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PoliGAF 2011: Of Weiners, Boehners, Santorum, and Teabags

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SlipperySlope said:
It's not a victory. Remember when they say that both sides need to make sacrifices? This is the Republican sacrifice to get something done. A small extension tied with a small spending cut.

That's not a sacrifice.
 
SlipperySlope said:
Also, EmptyVessel, you are of the rare minority of people that thinks no spending cuts need to be made.

Anyway, need to get back to work.

I must be one of the rare people that isn't manipulated, then. In all seriousness, many people agree with me (and also aren't manipulated!).

Most reasonable people do not see a need to cut spending, and in fact agree that it is terrible policy right now. Enjoy.

http://www.google.com/search?UTF-8&...oq=cutting+spending+terrible+policy+recession
 
Cyan said:
Oh drop the bullshit. Raising the debt ceiling is not a Republican sacrifice and you know it.

The Republican sacrifice is that there will not be entitlement reform in the current packages. There won't be any serious spending cuts at all until negotiation #2.

That's the sacrifice. To get almost nothing of what you wanted.
 

reilo

learning some important life lessons from magical Negroes
Cyan said:
The mind as an open landscape, unmarred by reality or facts.
Reading that was a little reminiscent of reading "Square-Enix just shot themselves in the foot. I don't know if you know anything about Japanese culture, I'm an expert..." for the first time.

SlipperySlope said:
The Republican sacrifice is that there will not be entitlement reform in the current packages. There won't be any serious spending cuts at all until negotiation #2.

That's the sacrifice. To get almost nothing of what you wanted.
Why do entitlement programs need to be cut?
 

Clevinger

Member
Boehner: A lot of Republicans want to cause enough chaos after Aug 2 to force a Balanced Budget Amendment

BOEHNER: Well, first they want more. And my goodness, I want more too. And secondly, a lot of them believe that if we get passed August the second and we have enough chaos, we could force the Senate and the White House to accept a balanced budget amendment. I’m not sure that that — I don’t think that that strategy works. Because I think the closer we get to August the second, frankly, the less leverage we have vis a vis our colleagues in the Senate and the White House.
 
SlipperySlope said:
It's not a victory. Remember when they say that both sides need to make sacrifices? This is the Republican sacrifice to get something done. A small extension tied with a small spending cut.

Boehner's revising his plan to get it over a trillion. Neither side will "win" this debate. Neither side will get everything they want. They both will have to swallow some pride.

Given that both plans are sub optimal, the sooner we restart negotiations, the better, IMO. Boehner's extension is for 6 months, and Reid's will last until 2013, if memory serves.

Also, EmptyVessel, you are of the rare minority of people that thinks no spending cuts need to be made.

Anyway, need to get back to work.
One of the few sane posts here today.
 

Evlar

Banned
Here's the language of the last debt ceiling increase passed by a Republican Congress: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=hj109-47
H.J.Res.47

One Hundred Ninth Congress
of the​
United States of America

AT THE SECOND SESSION

Begun and held at the City of Washington on Tuesday,
the third day of January, two thousand and six

Joint Resolution

Increasing the statutory limit on the public debt.
Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That subsection (b) of section 3101 of title 31, United States Code, is amended by striking out the dollar limitation contained in such subsection and inserting in lieu thereof $8,965,000,000,000.

Speaker of the House of Representatives.
Vice President of the United States and
President of the Senate.
That's it. That's the entire bill.
 

Clevinger

Member
Dude Abides said:
I'd really like to not pay my taxes, but doing so is my sacrifice for the good of the country.

I held up a guy at gunpoint and demanded all his money. But as a compromise - nay, a sacrifice on my part - I didn't kill him.
 

gcubed

Member
SlipperySlope said:
The Republican sacrifice is that there will not be entitlement reform in the current packages. There won't be any serious spending cuts at all until negotiation #2.

That's the sacrifice. To get almost nothing of what you wanted.

funny thing is there was entitlement reform in the first bill that Boehner and Obama were working on... and enough Dems would have supported it to get it passed. A balanced budget amendment will NEVER pass. If that is indeed their thought on the situation its clear the tea party caucus is full of mental midgets that should be nowhere near politics
 
reilo said:
Spending and public debt obviously wasn't a concern when Bush was in office.

Among fiscal conservatives it was. His standing on spending and debt, and the bailouts dropped him a full 20% in my personal favorability rating towards Bush.

It dropped him from a B to a D.
 

GhaleonEB

Member
Dude Abides said:
Wouldn't a balanced budget amendment mean that we could never go into debt to, say, finance a war? Why does the tea party want to render Lady Liberty defenseless against the rapacious Mooslem/Chinese hordes?
It sets up a framework to gut the social safety net to finance war. This is their stated set of priorities.
 

reilo

learning some important life lessons from magical Negroes
SlipperySlope said:
Among fiscal conservatives it was. His standing on spending and debt, and the bailouts dropped him a full 20% in my personal favorability rating towards Bush.

It dropped him from a B to a D.
The fact that Bush was a "B" for you before the bailouts is astounding, but the least bit surprising.
 

A Human Becoming

More than a Member
SlipperySlope said:
Among fiscal conservatives it was. His standing on spending and debt, and the bailouts dropped him a full 20% in my personal favorability rating towards Bush.

It dropped him from a B to a D.

The Patriot Act abuses dropped him less or are you just talking fiscally? What about the tax cuts for the wealthy?
 

Evlar

Banned
SlipperySlope said:
Among fiscal conservatives it was. His standing on spending and debt, and the bailouts dropped him a full 20% in my personal favorability rating towards Bush.

It dropped him from a B to a D.
You must be hatin' on the 51 Republican Senators who voted for that, too.
 
Internal Doc Reveals GMAC Filed False Document in Bid to Foreclose
by Paul Kiel
ProPublica

GMAC, one of the nation's largest mortgage servicers, faced a quandary last summer. It wanted to foreclose on a New York City homeowner but lacked the crucial paperwork needed to seize the property.

GMAC has a standard solution to such problems, which arise frequently in the post-bubble economy. Its employees secure permission to create and sign documents in the name of companies that made the original loans. But this case was trickier because the lender, a notorious subprime company named Ameriquest, had gone out of business in 2007.

And so GMAC, which was bailed out by taxpayers in 2008, began looking for a way to craft a document that would pass legal muster, internal records obtained by ProPublica show.

"The problem is we do not have signing authority—are there any other options?" Jeffrey Stephan, the head of GMAC's "Document Execution" team, wrote to another employee and the law firm pursuing the foreclosure action. No solutions were offered.

Three months later, GMAC had an answer. It filed a document with New York City authorities that said the delinquent Ameriquest loan had been assigned to it "effective of" August 2005. The document was dated July 7, 2010, three years after Ameriquest had ceased to exist and was signed by Stephan, who was identified as a "Limited Signing Officer" for Ameriquest Mortgage Company. Soon after, GMAC filed for foreclosure.

An examination by ProPublica suggests this transaction was not unique. A review of court records in New York identified hundreds of similar assignment documents filed in the name of Ameriquest after 2008 by GMAC and other mortgage servicers. ...

"This assignment of mortgage has all of the markings of GMAC finding that it lacked a needed mortgage assignment in order to foreclose and just making it up," said Thomas Cox, a Maine foreclosure defense attorney.

In New York, it's a felony to file a public record with "intent to deceive."

"It's fraud," said Linda Tirelli, a consumer bankruptcy attorney. "I want to know who's going to do a perp walk for recording this."

No criminal charges have been filed in the robo-signing cases.

Asked by ProPublica about the document, GMAC acknowledged Stephan did not have authority to sign on behalf of Ameriquest. The bank said it is still planning to push ahead with foreclosure on the homeowner, who remains in the property. ...​

http://www.propublica.org/article/gmac-mortgage-whistleblower-foreclosure

If a country's worth were measured by how corrupt and vile their businessmen were, this would be the most glorious country in the world.
 
reilo said:
The fact that Bush was a "B" for you before the bailouts is astounding, but the least bit surprising.

Not based on a timeline. I'm talking two different scenarios. If he didn't do his spending plans, the bailouts, the insane deficit, he would have been a B. With these, he's a D.

These things didn't start with the bailouts. They started much before.
 

Sol..

I am Wayne Brady.
Evlar said:
Here's the language of the last debt ceiling increase passed by a Republican Congress: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=hj109-47
That's it. That's the entire bill.

Herman-Cain.jpg
 

A Human Becoming

More than a Member
empty vessel said:
If a country's worth were measured by how corrupt and vile their businessmen were, this would be the most glorious country in the world.

As much as I like to rip on the corruption of US coporations, I imagine if governments in South America and Africa are more corrupt than the US government, their corporations much be near the same level of corruption, even if much smaller in scale. I assume government and corporate corruption go hand-in-hand.
 
A Human Becoming said:
As much as I like to rip on the corruption of US coporations, I imagine if governments in South America and Africa are more corrupt than the US government, their corporations much be near the same level of corruption, even if much smaller in scale. I assume government and corporate corruption go hand-in-hand.

Actually, income inequality and corruption are highly correlated.

This article argues that income inequality increases the level of corruption through material and normative mechanisms. The wealthy have both greater motivation and more opportunity to engage in corruption, whereas the poor are more vulnerable to extortion and less able to monitor and hold the rich and powerful accountable as inequality increases. Inequality also adversely affects social norms about corruption and people’s beliefs about the legitimacy of rules and institutions, thereby making it easier for them to tolerate corruption as acceptable behavior. This comparative analysis of 129 countries using two-stage least squares methods with a variety of instrumental variables supports the authors’ hypotheses using different measures of corruption (the World Bank’s Control of Corruption Index and the Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index). The explanatory power of inequality is at least as important as conventionally accepted causes of corruption such as economic development. The authors also found a significant interaction effect between inequality and democracy, as well as evidence that inequality affects norms and perceptions about corruption using the World Values Surveys data. Because corruption also contributes to income inequality, societies often fall into vicious circles of inequality and corruption.

http://irps.ucsd.edu/assets/003/5298.pdf

Sound familiar? Unsurprisingly, the US has the highest income inequality of the industrialized countries.
 

A Human Becoming

More than a Member
empty vessel said:
Actually, income inequality and corruption are highly correlated.



http://irps.ucsd.edu/assets/003/5298.pdf

Sound familiar? Unsurprisingly, the US has the highest income inequality of the industrialized countries.

It's true they are highly correlated, but I don't think all countries in South America and Africa are considered industrialized. I haven't read the entire article, so did it only look at industrialized countries?
 

Evlar

Banned
Another edition of "What Do You Mean, We Need That Money, Too?" starring Tea Party politicians. This hour's special guest is South Carolina governor Nikki Haley. She's shocked to discover her state is a net recipient of federal funds (they receive more in federal funds than they pay out in federal taxes):
Bloomberg said:
South Carolina Republican Governor Nikki Haley took the Tea Party line two months ago when speaking about Congressional talks to raise the U.S. debt ceiling.
“The very first thing they need to do is -- is make sure that they stop raising the debt,” she said May 15 on ABC’s “This Week” program.

Now, her state may lose its top credit rating if U.S. legislators can’t agree on raising the debt limit. Moody’s Investors Service placed South Carolina and four other states on review for a rating cut because their reliance on federal spending puts them at risk if the U.S. credit grade is lowered over the debt impasse.

That prompted Haley, a first-term Republican elected in November with Tea Party support, to distance her state from Washington at a public meeting today meant to promote South Carolina to bond-rating analysts, including those from Moody’s.
Via Bloomberg.
 

reilo

learning some important life lessons from magical Negroes
SlipperySlope said:
Not based on a timeline. I'm talking two different scenarios. If he didn't do his spending plans, the bailouts, the insane deficit, he would have been a B. With these, he's a D.

These things didn't start with the bailouts. They started much before.
Right, which means you were perfectly okay with putting two wars on the credit card, Medicare Part D, No Child Left Behind, the Patriot Act, torture, and the handling of economic policies that directly contributed to the mess we are in now.

But apparently, that shit is good enough for a B-grade as a self-proclaimed conservative.
 

Stinkles

Clothed, sober, cooperative
SlipperySlope said:
It's not a victory. Remember when they say that both sides need to make sacrifices? This is the Republican sacrifice to get something done. A small extension tied with a small spending cut.

Boehner's revising his plan to get it over a trillion. Neither side will "win" this debate. Neither side will get everything they want. They both will have to swallow some pride.

Given that both plans are sub optimal, the sooner we restart negotiations, the better, IMO. Boehner's extension is for 6 months, and Reid's will last until 2013, if memory serves.

Also, EmptyVessel, you are of the rare minority of people that thinks no spending cuts need to be made.

Anyway, need to get back to work.

The fact that you still think Boehner has done any honest brokering defies credulity. Boehner has done nothing but campaign by proxy for the 2012 elections for a yet-to-be-established candidate. As it turns out, no serious negotiation was ever taking place, except by the democrats. If you are a republican reading this and you still think your party is in the business of leadership, then you are demented.
 
With all that is going on in Washington right now makes me feel like I was never a procrastinator to begin with. I mean they've had over 7 months to figure this out. Come on.

/vent
 

Xena

Member
empty vessel said:
If a country's worth were measured by how corrupt and vile their businessmen were, this would be the most glorious country in the world.
You clearly never heard of Brasil.
 

Particle Physicist

between a quark and a baryon
SlipperySlope said:
It's not a victory. Remember when they say that both sides need to make sacrifices? This is the Republican sacrifice to get something done. A small extension tied with a small spending cut.

Boehner's revising his plan to get it over a trillion. Neither side will "win" this debate. Neither side will get everything they want. They both will have to swallow some pride.

Given that both plans are sub optimal, the sooner we restart negotiations, the better, IMO. Boehner's extension is for 6 months, and Reid's will last until 2013, if memory serves.

Also, EmptyVessel, you are of the rare minority of people that thinks no spending cuts need to be made.

Anyway, need to get back to work.


So the Democrats getting nothing they want, and the Republicans getting everything they want, but not as much as what they hoped for... is a sacrifice?

Name one thing the Democrats want or are asking for that is in Boehner's plan?
 

Particle Physicist

between a quark and a baryon
Dude Abides said:
Wouldn't a balanced budget amendment mean that we could never go into debt to, say, finance a war? Why does the tea party want to render Lady Liberty defenseless against the rapacious Mooslem/Chinese hordes?


The balanced budget amendment would likely have exceptions for tax cuts and wars.
 

segarr

Member
quadriplegicjon said:
The balanced budget amendment would likely have exceptions for tax cuts and wars.
All that would be for is slashing SS and Medicare. That's all they want to do. They probably dream of it at night.
 
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