.... is as complicated and challenging as the superstructure.

You don't want the buildings to fall down again.........do you?

...reduces the army of the unemployed, and....

Not everyone who joins the military ends up in combat.

It's been partially answered the last few days - he was a Kennedy - it's in their blood.

But I would like to hear more ......

The financials do the choosing - the real financials. And then the stockholders or the public.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discu...

Banks and businesses die all the time. We, the People create what we need to govern and support ourselves. If these institutions, including government, don't work, we change them or at least we change the managers of government and institutions.

In 1980 We, the People bailed out the Chrysler Corporation for a couple of billion dollars. Lee Iococca and Chrysler paid back the loan ahead of schedule and also paid almost half a billion in interest to the US Treasury - to us, the people.

We need banks to help us manage our business or financial needs. We need businesses, large and small, to provide varied services.
Bailing them out serves us, whether we realize it or want to admit it or not.

70 banks dying in 2009? That's gruesome, and real. And businesses going belly up? I don't even want to look at those numbers.

All technology and science piggybacks. No one is dumb enough to try to reinvent the wheel.

The Boeing 707 was created by the US Air Force as a tanker? and then the technology was given for free to Boeing.

Practically all Research and Development in military technology ended up in civilian hands where we are all enjoying the products of what we paid for as taxpayers funding military and space programs.

Ever heard of Tang?

Have your RW friend Google that. In @1980 the government bailed out Chrysler which paid back the money ahead of time AND....

.....paid the taxpayers almost half a billion dollars in interest.

I can do the research but I believe some of the recipients of recent bailouts have also paid back their loans WITH interest.

Here is just one story: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/810546...

Tell your RW friend that We, the People, ARE the government. We bail ourselves out and we pay back ourselves.......WITH interest.

More stories about how the bailouts are working.....and remember, these banks pay interest to the US Treasury on those loans.....

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/17/business...

If people can add up the national debt and partition it for that golly-gee-whiz gut grabber 37,000 dollars per person, then it is only appropriate to add up the national wealth - the national treasures and do the same thing - and then balance the debt with the assets - which yields the national net worth of the United States.

The national debt is the cumulative total of annual deficits and surpluses. When you consider that debt you must position it against the national wealth which is everything we own as a nation and not necessarily what individuals themselves own or owe.

For example I believe We, the People, own a major portion of the state of Nevada, for one. Add up all the other so called government land and national parks and public buildings and the rest and then compare it with that infamous trillions in national debt.

The national debt is indeed a problem because we, the taxpayers, have to pay interest on that debt, something like 500 billion per year. The best way to attack the debt is to balance the annual budgets. It can be done. Bill Clinton had three successive years with surpluses and he actually made two payments, several hundred million dollars, on the national debt.

I propose that we stop the hand wringing and breast beating and tell Obama and Congress to balance the annual budgets - NOW!

Yes, that is a huge liability, but....

In Accounting 101 we learn that you compare Liabilities with Assets. If each person is saddled with this debt, then the Assets of the United States should also be allocated to each person.

Anyone know what this country is worth? All the public land and the public buildings and the public treasures in places like the Smithsonian and the like?

Think about it and please quit looking at and talking about only one side of the balance sheet.

FDR's economic cures took years and were accelerated with Lend Lease and then Pearl Harbor and WW II.

JFK in his inaugural said that changes would not happen in weeks or months or even in his first term. Barack Obama said the same thing in his inaugural.

Bill Maher was a history major and maybe should do a little research before spouting off his "new rules" that come from his ill informed comedy writers.

Mixing comedy with history may be funny for the moment but in this instance it clearly collides with factual analysis.

Way too long and so beyond attention span of most congresspeople.

Everyone talks about the debt. How about a brief balance sheet that shows both Assets and Liabilities? Then we can figure out the Net Worth or Net Debt.....

You know, like they taught us in accounting.

All actual money collected goes into the general treasury to be used as needed for all government expenses.

Now how the accounting is done by different administrations is another story. They aren't fooling anyone with their juggled bookkeeping. And there you have a point.

Despite the dire prediction in the OP there will be surpluses. Hopefully for a long, long time. Let's see what the retiring boomer generation and the crappy economy does to the so called surplus.

What a brilliant deduction! Who figured that out?

If jobs don't come back, Social Security will be the least of the economic dilemmas facing imminent generations.

...to be believable and inspire the faith of their believers.

Millions left the Catholic Church after its "modernization" by the Second Vatican Council in 1962. That Council made my years of studying Latin wasted........

http://www.dailycatholic.org/history/21ecu...