I'd like to see this data as a percent change per president. Might give you a better idea, as well as a beginning %GDP and Ending %GPD. would put things in perspective as to how much the return on that debt expansion was.
ie, was the debt expansion worth it under a given pres.
This chart us useless if it is not on a log scale, or adjusted for inflation (log scale). Totally useless chart other than the fact that it does prove that government actually DO spend money.
The real story is told when you look at who controls the house and senate during each presidency.
It doesn't matter who controls the house or the senate or the presidency.
The national debt has grown 9.4% a year on average for 41 years. In some years it's done marginally better and some years marginally worse.
The only story is, is there isn't any functional difference between Republicans and Democrats today. There's your story. The left right paradigm is a myth. They just tell you different lies and give you different excuses for what they do. What are we doing in Libya? Oh, it's the help the poor people of Libya escape that evil dictator. If McCain won, who knows - it could have been about weapons of mass destruction again, or more likely, terrorism.
Stop being a stupid tool, please - or at least don't vote if you can't stop being a moron.
How many goddamned years does this have to go on before you stupid morons realize what is going on?
You are both a couple of fools. AIPAC is your master.
AIPAC is just an example of the corruption of the system. It's 5 million Jewish bigot dumbasses in Israel, our government don't really care about them. What do you think will happen to Israel when the US goes insolvent?
How has the US helped Israel by allowing it to wage a 60+ year war against it's indigenous population? You think that's going to end well?
AIPAC is just a bunch of stupid moron bigot assholes that don't realize that what they are doing, is absolutely guaranteeing the eventual destruction of the Jewish state. It's just another distraction for the boneheaded American populace. Yes, it has real consequences, but the US is going bankrupt and that's really the only issue to an actual American.
This is an interesting thought from the Debt/Silver ratio:
The minimum was about 40,000,000,000 ounces in 1979 even though the value of silver peaked in 1980. If 40 billion ounces of silver = the national debt, silver would cost about $350 an ounce.
That comment was tongue and cheek, since you took the time to post - If you are using CPI for a purchasing power measure and extrapolating from way back in 1933, the results are so flawed that no one would take them seriously, maybe you didn’t mean them to be taken seriously but that’s another matter. There are many different ways of trying to gauge "real worth" from so distant in the past, as you probably know - as i have said before, i am no economist - but which measure do you pick, why pick it, what methodology do you use to limit it's flaws, what is the essential context, and ultimately, how has life changed - and are we confident enough to say we have tracked those changes correctly?(fuck no man, fuck no!)
You need to be clear on why you are looking, and what you want to find, and considering you are talking about 14trln in debt that has been used for many, perhaps uncountable reasons, just bandying a CPI number around says little about the real value of the amount, the value gained from it, or indeed the real consequences of the debt. Its safe to say, the mind-bending complications of trying, are sufficient enough, that any old argument proposed could probably be backed up with some measure or another, given the right context and motives.
For example,.(dont be too shy to correct me here) In 1933, for the relative worth of $14,200,000,000,000, we get (using CPI) $844,000,000,000. The national debt then was actually $56,400,000,000(as of june 1933), and if you had of been in the same amount of debt then as you are now on that relative basis, it would have been ~1500% of GDP using the CPI, but yet its under 100% GDP presently (which paradoxically would imply rather strange growth if you tried to extrapolate from then until now).
On the other hand if you use Relative share of GDP(or how much was the debt worth then compared to the economy now), the $56,400,000,000 debt your government really held in 1933 would have been $14,700,000,000,000! today, $5,940,000,000,000 using nominal GDP per capita, and when adjusted for inflation(unrequired!) $942,000,000,000 - even still you would owe around fifteen times more today than you did in 1933....big deal. If you want it shrink stop voting for republicans!
The situation is that WHEN THE USA WENT OFF THE GOLD REDEMPTION IN THE EARLY 1970's that, since now the US dollar was essentiall worthless with no backing, it gave the GOV the oppertunity to inflate to infinity.
Log scale, absolutely, and a potential 3rd graph; debt/receipts. I never understood this debt/GDP, it's not as if the government can claim all of GDP in taxes one year. The potential for increased receipts is connected to existing receipts.
Which leads me to "Monetary Regimes and Inflation" - according to the bible on hyperinflation, once 40% of all spending is raised through new debts, we're in hyperinflation territory. The US is there.
Inflation adjusted, the current debt would be 560 billion in 1938.
The US would never have entered WOII with a debt like that.
But the chart sucks because it only shows the names of the puppets, and not the events that caused the rises.
For example: During the Kennedy era, the US went to the moon and spend hughe amounts of money. But yet, the debt ceiling hardly moved in that decade, and yet after 64, it was the end of 90% silver coins.
Or...just needed to graph it in Log-scale, or else it's misleading. For instance, it doesn't show that the Vietnam war is what started the whole necessity for money printing. Also, it fails to show that during Reagan, the Federal deficit expanded by the greatest % GDP of any President.
I think W is the winner. Obama has surprisingly taken the slope down a bit.
If you look closely at the graph, you'll see 2011 and 2012 are in there.
Those are PROJECTIONS not actual data. Bush was a stupid fuckhead of an asshole of a president - that being said, whoever made that graph is skewing to make Obama look better than he is - and he's a stupid fucked of an asshole of a president whose just like Bush.
I like how I get junked for pointing out a deception in the chart, and openly stating what kind of shitheads we have in power, but the junker doesn't have the balls to rebutt what he knows to be true.
"I think W is the winner. Obama has surprisingly taken the slope down a bit."
Obama's reign of destruction isn't over yet. We'll see when his 4 years are done. God help us if he gets re-elected. (Then again, the next republican stooge will do the same thing.)
I have no idea where you got the $1 trillion cost from. Even the Obama administration put the cost at $100 billion per year. So out of Obama's $5 trillion in debt, take out $300 billion. Obama ran up $4.7 trillion in debt in less than three years. Bush kept it off the books when presenting the budget, but CBO didn't. The cost is included in the national debt.
You honestly believe the war only cost 100 billion a year. Think about that. All those years of war only cost 100 billion a year. All that concrete we layed down. All the payoff's to Blackrock, Halliburton and all those private contractors that we have no idea where the money went. I'll help, much money went to entities the are not U.S. citizens. Just to start the campaign most likely cost us 500 billion. I've just started, but I quit. Your right, 100 billion a year. LOL
The Media has destroyed another mind, and it is not mine. Oh yeah, Bambi sucks too. We are still there.
My back of the napkin calcs have simple feeding of 200,000 troops 3 times a day at $40 a wwhack (KBR rate) at $9 billion a year. Fuel? fugettabout it. $100b? you can't say "should we go to war?" for a $100b
Cost of ordnance of all kinds from the daily burn rate of 7.62 all the way up to daisy cutters, DU sabot rounds, and the occasional cruise missile. The stuff is not bein bought on the cheap either. Giaps men collected their brass for chrissakes, hell, they even collected ours. There has probably been no army in history which can match Empire America's for sheer, orgyistic profligacy of materiel.
to say nothing of the "humans wasted" - which is rarely factored in. . .
Soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are at risk of a new disease researchers say they have named Iraq-Afghanistan War lung injury.
Iraq and Afghanistan veterans face numerous respiratory threats including: dust from the sand; smoke from burn pits; aerosolized metals and chemicals from bombs; blast overpressure or shock waves to the lung; outdoor aeroallergens such as date pollen, indoor aeroallergens such as mold aspergillus, vehicle exhaust and tobacco smoke, Rose says.
As for me, I don't have progeny so I don't give a fuck anymore.
I'm about to relocate to the outskirts of a third or fourth tier metro area and buy a secured piece of property to watch the rest of you tards burn it all to the fucking ground!
I no longer give a fuck about all you mongoloid trash voting for the (D) & (R) Free Crap Empire™, I hope you enjoy the whirlwind.
What I really meant was that it is no coincidence that after JFK was assasinated in 1963---the same JFK who was fighting the Fed and Treasury at least nominally on behalf of maintaining monetary silver---there has been a series of very pro-Fed, pro-spend, pro-paper presidents, and as a result, you can see what has happened.
So, silver was taken out in '64, gold in '71, and copper in '82. Sort of on-topic and sort of off-topic, I got an email from Gainesville today that they are selling 1-avp oz copper rounds for "only $1.48 over spot!" Of course, copper is under $4.00 a avp-pound, so its spot price per avp-oz is about $0.25. But here's Gainesville selling 1 avp-oz copper rounds for $1.73; that's a record-setting 592% premium! (Uh, yeah---no, thanks.)
I'm all for sequestering copper---but by simply pulling copper pennies out of circulation, you can get a whole pound of copper by collecting just 154 pennies (which only costs $1.54). And there are tons and tons of copper pennies out there.
I've been "sequestering" copper pennies since 2006, and have several hundred pounds. In the process I've turned my son into a coin collector who ironically had me order him some copper rounds from gainesville earlier this week.
Well, a few Gainesville rounds as a reward for your son's good behaviour I think is fine--just don't buy 7000 of them! :) But if you've been sequestering since '06, you already know that. I expect that the practice is on the rise, and I'm all for it.
You might interested in these tables I put together a couple of years ago on the topic of penny arbitrage which will let you gauge the changing value on a per-pound or face-value basis:
It is also an easy way to explain (unideal) arbitrage to your son. How long do you think the Congress keeps the restriction on melting them? The silver coin melting restriction didn't last very long, did it? I think all of our coins will be aluminium (currently $1.15/lb) soon, anyway, and then they'll take our aluminium as well.
I know you actually meant 'the [first] derivative.' the second derivative is scratching at straws to extract a meaning from it. i.e. you meant the function that represents the rate of change in slope of a tangent line to the curve at any given point. You've been taking cues from those bastards on CNBC who say 'second derivative' all the time when they mean 'the derivative' too. Same with everyone who keeps saying 'that begs the question' when they really mean 'I feel like I'm being begged to ask this question' which is totally not the same thing.
well there is administration slant and then there is media slant. Which is the slant on the administration slant. That's a double slant, like a second derivative. As for begging, whether its for a question or for an answer...its always a way of spinning the story where you want to take it.
Media is what media does... as media is the message...if you don't believe that you're out of a job pronto fast in MSM.
Put another way, if this is a function of how far the train is from a cliff, the first derivative tells how fast the train is speeding towards the edge, while the second indicates if someone is slamming on the gas or the brakes.
I'm not convinced the "second derivative" was in error.
hey ist, I like a little math dirty talk as much as the next guy but WTF is looking at the first or second or third derivative going to reveal?
It's certainly not something about the future, because that graph could flatline or reverse in a collapse. Why don't you predict what the graph will do if Ron Paul gets elected POTUS?
anyine who thinks about gay as much as him is gay.. closet gay... meth and male escort gay.. but dont blame him.. his manly, fat wife has a bigger dick than he does thusly he is feeling girly all the time..
While the idiot morons have their clowns fight over gay marriage, flag burning, school prayer, abortion, and other trivial bullshit, the country goes bankrupt.
Kind of puts into perspective what is important. Hmm, if two men can legally screw one another with the blessing of the government, OR if an economy exists at all and our monetary system exists. Hmmm. Golly - which one should be addressed and which one is just a big fat distraction for chucklehead morons?
You idiots that vote based on this crap, should all be hanged as traitors to the nation, because you're the principle reason we have this joke two-party system. If gay marriage was even an issue, Bush was in power for 8 years with 6 years of a Republican majority with a Republican judicial branch - there could have been an amendment passed at any time for that - if anybody actually gave a crap. It's just a non issue to get you morons to vote for one of the factions of our one-party system. Different rhetoric, same actions.
Guantanamo is still open, Patriot is still law, president still going to war skipping congressional approval, Iran and Afgahnistan still on, paid mercenaries still are being paid by our government, still threatening Iran, warrantless wiretapping hasn't stopped.
Hope and change - well the only people that had any hope were the ones that never bothered to check the voting record of Obama, when he was a junior senator. Can't wait until the US dollar collapses so I never have to hear about bullshit issues again. All you idiots will be spending all your time trying to find food, and won't have time to decide if we should have skool prayer or not - finally you won't give a crap either.
yup, equal parts in the same plot. Time to drop the old paradigm conservative/liberal/republican/democrat/socialist/fascist. It all amounts to powerful seeking and getting more power vs powerless loosing more power mostly unconscious and unaware of reality and entertained with useless rhetoric. Time to wake up
Yup. Those who claimed to be 'conservative' actually accelerated the end-point by being the most radical spenders with the most radical monetary policies.
Both parties are nothing more than trading cards to make the public believe that there is really free choice. Like having Coke and Pepsi competing for consumers with a rule that you can't drink anything else.
Exactly -- CONgress is responsible for originating and passing the spending bills. How about a chart showing US Debt and the party-affiliations of the CONgresses responsible (especially the House since that is where spending bills are supposed to originate). The Democrats like to blame Bush for the bailouts, but if you go back and look at the actual votes, you will see that it was mostly Democrats with the help of a few Republicans that passed it. And, Democrats controlled both houses of CONgress and the presidency during this latest bout of spending lunacy.
Not that it matters much because both parties are ultimately responsible.
While the presidents are equally culpable the task of creating the budget falls at the feet of Congress. A useless lot that adopted baseline budgeting. I'd like to see the real books using GAP. The horrors are hidden in the details. If congress had errors and omission insurance it would be time to make a big fricking claim.
In the event of a sale of land from any of the Thorsson Capital properties to any Zero Hedge reader, the vendor (Thorsson Capital) hereby pledges a donation of 1% of the total sale to Zero Hedge, said donation is to be made within 30 working days of settlement.
Not true, Congress makes the money available, the president puts it to use. The republican presidents seem to consistanly spend more than is available. The last true conservative was Eisenhauer, but we all knew that.
The president cannot levy a tax...that takes Congress to pass a law...Congress passes laws & budgets on to the president to sign off on or to veto.
Period. End of story.
If the government had more veto and less law (including spiraling upward budgets based on base line budgeting) the government would be in better shape than it is.
You will note, I said its the governments problem, not mine.
What are you talking about now?...you've gone from Congress "manufacturing" money to give to the president to spend on what he wants (apparently they don't need to tax anyone or anything)...to the pay go?
What party championed pay go and what did they actuallydo when they had a majority in the senate, house & executive branch of government?
And on this force business...what or who will be doing the forcing?
Is that anything like a debt ceiling law without the dentures in?
I think we agree that the government spends too much, I think we agree that the budget should be balanced. I think we also agree that both parties cannot be trusted.
But how it is balanced & who to trust to balance it, is the debate.
I've pretty much withdrawn from it all for now...if it collapses in my lifetime fine, if it doesn't I've prepared my children for it...as any father should.
The simple fact remains...you could seize all the earnings over 300k and run the country for six months...that's how large the debt it is. You could gut the 600-700 billion for defense and not even get close.
"Entitlements" (the word itself turns my stomach) will have to be dealt with or there is no chance...this "thing" has been built over decades and no one anywhere on the globe can afford this...only the existence of the "black hole" of the central banks makes it possible for war & welfare...you will have to decide for yourself...I already have.
Is a man's pay check earning, that is used to create a future nest egg for retirement pension or for health care. Is that not a valid reason for that person to receive something in return down the road? He's contributed to it from his earned salary. Its not money made out of thin air...like government spending on 'prestige', sabre ratting wars...what's your problem with that???
Its part of the social contract. If there were no social contract we'd be back to the age of forced labour, feudal or slavery style...Don't want to go there...right??
Is a man's pay check earning, that is used to create a future nest egg for retirement pension or for health care.
Except that it wasn't really insurance or an annuity or a nest egg, it was a tax. The tax money has been spent. The "Greatest Generation" fell for the "Trust Fund" canard like a sack of potatoes. They saw it instituted, they saw it expanded, they believed in it, they failed to adequately oversee it. The failure is theirs. They trusted the government and the government stole their money. It was a Ponzi scheme with guns behind it. Now they want to steal from me to make up for their error, socializing their losses.
Nope.
Its part of the social contract. If there were no social contract we'd be back to the age of forced labour, feudal or slavery style...Don't want to go there...right??
This conflation is so wide you could drive a truck through it. Obviously it could be used to justify anything. Fail.
You don't propose a solution to the entitlement thesis. You just critique it negatively.
Every man who works and pays his dues has a right to retirement and health care in a civilized world. That's his paid in entitlement. How it gets remunerated is subject to debate when we hit hard times. But denying its existence is make-belief economics. So saying "fail" is not a response. It's a sign of impotent governance, as you speak for the employer/legislator class. I fail your fail.
As for your demonstration about entitlement being a tax perk under the great generation legislation, I find it very unconvincing. Here in europe, entitlements are not tax perks. They are industry wide negotiated deals whereby salaried people set aside a part of their earnings in mutual fund type vehicles, which are either government or private sector run, and which ensure both health care and retirement pension pay, on a sliding scale basis that is pegged to monthly contribution by subscriber (obviously a function of his actual take home pay). I don't know what tax perks has to do with it. We all pay income tax on our take home pay including the entitlement benefits.
So what you are saying is that you have no belief in your fellow man that he has the intelligence to put aside money for himself for his retirement. We all need to be cared for by our own govt nipple. Really what kind of argument is that. We have relied for far too long on the govt to take care of all our needs. It is now to a point where our govt knows that the bottom 50% earners or feeders need govt support to assist with their food (food stamps) and shelter (govt housing). Even if the people don't need it they still siphon off the govt programs and more and more people are beginning to do this.
Believing that the govt needs to help you with anything is a very feeble minded position to have.
We're talking at cross purposes. I am not for mandatory government support. But I am for state/private sector mutual fund type vehicles honoring their contracts with their subscribers when an industry wide agreement was signed to which every salaried person signed in and contributed on a mandatory basis. That's a contractual relation that should be honored. This is not unfunded entitlements that governments promise ALL people on the dole or on food stamps. When there is a down turn some of these mandatory schemes don't have the resource base to pay their historical entitlements. Thats bad risk management on their part. And I suppose in such cases they will either ask future salaried people to pay more to cover past commitment and get less in return or ask people to work longer before they can retire. That is what is happening in Europe. These increased contributions for new entitlements with a lower payback is going to be the new recipe for the next generation.
I the U.S. the Social Security and Medicare systems are taxes. The Supreme Court of the U.S. has ruled they are taxes and not annuities or insurance programs. There is no contractual obligation.
that does not speak highly for the judicial system of USA...one more breach of moral responsibility by govt/legal system...like the foreclosure farce...and the lack of legal action against Banksta robber barons. The US system less and less a reference for others.
The context of the word "entitlements" here is government social programs but it goes much further.
If you rely on government to take care of what you yourself should be taking care of it will become indispensable to you in that area...whether its food, housing, retirement, health insurance, personal safety...whatever.
You will become an addict, a slave to it. You will justify, in your mind as morally correct, the taking from others far more than you yourself ever put in to the whole. You will ask government to take from your neighbor and give to you.
You will make no distinction between someone who worked diligently their entire lives to get to a certain level of comfort...from someone who had zero ethics or morality and stole from others to reach the same level.
They will be the same to you simply because they have more than you, so you will feel "entitled" to an ever growing share of someone elses labor who has done nothing wrong, who has in fact produced more than you by their own skill & labor. The more productive person will soon reduce their labors and application of certain skill's to any society which does not value that activity higher than someone who produces less or nothing at all. Its human nature.
At some point, you will find yourself actually volunteering to spend your time, resources and energy marching behind your favored robber baron. Whether he has a DHS crest on his shield or an HHS crest makes no difference, you will still be cannon fodder and he could care less really, as you are separating him from those who oppose him.
"Its part of the social contract. If there were no social contract we'd be back to the age of forced labour, feudal or slavery style...Don't want to go there...right??"
Entitlements as I understand it is an economic option offered a salaried person. You make it into a social philosophy. I don't believe in a state that pampers the individual and provides subsidies for nothing. But I do believe in a scheme, state or private, which HONORS its commitment to people who have contributed part of their professional earnings to it on an industry wide contractual basis. That's all I'm saying.
"Entitlements as I understand it is an economic option offered a salaried person. You make it into a social philosophy."
Its not an option if it is involuntary.
It is extracted from every wage earner through taxation. You can't say no don't take this from me...if you decide to do that the "baron" shows up at your door with his men ;-)
You can in europe, by being a self entrepreneur. If you are salaried you pay your dues as per the industry rules, for which you get something in return. If you don't want to then run your own company. No baron can come and claim anything except a small minimum. I have lived in both systems.
but what if you pay in $1 for $2 of entitlements promised by a politician.
the taxpayer who has to make up the $1 difference in your entitlement gets no say in the matter.
This is why a democracy doesn't work. 45 million people on food stamps are likely to vote for whoever EXTENDS the food stamps. The 100 million who work will be labeled as 'rich' people who 'don't want to share'.
The USA was conceived as a republic, to prevent mob rule, and to protect the minority
Congress passes laws & budgets on to the president to sign off on or to veto.
No, it's not quite like that...the President submits a budget, the Congress passes a law to provide funding or not for the President's budget. The President can also spent huge amounts of money through "executive" steps which have to be funded by Congress, but are not actually "legislation." These are the supplemental and emergency spending bills passed to fund excursions in military operations.
Generally speaking, the President would *never* veto the Congressionally approved spending that the President himself requested, and it has been unusual (if not unheard-of) for Congress to deny funding for warfare. The Congress can also pass laws which it funds itself, and these are about the only things the President can veto in order to limit spending.
So Dubya increased the debt by 5T or so through the attack on Afghanistan, invasion of Iraq, tax cuts, and Medicare D. A Dem Congress supported Medicare D, split on the tax cuts but they passed, and opposed the military spending but passed it because it was too difficult politically to actually draw a line.
Now Obama's increased the debt mostly because of the big-spending ways of the last Congress--Medicare D, tax cuts, and several ongoing military occupations, but has also made the situation much worse by supporting the healthcare bill, the attempts to stimulate consumption like C4C, and his own brand-new military escalations in Pakistan and Libya. The fact that tax revenues are falling because of extended national economic contraction is further aggravating the situation.
If you look at things without considering which team you like, it's pretty tough to pin a lion's share of blame on either side. The Republican Executives have tended to increase debt through bombings and tax cuts, and the Democrat Congresses have tended to increase debt through social spending.
In principle, the Dem Congresses "should have" declined to fund the warfare, and the Pub Presidents "should have" vetoed the social spending bills.
But those decisions (for either side) might've affected their ability to get re-elected.
"In principle, the Dem Congresses "should have" declined to fund the warfare, and the Pub Presidents "should have" vetoed the social spending bills.
But those decisions (for either side) might've affected their ability to get re-elected."
Exactly...which is why democracies suck...which is why the constant attacks on the electoral college system that we now enjoy.
But yes, you are one hundred percent correct on the last point...de Tocqueville observed this a long time ago...people will not directly steal from their neighbors, when they can get government to do it for them.
ALL MEMBERS OF THE BAR ASSOCIATION, sit at the will/behest of the EXECUTIVE OFFICE(as well register with the IRS)..find me 1 attorney in the USA, whose licenced to practice law in the USA, and that license is not issued by a subordinate(for lack of a better word) office of the Executive!
if this being a known fact...if the POTUS decided to set up a counterfeiting operation of the US dollar.. who could stop him? assuming all judges and attorneys are 1st and foremost (by license) responsible to the POTUS?
Didn't Nixon say the line...."if the President does it...it not illegal!"
The Judicial Branch is separate (by design) from the Executive Branch and the Legislative Branch...they are officers of the Court...so I guess I don't get your point.
If you're saying things can be corrupted away from the designedlawful structure that the people signed on to, then yes I do.
once again for lack of better words..I'll offer an example...the claim, driving a car, being issued a "drivers license" is not a right, it is a privilege. that can be given or taken.
akin to practicing law...it is not a "right" to become an attorney/BAR member. it is a privilege. given or taken at the will of the POTUS. think, no law license nobody to act as prosecutor in a court
Maybe find out how the members of the "judicial branch, and the legislative branch" are compensated for their services...hmmm I'm guessing FRNs....that stands for federal reserve note(who owns the FED?)..now which "branch" of the government do you see signatures on these notes? further who controls the value of these notes?....enter jeopardy diddy here.
in the past they may have been able to operate by degrees of separation, under the gold standard(limited supply). But now under a fiat currency system of credit/debt...credit can be created without work, or at-least without work until said debt comes due. look at it this way...if the leadership of jpm, or boa(the ones that are members of the FED governors, I'm not sure which are) want a certain man elected, and certain other groups of men NOT elected....would that be easily managed through the issuing of credit to their candidate, and/or not issuing credit to the opposition? this concept doesn't work so well under a gold standard.
the bottom line question i pose to you is...how can any of the members of the Judicial, or Legislative Branches be considered "separate branches" if their compensated by notes issued under order of the Executive branch? and the total breakdown occurs when you add in the "Uniform Commercial Codes"
"they are officers of the Court" maybe...but who issues their license to practice, and who compensates them, and how much debt does each(and include family members) have? Have you not seen the super heroic drive of a deadbeat debtor, trying to keep his family in a home, with food on the table?
Well, I tried, I still don't know what the hell you're talking about.
Being compensated in the "official" currency does not imply an allegiance to anything.
To say so implies everyone who accepts the common currency for goods & services is some sort of co-conspirator...I can assure you that's not the case.
On licensing, I hold similar views to yours...I think.
Licensing, for the most part, is nothing but another tax or fee in my opinion.
There is no added value to an individual looking to hire someones services, by having the government involved in the process (who are not professionals in anything they license by a long shot) by saying, yes, Joe Blow does in fact hold accreditation from X association who are his professional peers or has a degree from Y college showing competency in Z field.
Any of that can be ascertained easily before someone plunks down their money for whatever service is being offered...all the license means is he stroked a check to government after presenting the above accreditation or degree, falsified or not.
"Being compensated in the "official" currency does not imply an allegiance to anything.
To say so implies everyone who accepts the common currency for goods & services is some sort of co-conspirator...I can assure you that's not the case."
..go check the constitution for reference to what the U.S. is suppose to use as an "official" currency.
this is the biggie...."To say so implies everyone who accepts the common currency for goods & services is some sort of co-conspirator"
did you not hear CONGRESSMAN Ron Pauls statement that the FED is illegal?..why would he be able to make such a claim?
"There is no added value to an individual looking to hire someones services, by having the government involved in the process (who are not professionals in anything they license by a long shot) by saying, yes, Joe Blow does in fact hold accreditation from X association who are his professional peers or has a degree from Y college showing competency in Z field.
Any of that can be ascertained easily before someone plunks down their money for whatever service is being offered...all the license means is he stroked a check to government after presenting the above accreditation or degree, falsified or not."
the added value/savings/piece-of-mind/propaganda comes by way of the costs involved on the insurance/bonding by the fed/banker/insurance industries.
Having been a pharmaceutical chemical compounder for a major aerosol, liquid, and powder, filling company...now do you really think i can just decide to start making the same shit in my garage, and be able to sell my goods? yes i would find buyers, however i would never be able to get the insurance/bonding to label for sale, nor would i be able to attain a permit to make such mixtures at home, nor could i get FDA approval for nation-wide/world-wide sales. nor could i get EPA, hazmat approval for storage/shipping of the materials needed...but i'll tell you..i have plenty of experience to do the work...and believe it...a compounders work is 110% accurate...it has to be. so its not like the product would be bad.
"go check the constitution for reference to what the U.S. is suppose to use as an "official" currency."
You're not sittin around here thinkin I'm not a hard money guy are you?
"did you not hear CONGRESSMAN Ron Pauls statement that the FED is illegal?..why would he be able to make such a claim?"
This will offend everyone...but I really don't give a fuck what Paul says...I care what he does. So far all he's done is talk.
As far as your screed on licensing...when you produce something that is harmful or does not work as advertised (pharmaceuticals in your example) you will be sued for fraud and/or damages.
The government does not get sued for negligently giving you a license...thus, no added value for having it.
How many times do we have to go through this?...the government's CDC said the pig flu will kill us all, it didn't.
Though they pumped quite a few kids & elderly full rapidly deteriorating "medicine" in the form of shots & nasal spray. My kids were not in that group. I told them I had signed the papers that under no circumstances are they to be given it by anyone...if they tried, to fight them off and run out of school...I would take it from there.
Alar will kill us all, eggs will kill us all, coffee, wine, fat, cholesterol...fucking aspirin & contrails...LOL...they are/were all licensed by the government.
"in a civil court hearing what is professional testimony...in criminal court could anybody enter/read the results for DNA samples?"
If there were no licensing by government, would it still be considered "professional testimony", if the one giving it were considered a professional in good standing among his or her peers in that field?
hmmm...well maybe were lighting a candle at both ends on this...same conclusions...just different approaches...a good funny on this would be reading about how the APA (American Psychology Association) came to be...and now these professionals can now maKe claim, as an authority, and can challenge parental custody, and drug children. I couldn't find it on the web in a brief search, but 1 of the original founders retired recently, and published a closing letter......VERY DAMNING of the whole industry. wish i could find it...if anybody can find it. please link it. the word therapists used to be 2 words that were merged together for this industry, the-rapists! ok well i guess that's a lie...but funny as hell, i gotta credit Chevy, and Dan on a SNL skit for that 1.
"if the one giving it were considered a professional in good standing among his or her peers in that field?" well...i'm no attorney, but i would think "good standing among peers" would be a speculative statement in a court..."the innocence project" kinda proves this. I'm pretty sure judges only want facts in cases.
and i'm in indiana right now, and i'm not sure we have courts that are "in good standing with peers" at this point.
"hmmm...well maybe were lighting a candle at both ends on this...same conclusions...just different approaches..."
Seems so.
I believe in having a system of government that works, as opposed to anarchy. I'm not saying I think you're an anarchist, I'm saying I don't subscribe to what is termed mainstream libertarianism.
"a good funny on this would be reading about how the APA (American Psychology Association)"
My loathing of psychologists is only surpassed by my loathing of socialists...LOL. Here is a group that profits from roaming around in confused peoples minds even as they tell you they do not know what makes the brain work. I would wager that with proper research a case could be made they have harmed far more people than they have helped. My opnion is most of them are mentally unstable themselves.
"and i'm in indiana right now, and i'm not sure we have courts that are "in good standing with peers" at this point."
I saw that...my comments on that travesty of a court case begin on page two of comments...
I believe in having a system of government that works, as opposed to anarchy.
Government will only "work", or at least work in the best interests of the common citizen, when government is composed solely of angels. Until then, such wishful thinking is dangerously naive and hopelessly utopian.
We have already seen, countless times throughout history, anarchy work and work well in many societal spheres ("anarchy" being properly defined simply as the absence of governmental coercion) --- why is it therefore "impossible" to see it work in ALL spheres of society?
Statists of all persuasions always love to smear the concept of anarchy as "utopian" and "impractical", never acknowledging the far greater (and destructive) utopianism and impracticality of their sociopathology-enabling and institutionalized mass coercion.
"Government will only "work", or at least work in the best interests of the common citizen, when government is composed solely of angels."
Akak my old friend, there are only men & women who comprise any government. So in anarchy you would have the same would you not?
It would not be angelic at all in my estimation. There would/will always be a group that attempts to dominate others.
"We have already seen, countless times throughout history, anarchy work and work well in many societal spheres ("anarchy" being properly defined simply as the absence of governmental coercion) --- why is it therefore "impossible" to see it work in ALL spheres of society?"
I come from the camp that says less is more...but none is not so good either. For example, I'm not willing to live in a society that allows a factory owner to dump his waste into the drinking water supply because there is no infringement on his desire to do so to maximize his profits. There is nothing angelic or utopian about that. For example, I have the ability to defend myself from a home invasion but I have no ability to defend someone in Arizona from one.
And I'm not at all willing to go all tribal, as there will always be someone at the top. I don't do dictatorships and monarchies very well...anymore than I do socialism & communism.
What were these societies so we can reference them properly?
"Statists of all persuasions always love to smear the concept of anarchy as "utopian" and "impractical", never acknowledging the far greater (and destructive) utopianism and impracticality of their sociopathology-enabling and institutionalized mass coercion."
You're not calling me a statist I hope, because this will degenerate rather quickly. You should know me better by now.
I'm not about all of an individuals productivity/labor going toward the greater good of the state instead of himself.
I'm for limited government in all areas while recognizing the need for it...everyone is not like you and I but we have to live with them. I've fought authority over myself as an individual all my life, I will until they plant me. If everyone did so the chains that bind a government down would be strengthened not weakened.
Which is how I look at government in all its forms...a beast that is needed, but must be bound by us.
As we have seen here on ZH, there are very few (if any) angels here...only people, full of the same greed, lust, desires, petty schemes, deciet etc. that makes people, people.
Hell, some of them won't even identify what part of the planet they're from when you ask them point blank...LOL!!!...these would be the same people under anarchy...untrustworthy.
Yes, HE did say that. Mr. Nixon also exclaimed on tv, before millions of sheeple that "I AM NOT A CROOK"! this is verifiable history if you wish to research it.
Obama says that it is not a war and only limited involvement. Now, if Libya were blowing things up around the country with drones how would he declare the action?
Oh, I know the history. Let's take a look at your working definitions...
"Sponsoring terrorism" is an empty phrase. What we'd like to call illegal when done by someone like Iran is ok when done by our President.
Missile attacks on non-combatants are not "war" because no infantry troops are landed.
Congressional approval makes unprovoked war of aggression legal.
Conclusion: "legal" or "illegal" is more a matter of opinion than anything else. So even if you have past precedent and such on your side, the right lawyers can make the current escalation in Libya legal.
It's all a fiction to ensure no one gets too involved improving his own life. Folks running the show want us to argue over this stuff.
(PS: Your response was well-stated. I knew you had it in you.)
The numbers are available. Doing it off budget is bullshit, but all congresses are corrupt now that they've learned the proles are even more stupid than they could have imagined.
Thank Carter and his Dept. of Education. Only two generations, and we are more clueless than even Europeans.
Aren't the presidents required to spend the money appropriated by congress? Sequestering was tried (forgot which president) and was shot down in court.
Have you ever heard of unfunded mandates and an over budget projects? Most of those overbudget are related to defense, but if you don't even include Iraq war spending in the budget it doesn't really matter, does it? I think the president has a pretty free hand when it comes to spending, especially when he can manufacture a crisis. 911 could have apparently been solved with air-strikes and seal team 6, but Bush chose to invade Iraq instead - knowing that he risked bankrupting the country.
seems to me the correlation between Rep/Dem is slowly moving to 1
Just look at the 2nd derivative, that's where the story is.
I'd like to see this data as a percent change per president. Might give you a better idea, as well as a beginning %GDP and Ending %GPD. would put things in perspective as to how much the return on that debt expansion was.
ie, was the debt expansion worth it under a given pres.
Log scale.
This chart us useless if it is not on a log scale, or adjusted for inflation (log scale). Totally useless chart other than the fact that it does prove that government actually DO spend money.
Can anyone provide this same data with debt valued in gold rather than dollars?
TPOG
Sure, I can.
Look here:
http://mises.dyndns.info/~rwicks/theEnd/
It's a little more than 1/2 way down the page but I think you will find all the information useful.
The real story is told when you look at who controls the house and senate during each presidency.
It doesn't matter who controls the house or the senate or the presidency.
The national debt has grown 9.4% a year on average for 41 years. In some years it's done marginally better and some years marginally worse.
The only story is, is there isn't any functional difference between Republicans and Democrats today. There's your story. The left right paradigm is a myth. They just tell you different lies and give you different excuses for what they do. What are we doing in Libya? Oh, it's the help the poor people of Libya escape that evil dictator. If McCain won, who knows - it could have been about weapons of mass destruction again, or more likely, terrorism.
Stop being a stupid tool, please - or at least don't vote if you can't stop being a moron.
How many goddamned years does this have to go on before you stupid morons realize what is going on?
You are both a couple of fools. AIPAC is your master. You are servile subjects of your lizard overlords, do not forget it.
AIPAC is just an example of the corruption of the system. It's 5 million Jewish bigot dumbasses in Israel, our government don't really care about them. What do you think will happen to Israel when the US goes insolvent?
How has the US helped Israel by allowing it to wage a 60+ year war against it's indigenous population? You think that's going to end well?
AIPAC is just a bunch of stupid moron bigot assholes that don't realize that what they are doing, is absolutely guaranteeing the eventual destruction of the Jewish state. It's just another distraction for the boneheaded American populace. Yes, it has real consequences, but the US is going bankrupt and that's really the only issue to an actual American.
Nice. Thanks for the link.
This is an interesting thought from the Debt/Silver ratio:
But since the dollar has lost 90% of its purchasing power since 1933, you only really owe 10% of the debt. Nothing to worry about then.
but the national debt has gone up 34,900% ($40.6billion in 1933 to $14.2 trillion in 2011) in that time.
so reducing it for purchasing power 34,900 x 10% = 3,490% increase in 1933 denominated debt.
Or 14.2 trillion (in 2011$) x 10% (purchasing power back in 1933) = $1.42 trillion in 1933 dollars.
That comment was tongue and cheek, since you took the time to post - If you are using CPI for a purchasing power measure and extrapolating from way back in 1933, the results are so flawed that no one would take them seriously, maybe you didn’t mean them to be taken seriously but that’s another matter. There are many different ways of trying to gauge "real worth" from so distant in the past, as you probably know - as i have said before, i am no economist - but which measure do you pick, why pick it, what methodology do you use to limit it's flaws, what is the essential context, and ultimately, how has life changed - and are we confident enough to say we have tracked those changes correctly?(fuck no man, fuck no!)
You need to be clear on why you are looking, and what you want to find, and considering you are talking about 14trln in debt that has been used for many, perhaps uncountable reasons, just bandying a CPI number around says little about the real value of the amount, the value gained from it, or indeed the real consequences of the debt. Its safe to say, the mind-bending complications of trying, are sufficient enough, that any old argument proposed could probably be backed up with some measure or another, given the right context and motives.
For example,.(dont be too shy to correct me here) In 1933, for the relative worth of $14,200,000,000,000, we get (using CPI) $844,000,000,000. The national debt then was actually $56,400,000,000(as of june 1933), and if you had of been in the same amount of debt then as you are now on that relative basis, it would have been ~1500% of GDP using the CPI, but yet its under 100% GDP presently (which paradoxically would imply rather strange growth if you tried to extrapolate from then until now).
On the other hand if you use Relative share of GDP(or how much was the debt worth then compared to the economy now), the $56,400,000,000 debt your government really held in 1933 would have been $14,700,000,000,000! today, $5,940,000,000,000 using nominal GDP per capita, and when adjusted for inflation(unrequired!) $942,000,000,000 - even still you would owe around fifteen times more today than you did in 1933....big deal. If you want it shrink stop voting for republicans!
Bravo.
Log scale would clearly be better. The chart is ugly enough as it is however.
Parden the thread jack---
DTFM
Do The Fucking Math
Did you think it wouldn't happen? Bwah ha ha...
Looks like the 10 year gold chart.
GREAT OBSERVATION!
The situation is that WHEN THE USA WENT OFF THE GOLD REDEMPTION IN THE EARLY 1970's that, since now the US dollar was essentiall worthless with no backing, it gave the GOV the oppertunity to inflate to infinity.
I would do a few things:
- Log Scale
- Shift data by one year to the right since budget is set in prior year (usually)
- Color-code the background by proportion of GOP or Dem in House
- Not just Red vs Blue, but more Red if more more GOP in control (slightly if slim majority), and likewise with Blue
- Perhaps a second shading for control of Senate
- Add bar indicating recessions
- 2 versions
- One with $ of debt
- One with % Debt to GDP
- 2 more master versions
- One with Straight Debt, and I would say include debt owed to social security and other intra-governmental
- One with All Debt, including Unfunded Liabilities
Can get more and more complex, but I think these would be even more enlightening
NB: The indent feature is not working
Log scale, absolutely, and a potential 3rd graph; debt/receipts. I never understood this debt/GDP, it's not as if the government can claim all of GDP in taxes one year. The potential for increased receipts is connected to existing receipts.
Which leads me to "Monetary Regimes and Inflation" - according to the bible on hyperinflation, once 40% of all spending is raised through new debts, we're in hyperinflation territory. The US is there.
Apparently I have reached auto-junk status from some posters. I can't imagine what is controversial here unless you are against information.
Inflation adjusted, the current debt would be 560 billion in 1938.
The US would never have entered WOII with a debt like that.
But the chart sucks because it only shows the names of the puppets, and not the events that caused the rises.
For example: During the Kennedy era, the US went to the moon and spend hughe amounts of money. But yet, the debt ceiling hardly moved in that decade, and yet after 64, it was the end of 90% silver coins.
Coincidentally, 1964 was the year Johnson began the War on Poverty.
Rodent,
ha!
Junked for the truth.........that's fresh!.
if this was a chart of silver going parabolic, everyone would be nervous that we would get a parabolic crash.
Ha ha, good point!
Also, what in God's name is that chart all about anyway, showing the rate of growth in the national debt DECREASING under Obama? WTF?!
Is that you John Maynard?
Or...just needed to graph it in Log-scale, or else it's misleading. For instance, it doesn't show that the Vietnam war is what started the whole necessity for money printing. Also, it fails to show that during Reagan, the Federal deficit expanded by the greatest % GDP of any President.
$1,500,000,000,000.00+ per year and growing................Ya, Im pretty sure Obama takes this one inflation adjusted or not.
I think W is the winner. Obama has surprisingly taken the slope down a bit.
If you look closely at the graph, you'll see 2011 and 2012 are in there.
Those are PROJECTIONS not actual data. Bush was a stupid fuckhead of an asshole of a president - that being said, whoever made that graph is skewing to make Obama look better than he is - and he's a stupid fucked of an asshole of a president whose just like Bush.
I like how I get junked for pointing out a deception in the chart, and openly stating what kind of shitheads we have in power, but the junker doesn't have the balls to rebutt what he knows to be true.
balls shit fuck asshole morons shitheads morons fuck!
"I think W is the winner. Obama has surprisingly taken the slope down a bit."
Obama's reign of destruction isn't over yet. We'll see when his 4 years are done. God help us if he gets re-elected. (Then again, the next republican stooge will do the same thing.)
Here you go (at least part of it). Makes the correlation pretty clear.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_by_U.S._presidential_terms
Nolsdrad,
As a percentage of GDP, here are the numbers for each president:
Reagan: 14.9%
GHWB: 7.1%
Clinton: -13.4% (he did increase the debt a little, but GDP growth outstripped)
GWB: 5.6%
Obama: 21.9% (up to Dec. 2010)
(source: politifact)
This chart proves that we have had the same president since late 1963.
Chart does miss the fact that about a trillion of Bambi's part was carried over to him.
Bush II kept the cost of the war off the debt books. The left call it the charge card.
My only question is, if the war wasn't on it. Where did all that money go during Bush II.
dotcom bubble
realestate bubble
bond bubble
I have no idea where you got the $1 trillion cost from. Even the Obama administration put the cost at $100 billion per year. So out of Obama's $5 trillion in debt, take out $300 billion. Obama ran up $4.7 trillion in debt in less than three years. Bush kept it off the books when presenting the budget, but CBO didn't. The cost is included in the national debt.
You honestly believe the war only cost 100 billion a year. Think about that. All those years of war only cost 100 billion a year. All that concrete we layed down. All the payoff's to Blackrock, Halliburton and all those private contractors that we have no idea where the money went. I'll help, much money went to entities the are not U.S. citizens. Just to start the campaign most likely cost us 500 billion. I've just started, but I quit. Your right, 100 billion a year. LOL
The Media has destroyed another mind, and it is not mine. Oh yeah, Bambi sucks too. We are still there.
My back of the napkin calcs have simple feeding of 200,000 troops 3 times a day at $40 a wwhack (KBR rate) at $9 billion a year. Fuel? fugettabout it. $100b? you can't say "should we go to war?" for a $100b
And you can't give medical treatment for the 50,000 wounded american soldiers for less than 50k each...ooops, another 2.5b.....for LIFE!
Plus, ya gotta factor in pallets of Benjis disappearing off air base tarmacs...
Cost of ordnance of all kinds from the daily burn rate of 7.62 all the way up to daisy cutters, DU sabot rounds, and the occasional cruise missile. The stuff is not bein bought on the cheap either. Giaps men collected their brass for chrissakes, hell, they even collected ours. There has probably been no army in history which can match Empire America's for sheer, orgyistic profligacy of materiel.
to say nothing of the "humans wasted" - which is rarely factored in. . .
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2011/05/19/iraq-afghanistan-wars-spawn-new-...
and it goes without saying, those inhabitants of the nationstate being invaded, and poisoned, are even more rarely mentioned, or taken into "account."
Goldman using currency swaps to hide the true national debt? Plausible.
"New Disclosures on Currency Swaps with Goldman to Hide Greek Debt; Tip of the Iceberg says Former Bond Trader "Dr. Evil""
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2011/05/new-disclosures-on-cu...
Air Amerika, still on the job!
also Medicare expansion and NCLB.
All of his friends?
Yes, looting of the USofA is now common place.
As for me, I don't have progeny so I don't give a fuck anymore.
I'm about to relocate to the outskirts of a third or fourth tier metro area and buy a secured piece of property to watch the rest of you tards burn it all to the fucking ground!
I no longer give a fuck about all you mongoloid trash voting for the (D) & (R) Free Crap Empire™, I hope you enjoy the whirlwind.
Piss off and die,
Quixotic_Not out!
+100 My point exactly. You Rule the Night.
LMAO! +divide by zero
What I really meant was that it is no coincidence that after JFK was assasinated in 1963---the same JFK who was fighting the Fed and Treasury at least nominally on behalf of maintaining monetary silver---there has been a series of very pro-Fed, pro-spend, pro-paper presidents, and as a result, you can see what has happened.
So, silver was taken out in '64, gold in '71, and copper in '82. Sort of on-topic and sort of off-topic, I got an email from Gainesville today that they are selling 1-avp oz copper rounds for "only $1.48 over spot!" Of course, copper is under $4.00 a avp-pound, so its spot price per avp-oz is about $0.25. But here's Gainesville selling 1 avp-oz copper rounds for $1.73; that's a record-setting 592% premium! (Uh, yeah---no, thanks.)
http://www.gainesvillecoins.com/products/157766/NewAmericanDrapedBust1AV...(MadeIntheUSA)ThisisonlyastockphotoshippingJune3rd.aspx
I'm all for sequestering copper---but by simply pulling copper pennies out of circulation, you can get a whole pound of copper by collecting just 154 pennies (which only costs $1.54). And there are tons and tons of copper pennies out there.
I've been "sequestering" copper pennies since 2006, and have several hundred pounds. In the process I've turned my son into a coin collector who ironically had me order him some copper rounds from gainesville earlier this week.
Well, a few Gainesville rounds as a reward for your son's good behaviour I think is fine--just don't buy 7000 of them! :) But if you've been sequestering since '06, you already know that. I expect that the practice is on the rise, and I'm all for it.
You might interested in these tables I put together a couple of years ago on the topic of penny arbitrage which will let you gauge the changing value on a per-pound or face-value basis:
http://banksterreport.blogspot.com/2009/12/penny-arbitrage-us-dollar-and...
It is also an easy way to explain (unideal) arbitrage to your son. How long do you think the Congress keeps the restriction on melting them? The silver coin melting restriction didn't last very long, did it? I think all of our coins will be aluminium (currently $1.15/lb) soon, anyway, and then they'll take our aluminium as well.
I know you actually meant 'the [first] derivative.' the second derivative is scratching at straws to extract a meaning from it. i.e. you meant the function that represents the rate of change in slope of a tangent line to the curve at any given point. You've been taking cues from those bastards on CNBC who say 'second derivative' all the time when they mean 'the derivative' too. Same with everyone who keeps saying 'that begs the question' when they really mean 'I feel like I'm being begged to ask this question' which is totally not the same thing.
Thank you, you are correct.
well there is administration slant and then there is media slant. Which is the slant on the administration slant. That's a double slant, like a second derivative. As for begging, whether its for a question or for an answer...its always a way of spinning the story where you want to take it.
Media is what media does... as media is the message...if you don't believe that you're out of a job pronto fast in MSM.
also thank you. clarity is an increasingly rare virtue.
Put another way, if this is a function of how far the train is from a cliff, the first derivative tells how fast the train is speeding towards the edge, while the second indicates if someone is slamming on the gas or the brakes.
I'm not convinced the "second derivative" was in error.
I want to see someone who actually plotted the average maturity of government debt.
That tells you more about what is going on in money printing. Total debt can be masked by a trend to shortened maturities.
Remember: zero maturity is money printing. Longer means that debt is supporting infrastructure development.
hey ist, I like a little math dirty talk as much as the next guy but WTF is looking at the first or second or third derivative going to reveal?
It's certainly not something about the future, because that graph could flatline or reverse in a collapse. Why don't you predict what the graph will do if Ron Paul gets elected POTUS?
We would probably default on the debt. It is the only way he could make good on his promises. I'm fine with that.
yep.
Q. What's a Republican?
A. 95% of a Democrat.
A: A democrat who is against gay marriage
Nobody wants gay marriage.
Do you know any gay people?
anyine who thinks about gay as much as him is gay.. closet gay... meth and male escort gay.. but dont blame him.. his manly, fat wife has a bigger dick than he does thusly he is feeling girly all the time..
While the idiot morons have their clowns fight over gay marriage, flag burning, school prayer, abortion, and other trivial bullshit, the country goes bankrupt.
Kind of puts into perspective what is important. Hmm, if two men can legally screw one another with the blessing of the government, OR if an economy exists at all and our monetary system exists. Hmmm. Golly - which one should be addressed and which one is just a big fat distraction for chucklehead morons?
You idiots that vote based on this crap, should all be hanged as traitors to the nation, because you're the principle reason we have this joke two-party system. If gay marriage was even an issue, Bush was in power for 8 years with 6 years of a Republican majority with a Republican judicial branch - there could have been an amendment passed at any time for that - if anybody actually gave a crap. It's just a non issue to get you morons to vote for one of the factions of our one-party system. Different rhetoric, same actions.
Guantanamo is still open, Patriot is still law, president still going to war skipping congressional approval, Iran and Afgahnistan still on, paid mercenaries still are being paid by our government, still threatening Iran, warrantless wiretapping hasn't stopped.
Hope and change - well the only people that had any hope were the ones that never bothered to check the voting record of Obama, when he was a junior senator. Can't wait until the US dollar collapses so I never have to hear about bullshit issues again. All you idiots will be spending all your time trying to find food, and won't have time to decide if we should have skool prayer or not - finally you won't give a crap either.
Bravo!!
yup, equal parts in the same plot. Time to drop the old paradigm conservative/liberal/republican/democrat/socialist/fascist. It all amounts to powerful seeking and getting more power vs powerless loosing more power mostly unconscious and unaware of reality and entertained with useless rhetoric. Time to wake up
Yup. Those who claimed to be 'conservative' actually accelerated the end-point by being the most radical spenders with the most radical monetary policies.
Both parties are nothing more than trading cards to make the public believe that there is really free choice. Like having Coke and Pepsi competing for consumers with a rule that you can't drink anything else.
"Presented without thought."
Let's see: does it matter which party was in charge of Congress when a president was increasing the debt? Clearly not to pea-brained simpletons.
But on the other hand, do any of the fuckheads elected to either the legislative or executive branch give a shit about the fools that pay the bills?
Exactly -- CONgress is responsible for originating and passing the spending bills. How about a chart showing US Debt and the party-affiliations of the CONgresses responsible (especially the House since that is where spending bills are supposed to originate). The Democrats like to blame Bush for the bailouts, but if you go back and look at the actual votes, you will see that it was mostly Democrats with the help of a few Republicans that passed it. And, Democrats controlled both houses of CONgress and the presidency during this latest bout of spending lunacy.
Not that it matters much because both parties are ultimately responsible.
While the presidents are equally culpable the task of creating the budget falls at the feet of Congress. A useless lot that adopted baseline budgeting. I'd like to see the real books using GAP. The horrors are hidden in the details. If congress had errors and omission insurance it would be time to make a big fricking claim.
It seems there is no difference... these politicians are merely marionettes with whips and guns and they've enslaved the whole world.
In times of change you need new alternatives and new ideas.
Land in Panama is one of the most undervalued assets in 2011.
PROTECT YOUR CAPITAL. INVEST. SAVE. OWN. LAND.
http://www.thorssoncapital.com/land-portfolio.html
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110 documents to put away Obama..for an unelected dual citizen!
http://www.youtube.com/user/TheAlexJonesChannel#p/u/4/OqvvqGqpkgE
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=301329
Looks like a bubble to me.
My only question is: Can you eat it?
debt only costs $5 to dig out of the ground
"and the stuff is literally everywhere!"
"grows on trees!"
"Brawk!"
"Trollie wants a cracker, Trollie wants a cracker!"
i hear.. that the comex has sooooooooooooooo much that they are having some kind of fire sale!!!
No commentary necessary, TD. No comentary necessary.
The last veto pen factory shut down in the 60's ;-)
The point is important: Congress spends money, not the president.
Not true, Congress makes the money available, the president puts it to use. The republican presidents seem to consistanly spend more than is available. The last true conservative was Eisenhauer, but we all knew that.
Where does Congress get the money?...not lately, every one knows we're flat ass broke...but theoretically, where is Congress supposed to get the money?
It's been debt expansion since Reagan.
The president cannot levy a tax...that takes Congress to pass a law...Congress passes laws & budgets on to the president to sign off on or to veto.
Period. End of story.
If the government had more veto and less law (including spiraling upward budgets based on base line budgeting) the government would be in better shape than it is.
You will note, I said its the governments problem, not mine.
Or- if they were forced to levy taxes to pay as they go...
What are you talking about now?...you've gone from Congress "manufacturing" money to give to the president to spend on what he wants (apparently they don't need to tax anyone or anything)...to the pay go?
What party championed pay go and what did they actually do when they had a majority in the senate, house & executive branch of government?
And on this force business...what or who will be doing the forcing?
Is that anything like a debt ceiling law without the dentures in?
I think we agree that the government spends too much, I think we agree that the budget should be balanced. I think we also agree that both parties cannot be trusted.
I agree with all of that.
But how it is balanced & who to trust to balance it, is the debate.
I've pretty much withdrawn from it all for now...if it collapses in my lifetime fine, if it doesn't I've prepared my children for it...as any father should.
The simple fact remains...you could seize all the earnings over 300k and run the country for six months...that's how large the debt it is. You could gut the 600-700 billion for defense and not even get close.
"Entitlements" (the word itself turns my stomach) will have to be dealt with or there is no chance...this "thing" has been built over decades and no one anywhere on the globe can afford this...only the existence of the "black hole" of the central banks makes it possible for war & welfare...you will have to decide for yourself...I already have.
why does "entitlements" turn your stomach?
Is a man's pay check earning, that is used to create a future nest egg for retirement pension or for health care. Is that not a valid reason for that person to receive something in return down the road? He's contributed to it from his earned salary. Its not money made out of thin air...like government spending on 'prestige', sabre ratting wars...what's your problem with that???
Its part of the social contract. If there were no social contract we'd be back to the age of forced labour, feudal or slavery style...Don't want to go there...right??
OK, I'll say it, it needs saying:
Is a man's pay check earning, that is used to create a future nest egg for retirement pension or for health care.
Except that it wasn't really insurance or an annuity or a nest egg, it was a tax. The tax money has been spent. The "Greatest Generation" fell for the "Trust Fund" canard like a sack of potatoes. They saw it instituted, they saw it expanded, they believed in it, they failed to adequately oversee it. The failure is theirs. They trusted the government and the government stole their money. It was a Ponzi scheme with guns behind it. Now they want to steal from me to make up for their error, socializing their losses.
Nope.
Its part of the social contract. If there were no social contract we'd be back to the age of forced labour, feudal or slavery style...Don't want to go there...right??
This conflation is so wide you could drive a truck through it. Obviously it could be used to justify anything. Fail.
You don't propose a solution to the entitlement thesis. You just critique it negatively.
Every man who works and pays his dues has a right to retirement and health care in a civilized world. That's his paid in entitlement. How it gets remunerated is subject to debate when we hit hard times. But denying its existence is make-belief economics. So saying "fail" is not a response. It's a sign of impotent governance, as you speak for the employer/legislator class. I fail your fail.
As for your demonstration about entitlement being a tax perk under the great generation legislation, I find it very unconvincing. Here in europe, entitlements are not tax perks. They are industry wide negotiated deals whereby salaried people set aside a part of their earnings in mutual fund type vehicles, which are either government or private sector run, and which ensure both health care and retirement pension pay, on a sliding scale basis that is pegged to monthly contribution by subscriber (obviously a function of his actual take home pay). I don't know what tax perks has to do with it. We all pay income tax on our take home pay including the entitlement benefits.
So what you are saying is that you have no belief in your fellow man that he has the intelligence to put aside money for himself for his retirement. We all need to be cared for by our own govt nipple. Really what kind of argument is that. We have relied for far too long on the govt to take care of all our needs. It is now to a point where our govt knows that the bottom 50% earners or feeders need govt support to assist with their food (food stamps) and shelter (govt housing). Even if the people don't need it they still siphon off the govt programs and more and more people are beginning to do this.
Believing that the govt needs to help you with anything is a very feeble minded position to have.
We're talking at cross purposes. I am not for mandatory government support. But I am for state/private sector mutual fund type vehicles honoring their contracts with their subscribers when an industry wide agreement was signed to which every salaried person signed in and contributed on a mandatory basis. That's a contractual relation that should be honored. This is not unfunded entitlements that governments promise ALL people on the dole or on food stamps. When there is a down turn some of these mandatory schemes don't have the resource base to pay their historical entitlements. Thats bad risk management on their part. And I suppose in such cases they will either ask future salaried people to pay more to cover past commitment and get less in return or ask people to work longer before they can retire. That is what is happening in Europe. These increased contributions for new entitlements with a lower payback is going to be the new recipe for the next generation.
I the U.S. the Social Security and Medicare systems are taxes. The Supreme Court of the U.S. has ruled they are taxes and not annuities or insurance programs. There is no contractual obligation.
that does not speak highly for the judicial system of USA...one more breach of moral responsibility by govt/legal system...like the foreclosure farce...and the lack of legal action against Banksta robber barons. The US system less and less a reference for others.
The greatest generation is dead. It's the baby boomers who are robbing you.
"why does "entitlements" turn your stomach?"
I'll tell you why.
The context of the word "entitlements" here is government social programs but it goes much further.
If you rely on government to take care of what you yourself should be taking care of it will become indispensable to you in that area...whether its food, housing, retirement, health insurance, personal safety...whatever.
You will become an addict, a slave to it. You will justify, in your mind as morally correct, the taking from others far more than you yourself ever put in to the whole. You will ask government to take from your neighbor and give to you.
You will make no distinction between someone who worked diligently their entire lives to get to a certain level of comfort...from someone who had zero ethics or morality and stole from others to reach the same level.
They will be the same to you simply because they have more than you, so you will feel "entitled" to an ever growing share of someone elses labor who has done nothing wrong, who has in fact produced more than you by their own skill & labor. The more productive person will soon reduce their labors and application of certain skill's to any society which does not value that activity higher than someone who produces less or nothing at all. Its human nature.
At some point, you will find yourself actually volunteering to spend your time, resources and energy marching behind your favored robber baron. Whether he has a DHS crest on his shield or an HHS crest makes no difference, you will still be cannon fodder and he could care less really, as you are separating him from those who oppose him.
"Its part of the social contract. If there were no social contract we'd be back to the age of forced labour, feudal or slavery style...Don't want to go there...right??"
I went straight there didn't I? ;-)
Entitlements as I understand it is an economic option offered a salaried person. You make it into a social philosophy. I don't believe in a state that pampers the individual and provides subsidies for nothing. But I do believe in a scheme, state or private, which HONORS its commitment to people who have contributed part of their professional earnings to it on an industry wide contractual basis. That's all I'm saying.
"Entitlements as I understand it is an economic option offered a salaried person. You make it into a social philosophy."
Its not an option if it is involuntary.
It is extracted from every wage earner through taxation. You can't say no don't take this from me...if you decide to do that the "baron" shows up at your door with his men ;-)
You can in europe, by being a self entrepreneur. If you are salaried you pay your dues as per the industry rules, for which you get something in return. If you don't want to then run your own company. No baron can come and claim anything except a small minimum. I have lived in both systems.
Same here, my wife owns a business and I used to...sounds about the same as you still have to claim some wages which are taxed.
Where do you hail from in Europe?
france
Thank you.
but what if you pay in $1 for $2 of entitlements promised by a politician.
the taxpayer who has to make up the $1 difference in your entitlement gets no say in the matter.
This is why a democracy doesn't work. 45 million people on food stamps are likely to vote for whoever EXTENDS the food stamps. The 100 million who work will be labeled as 'rich' people who 'don't want to share'.
The USA was conceived as a republic, to prevent mob rule, and to protect the minority
Congress passes laws & budgets on to the president to sign off on or to veto.
No, it's not quite like that...the President submits a budget, the Congress passes a law to provide funding or not for the President's budget. The President can also spent huge amounts of money through "executive" steps which have to be funded by Congress, but are not actually "legislation." These are the supplemental and emergency spending bills passed to fund excursions in military operations.
Generally speaking, the President would *never* veto the Congressionally approved spending that the President himself requested, and it has been unusual (if not unheard-of) for Congress to deny funding for warfare. The Congress can also pass laws which it funds itself, and these are about the only things the President can veto in order to limit spending.
So Dubya increased the debt by 5T or so through the attack on Afghanistan, invasion of Iraq, tax cuts, and Medicare D. A Dem Congress supported Medicare D, split on the tax cuts but they passed, and opposed the military spending but passed it because it was too difficult politically to actually draw a line.
Now Obama's increased the debt mostly because of the big-spending ways of the last Congress--Medicare D, tax cuts, and several ongoing military occupations, but has also made the situation much worse by supporting the healthcare bill, the attempts to stimulate consumption like C4C, and his own brand-new military escalations in Pakistan and Libya. The fact that tax revenues are falling because of extended national economic contraction is further aggravating the situation.
If you look at things without considering which team you like, it's pretty tough to pin a lion's share of blame on either side. The Republican Executives have tended to increase debt through bombings and tax cuts, and the Democrat Congresses have tended to increase debt through social spending.
In principle, the Dem Congresses "should have" declined to fund the warfare, and the Pub Presidents "should have" vetoed the social spending bills.
But those decisions (for either side) might've affected their ability to get re-elected.
"Congress passes laws & budgets on to the president to sign off on or to veto.
No, it's not quite like that...the President submits a budget, the Congress passes a law to provide funding or not for the President's budget."
The president submits a budget request. A request, any request, can be denied by the people who appropriate the money...that would be Congress.
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
"In principle, the Dem Congresses "should have" declined to fund the warfare, and the Pub Presidents "should have" vetoed the social spending bills.
But those decisions (for either side) might've affected their ability to get re-elected."
Exactly...which is why democracies suck...which is why the constant attacks on the electoral college system that we now enjoy.
But yes, you are one hundred percent correct on the last point...de Tocqueville observed this a long time ago...people will not directly steal from their neighbors, when they can get government to do it for them.
I think people are forgeting a key fact here...
ALL MEMBERS OF THE BAR ASSOCIATION, sit at the will/behest of the EXECUTIVE OFFICE(as well register with the IRS)..find me 1 attorney in the USA, whose licenced to practice law in the USA, and that license is not issued by a subordinate(for lack of a better word) office of the Executive!
if this being a known fact...if the POTUS decided to set up a counterfeiting operation of the US dollar.. who could stop him? assuming all judges and attorneys are 1st and foremost (by license) responsible to the POTUS?
Didn't Nixon say the line...."if the President does it...it not illegal!"
I guess I need some clarification.
The Judicial Branch is separate (by design) from the Executive Branch and the Legislative Branch...they are officers of the Court...so I guess I don't get your point.
If you're saying things can be corrupted away from the designed lawful structure that the people signed on to, then yes I do.
once again for lack of better words..I'll offer an example...the claim, driving a car, being issued a "drivers license" is not a right, it is a privilege. that can be given or taken.
akin to practicing law...it is not a "right" to become an attorney/BAR member. it is a privilege. given or taken at the will of the POTUS. think, no law license nobody to act as prosecutor in a court
Maybe find out how the members of the "judicial branch, and the legislative branch" are compensated for their services...hmmm I'm guessing FRNs....that stands for federal reserve note(who owns the FED?)..now which "branch" of the government do you see signatures on these notes? further who controls the value of these notes?....enter jeopardy diddy here.
in the past they may have been able to operate by degrees of separation, under the gold standard(limited supply). But now under a fiat currency system of credit/debt...credit can be created without work, or at-least without work until said debt comes due. look at it this way...if the leadership of jpm, or boa(the ones that are members of the FED governors, I'm not sure which are) want a certain man elected, and certain other groups of men NOT elected....would that be easily managed through the issuing of credit to their candidate, and/or not issuing credit to the opposition? this concept doesn't work so well under a gold standard.
the bottom line question i pose to you is...how can any of the members of the Judicial, or Legislative Branches be considered "separate branches" if their compensated by notes issued under order of the Executive branch? and the total breakdown occurs when you add in the "Uniform Commercial Codes"
"they are officers of the Court" maybe...but who issues their license to practice, and who compensates them, and how much debt does each(and include family members) have? Have you not seen the super heroic drive of a deadbeat debtor, trying to keep his family in a home, with food on the table?
Well, I tried, I still don't know what the hell you're talking about.
Being compensated in the "official" currency does not imply an allegiance to anything.
To say so implies everyone who accepts the common currency for goods & services is some sort of co-conspirator...I can assure you that's not the case.
On licensing, I hold similar views to yours...I think.
Licensing, for the most part, is nothing but another tax or fee in my opinion.
There is no added value to an individual looking to hire someones services, by having the government involved in the process (who are not professionals in anything they license by a long shot) by saying, yes, Joe Blow does in fact hold accreditation from X association who are his professional peers or has a degree from Y college showing competency in Z field.
Any of that can be ascertained easily before someone plunks down their money for whatever service is being offered...all the license means is he stroked a check to government after presenting the above accreditation or degree, falsified or not.
"Being compensated in the "official" currency does not imply an allegiance to anything.
To say so implies everyone who accepts the common currency for goods & services is some sort of co-conspirator...I can assure you that's not the case."
..go check the constitution for reference to what the U.S. is suppose to use as an "official" currency.
this is the biggie...."To say so implies everyone who accepts the common currency for goods & services is some sort of co-conspirator"
did you not hear CONGRESSMAN Ron Pauls statement that the FED is illegal?..why would he be able to make such a claim?
"There is no added value to an individual looking to hire someones services, by having the government involved in the process (who are not professionals in anything they license by a long shot) by saying, yes, Joe Blow does in fact hold accreditation from X association who are his professional peers or has a degree from Y college showing competency in Z field.
Any of that can be ascertained easily before someone plunks down their money for whatever service is being offered...all the license means is he stroked a check to government after presenting the above accreditation or degree, falsified or not."
the added value/savings/piece-of-mind/propaganda comes by way of the costs involved on the insurance/bonding by the fed/banker/insurance industries.
Having been a pharmaceutical chemical compounder for a major aerosol, liquid, and powder, filling company...now do you really think i can just decide to start making the same shit in my garage, and be able to sell my goods? yes i would find buyers, however i would never be able to get the insurance/bonding to label for sale, nor would i be able to attain a permit to make such mixtures at home, nor could i get FDA approval for nation-wide/world-wide sales. nor could i get EPA, hazmat approval for storage/shipping of the materials needed...but i'll tell you..i have plenty of experience to do the work...and believe it...a compounders work is 110% accurate...it has to be. so its not like the product would be bad.
"go check the constitution for reference to what the U.S. is suppose to use as an "official" currency."
You're not sittin around here thinkin I'm not a hard money guy are you?
"did you not hear CONGRESSMAN Ron Pauls statement that the FED is illegal?..why would he be able to make such a claim?"
This will offend everyone...but I really don't give a fuck what Paul says...I care what he does. So far all he's done is talk.
As far as your screed on licensing...when you produce something that is harmful or does not work as advertised (pharmaceuticals in your example) you will be sued for fraud and/or damages.
The government does not get sued for negligently giving you a license...thus, no added value for having it.
How many times do we have to go through this?...the government's CDC said the pig flu will kill us all, it didn't.
Though they pumped quite a few kids & elderly full rapidly deteriorating "medicine" in the form of shots & nasal spray. My kids were not in that group. I told them I had signed the papers that under no circumstances are they to be given it by anyone...if they tried, to fight them off and run out of school...I would take it from there.
Alar will kill us all, eggs will kill us all, coffee, wine, fat, cholesterol...fucking aspirin & contrails...LOL...they are/were all licensed by the government.
No added value.
in a civil court hearing what is professional testimony...in criminal court could anybody enter/read the results for DNA samples?
You just said it...
"in a civil court hearing what is professional testimony...in criminal court could anybody enter/read the results for DNA samples?"
If there were no licensing by government, would it still be considered "professional testimony", if the one giving it were considered a professional in good standing among his or her peers in that field?
I say yes.
hmmm...well maybe were lighting a candle at both ends on this...same conclusions...just different approaches...a good funny on this would be reading about how the APA (American Psychology Association) came to be...and now these professionals can now maKe claim, as an authority, and can challenge parental custody, and drug children. I couldn't find it on the web in a brief search, but 1 of the original founders retired recently, and published a closing letter......VERY DAMNING of the whole industry. wish i could find it...if anybody can find it. please link it. the word therapists used to be 2 words that were merged together for this industry, the-rapists! ok well i guess that's a lie...but funny as hell, i gotta credit Chevy, and Dan on a SNL skit for that 1.
"if the one giving it were considered a professional in good standing among his or her peers in that field?" well...i'm no attorney, but i would think "good standing among peers" would be a speculative statement in a court..."the innocence project" kinda proves this. I'm pretty sure judges only want facts in cases.
and i'm in indiana right now, and i'm not sure we have courts that are "in good standing with peers" at this point.
"hmmm...well maybe were lighting a candle at both ends on this...same conclusions...just different approaches..."
Seems so.
I believe in having a system of government that works, as opposed to anarchy. I'm not saying I think you're an anarchist, I'm saying I don't subscribe to what is termed mainstream libertarianism.
"a good funny on this would be reading about how the APA (American Psychology Association)"
My loathing of psychologists is only surpassed by my loathing of socialists...LOL. Here is a group that profits from roaming around in confused peoples minds even as they tell you they do not know what makes the brain work. I would wager that with proper research a case could be made they have harmed far more people than they have helped. My opnion is most of them are mentally unstable themselves.
"and i'm in indiana right now, and i'm not sure we have courts that are "in good standing with peers" at this point."
I saw that...my comments on that travesty of a court case begin on page two of comments...
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/guest-post-indiana-supreme-court-dispenses-magna-carta-constitution?page=1
Take care.
Government will only "work", or at least work in the best interests of the common citizen, when government is composed solely of angels. Until then, such wishful thinking is dangerously naive and hopelessly utopian.
We have already seen, countless times throughout history, anarchy work and work well in many societal spheres ("anarchy" being properly defined simply as the absence of governmental coercion) --- why is it therefore "impossible" to see it work in ALL spheres of society?
Statists of all persuasions always love to smear the concept of anarchy as "utopian" and "impractical", never acknowledging the far greater (and destructive) utopianism and impracticality of their sociopathology-enabling and institutionalized mass coercion.
"Government will only "work", or at least work in the best interests of the common citizen, when government is composed solely of angels."
Akak my old friend, there are only men & women who comprise any government. So in anarchy you would have the same would you not?
It would not be angelic at all in my estimation. There would/will always be a group that attempts to dominate others.
"We have already seen, countless times throughout history, anarchy work and work well in many societal spheres ("anarchy" being properly defined simply as the absence of governmental coercion) --- why is it therefore "impossible" to see it work in ALL spheres of society?"
I come from the camp that says less is more...but none is not so good either. For example, I'm not willing to live in a society that allows a factory owner to dump his waste into the drinking water supply because there is no infringement on his desire to do so to maximize his profits. There is nothing angelic or utopian about that. For example, I have the ability to defend myself from a home invasion but I have no ability to defend someone in Arizona from one.
And I'm not at all willing to go all tribal, as there will always be someone at the top. I don't do dictatorships and monarchies very well...anymore than I do socialism & communism.
What were these societies so we can reference them properly?
"Statists of all persuasions always love to smear the concept of anarchy as "utopian" and "impractical", never acknowledging the far greater (and destructive) utopianism and impracticality of their sociopathology-enabling and institutionalized mass coercion."
You're not calling me a statist I hope, because this will degenerate rather quickly. You should know me better by now.
I'm not about all of an individuals productivity/labor going toward the greater good of the state instead of himself.
I'm for limited government in all areas while recognizing the need for it...everyone is not like you and I but we have to live with them. I've fought authority over myself as an individual all my life, I will until they plant me. If everyone did so the chains that bind a government down would be strengthened not weakened.
Which is how I look at government in all its forms...a beast that is needed, but must be bound by us.
As we have seen here on ZH, there are very few (if any) angels here...only people, full of the same greed, lust, desires, petty schemes, deciet etc. that makes people, people.
Hell, some of them won't even identify what part of the planet they're from when you ask them point blank...LOL!!!...these would be the same people under anarchy...untrustworthy.
Yes, HE did say that. Mr. Nixon also exclaimed on tv, before millions of sheeple that "I AM NOT A CROOK"! this is verifiable history if you wish to research it.
Yeah, right. And only Congress can declare war.
Tomorrow Libya become an officially illegal war.
Let's see how that plays out.
if you are a black liberal president the constitution and laws dont apply
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2011/05/white-house-on-war-power...
It seems that way, yes.
This will end in tears.
Obama says that it is not a war and only limited involvement. Now, if Libya were blowing things up around the country with drones how would he declare the action?
as 'job creation'?
There's no such thing as an illegal war. If the Preznit does it, it's legal.
Reagan proved that in Nicaragua, Clinton demonstrated it in Bosnia and the Sudan, Dubya depended on it in Iraq...
Damn, boy, where you been?
You are ignorant:
No US military in Nicaragua. They were supplying arms to the rebels.
US troops were never in Sudan. Bosnia was illegal.
Bush got congressional approval for Iraq.
Oh, I know the history. Let's take a look at your working definitions...
"Sponsoring terrorism" is an empty phrase. What we'd like to call illegal when done by someone like Iran is ok when done by our President.
Missile attacks on non-combatants are not "war" because no infantry troops are landed.
Congressional approval makes unprovoked war of aggression legal.
Conclusion: "legal" or "illegal" is more a matter of opinion than anything else. So even if you have past precedent and such on your side, the right lawyers can make the current escalation in Libya legal.
It's all a fiction to ensure no one gets too involved improving his own life. Folks running the show want us to argue over this stuff.
(PS: Your response was well-stated. I knew you had it in you.)
Huh? It's baseline budgeting that suks.
The President presents a budget request because Congresses past were dysfunctional. It has no legal requirement to become law. It is only a wish list.
Congress controls the budget.
Not when they authorize an open-ending spending bill to fund a war.
Has to be renewed each year.
The numbers are available. Doing it off budget is bullshit, but all congresses are corrupt now that they've learned the proles are even more stupid than they could have imagined.
Thank Carter and his Dept. of Education. Only two generations, and we are more clueless than even Europeans.
'Only two generations, and we are more clueless than even Europeans.'
Europeans have known that for a lot longer than two generations...
Ah yes, blame Carter. That one never wears out.
Heh. Carter, the dbag that keeps on giving.
Even Shillary hates that clueless bastard.
+ 1 Heh.
Shillary...
Make that:
+ 2
Aren't the presidents required to spend the money appropriated by congress? Sequestering was tried (forgot which president) and was shot down in court.
Have you ever heard of unfunded mandates and an over budget projects? Most of those overbudget are related to defense, but if you don't even include Iraq war spending in the budget it doesn't really matter, does it? I think the president has a pretty free hand when it comes to spending, especially when he can manufacture a crisis. 911 could have apparently been solved with air-strikes and seal team 6, but Bush chose to invade Iraq instead - knowing that he risked bankrupting the country.
get help
Open your eyes blind man.