[inthebox]

Time magazine and right wing? :confused:

Perhaps Hillary is to the right of Obama. Now that is scary. :eek:

[BABRAM]

Senior Bubba, if Obama has not been able to muster the plan himself and present it to the American people in depth and he's the one running for president, other than just using cutsie-tootsie words that sound like a xylophone to people's ears, including yours obviously, then the pied piper doesn't have any plan. Sorry to burst your bubble but you're obviously waiting for the next great ark and it surely ain't comin' by way of Obama! Watch yourself, you're blowing alot of hot air again, Bubba, heh, heh!

Did you forget your sign-on password or did you get caught for trolling again "Gust" (Guest)? What happened to that "solid economic plan" you crowed about earlier? That's what I figured. :p

[BABRAM]

Time magazine and right wing? :confused:

Perhaps Hillary is to the right of Obama. Now that is scary. :eek:

Good point. Early on some of the Republicans in media commented that there was no difference between John McCain and Hillary Clinton outside of Universal Health-care and the length of Iraqi war proposals. :)

[Gust]

Did you forget your sign-on password or did you get caught for trolling again "Gust" (Guest)?! What happened to that "solid economic plan" you crowed about earlier? That's what I figured. :p

Ah, you liked my sign-in name, huh? Guess I'll keep it then! But seriously, now I *know* I am dealing with a trolling whippersnapper. What you write and the way you write it tells the story. I am still waiting to hear about Obama's plan for the country, you know -- the miraculous panacea to the nation's problems. Oh, no such thing you say? Well, how come I knew that already! So, no dice with you amigo, nice try but no cigar! Let's get some real pros here to discuss matters of importance!

[Gust]

Sorry, t, but JK is not part of the right wing conspiracy.

Sometimes you just got to educate them, George! Thanks.

[BABRAM]

the Nation would have finally *awoken* from their deep sleep and pacification of his words and will finally stand up to vote for someone else with a solid concrete plan for our economic recovery and other woes.

George, is this one of your "educated" proteges? Might want to motivate your student to provide that "solid concrete plan for our economic recovery" that she proclaimed. ;)

[BABRAM]

McCain’s Economic Plan | Newsweek Business | Newsweek.com


Staying on Bush's Course!

McCain's fiscal program is either a joke or a fantasy

Daniel Gross
Newsweek Web Exclusive
Updated: 3:38 PM ET Mar 28, 2008

"In the last week, the three remaining presidential candidates made big-picture economic speeches that were perfectly in keeping with the tone of their campaigns. Barack Obama delivered his speech, introduced by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg (a potential Obamacan?), at Cooper Union, a venue long identified with great oratory. Hillary Clinton tactically delivered her speech in the current battleground state of Pennsylvania and offered a list of solutions. Both campaigns have remarkably detailed (and remarkably similar) platforms on how to attack the various economic woes facing America.

John McCain, fresh from a whirlwind tour aimed at demonstrating his foreign-policy credentials, took a somewhat different approach. There's an emerging theme surrounding his campaign: The problem with the last eight years isn't that the Bush administration had the wrong policies or was incompetent. No, the problem is that it lacked intensity. Which is why McCain is bent on offering a more concentrated, sustained, high-energy form of Bushism. Bush has been adamant about staying in Iraq until the end of his presidency; McCain is adamant about staying up to 100 years, if necessary. Bush has taken to carefully cherry-picking facts and metrics (the number of soccer games visible from the air, to cite one) to construct a narrative on how well things are going there. (I bet there weren't many soccer matches in Sadr City today.) McCain prefers simple declarations to data points: "We're winning. I don't care what people say. I've seen the facts on the ground."

The same holds true for the economy. By virtue of his history as a deficit hawk, a foe of earmarks, an opponent of the Bush tax cuts, and the presence of reality-based advisers like Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former director of the Congressional Budget Office, McCain deserves some benefit of the doubt. Unfortunately, the brains behind the economic operation seems to be former Sen. Phil Gramm, the Texas A&M economist-turned-senator who confidently forecast in 1993 that the Clinton program of spending cuts and tax increases on the wealthy would be "a one-way ticket to recession." And the sections on McCain's Web site about domestic policy reveal, as Matt Yglesias noted, "a nearly astounding level of vacuity."

Reading McCain's economic agenda, and listening to his speech, it appears that the problem with the last eight years is that we haven't seen enough tax breaks for the wealthy, that economic royalism hasn't been pursued with sufficient vigor, and that the middle and working classes haven't been stiffed sufficiently.

McCain wants to extend the Bush tax cuts, which he once opposed as a needless sop to the rich in a time of war. (I await David Brooks' inevitable explanation of how opposing taxes in a time of war in 2001 and 2003, when deficits were low, but supporting them in 2011, in a time of war and high deficits, is deeply moral and admirable.) But McCain wants to see Bush's tax relief and raise it some. McCain would slash the corporate-income-tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent (because corporate profits as a percentage of GDP didn't spike enough this decade?), and he'd abolish the Alternative Minimum Tax, which would be a welcome move for many upper-middle-class taxpayers. "In all, his tax-cutting proposals could cost about $400 billion a year, according to estimates of the impact of different tax cuts by CBO and the McCain campaign," the Wall Street Journal reported. And how to make up for the lost revenues? Hmmm. McCain promises to cut earmarks; to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse; and to reduce the projected growth of Medicare; but he won't provide many numbers. As the WSJ deadpanned: "The cost will make it difficult for him to achieve his goal of balancing the budget by the end of his first term." That's perhaps the understatement of the year. The 2009 budget calls for a deficit of $407 billion on projected receipts of $2.7 billion, as this table shows. Essentially, McCain wants to cut revenues by about 15 percent from current levels, with nothing close to that in spending reductions, in a time when, even after spending excess Social Security payroll taxes, the deficit is running at more than $400 billion. Here's some straight talk: McCain's fiscal program is either a joke or a fantasy.

McCain's housing speech, delivered in Orange County, Calif. ground zero of the housing crisis, was a mixed bag. He provided a good description of the problem. But his solution to an era in which financial deregulation set the stage for federal bailouts, rampant speculation, and reckless lending is... less regulation. "Our financial market approach should include encouraging increased capital in financial institutions by removing regulatory, accounting, and tax impediments to raising capital." Bizarrely, he has also joined the chorus arguing that mark-to-market accounting—the rules that require companies to, you know, tell investors the actual market value of assets they hold-should be revisited.

The Federal Reserve and the Bush administration have justified the extraordinary help offered to investment banks and investors by saying that it matters less how we got here and more how we deal with the situation as it is. For McCain, however, it's all about the journey. Poor decisions should not be rewarded-unless those poor decisions are made by really rich people who run investment banks and hedge funds. While "those who act irresponsibly" shouldn't be bailed out as a matter of principle, it's OK to take extraordinary measures to help banks prevent "systemic risk that would endanger the entire financial system and the economy." Obama and Clinton-and the Bush administration, through its various efforts to ease the mortgage crisis-have argued that it might be possible to spare further systemic risk if something was done to buck up the fortunes of homeowners. says McCain. People should just put up more money for down payments and work harder to keep current with their mortgage payments.

Straight talk? No doubt. At a time of rampant economic insecurity and low consumer confidence, at the end of a business cycle in which median incomes didn't rise and the percentage of working people with health insurance fell, McCain won't succumb to the easy temptation of saying that government policy can help improve the situation. But smart politics? I wonder. What's left of the Republican Party is becoming increasingly downscale, and many swing states have been ravaged by the housing crisis (Nevada, Florida) and globalization (Ohio, Michigan). Besides, he's already got the Let-Them-Eat-Cake vote sewed up."

[Gust]

George, is this one of your "educated" proteges? Might want to motivate your student to provide that "solid concrete plan for our economic recovery" that she proclaimed. ;)

Cute, :) But George had nothing to do with this. Oh, and by the way, I'm still waiting for that plan from ANYONE at this point since Obama obviously hasn't got one to offer except empty words to the tune of follow the piper. So, since no one was named in my posting, little feller, (well, the icon picture of the kid to the left of your posting just HAS to be you!) the person who comes up with a REAL plan to ameliorate the problems of this nation gets my vote! But I'm not holding my breath that it'll be Obama, little tyke. If he had a real plan, he would have proudly introduced it by now instead of just leading us on.

[George_1950]

Cute, :) But George had nothing to do with this. Oh, and by the way, I'm still waiting for that plan from ANYONE at this point since Obama obviously hasn't got one to offer except empty words to the tune of follow the piper. So, since no one was named in my posting, little feller, (well, the icon picture of the kid to the left of your posting just HAS to be you!) the person who comes up with a REAL plan to ameliorate the problems of this nation gets my vote! But I'm not holding my breath that it'll be Obama, little tyke. If he had a real plan, he would have proudly introduced it by now instead of just leading us on.

You are right, G; Obama has no plan, but worse than that, in a nation with a 'free' press, he has no inquisitors, except racists, bigots, etc. Of course, you know their definition of a bigot: someone winning an argument with a liberal. Obama, like all Dem/Lib/fascists, will never say what he will do because he knows that he will never win the election. So, all we will get from Obama, or anyone else from that side, is soft-shoe tapping around the issues and lies. They know that they will never be elected as "Liberals".

[BABRAM]

Cute, But George had nothing to do with this.

George has proven immature, but I really don't care how much praise you lavish on him. I just want to know from him since he sees Democrats as fascist, if you were one his ideology misfits. Seems you two have a special bond? I hope you embody the representation of McCain campaign strategy for the general election. Between Hebert Walker and Dubya I have had my share of George's lately. :)

Oh, and by the way, I'm still waiting for that plan from ANYONE at this point since Obama obviously hasn't got one to offer except empty words to the tune of follow the piper.

I'd dearly love to spend more time chatting about your reading comprehension skills, but to be perfectly straight with you as long as you don't grope or molest children, I think you'll just keep delivering pizza, playing Xbox, and learning movie trivia without being much of a threat to society. It's very telling that you can't give facts for your "solid concrete plan for our economic recovery." You can't even give a rebuttal to the Newsweek piece. ;)

So, since no one was named in my posting, little feller, (well, the icon picture of the kid to the left of your posting just HAS to be you!) the person who comes up with a REAL plan to ameliorate the problems of this nation gets my vote! But I'm not holding my breath that it'll be Obama, little tyke.

Really. Well that's my son in the picture, but if you show up to Vegas you can meet his father. :cool:

the person who comes up with a REAL plan to ameliorate the problems of this nation gets my vote!

Wow! And what makes you think your vote is that important? Good thing for you that voting doesn't include passing a civics test. :)

But I'm not holding my breath that it'll be Obama, little tyke. If he had a real plan, he would have proudly introduced it by now instead of just leading us on.

If you held your breath it probably wouldn't deprive any less oxygen to your brain. It's leadership identification skills like yours that got our nation in trouble in the first place. Some people actually voted for Dubya twice. Wow! :)

[talaniman]

There are only two options for the next president:

1) Clean up the republican debacle.

2) Continue the republican debacle.