lupapilgrim, the problem with all the right of center parties in the democratic west chanting cut expenses is that 1) it is clear that this is an *international* movement, (which apparently meets and strategizes, not in public alliances, but in private-corporate cabals) 2) it / they always insist on also lowering taxes on the uber rich and uber corps. 3)  And it tells the big lie that lower taxes will create jobs.  Now, just look at employment levels, pay rates, etc., in the US economy and actual tax rates from the era of FDR thru reagan and to the present.  Tax rates on uber rich uber corps have gone way way down, real living wage jobs have decreased, (you want fries with that?)  and the disparity of wealth between the lower + working classes vs the uber wealthy has become so disparate that the US is on the verge of having a 3rd world society, it is becoming more extreme that the imbalance that created the first 'great depression.'   The right has preached snake oil lies since the reagan era. And used fear of no jobs if the govt doesn't cave in to cutting whats left of social supports, along with cutting taxes on uber rich.   Now they want to cut social security,, and basic medical care... for the non-uber rich.. lol.  

It is pure fantasy that cutting government expenses (as opposed to cutting abuses of govt costs) will create new jobs for the bulk of citizens.  The plain facts of history since the reagan economic cou show that.  

On top of that... the right of center parties still want all the uber corp welfare from the government.  Why is the 'shared sacrifice' we keep hearing about so unequally loaded upon the broken backs of the poor and middle class? 

A big lie repeated often enough takes on the (false) cloak of 'truthfulness.' Lower taxes will not create new jobs for most people - neither will cutting social supports.  The gov't doesnt tax uber corps and uber rich, so the govt borrows money from the uber rich.  Who gets this interest?  Its a con game, snake oil.  What will increase living wage jobs?  Government sponsored employment will.  Want to jump start the economy?  Do a New Deal kind of thing, and make the greedy uber rich / uber corporations return some of their ill gotten gains back to the people.  One just has to decide if 'economic' purity supersedes human suffering. 

BTW  You have 'pilgrim' in your name.  IF that means you are also an 'evangelical' or baptist oriented christian, ( a bible believer), or one who believes in Church dogma, canon law, and encyclicals) then I have a much graver concern for you:  The texts that 'bible believing' Christians hold as accurate statements of the teachings of Jesus clearly present a jesus that sided with the poor, the powerless, and those who failed to get justice in the courts because they could not afford it against the rich.  It does not bode well that these groups of Christians, in their sermons, their public documents, and in elections, side with the rich and powerful.   Remember "... the least of these..." trumps any loyalty to a modern economic system.  "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."    g-d or mammon, you can't serve two masters....  

I would also suggest that the endless expansion you cautioned us about is not mainly govt, (nor Obama - who acts like a traditional Republican-) but uber corps and uber rich who love the economic system - its their machine to milk the people. Dems and GOP (Greedy ol Plutocrats) are twiddle dee and twiddle dum...  different, but so close as to be almost the same.   The fight over deficits, cutting gov't spending is all smoke and mirrors.  What is really going on is a continued set up to have govt borrow money form the uber rich so the uber rich get even more money - and use the fear and a crisis atmosphere to frighten people into agreeing to cut whats left of social supports. 

The real impetus to endless expansion is an economic system predicated and driven by the need to endlessly expand, consume, and transform the planet into human biomass.  The so-called 'free market' (a rigged game) is the tool used by uber rich + uber corps to manipulate the 'free market' so they can raid the assets of pension funds, banks, etc.  Raiding a corporation and leaving a shell to collapse is a time honored tactic of the robber barons of all ages.  And the regular people are the ones who lose the most in assets and retirement, and medical.  (is this a form of cannibalism mediated by a market?)  People are so blinded by the rhetoric in Washington that they don't see the big picture.  Iceland did the right thing.  Obama and health care is not the endless expansion of govt.  Uber corps and uber rich milking the govt is.  And like the corporate shells that have been raided and sucked dry in the past, the gov't, too will be sucked dry, and than abandoned to collapse.  Uber corporations are so big now,m that they can, and do treat governments as targets to raid, as prey.  Given enough time, these uber corps, and the uber rich that own them will suck our bones dry, and then go for cocktails with their friends.  And the masses of surviving people will be much more compliant, more amenable to serving whatever appetites the new ruling class wishes us to sate. 

'Uber corporations' are part of the problem.  The rest is BS. 

The Creature from Jekyll Island.

[Edit] BTW, good stuff myfist0.

[Editx2] How many know Larry McDonald, quoted above, was killed in 1983 when the Soviet Union shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007?

I have it on good authority that 007 was shot down for the sole purpose of killing McDonald.  There was simply no other way to eliminate him.

This was absolutely fantasic 

This is going in the OP

All it takes for evil to win is for a few good men [humans] to do nothing.

@myfist0 - that cartoon was amazing.

Thanks again. I agree and think everyone should give it a thumbs up at YouTube and pass around the link.

I added it to the "Bankster" playlist after Too big to fail.

ElanaAhova,

As to the USA,

Do you know that  the "uber rich", as you say, are paying the highest percentage of income tax EVER while 52% of citizens are paying nothing, zero (0)?

Put another way, the "uber rich", the top 5% are paying 60% of all income tax. The "uber rich", the risk takers, the innovaters, the ones creating jobs, the market entrepreneurs, are taxed the most. There is no fairness in the present tax system. It needs reform, to the tune of a complete overhaul.

The economic system created under Obama's Socialist regime is deplorable. It is about government choosing winners, helping political entrepreneurs amass fortunes.

As for the right of center party, the Republican party has tried. It passed a budget on April 15. while the Democrats who had a had a super majority for two years produced nothing.  

I must disagree that it's a big lie that lower taxes will create jobs.

Check out the work of Andrew Mellon, Sec. of Treasury under Harding and Coolidge. We learn from him that lower taxes will create jobs. During WWI the top income tax rate increased to 73 percent and instead of putting their money in business investment, the uber rich invested in state bonds.  Mellon realized tax relief was essential and to help businesses get capital, reduced the tax rates...from 73 to 40 to 25%. The result...federal revenue increased, and economic activcity multiplied so that in 1926 unemployment reached 1%.

Then came Hoover and the government meddled with the economy bigtime in the midst of the depression. Congress increased taxes, the uber rich tax rate went from 25 to 63 percent....businesses failed as a result and jobs were lost.

Then came FDR whose New Deal massively increased the size of government and made the depression last 8 years after his election. FDR more than doubled taxes making less capital for business men (I'm not politically correct) to create jobs. It  wasn't the New Deal that pulled us out of the depression, it was WWII. 

..................................

More and more, I'm asking myself how the party which embraces & supports constitutional government ever got the label 'right of center' - constitutional government is the center.  Those of us who've considered ourselves so have been a little too lazy in letting the other side (the left and it's propaganda organs) define us.  I'd consider advocates of a fascist dictatorship or monarchy to be 'right wing' and the 'progressives' and socialists to be 'left wing'.  How could adherence to the Constitution not be 'centrist'?

WTF
Their taxes may seem high but there are so many loop holes that they often pay ZERO or get refunds. 

Sure, if you call "innovating" moving American jobs to China and what you call market entrepreneurs I call banksters.

That so called economic activity caused the biggest depression the world ever seen.

As to your other points, sure war is good for employment. A dead guy can't flip a hamburger. 

The rich has had their taxes lowered for a long time and it looks to me like the more we lower their taxes the more they use that money to turn America into a 3rd world country, buy politicians and buy new deregulation laws.

Then explain to me how the government gets its revenue.  It can't come from the roughly 48% who pay no taxes, so who's paying it?

You can choose to 'blame' entrepreneurs but wouldn't do them much good to go bankrupt as a consequence of being non-competitive.

That just might be a slight oversimplification.

The only jobs government creates are government jobs. And right now, across the board, government jobs are paying more than the private sector. The average federal worker costs the taxpayers over $100K a year. Plus what about all the ridiculous benefits? In San Francisco, the police chief just retired at age of 52 with pension of $225K per year which will cost the taxpyers $8 million for her retirement. There is a doctor in the prison system in California made $777K last year and he's not even working!  The examples go on and on and on. I don't care what side you're on, even if the rich are taxed 100%, it's unstainable.

It's not about cutting social supports. The bottom line is if we cut the pork spending, stop all corruption, fraud, and waste, we would have enough revenues to take care of all the citizens.

You want to hear unfair, con game, snake oil? GE paid no income taxes becasue it is friends of Obama while Exxon Mobil pays billions of income tax and is villified?

The government isn't borrowing from the uber rich, it's borrowing from Communist China and other countries.

Ah, no....that's Socialism/Communism; you know back to where the government chooses the winners and losers....and a wrong solution indeed.   

You are correct about the 'pilgrim' in my name. I'm Catholic and the Church has always taught that a man has a right to a living wage. That all workers are entitled to a living wage is something that has been repeated again and again in the encyclicals of the Popes throughout the ages. One is Pope Leo XIII, 1878-1903 constructive application of Christian principles to economic affairs set forth in his famous encyclical,  Rerum Novarum. http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/leo_xiii/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_15051891_rerum-novarum_en.html  where he instructs and warns of the dangerous errors of Nihilism, Socialism and Communism.

I am pretty sure that when the term uber rich or wealthiest are used we are not talking about well off people, we are talking about that 4% that owns 90% or whatever that insane number is. I am anyway. Really, what is the difference between this 4% and the King you threw out long ago? None to me, they right all the laws now and the laws only benefit them. As you take away all the wealth and put it in the hands of fewer and fewer people the more of a police state you will need to control your slave population.

WARNING: Foul Language 

ROFL: Christ the Capitalist. Make that your bumber sticker or your rally t-shirts slogan.

You can have a rebutal to that last statement but lets please keep religion out of this topic. I don't want it booted to JoeUser only.

Really?  Wanna take a guess how many of the top 10% earners were in the top 10% ten years ago?  I'm startin' to wonder about you, fist.

LOL you said the exact same thing the very 1st time you responded to a post I made  . Still good to have you here.

I am not to much into guessing about some arbitrary number.

If you define 'wealth' as that which only billionaires have, there ain't too many of them - 6 listed by Forbes in 2011.  Somehow, even Franklin Raines seem pretty wealthy to this po' white boy, even though he's a paltry multimillionaire.  And I think that bodes well, since none of them were billionaires two decades ago.  I'll take a system that makes possible that kind of upward mobility any day.

Oh, and I'm still scratchin' my head tryin' to figure out how the government 'makes money' incarcerating drug users.  Only one way for the government to 'make money' - by printing it.  I don't think they should be there, either, but not sure where/how Chris came up with that notion.

It all depends on how you want to show the numbers that best suit your cause.

The 25 families on our list are worth a combined $418 billion. Given the stance of secrecy often adopted by American aristocracy, all of the net worth figures should be considered "at least" estimates.
http://www.forbes.com/2009/12/03/americas-richest-families-walton-rockefeller-dupont-business-billionaires-families.html

You really believe that these guys don't try and hide every dollar they can?

Not part of the clip I was going for but prisons are private corporations and they do not make money with empty rooms, their stock grows only with expansion. Basic economics. The war on drugs and american prisons could be a great topic on it's own.

Private prisons in the United States

Obama tried to do a FDR New Deal kind of thing and how's that doing for the economy?

I know history textbooks have been kind to FDR giving him credit for pulling us out of the Depression.

Like you, many thought his New Deal programs rescued the country and his intervention into the economy brought recovery. Upon critical examination, we know now that, other than his resounding political success, he was overrated. His administration and New Deal liberalism initiated the government welfare state and resultant problems that we still have today. I’m speaking of massive government intervention in agriculture to the point that the government actually pays farmers for cutting back on production or for producing nothing. His economic strategy for recovery failed producing hardship and unemployment which averaged a whopping 18% from 1933 to 1940.

For all intents and purposes, Socialism was born in the Roosevelt years with his anti-business zealotry, his boost to organized labor which actually impoverished society, and his massive spending projects which created public sector jobs funded by taking money from taxpayers and giving it to newly created public sector jobs.

Standard textbooks provide little mention about FDR pioneering political intimidation which always heightened around re-election.

FDR was a Freemason and in order to keep the New Deal, he used court reform as a vehicle to politicize the Supreme Court. He appointed Byrnes, Reed, Douglas, Black, Jackson, and Rutledge. Justice Black was a Klansman which is an offshoot of Freemasonry. When the Paulist Catholic Radio station of poor Father James Gillis in Chicago criticized FDR’s court-packing scheme, the FCC took its license away.

 After that Truman appointed Vinson, Burton, Minton, and Clark. With the selection of Earl Warren, former Masonic grand master in 1953, the Court had its own mini lodge. The Masons controlled the direction of the Court by majority rule from 1941 to 1971. During that period the Court systematically dismantled the moral and religious fabric of America. 

If there ever was an “imperial presidency” it took its first shape with FDR. From numerous books including those written by Dem. Senator Patrick Moynihan and Robert Shogun, we learn of FDR’s 1940 illegal decision to exchange 50 American destroyers for 99-year leases on several military bases in the Western Hemisphere, of his deceptive means used to draw us into the war and of his long held favorable view of Stalin and claim that freedom of religion was a fundamental right in Stalin’s Russia.

I have an 86  year-old friend who voted for FDR in the 1932 election. FDR drafted him and he bravely served our country. After FDR turned Socialist, he broke his support of him.

Did you ever hear of Marguerite “Missy” Lehand or Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd? They had the same connection with FDR that Monica Lewinsky had with Bill Clinton. Missy was his secretary who according to FDR’s daughter, Anna, carried on a lengthy sexual relationship with her father. Walter Trohan’s book “Political Animals” tells how President Roosevelt used to call on Missy while Eleanor sometimes waited outside. Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd was a married woman whom FDR used to ride the presidential train  to New Jersey so Lucy could step on. Roosevelt wanted to marry Lucy, but she wouldn’t because she was Catholic. It was Mrs. Rutherfurd and not Eleanor, who was there with him in Warm Springs, Georgia when he died in April of 1945.

For the real deal on FDR, I also recommend you read 2 other books....Jim Powell's, FDR's Folly How Roosevelt and His New Deal prolonged the Great Depression and Burton Folsom, Jr's,  New Deal or Raw Deal. 

Marx said man was destined to find fulfillment in a new world order in which conflict would be eliminated and socio-economic  harmony at last achieved. The wars, oppression, miseries would dissolve into Communist peace.   

The elites running the Communist countries think they have economic purity and how is it working out for the little people in those countries? Communism brings immense suffering and untold misery.

Obama acts like a traditional Republican? Hows that? As far as the economy goes, the social fiscal Republicans are for lesser taxes, (Obama's not for that) small businesses which create jobs. They've said over and over, it's not a problem of revenue but rather a problem of spending. (Obama is all for taxing and spending.)

We can't spend more than we take in....not in the household, not in business, not in states and not in countries. 

Government isn't borrowing from the rich, it's borrowing from Communist China and other countries.

It's either free markets or Socialism/Communism.

Oh yes, Obamacare will mean endless expansion of government...even the unions that supported it got waivers!

Let's see who's milking the government? Obama's government made Nancy Pelosi's net worth go from 18 million to 29 million. Obama has more than 474 aids at a cost of $100K not counting his cabinet and czars. Obama gives reunions at the White House with cases of booze at 400 bucks a pop.

Your retort shows you haven't a clue.

"Christian principles to economic affairs" ... to understand read Rerum Novarum. That's why I provided the handy-dandy link. 

I am not for communism but you really like to keep spewing this propaganda line. Why not take a trip to the paradise of Haiti and see how American jobs and free market brought them paradise and freedom. What a joke.

The Government borrows from whom ever will by there bonds. If the banksters see a profit in it they are also buying.
http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/tic/Documents/mfh.txt

Well, most of them are US citizens, or US-based institutions. (“Debt held by the public” basically means anything not held by the federal government itself, so institutions count.) At the end of 2010, about 53 percent of US debt held by the public was held domestically, according to a recent study from theCongressional Budget Office.

Within this slice, the largest category is individuals – Treasury notes are good solid additions to any portfolio. US individuals hold 12 percent of the country’s debt. Next under the domestic category comes the Federal Reserve, which holds 9 percent of US debt, then pension and retirement funds, mutual funds, and state and local governments.

Foreigners hold about 47 percent of US public debt. And yes, the largest foreign holder here isChina – but only by a hair. Chinese investors are owed 9.8 percent of US debt. Next comes Japan, at 9.6 percent, and the United Kingdom, at 5.1 percent.

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/DC-Decoder/2011/0204/National-debt-Whom-does-the-US-owe