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Saturday, April 10, 2010

GOP Convention – Repeat of 2000-2008 Fairy Tale Economics

Their platform? Cut taxes and balance the budget at the same time!

Haven't we fallen for that fairy tale before? Like during 2000-2008 when Bush put everything on the credit card - two wars, Plan D, the tax cut for the top 5% which the little guys paid for.

How about a real platform of honesty? After Reagan's budget deficit disaster in the 80’s (candidate H.W. Bush I called it ‘voodoo economies), Bush I said “read my lips,” and then raised taxes to reverse the negative spiral.

President Clinton, who won in ’92 partly as a result of Bush I’s tax increase, kept those rates and restrained spending, handing Bush II a $200 billion SURPLUS.

Bush II handed Obama a $5 TRILLION DEFICIT (doubling our national debt accumulated over 200 years in 8 short years!)

In effect, Clinton handed “W” keys to the world’s fastest supertanker but “W” gave Obama the keys to a smoking supertanker, hung up on a reef leaking oil, with a frozen banking system and a $1.3 Trillion deficit from his last year in office.

We need more of this?

All Sarah Palin could talk about in her speech was OIL, OIL, OIL. She criticized Obama for picking on Afghanistan “President” Karzai, who won office by vote fraud yet accused the U.S. of committing the fraud! Then he says he is tempted to side with the Taliban! Palin feels sorry for Karzai? Yikes – pay attention to the news!

Did she propose the GOP candidate for Sen. Reid's seat come out in FAVOR of storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain? No, but she criticized Obama for closing it.

In 2010 we need to see some political reality and adults proposing some real solutions – our ship is still in recovery mode.

During 2000-2008, corporations were allowed to pretend to move offshore and stop paying their U.S. taxes (ordinary citizens can’t do that.) Companies were given no-bid billion dollar Iraq contracts. Revenues dwindled despite boom times. Naturally, deficit borrowing soared.

Billions of dollars were lost for our federal treasury, so Bush covered it with borrowed money (a lot from China) during a prolonged boom when people had lots of cash to pay a fair share. The government lost money so that a privileged few at the top of the economic ladder could pay less or nothing at all. Wall Street was allowed to drive drunk and collapse the world economy with credit default swaps while betting against their own customers. Your kids and grandkids were left with the bill.

Do you think that even John McCain, had he been elected, would have sat in office and done NOTHING to fix a wrecked ship on a reef?

TARP was actually started by the Bush administration – not Obama. Do you think McCain would not have asked for a stimulus when the entire economy had frozen up along with economies around the world?

Do you think people would be happier if our unemployment were up to twice as high because the government had, like President Hoover in the 30’s depression, done nothing? If a man is drowning, you either throw a lifeline or do nothing? If throwing a line is socialism and doing nothing is capitalism, someone is really confused. The right American thing should be throwing the line.

It’s easy to criticize and be an armchair quarterback, but we need to see some real proposals from the GOP to get America competing globally: green technology for renewables is one of the few areas that would do it. I didn’t hear that coming from the GOP convention. Drill baby drill won’t cut it when we have only 2% of the world’s oil and consume 20%! That is fuzzy math.

Calling people patriots and repeating “American is great” a hundred times is not a plan and won't make America great. Talk is not action. People need to hear some hard truths – fixing wrecked economies takes time and money. It doesn’t happen by doing nothing or ballooning the deficit even more.

All I heard yesterday was more fairy tale economics and “just say no” negative attitudes instead of some real solutions based on reality to help our country to compete with fast-growing, high-tech China, India, etc. in the 21st Century.

Re-electing the same folks who got us into this mess based on the same platform from 2000-2008 is not a solution, its insanity because it will lead to the same result – more deficits and favoritism for the top 5% instead of the Obama administration focus on the middle class.

Palin’s plan would insure America stays focused on old technologies while countries like China are racing in front of us -- developing solar, wind, and renewable energy while buying up mineral rights worldwide. China has built a 350 mph Mag Lev train and their export base is global. The GOP focus is keeping the tax cuts for the top 5%.

Repeating past mistakes is not going to advance American interests. We need to return to people paying their fair share, like Bush 41 had the courage to do, to get our budget back in control and return to honest accounting instead of the 2000-2008 voodoo economics that didn’t even include the cost of the two wars in the Bush budgets.

Neither America’s, nor the world’s, future will be advanced on fairy tales and platitudes.

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