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1. dobro
   Member Profile

   

   Do you think the Republicans are intentionally stalling efforts to jumpstart the economy to insure that Barack Obama is not reelected?

   Posted 6 months ago #         

2. redblack
   Member Profile

   

   yes.

   they desperately want a republican in office and an end to capital gains taxes so that they can bring their investments from failing foreign banks to the mainland without any kind of "penalties."

   in other words, they love american consumerism, but they don't want to pay for government assistance for american freeloaders - i.e. the poor, the sick, and the elderly.

   Posted 6 months ago #         

3. JoB
   Member Profile

   yes,
   the saner heads in their own party have recently confirmed my suspicions :(

   Posted 6 months ago #         

4. kootchman
   Member Profile

   Thank god yes.... good money after bad is not a recovery strategy. Uh redblack?... the Democrats are on board for repatriated earnings... even The Messiah understands money over there is money invested over there.

   Posted 6 months ago #         

5. JoB
   Member Profile

   kootch..

   and the money that comes home is invested here?
   nice fantasy .. too bad there is no reality there.

   Posted 6 months ago #         

6. JanS
   Member Profile

   

   you know, you may cheer it, Kootch...but explain that to the American people who are hurting because they are doing nothing. Lack of respect for the American people, lack of respect for the president's office, lack of respect for themselves. Or are you just flaming. You could be on the downside any time, and then what? Will you bitch about how they're running the country when it's harming you? They need to all be voted out...a do nothing Congress that had "In God We Trust" already on our money as the most important thing they've done this week. Embarrassing as a country !

   Posted 6 months ago #         

7. redblack
   Member Profile

   

   yeah, kootch, but the difference is that democrats - well liberals, anyway - want to get some tax revenue out of that money when it comes home. which is the whole b.s. "regulatory uncertainty" argument again.

   Posted 6 months ago #         

8. anonyme
   Member Profile

   It is their open, stated mission to thwart Obama in any and every way possible. No mystery, no misunderstanding.

   Posted 6 months ago #         

9. Smitty
   Member Profile

   Yes, they disagree with the method so they are doing their job. The method that failed the first time- using twice the amount.

   Obama had the senate and the house for two years and the senate for the remaining two - blame the Republicans for the failed economy isn't going to work. American's are not big on leaders pointing fingers (if that is what you are getting at).

   Posted 6 months ago #         

10. TDe
    Member Profile

    Silly me... I thought the job of Congress was to pass laws and try to better the lives of the American people. Not sit on their collective arses and fiddle while the country burns.

    Posted 6 months ago #         

11. JanS
    Member Profile

    

    Smitty..jobs? jobs? the rallying cry for 2010..and how many have been created? how many things put forth by Barack Obama have the Repubs even considered compromising a little on, even just considering...not one damned thing. Have you listened to Mitch McConnell lately? Seriously? Does he give a flying fig about you and me? NO ! And, you, as an intelligent man, know this. Listening to John Boehner yesterday pretending that Grover Norquist was just a nobody turned my stomach. We are not that stoopid...although there is a lot of stoopidity going around these days.

    Posted 6 months ago #         

12. JoB
    Member Profile

    Smitty...

    No matter how much it may look like it
    American politics is not a sporting event

    When the winner takes all
    all is your pocketbook
    that is assuming you are a middle class taxpayer.

    because when the rich get tax breaks
    and big business gets tax breaks
    we pick up the slack
    or suffer the consequences

    it's that simple.

    So what are the republicans offering you?

    every one of their "fair" tax plans would shift more of the burden of taxation from the rich to the middle class.

    is that really what you want?

    Are you willing to take that big a hit for a home team win?

    it's a question you should be asking.

    Believe me, I am asking the same sort of questions.

    Policies marginally better than those proposed by the Republicans aren't enough for me to invest my personal dollars in the election.

    and i don't buy the excuse that the republicans made me do it.

    that excuse didn't work when i was a kid
    it didn't work for my kids
    it doesn't work for my grandkids
    and i am pretty sure it isn't working for my great-grandkids

    it's time our politicians grew up
    we pay them big bucks to govern our nation
    not to run it into bankruptcy so they can score political coup by claiming it is someone else's fault.

    Posted 6 months ago #         

13. Bostonman
    Member Profile

    I don't think its going to really matter. I would be amazed if he got reelected of course anything can happen. Regardless of the situation he inherited which wasn't his fault he has barely done anything to change the tax structure or to decrease spending or to even control spending.

    Yes, the first 2 years he could have done something to adjust taxes if he tried. We might be in a better position now if he did something like that.

    Either way, I don't want another 4 years of what he has done. I also don't want another 4 years of 2000 to 2008.

    Posted 6 months ago #         

14. HMC Rich
    Member Profile

    

    787 Billion Stimulus for "shovel ready jobs".
    Promised unemployment would not go over 8%. How come that one didn't work?

    Why did we need a repeat failure? 60 Billion jobs bill failed by bi-partisan vote. (which means Ben Nelson and another Democrat also said NO.)

    No budget from Mr. Reid in 3 years. How come? Don't want a benchmark to have to think about following.

    No, failure on Obama and Dem spending policy.

    See ya

    Posted 6 months ago #         

15. DBP
    Member Profile

    Yeah, 'bro. They're stalling. But I think Obama will clinch it anyway, much to Boston's amazement.

    I just wish the President would take his case directly to us — the American people — instead of spending so much of his time courting his sworn enemies.

    The way Obama and the Democratic Party have squandered their popular support is a disgrace. For contrast, look at the Repubs. After the smoke cleared, they all got a little boost from the Tea Party movement.

    And what're the Dems getting from the Occupy movement? –Blunt force trauma.

    Posted 6 months ago #         

16. Bostonman
    Member Profile

    Well I think a lot is going to depend on the economy. If unemployment drops to 7 or 8% it looks good for him. Unfortunatly he is also dealing with something he can't really control. A little place called Europe.

    Posted 6 months ago #         

17. Smitty
    Member Profile

    It didn't work the first time, so why try it again? They are simply doing their jobs. Call it whatever you want.

    Posted 6 months ago #         

18. cadbury
    Member Profile

    They are doing part of their jobs, ok, sure. But how about ANY ideas outside of lowering taxes on corporations and the wealthy? (and making In God We Trust" some sort of corporate slogan for America does not count) Is that really all it's going to take to turn this economy around?

    Posted 6 months ago #         

19. Smitty
    Member Profile

    I betcha they would vote to get rid of Obamacare regulations that are hindering business' from hiring if it came to a vote. You?

    Posted 6 months ago #         

20. cadbury
    Member Profile

    They sure would repeal universal healthcare, but it's a fallacy that it's hindering hiring.
    That's also not really a new idea. Going back to how things were when the recession started isn't a great plan.

    Posted 6 months ago #         

21. JanS
    Member Profile

    

    tell me exactly what hiring has been hindered. If you're going to put it out there, please give an example. Thanks.

    Posted 6 months ago #         

22. kootchman
    Member Profile

    I have heard from not one single business that says Obamacare is not going to hurt. Look to Greece. 27% of the population works for government. It is a bankrupt country. It got there in short simple steps. Step one. Appease the population with all manner of benefit. 2. Borrow like crazy to pay for them. 3. Tax until the private sector is bled to death and the capitalists flee the country to reside in safe havens. Refuse to recognize the depths of the crisis and of course never look inwards. We have two classes of governance, those that accept bribes and those that bribe. We have crossed the line where dependency is now the normative citizen. We know how they will vote. The will vote to continue their status. We have seem this all before. The next question from WSO should be.. if this is such a massive fraud, how come this administration and DOJ has prosecuted ZERO "Wall Street" types? Not one. Let's see if the Obama reelection committee returns that 500K Corizon bundled up for Obama. I love in the midst of Europe falling apart with unsustainable social programs. there are still chirps out there that "the top twenty industrialized nations have it, except us"... yea and more than half are bankrupt. As bad as it is.. we are still in better shape than Europe..for now. You keep throwing trillions of more debt and we will catch up.

    Posted 6 months ago #         

23. cadbury
    Member Profile

    Wow. Where does one start?

    Have you heard of one business that said, gee I would really start hiring if only that obamacare would go away? Really?

    The governments and economies of Greece and the US have very little in common. Not worth bringing up over and over again.

    No one is in any danger of being bled to death by taxes here. Not even close

    And no, we have not crossed any line into dependency. Providing accessible affordable healthcare is hardly some over the top benefit. It is common decency and exactly the type of thing a government should provide. And every other indurialized country on earth agrees, excep south Africa.

    And yes, I agree we need to get all lobbying money out of politics. Right now.

    Posted 6 months ago #         

24. JanS
    Member Profile

    

    cadbury...I agree. I want the proof. I want a company that hasn't hired because of "Obamacare"...Damn, I hate that name. It's not even healthcare. It's disease care. I digress. If that claim is going to be made, I want the names of the companies that haven't hired because of it. I don't think it's unreasonable to ask for names as proof. If they can't be named, they're all just talking through their hats. Names, folks, names !

    Posted 6 months ago #         

25. Smitty
    Member Profile

    "Have you heard of one business that said, gee I would really start hiring if only that obamacare would go away? Really?"

    Yes, really.

    Posted 6 months ago #         

26. JanS
    Member Profile

    

    name it ! Yes, we want names...not just "yes"...that's not an answer :)

    Posted 6 months ago #         

27. kootchman
    Member Profile

    You wish they had nothing in common. It would sorta cloud up the fervor of the confiscators. It was a country who overextended itself, by promising too much, to be paid for by too few, and borrowed beyond its means to pay. That is exactly the trajectory we are on.

    Denis Strigl - Verizon

    "
    "If the president and the administration were really serious about creating jobs in this country, they would listen to what people have been telling them over, and over, and over again. Cut corporate taxes, eliminate the regulatory morass that we have in this country, and by the way, repeal Obamacare. How many times do people have to say?""

    Jan?

    It seems Starbucks is regretting the health care Frankenstein it helped create. The company was a key corporate backer of Obamacare in its legislative stages, but its top executive has raised concerns about the law's economic damage.

    Howard Schultz, the coffee company's CEO, recently told the Seattle Times that "the pressure on small businesses, because of the mandate, is too great" in the Obamacare law as currently written

    Jan?

    Here is what you have to look forward to.

    The director of the new agency created to oversee the government takeover of the nation’s healthcare system was the Chairman and Executive Officer of a Maryland company that cheated taxpayers out of more than $74 million in Medicaid overpayments.
    When Larsen ran Amerigroup Maryland, the company was embroiled in a huge corruption scandal for billing Uncle Sam for medical services that about 90,000 low-income residents never received in the District of Columbia. Amerigroup was one of three healthcare contractors involved in the $100 million scheme, which was exposed in 2007 by D.C.’s Office of the Inspector General. "

    Posted 6 months ago #         

28. kootchman
    Member Profile

    Stimulus 1 was abject crony capitalism..nothing but organized labor got any money, .Fannie and Freddie are paying millions in bonuses and were "left out" of Dodd/Frank (imagine, no reform for the largest mortgage lender) DOE is awash in crony scandals from Solyndra and so far 23 other named suspicious loans, and you want to put healthcare and the vast trillions in the hands of the government and politicians? Where do you get this blind faith? It's like hiring level 3 child sex offenders to run day care and head start.

    Posted 6 months ago #         

29. kootchman
    Member Profile

    "The law clearly is discouraging businesses from hiring. According to a recent U.S. Chamber of Commerce survey, 39 percent of small business owners say the law is either their greatest or second-greatest obstacle to new hiring"

    Jan?

    Or from A CEO Clint Greenleaf... read it yourself. Now go ahead and discount all the information.

    "So why aren't we hiring?

    It's simple: uncertainty. I wrote about this concern earlier in the year, and not much has changed. We're still waiting to learn what recent legislation will mean for us. And I'm not just talking about the Financial Regulation passed in July. When politicians told us we had to pass the Health Care bill to find out what was in it, business owners suspended their plans to hire. The risks are too great."

    http://www.inc.com/by-the-book/why-im-not-hiring.html

    God help you if you are a small business that wants to grow... if you have over 50 employees... Obamacare gets scary. Here's how you expand benefits... a robust, healthy economy, with a tight labor supply...

    Posted 6 months ago #         

30. JanS
    Member Profile

    

    a robust, healthy economy...I don't see that happening any time soon...right now there are too many promises, too many Catch 22's, and not enough action.

    Frankly, healthcare under our current insurance system is terrible...it's not "health care", it's "disease care". It's a double edged sword fr me. I get a lot of my income by billing health insurance, but I see the the other side, too...the incessant paperwork, denials when they shouldn't be, inept handling of claims, left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. Dealing with insurances is a crap shoot at times. They aren't exactly efficient, either. And they really only care about their bottom line a good portion of the time.

    Posted 6 months ago #         

31. JanS
    Member Profile

    

    "If the president and the administration were really serious about creating jobs in this country, they would listen to what people have been telling them over, and over, and over again. Cut corporate taxes, eliminate the regulatory morass that we have in this country, and by the way, repeal Obamacare. How many times do people have to say?""

    Kootch...people aren't saying that...Repubs and big business are saying that...there's a difference.

    Schultz? has he not hired because of Obamacare? NO.. he just stated a belief. Talk is one thing...doing it, and proving that it's been done is another.

    Amerigroup is involved with Medicaid and Medicare in many states. Steve Larsen was Maryland Insurance commissioner until 2003, and then worked for Amerigroup..he was a VP. Search as I may, I find nothing to directly implicate him in any insurance fraud that Amerigroup may have been involved in. Yes, I do believe that big business insurances will defraud for their bottom line. And they get away with it. Another reason why I'm not crazy about big business insurances running the show.

    None of this has proven that anyone has not hired directly because of Obamacare...they just talk about it, and try to scare people, in my opinion becuase they still want the big business insurances to flourish. Is Obamacare perfect? Not in the least. But the rest is pure speculation...again...just an opinion.

    Posted 6 months ago #         

32. Smitty
    Member Profile

    http://www.forbes.com/sites/sallypipes/2011/09/19/the-best-jobs-program-full-repeal-of-obamacare/

    Just one of many..........

    Posted 6 months ago #         

33. redblack
    Member Profile

    

    lol. i read the CEO of pacific research institute's opinion piece in forbes, smitty. pure speculation and fear-mongering.

    except for the white castle thing.

    what you guys are ignoring is that the law is intended to punish businesses if they don't provide access to health care for their employees. it's no accident; it's supposed to hurt. 45 million uninsured poor people, and corporate profits are still soaring. the government is telling wal-mart, the nation's second-largest employer, "you will no longer dump your employees' health care costs onto medicaid." it gets people into doctor's offices - possibly for the first time ever - by mandating that a whole slew of preventative screenings are fully covered by the insurance industry.

    and on and on.

    oh, crap. i totally apologize. i forgot that our government is only supposed to do what's good for business - no matter how harmful it is to the population at large - because only business knows how to govern, and business always does what's right.

    Posted 6 months ago #         

34. Smitty
    Member Profile

    "what you guys are ignoring is that the law is intended to punish businesses if they don't provide access to health care for their employees. it's no accident; it's supposed to hurt. 45 million uninsured poor people, and corporate profits are still soaring."

    So we agree?

    Posted 6 months ago #         

35. redblack
    Member Profile

    

    sure thing, smitty.

    the health care delivery "system" we have in this country is a free market one, right? and most employers have agreed to provide access to health care for their employees, right?

    so what do we do about the ones that don't, and whose employees make so little in wages that they can't afford insurance on the open market?

    what's your solution to making sure that the least among us don't become incubators for disease, simply because, "well, health care isn't a right - it's a privilege?"

    ACA obviously isn't perfect, but the moneyed powers that be won't even allow the federal or state governments to compete in the market place through a public option - let alone provide access through a universal or single-payer model. (and remember that the single payer doesn't necessarily have to be a government. it could be a non-profit corporation or a public-private partnership.)

    but ACA is a start - albeit a rocky one - and it's an extremely overdue acknowledgment that the u.s. has fallen behind the rest of the first world when it comes to protecting our poorer citizens from dying of preventable disease. it's also acknowledgment that our health insurance "system" is mostly employer-driven, and that what's available on the free market for those that don't have employer-provided insurance is substandard or overpriced.

    in other words, ACA is an admission that the free market has once again failed to deliver something basic, and turned it into a profit-making machine to the tune of 1/6 of the largest GDP on the planet.

    Posted 6 months ago #         

36. Smitty
    Member Profile

    "what's your solution to making sure that the least among us don't become incubators for disease"

    Getting 16 million people a job would be a good start.

    Posted 6 months ago #         

37. JanS
    Member Profile

    

    and how do you propose doing that? It ain't happening now...

    oh, and there are many more than 16 million without health insurance..I was one...and I had to get cancer in order to finally get some...and I get to keep it now because I need a kidney. Lucky me. As a healthcare provider, one of the things I see wrong with our healthcare system is that it treats things after they happen. We need more preventative care. But big business insurances won't pay for that..

    Posted 6 months ago #         

38. JoB
    Member Profile

    kootch...

    "It was a country who overextended itself, by promising too much, to be paid for by too few, and borrowed beyond its means to pay."

    we agree on this...

    but i think we disagree on who it was we promised too much....

    i think we promised big business too much ...

    you think America should give more to big business
    and default it's people:(

    Posted 6 months ago #         

39. redblack
    Member Profile

    

    Getting 16 million people a job would be a good start.

    agreed. with good wages and benefits.

    then the employers will be in compliance with ACA and face no penalties.

    see how easy that is?

    Posted 6 months ago #         

40. dawsonct
    Member Profile

    I don't know what having a job has to do with being healthy, I usually get sick from someone at work.
    Speaking of which, the restaurant industry is one of those that has for too long been avoiding their obligations to their workers. (SOCIALIZING their expenses). Couple that with the low pay, and you get restaurant workers who can't AFFORD to take sick days, so they bring their sick to work with them, give it to their fellow workers (who will ALSO continue working when THEY get sick), who will then pass it to you. This is one of the consequences of a "you're on your own, sucker!" society.
    ---
    BTW, a significant portion of the unemployment numbers can be attributed to unemployed government workers in states with Republican governors, who all roundly criticized the stimulus spending, took the money anyway, usually posing with a giant check at some point, used it to pay down their state's debt, instead of the infrastructure projects the Federal money was SUPPOSED to have been used for, and then they laid off a bunch of state employees.
    I guess if you've already been in line at the DMV for two hours, what's another two?
    ---
    30+ years of proof the "Supply-side" doesn't work. You can't give enough tax breaks to a wealthy person to force them to create a job where there is no demand for the labor.
    The wealthy and corporations are a greater burden on our government than anyone in the middle-class and the poor. And the return on Federal dollars, the economic effect per dollar spent, to the wealthy is demonstrably, proveably miniscule. They use our court system much more often than the average American citizen, they use our roads and rails more heavily, they pressure municipalities to improve transit and other ares of infrastructure as a means to improve their efficiency.
    Does our Nation bennefit from their presence? Yes, to a point, though the efficiency of scale often costs us jobs and small businesses and community connection.
    ---
    Big corporations don't really like President Obama's health INSURANCE reform, because they collude with the insurance companies to sell packages to their employees, for which they get a HUGE kickback.
    ---
    I'm amused by the unremitting drumbeat from the farright about the so-called "one-World government," which I have never seen evidence of, yet they seem to think vast trans-national corporate conglomerates over which they have absolutely ZERO influence, are just fine and dandy, and should NEVER have ANY of their practices questioned by us mere people, because it just may cut a few .0001% from their bottom line. All hail the all powerful, unassailable, and apparently ungovernable corporate, that seems to really be the ONLY thought on the minds of those wayTF out their on their farright fringe.

    Posted 6 months ago #         

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