The Repbli-CON Plan to Destroy the Economy, Kansas Edition

UPDATE VI:  "In 2012, voters in California approved a measure to raise taxes on millionaires, bringing their top state income tax rate to 13.3 percent, the highest in the nation. Conservative economists predicted calamity, or at least a big slowdown in growth. Also that year, the governor of Kansas signed a series of changes to the state's tax code, including reducing income and sales tax rates. Conservative economists predicted a boom.

Neither of those predictions came true. . .

California's economy grew by 4.1 percent in 2015, according to new numbers from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, tying it with Oregon for the fastest state growth of the year. That was up from 3.1 percent growth for the Golden State in 2014, which was near the top of the national pack.

The Kansas economy, on the other hand, grew 0.2 percent in 2015. That's down from 1.2 percent in 2014, and below neighboring states such as Nebraska (2.1 percent) and Missouri (1.2 percent). Kansas ended the year with two consecutive quarters of negative growth -- a shrinking economy. By a common definition of the term, the state entered 2016 in recession.

Other effects of the Kansas tax cuts, which were meant to spur entrepreneurship, are well-documented.

While state officials anticipated that the reductions would create a shortfall in the state budget, tax revenues have been consistently below even those expectations. Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s Investors Service have signaled that they could reduce Kansas’s credit rating, indicating there is a chance the state cannot pay its bills."

Read the Washington Post, The interesting thing that happened when Kansas cut taxes and California hiked them.

UPDATE V:  The Republi-con modus operandi:  tax cuts for the rich, deficits and budget crisis, tax increases on the poor, repeat.

Read the Washington Post, Kansas lawmakers want the poor to pay for tax cuts for the rich.

UPDATE IV:  "What's the matter with Kansas now? Oh, you know, just a small budget crisis brought on by its Republican governor's radical tax cuts. This week, the state discovered it would have to cut $279 million by June in order to balance its books, then slash another $436 million during the following fiscal year. For Kansas, this is a hefty amount of money. The entire state budget legislators approved in May was just $6.3 billion.

Back in 2012, the state's recently re-elected Republican governor, Sam Brownback, turned Kansas into a petri dish for conservative fiscal policy after he signed into law a massive tax cut that dropped rates for top earners and eliminated taxes entirely for some businesses. Brownback and conservative tax guru Arthur Laffer promised that the cuts would bring "enormous prosperity" to the state by making it more competitive. But jobs growth has lagged in Kansas, and this summer, the state government found itself nearly $300 million short on revenue. To cope, it began burning through its reserve funds, and Moody's in turn downgraded the state's credit rating."

Read Slate, Thanks to Massive Republican Tax Cuts, Kansas Is Facing a Budget Crisis.

UPDATE III:  "There might be a worse idea than cutting spending during a depression, but I doubt it. . .

That's right: cutting spending in a slump might actually make debt problems worse."

Read the Washington Post, Austerity has been an even bigger disaster than we thought.

So much for the Republi-con myth of expansionary austerity.

UPDATE II:  "In 2010, after two and a half terms in the Senate, Brownback made a bid for the governor’s mansion. Riding the Tea Party wave, he swept his opponent in a landslide, promising a new age for Kansas politics.

Brownback didn’t just keep his promise, he embarked on a radical 'real live experiment' in conservative governance. As he later explained to the Wall Street Journal, 'My focus is to create a red-state model that allows the Republican ticket to say, 'See, we’ve got a different way, and it works.' '

With advice from Arthur Laffer—the long-discredited guru for supply-side economics—and support from a new band of conservative lawmakers in the Kansas statehouse, the newly minted governor pursued a path of rigid orthodoxy. His signature move was a massive tax cut: He eliminated the top income bracket of 6.45 percent, reduced the middle bracket from 6.25 percent to 4.9 percent, reduced the lowest bracket from 3.5 percent to 3 percent, and ended taxes on certain kinds of small-business income. This, he promised, would increase disposable income and create thousands of jobs.

In reality, however, Kansas’ job growth stagnated in 2012 and income growth fell. Far from a stimulus plan, Brownback’s tax cuts were a massive program of redistribution for the rich. . .

In 2013 he proposed another round of tax cuts that would eliminate income taxes and maintain a high sales tax. Critics blasted the plan, noting the extent to which it was a massive tax increase on the poorest Kansans: For instance, replacing 50 percent of income tax losses with a sales tax would raise taxes on the lowest earners by 2.5 percent. But Brownback promised new revenue ($777 million in state earnings) and broad prosperity. 'We’re on a path of growth and job creation, so I say, 'Come to Kansas,' ' he said. 'We’re paving the way to make Kansas the best place in America to raise a family and run a business.'

A year later Kansas is among the most dysfunctional states in the country. Even after cuts in schools, colleges, libraries, and social services, Kansas can’t keep up with expenses. This year, it faced a huge shortfall in personal income tax receipts, and had to end tax rebates for food and child care to help fill the hole. And overall, it faces a $900 million budget shortfall by 2019, even as the top income tax rate is scheduled to decline to 3.9 percent by 2018. Both Moody’s and S&P have downgraded the state’s bond rating, and economic growth has been poor. Far from giving Kansas a bright new future, Brownback plunged it into chaos."

Read Slate, The Kansas Miracle.

In Kansas they drank the kool-aid.

UPDATE:  "[R]ecently, Kansas went all-in on supply-side economics, slashing taxes on the affluent in the belief that this would spark a huge boom; the boom didn’t happen, but the budget deficit exploded, offering an object lesson to those willing to learn from experience. . .

In 2012, however, Democratic dominance finally became strong enough to overcome the paralysis, and Gov. Jerry Brown was able to push through a modestly liberal agenda of higher taxes, spending increases and a rise in the minimum wage. California also moved enthusiastically to implement Obamacare. . .

Needless to say, conservatives predicted doom. . .

What has actually happened? There is, I’m sorry to say, no sign of the promised catastrophe.

If tax increases are causing a major flight of jobs from California, you can’t see it in the job numbers. Employment is up 3.6 percent in the past 18 months, compared with a national average of 2.8 percent; at this point, California’s share of national employment, which was hit hard by the bursting of the state’s enormous housing bubble, is back to pre-recession levels. . .

And, yes, the budget is back in surplus. . .

So what do we learn from the California comeback? Mainly, that you should take anti-government propaganda with large helpings of salt. Tax increases aren’t economic suicide; sometimes they’re a useful way to pay for things we need. Government programs, like Obamacare, can work if the people running them want them to work, and if they aren’t sabotaged from the right. In other words, California’s success is a demonstration that the extremist ideology still dominating much of American politics is nonsense."

Read The New York Times, Left Coast Rising.   

I've often suggested that Obama should just call the Republi-con bluff -- implement some of their wacky ideas and watch CONservative ideas implode.  Well in Kansas they drank the kool-aid. 

"Governor Sam Brownback is facing an organized revolt from centrist Republicans, over 100 of whom just endorsed the presumptive Democratic nominee for governor, so disgruntled are they with the effects of Brownback’s rule.

In many ways, Brownback’s term has been a perfect experiment in Republican governance. Take a crusading conservative governor, give him a legislature with Republican super-majorities so he can do pretty much whatever he wants, and let him implement the right’s wish list. The result was supposed to be a nirvana of economic growth and budgetary stability. But the opposite happened.

The disastrous results of Brownback’s economic and fiscal policies demonstrate that it’s one thing for your average Republican to go around saying things like 'cutting taxes raises revenue!' even if nearly every economist agrees that the idea is absurd (Greg Mankiw, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under George W. Bush, famously called the purveyors of this idea 'charlatans and cranks'). It’ll never really be tested, at least not in a context where there aren’t so many other variables at play that any inconvenient results can be explained away. Republicans know that it’s bogus, but they like the way it sounds; after all, who wouldn’t love a free lunch? But if you bet a single state’s future on the idea — and you have the power to take it to an extreme — you’re going farther than anyone in Washington ever has to go.

That’s what Sam Brownback did. In 2012 and 2013, Brownback and Republicans in the legislature cut income taxes twice, eliminated taxes on corporate profits that are “passed through” to individuals (making it the only state that does this), and since they’re Republicans, made changes to the tax code that had the effect of raising taxes on the poor (the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has a good explanation of the tax changes and their effects). The governor has said his goal is to eventually eliminate the income tax completely.

And what happened? At a time when most states are seeing higher revenues as the country recovers economically, Kansas’ revenues have plummeted. The result has been cuts to schools, cuts to higher education, cuts to libraries, and cuts to local health centers. Kansas’ job growth and income growth are lagging the nation’s. In response to the fiscal difficulties, Moody’s recently lowered the state’s bond rating. . ."

When he was elected governor, some Washington conservatives touted Sam Brownback as a future presidential contender. Once he implemented the conservative economic agenda and showed what a dynamic economy and pleasing government balance sheet it produced, he’d be able to take the message nationwide as a demonstration of the power of conservative ideas. Nobody’s saying that anymore. Brownback is trailing his probable Democratic opponent. In a state as conservative as Kansas (where Mitt Romney beat Barack Obama by 22 points), you have to screw up pretty badly to be in that position. And saying, 'hey, didn’t we all agree that tax cuts raise revenue?' probably won’t bail him out."

Read the Washington Post, GOP governor implements GOP economics, disaster ensues. 

The Test of The Republi-CON Myth of Expansionary Austerity, Greek Edition

UPDATE:  "It’s astonishing even now how blithely top European officials dismissed warnings that slashing government spending and raising taxes would cause deep recessions, how they insisted that all would be well because fiscal discipline would inspire confidence. (It didn’t.) The truth is that trying to deal with large debts through austerity alone — in particular, while simultaneously pursuing a hard-money policy — has never worked. It didn’t work for Britain after World War I, despite immense sacrifices; why would anyone expect it to work for Greece?"

Read The New York Times, Europe’s Impossible Dream.

As noted before, expansionary austerity is a Republi-con myth.

There was the limited experiment on Kansas that failed.

Now for the grand test, "[i]t could be a chapter in an economics textbook: What happens when severe austerity is imposed on an economy that’s already lost a quarter of its output?

Greece will find out how bad it could be."

Read Bloomberg, Greece Rewrites Economic Textbooks With Austerity on Austerity.

Read also, the Washington Post, Europe’s dirty little secret is Greece will never pay back its debt, which notes that "if Greece can't cut its way out of debt and it can't grow its way out of debt, its only option is to default its way out of debt. There are more and less painful ways of doing this. Least among them is for the two sides to work together, so both can keep getting at least some money from the other. That's a polite default, or a restructuring. And the IMF has suggested three ways that might work. Europe can either give Greece money every year; give Greece a pass on some of what it owes; or give Greece far more time to pay what it owes, with a 30-year grace period at the start. But in any case, Europe is effectively going to have to give—notice how that word keeps popping up—Greece money. It just depends on how they want to do it."

And here's a dirty little secret for you -- well not really a secret, just something Republi-cons would never admit -- the United States of America only works because of money subsidies/transfers from rich, prosperous states to poor, needy states and labor mobility from poor, needy regions to wealthy, prosperous regions.

Read The New York Times, The Problem With a Euro Fix: What’s in It for the Dutch? and the Washington Post, The four ways to end the Greek crisis, from Obama’s former top economist.

And in the U.S., it is the Blue states that are rich and prosperous; the Red states that are poor and needy.

Read Slate, How The US Currency Union Works—Endless Subsidies To Low-Productivity Areas.

Read also, Rich state, poor state, red state, blue state: What’s the matter with Connecticut?

Fat Lady Still Seeks Job (And Republi-CONs Couldn't Care Less)

UPDATE III:  The "president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, was once a leading opponent of the Federal Reserve’s efforts to stimulate the economy" finally admits that those invisible Republi-CON bond vigilantes were just his wild imagination, but "that persistent unemployment has created 'a time of testing' for the Fed comparable to the rise of inflation in the late 1970s and early 1980s."

So much for the Republi-con myth of expansionary austerity.

Read the New York Times, A Fed Policy Maker, Changing His Mind, Urges More Stimulus.

UPDATE II:  "[T]he labor market has experienced neither terrific gains nor terrific crashes in the last three years. Instead, we've suffered the Curse of Goldilocks: Just fine enough to keep pressure from building in Washington for another round of intervention. . .

It makes you wonder: What kind of recovery might we have today if Washington weren't so enthusiastically trying to kill it?"

Read The Atlantic, The Goldilocks Curse: How America's Job Creation Story Got So Boring.

The link is to The Atlantic, The Greatest Risk to the U.S. Economy Is Still the People in Charge of It, which notes that "[t[he recession gave us a lost decade. Congress added a lost year. The budget wars since 2010 have cost us 12 months in job creation." 

UPDATE:  "[I]nfluential people need to stop using the future as an excuse for inaction. The clear and present danger is mass unemployment, and we should deal with it, now."

Read The New York Times, Fight the Future.  

As I said in February 2009, tax cuts are not the answer, and again in October 2010, this downturn won't be over 'til the fat lady gets a job.  And in June 2011 and Jan-Feb 2012, as well as other times -- it's jobs stupid.

But since Obama first won election, Republi-cons have been using best efforts to tank the economy and keep unemployment high.

So "just a reminder that the U.S. labor market is still in rough shape — despite the considerable improvement in recent years."  Read the Washington Post, The U.S. job market is still worse than at any point during the last downturn.

The article includes this graph:

The Republi-CON Myth of Expansionary Austerity

UPDATE IV:  "The nation’s unemployment rate would probably be nearly a point lower, roughly 6.5 percent, and economic growth almost two points higher this year if Washington had not cut spending and raised taxes as it has since 2011, according to private-sector and government economists.

After two years in which President Obama and Republicans in Congress have fought to a draw over their clashing approaches to job creation and budget deficits, the consensus about the result is clear: Immediate deficit reduction is a drag on full economic recovery."

Read The New York Times, Economists See Deficit Emphasis as Impeding Recovery. 

UPDATE III:  "At this point the economic case for austerity — for slashing government spending even in the face of a weak economy — has collapsed. Claims that spending cuts would actually boost employment by promoting confidence have fallen apart. Claims that there is some kind of red line of debt that countries dare not cross have turned out to rest on fuzzy and to some extent just plain erroneous math. Predictions of fiscal crisis keep not coming true; predictions of disaster from harsh austerity policies have proved all too accurate. . .

And if you look at United States history since World War II, you find that of the 10 presidents who preceded Barack Obama, seven left office with a debt ratio lower than when they came in. Who were the three exceptions? Ronald Reagan and the two George Bushes. So debt increases that didn’t arise either from war or from extraordinary financial crisis are entirely associated with hard-line conservative governments.

And there’s a reason for that association: U.S. conservatives have long followed a strategy of “starving the beast,” slashing taxes so as to deprive the government of the revenue it needs to pay for popular programs.

The funny thing is that right now these same hard-line conservatives declare that we must not run deficits in times of economic crisis. Why? Because, they say, politicians won’t do the right thing and pay down the debt in good times. And who are these irresponsible politicians they’re talking about? Why, themselves."

Read The New York Times, The Chutzpah Caucus. 

UPDATE II:  "Economic debates rarely end with a T.K.O. But the great policy debate of recent years between Keynesians, who advocate sustaining and, indeed, increasing government spending in a depression, and austerians, who demand immediate spending cuts, comes close — at least in the world of ideas. At this point, the austerian position has imploded; not only have its predictions about the real world failed completely, but the academic research invoked to support that position has turned out to be riddled with errors, omissions and dubious statistics.

Yet two big questions remain. First, how did austerity doctrine become so influential in the first place? Second, will policy change at all now that crucial austerian claims have become fodder for late-night comics? . .

Part of the answer surely lies in the widespread desire to see economics as a morality play, to make it a tale of excess and its consequences. We lived beyond our means, the story goes, and now we’re paying the inevitable price. Economists can explain ad nauseam that this is wrong, that the reason we have mass unemployment isn’t that we spent too much in the past but that we’re spending too little now, and that this problem can and should be solved. No matter; many people have a visceral sense that we sinned and must seek redemption through suffering — and neither economic argument nor the observation that the people now suffering aren’t at all the same people who sinned during the bubble years makes much of a dent."

Read The New York Times, The 1 Percent’s Solution.   

UPDATE:  "For three years, the turn to austerity has been presented not as a choice but as a necessity. Economic research, austerity advocates insisted, showed that terrible things happen once debt exceeds 90 percent of G.D.P. But “economic research” showed no such thing; a couple of economists made that assertion, while many others disagreed. Policy makers abandoned the unemployed and turned to austerity because they wanted to, not because they had to."

Read The New York Times, The Excel Depression.  

Another Republi-con myth fails in the real world of factual reality:

"With all the theatrics going on in Washington, you might well have missed the most important political and economic news of the week: an official confirmation from the United Kingdom that austerity policies don’t work.

In making his annual Autumn Statement to the House of Commons on Wednesday, George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was forced to admit that his government has failed to meet a series of targets it set for itself back in June of 2010, when it slashed the budgets of various government departments by up to thirty per cent. Back then, Osborne said that his austerity policies would cut his country’s budget deficit to zero within four years, enable Britain to begin relieving itself of its public debt, and generate healthy economic growth. None of these things have happened. Britain’s deficit remains stubbornly high, its people have been suffering through a double-dip recession, and many observers now expect the country to lose its 'AAA' credit rating."

Read The New Yorker, It’s Official: Austerity Economics Doesn’t Work.

As you may remember, the myth of expansionary austerity has been the subject of numerous posts over the past several years.

The Mad Tea Party Ride: A Republi-CON 'Obamacare 720', and Other Budget Dishonesty

UPDATE VII:  According to the Tax Policy Center, Ryan-Republi-con budget gap is just $5.7 trillion (vice $6.7 trillion as stated below). 

"By comparison, every itemized deduction in the federal tax code adds up to less than $2 trillion, and that’s with higher rates than Ryan has (which means that deductions are more valuable, and eliminating them raises more revenue). Ryan has set up a rather imposing task for himself."

Read the Washington Post, The price tag on Paul Ryan’s tax reform: $5.7 trillion. 

No wonder the winner of the 2008 the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, Paul Krugman, an economist and professor of economics and international affairs at Princeton University, and an op-ed columnist for The New York Times, calls Ryan a flimflammier.

FYI, flimflammery is nonsense; humbug; a deception; a swindle.

One reason I call 'em Republi-cons. 

UPDATE VI:  "Way back in 2010, when everybody in Washington seemed determined to anoint Representative Paul Ryan as the ultimate Serious, Honest Conservative, I pronounced him a flimflam man. Even then, his proposals were obviously fraudulent: huge cuts in aid to the poor, but even bigger tax cuts for the rich, with all the assertions of fiscal responsibility resting on claims that he would raise trillions of dollars by closing tax loopholes (which he refused to specify) and cutting discretionary spending (in ways he refused to specify).

Since then, his budgets have gotten even flimflammier. For example, at this point, Mr. Ryan is claiming that he can slash the top tax rate from 39.6 percent to 25 percent, yet somehow raise 19.1 percent of G.D.P. in revenues — a number we haven’t come close to seeing since the dot-com bubble burst a dozen years ago.

The good news is that Mr. Ryan’s thoroughly unconvincing policy-wonk act seems, finally, to have worn out its welcome. In 2011, his budget was initially treated with worshipful respect, which faded only slightly as critics pointed out the document’s many absurdities. This time around, quite a few pundits and reporters have greeted his release with the derision it deserves."

Read The New York Times, After the Flimflam, which also discusses "the proposal from the Congressional Progressive Caucus, titled 'Back to Work,' which calls for substantial new spending now, temporarily widening the deficit, offset by major deficit reduction later in the next decade, largely though not entirely through higher taxes on the wealthy, corporations and pollution.

I’ve seen some people describe the caucus proposal as a 'Ryan plan of the left,' but that’s unfair. There are no Ryan-style magic asterisks, trillion-dollar savings that are assumed to come from unspecified sources; this is an honest proposal. And 'Back to Work' rests on solid macroeconomic analysis, not the fantasy 'expansionary austerity' economics — the claim that slashing spending in a depressed economy somehow promotes job growth rather than deepening the depression — that Mr. Ryan continues to espouse despite the doctrine’s total failure in Europe. 

UPDATE V:  "Republican leaders can’t even begin to acknowledge that Obama has offered them a real compromise, because they can’t sell their base on the idea that the President is being flexible, let alone get them to seriously entertain accepting any compromise with him, because the base sees total victory over Obama as the only acceptable outcome.

In essence, a variety of political constraints prevent Republican leaders from acknowledging the reality of the situation. That makes any reality-based dialog impossible. The press has largely failed to reckon with this basic disconnect . . .

In his meeting with Republican Senators, Obama reportedly presented them with a choice: They can accept a deal that includes Chained CPI for Social Security and means testing of Medicare in exchange for new revenues, or end up with no entitlement reform. Republicans continue to respond by claiming the President is being inflexible — by pretending he hasn’t offered them what he has offered — while refusing to say what could induce them to compromise. "

Read the Washington Post, The GOP’s self-defeating strategy in fiscal fight.

UPDATE IV:  "Magical (adj): "delightful in such a way as to be removed from everyday life." [Synonyms: fake, absurd, couldn't-hardly-happen-even-if-Republicans-controlled-both-houses-and-the-presidency]" 

Read The Atlantic, The 2 Most Magical Numbers in Paul Ryan's Magical Budget. 

One of those magic numbers is $6.7 trillion, as in the unexplained "$6.7 trillion hole in federal revenues" created by the Ryan-Republi-con budget.

UPDATE III:  "Ronald Reagan ran the federal government at 22 percent of gross domestic product when the country’s population was much younger and health care consumed about 11 percent of GDP. . .

Now Paul Ryan says we can run the federal government at 19 percent of GDP as the massive baby-boom generation retires and when health costs (largely for seniors) have already soared to 18 percent of GDP.

Sorry, but Ryan is either deeply confused or doing his best to snooker us"

Read the Washington Post, Paul Ryan is no Ronald Reagan. 

UPDATE II:  "Ryan’s budget boils down to, 'trust me,' or at least, 'trust the House Republican Conference.' Without the details on tax reform, there’s no way for us to verify that the tax and spending sides of the budget really add up. Without knowing whether he’s got a credible plan for controlling Medicare costs if premium-support fails to deliver the savings he hopes to see, the long-term projections are, similarly, unreliable. Without knowing where the Section 920 spending cuts are coming from, it’s hard to believe they’re real. Ryan often criticizes the Democrats for dodging the 'tough choices,' but there are plenty of tough choices that he too is dodging."

Read the Washington Post, Five huge things we still don’t know about Paul Ryan’s budget. 

UPDATE:  "Paul Ryan and the Republicans have run a national election campaign (the 2012 presidential election) in which the main theme was bashing the Democrats … for a policy which Republicans support — and indeed are making a key part of the most important policy blueprint that they will roll out this year.

This is no garden-variety flip-flop. It’s a fundamental decision to govern one way and campaign the exact opposite way. . .

I really can’t think of any comparably dishonest episode in recent American political history. To base not one but two campaigns on attacking the other party for a policy which, between elections, they support…it’s well beyond chutzpah. Oh, and that’s without even beginning to reckon with the fact that the House GOP’s larger Medicare plans call for much bigger long-term cuts than Obamacare made."

Read the Washington Post, What do you do when one party is this dishonest?   

They were against them, before they were for them (twice), before they were against them, but now for them.

"Ryan and Republican leaders started off opposing the ACA’s Medicare cuts, then turned around and twice passed budgets that kept them, then campaigned against those cuts in the 2012 election, and are now embracing them again."

Read TalkingPointsMemo, Paul Ryan Reverses Himself Yet Again On Medicare Cuts.

Are you dizzy yet?

All That Talk About the Federal Deficit and Debt Is Just a Republi-CON CON Game

UPDATE V:  Congresses action regarding the looming taxmageddon will be prof that all that hysteria about the federal defisit and debt is just a Republi-con con game. 

"Taxmageddon is the popular nickname given to a series of policies set to lapse or take effect in January, immediately slicing more than $500 billion out of next year’s federal budget deficit. While it includes about $100 billion in spending cuts, most of the changes involve higher taxes for every American taxpayer, primarily from the expiration of President Obama’s payroll tax holiday and broad tax cuts enacted under President George W. Bush."

Read the Washington Post, CBO: Taxmageddon would bring tax pain but debt relief and The budget outlook in one graphic, with this graph:

 

The article notes:

"Remember: The 'extended baseline scenario' means we let the Bush tax cuts expire, the spending sequester take effect, etc. The 'alternative' scenario means we extend everything.

In the 'extended baseline scenario,' which is the one currently written into law, we don’t have a debt problem, but we have much higher taxes and, in the short-term, a likely recession. In the 'alternative' scenario, we’ve got a huge debt problem, but lower taxes and less short-term austerity. "

UPDATE IV:  Even Obamney recently admitted that balancing the federal budget would throw the U.S. "into recession or depression. So I’m not going to do that, of course."  Read the Washington Post, Mitt Romney, Keynesian, which references this comment by Jon Chait: "'Romney says this as if it’s completely obvious that reducing the deficit in the short term would throw the economy back into recession, even though he and his party have been arguing the opposite case with hysterical fervor.'"

Even Republi-cons don't believe their own lies about the myth of expansionary austerity. 

UPDATE III: More proof that the Republi-cons are all talk when it comes to the deficit, they're all hiding from Paul Ryan's latest budget plan.

Read the Washington Post, Paul Ryan’s budget is bad politics. Just ask Republicans.


UPDATE II: Republi-cons have never been concerned with merits of thier proposals, only the 'political possibilities.' As a result, "the budget deficit rose to 6 percent of gross domestic product in 1983 from 2.7 percent in 1980" under Reagan. Since he won re-election in 1984, Republi-cons have never been concerned about deficits, "only tax cuts mattered for political success." Read The New York Times, The Origin of Modern Republican Fiscal Policy.


UPDATE: "[A]s Republicans yell about Obama’s deficits and cry that we’re turning into Greece, Greece I tell you, all of them, all of them, propose making the deficit bigger.

And for what? For reverse Robin-Hoodism, taking from the poor and the middle class to lavish huge tax cuts on the rich.

And I believe that all of them know this, too. It’s pure hypocrisy – and it’s all in the service of class warfare waged on behalf of the top 0.1 or 0.01 percent of the income distribution."

Read The New York Times, Four Fiscal Phonies, which includes this graph showing "debt as a percentage of GDP in 2021 (using the OMB numbers (pdf) for Obama and CRFB for the others):"

"The national debt is likely to balloon under tax policies championed by three of the four major Republican candidates for president, according to an independent analysis of tax and spending proposals so far offered by the candidates.

The lone exception is Texas Rep. Ron Paul, who would pair a big reduction in tax rates with even bigger cuts in government services, slicing about $2 trillion from future borrowing.

According to the report — set for release Thursday by U.S. Budget Watch, a project of the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget — former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum and former House speaker Newt Gingrich would do the most damage to the nation’s finances, offering tax and spending policies likely to require trillions of dollars in fresh borrowing.

Both men have proposed to sharply cut taxes but have not identified spending cuts sufficient to make up for the lost cash, the report said. By 2021, the debt would rise by about $4.5 trillion under Santorum’s policies and by about $7 trillion under those advocated by Gingrich, pushing the portion of the debt held by outside investors to well over 100 percent of the nation’s economy."

Read the Washington Post, Debt will swell under top GOP hopefuls’ tax plans.

As I've said for years now, the Republi-CONs conned the tea party, there will be no balanced budget, there won't even be a $100 billion budget cut as promised in 2010. So let's admit the obvious, the Republi-CONs are not serious about deficits.

The Republi-CON Continue to Try to Tank the Economy

UPDATE II:  "The aversion to government spending, and government activity generally, which animates many Americans isn’t actually based on economics, or logic: it is an emotionally driven belief system, founded upon a cockeyed view of American history and buttressed by a variety of right-wing shibboleths.

In the real world that rarely intrudes upon conservative economists and voters, both parties (and all Presidents) are Keynesians. Whenever the economy falters and private-sector spending declines, they use the tax-and-spending system to inject more demand into the economy. In 1981, Ronald Reagan did precisely this, slashing taxes and increasing defense spending. Between 2001 and 2003, George W. Bush followed the same script, introducing three sets of tax cuts and starting two wars. In February, 2009, Barack Obama introduced his stimulus. The real policy debate isn’t about Keynesianism versus the free market, it is about magnitudes and techniques: How much stimulus is necessary? And how should it be divided between government spending and tax cuts?

On both questions, Obama took the middle ground. His $800 billion stimulus program was smaller than many Keynesians, such as Christine Romer and Paul Krugman, wanted. (Romer reportedly pushed first for a $1.8 trillion package, then for $1.2 trillion.) Concentrated over a three-year period, it amounted to 1.1 per cent of G.D.P. in 2009, 2.4 per cent of G.D.P. in 2010, and 1.2 per cent of G.D.P. in 2011. So far, some $750 billion in stimulus money has been paid out: about $300 billion went to tax breaks for individuals and firms; roughly $235 billion was dispersed in the form of government contracts, grants, and loans; and another $225 billion was spent on entitlements—unemployment benefits, Medicaid, food stamps, and so on.

And what impact did the stimulus have? Without rehashing the entire debate—we’ve got another five months for that—here are three things to keep in mind.

1. It gave a much-needed boost to spending and growth. . .

2. The rise in federal spending under Obama was pretty modest. . .

3. Paul Krugman is right. To some extent, we already have a Republican economy. With the flow of stimulus money having all but dried up, and with continuing budget cutbacks at the state and local levels, government spending on many goods and services—the government spending that directly impacts G.D.P.—is falling.

You don’t believe it? Take a look at Table 1 in the Commerce Department’s latest report on G.D.P., and focus upon the section labelled “Government consumption expenditures and gross investment.” In 2011, you will notice, these expenditures declined at an annual rate of 2.1 per cent. In the first three months of this year, the rate of decline accelerated—to 3.9 per cent. The cutbacks have extended to all the major areas of government. Federal non-defense spending fell at an annual rate of 0.8 per cent in the first quarter; federal defense spending declined at an annual rate of 8.3 per cent, a shocking figure; state and local spending fell at a rate of 2.5 per cent.

It is a central tenet of Keynesian economics that when the government sector cuts back its expenditures in an economy with slack resources, worried households, and cautious business enterprises, output and growth will stall. That, of course, is precisely what has happened. In a saner world, we would be talking about what should be done right now, rather than after November, to rectify the situation."

Read The New Yorker, Reagan, Bush, and Obama: We Are All Still Keynesians.  

Read also, The Myth of Expansionary Austerity.  

UPDATE:  "[T]he best argument against Republicans’ claims that they can fix the economy. The fact is that we have already seen the Republican economic future — and it doesn’t work."  Read The New York Times, This Republican Economy.  

Republi-cons well know that any good news for the economy is bad news for their election hopes.

Their attacks on the Federal Reserve are "an effort to bully the Fed into doing exactly the wrong thing. The attackers want the Fed to slam on the brakes when it should be stepping on the gas; they want the Fed to choke off recovery when it should be doing much more to accelerate recovery. Fundamentally, the right wants the Fed to obsess over inflation, when the truth is that we’d be better off if the Fed paid less attention to inflation and more attention to unemployment. Indeed, a bit more inflation would be a good thing, not a bad thing."

Read The New York Times, Not Enough Inflation.

Since Obama was elected, Republi-cons have shown their willingness to sacrifice workers to appease their imaginary inflation god.

But there is not need to fear 'the invisible Republi-CON bond vigilantes'.

The Myth of Expansionary Austerity

UPDATE XI:  "[W]e’re now living in a world of zombie economic policies — policies that should have been killed by the evidence that all of their premises are wrong, but which keep shambling along nonetheless. And it’s anyone’s guess when this reign of error will end."  Read The New York Times,  Death of a Fairy Tale. 

UPDATE X:  The chart says it all.  From the Washington Post, The consequences of austerity in one chart?:

The article, quoting Joe Weisenthal, notes that the "UK was recovering on a fine trajectory right up until early 2010, at which point UK growth hit a brick wall. What happened in 2010? That’s when conservative David Cameron came to power with an agenda of reigning in the debt."

As I said before, and before,Obama should call the Republi-CON bluff.

UPDATE IX: Just ask the PIIGGS, "austerity policies have been an utter failure." Read The New York Times, Pain Without Gain.


UPDATE VIII: "Despite meeting terms for bailout money [i.e. austerity measures], Portugal is going deeper into debt because its economy is shrinking." Read The New York Times, Portugal’s Debt Efforts May Be Warning for Greece.

So much for expansionary austerity.


UPDATE VII: "Look at Britain [or Italy or Spain] to see the tragic effects of a very bad idea." Read The New York Times, The Austerity Debacle.

UPDATE VI: "Once again, when politicians and policy makers decided to focus on deficits, not jobs, they proved Keynes right about a slump being the wrong time for austerity. " Read The New York Times, Keynes Was Right.


UPDATE V: From The New York Times, The Hijacked Crisis:

[The markets are] "signaling, as clearly as anyone could ask, that unemployment rather than deficits is our biggest problem. Bear in mind that deficit hawks have been warning for years that interest rates on U.S. government debt would soar any day now; the threat from the bond market was supposed to be the reason that we must slash the deficit now now now. But that threat keeps not materializing. And, this week, on the heels of a downgrade that was supposed to scare bond investors, those interest rates actually plunged to record lows.

What the market was saying — almost shouting — was, 'We’re not worried about the deficit! We’re worried about the weak economy!' For a weak economy means both low interest rates and a lack of business opportunities, which, in turn, means that government bonds become an attractive investment even at very low yields. If the downgrade of U.S. debt had any effect at all, it was to reinforce fears of austerity policies that will make the economy even weaker.

So how did Washington discourse come to be dominated by the wrong issue?

Hard-line Republicans have, of course, played a role. Although they don’t seem to truly care about deficits — try suggesting any rise in taxes on the rich — they have found harping on deficits a useful way to attack government programs.

But our discourse wouldn’t have gone so far off-track if other influential people hadn’t been eager to change the subject away from jobs, even in the face of 9 percent unemployment, and to hijack the crisis on behalf of their pre-existing agendas."

UPDATE IV: We are in a 'Great Contraction,' and problem No. 1 is too much debt.

"Until we find ways to restructure and forgive some of these debts from consumers, firms, banks and governments, spending to drive growth is not going to come back at the scale we need.

Our challenge now, therefore, is to deleverage the economy as fast as possible, while, at the same time, getting back to investing as much as possible in our real pillars of growth so our recovery is built on sustainable businesses and real jobs and not just on another round of credit injections"

Read The New York Times, Win Together or Lose Together, which quotes:

"Kenneth Rogoff, a professor of economics at Harvard, who argued in an essay last week for Project Syndicate that we are not in a Great Recession but in a Great (Credit) Contraction: 'Why is everyone still referring to the recent financial crisis as the ‘Great Recession?' ' asked Rogoff. 'The phrase ‘Great Recession’ creates the impression that the economy is following the contours of a typical recession, only more severe — something like a really bad cold. ... But the real problem is that the global economy is badly overleveraged, and there is no quick escape without a scheme to transfer wealth from creditors to debtors, either through defaults, financial repression, or inflation.'

Re-read 'The Great Stagnation' about our broken political system.


UPDATE II: We are not suffering through a normal "business-cycle recession, in which the drop is quick, and the recovery is usually similarly swift. That is not what we’re in. That is not what financial crises are. And mistaking one for the other has, in his opinion, cost us a fortune.

Financial crises are not about the business cycle falling out of whack. They’re about debt. Lots of it. And that’s why they’re so resistant to efforts to speed a recovery. Whereas you normally get out of a recession by lowering interest rates and persuading consumers to spend, the period after a financial crisis is marked by consumers trying to dig out from under a mountain of borrowed money. You can accelerate that process, but it’s hard to do. But first you must correctly diagnose the problem. . .

'Debt de-leveraging takes about seven years. That’s the essence,' [Carmen Reinhart, now of the Peterson Institute for International Economics] says. 'And in the decade following severe financial crises, you tend to grow by 1 to 1.5 percentage points less than in the decade before, because the decade before was fueled by a boom in private borrowing, and not all of that growth was real. The unemployment figures in advanced economies after falls are also very dark. Unemployment remains anchored about five percentage points above what it was in the decade before.'"

Read the Washington Post, Double dip, or just one big economic dive?

But whether it is a Republi-con double-dip recession or not, there is no argument that Republi-cons want Obama to fail, the American economy is just acceptable collateral damage to achieve that goal.


UPDATE: As I first stated in 2008, the economy is deleveraging. From The New York Times, We’re Spent:

"We are feeling the deferred pain from 25 years of excess, as people try to rebuild their depleted savings. This pattern is a classic one. The definitive book about financial crises has become 'This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly,' published in 2009 with exquisite timing, by Carmen M. Reinhart, now of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, and Kenneth S. Rogoff, of Harvard.

Surveying hundreds of years of crises around the world, Ms. Reinhart and Mr. Rogoff conclude that debt is the primary cause and that the aftermath is 'deep and prolonged,' with 'profound declines in output and employment.' On average, a modern financial crisis has caused the unemployment rate to rise for more than four years and by 7 percentage points. (We’re now at almost four years and 5 percentage points.) The recovery takes many years more."

And the article warns of the risk of austerity measures now:

"The easy thing now might be to proclaim that debt is evil and ask everyone — consumers, the federal government, state governments — to get thrifty. The pithiest version of that strategy comes from Andrew W. Mellon, the Treasury secretary when the Depression began: 'Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate,' Mellon said, according to his boss, President Herbert Hoover. 'It will purge the rottenness out of the system.'

History, however, has a different verdict. If governments stop spending at the same time that consumers do, the economy can enter a vicious cycle, as it did in Hoover’s day."

Of course, Republi-cons don't want an economic recovery just yet, even if unemployment remains high. It doesn't benefit their plans for the 2012 election, just as Bush couldn't admit the Iraq strategy failure until after the 2006 elections, even as soldiers died.

Another warning about the myth of expansionary austerity.

"The Irish, British and, soon, Greeks have bought into a misguided belief in austerity — that they can somehow cut their way to growth. In the United States, we have seen states and municipalities slashing head counts of teachers, cops and firemen. The “paradox of thrift” has morphed into a misguided economics of austerity. Hence, even when the private sector manages to create some jobs, its offset by public-sector job cuts." Read the Washington Post, Wall Street analysts and economists have this recession recovery wrong, which notes the economic downturn was caused by a credit-crisis, not an ordinary run-of-the-mill recession, "far rarer, more protracted and much more painful [and] different from other cycles" and bubbles.

Class Today at NoBullU on WEBY

Listen to the voice of wisdom and reason in a wilderness of partisan rhetoric -- no political insanity, no conservative hypocrisy, no liberal foolishness -- Just straight talk, straight at you, and that’s no bull!!

NoBullU will broadcast today from 4:05 to 6:00 p.m. at 1330 AM WEBY and on line.

Topics:

Local Business/Event Shout-Out: TBD;


Follow-up: Don't be duped by the Birthers, including our very own Pastor Dred Scott (you may remember the infamous Dred Scott decision of 1857, which asserted that African Americans were "beings of an inferior order" who "had no rights which the white man was bound to respect." That ruling declared that African Americans could never be U.S. citizens and therefore could never be President), and The spin of Pastor 2+2 Does Not = 4

See The Fogbow, "your best resource for debunking the lies of the 'birther' movement and discussing the birther antics" and WhatsYourEvidence.com, there is even a Birther Case Scorecard, 0-80 for the birthers;


Fact-free fantasies of the shrieking hatemongers of right-wing rhetoric and partisan hackery: all part of the fundamentalist subculture of ignorance that embraces 'discredited, ridiculous and even dangerous ideas'

And America's preference for rhetorical fairy tales to unpleasant realities


Local and regional: To toll or not to toll and be a hypocrite, major economic expansion and 100s of jobs at risk because of some snotty-nosed kids only in in Podunk-cola, and Public defenders or criminals?;


National and international: I'm waiting, where's the balanced budget, don't hold you breath because the Republi-CONs Con the Tea Party, there'll be no $100 billion budget cut, and let's admit the obvious, the Republi-CONs are not serious about deficits, and who's responsible for the debt

Still no sign of those 'invisible [Republi-CON] bond vigilantes'

Did Obama save the economy?

Republi-CONs in their delusion-land

Republi-CON budget drama, much to do about nothing

All that talk about the federal deficit and debt is just a Republi-CON CON game

Good news for the economy, bad news for Republi-CONs

The myth of expansionary austerity

Still unemployed, it's the economy stupid!

Pity the 1%, they control only 43% of the country's wealth


And the Republi-CON race cont., to find America’s Not-Mitt

Obama's New BFF

FL here were the Republi-CONs

What next for the Republi-CONs

Still searching for the ideal Republican candidate: conservative, interested, electable

CONservatism is a CON game, and the Republi-CON candidates are the result

Romney: 'I’m not concerned about the very poor, because 'I like being able to fire people'

Open Mouth, Insert Golden Spoon

Pity poor Obamney, McCain's Obamney playbook

Obama in 2012?, Lookin better for Obama all the time

HWJRFO

Déjà vu all over again, what to expect if it is Obama v. Romney

Save Us, Sarah, Save Us!

The Republi-CON Tea Party


Health Care Lawsuit Update

After reading two of the appellate opinions, it doesn't look good for the Republi-CONs

It's Not Who You Are, It's Who You Know

Once upon a time, a story of fairy tale President

The myth of voter fraud

The good ol' days , dying in car crashes

For those who favor the Republi-con 'Every Man For Himself" myth

The Republi-CON 'We Are Better Than Europe' myth

The Republi-CON 'Less Government, More Personal Freedom' myth


Fun stuff: Now why didn't we think of this: urine-controlled video games


and


Donate to a good cause: TBD.

I'll discuss anything, but expect a no mercy take-down if you are a shrieking hatemonger of right-wing rhetoric and partisan hackery, pandering to fear, anger and hatred, because the truth sure makes it hard out there for the party pimps.

So tune-in, call-in, but only if you can handle the truth and some ass kickin' discussion of politics and current events.

Did Obama Save the Economy?

"Two years ago, the McKinsey Global Institute looked at the recoveries of 32 countries that had undergone a financial crisis. Their analysis was grim. It was also correct. Contrary to the hopes some held for a quick recovery, MGI warned that financial crises tended to lead to long, slow recoveries as households, businesses and governments dug their way out of debt. But in a report released last week, MGI delivered some sunnier news — at least for the United States. If you look at the 10 largest developed economies in the world, the United States is the furthest along the path to recovery.

Looking back to their sample of 32 past instances with post-financial crisis recoveries, MGI zeroed in on Finland and Sweden’s experiences in the 1990s as the most relevant to our current moment. Those examples 'show two distinct phases of deleveraging. In the first, households, corporations, and financial institutions reduce debt significantly over several years, while economic growth is negative or minimal and government debt rises. In the second phase, growth rebounds and government debt is reduced gradually over many years.'

Most economies, the authors say, are barely even in phase one. In the United Kingdom and Spain, for example, total debt is still rising. But not in the United States. Here, 'debt in the financial sector relative to GDP has fallen back to levels last seen in 2000, before the credit bubble. U.S. households have reduced their debt relative to disposable income by 15 percentage points, more than in any other country; at this rate, they could reach sustainable debt levels in two years or so.'"

Read the Washington Post, U.S. recovering faster than its peers.

So much for the myth of expansionary austerity.

Class Today at NoBullU on WEBY, How Should I Vote Edition

UPDATE: Thank you to the caller for helping me, the newbie Republi-con, make this important decision. FYI, in the FL January 31 Presidential Preference Primary Election, I voted for the The Great Lecherer, aka Newtenstein. Keep your fingers crossed that he wins the nomination and brings us many happy shows til November.

Listen to the voice of wisdom and reason in a wilderness of partisan rhetoric -- no political insanity, no conservative hypocrisy, no liberal foolishness -- Just straight talk, straight at you, and that’s no bull!!

NoBullU will broadcast today from 4:05 to 6:00 p.m. at 1330 AM WEBY and on line.

Topics:

Local Business/Event Shout-Out: TBD;


Follow-up: see below;


Fact-free fantasies of the shrieking hatemongers of right-wing rhetoric and partisan hackery: all part of the fundamentalist subculture of ignorance that embraces 'discredited, ridiculous and even dangerous ideas'

And America's preference for rhetorical fairy tales to unpleasant realities

One was gays in the military, funny thing, the world's still turning, not even a hurricane, earthquake or an oil well

And don't be duped by the Birthers, including our very own Pastor Dred Scott (you may remember the infamous Dred Scott decision of 1857, which asserted that African Americans were "beings of an inferior order" who "had no rights which the white man was bound to respect." That ruling declared that African Americans could never be U.S. citizens and therefore could never be President),

See The Fogbow, "your best resource for debunking the lies of the 'birther' movement and discussing the birther antics" and WhatsYourEvidence.com, there is even a Birther Case Scorecard, 0-80 for the birthers;


Local and regional: Hasta la vista TEAM Santa Rosa and time to vote (Wednesday is deadline to request absentee ballot for primary)


National and international: I'm waiting, where's the balanced budget, don't hold you breath because the Republi-CONs Con the Tea Party, there'll be no $100 billion budget cut, and let's admit the obvious, the Republi-CONs are not serious about deficits, and who's responsible for the debt

Republi-CON budget drama, much to do about nothing

To balance the budget, do nothing

Still no sign of those 'invisible [Republi-CON] bond vigilantes'

Good news for the economy, bad news for Republi-CONs

Did Obama con the Republi-CONs?

The Republi-CON zombie myth that the government forced the banks to make bad loans

Economic stimulus told ya so, again

The myth of expansionary austerity

Pity the 1%, they control only 43% of the country's wealth

Republi-CONs in their Delusion-land


And the Republi-CON race cont., to find America’s Not-Mitt

Eeny Meeny Miny Moe, Which Republi-CON, In Iowa They Still Don't Know

A NoBullU told ya so, it was SC stupid

What happened in SC?

FL here come the Republi-CONs

Still searching for the ideal Republican candidate: conservative, interested, electable

Romney: it's 'party ideology politics and obstructionism first', Romney: 'I like being able to fire people', Pity poor Obamney, McCain's Obamney playbook

Gingrich the Republi-CON, Gingrich is soft on crime, Gingrich supports child labor, Newtenstein, What goes around comes around

Colbert for Cain, and making a mockery of Republi-CONs

Obama in 2012?, Lookin better for Obama all the time

HWJRFO

Déjà vu all over again, what to expect if it is Obama v. Romney

Save Us, Sarah, Save Us!

The Republi-CON Tea Party


Health Care Lawsuit Update

After reading two of the appellate opinions, it doesn't look good for the Republi-CONs


and

Is the can at the end of the road?, an update and was it worth it

The Republi-CON 'classless merit-based society' myth

The Republi-CON 'Obama's a socialist' myth


The myth of voter fraud

Watch Hedgehog News, be dumber than the dumb


Fun stuff: Now why didn't we think of this: urine-controlled video games


and


Donate to a good cause: TBD.

I'll discuss anything, but expect a no mercy take-down if you are a shrieking hatemonger of right-wing rhetoric and partisan hackery, pandering to fear, anger and hatred, because the truth sure makes it hard out there for the party pimps.

So tune-in, call-in, but only if you can handle the truth and some ass kickin' discussion of politics and current events.

Class Today at NoBullU on WEBY, Special Holiday Edition

Listen to the voice of wisdom and reason in a wilderness of partisan rhetoric -- no political insanity, no conservative hypocrisy, no liberal foolishness -- Just straight talk, straight at you, and that’s no bull!!

NoBullU will broadcast today from 4:05 to 6:00 p.m. at 1330 AM WEBY and on line.

Topics:

Local Business/Event Shout-Out: TBD;


Follow-up: see below;


Fact-free fantasies of the shrieking hatemongers of right-wing rhetoric and partisan hackery: all part of the fundamentalist subculture of ignorance that embraces 'discredited, ridiculous and even dangerous ideas'

And America's preference for rhetorical fairy tales to unpleasant realities

One was gays in the military, funny thing, the world's still turning, not even a hurricane, earthquake or an oil well

Speaking of gays in the military, on December 21, 2011, a "Navy tradition caught up with the repeal of the U.S. military's 'don't ask, don't tell' rule . . . when two women sailors became the first to share the coveted 'first kiss' on the pier after one of them returned from 80 days at sea." Read the Washington Post, Two women kiss at Navy ship's return

And don't be duped by the Birthers, including our very own Pastor Dred Scott (you may remember the infamous Dred Scott decision of 1857, which asserted that African Americans were "beings of an inferior order" who "had no rights which the white man was bound to respect." That ruling declared that African Americans could never be U.S. citizens and therefore could never be President),

See The Fogbow, "your best resource for debunking the lies of the 'birther' movement and discussing the birther antics" and WhatsYourEvidence.com, there is even a Birther Case Scorecard, 0-80 for the birthers;


Local and regional: TBD;


National and international: I'm waiting, where's the balanced budget, don't hold you breath because the Republi-CONs Con the Tea Party, there'll be no $100 billion budget cut, and let's admit the obvious, the Republi-CONs are not serious about deficits, and who's responsible for the debt

To balance the budget, do nothing

One way to reduce the deficit

Still no sign of those 'invisible [Republi-CON] bond vigilantes'

Did Obama con the Republi-CONs?

The Republi-CON zombie myth that the government forced the banks to make bad loans

The myth of expansionary austerity

Pity the 1%, they control only 43% of the country's wealth

Republi-CONs in their Delusion-land

The Great Stagnation' and our broken political system


Happy Shopmas!

Did you know, polyester is a sin


And the Republi-CON race cont., to find America’s Not-Mitt

Eeny meeny miny moe, which Republi-CON, in Iowa they still don't know

Still searching for the ideal Republican candidate: conservative, interested, electable

Iowan Republi-Con religious conservative hypocrisy

Cain isn't able, except maybe to grope

Gingrich the Republi-CON, Gingrich is soft on crime, Gingrich supports child labor, Newtenstein, What goes around comes around

Obama in 2012?, Lookin better for Obama all the time

Déjà vu all over again, what to expect if it is Obama v. Romney

Save Us, Sarah, Save Us!


Health Care Lawsuit Update

After reading two of the appellate opinions, it doesn't look good for the Republi-CONs

OMG, Republi-CON are ready to endorse ObamaCare

Republi-CON 'it's not Judicial activism, it's judicial engagement' hypocrisy


Does Palin have a point about the corrupt crony capitalism

Corrupt crony capitalism and Congress


and

Is the can at the end of the road?, an update and was it worth it

The myth of voter fraud

Watch Hedgehog News, be dumber than the dumb


Fun stuff: Just in time for Christmas,

'Twas the Night Before Christmas with Peanut and Jeff Dunham

A Very TSA Christmas

Now why didn't we think of this: urine-controlled video games


and


Donate to a good cause: TBD.

I'll discuss anything, but expect a no mercy take-down if you are a shrieking hatemonger of right-wing rhetoric and partisan hackery, pandering to fear, anger and hatred, because the truth sure makes it hard out there for the party pimps.

So tune-in, call-in, but only if you can handle the truth and some ass kickin' discussion of politics and current events.

Holiday Break at NoBullU

Unfortunately, work calls, so this blog is suspending posting for three months. Until I return, read some of these recent posts:

On the economy and federal budget, et al.:

I'm waiting, where's the balanced budget, don't hold you breath because the Republi-CONs Con the Tea Party, there'll be no $100 billion budget cut, and let's admit the obvious, the Republi-CONs are not serious about deficits, and who's responsible for the debt

To balance the budget, do nothing

One way to reduce the deficit

Still no sign of those 'invisible [Republi-CON] bond vigilantes'

Our politically induced economic stagnation, part of the Republi-CON war on the middle class

Hello globalization, goodbye jobs

It's China, stupid

The Republi-CON zombie myth that the government forced the banks to make bad loans

Told ya so: economic stimulus

The Republi-CON stimulus myth

The myth of expansionary austerity

About the Republi-CON war on the middle class

More on the Republi-CON war on the middle class

Better, not just less, government

The Republi-CON 'taxes and regulations are killing business' myth, now it dwarf tossing, what next, baby juggling?

Republi-CONs in their Delusion-land

The Great Stagnation' and our broken political system

The EuroMess

Would Jesus occupy Wall Street?

On the 2012 election, politics, and those waskly Republi-CONs:

And the Republi-CON Race is cont., to find America’s Not-Mitt

The audacity of grope-gate

Still searching for the ideal Republican candidate: conservative, interested, electable

They're back, with another debate

A NoBullU prediction: Romney-Cain in 2012

A Republi-CON 'my family escaped communism' myth

Is the RepubliCON race a joke?

Obama in 2012?

Déjà vu all over again, what to expect if it is Obama v. Romney


The Republi-CON 'Obama's a socalist' myth

Spreading slanderous lies, and supporting a group that massacres and enslaves women and children

Other current events:

Health Care Lawsuit Update

After reading two of the appellate opinions, it doesn't look good for the Republi-CONs

Republi-CON 'it's not Judicial activism, it's judicial engagement' hypocrisy


Does Palin have a point about the corrupt crony capitalism

Corrupt crony capitalism and Congress


and

An Iraq What-Might-Have-Been, and was it worth it

Did Steve Jobs' faith in alternative remedies kill him?

So You Don't Believe in Global Warming, Then Explain What Happens to 35 Gigatons of CO2 Each Year

Those not so good ol' days

CSI Dog Poop, the trial

Big brother is watching you,

The myth of voter fraud

Fun stuff:

Why dogs hate Halloween

Just in time for Christmas

Humor for English majors, and

Punnies

I'll be back soon to deprogram you.