Is Barack Obama is a Liar and a Typical Politician?

Originally Posted by Aquatic

I might be getting this wrong. I'm just reacting to some statements by Obama last week that I just saw that really, really upset me.

Last Sunday on Meet the Press, David Axelrod said Obama might not repeal the Bush tax cut for the rich, until it expires in the end of 2010. And then the man himself, Obama, stated this on his radio address during a question and answer session. Ludicrous.

This tax cut for the rich is the most "expensive" thing the government has ever done. It dwarfs the Iraq war. It took an enormous piece of revenue off of the table. Trillions. And of course most of it benefits the incredibly super-rich. (Numbers: http://www.brookings.edu/articles/20...mics_gale.aspx) It does not seem to have "trickled down".

I don't have nearly enough knowledge or experience to have an opinion on the bailout of banks or the auto industry. It would seem we would at least need to require that the CEOs don't get fat severance deals and golden parachutes, and get rewarded for doing a crappy job. I'm a capitalist. Let the rich lose billions, that's capitalism.

Nevertheless, it seems that we do need a massively enormous Public Works project, like a New New Deal, to keep everyone employed and bring us out of the next Depression. The new Public Works Administration, basically. It can focus on infrastructure upgrade (with a green focus) and repair and "green collar" jobs, such as initiating the production of new energy sources and green products, built and designed and used in this country (wind turbines, solar panels, efficient cars, green building, etc.) This will keep people employed. I think John Maynard Keynes and FDR had it right. Deficit spending seemed to work for the last Depression, keeping people employed and benefiting everyone, and this time around it will be even more useful, and help address our long-term problems of environmental protection and population growth-related problems.

I had hoped Obama would at least restore the tax policy back to the Clinton levels of the 1990s, back when everything was great. Or perhaps increase it beyond these levels, due to the current economic challenges, since as I understand it, trickle-down economics doesn't work, and yet middle-class Americans spending money is what keeps our consumer economy ticking.

So, is Obama not going to repeal the Bush Tax Cuts for the Rich until it expires in the end of 2010?!

Where will the money for all these "bailouts" which both parties seem to agree are necessary, come from? Not to mention all of the other campaign promises Obama made? Where will the money for any of his ideas come from, for the next two years, if he doesn't immediately repeal the Bush Tax Cuts for the Rich? Chinese banks?

Is Barack Obama just another typical politician, who flip flops and says anything just to get elected? I just became a lot more cynical. But I may not be seeing the whole picture and I wanted to see what everyone else thought. I was surprised and disappointed that it seems as if the "liberal" media isn't paying much attention to this seemingly new development in Obama's politics.

Originally Posted by jimmac

Well we all have to make changes to our agendas now because of the mess the Bush administration has made for us through their actions/inactions. I don't know why under these extreme circumstances this is any different.

Gee thanks Mr. Bush!

Originally Posted by FloorJack

Yea but nothing's really changed since Obama repeated ad nauseum that 95% of us would receive a tax cut paid for by the other 5% and an increase in cap' gains tax.

Now at the time I didn't believe him. I was told to read his web site because obviously I must not have read his web site because then I would know that 95% of would get a tax cut. When I expressed by disbelief that was an attack on Obama calling him a liar. So what does that make him now?

The land of milk and honey is coming on Jan. 20th. World hunger is gone forever once your ballot is in the mail.

Originally Posted by jimmac

I've already covered this. Things would be a lot better and maybe the next president could make alot of positive changes but he has to clean up the Bush legacy first.

We'd be at least closer to milk and honey if we hadn't been spoon fed a load of crap from Bush first.

Bottom line Floorjack they were in charge and here we are.

Once again thank you Mr. Bush!

Originally Posted by midwinter

Who around here claimed that the Clinton years were good because he raised taxes during an economic collapse?

Originally Posted by trumptman

When did economic collapse become one quarter of negative growth and 6.5% unemployment?

Originally Posted by trumptman

When did economic collapse become one quarter of negative growth and 6.5% unemployment?

Originally Posted by midwinter

But that's not the question. Who around here claimed that the Clinton years were awesome because he raised taxes during a period of economic collapse?

Bad News About the Budget

Before Clinton took office, he received some jarring information about the size of the deficit. The news would present Clinton with a great challenge and force him to abandon campaign promises, especially the pledge of a middle class tax cut.

Reich: Well, we knew the deficit was large. In fact, years before [Reagan budget chief] David Stockman had referred to '$200 billion-a-year deficits as far as the eye could see." And during the campaign, the president did talk about the importance of reducing the deficit, but it had been of second order priority to investing in education, in job skills, in health care, and a lot of other things that the country needed to do. But, obviously, when the president is on the cusp of actually governing the country, he's got to know how bad that deficit projection really is, how much damage has been done, what he's inherited in terms of an economic mess.

And so I headed over to the Treasury Department to talk to officials over there, officials in the Bush administration, and try to get the best estimate I possibly could as to how bad the numbers really looked, how bad that deficit was going to be the next year and likely to be in years to come.

And you found out it was going to be worse than you had been told, and on December 7th I think it was, you go to tell the president the news. What's his reaction?

Reich: The president was not happy when he heard that the projected deficit was much larger than we had assumed, larger than we had been told, larger than the Bush administration had told the public. He knew that it meant that we couldn't do everything that he wanted to do, everything that he had promised the public. Now, he was both upset, but he was also -- I remember this very vividly, and I was surprised at the time because he was also kind of excited. He said, "Gee, that's a great challenge. We're going to really, really have to work on that." And I remember sitting there thinking, "Now, wait a minute. This is going to set a lot of our plans back. Certainly this is going to put a major crimp in all of this public investment.

Rubin: By the time we got toward the end of the transition, the Bush administration had come out with new deficit forecasts and they were much higher than anybody expected.

So, clearly, that was creating whole new pressures. On January 7th of 1993, during the transition, we had a six-and-a-half hour meeting in Little Rock, the incoming economic team with the president, the vice president, and Hillary. And one of the political advisors said to me just before the meeting that our recommendation of very strong deficit reduction was going to require the president to defer a lot of things that he cared deeply about, and that you couldn't possibly expect the president-elect to make that decision at that time.

So we began the meeting and we made our basic presentation. And about half an hour, 45 minutes into it, he stopped the meeting and he said, "Look -- the threshold issue is the deficit. Until we deal with that, we can't get the economy back on track and we can't do the things that we want to do. So that has to be our threshold issue, and then, within that context, we have to do as much else as we can, that we want to do. But we can't get the rest of it done until we address the deficit."

And it was that basic decision that framed the rest of the development of the budget and the carrying forward of the economic strategy from that point forward.

Originally Posted by midwinter

Probably around the same time that the banks stopped lending to one another and commercial paper ground to a halt and the banks had to be bailed out across Europe and America, and China had to engage in a massive public works project, and Iceland went bankrupt and could only deal in cash.

...

Originally Posted by midwinter

Probably around the same time that the banks stopped lending to one another and commercial paper ground to a halt and the banks had to be bailed out across Europe and America, and China had to engage in a massive public works project, and Iceland went bankrupt and could only deal in cash.

But that's not the question. Who around here claimed that the Clinton years were awesome because he raised taxes during a period of economic collapse?

The U.S. economy has been in a recession since December 2007, the National Bureau of Economic Research said Monday.

The NBER - a private, nonprofit research organization - said its group of academic economists who determine business cycles met and decided that the U.S. recession began last December.

By one benchmark, a recession occurs whenever the gross domestic product, the total output of goods and services, declines for two consecutive quarters. The GDP turned negative in the July-September quarter of this year, and many economists believe it is falling in the current quarter at an even sharper rate.

But the NBER's dating committee uses broader and more precise measures, including employment data. In a news release, the group said its cycle dating committee held a telephone conference call on Friday and made the determination on when the recession began.

The White House commented on the news that a second downturn has officially begun on President George W. Bush's watch without ever actually using the word "recession," a term the president and his aides have repeatedly avoided. Instead, spokesman Tony Fratto remarked upon the fact that NBER "determines the start and end dates of business cycles."

Originally Posted by trumptman

Now who around here have said that Clinton growth was due to tax increases?

Plenty have said that

Originally Posted by Hassan i Sabbah

amusing but unhelpful comment removed

Originally Posted by @_@ Artman

Prepare not to be shocked...

It's official: US is in recession

Originally Posted by Aquatic

I might be getting this wrong. I'm just reacting to some statements by Obama last week that I just saw that really, really upset me.

Last Sunday on Meet the Press, David Axelrod said Obama might not repeal the Bush tax cut for the rich, until it expires in the end of 2010. And then the man himself, Obama, stated this on his radio address during a question and answer session. Ludicrous.

This tax cut for the rich is the most "expensive" thing the government has ever done. It dwarfs the Iraq war. It took an enormous piece of revenue off of the table. Trillions. And of course most of it benefits the incredibly super-rich. (Numbers: http://www.brookings.edu/articles/20...mics_gale.aspx) It does not seem to have "trickled down".

I don't have nearly enough knowledge or experience to have an opinion on the bailout of banks or the auto industry. It would seem we would at least need to require that the CEOs don't get fat severance deals and golden parachutes, and get rewarded for doing a crappy job. I'm a capitalist. Let the rich lose billions, that's capitalism.

Nevertheless, it seems that we do need a massively enormous Public Works project, like a New New Deal, to keep everyone employed and bring us out of the next Depression. The new Public Works Administration, basically. It can focus on infrastructure upgrade (with a green focus) and repair and "green collar" jobs, such as initiating the production of new energy sources and green products, built and designed and used in this country (wind turbines, solar panels, efficient cars, green building, etc.) This will keep people employed. I think John Maynard Keynes and FDR had it right. Deficit spending seemed to work for the last Depression, keeping people employed and benefiting everyone, and this time around it will be even more useful, and help address our long-term problems of environmental protection and population growth-related problems.

Originally Posted by Akac

I'd like to point out that all of FDR's work creating tons of deficit did not bring us out of the last Depression. In fact, nearly all economists actually agree that it simply made it last longer. What brought us out of the depression was World War II.

http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla...px?RelNum=5409

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=29646

What brought about the end of the last recession in 2001? Bush's tax cuts. It wasn't the rebate checks. It was tax cuts.

Its really quite simple. Bush's tax cuts didn't just help the "uber super rich". It helped those of us making $70k a year to build businesses that now make almost a million a year. It helped those who were making $20k a year make $50k a year.

When did the economy go sour? When the Democrats got took over Congress 2 years ago. When did Clinton's administration start seeing the benefits of the economy? When the Republicans took over Congress.

Why people see the President as the one who "controls" America is beyond me. Its the Congress. I don't care who the president is. Give me a Republican Congress so we can get out of this financial mess please! (No RHINO's please).

Originally Posted by Aquatic

Why?



Again, Why? Keep in mind I mean tax cuts for people with billions or at least hundreds of millions of dollars. I believe I outlined my reasoning. Economists of all stripes that I've seen in the media seem to agree that "the" bailout necessary (Although perhaps there is disagreement about the specifics such as who, what, when, where, etc.) I'm not an economist. I'm just noting a clear discrepancy that you don't need a degree to see: Obama has proposed a whole bunch of stuff, such as the "bailout", that will cost a lot money. Not to mention all sorts of new programs. And yet he wants to cut taxes for the middle-class, without raising taxes on the super-rich. So, he wants to spend more and cut taxes. We saw how that worked when Bush did this. This is the thinking that got us in to this mess, coming from a surplus.

I'm not an economist, hopefully someone else is. I think we have a very interesting and capable team of experts in various fields here at AI. In this case while I'm very concerned, I have no background, and I wanted to see what everyone here thought.

I'm worried I'm missing an important concept. But if I'm not, it seems Obama is proposing to do something that will further hurt our economy in the short and long term and will also make him a liar, if I understand his current position correctly and understood his campaign rhetoric correctly.

trumpt is right on here. Maybe the big donors that he brought up in a separate thread are influencing Obama?

trumpt is right on here. Maybe the big donors that he brought up in a separate thread are influencing Obama?