Obama is lying again!

[gdnp]

Originally Posted by gdnp View Post
Answer this BAC: what outcome over the next two years would you accept as evidence that the stimulus program was a success?

Well if we'd done nothing and just let the market and it's institutions work, we'd probably already be coming out of the recession and two years from now the economy might be roaring. So how can we know that the Obama's approach worked now?

Now maybe ... just maybe ... even with the trillion dollars in added taxation, welfare and pork, the economy might be improved in two years from what it is now ... assuming the government doesn't continue to interfere when Obama's base complains things aren't getting better fast enough or that they aren't getting enough welfare. But how will we judge if it's doing better than if we'd left well enough alone? Too bad we can't divide the country in two and try both approaches so that even people like you would finally have to accept that government planning of economies does not work. And that government is not better at allocating resources than the individuals who actually created the wealth that government takes and spends.

Translation: Sorry, gdnp, There is no outcome that will convince me that the stimulus package was successful. If unemployment and inflation drop to 2% and the government runs a trillion dollar surplus, I will claim that without the stimulus unemployment and inflation would be 1% and we would have a 2 trillion dollar surplus.

 

[gdnp]

Both housing and car sales took huge hits during the 1974 and 1981-82 recessions. Had the government not interfered in this one, perhaps things would already be looking up. And by the way, if you don't sell your house, a drop in housing prices doesn't really mean much to the owner. In fact, it might offer an opportunity to reduce one's property taxes.

Note to self: Add property taxes to subjects that BAC knows nothing about.

Here's how it works, BAC. property values fall, in part because foreclosures increase. The people facing foreclosure stop paying their property taxes and their homes fall into disrepair, further losing value. The local government, having to keep paying the cops and the teachers, is forced to raise the taxes of everyone else. If the property values fall globally, they just increase the tax rate so that revenues remain stable.

It's the opposite of what happened to me during the boom over the past 10 years. Almost every year the tax rate was cut, but the tax bill increased because property values were rising. The tax rate was cut 5%, property values rose 10%, so the tax bill increases 5%.

Now the value drops 10%, but the tax rate increases 15%, and the tax bill continues its climb.

The idea that falling property values will likely cause people to save money on their taxes is laughable.

ETA: Here is a graph from Calculated Risk of auto sales. The curent drop is greater than in either of the two previous recessions, with sales now lower than they have been since 1982. No evidence they have bottomed out, either. GM and Chrysler would both be in bankruptcy now were it not for federal intervention.

I know, I know...none of this would have happened were it not for government interference.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Note to self: Add property taxes to subjects that BAC knows nothing about.

Here's how it works, BAC. property values fall, in part because foreclosures increase. The people facing foreclosure stop paying their property taxes and their homes fall into disrepair, further losing value. The local government, having to keep paying the cops and the teachers, is forced to raise the taxes of everyone else. If the property values fall globally, they just increase the tax rate so that revenues remain stable.

It's the opposite of what happened to me during the boom over the past 10 years. Almost every year the tax rate was cut, but the tax bill increased because property values were rising. The tax rate was cut 5%, property values rose 10%, so the tax bill increases 5%.

Now the value drops 10%, but the tax rate increases 15%, and the tax bill continues its climb.

The idea that falling property values will likely cause people to save money on their taxes is laughable.

Good explanation.

Thank you.

 

[Meadmaker]

I know, I know...none of this would have happened were it not for government interference.

It's the mindlessness of a BAC thread that I find alternately amusing and frustrating. Just regurgitate a bunch of Republican talking points. No thinking required.

I've been a deficit hawk for all my adult life. I think the worst thing that government can do is borrow money. As a consequence, I'm no fan of this "stimulus bill". However, anyone with one eye open and half a brain can see that the GOP was incredibly, amazingly, and consistently fiscally irresponsible.


Likewise with all the other analyses of the current crisis. Both parties certainly played a role, and no good can come of any program that encourages lending to people who can't afford it, but George Bush expanded those programs while encouraging financial institutions to find creative ways to let them make money while doing it. They responded in first rate style. Any halfwit can see that this was a bipartisan crisis, but maybe, just maybe, most people might be inclined to assign just a tad more blame to the party who actually had the power to do something about it while the crisis was developing.

Well, regardless, Obama is in charge now. He has a solid majority in Congress. He will get most of what he wants. I'm not keen on how he is starting out, but no one has the power to stop him, so we'll see what happens. Three years from now, when he runs for reelection he will have a record. If it works, the economy will be humming along, and if it doesn't work there will be a lot more poor people in America. Either way, useful idiots on boths sides will be there to say that all the bad things were the other party's fault, and all the good things were due to our party's efforts.

 

[gdnp]

The problem I see is that if in 3 years we have 12% unemployment and a half trillion dollar budget deficit the Democrats will claim that without intervention unemployment would be 20% and the Republicans will claim that without government interference in the free markets unemployment would be 5% and we'd be running a budget surplus.

 

[Meadmaker]

The problem I see is that if in 3 years we have 12% unemployment and a half trillion dollar budget deficit the Democrats will claim that without intervention unemployment would be 20% and the Republicans will claim that without government interference in the free markets unemployment would be 5% and we'd be running a budget surplus.

Undoubtedly. On the other hand, voters tend not to be swayed by such things. They tend to vote on the basis of Ronald Reagan's famous question, "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?" In some ways, it is a horribly unfair question. Governments can only do so much, after all. However, they claim the ability to influence the economy. We might as well hold them to it.

Of course, "the base" of each party will make excuses for anything. Did you know there are people who think this crisis is Bill Clinton's fault? Outrageous, you say? But there are such people. Takes all kinds to make a world, I guess.

 

[BeAChooser]

You're proving my point exactly.

Hardly ... and I'll explain why in a moment. But first, from your response, I gather that you agree with me that the New Deal didn't recover the economy. Please inform gdnp and Dr Adequate.

World War II started in 1939 and shortly afterwards the Great Depression was over. Billions were poured into the economy, which was almost entirely controled by the federal government. I know libertarians can't stand to hear this, but it worked.

Now as to this claim, note that there are a few major differences between the sort of programs the money was spent on in WW2 and what it will be spent on in Obama's stimulus package.

First, the WW2 money was spent on building weapons because there was a REAL need. Most of the things the Obama spending will go towards are not really needed. In fact, you probably can't even tell us how they arrived at the amounts being spent on various things. That's because they just pulled those numbers out of the air. They aren't based on need.

And to build the WW2 weapons, they had to build lots and lots of new industry ... which created the means by which people would be employed and would create new wealth after the war was over. Plus, WW2 spending created an entire new technological base in dozens of fields. We came out of WW2 the manufacturing and technological powerhouse of the entire world. The Obama program, in contrast, will mostly fund temporary jobs like redecorating offices and building things that will have very little to do with growing the economy long term or increasing our production capacity. Sorry, but a road to Vegas will not do that. It's just PORK.

Nor will keeping people in homes they couldn't afford and still won't be able afford after the money runs out. In fact, for those people to keep those home you will have to continue to STEAL money from those who didn't make such bad decisions and give it to them. What's going to be the price tag of that? Obama announced $75 billion for this one item alone and I heard the final pricetag may run to over $250 billion. Bet its double even that. And Let me guess. They all voted for Obama.

And Obama's programs are not going to alter technology any significant way either (despite all the rhetoric). In fact, his emphasis on green and bogus global warming hysteria will likely damage our relative productivity relative to the rest of the world ... make us even less competitive.

And there are more differences that make your claim absolutely silly. Do you know how much those WW2 jobs paid? Very little compared to the expectations of Obama, democrats and those who will benefit from Obama's program. EACH job created under Obama's program (assuming as many jobs are created as is claimed) will cost between $200,000 and $300,000. I assure you that the jobs created during WW2 cost a fraction of that.

And what sort of housing did they get for their work back in WW2? A quonset hut? A fox hole? And what sort of food did they get? K rations? Were they all promised TVs too? Of course not. So don't try and claim the WW2 experience proves the stimulus package will work to recover the economy now. It only makes you look desperate to find ANY example that might support this bogus notion that government can manage economies better than a free market. The truth is they can't.

And by the way, I'm no liberal.

And yet you want to tax and spend, tax and spend, and you support a bill that for the most part is nothing but welfare.

 

[BeAChooser]

I think the problem is that in many industries there are really large economies of scale, which combined with the fact that monopolies and oligopolies can and do use their power to create excess profits leads to a marketplace that is far from competitive.

And you think government control ... the biggest monopoly of all ... will be more competitive? What can I do but laugh. ROTFLOL!

 

[BeAChooser]

The thing about leadership is that if balls are rolling willy nilly, you look to the leaders to do something about them. I want the guy in charge to stand up and say, "We've got balls rolling out of control. It's time to put a stop to this!"

The problem is that Obama's kick has been misdirected and will only cause the ball to roll faster and farther than it would have without the kick.

I didn't see that from President Bush.

A red herring. I'm not defending Bush in this matter. Bush actions of late are part of the problem. He too wasn't willing to let the free market institutions work as they otherwise would have worked in this case. He acted like Arnold is now acting in California. In league with the devil. Thinking that more taxes will solve the problem and that you can spend your way out of problems caused by the fiscal irresponsibility of liberals (and I include Bush in that description). You can't.

However, if you think he tried very, very hard to put a stop to all this nonsense, please do tell us what he did.

For one thing, he and the republicans tried to reign in Freddie and Fannie back in the 2000 to 2004 timeframe. They wanted more oversight and regulations that economists say now would probably have prevented this collapse. In fact, what they proposed was widely described as "the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis." But noooooo ... democrats would not allow that to happen. Remember what Franks, Waters and Schumer said back then? You should since we had this discussion before. Let me quote democrat Maxine Waters AGAIN:

"Through nearly a dozen hearings where frankly we were trying to fix what wasn't broke. Mr Chairman, we do not have a crisis at Freddie Mac and particular at Fannie Mae. Under the OUTSTANDING leadership of Mr Frank Raines, everything in the 1992 act has worked just fine."

And she wasn't alone. Far more democrats spoke and voted against fixing the problem of monitoring and regulating mortgage lenders than spoke and voted for fixing it. And far more republicans spoke and voted for a fix than against one. So as far as I'm concerned this problem is OWNED by the democrats. And Obama LIED during his campaign when he claimed Bush and McCain hadn't done "anything" to try and solve the mortgage problem. (Lying not a new thing with Obama.)

I have bad news for you. They have. Really. Check the balance sheets. The assets are gone.

Source? You don't know what you are talking about. Bad loans are only a fraction of the total assets. Look at Bank of America, for example, which has received billions in bailout funds and will be getting more if Obama gets his way. All because it has some bad loans (to Obama constituents) that bankruptcy could wipe off the slate.

 

[BeAChooser]

Originally Posted by BeAChooser
Public education has failed about half the children still in public education.

Evidence of this?

How about the fact that about half of the kids in the public school systems of our big cities fail to graduate high school? And most of those school systems are democrat run.

The literacy rate in the United States is 99%.

So you think being able to read and write sums up a "good" education? But read and write what? Define literate, since what apparently passes for it nowadays is not what once was considered literate.

 

[BeAChooser]

You are getting your causation wrong. It isn't something magical about the private schools that makes them have better performance than public schools, it is the fact that parents have to be wealthy enough ("Lucky" as you would say) to send the kids there that makes them have better performance. Socioeconomic status is one of the greatest determinants of a child's performance, and once balanced for the socioeconomic status of the students in them, private and public schools are statistically the same in performance.

Here are some facts that would tend to suggest you (and the study you got that from) are mistaken:

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1670063,00.html

The study says that it is "the kinds of economic and resource advantages their parents can give [students]" — as well as the level of parental involvement in their kids' education —that determines success or failure in high school. That's a message the teachers unions and Democrats in general love: The problem isn't in the schools; it's with social inequality. Except that's not exactly what the data shows. It's true that controlling for socioeconomic status (SES) eliminates most of the public-school/private-school differences in achievement-test scores in math, reading, science and history. But even after you control for SES, Catholic schools run by holy orders (not those overseen by the local bishop) turned out to perform better than other schools studied. True, as the study says, there are only a small number of religious-order schools. But the data suggests that the type of school a kid attends does affect how well he will do — and that we could learn something from how holy orders run their schools. The Center on Education Policy, however, is an advocacy group for public schools, so it didn't look into why holy-order schools are succeeding where others fail.

The center also downplays another finding: While controlling for SES eliminated most public school/private-school differences in achievement test scores, it did not eliminate differences in the most widely used test of developed abilities, the SAT. (As I explained more fully here, developed abilities are those nurtured through schoolwork, reading, engaging a piece of art, and any other activities that spark critical thinking. Developed abilities aren't inborn traits but honed competencies, more akin to athletic skill gained through practice rather than raw IQ. By contrast, achievement tests measure the amount of material students have committed to memory in any particular field.) Combined with high-school grades, SAT scores are the best predictor of how kids will do in their freshman year of college. And the data in the new study shows that private-school students outperform public-school students on the SAT.

Isn't that just because richer private-school kids can afford to be coached more before the SAT? No — remember that this study carefully controlled for socioeconomic status. Rather, it appears private schools do more to develop students' critical-thinking abilities — not just the rote memorization required to do well on achievement tests.

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/will083100.asp

A two-year study, by the Harvard Program on Education Policy and Governance, of privately funded school choice programs in Washington, D.C., New York City and Dayton, Ohio, documents "moderately large" improvement in test scores by African American children who used vouchers to switch from public to private schools. The improvement was better than that achieved in a Tennessee experiment reducing class sizes by seven students.

But democrats are opposed to vouchers.

And by the way, if private schools spent as much as public schools do ... i.e., they doubled their spending ... I wonder how well the comparison between the education one receives in each environment (dollar for dollar) would be then?

But the best proof of all that there is a real difference quality between public and private education is that virtually all politicians send their kids to private schools. If there wasn't a difference then they'd have no problem sending them to public schools and saving a few dollars. Right?

 

[Meadmaker]

For one thing, he and the republicans tried to reign in Freddie and Fannie back in the 2000 to 2004 timeframe. They wanted more oversight and regulations that economists say now would probably have prevented this collapse. In fact, what they proposed was widely described as "the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis." But noooooo ... democrats would not allow that to happen. Remember what Franks, Waters and Schumer said back then? You should since we had this discussion before.

It must be horrible to be President. Your predecessor makes a bad law, and even though you are in control of the White House, and your party controls both houses of Congress, and you have six years to get it done (we won't hold him accountable post 2006 when Democrats took charge in Congress), you are utterly powerless to change it. You try so hard, but people in the minority party keep saying nasty things about you and say that your great laws are actually bad ones.

What's a President to do?

You are incredibly naive to think that Congressional Republicans wanted that bill. If they would have wanted it, they would have gotten it. As for Bush, maybe he wanted it, but not very badly. Certainly not enough to make the slightest compromise to get it.

 

[BeAChooser]

You have no clue. Bankruptcy implies your debts are greater than your assets: that you are insolvent. When you declare bankruptcy you don't just wipe out your debts and keep your assets: your assets are liquidated and the proceeds used to pay off your creditors, usually at cents on the dollar.

How can you liquidate assets if you have no assets ... if they are "all gone" as was claimed by meadmaker? Obviously, it is meadmaker and you who have no clue. And by the way, there are several types of bankruptcy. And we aren't just talking about banks declaring bankruptcy ... but also the folks who took out those bad mortgages. But instead Obama and company are going to STEAL money from the rest of us and give it to the folks who foolishly took out loans they couldn't hope to pay off. And keep the bad bank management in place. And Obama's friend, ACORN, says they aren't going to allow anyone to be foreclosed on ... threatening riots if any one is.

So a bankrupt bank has no remaining net assets.

Ah, now you are going to add the word "net"?

The bad assets are a small proportion of the total? Do you recall that the banks are highly leveraged? If you borrow $25 for every $1 of capital, and 5% of your loans go bad, guess what? You are broke.

So your solution is to bail out these highly leveraged banks by STEALING money from me and those who didn't make unsound decisions? Perhaps they deserve to go under instead? And none of the real assets (like property, houses, businesses, etc) are going to disappear. Just the banks profits and those half million dollar salaries that Obama promised their CEOs. In fact, guess who should own the properties in question when the borrower defaults? Surely you don't think those properties have no value? If they didn't have value, ACORN wouldn't be so insistent about not allowing banks to foreclose on them. Right?

 

[BeAChooser]

If unemployment and inflation drop to 2% and the government runs a trillion dollar surplus

If that happens I will gladly announce that Obama and the democrats were right! But you and I both know that isn't going to happen. So you are just spouting nonsense. Try to stick to the real world, gdnp.

 

[BeAChooser]

The idea that falling property values will likely cause people to save money on their taxes is laughable.

Except that is exactly what happened during the 80's and 90's when property values fell in California (for example). SMART PEOPLE went out and negotiated reductions in their property tax bill based on the reduced value of their home. You see, the tax was/is a certain percentage of the assessed property value ... whatever that happens to be.

 

[BeAChooser]

I think the worst thing that government can do is borrow money. As a consequence, I'm no fan of this "stimulus bill".

Odd. You seem to be defending it tooth and nail on this thread.

However, anyone with one eye open and half a brain can see that the GOP was incredibly, amazingly, and consistently fiscally irresponsible.

On the whole, I'm not defending Bush and many republicans ... certainly not as far as their handling of the mortgage crisis (once it developed) is concerned. But whether they were irresponsible is beside the point. The issue NOW is whether Obama is being EVEN MORE irresponsible. I say he is and that he also lying to us. THAT is the thread's topic. Not whether Bush was a bad boy. So stick to the topic. Or start your own thread.

Well, regardless, Obama is in charge now.

Right. Which is why I want to talk about Obama and what he's proposed. And what he's claimed as fact. But you seem opposed to that.

I'm not keen on how he is starting out, but no one has the power to stop him, so we'll see what happens. Three years from now, when he runs for reelection he will have a record.

But don't you think we have a responsibility to try and stop his approach to the problem NOW if we think (and history shows) it's just going to do further damage to the economy? You don't like deficits but now we are talking about trillion dollar deficits into the forseeable future.

And I don't recall democrats sitting back and waiting to see if the Iraq War was going to be a success. From almost day one they were against it and quite vocal about it. I shall defend conservative (notice I didn't say republican) economics just as passionately and don't appreciate a statement by you that doing so is just "mindless". In fact, I think such a statement was "mindless".

 

[BeAChooser]

It must be horrible to be President. Your predecessor makes a bad law, and even though you are in control of the White House, and your party controls both houses of Congress, and you have six years to get it done (we won't hold him accountable post 2006 when Democrats took charge in Congress), you are utterly powerless to change it.

We had this discussion once before and I showed you then that you were wrong. Your response was to start hurling accusations of racism at me. You were so busy doing that, you apparently didn't attend to a single fact that I provided proving you are wrong. If that's going to be your approach to debate, what's the point of debating you further in this thread? So I shall simply close my discussion with you by reposting what I noted the last time you made this bogus claim.

We are talking about S.190. In the Senate, it made it out of committee by a straight party line vote (11-9) with all the democrats voting against it and all the republicans voting for it. And then the democrats in the Senate killed it. And how did they kill it? They used the filibuster. Here's what I provided before, but I guess you didn't read it:

http://www.govtrack.us/users/questions.xpd?topic=bill:s109-190

What Does "Ordered to be reported with an amendment in the nature of a substitute favorably." mean?

A1: This was just a way for S.190 to be delayed through amendment. It then died at the conclusion of the 109th Congress when the 110 Session began in January of 2007. Shortly after, a similar bill (S. 1100) was reintroduced with the amendments in the 110th session of Congress where it remains pending.

The fact that it was reported "favorably" means that the majority of those on the committee recommended that the bill be passed.

A7: McCain's appeal for more Senate co-sponsors was an attempt to garner enough support to force a floor vote. Apparently, to no avail. It remained stalled until it expired.

So it looks like McCain did more than just wait for something to happen. He tried to make something happen. But since democrats could filibuster, nothing did. Filibuster, you say?

I'm assuming (correctly I hope) that in '05 the Republican's controlled Congress. How was this bill (heavily favored by Republicans) blocked on voting by Democrats?

A1: Strange but true - neither party has true 'control' of the Senate.

A simple majority is not 'control' because neither party has the 60-votes req'd to break "filibuster". A minority party can block a measure (i.e. filibuster) until either the measure is withdrawn or the filibuster is broken by a 60-votes.

http://www.congresslink.org/print_basics_senaterules.htm#filibusters

"almost any motion that does not have the support of [60-votes in] the Senate effectively fails"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate [Answer submitted on Sep 28, 2008 6:28 PM]

A2: It was never allowed to be brought to the floor for a vote because Schumer and Dodd, primarily, are on record as having said Fannie and Freddie are just fine. Since I am going by the clips of the floor comments and articles that were written at the time quoting the Republican's begging Dodd to allow it on the floor for a vote, I presume there was a filibuster by the Dems. It came up again in 2006, but at that point the Dems were in control of both Houses of Congress. [Answer submitted on Sep 29, 2008 12:30 AM]

Now those are the real facts. And as I pointed out to you the last time you tried this republican's were *in control* argument,

the truth is that from 2003 to 2005, Republicans had 51 seats in the senate to the democrat's 48. So all it would take is a few RINOs (and there were more than a few) for the group to vote with democrat *positions*. If only a few democrats had voted for change/reform, it would have passed. But none did. And that's why Bush's initial call for legislation fell flat, as well as the ones in 2005 and later. Yes, between 2005 and 2007, Republicans widened their majority but at the cost of electing even more RINOS. Here's a list of the top 10 in December of 2005. http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=11129 And even then, they weren't filibuster proof. So make no mistake. Far more democrats spoke and voted against fixing the problem of monitoring and regulating mortgage lenders than spoke and voted for fixing it. And far more republicans spoke and voted for a fix than against one. So the lack of oversight that led to this crisis and the failure to fix is clearly due to democrat actions and inaction over the past 8 years (or longer). And no amount of spinning will extract you from that simple fact, Meadmaker.

Even though you continue to spin.

 

[Meadmaker]

Odd. You seem to be defending it tooth and nail on this thread.

Where?

But don't you think we have a responsibility to try and stop his approach to the problem NOW if we think (and history shows) it's just going to do further damage to the economy?

Certainly the loyal opposition has a duty to be opposed to government action. No problem.

You don't like deficits but now we are talking about trillion dollar deficits into the forseeable future.

And I'm glad to see the Republican Party voicing opposition to deficits. Maybe they are finding their way back to fiscal responsibility. Oh....wait...they are mostly saying that instead of spending hikes, we should have tax cuts. It seems they don't actually care about deficits. They are just concerned about the mechanism by which the deficits are created. Our deficits....good. Their deficits....bad.

 

[Meadmaker]

We had this discussion once before and I showed you then that you were wrong.

No, you showed me that they had you duped. Just like you showed me again.

I'm sure you believe everything you wrote, and I'm sure that Senator McConnell likes it that way.

 

[Meadmaker]

Right. Which is why I want to talk about Obama and what he's proposed. And what he's claimed as fact. But you seem opposed to that.

Then you had better start a new thread, because this one started by saying Obama is LYING when he claims that this crisis is as deep and dire as any since the Great Depression.

Now, would you like to talk about that? Or would you like to talk about whether Obama's program will fix it? That's a much more complicated question, but you didn't start a thread about that.