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Now Minnesota joins the list of states being gutted by the Republican Party. The government in the state famous for being nice has shut down, because Democratic Governor Mark Dayton wanted to impose a higher income tax on Minnesotans earning $1 million or more a year—a whopping 7,700 people in a state of 5.3 million. There are additional matters—a GOP insistence on a 15 percent reduction in state workers over the next four years, for example. And so the evidence mounts: In Saint Paul and Columbus and Tallahassee and Madison, as in Washington D.C., we are watching something that is no longer a political party in the normal sense, but a group of cynical highwaymen perpetuating a national crisis and then exploiting that very crisis to try to destroy the public sphere.

The GOP House speaker in Minnesota is quoted in the Star-Tribune today inveighing against saddling future generations with debt. I don’t know the man, so I’ll allow for the possibility that he’s sincere. But at the highest levels, the Republican Party cares nothing about the public debt. In fact, it wants more. Americans must understand this.

It is the party of debt. It is the party of deficits. It is the party of recession. It is the party of unemployment. It is the party of inequality. And it is the party of middle-class stagnation and slippage.

It is the party of all these things because it needs these conditions to exist—so that its leaders can scream “Crisis!” But they don’t desire in any meaningful way to fix the crisis. They scream about crisis because what they desire is to use the crisis as an excuse to do things to this country that the hard right has wanted to do for 30 years.

We see it all over the place. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and Ohio Governor John Kasich could have behaved more like other governors around the country who’ve won labor concessions, like New York Democrat Andrew Cuomo. But they sought to go much farther with their “emergency” bills. Why? Well, as long as there’s an economic emergency, they can just repeat “Crisis! Crisis! Crisis!” and a certain percentage of the public and the gullible and hopeful media, which refuses to believe that governmental leaders can possibly be as deceitful as these people are, will buy it.

But the truth is that their corporate benefactors want to get rid of unions. The unpopular public-employee unions are a handy place to start. And a crisis provides the perfect opportunity to do it. It’s also a perfect opportunity to refuse billions in long-awaited rail infrastructure money, as Florida’s Rick Scott and New Jersey’s Chris Christie have done, the better to delegitimize the idea that the federal government should even be in such a business.

Yet these hard-right governors are failing. The “unpopular” public-employee unions turn out to have some defenders: Organizers of a drive to put a repeal of Kasich’s notorious SB 5 on the Ohio ballot this fall just delivered 1.3 million signatures, about six times the required amount. Meanwhile, it’s the governors who are in fact unpopular. Christie is at 43-53 and sinking. Walker is also at 43, Kasich at 38 percent, and Scott at 29 percent. This matters of course to them and their supporters, but it probably doesn’t matter much to the financial forces behind the GOP as long as they get the job done. As my friend Sid Blumenthal put it to me the other day, “The governors are the Koch brothers’ suicide bombers.” Seventy-two Fox contracts await them in a future life.

The cynicism is most rampant in Washington. Once the economy recovers, Barack Obama, whom most people still basically want to see succeed, will be back to a 53 to 55 percent approval rating, and the rage will have no oxygen. And of course he will under those circumstances be reelected. In addition, a less exercised public will be less open to extreme measures aimed at drowning government in the bathtub. So the Republicans have to keep the economy struggling. Unemployment and high deficits provide their only shot at gaining power and dismantling the state. They must rail against both for the sake of their public credibility, but they have to know privately that forcing massive spending cuts in domestic budgets and entitlements has nothing to do with unemployment (except quite possibly making it worse) and even comparatively little to do with deficits.

It follows the pattern. ****** Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz wanted a reason to invade Iraq. September 11 gave them one. Never, ever forget what Rumsfeld said on the very afternoon of 9-11 itself. They used a crisis to impose a belligerent foreign policy on a nation that initially did not want it. Now their legatees are doing the same thing with domestic politics. It’s how they roll, and the reason in both cases is simple: The agenda is so radical and at odds with American tradition and practice that they can’t possibly tell the truth about it.

Americans will have to learn this between now and Aug. 2 (when the debt ceiling must be raised). Will the Democrats teach them? Senator Chuck Schumer has started making the argument. Will his fellow Democrats, in their usual disorganized fashion, leave him out there to say it alone, thus ensuring that the theme gets no real traction? Will the president start making these arguments? The Republicans are already trying to make an “angry black man” out of him, on the basis of his only moderately aggressive performance in Wednesday’s news conference. What he needs is to get angrier—and to explain to the country what’s really happening.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/07/01/the-gop-party-of-debt-and-deficits.html

Yawn.........

Yawn on this you heathens......LOL


Ron

Dude, the Republicans were in control of the House for 8 years, the Democrats only 4 over the last 12 years. The last two governors were Pawlenty, a republican for 8 and before that Jesse the wrestler.

This entire 'liberals aren't fiscally responsible and conservatives are' meme is total bs. Once again you are trying to find the closest Democrat to blame, even when it's not logical, like in this case, since the budget control in MN was controlled by R's more than D's in the last 12 years.

Read & learn Lefty:



The Presidential Divider
Obama's toxic speech and even worse plan for deficits and debt.


Did someone move the 2012 election to June 1? We ask because President Obama's extraordinary response to Paul Ryan's budget yesterday—with its blistering partisanship and multiple distortions—was the kind Presidents usually outsource to some junior lieutenant. Mr. Obama's fundamentally political document would have been unusual even for a Vice President in the fervor of a campaign.


Joseph Rago and Steve Moore on who will pay more under the White House's planned tax increases.

The immediate political goal was to inoculate the White House from criticism that it is not serious about the fiscal crisis, after ignoring its own deficit commission last year and tossing off a $3.73 trillion budget in February that increased spending amid a record deficit of $1.65 trillion. Mr. Obama was chased to George Washington University yesterday because Mr. Ryan and the Republicans outflanked him on fiscal discipline and are now setting the national political agenda.

Mr. Obama did not deign to propose an alternative to rival Mr. Ryan's plan, even as he categorically rejected all its reform ideas, repeatedly vilifying them as essentially un-American. "Their vision is less about reducing the deficit than it is about changing the basic social compact in America," he said, supposedly pitting "children with autism or Down's syndrome" against "every millionaire and billionaire in our society." The President was not attempting to join the debate Mr. Ryan has started, but to close it off just as it begins and banish House GOP ideas to political Siberia.

Mr. Obama then packaged his poison in the rhetoric of bipartisanship—which "starts," he said, "by being honest about what's causing our deficit." The speech he chose to deliver was dishonest even by modern political standards.

The great political challenge of the moment is how to update the 20th-century entitlement state so that it is affordable. With incremental change, Mr. Ryan is trying maintain a social safety net and the economic growth necessary to finance it. Mr. Obama presented what some might call the false choice of merely preserving the government we have with no realistic plan for doing so, aside from proposing $4 trillion in phantom deficit reduction over a gimmicky 12-year budget window that makes that reduction seem larger than it would be over the normal 10-year window.

Mr. Obama said that the typical political proposal to rationalize Medicare's gargantuan liabilities is that it is "just a matter of eliminating waste and abuse." His own plan is to double down on the program's price controls and central planning. All Medicare decisions will be turned over to and routed through an unelected commission created by ObamaCare—which will supposedly ferret out "unnecessary spending." Is that the same as "waste and abuse"?

Fifteen members will serve on the Independent Payment Advisory Board, all appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. If per capita costs grow by more than GDP plus 0.5%, this board would get more power, including an automatic budget sequester to enforce its rulings. So 15 sages sitting in a room with the power of the purse will evidently find ways to control Medicare spending that no one has ever thought of before and that supposedly won't harm seniors' care, even as the largest cohort of the baby boom generation retires and starts to collect benefits.

Mr. Obama really went off on Mr. Ryan's plan to increase health-care competition and give consumers more control, barely stopping short of calling it murderous. It's hardly beyond criticism or debate, but the Ryan plan is neither Big Rock Candy Mountain nor some radical departure from American norms.

Mr. Obama came out for further cuts in the defense budget, but where? His plan is to ask Defense Secretary Bob Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mike Mullen "to find additional savings," whatever those might be, after a "fundamental review." These mystery cuts would follow two separate, recent rounds of deep cuts that were supposed to stave off further Pentagon triage amid several wars and escalating national security threats.

Mr. Obama rallied the left with a summons for major tax increases on "the rich." Every U.S. fiscal trouble, he claimed, flows from the Bush tax cuts "for the wealthiest 2%," conveniently passing over what he euphemistically called his own "series of emergency steps that saved millions of jobs." Apparently he means the $814 billion stimulus that failed and a new multitrillion-dollar entitlement in ObamaCare that harmed job creation.

Under the Obama tax plan, the Bush rates would be repealed for the top brackets. Yet the "cost" of extending all the Bush rates in 2011 over 10 years was about $3.7 trillion. Some $3 trillion of that was for everything but the top brackets—and Mr. Obama says he wants to extend those rates forever.

Mr. Obama sought more tax-hike cover under his deficit commission, seeming to embrace its proposal to limit tax deductions and other loopholes. But the commission wanted to do so in order to lower rates for a more efficient and competitive code with a broader base. Mr. Obama wants to pocket the tax increase and devote the revenues to deficit reduction and therefore more spending. So that's three significant tax increases—via higher top brackets, the tax hikes in ObamaCare and fewer tax deductions.

Lastly, Mr. Obama came out for a debt "failsafe," which will require the White House and Congress to hash out a deal if by 2014 projected debt is not declining as a share of the economy. But under his plan any deal must exclude Social Security, Medicare or low-income programs. So that means more tax increases or else "making government smarter, leaner and more effective." Which, now that he mentioned it, sounds a lot like cutting "waste and abuse."

Mr. Obama ludicrously claimed that Mr. Ryan favors "a fundamentally different America than the one we've known throughout most of our history." Nothing is likelier to bring that future about than the President's political indifference in the midst of a fiscal crisis.

wsj

So only your copy/pastes are acceptable? All others that disagree are wrong?

I suppose your "sources" have no agenda's and are absolutely without doubt accurate fair and unbiased?

Sorry for my ignorance, I live in a country where I thought diversity is expected.


Guess I live in fantasyland instead : (

Of course you are the judge of what is "original thought".

Fair and unbiased for sure.

You really do think highly of yourself. Not that there is anything wrong with that, yet interesting to observe.

Neither the Republicans or the Democrats love debt. They simply have a problem that has grown large enough that it cannot be solved without austerity measures while at the same time we're trying to expand the "social contract". These positions are in direct conflict and Americans are way too weak to be able to handle the pain of austerity.

Obama offers a viable option to take on more debt and avoid the pain for a little longer.

By taking on more debt now and expanding the social contract and teaching Americans to become dependent on the social contract, it actually forces the hand of the eventual austerity measures.

"Their vision is less about reducing the deficit than it is about changing the basic social compact in America,"
"a fundamentally different America than the one we've known throughout most of our history."

These quotes clearly fall on one specific side of the debate regarding government spending. The level of government spending and its share of the economy is good and valid and is needed to support the social contract. Therefore the solution to the budget deficit is more taxes, not cutting government spending. As long as Americans need their "social contract" intact and enlarged, the only remaining detail is how to find a trillion dollars a year in tax increases without destroying the economy. The only solution is to borrow money and ease into the tax increases. Americans are being cornered into that being the only solution.

The alternative is to reduce government size and spending and change the social contract. That sounds really bad. We wouldn't want that.

The problem is if you actually asked most people, they would say they believe they are taxed fairly and don't think they should pay more taxes. Little do they know what is in store for them!