El Presidente In 2012?

[atlcomedy]

Originally Posted by charlestudor2005

. Yours is more of a "survival of the fittest" approach, while mine is more of a team approach. IOW, mine is: we're all in this together, so let's help support one another.

Yours is: to hell with those who can't survive. They're just a drag on the economy and society anyway, and I don't want them squandering MY money.

I find your choice of words telling: "team"

The reality is the only "teams" that are effective are ones that are aligned around common objectives, be these sports teams or the leadership group at a corporation.

The American people are anything but united in objective You have people that want as much as possible while doing as little as possible. As long as the government enables these people with an entitlement society they will never do (read: "work") anything. On the otherhand you have people that have done things (read: "worked hard") and they don't like seeing their rewards confiscated. Does that sound like a winning "team" to you?

Originally Posted by CaptainMidnight

.......Unless there's a very big change of course, this is not going to end well.

I don't know how it ends or if it ends (or exactly how you define "this"). I don't see some giant doomsday event that we all point to as "the end." I do think, gradually, unless there is an intervention, we will cede the power and affluence we now have relative to many other countries.

[pjorourke]

Originally Posted by ..

Well do the math. Besides the Spendulus Bill contains part of the cost of war.
(e.g. money for war veteran treatment and care)

WTF??? Is that you?

[pjorourke]

Personally, I believe that “fairness” consists in the fruits of my labor not being taken by corrupt hacks to redistribute to their cronies in exchange for votes.

[Rudyard K]

Originally Posted by ..

Well do the math. Besides the Spendulus Bill contains part of the cost of war.
(e.g. money for war veteran treatment and care)

Uh, that's a bit in the presentation. You'd have us take care of that same human being under the spendulous bill and call it our duty if they are not a Vet...but make us wear it as as a yoke if they are. Who's playing who here?

Remember, the first excursion into Iraq was to stop an invasion of Kuwait...and its oil fields. If we had been smart...and not playing to the emotions of the world...we would have finished the job right then and there....instead of abandoning all the folks over there who helped us lay those plans and crush that offensive...so that they could be slaughtered as we left.

The same thing happened in Afgan. But once we got them to the finish line...we ran on to play another game...and in came the Taliban to fill the hole.

Sometimes the offensive dollars spent are the cheapest dollars. But we never really know, because we don't get to see how the world turned out without those dollars spent. It's easy to throw stones and say something turned out badly...when you don't have to stand behind how badly they might have turned out absent the first action.

[..]

Originally Posted by pjorourke

WTF??? Is that you?

No, it's me

But have a look at the Spendulus Bill, e.g. part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 are:

$ 1.3 billion for construction of military hospitals

$ 1 billion for the Veterans Health Administration

$ 14.2 billion to give one-time $250 payments to Social Security recipients, people on Supplemental Security Income, and veterans receiving disability and pensions.

$ 500 million for vocational training for the disabled

$ 4.2 billion to repair and modernize Defense Department facilities.

$ 200 million for Department of Homeland Security headquarters

$ 100 million to improve facilities of the National Guard

$ 500 million for the Social Security Administration to process disability and retirement backlogs

$150 million for an increase of claims processing military staff

$555 million in mortgage assistance for wounded service members (Army Corps of Engineers)

$200 million for IT and claims processing improvements for Veterans Benefits Administration

All costs which are either related to military or wars on terrorism

[Texas Contrarian]

Originally Posted by ..

...Since Bush government does lots of costly quasi-military bullshit like Homeland Security, all kinds of wars on terror, etc.

True, but that still pales in comparison to all the other spending increases: The presrcription drug entitlement expansion of 2003, bloated farm and transportation bills, stimulus packages, endless lists of payoffs to favored political constituencies (by both parties), etc. And the items in the "stimulus" package that relate to the wars or the military budget comprise a very tiny percentage of the $862 billion total.

Is the military budget an offender? Sure. But the major offender? Hardly.

Originally Posted by atlcomedy

I don't know how it ends or if it ends (or exactly how you define "this"). I don't see some giant doomsday event...

I'm not suggesting that we're bound to suffer some giant doomday event (although if we keep thinking we can get away with running $1.5 trillion deficits, I sure think we're asking for some very serious trouble). We are going to have a day of reckoning for all this debt; there's just no way around that. It could be a series of financial crises or a difficult wind-down. Economies eventually have a way of reacting very violently if manipulated enough with bad fiscal or monetary policy. (Or both!)

But in my view, we don't have to suffer a deflationary depression with 25% unemployment for this to "end badly." If we totally forfeit our global competitiveness and have a virtually no-growth economy for 10 years, I think that's a pretty bad outcome.

[atlcomedy]

So we are talking ~$20B (I didn't add it up) out of $800B?

If you exclude the $14B for SS, we are at ~$5B....a drop in the bucket in a relative sense

Originally Posted by ..

No, it's me

But have a look at the Spendulus Bill, e.g. part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 are:

$ 1.3 billion for construction of military hospitals

$ 1 billion for the Veterans Health Administration

$ 14.2 billion to give one-time $250 payments to Social Security recipients, people on Supplemental Security Income, and veterans receiving disability and pensions.

$ 500 million for vocational training for the disabled

$ 4.2 billion to repair and modernize Defense Department facilities.

$ 200 million for Department of Homeland Security headquarters

$ 100 million to improve facilities of the National Guard

$ 500 million for the Social Security Administration to process disability and retirement backlogs

$150 million for an increase of claims processing military staff

$555 million in mortgage assistance for wounded service members (Army Corps of Engineers)

$200 million for IT and claims processing improvements for Veterans Benefits Administration

All costs which are either related to military or wars on terrorism

[nevergaveitathought]

and all i did was wonder about 2012 and who might run

[pjorourke]

Originally Posted by ..

No, it's me

But have a look at the Spendulus Bill, e.g. part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 are:

$ 1.3 billion for construction of military hospitals

$ 1 billion for the Veterans Health Administration

$ 14.2 billion to give one-time $250 payments to Social Security recipients, people on Supplemental Security Income, and veterans receiving disability and pensions.

$ 500 million for vocational training for the disabled

$ 4.2 billion to repair and modernize Defense Department facilities.

$ 200 million for Department of Homeland Security headquarters

$ 100 million to improve facilities of the National Guard

$ 500 million for the Social Security Administration to process disability and retirement backlogs

$150 million for an increase of claims processing military staff

$555 million in mortgage assistance for wounded service members (Army Corps of Engineers)

$200 million for IT and claims processing improvements for Veterans Benefits Administration

All costs which are either related to military or wars on terrorism

Give me a freaking break -- total that up (ignoring the $14.2B which is mainly going to SS people) and you have a rounding error -- 3-4B.

Besides, most of this shit is good old fashioned pork.

[Rudyard K]

Originally Posted by nevergaveitathought

and all i did was wonder about 2012 and who might run

And that's what you get for changing your moniker and all the sudden giving-it-a-thought.

[nevergaveitathought]

Originally Posted by Rudyard K

And that's what you get for changing your moniker and all the sudden giving-it-a-thought.

about the two reviews it says you gave

[John Bull]

From the Tea Party representative to D&T - a pox on all their houses: Bush for enmeshing us in Iraq, which will revert to a dictatorship within 3 years and Afganistan, which is unwinnable and will also revert when we leave whenever that may be, and for TARP and not doing anything meaningful about illegal immigrants; Obama for not only keeping Bush's various assaults on our liberty, see Homeland Security, Patriot Act etc, but expanding all in order to keep the citizens in line, expanding the deficit and using the money for pork and vote getting and burying us in debt.

[charlestudor2005]

Originally Posted by John Bull

From the Tea Party representative to D&T - a pox on all their houses: Bush for enmeshing us in Iraq, which will revert to a dictatorship within 3 years and Afganistan, which is unwinnable and will also revert when we leave whenever that may be, and for TARP and not doing anything meaningful about illegal immigrants; Obama for not only keeping Bush's various assaults on our liberty, see Homeland Security, Patriot Act etc, but expanding all in order to keep the citizens in line, expanding the deficit and using the money for pork and vote getting and burying us in debt.

Dayum, JB, for once we (generally) agree!!

I still think a poll would have been helpful in this thread.

As to the budgetary issues brought up by the other THs in this thread (TH=talking heads), a couple years ago the biggest pigs (in order) for federal dollars were DoD, VA and Homeland Security. Forget who was fourth, but I'm sure the first three is still the same.

[Texas Contrarian]

We've already discussed the military budget, and it's quite clear that increases therein pale in comparison to increases in non-military spending. Put about as simply as I can, we could have ended the wars and slashed defense spending radically so that we had a military budget/GDP ratio equal to that of France, and we'd still be running a trillion dollar deficit.

Originally Posted by charlestudor2005

...a couple years ago the biggest pigs (in order) for federal dollars were DoD, VA and Homeland Security. Forget who was fourth, but I'm sure the first three is still the same.

What?!?

VA and Homeland Security are tiny little piglets compared with all the payoffs to favored constituencies, entitlement expansions, and pork-festooned "stimulus" packages.

I sure hope whoever becomes "El Presidente" in 2012 is someone capable of taking on the tough task of clearing away giant piles of fiscal wreckage.

[..]

Originally Posted by CaptainMidnight

Put about as simply as I can, we could have ended the wars and slashed defense spending radically so that we had a military budget/GDP ratio equal to that of France, and we'd still be running a trillion dollar deficit.

Well, the US currently spends AFAIK over 4% of their GDP [0]. France spends roughly 2% which is still much. e.g. the Dutch and Germans spend +/- 1%.

[0] And this is only the offical part, if you look closer into the budget you'll find that actually more money is spent.