everybody!!”

“Given that the Clinton administration had major budget surplusses that the Bush administration promptly replaced with even bigger deficits, I think we can blame the Republicans for the run up. Just compare deficits under Democratic presidents with Republican presidents and you'll see.

The last two presidents to present a budget without a deficit: LBJ and Clinton.”

“I notice also how everyone is trying to pin price increases on the cost of oil, but a lot of it is related to falling value of the dollar.”

“So under Clinton, we had less national debt, less poverty, less war and more jobs. Under Reagan, BushI and Bush II, we have the opposite. Hmmmm, interesting:

"The rich get richer until the poor get educated."”

“Well that's one thing we agreed on pedxing. Every time the government raises the debt ceiling, the Bureau of Engraving cranks up the presses, and the checks go out. The results, a fiat currency with no more value that the trust you have in the issuing agency. How much do you trust the U.S. government? Now think how much the Chinese, the Japanese, the oil producing Arabs etc. trust Uncle Sam.”

“$30,000 more good paying jobs out the door and into oblivion, or China. Trickle Down Economics and Globalization combined with horrible management result in 30,000 job losses. Happy holidays! Looks like welfare roles will increase again!”

“I blame the unions for driving up costs and sending these jobs else where.

































What else did ya expect me to say? LOL!”