Rand Paul preaches “Trickle Down Reagan-omics” at Howard University

Rand Paul’s ignorance, distortions, and deceptions, Part II.

During his lecture Rand Paul praises the economic growth during Reagan’s presidency as a model to follow.

• Reagan raised taxes.
  • Paul opposes tax increases.
  • (Obama calls for tax increases)
• Reagan expanded the size of government 1.5 million employees.
  • Paul calls for smaller government.
  • (Obama has cut nearly 800,000 government jobs)
• Reagan increased the military with a $1 Trillion dollar peace time build up.
  • Rand Paul does love this about Reagan.
  • Obama has reduced military spending.
• All this he did with deficit spending.
  •  Blaming federal deficit as the cause of poor economic growth, Paul calls for austerity to balance the budget.
  • Obama has reduced the deficit every year in office and calls for easing down the deficit.

The only things Reagan and Paul have in common is they were both republicans and loved spending money to threaten the world. Paul claims that the republican party has not changed. Paul needs to be a student not a lecturer.

 

Refusing to Negotiate, Paul Ryan Continues Rhetorically Inflamitory Grandstanding.

The US Senate did pass a bipartisan budget bill. If it were not a bipartisan bill it would have been filibustered by the GOP.

John Boehner prevented negotiation by taking every proposal from the president to a press conference with statements like “He can’t be serious”. Paul Ryan continues to refuse to negotiate taking the newly passed Senate budget bill to the press conference and saying “they’re blowing smoke”.

Negotiating between the House and the Senate is traditionally done in committee. Without distraction from the press, all previous congresses have worked through their differences and produced a functional budget by sitting down and negotiating a compromise. The GOP refuses to do anything like this.

Eric Cantor, republican majority leader in the House, demonstrated the “my way or highway” attitude stating “If Obama is unwilling to stop trying to raise taxes there is now way we can lay aside our differences”. We can lay aside our differences? Raising taxes is the differences. Obama must do all he says or no deal will be made.

The president has no vote in congress. When the GOP House leadership ceases the inflammatory rhetoric and engages in more productive dialog with the Senate, then a deal will be reached.

Keep talking Jeb Bush, minorities are listening and you will go the way of Romney.

Current path for “dreamers” includes being brought to the US as a child. Living “under the radar”. Getting an education without being noticed. Working without being noticed and without the protections of oppression that citizens enjoy.  Now as an adult, announce yourself as illegal, pay years of the back taxes that you were not allowed to pay before, paying the cost and passing FBI background checks  According to Jeb, this is easy. Jeb is counting on the ignorance of Americans to rise to power.

Jeb Bush, ignores the grossly unfair current immigration policy and calls for a “fair” system that denies legal immigration. This is yet another racist attitude of ignorance. Jeb is getting his point across to minorities with this one. I hope he runs for president. He will be easy to defeat.

First he calls for No path to immigration then says we need to be fair.

“If we’re not going to apply the law fairly and consistently, then we’re going to have another wave of illegal immigrants coming into the country.”

Before a law can be applied fairly and consistently, we need a law that is fair and consistent. Jeb misses the point of what immigration reform is all about. I compare this to his brother’s lack of understanding of what War is about.

source of quotes: http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/03/04/17181705-jeb-bush-no-pathway-to-citizenship-for-illegal-immigrants?lite

Sequester was Obama’s idea? Of course, where else would a compromise come from.

Republican house concept of compromise- My Way or Highway.In 2011 Obama proposed a budget. House republicans presented the same GW Bush’s $1.2 trillion and growing out of control deficit spending.

Republicans knew that in November 2012 Obama would be voted out of office and the majority of the senate would also be republican. Why compromise, just delay for a year and do whatever they wanted. Where did compromise come from? Barack Obama.

Obama campaigned on renewing the middle class while Republicans campaigned on more GW Bush economics.  After the 2012 election Obama proposed a budget in line with what he promised. The House passed the Romney plan. No compromise.  Thus the fiscal cliff.

GW’s tax cuts were expiring and they did not have to power to stop it. Republicans could not afford to do nothing and Obama again compromised and a partial budget passed.

Some tax cuts were extended, more than were prudent, but some taxes were put back to Clinton budget levels. Remember the Clinton budget? Zero deficit plus cash to start paying down the National debt.

2.4% of federal spending has been cancelled. The biggest customer of American Business, the federal government, cut spending. Is this really the way to promote job creation and economic recovery?

It does not hurt the top 2%. Romney’s people, Corporations, are doing great. Their profits are making the CEO’s richer and padding even more off shore tax sheltered accounts that ever. Just hang on a little longer 98% of America, soon the rich will be rich enough to start creating jobs.

More of John Boehner’s Shell game.

Pick the shell containing the truth. The trick is that there is only deception under every shell.

Under shell number one:

Boehner raised middle class taxes. The middle class tax increases came in the form of the expiration of the temporary payroll tax cuts. To prevent this expiration the House, John Boehner, needed to act. Obama asked the House to act. The White House cannot pass a bill, only congress can do that. If the House had acted, then and only then could he blame Obama and only if Obama used his power of veto. This did not happen. Upper income tax increases came when the GW Bush tax cuts expired on incomes over $400,000.

Under shell number two.

Boehner pretends ignorance asking “The president got $650 billion of higher taxes on the American people on January the first,” Boehner said. “How much more does he want?”  Here are 3 suggestions on how Boehner could get his question answered.

1. go to http://www.whitehouse.gov and read it.
2. Boehner could listen during private meetings in the White house.
3. Being unable to see or hear, he could request a braille copy. I am sure one could be created for him.

Under shell number 3.

Since no bill came out of the senate, Boehner pretends not to understand why. “why wouldn’t Senate Democrats go ahead and pass it?” Boehner knows his republican senate counterparts obstructed it. Senate Democrats passed a budget bill on Thursday, February 28th by a 51-49 vote. The Senate republicans essentially vetoed the majority by the use of the filibuster.

Under shell number 4.

Boehner said, “I don’t know whether it’s going to hurt the economy or not. I don’t think anyone quite understands how the sequester is really going to work.” Under this shell he hides his true point of view stated back in 2011 when the sequester was created. “I got 98% of what I wanted” The sequester will cause no pain to the wealthiest 2%. The pain is on the middle class. The 98% of Boehner’s goal.

Under shell number 5.

ALL deficit spending for the past 12 years was created by the GW Bush Administration. In spite of the obstructionist congress, Obama has reduced the deficit spending every year. John Boehner was there in the republican controlled congress when they created runaway government deficits. Boehner knows the deficit was created with a combination of unfunded warfare and huge tax cuts for the wealthy. He knows this to be true.

Quotes taken from Boehner’s interview on Meet The Press http://nbcpolitics.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/03/03/17167371-boehner-i-dont-think-anyone-quite-understands-how-sequester-gets-resolved?lite

American Economics is like a snake that is swallowing its own tail

For the past 30+ years, since Ronald Reagan, aka the “great communicator”, sold “Reagon-onmics” to the American people, the economic system has been depressing the middle class redistributing wealth to the upper class.

If this was actually a valid economic model, the upper class would immediately open new businesses increasing their wealth and creating new jobs eliminating unemployment. The upper class did not get rich by being stupid. Without a customer base with money to spend, there is little opportunity for new business creation.

Huge tax breaks for the upper class has shifted the tax burden onto the middle class.  The middle class Americans, 80% of America, are the customers that drive the demand and create business opportunities in America. Since no business can prosper without customers, America has drifted from one recession to the next as the private sector opportunities shrink.

This is like a snake swallowing its own tail.

The rubber stamp response to recession has been to grow the size of government creating new government jobs to make up for the lagging of private sector growth. Ronald Reagan, George H. Bush, Bill Clinton, and GW Bush all increased the size of Government while American Business opportunities became fewer and farther between. The result is a growth from 17 million federal employees to 22.5 million federal employees in just 28 years.

This is an increase of 32% in the size of government in 28 years.

This is like a snake swallowing its own tail.

Barrack Obama together with a democratic congress passed stimulus that put all recovery effort in the private sector and reduced the size of government for the first time in modern history. To further create business opportunities Obama proposes shifting the tax burden back to the upper class, leaving American business’s customer base more money to spend and create more business opportunities.

To further create business opportunities Obama now calls for a raise in the national minimum wage. The $9 per hour proposal would raise a two income household of four almost to the poverty level reducing the need for government housing and food subsidies. At this level of income, every dime made is immediately spent stimulating business.

Tax breaks for the upper class simply grow off shore tax sheltered bank accounts and do nothing for the commonwealth.

We can always fight about money. It matters not how much or how little we have we can always fight about what to do with it. America is the richest nation on earth. There is no reason for poverty, hunger, sickness, poor education, and depressed business opportunity other than we choose it to be so.

Size of Government

America goes from one recession to the next.  The economy is out of balance with lower lows each cycle. The patch the past 4 presidents have applied is to grow the size of government.

In order to ease a recession, President Reagan created about 1.5 million government jobs.  Clinton did the same thing. Bush Sr. being a one term president, grew the Government less. Bush Jr., in the spirit of one-ups-man-ship, created nearly 2.5 million new government jobs.

If Obama had continued this trend, there would have been an additional 1 million government jobs created in the past 4 years and unemployment would be a lot closer to 5%.

Since Obama took office, federal jobs have been cut by about 791,000 and he is continuing this trend. Obama is the first president in decades to actually begin to reduce the size of government. Obama is working toward bringing the economy into balance.

Cutting these jobs hurts business.  The recovery would be faster if Obama was increasing the size of government instead of cutting the size of government.  Obama’s  reduction in the size of government is the approach his RIGHT WING opponents are calling for.

Top Tax Rate

When the top tax rate was 95%, America built the most powerful industrial nation the world has ever known and there were lots of really really rich people.

This tax rate was necessary due to rampant poverty in the US.  The really really rich people were the only ones with income worth taxing.  As the middle class grew the top tax rate of 95% was no longer needed as more people could contribute.

Let us not return to the necessity of a 95% tax rate.