We don't have to go back very far. Only to about the 1980's.

It was at that time that they decided government was evil. Never before had they been so bold at stating their long held belief about government.

They took simple economic theories printed on napkins and made them a national policy. Their aim was to destroy the beast called "big government" by starving it to death. If there were no taxes, they would have nothing with which to feed the beast.

So they deliberately lied. They told the people that they could cut taxes and it would bring in more money to the Treasury. Simply because, businesses would have more money to expand and create jobs, thus bringing in more tax revenues. But, unfortunately, it did not work that way. They created huge debt and deficits, unlike any we had ever seen in history.

However, America did get sort of a reprieve in 1992 when Bill Clinton was elected. He was lucky to come in at a time when technology and computers were revolutionizing the American economy. By the end of his second term, he was able to balance the budget and forecast a surplus far into the future, without using SS funds to fund the government. Of course, the Republicans jumped on the bandwagon. They were partners in balancing the budget they argued. Of course, every single Republican voted against the Clinton economic plan in 1993 and said that it would create a terrible economy. Once again, they were able to lie themselves out of a hole.

But they were desperate. This money belonged to the people, not to the government, Bush argued in the 2000 campaign. They had to take back the government by hook or crook. They ended up taking back power by crook and decided to double down on the voodoo economics that had failed so terribly in the 1980's. Not only that, they would get rid of every regulation possible to make it easier for business to make their fortunes without the yoke of "big government". They had already reformed welfare under Clinton, before they impeached him. So they were well on their way to destroying the "beast" of big government.

Every conscious American knows what happened under George W Bush and the Republicans, who were in control of everything for 6 years. Terrorism, wars, pestilence, lies, and neglect of our Constitution, torture, rendition, etc. We all know what happened, even if some prefer to continue in denial. The Democrats were weak and helpless during this time. They offered little resistance.

Then, when Barack Obama was elected in 2008, many thought there was hope to turn everything around. Unfortunately, the mess created was so deep and destructive, and the willpower so weak and timid, that we were unable to make the progress that the country needed. We made some progress but it was minute compared to the need. The Republicans fought every effort to make the changes necessary.

So, there you have it. A short history of how the Republicans tore down our country and are looking for an opportunity to finish the job. America was such a great country with such hope and opportunity. The people bought the lies and were not vigilant and they lost it.

...

He said the famous quote, "Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" It was so inspiring and full of oratory. It was almost as great as Bush Jr's bullhorn moment, "They will hear all of us now!" Abraham Lincoln could not hold a light to these great orators.

And the wall did come down. But not until George Bush Sr was President. Still, his followers gave the Gipper all the credit. Reagan single-handedly defeated communism and brought down the Soviet Union.

Also, Reagan said that "government was not the solution, government was the problem." Then he went out and proved it. He ran up the largest deficits in our history at that time and cut taxes on the wealthy, which started our slide into huge deficits. His supply-side theories, written on a napkin, became a bible for economic conservatives.

Then, when Bill Clinton raised taxes and balanced the budget in his eight years in office, everyone knew that it was because Ronald Reagan laid the foundation for it. Reaganomics finally worked - under Clinton.

America was the "shining city on the hill" to the Grade B actor turned President. His followers adored him. America would once again be the most powerful nation on earth. We would use our military wherever it was to our advantage. As he did when he sent in our Marines into Lebanon to quell the violence. 241 Marines died in their barracks from a car bomb, as they lay sleeping. Then Reagan withdrew the remaining forces and lobbed bombs into the Lebanese countryside, just to show them how angry he was.

But he didn't stop there. He was intent on stopping communism from spreading across our borders to the South. His accomplices, Oliver North and Robert McFarland secretly sold arms to the Iranian terrorist government so they could get spending money to spend in El Salvador and Honduras. When it was discovered, he feigned ignorance.

Then, when Bush Jr came into power, after stealing an election in Florida with the help of the US Supreme Court, Reaganomics became prominent once again. Taxes were cut and the military was put on a wood floor and fed corn all winter to fatten it up like a bloated hog. The balanced budget disappeared after the first year of new Reaganomics and we were at war once again. Supply-side was once again the economic religion of the right-wing conservatives.

Like Reagan wanted, Bush Jr and the Republicans removed as many regulations as possible to free up the markets. The market was God. After all, government was the problem.

Then the stock market crashed and the economy collapsed. The big money Reaganites were sweating bullets. Their money was disappearing. They came crawling back to the hated "government" begging to be saved from themselves. And the government saved them.

Those are just a few of the greatest accomplishments of Ronald Reagan. He is now a myth. If he were alive, he would walk on wine and turn it to water. Every Republican wants to be like Ronald Reagan.
Don't dare criticize this great president.

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It was like a scene out of Men in Black. Perry was on a roll. He started to name the 3 programs that he was going to cut and after he had named two of them, he looked over at Ron Paul, just to his left. As soon he looked at Paul, his mind went blank. I didn't notice whether or not Paul was holding up some small black gadget to make him forget everything that just happened?

Whether Ron Paul put a hex on him or not, he showed he was not ready for prime time. If you plan on spouting off lists of things you are going to do, it is best to be prepared. If you cannot remember those items, it is best to write down some notes. Even initials, such as E.C.E., might help one to remember the 3 Departments you are going to cut when you stagger into Washington?

If it wasn't Ron Paul and it wasn't liquor, then it may been the effects of medication. I had read that Perry had recently had back surgery and was taking Vicodin for the pain? That shit will make you forget your name sometimes. It's all a matter of judgement. Don't drink or take pills if you are going to a debate. And under no circumstances, do you look at Ron Paul...

..do you look down at your speedometer to make sure you are not breaking the speed limit? Do you then look to see if a cop is looking for lawbreakers?

Are you always aware of your speed when you are driving? Do you feel like you are driving at unsafe speeds? Why are you so conscious of that? The laws are the laws, are they not? Everyone must obey? Don't you agree?

Or is this just a paranoia? You should just ignore the cops and act like a free man. Get to where you are going and enjoy the ride, without worrying about some cop pulling you over. Wouldn't that be a better environment?

Or do you feel guilty when someone passes you in a pickup truck, doing about 85 mph, and you are just creeping along about 65 or 70? Why must we travel so slow on the Interstates? I know all the answers about safety will wake up now.

That is the only way I see this movement succeeding. We have to become a threat to the political status quo. We should not vote for any Democrat or any Republican that votes with Wall Street and the Big Banks over the interests of the 99%.

We should put every incumbent on a list to be voted out. Their voting record should be carefully analyzed to see if they deserve to be re-elected. The chances are that 75% or more of the House and Senate should be sent packing.

In my opinion, this is the direction the Occupy Movement needs to go. Politicians need to fear the people, not the other way around. We need to become more political toward both Parties. Nobody gets a free pass. You are either with the people or you are against the people. There will be a National General Assembly meeting next July 4th of 2012. That will be the beginning of the organizations political future. Mark it on your calendar. https://sites.google.com/site/the99percent... /

Unless the movement is seen to have political power, we will be ignored by the powers that be. We must unite in such a way that gets the attention of the politicians in Washington. We need to make a wholesale change in our government. It no longer works for the people. It is rotten to the core.

(edited to change "they" to "we")

Remember when you got your first credit card?

I recall that my first credit card was an American Express and had either a $500 or $1000 dollar limit on it. It was almost like a status symbol of sorts because a lot of people did not have a card and could not get one. Little did I know that I would soon move on to harder stuff.

Not long after came a Visa card, a Master Card, and finally got a Discover card. It didn't take long to max them out if you were a common working man in the 1980's and 1990's. You discovered that you could pay off American Express with your new Visa Card and when that was maxed out, you discovered that you could pay off the Visa with your new gold Master Card. You could now get $25,000 of the clean stuff.

Just when I was ready to go into withdrawals, a new dealer came into town with the best stuff ever. I could re-finance my mortgage and pay off all my bills, including all my credit cards. It was the mainline rush I was looking for.

All this time, my wages had stagnated. My employer just did not feel the need to give the same raises he did in the past, especially after the Carter inflation and the deep Reagan recession. So the credit cards and the mortgage re-financing provided the money I was looking for and that I needed.

Unfortunately, in September of 2008, the dealer got busted. I could no longer get any more easy credit. I could not re-finance my home because it was worth less than what it was when I previously re-financed. It was cold turkey time.

The last I heard, the dealer was back on the Street and making more money than ever. He served no time. He left millions of people desperate and hooked on his stuff and he walked away smiling...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMqVrUSz62o

and we need to adapt to the new reality.

We are programmed to work 40 hours per week or more. Companies expect 40 hours of productivity from each worker. That is an obsolete idea in this new reality.

Here is a graph that I post from time to time:


As we can see, wages have been stagnant for over 30 years. Even as productivity skyrocketed, all the money was kept by those at the top. This is much of the problem with today's economy. In a consumer-based economy such as ours, there must be money in the pockets of consumers in order for our economy to keep running.

We need to return to the same formula for wages vs productivity that we had previous to 1980. Even at that, workers have lost 30 years of wages. How do you make up for that deficiency?

On top of the low wage problem, we now no longer need 40 hours of work from each employee. If we went to a 35-hour work week, that would open up about 15 million new jobs and would mostly resolve the unemployment problem. However, how would we make up for the loss of wages with the decrease in hours worked? There would have to be legislation of some sort to incentivize hiring more workers. Either pay your workers more or pay more in taxes. That is the choice that businesses would have to make. Also, we would promote and encourage more union activity. Business profits would decline but workers wages would increase. That would be the trade-off we would have to make.

"We have to educate our children if we want to compete in the global economy", we are told.

If everyone had a college education, what would it be worth?

And if education is the key to keeping our economy strong, where will these educated people be working and what will they be doing?

I'm certain education is a good thing but education on how to be a good corporate citizen is not necessarily the solution to our problems. Just my opinion.

If, in January of 2009, Barack Obama had come out with the same message and same attitude that he is now showing towards the Republican Party? What would the Republican Party have done?

If Barack Obama had said to the voters that we are on the precipice of collapse and we must do everything within our power to prevent that from happening? If he had said to the voters that the Big Banks and Wall Street had taken our economy to the edge and that we needed radical reform of both those institutions because we could not allow this to happen again. What would have happened if he had insisted on the help of both Parties to straighten out the mess? What would the Republicans have said or done when our nation was in the throes of an economic calamity? What could they have said?

What would have happened if Barack Obama had said to the voters that we needed instant repeal of the Bush taxcuts to prevent further monstrous debt and deficits and that we needed reform of the healthcare system that was the largest drag on our economy recovering? What could the Republicans have said at that time? Would the voters have gone along with the President in January 2009??

The market has maximized its efficiency. Be it technology, greed, or whatever, businesses do not create more jobs without further demand. A company that makes candy bars will not hire people to make more candy unless their candy bars are selling. The law of supply and demand is still legitimate.

However, we have an official unemployment rate of 9.1% which is, in reality, probably closer to 20%. We have 46 million people below the poverty line. We have record numbers on food subsistence - food stamps.

There is nothing on the immediate horizon to help these folks. They cannot depend on the market, no matter how many tax breaks they might get. Tax breaks are not the solution. Companies do not have a shortage of investment capital. They are sitting on about $2 trillion dollars in cash as we speak.

So what can government do to create jobs? First of all, we need to get a Fed Chairman that is friendly to the working people of this country instead of always favoring the big banks. We need a chairman that can print money for the working people of this country just like he prints money for foreign banks. They presently have no problem printing trillions of dollars for these folks. The President appoints the Fed Chairman.

Once we get a new Fed Chairman that is more friendly to the workers of this country, then we can put people to work on many needed projects and jobs. We also need to get rid of those politicians that believe the "market is God". The market is the answer to all our problems. It is not.

But what about inflation? Inflation is when too many dollars are chasing too few goods. We don't have that problem at present. Companies are making more and more profits by increasing the prices of their products and can sometimes make more profits even if they sell less of their products. They have manipulated the market in many instances.

Oil prices are a huge drag on our economy at present. The big oil companies understand that there will be no taxes on their oil so long as the Republicans control the House of Representatives. Remarkedly, their prices have not fluctuated very much from the $3.50-$4.00 per gallon in the last couple of years. That is a bit unusual in itself.

The market cannot create jobs in this present environment. They have no incentive to raise wages either, since there are millions of unemployed waiting at the doors to work for whatever wage they are offered. Businesses are sitting pretty in that regard.

So the only option left is government. Government will have to put these folks to work or we could go for many years with this same depressed economy. Our country could very easily slide into a depression, Especially with the politicians in control of the House that want to cut spending, rather than expand it. Government must put people to work or the situation will only continue to worsen.

The capitalists have never been the friend of working people or the middle class. We have swapped our labor for their meager wages forever. They hate unions because it forces them to take less of the profits, at the benefit of labor. There has always been a struggle between the two since capitalism was born.

However, in the late 1990's, the struggle took a dramatic turn. When the NAFTA trade treaty was passed, corporations and capitalists were no longer dependent on American labor. They could get cheap labor in Mexico. But it did not take them long to see that they could get even cheaper labor in China, Indonesia, Vietnam, and other places in Asia. So buenos dios and adios.

Now we have seen over 50,000 American manufacturing plants go "off shore". How many jobs did we lose? They said we would create more jobs than we would lose but that was the "big lie". Even low-paying jobs throughout the South, like textile jobs, making shoes and shirts, were sent overseas. The tech industry, born in this country, deserted the workers and the nation at the first opportunity. They could get customer service reps in India and other places much cheaper than the $8-$10 they were paying American workers.

Now, we wake up and see that we have very few manufacturing jobs or jobs of any kind left in our country. About 20 million Americans are looking for jobs that no longer exist. The capitalists have finally won the long struggle.

Ten years after the attack on the WTC, our troops and other interests are still scattered around the corners of the globe. In many of the countries, we are not wanted or admired. Our military, contrary to American propaganda, do not inspire good will in many of these countries. We see a different picture from how most of those countries feel about us.

Before 9/11, we had put troops into Saudi Arabia, the home of Mecca and the Islam religion. It was unwise and dangerous. You can only swipe at a hornet's nest so many time before they attack back. The attack on 9/11 was not unprovoked.

With our continued presence in these countries, we will never be secure. Homeland Security cannot protect us from all attacks, no matter how many billion or trillions we spend on defense or security. We are making permanent enemies that will drain our wealth and resources and make us a poor third-world country.

We, as a people, need to end these wars and provocation. We need to bring our troops home. The many years of imperialism should end. Otherwise, we will have enemies for ever.

I love passion in politics as much as the next fellow. But my passion is usually reserved for Democratic ideas. I have a difficult time getting passionate about taxcuts or trade treaties or cuts in Medicare or Social Security. These are Republican ideas and it is a rarity to see a politician get passionate about them. Because passion usually originates in ideas seeking fairness and equality and progressivism.

We should step carefully into this minefield. We should save our passion for ideas that promote the Democratic Party, not capitalism or Republicanism. We should not be blinded by the passion of any politician that would promote such ideas.

Just my two cents.

One of the most hyped Presidents of our lifetimes and also, one of the worst. But not one Republican out of a million would admit to Reagan's failures.

Ronald Reagan was the leader in preaching lower taxes and less government. Deficits were never a problem until Reagan ran them through the roof. He believed in the superiority of the American military, also, until 246 Marines were blown up in Beirut. It was tragic. But Americans tend to overlook the Reagan policies that have hypnotized the Republicans for 3 decades now and has turned the Republican philosophy into the Gospel of Saint Ronnie.

No one can rationally explain the Republican Party's affinity for Ronald Reagan. They needed a hero and Ronnie came riding by on a white horse at just the right time. He lassoed their hearts and captured their loyalties.

Unfortunately, it is a false and destructive legacy. The reason we are so far in debt today can be directly traced to the low taxes and big spending philosophy of Ronald Reagan. He believed if you could spend enough, then there would be nothing left for social programs. He hated big government. Present-day Republicans still believe this and have taken our country to the edge of bankruptcy and collapse. Worse still, they want to continue Reagan's ideas.

Every candidate on the stage last night tried to out-Reagan everyone else. It was rather pitiful that the only straw they had to grasp was the illusion of Ronald Reagan. Reality shall never interfere with their governance.

Everyone is scratching their heads and their asses, trying to figure out what this guy stands for? Is he a progressive? Is he a moderate centrist? Is he a left centrist? Is he a right centrist? Is he a Republican? Nobody has yet figured it out.

But he has stated on numerous occasions that he will use the ideas, Democratic or Republican, that he thinks will work best to solve the problems. He is pragmatic, they say. He is not a partisan politician.

The problem that is so befuddling is that when he weighs these ideas for merit, he tends to lean to the conservative solutions. On jobs, on healthcare, on taxbreaks, on trade, etc. He seems to believe more in the conservative arguments than he does in the progressive or Democratic arguments. That is why people are scratching their heads.

From day one, with the hiring of the former head of the New York Federal Reserve to fill the Treasury position, we have seen the political philosophy of Barack Obama in action. With the way he has handled the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and other places, we have seen a right-wing policy in action. As with Guantanamo and the continuing policies of George W Bush. As with his statements that there would be no WPA-type programs and that he would be open to cutting Social Security and Medicare. He gave a green light to the right-wingers in the present Congress.

But he is a Democrat. He was a community organizer in Chicago. He was an admirer of Ronald Reagan and actually took a book about Ronald Reagan to read on his vacation once upon a time. He is not your commonplace Democrat, that is for sure.

Unfortuantely, or maybe fortunately, he has been put into a position where he needs Democrats to continue being the President of the United States. There are Congressmen and Senators that are just as confused by this enigma as you. They are torn about what is the best thing to do? Do they support Barack Obama, the moderate conservative, against their better wishes, or do they let a right-wing nut take over the Presidency?

It is a terrible predicament for a Party to be in, especially at such a critical time in our history. The only solutions we can look for in the near future are conservative solutions and we know from the last 10 years of history how that will likely turn out?

It is understandable why people are so confused.