Don't Pay Your Bills! (or how to be a Tea Party Person)

warning: this is sarcasm, and not very subtle sarcasm at that. In truth it may be mean spirited sarcasm as well. it certainly isn't funny. Just in case any really stupid people read this (as opposed to writing it), It's about the debt ceiling insanity. So I apologize if you are offended. Oh hell, no I don't, I meant to offend some people. (unless you are my mother, then I sincerely apologize and I am just kidding).  Otherwise, fuck it. read at your own risk.


Here's a great way to control your families' finances. First, run up a bunch of bills, cable TV, Internet, a couple of cell phone bills, maybe some credit card charges for groceries, and of course that vacation at Sea World that the kids loved so much.

Then, when it comes time to pay those bills, 
refuse pay them!  Yeah, just refuse to pay the bills you already owe, unless the family agrees to give up food, their bedrooms, Doctor checkups, new clothes and a bunch of other stuff they need next year!

Sure, the kids will be hungry, and your spouse may get sicker and lose some teeth by not going to the Dentist, but boy, will you cut that spending!

Of course, you'll pay a lot for the refusal to pay those bills when you finally do pay them a month later, which of course you have to do eventually.

But think of the benefits of doing useless protesting when it's time to PAY the bills, instead of agreeing to spend less when you PLAN your budget!

Umm, I can't think of any benefits.
(Unless being the stupidest person in your family is a benefit).

But golly, that is just what the Tea Party in Congress is doing to the USA, and it's messing up the U.S. economy just as surely as your refusal to pay your bills would mess up yours!

And if the kids complain, insult them, give them a smarmy look as if you knew what you were doing (and even though your spouse is a lot smarter than you, act as if THEY were the idiot!). 

 Tell them they have to spend less money, even though they already cut back and gave up half their spending money already. Just LIE to them and tell them "the right time to focus on spending is when it's time to PAY, not when you actually SPEND the money."

They won't believe you, unless they are clueless morons. Or unless they are 26% of the American public.  


If they go talk about what you are doing with the neighbors, compare them to Hitler! 

Don't worry about being illogical, if you want to be a Tea Party Person you have to learn to ignore logic. Be sure to finish learning to ignore facts first, which we learned in Lesson 1.


One final thing, even if you could borrow money by refinancing your house at today's low low interest rates (and save thousands of dollars), and even if you could invest some of that money to take a class and finish your Masters, which would give you a raise of about 20% more than what you make now, DON'T SPEND THAT MONEY. 

Oh, no, because the way to help your family is to cut spending no matter what.  And when you  don't get that promotion because you don't have the skills because you didn't invest in training, don't worry. With less spending you won't need a promotion, you can just do with less. Your family will understand, because they know that they have to sacrifice so that your rich Uncle can get even richer! You can always get support from the government, then blame it on the Democrats!

Then you will be a real Tea Party Person! First, pretend you want to balance the budget. Second, make sure the richest members in your family don't give you any money to help with the kids' medical bills, just don't take your child to the Doctor. Third, cut spending for food, don't invest in any training, and fall behind the rest of the people at work. Then when you lose your job, you will REALLY spend less money, because you won't have any! 

 You will then be a real Tea Party Person!

Pay no attention to the (damn) liberal next door, who now makes twice what he did last year due to the training he took, and whose medical bills are far reduced because he invested in healthy living and eating, and who can afford to send his kids to a good school, so they will also make good money. Ignore him, and ignore his friend that old-school conservative too (you remember him? The smart one you threw out of the Neighborhood Association last year for talking to the Damn Liberal?). He is using reasoning, he is looking at what worked before and doing that. DON'T FALL FOR THAT!

It's too intelligent. YOU are an American. A White American! This is your country, and whatever those English people are doing, ridicule them! They're foreigners from across the ocean, you just can't trust 'em. 

 No, that liberal is wrong, the way to get ahead is to cut off all your spending, period.  So what if it hurts your family? You can rest happy in the fact that your wealthy relative is still rich. And you still have your gun.

STIMULUS NOT SEQUESTER

The GOP is currently refusing to add any revenue to the attempt to get our budget under control.

My last post showed how under Obama we are already at the lowest level of spending in many years, and within a couple of years, under legislation already signed into law, our Discretionary Spending will be a the lowest rate since WWII. If we could get our GP going again, it will be an even lower %.

The GOP need sto add some revenue to the mix. WE lost a great deal of revenue for the government to operate on during the Bush years. The wealthy have profited mightely due to that, while everyone else has seen a net decrease in earnings.

It's time to add revenue, buy elminating corporate subsidies and by reforming the tax code, in order to stop so many large coroporations from not paying any tyaxes.

Here are some faxes about taxes

In the Atlantic Magazine was an article with this:


"No, the U.S. is not a high-tax country. But saying exactly how not-high-tax we are gets a little tricky.   The graph below comes from a KPMG report excavated by Henry Blodget. It shows personal tax rates on $100,000 around the world. The U.S. comes in at 55th out of 114."

Here's the source:

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/01/how-low-are-us-taxes-compared-to-other-countries/267148/

Here's the graph, which makes it easy to see we are nowhere near the "high tax" level compared to other countries:
 


SO WE DO NOT HAVE HIGH TAXES COMPARED TO THE REST OF THE WORLD.

WHAT ABOUT IN THE USA?


This is from factcheck.org:

"Politicians talk about the burden of taxes incessantly. Now comes a rare chance to check the facts. And the fact is that federal tax rates had fallen to the lowest in 30 years when President Barack Obama took office — and fell again in his first year in office."

"LOWEST IN 30 YEARS"

HERE'S A CHART:




THESE ARE THE FACTS, H, YOU SHOULD LEARN SOME OF THEM SO YOU DON'T SOUND OFF WHEN YOU ARE WRONG.
Do you see how I use evidence to back up my points? If you want rational people to believe you, try doing that. knee-jerk repetition of right wing talking points is not persuasive to anyone but right wingers

now, back to taxes. CORPORATIONS DON'T PAY TAXES AT THE POSTED CORPORATE RATES, MANY HUGE HIGHLY PROFITABLE CORPORATIONS PAY NO TAXES AT ALL

THIS IS FROM INDEPENDENT SENATOR BERNIE SANDERS:

"Mitch McConnell was on the floor of the Senate saying the revenue discussion is over. Well, not for me. The truth of the matter is that right now you have one out of four profitable corporations in America paying zero in federal taxes. The percentage of revenue that we get compared to GDP today in corporate taxes is much much lower than it used to be. As I mentioned many times, we’re losing one hundred billion dollars a year from corporations and wealthy individuals who stash their money in the Cayman Islands and other tax havens. We have just enormous loopholes that corporations and wealthy people continue to take advantage of. "

hey tea party!  
  ARE YOU PAYING ATTENTION?

One in Four profitable corporations pay NO taxes!


SAY WHA..?

One in Four profitable corporations pay NO taxes!

DAMN! THAT'S WHAT I THOUGHT YOU SAID!

Here's an article from Bruce Bartlett, who held senior policy roles in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations and served on the staffs of Representatives Jack Kemp and Ron Paul:

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/18/are-corporations-overtaxed/

Read it and learn about corporate taxes from a genuine Republican conservative.

Here are a couple of excerpts:

"One problem with the Republican theory is that many big corporations actually pay little, if any, federal income tax. For example, The New York Times has reported that General Electric, the sixth-largest corporation in the United States, earned $14.2 billion in 2010, but disclosed in federal filings that it had no federal tax liability."

"According to Citizens for Tax Justice, G.E. paid a federal tax rate about the same as Continental Resources’ over the last 10 years – an average of 2.3 percent, including four years in which it received a net tax refund."


Considering we have cut the deficit under Obama, and are about halfway back where we were when Bush took over from Clinton, it is silly to focus on cutting government spending any further without first stimulating the economy.

STIMULUS BRINGS JOBS!   

STIMULUS BRINGS JOBS!    

STIMULUS BRINGS JOBS!   
 

Sequester This, Boehner!

Republicans like to portray President Obama as a big government spender, despite the fact that government spending under Obama has grown at its slowest pace since the Eisenhower administration. 

The GOP is also trying to pretend the spending cuts that Obama has signed into law over the last two years simply didn’t happen.

Check out how discretionary spending has gone down..

In fact, under its current trajectory, non-defense discretionary spending — everything from education to food safety to transportation to housing to veterans’ benefits — will hit historic lows in the next decade, as Center for American Progress Director of Tax and Budget Policy Michael Linden showed in the charts in this article.

 

If the so-called “sequester” comes into force in March, which House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) says it will, domestic spending will fall even more. “Instead of totaling 3.2 percent of GDP in 2017, non-defense discretionary spending would total less than 3 percent of GDP and would be on its way down to 2.6 percent by 2022. This is less than two-thirds of what was previously its lowest level.

Most galling is the GOP insistence that the sequester "is Obama's idea", as if Obama wanted it to pass. This is a straight up denial of reality (and if you know this but still say it to people as if it were the truth, it's what we call 'a LIE').

Obama, and other rational people  thought no one would be cruel enough to actually let these cuts happen. He failed to recognize the depths of hatred the right wing holds for him and the level of their contempt for government. Not to mention their willingness to hurt thousands or even millions of people in order to protect the greedy money-grubbing of the top income-takers.

There are legitimate reasons to slow spending, but there is precious little evidence that drastically cutting spending will do anything other than hurt an already anemic recovery.

Now it's time to focus on Demand-Side Economics!

Here it is, one main reason the USA is stagnating economically:

This next chart shows similar information, again showing flat wages but including rising Productivity!

Together, they include....the way to fix the economy!


We tried several versions of "Supply-Side economics in the past thirty years. Just take care of the top % (the "Investing Class" or lately "Job Creators") and the prosperity will 'trickle-down' to the middle and lower class.  Trickle Down. As Reverend Al says, "we got the down, but no Trickle.

Bottom line? It hasn't worked, not during Reagan, and not under Bush. Twice.

Reagan Tripled the debt. Tripled the debt. Trible down, Ronnie.

Well then, how 'bout Bush, what did he do to the Deficit?


Here's what he did


2007    161   billion
2008     459    billion
2009   1413  billion 

What is that?   Really?  We went from 169 up to 1413?  Billion?  Dollars? No way!

Yes, way.

How many times does 161 go into 1413?  8.something?

So if Reagan Tripled the debt, Bush Octoogled the Deficit!

What about Obama?  

2010   1293
2011   1300
2012   1089
2013     901

Wow. It goes down?  Yes, it does!  Obama reduced the deficit.

Check it out. If you learn this stuff, you will sound really smart when talking politics and economy. Or you an ignore it and be thought of as a Republican. Ouch.

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/federal_deficit_chart.html  


 So what do we do to fix the economy? Look at the next chart. It shows us that the Middle Class has been getting a smaller share of the overall wealth than anytime in the last 80 years.

 That's because the top 1% is taking a higher share than anytime since the Great Depression.  Let's do the math.   If the top 1% takes 25%, how much does that leave for everyone else?

75%  YES! GOOD!  SO 400 PEOPLE GET 25%, HOW MANY PEOPLE SPLIT THE REST?

Consider this:
 As of 2011,  the top 400 people in America own more than the entire bottom 60% of Americans.
 

We should spend money on the Middle Class.  Just like the plan that saved the Auto-Industry, which was direct government loans to the industry, in place of private loans which were not available.  Government investment saved that industry. And we are making a profit as they pay back the loans.

This money stimulated the industry, enabled a structured bankruptcy and debt renegotiation, and the resulting economic vigor has made the auto industry vibrant again.. 

The Middle Class is the Demand Side of supply and demand.  When  Demand has the ability to buy stuff,  (desire & resources),  Supply can step up, hire people, open factories and make stuff to sell. Then Investors can jump on that economic activity, and assist businesses large and small to fight for that business.

It really helps to have a 'new product' a wave of excitement, either through new product or a new technology to get an economic push going.

Taht da da daaah! Anouncing 
"The Green Look American Makeover, USA! 
 ("GLAM USA")

The main motive behind the rebound should be repairing our infrastructure. It's needed, it uses a wide variety
of skills that American Workers have in spades, and it's patriotic! 

Don't just Rebuild it, Re-Brand it. 

Join "The Big Build"! A series of Big Projects requiring a Giant manufacturing and Construction overhaul

Join the Green Movement" - Glam USA 's leap into the future Greening of America, learn New skills, bring old ones to a new industry from wind to solar to Geo thermal.

The Old Bulls, GLAM USA's Old-school energy players competing for efficiency and safety records as the way to win government contracts. Challenge traditional industrys to show how clean, safe and efficient energy can be delivered, using old-school philosophies and modern technonligies.

Reward clean and safe over pure volume.  

The varieyt of ways to join the project cna build team unity and freindly copetition betewwen the agencies to make America the best looking, nost productive nation on earth. Set up[ so that the invesment class can win and retain the glory position, by changing the corporate outlook of oil at all costs, to clean energy and safe delivery. That wins contracts, as do favorable tax positions.

By investing in the country we can take every area of society up to the H-N-L, a hole-nudder-lebel.  



By providing the original investment and the market (government contracts, the government can put people to work, help raise incomes and lower the unemplopyment rate, and repair our crumbling infrastucture. American reboot!

A perfect nations project to inspire pride and get community involvement. When you raise the GDP, you really do generate more income, enough to run a surplus. and raise wages.

By raising the Middle Class's stature and abilioty to buy, and buy making 'supporting the rebuld' a patriotic endeavor, we can create a new young-persons volunteer crew to manage the work and bring it to our communties. We can generate civic pride and contributios from every sector of our society.

A bright and shining rebuilt and remodeled, economically secure  America will rebuild our tourism brand and viatlize travel ni both directions. our stronger dollar and viable economy will spark similar efforts across the first world nations, and the rising GDP will raise enough income to lower our debt and being Europe's economy along with us.

This is a golden opportunity, folks. We need to get behind Obama's Rebuild America plan ! (well, I'm sure he will see the wisdom of this assoon as I teach it to him!)

Don't Be Ignorant

I keep talking to my republican friends and they keep on believing the strangest things. I am not sure what it is that turns otherwise reasonably smart and sane people into gullible obedient little GOP defenders but it is an amazing thing to watch.

I do present the facts to them, such as how we were losing hundreds of thousands of jobs every month for almost a year before Obama took over, and now we have had over three years straight of job increases, doesn't matter.

Even though I point out that in order to make Obama's statistics look worse, the GOP counts everything in the 1st Quarter of 2009, even though Obama hadn't put any policies in place in 1st 6-7 weeks in office.  In fact, Obama wasn't even sworn into office until January 20th, they count January's job losses as something Obama could have done something about!

You wouldn't accept being held responsible at work for something the guy who had your job last year did, Obama can't be blamed for jobs lost before he took office! Try blaming your current wife or husband for something that happened in your previous marriage, see how that works out for you.

Yet that's what you have to be willing to do to accept the phony picture the GOP / Tea Party has been painting since the day Obama took office.

Obama has actually lowered the number of government employees drastically. Not only does the GOP still cry 'socialist', they don't come to the same, sane conclusion a normal person would, that if we have been adding overall jobs every month, yet government jobs have gone down, we must be doing much better in the private sector that the overall unemployment rate reflects.

Of course, the GOP uses the January 2009 rate of about 7.6% to argue Obama has 'raised the unemployment rate', but in fact as of the day Obama took office the rate is now lower.  Romney uses the claim "Obama 'promised' he would lower the rate to under 4%", which is true, but since it  happened in 2008 when the Bush rate was still around 4-5%, to knowingly use that as a political attack is deceitful. 

And If you look at the fast-rising line in a chart since the Bush recession started in 2008, you can see how it took a few months for the rate to stop climbing, but once it did we have had a fairly successful jobs rate since then, a large improvement over what Obama was handed.  (Bush took the unemployment rate from around 4% to over 8% in his eight years in office). By the end of his first year, Obama had stopped that catastrophic trend and has us headed in the right direction.

And regarding the charge of 'Obama the socialist', is it possible that well educated, normal people can so misunderstand that word they think it's true about Obama? or is it that they haven't bothered to see if it's true?

I'm guessing it's being ignorant of facts, rather than being under-educated or simply in denial. At least I hope that's what it is, I hate to think some of my friends and family are willingly being deceitful, or that they don't really care what happens to the country.

Time and again, though, presenting them with facts never elicits a surprising 'wow, didn't know that' or some other type of acknowledgement that the reason they just gave for hating Obama is wrong on the facts. They just ignore that, change the topic to some other (equally vacuous) charge, and of course continue to use the same, discredited argument in the next conversation.

I understand this kind of stubborn intentional ignorance and strongly held belief system when it regards religion, everyone wants their God to be The God. But that's personal, and their holding those beliefs are their right, and don't really impact others too much ( I know that's arguable, I am trying to be generous here).

But in politics, an ignorant belief in political lies has a huge impact on the rest of us, it happened when we 'elected' Bush, and if enough people hold this irrational position and hatred of President Obama, it will harm the country again.

There is evidence out there, much of it is presented in these essays. All you need to do is pay attention and be willing to discuss and seek the truth. Good luck.