Time For A Budget SURPLUS Amendment

Forget the Balanced Budget Amendment (BBA). It's a cynical political ploy by the GOP. It leaves them free to pass all the irresponsible cut taxes they want while handcuffing the Democrats from restoring taxes to responsible levels or even raising them if needed.


The BBA is part of the GOP's larger strategy to sabotage the finances of government, to create massive deficits/debt hoping an eventual fiscal crisis will undermine signature Democratic safety net programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. As if that wasn't bad enough, it leaves the matter of the national debt unresolved… setting in cement the theft by our generation of some now $15 trillion from future tax payers… and by that I mean our kids and grand kids. The interest alone last FY was over $450 billion and $2.9 TRILLION was pissed away on interest during the Bush years alone.


We need to stop playing these budget games. Both Democrats and the GOP use the unified budget to conceal internal borrowing from the trust funds to make the real deficit look smaller. It's the on-budget deficit that gives us the true picture.


What is needed is a no games On-Budget SURPLUS Amendment to restrain both reckless spending AND reckless tax cuts by all sides and force them to finally pay down our enormous debt which now is about $16 trillion dollars.


The task ahead is daunting. Even if we ran an annual $500 billion surplus, something that didn't even happen in the best Clinton years, it would take us now some 32 years to pay down the debt. That neither political party sees the moral outrage in this situation is a damning indictment against our morally bankrupt and intellectually braindead political system.


ulTRAX

updated 9-17-12

So Where's That Conservative Nirvana?

These past 30 years the rich, corporations, and Wall Street have gotten just about EVERYTHING they wanted… tax cuts for the filthy rich and big reductions on capital gains taxes... the destruction of most unions... free trade deal to exploit cheap and slave labor overseas... corporate welfare... two wars fought on the credit card... the deregulation of banks, mass media, and commodities. They sabotaged government revenue with irresponsible tax cuts and Free Trade sabotaged the industrial base of America. Their privatization efforts in Iraq milked taxpayers for $100k+ a year private contractor jobs that our military should have been doing for a fifth that. They encouraged us to place our life savings in the hands of sociopathic predators on Wall Street whose greed and hubris was so great they didn't just bring down their own banks, they brought down our entire economy... almost the world's.


ALL THE EVIDENCE IS NOW IN, and it’s these conservative/neo-liberal policies have proven to be a DISASTER. At least some neo-libs like Clinton now have some regrets about free trade and deregulation. Clinton got us to a balanced budget only to have it quickly sabotaged by Bush to prevent debt paydown. Do you ever hear ANY regrets from the far Right or the crazed Tea Baggers for supporting policies that created more debt and brought the economy down?


Above was just the beginning of the Right's proposed insanity. The Tea Party sociopaths in Congress are now demanding policies even MORE insane than the above. Grover Norquist on 60 Minutes last Sunday again went on record his goal is to shrink the federal government down to about 8% of GDP. That means the elimination of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and just about all of the social safety net plus those regulatory agencies that protect us from the more malignant aspects of capitalism. Quite literally it's the rolling back of the 20th Century.


The Right has shown they are willing to become fiscal terrorists threatening to blow up the system if they are not allowed to inflict even MORE damage. They are blind to the fact that they have gotten most of what they wanted these past 30 years and there's still no Conservative Nirvana, that is except for the rich. They blame their failures on not being extreme enough. And these lunatics are saying they can be trusted to fix our system?


If anyone should be reforming our system, it's those whose instincts were sound in OPPOSING all of the above insanity… people on the LEFT.

updated 10-14-12

ulTRAX

It's Time For An ANTI-NORQUIST PATRIOT PLEDGE!!!

The Grover Norquist anti-tax pledge is the lynchpin that holds the GOP's fiscally irresponsible GOP policies together. It's time the Democrats target this pledge by demanding they sign a counter pledge similar to the below:


I, (name), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office of which I seek. While in office my primary obligation is to those I represent and to the People of the United States.


I further affirm that I will not let commitments, oaths, or pledges made to others restrict my ability to arrive at the best policy decisions or come before my sworn obligations stated above.


Signed___________________




revised 10-15-12


ulTRAX

A Proposal For An Occupy Wall Street Manifesto

The term traitor has both legal and moral definitions. In the moral sense, we hold the following to be TRAITORS to the United States and its People.

1: Politicians in BOTH parties who passed irresponsible tax cuts with the deliberate intent of creating massive debt as a backdoor way to undermine our social safety net. This has not just created massive interest payments... almost $3 trillion alone in the Bush years, stolen from trillions from our children, but also sabotaged government's ability to respond to emergencies.

2: Politicians in BOTH parties who put ideology over common sense and passed free trade which exported our jobs and undermined our economy and standard of living to benefit a few corporate investors. This has not only undermined our defense industry but is now crippling our economic recovery.

3: Politicians in BOTH parties who permitted advanced technology transfers to Red China and have allowed the US to become financially indebted to the Red Chinese who now have the power to destabilize the US. In a mere 15 years we have undermined our own economy and created a powerful economic and military rival.

4: Politicians in BOTH parties who deregulated the banks and commodity sectors letting the greedy predators run wild to prey on homeowners, small investors, and our retirement funds. They have robbed our youth of a future. They sabotaged the productive parts of our economy and allowed it to be replaced with irresponsible speculation and gambling. Like in 1929 this ultimately crashed the entire economy.

5: Politicians in BOTH parties who bailed out Wall Street predators and thieves without massively reforming our economic system so the Crash Of 2008 could never happen again.

6: Politicians in BOTH parties who refused to bring these predators and thieves to justice and allowed them to keep wealth they stole from the rest of us.

7: Politicians in BOTH parties who have refused to try to free us being held hostage to foreign oil from a hostile region of the world.

8: Politicians in BOTH parties who for political gain got the US bogged down in illegal wars of aggression... weakening our military and economy while undermining US credibility around the world, then passed the bill on to our children.

If our ENEMIES had done this to our nation, all real patriots would have declared war on these traitors long ago. Our goal is to REVERSE THE ABOVE and see that those who did this to our nations are either punished in elections or by the law!!

IS STARVE THE BEAST TREASON?

Just what is Grover Norquist's strategy of "Starve The Beast"? It was once a fringe far Right wing strategy to use fiscal irresponsibility as a political weapon. The GOP would rack up debt with irresponsible tax cuts and reckless spending to benefit their wealthy and corporate constituency. And and when the political pendulum shifted and the Democrats took power, that new debt would restrain them.

Eventually this fiscal irresponsibility would create a financial crisis where the GOP could go in for the kill and go after Democratic programs they knew could never get voters to weaken or kill through the ballot box.

Starve The Beast is now the mainstream in the GOP with the vast majority of GOP representatives and senators having signed Grover Norquist's pledge to pursue this strategy.

Given Starve The Beast calls for the willful sabotaging of government revenues and the creation of massive debt, it is a deliberate attack on the fiscal health of government and affects government's ability deal with emergencies.

At what point does this strategy cross the line into treason? Has it already?

Proof Reagan's Tax Cuts FAILED As A Stimulus?

Last week Limbaugh was again spouting the Right's nonsense that tax cuts are some magic bullet for the economy as if the evidence wasn't in from the Bush2 years. Tax cuts them failed to either stimulate the economy or inoculate the economy against recession. We might have avoided that mistake if we just went back and learned from an earlier example... the era of Voodoo Economics.

In February 1981 the Reagan admin wrote of their new economic plan

The program we have developed will break that cycle of negative expectations. It will revitalize economic growth, renew optimism and confidence, and rekindle the Nation's entrepreneurial instincts and creativity.

The benefits to the average American will be striking. Inflation—which is now at double digit rates—will be cut in half by 1986. The American economy will produce 13 MILLION NEW JOBS by 1986, nearly 3 million more than if the status quo in government policy were to prevail. The economy itself should break out of its anemic growth patterns to a much more robust growth trend of 4 to 5 percent a year. These positive results will be accomplished simultaneously with reducing tax burdens, increasing private saving, and raising the living standard of the American family.

Source: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=43427

In reality, just 5 months later, the economy sank into what was then the worst recession since the 30's. Unemployment hit a peak of 10.8% by December 1982... higher than it was under Obama. The unemployment rate remained over 8% for nearly 2 years, from March 82 through January 84.

Source... you'll have to construct your own tables here: http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/surveymost?bls

As for the actual job creation numbers under Reagan?

FOX says "Under Reagan, 9.5 million jobs were created from January 1981 to December 1986."

source: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,242424,00.html

That's it? Even when Fox gives Reagan an extra YEAR, Reagan could not meet his own job creation prediction of 13 million new jobs by 1986 (Jan 86) and was 3.5 MILLION jobs off.

I don't know where FOX got it's 9.5 million new jobs number but at the BLS site http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/surveymost?bls you can also run the job numbers.

In February 1981 when that White House reported predicted 13 million new jobs by 1986... the total workforce was estimated to be 108,242,000. In January 1986 the number was 116,682,000.

Where Reagan predicted 13 million jobs... it looks like a mere 8.4 million were created. That's 4.6 MILLION off Reagan's prediction.

Reagonomics was a utter failure yet the Orwellian Right has erased this failure from the minds of GOPers just as they are busy erasing the Bush2 failures.

So why would someone want to deliberately the public believe in a FAILED policy?

Because the REAL intent of these irresponsible tax cuts was NEVER economic stimulus but a reason the far Right can never admit to... to sabotage government revenues and drive up debt hoping to eventually bring us to the point we are at now... where the Right hopes to drive a stake in the heart of all those New Deal and great Society programs they've always loathed. To preserve this strategy the Orwellian Right has rewritten history and turned irresponsible tax cuts not just into a shining success but into a religion. They know fully well facts really don't stand a chance when the Right wing faithful inoculate themselves against them.

ulTRAX