pattygreen

The Kennedy family, you probably don’t know this, has many members who are due family money (due with age, maturity etc.). You probably also don’t know that this money is apparently in a foreign bank – avoiding estate taxes. I say ‘apparently’ because the family refuses to talk about this allegation. It would be so easy to simply deny it if it wasn’t true – right? Isn’t it ironic that the democrats, as the Kennedy’s all are, love to raise taxes and allege that the ‘rich’ get away with too much tax relief here in the US. Meanwhile this family full of ‘rich’ people and democrats protect their money by putting it in foreign banks. If this country is such a protector of the rich and their money, why do the Kennedy’s putting their money in foreign banks?

By the way, Hillary Clinton admitted to having prohibited her 13 year old from getting her ears pierced. She also enrolled Chelsea in a school that refused to distribute condoms to minors. She wants our daughters to be 'footloose and fancy free' like abortion rights for children and access to condoms for children, but raises her own daughter with an attempt at conservative morals?

Speaking of abortion… liberal doctors are now stating that the death penalty via a hypodermic needle is cruel and unusual punishment. The doctors say assisting in these legal actions is against their Hippocratic Oath. So, a Doctor can suck the brain out of a baby whose head is sticking out of the birth canal, but they have a problem inserting a needle into a murderer’s vein? LOL

Liberals want to say ‘any 13 year old should be allowed to have an abortion without their parent’s consent. Yet, liberals say you should be 22 to possess a weapon. Therefore, you’re old enough to make the incredible permanent and powerful decision to submit your body to an abortion? Yet, you’re not old enough to possess a weapon to protect life and property! Republicans agree with no weapons for children, even if some of these weapons call themselves Doctor

I suppose since the republicans are hypocrites it makes it perfectly okay for the dems to be. This one is so good I can’t contain my utter contempt for the left-wing activists who once chided President Bush’s deficits yet now make excuses for President Obama’s. Seems that the liberal PAC MoveOn.org took a quarrel with President Bush’s spending and put out this ad back in March of 2008 called “ “: Funny, I don’t remember President Bush ever hitting a “trillion dollar deficit.” Oh wait, that would be President Obama who will be hitting a $1.85 trillion deficit this year. So I guess, in essence, President Obama’s spending is indeed making President Bush’s spending look like “child’s play,” they’re correct. So thank you MoveOn.org for pointing this out. Yes, President Obama, who is going to pay off your $1.85 trillion deficit on top of President Bush’s $400 billion deficit? There is no good answer here and it simply proves that liberals are fine with deficits so far as they’re done by Democrat Presidents. I think Bush’s spending was terrible as well but now it pales in comparison to Obama.

96,000,000 out of 308,672,753 is less than 1/3. Try putting every American on the plan and see what it's going to cost and see if they don't ration your care.

By MICHAEL J. BOSKIN President Barack Obama's 2011 budget lays out a stunningly expensive big-government spending agenda, mostly to be paid for years down the road. He proposes to increase capital gains, dividend, payroll, income and energy taxes. But the enormous deficits and endless accumulation of debt will eventually force growth-inhibiting income tax hikes, a national value-added tax similar to those in Europe, or severe inflation. On average, in the first three years of the 10-year budget plan, federal spending rises by 4.4% of GDP. That's more than during President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society and Vietnam War buildup and President Ronald Reagan's defense buildup combined. In those same three years, spending on average hits the highest level in American history (25.1% of GDP), save the peak of World War II. The average deficit of $1.4 trillion (9.6% of GDP) is over three times the previous 2008 record. Remarkably, President Obama will add more red ink in his first two years than President George W. Bush—berated by conservatives for his failure to control domestic spending and by liberals for the explosion of military spending in Iraq and Afghanistan—did in eight. In his first 15 months, Mr. Obama will raise the debt burden—the ratio of the national debt to GDP—by more than Reagan did in eight years. Some specific proposals are laudable: permanently indexing the Alternative Minimum Tax for inflation, part of the increased R&D funding, reform of agriculture subsidies, a future freeze on one-sixth of the budget (only after it balloons for two years). But these are swamped by the huge expansion and centralization of government. True, as he often reminds us, President Obama inherited a recession and fiscal mess. Much of the deficit is the natural and desirable result of the deep recession. As tax revenues fall much more rapidly than income, these so-called automatic stabilizers cushioned the decline in after-tax income and helped natural business-cycle dynamics and monetary policy stabilize the economy. But Mr. Obama and Congress added hundreds of billions of dollars a year of ineffective "stimulus" spending—more accurately characterized as social engineering and pork—when far more effective, less expensive options were available. The Obama 10-year budget—unprecedented in its spending, taxes, deficits and accumulation of debt—is by a large margin the most risky fiscal strategy in American history. In his Feb. 1 budget message, Mr. Obama said, "We cannot continue to borrow against our children's future." But that is exactly what he proposes to do. He projects a cumulative deficit of $11.5 trillion by 2020. That brings the publicly held debt (excluding debt held inside the government, e.g., Social Security) to 77% of GDP, and the gross debt to over 100%. Presidents Reagan and George W. Bush each ended their terms at about 40%. The deficits are so large relative to GDP that the debt/GDP ratio keeps growing and then explodes as entitlement costs accelerate in subsequent decades. So worrisome is this debt outlook that Moody's warns of a downgrade on U.S. Treasury bonds, and major global finance powers talk of ending the dollar's reign as the global reserve currency. Ken Rogoff of Harvard and Carmen Reinhart of Maryland have studied the impact of high levels of national debt on economic growth in the U.S. and around the world in the last two centuries. In a study presented last month at the annual meeting of the American Economic Association in Atlanta, they conclude that, so long as the gross debt-GDP ratio is relatively modest, 30%-90% of GDP, the negative growth impact of higher debt is likely to be modest as well. But as it gets to 90% of GDP, there is a dramatic slowing of economic growth by at least one percentage point a year. The likely causes are expectations of much higher taxes, uncertainty over resolution of the unsustainable deficits, and higher interest rates curtailing capital investment. The Obama budget takes the publicly held debt to 73% and the gross debt to 103% of GDP by 2015, over this precipice. The president's economists peg long-run growth potential at 2.5% per year, implying per capita growth of 1.7%. A decline of one percentage point would cut this annual growth rate by over half. That's eventually the difference between a strong economy that can project global power and a stagnant, ossified society. Such vast debt implies immense future tax increases. Balancing the 2015 budget would require a 43% increase in everyone's income taxes that year. It's hard to imagine a worse detriment to economic growth. Presidents and political parties used to propose paths to a balanced budget. After almost doubling it, Mr. Obama proposes to substitute stabilizing the debt/GDP ratio, a much weaker goal. That goal requires balancing the budget excluding interest payments, the so-called primary budget. But he never achieves this, even after five and a half years of economic growth, withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, and repaid financial bailouts. The 2015 budget still calls for a primary deficit of $181 billion. For perspective, returning 2015 spending to population growth plus inflation produces a primary surplus of $645 billion (3.3% of GDP). Mr. Obama's spending turns a short-run crisis into a medium-term debacle. Two factors greatly compound the risk from Mr. Obama's budget plan. He is running up this debt and current and future taxes just as the baby boomers are retiring and the entitlement cost problems are growing, which will necessitate major reform. (Mr. Obama didn't get any help from his predecessors: George W. Bush's growing Medicare prescription drug benefit was not funded, and Mr. Clinton's Social Security reform was a casualty of the Monica Lewinsky scandal.) And Mr. Obama's programs increase the fraction of people getting more money back from the government than the taxes they pay almost to 50%, just as the demographics on an aging population will drive it up further. That's an unhealthy political dynamic. Former Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker famously called Reaganomics—with its defense buildup, tax cuts and budget deficits—a "riverboat gamble." (Which, by the way, worked out well.) Mr. Obama's fiscal strategy is more akin to the voyage of the Titanic. Let's hope he changes course soon enough to prevent disaster. Mr. Boskin is a professor of economics at Stanford University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.

So, your answer to that would have been to let the government be the one to come between him and the patient instead? Did you really think that the government is going to be any different at insuring you? There is no doubt problems with insurance companies occur all the time. That is not the reason people were opposed to gov. public option ins. We don't want the government having full control of All the ins., cause that is where it would have went in the end. I know you don't like to look down the road and see the future, you are like a lot of liberals who just live in the here and now, but eventually with the public option, ALL people, EVERYONE, would be on the plan, and there would have been no other options. Then the only way to afford it would be to cut benefits, cause we certainly can't afford to raise taxes anymore. We would then be in the same situation as the boy with the ins. company. The gov. would deny his medication as well. No. The answer to the ins. problems was not to let the government run things. That's why they're NOT going to. The people knew better and let them know that they were not going to tolerate such an idea. Now, let's let that President of ours scratch that one and start over right this time, with many of the ideas that were put forth, that he denies were put forth, by the republicans. Tort reform, (which he would not even consider because the lawyers funded his campaign and he owes them), purchasing ins. across the borders, regulations for ins. companies to follow, etc. Real reform, not socialism, or a government take of all the insurance companies.

Now you know better than that, don't you? Phil has a self esteem problem. It's quite obvious. For anyone who has the need to put others down that disagree with him is certainly lacking in it.

That scripture is about praying to be 'recognized' or seen as a 'godly' person rather than praying to simply just talk to God privately. God doesn't want us to do things for our own recognition. He wants us to do things because it's right or because it glorifies him. That doesn't have anything to do with speaking loudly about God or your faith. Try again.

You have already succeeded in getting one thread shut down with your disrespectful name calling. What do you want to do, close every thread you post on? What's the matter with you? Are you unable to be civil? Or do you just feel lot's of strength within yourself to post boldly and disrespectfully because noone can see you and actually hold you accountable for your words?:thumbup:

Citizens Against Government Waste Homepage This link will bring you to a website called "citizen's against government waste". you will not believe what our government spends our money on!!!

I do not mind at all when the government helps those who 'need' the help. The problem is waste. There is so much waste of federal funds going on. Eliminating waste cannot balance the budget. But here’s a start: 1. The federal government made at least $72 billion in improper payments in 2008. 2. Washington spends $92 billion on corporate welfare (excluding TARP) versus $71 billion on homeland security. 3. Washington spends $25 billion annually maintaining unused or vacant federal properties. 4. Government auditors spent the past five years examining all federal programs and found that 22 percent of them–costing taxpayers a total of $123 billion annually–fail to show any positive impact on the populations they serve. 5. The Congressional Budget Office published a “Budget Options” series identifying more than $100 billion in potential spending cuts. 6. Examples from multiple Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports of wasteful duplication include 342 economic development programs; 130 programs serving the disabled; 130 programs serving at-risk youth; 90 early childhood development programs; 75 programs funding international education, cultural, and training exchange activities; and 72 safe water programs. 7. Washington will spend $2.6 million training Chinese prostitutes to drink more responsibly on the job. 8. A GAO audit classified nearly half of all purchases on government credit cards as improper, fraudulent, or embezzled. Examples of taxpayer-funded purchases include gambling, mortgage payments, liquor, lingerie, iPods, Xboxes, jewelry, Internet dating services, and Hawaiian vacations. In one extraordinary example, the Postal Service spent $13,500 on one dinner at a Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse, including “over 200 appetizers and over $3,000 of alcohol, including more than 40 bottles of wine costing more than $50 each and brand-name liquor such as Courvoisier, Belvedere and Johnny Walker Gold.” The 81 guests consumed an average of $167 worth of food and drink apiece. 9. Federal agencies are delinquent on nearly 20 percent of employee travel charge cards, costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars annually. 10. The Securities and Exchange Commission spent $3.9 million rearranging desks and offices at its Washington, D.C., headquarters. 11. The Pentagon recently spent $998,798 shipping two 19-cent washers from South Carolina to Texas and $293,451 sending an 89-cent washer from South Carolina to Florida. 12. Over half of all farm subsidies go to commercial farms, which report average household incomes of $200,000. 13. Health care fraud is estimated to cost taxpayers more than $60 billion annually. 14. A GAO audit found that 95 Pentagon weapons systems suffered from a combined $295 billion in cost overruns. 15. The refusal of many federal employees to fly coach costs taxpayers $146 million annually in flight upgrades. 16. Washington will spend $126 million in 2009 to enhance the Kennedy family legacy in Massachusetts. Additionally, Senator John Kerry (D-MA) diverted $20 million from the 2010 defense budget to subsidize a new Edward M. Kennedy Institute. 17. Federal investigators have launched more than 20 criminal fraud investigations related to the TARP financial bailout. 18. Despite trillion-dollar deficits, last year’s 10,160 earmarks included $200,000 for a tattoo removal program in Mission Hills, California; $190,000 for the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming; and $75,000 for the Totally Teen Zone in Albany, Georgia. 19. The federal government owns more than 50,000 vacant homes. 20. The Federal Communications Commission spent $350,000 to sponsor NASCAR driver David Gilliland. 21. Members of Congress have spent hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars supplying their offices with popcorn machines, plasma televisions, DVD equipment, ionic air fresheners, camcorders, and signature machines–plus $24,730 leasing a Lexus, $1,434 on a digital camera, and $84,000 on personalized calendars. 22. More than $13 billion in Iraq aid has been classified as wasted or stolen. Another $7.8 billion cannot be accounted for. 23. Fraud related to Hurricane Katrina spending is estimated to top $2 billion. In addition, debit cards provided to hurricane victims were used to pay for Caribbean vacations, NFL tickets, Dom Perignon champagne, “Girls Gone Wild” videos, and at least one sex change operation. 24. Auditors discovered that 900,000 of the 2.5 million recipients of emergency Katrina assistance provided false names, addresses, or Social Security numbers or submitted multiple applications. 25. Congress recently gave Alaska Airlines $500,000 to paint a Chinook salmon on a Boeing 737. 26. The Transportation Department will subsidize up to $2,000 per flight for direct flights between Washington, D.C., and the small hometown of Congressman Hal Rogers (R-KY)–but only on Monday mornings and Friday evenings, when lawmakers, staff, and lobbyists usually fly. Rogers is a member of the Appropriations Committee, which writes the Transportation Department’s budget. 27. Washington has spent $3 billion re-sanding beaches–even as this new sand washes back into the ocean. 28. A Department of Agriculture report concedes that much of the $2.5 billion in “stimulus” funding for broadband Internet will be wasted. 29. The Defense Department wasted $100 million on unused flight tickets and never bothered to collect refunds even though the tickets were refundable. 30. Washington spends $60,000 per hour shooting Air Force One photo-ops in front of national landmarks. 31. Over one recent 18-month period, Air Force and Navy personnel used government-funded credit cards to charge at least $102,400 on admission to entertainment events, $48,250 on gambling, $69,300 on cruises, and $73,950 on exotic dance clubs and prostitutes. 32. Members of Congress are set to pay themselves $90 million to increase their franked mailings for the 2010 election year. 33. Congress has ignored efficiency recommendations from the Department of Health and Human Services that would save $9 billion annually. 34. Taxpayers are funding paintings of high-ranking government officials at a cost of up to $50,000 apiece. 35. The state of Washington sent $1 food stamp checks to 250,000 households in order to raise state caseload figures and trigger $43 million in additional federal funds. 36. Suburban families are receiving large farm subsidies for the grass in their backyards–subsidies that many of these families never requested and do not want. 37. Congress appropriated $20 million for “commemoration of success” celebrations related to Iraq and Afghanistan. 38. Homeland Security employee purchases include 63-inch plasma TVs, iPods, and $230 for a beer brewing kit. 39. Two drafting errors in the 2005 Deficit Reduction Act resulted in a $2 billion taxpayer cost. 40. North Ridgeville, Ohio, received $800,000 in “stimulus” funds for a project that its mayor described as “a long way from the top priority.” 41. The National Institutes of Health spends $1.3 million per month to rent a lab that it cannot use. 42. Congress recently spent $2.4 billion on 10 new jets that the Pentagon insists it does not need and will not use. 43. Lawmakers diverted $13 million from Hurricane Katrina relief spending to build a museum celebrating the Army Corps of Engineers–the agency partially responsible for the failed levees that flooded New Orleans. 44. Medicare officials recently mailed $50 million in erroneous refunds to 230,000 Medicare recipients. 45. Audits showed $34 billion worth of Department of Homeland Security contracts contained significant waste, fraud, and abuse. 46. Washington recently spent $1.8 million to help build a private golf course in Atlanta, Georgia. 47. The Advanced Technology Program spends $150 million annually subsidizing private businesses; 40 percent of this funding goes to Fortune 500 companies. 48. Congressional investigators were able to receive $55,000 in federal student loan funding for a fictional college they created to test the Department of Education. 49. The Conservation Reserve program pays farmers $2 billion annually not to farm their land. 50. The Commerce Department has lost 1,137 computers since 2001, many containing Americans’ personal data.

Bush Deficit vs. Obama Deficit in Pictures President Barack Obama has repeatedly claimed that his budget would cut the deficit by half by the end of his term. But as Heritage analyst Brian Riedl has pointed out, given that Obama has already helped quadruple the deficit with his stimulus package, pledging to halve it by 2013 is hardly ambitious. The Washington Post has a great graphic which helps put President Obama’s budget deficits in context of President Bush’s. What’s driving Obama’s unprecedented massive deficits? Spending. Riedl details: President Bush expanded the federal budget by a historic $700 billion through 2008. President Obama would add another $1 trillion. President Bush began a string of expensive finan­cial bailouts. President Obama is accelerating that course. President Bush created a Medicare drug entitle­ment that will cost an estimated $800 billion in its first decade. President Obama has proposed a $634 billion down payment on a new govern­ment health care fund. President Bush increased federal education spending 58 percent faster than inflation. Presi­dent Obama would double it. President Bush became the first President to spend 3 percent of GDP on federal antipoverty programs. President Obama has already in­creased this spending by 20 percent. President Bush tilted the income tax burden more toward upper-income taxpayers. President Obama would continue that trend. President Bush presided over a $2.5 trillion increase in the public debt through 2008. Setting aside 2009 (for which Presidents Bush and Obama share responsibility for an additional $2.6 trillion in public debt), President Obama’s budget would add $4.9 trillion in public debt from the beginning of 2010 through 2016. UPDATE: Many Obama defenders in the comments are claiming that the numbers above do not include spending on Iraq and Afghanistan during the Bush years. They most certainly do. While Bush did fund the wars through emergency supplementals (not the regular budget process), that spending did not simply vanish. It is included in the numbers above. Also, some Obama defenders are claiming the graphic above represents biased Heritage Foundation numbers. While we stand behind the numbers we put out 100%, the numbers, and the graphic itself, above are from the Washington Post. We originally left out the link to WaPo. It has now been added. CLARIFICATION: Of course, this Washington Post graphic does not perfectly delineate budget surpluses and deficits by administration. President Bush took office in January 2001, and therefore played a lead role in crafting the FY 2002-2008 budgets. Presidents Bush and Obama share responsibility for the FY 2009 budget deficit that overlaps their administrations, before President Obama assumes full budgetary responsibility beginning in FY 2010. Overall, President Obama’s budget would add twice as much debt as President Bush over the same number of years.

If you took Bush's worst year in office it was $2.7 trillion spent. In 2009, Obama's first and only year, he spent $6.2 trillion. When Obama says he is going to reduce the debt he means he's going to spend less than what he spent the prior year. So, even if he cuts his debt in half, he'd still be spending $3.1 trillion that year which is more than Bush's worst year of spending! It's his way of being deceitful to you people. It only 'sounds' good, he's a great talker. but the reality is it's worse than bush's spending. By the year 2012, our debt will be estimated at $27 trillion! I'm not 'for' Bush. I'm for less spending.

The people who made the buses for Waterbury already had the job of making buses. They make buses for cities all over the nation. The $64 million dollars worth of stimulus money didn't stimulate a darn thing! It was wasted! It created zero jobs!

2 comments on Paul Krugman: hvance I don't know where to start in commenting on the article on Paul. He is in my opinion, a socialist, plain and simple. After seeing every attempt at socialism fail miserably, who cares what Paul Krugman says? He is wrong in his approach. The man is a failure in his profession. Patrick Mulligan Paul Krugman is partisan political hack with no credibility outside of his own far left socialist circles. He's an advocate of Keynesian economic ideas that have been abandoned even by modern neo-Keynesian economists (who are still wrong, but at least have the decency to try to repackage Keynesian ideas in light of modern economic reality). Had he been born 50 years earlier he could have been one of FDR's socialist Utopian "brain trust" lackeys, and he would have been considered a pretty hip, forward thinking dude. Unfortunately for him, he came on the scene a generation later when his beloved economic ideas had since led to stagflation and astronomical government debt, and weren't considered quite so fresh anymore.

[bjean quote] It seems to me that people who want the government to be involved in the control of our religious lives would do well to look at countries where they are ruled by a particular religious doctine. I can't name one where the people and country are better off because of it. That's because these people are also forced to 'worship' and 'believe' in the god of those nations. In America, we will never force anyone to believe in the Christian God or faith that this nation was founded on. Here we are free to have that choice. I am in total agreement with that. I do not want any one church denomination to become the rule in this country. Nor do I want any religion to be set up as the governing religion. I like the way this country has set things up so that the people who live here have the say in what becomes law or not. What I don't like is the way some who are in the minority feel that they can push christianity out of the picture entirely. They have been fighting to keep all the things that this country was founded upon and holds dear out of the public forum.

Not true. You just think so because abortion and homosexuality are not on your list of sins (wrong doings). Murder, stealing, lying.... these are probably on your list, so they are okay with you to regulate with laws. Well, they are also biblical principles, just ones you agree with. Biblical principles like abortion and homosexuality. We need a guideline (the bible) to tell us what is right and what is wrong. Without it, there will be chaos. If a man feels that lying is okay, then when he gets on the witness stand in court, he can lie and whose to say he can't. If we can't make it a law, then anyone will be able to lie and suffer no consequence for it. It is the same with every issue out there.

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Like I said, I don't believe that they are "unsaved" or "going to hell" or "immoral" or "have no faith", or "are in a league with the devil". I believe that they are mistaken about what God has to say on those issues. That's all. When these Christians get to Heaven they will have to answer to him for not believeing his word, for not studying it as he has told them to do, for not researching to find out just what his stand on certain issues are, etc. I'm sure there will be things that I will have to answer for as well. We all will.

I don't need to prove that what you say is true.....you do. If it's written in there, then show me and I will never speak loudly about my beliefs again. Contrary to what you say, I believe the bible teaches us to be loud and bold and strong when talking about God. It teaches us not to be ashamed of him. Isaiah 40:9 "O Zion, that bring good tidings, get you up into the high mountain; O Jerusalem, that bring good tidings, lift up your voice with strength; lift it up, be not afraid; say to the cities of Judah, Behold your God!" Acts 4:31 "And when they had prayed, the place was shaken where they were assembled together; and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they spoke the word of God with boldness." Acts 9:29 "And he spake boldly in the name of the Lord Jesus, and disputed against the Grecians: but they went about to slay him." Phil. 1:4 "And many of the brethren in the Lord, waxing confident by my bonds, are much more bold to speak the word without fear." Deut.27:14 "And the Levites shall speak, and say unto all the men of Israel with a loud voice..." (he goes on to give them God's words.) Luke 17:15 "And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, and with a loud voice glorified God." 2 Tim. 2:15 "Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth." 2 tim. 1:8 "Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord or of me His prisoner, but join with me in suffering for the gospel according to the power of God." It also goes without saying that a Christian's actions should speak louder than words. I believe that my own actions would definitely speak louder than my words in my life, but here, on LBT, all you have are my words, without my actions. Therefore, I will speak loudly, boldly, unashamed and without regret or remorse for my words here. I am confident that what I say here is truthful. Sometimes others may not want to believe what I say, or disagree with my words, and that is their right, but it won't keep me from talking about God, and what he deems righteous. So, bjean, we are supposed to speak loudly about God, as well as live righteously before him. (our actions)

Your hypocrisy sickens me. You know full well that there was nothing wrong with writing a note on your palm to remember something, especially when its an add on to the thoughts you prepared ahead of time. Why don't you give me some 'real' reason for your hatred of her? Cause there is no reason to hate her. she hasn't done anything wrong to anyone. She speaks her mind and she stands in agreement with many of the American people today. She seems to be a nice woman with a happy family and she is not afraid to tell people what she thinks about the agenda of the present administration. So what. You hate her because of her use of free speech? She has just as much right to speak her opinions as anyone else. You don't have to agree with her.