A more accurate word for “challenge” is BS. And this position will be just one more bent on f—ing the industry up similar to what’s going on now with this petty, thin skinned, progressive bunch of idiots up there now. All of them are as sharp as a bag of hammers.
Here is yet another wasteful bureaucratic job created at taxpayers expense. The new U.S. Insurance Chief will need a staff, an office, get benefits, travel to meet with each state’s respective Insurance Commissioner and so on. I feel better we have a new Insurance Chief as taxpayers continue to empty their wallets to pay for the Obama/Democrats programs.
Another fine job creation by the Obama Administration!!!
How did we manage to make it 225 plus years without such a position. This seems to be a prelude into getting the Feds ready to usurp more power from the States. Healthcare was exempted to make this palitable but fear not, it will eventually be added once the “exchanges” are found to be fraught with problems. This crowd does not do anything without planning out the steps in advance all while embedding the regulations with problems that demand their solutions.
Obama did say his policies would create jobs, didn’t he? The problem is they are all government jobs to regulate every aspect of our lives. These leaches are draining the life blood out of the American People and must be thrown out of office so we can restore this great country.
How true. This 21st Century version of Progressivism is being rejected again. It took them a slow 100 year march to get a Pres who holds early 20th Centrury luddite like visions of the evil “robber barons” who ruled yesteryear. They can’t deal with the fast pace of reality, so reality must be chaffed down to a crawl. That way they can comprehend how best to exert maximum government involvement and control over “big coroporations” and profit makers, all while ignoring that government “waste” far exceeds the profits they decry. Call this 21 Century statism, socialism, or proressivism, it is all made from the same worn cloth.
Typical posts from this crowd. Nothing but criticism and not one orginal idea on how to prevent another “too big to fail” fiasco like AIG. Maybe we should just do nothing and hope it never happens again. Or we can just throw rocks at attempts to prevent “too big to fail”.
Typical response from head in the sand liberals (..no better ideas??). The part of the industry that “failed” was the part overseen by, guess who, the Federal government! So what do they want to do? Why of course take oversight from the States (where oversight actually works) and give it to a Federal oversight system that failed miserably! This is Dodd, Frank and Emanuel politics at its best.
Too bad I can’t make the connection between a Fed Insurance Czar and too big to fail, a condition brought on by government prompting of loans to unqualified people. The gov encouraged everyone to write loans and make ooodles of money while laying off the risk to insurers who developed esocteric “derivatives” such as credit default swaps to hedge what was know to be high risk loans. Let’s see, how created this mess and now has the “solution”. By the way, the SEC failed to do its oversight job and ignored warnings from a small agency called the Commodoties and Futures Trading Commision run by Brooksley Born. One of the key players in ignoring her advice was Larry Summers, currently about to depart the Obama econ team. And you wonder why there is solid skepticism of the gov ability to prevent another TBTF.
My apology, I didn’t advance an idea. Here is one, the Fed government should have done its job! More regulations make TBTF more possible. AIG, Goldman and all the other financial institutions should have been allowed to fail, one thud at a time. Liking pulling off a bandaid, quicker is better than slowly. The DC crowd has treated us to the latter and the public is now wise to how the rich were protected at all costs. Meanwhile, Pres O still tries to pass of his “change” message all while proclaiming he is for the little guy and opposes those dark foreces of “fat cat” bankers. Give me a break.
Too much commentary on what whom and why the past was soo bad. Lets just hope the person dumb enough to take this job will talk some sense into those “idiots” in DC. McCarran-Ferguson still has some validity and hopefully the person who takes this job will preserve what he can and put in place some firewalls to the derivative markets and keep financial instruments out of the PC markets. That’s just my two cents.
Typical post from a Liberal sympathizer who believes in big, bigger and more government! There is no need for yet another bureaucratic government agency. At a time when every American is tightening their financial belts, Congress and the Administration creates yet another department at the expense of taxpayers. If Congress was properly doing their job, we wouldn’t yet another government agency. So don’t scold the commentators of this thread when we object to yet more government. I do believe we are a little more intelligent than liberals give the American people credit for. Many of us run our own businesses and know what it’s like to make payroll and meet our financial obligations while living within our means. Government does not live within their means and once this agency is created with however many new employees it will be difficult to do away with it. Obama and this Democratically controlled Congress is taking this country in the wrong direction and they know it!
Anyone who thinks this Administration can do a better job of regulation of the Insurance Industry than the states is living in a dream world. All they are about is consolidation of power so they can control every aspect of our lives. Their buddies in Congress, Frank, Dodds, Schumer etc were the root cause since they controlled the committees regulating the financial industry including Fannie & Freddie, AIG, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, I could go on. These corrupt people should be occupying a cell with Bernie Madoff for what they perpetrated on the American People.
For those Dems who still believe their party is for the downtrodden, I offer the following for review. Robert Rubin (Sec of Treas under Clinton and Goldman Sachs veteran) Alan Greenspan (Clinton approved) and Larry Summers (Clinton Sec of Treas and current Obama econ adviser) along with Hank Paulson (Bush Sec of Treas and Goldman guy), Barney Frank (Fannie supporter supreme) Chris Dodd (Freddie supporter and recipient of the Countrywide Friends of Angelo “special mortgages”, including a nice home in Ireland). Dems, do you get the point, you are now the party of “fat cat” bankers, big unions (including SEIU’s Andy Stern, currently under investigation for using union money for no show jobs) and George Soros. Now you know why many Dems are moving toward the T party.
I hope that everyone who has posted their opposition to this new federal agency will get out and vote in about 4 weeks to turn this country around and onto the right track. There are very few current officeholders who deserve re-election and it’s up to all of us to get rid of those who don’t. This is no time for apathy – our future as a nation of free people is at stake because the more the government becomes involved in our daily lives, the less freedom we will have. Centralized governmental control has not worked in the past and there is no reason to believe it will ever work because it attempts to defy natural economic laws(much like trying to defy gravity). Unfortunately, we continue on a path in that direction while, having found that it doesn’t work as “advertised”, European countries are beginning to move away from it. And, I haven’t even mentioned the numerous times our government has violated the constitutional limits on its power.
Credit default swaps are NOT insurance, nor are bonds. The failure falls squarely on the shoulders of the Securities and Exchange Commission and Banking Oversight Commissions – both of which are Federal agencies, and both of which failed in their duties.
Let’s bring back the guys who passed unfunded Medicare Part D, started the two longest (and debt-financed) wars in US history, turned a surplus into a $1.3 trillion deficit, and gave a trillion dollar bailout to morally-bankrupt Wall St firms!
We need these guys back in office so they can add another $4 trillion to the deficit to cut taxes for the rich again, get Wall St back to it’s pre-crash state of non-regulation, widen our war to include Iran and further increase defense spending!
We need guys who are ready and able to demonize $35,000-a-year teachers and police officers in the press while they buy hookers for the hedge fund manager donors that made $500 million apiece last year and paid a 15% tax rate on it!
We need people who will finally prove that Barack Osama Bin Hussein is a Kenyan Muslim terrorist who has been trained since his birth as the anti-Christ to destroy the American empire using his Marxist regime!
…when will people wake up to the fact that the D’s and R’s are equally liable for the deficit, out of control defense spending and growth of government?
…when will people be willing to acknowledge that they sat on their hands for eight years of ruinous spending and growth of government under Bush II?
Matt, You sound like one of the new White House Czars with this tirade. We didn’t start the wars, we were attacked. If it was your Chosen One in charge, he would have rolled over and apologized for making them mad. I do agree with you about the corruption in Wall Street and those people should be prosecuted along with Turbo Tax Tim, Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Chuckie Schumer and all the rest of the dudes which started the financial meltdown. Remember, Democrats have been in charge since 07 and they were setting the spending agenda, bailouts and other disastrous legislation which have all but ruined our economy. Bush’s big fault was losing his backbone and not vetoing the majority of it.
Yes, how quickly they forget that it was under the Bush regime and Paulson that the bailouts started. That Geithner worked for BUSH. That TARP was a done deal under a lame duck GOP regime.
You all are infinitely better at creating revisionist history than Mao Tse Dung or Josef Stalin, or Goebbels, for that matter.
If you are going to dump on something and someone, get your facts straight.
To those of you who want to throw the incumbents out, regardless of party, who do you suggest we vote for? We have a choice of Tweedle De Dum or Tweedle De Dee..and this is just how they want it…no viable third party…even in state and local contests. Dems becoming the “party of fat cat bankers” only resulted since the “fat cat bankers” go to the power and Bush pretty much eroded that of the GOP in his 8 years…where else were they to put their dollars to buy influence and entree at the time? How many of those “fat cats” do you think vote Dem when they are in the solitude of the voting booth?
This country is in the severest recession since the great depression measured by job loss and wage erosion, among other factors. This was NOT started by Obama and the Dems and you all need to admit that fact, as Matt so eloquently recounts. I think you all secretly believe (or hope) that Obama surely is Superman since you expect him to wave a wand or “gesticulate magically” to correct these issues so long in the making. Our job loss, now hitting the white collar sector, has been exacerbated by the export of our jobs as well as the importation of “necessary” foreign workers which surely isn’t being done by the “working class.” This has not been addressed by either party. It is so much easier to set us at each others throats over “states rights” issues, for instance, and if Obama is a Muslim or a citizen, and to divert us from the draining of America by global corporations…but I guess that is OK, right? While the white collar sector (not even to mention the blue collar one) is desperate for jobs, the corporations went whining to the feds that they needed to import yet MORE foreign white collar workers! How patriotic!
MR, your posts are useless; the wrong facts you post turn me off what may be valid points of argument. Tom, you are reverting and I expect better from you.
How do you people expect to make a believer out of me if you can’t even get your facts straight?
Cass, your facts are askew. Geitner is a protege of Robert Rubin and Larry Summers, both Dems (all three now Treas Sec under Dem Presidencies)and all heavily involved with Wall street through either Citigroup or Goldman Sachs. Overlooking these facts makes me believe you have lost your honest perspective. Let me remind you that Warren Buffet, Bill Gates and George Soros are industry titans who would seem to fit your anti-big business vitriol but all of whom are big O supporters. Also, the Dems held power since 2006 and encouraged the regulations that led to the mortgage bubble that is the nexus of this recession. And even if you can’t grasp these facts, you must know by now that the Obama Keynesian cure is not working. I know the shock of all this may have exacerbated your cogintive dissonance, but I have faith that you can overcome the hyperbolized rationalization and conclude that anyone, including Repubs, that expresses a positon that government (spending) can cure our economic miasma should be designated a pariah and kept, or swept, from office. We need only look to the civil unrest in Europe to see our future, so it may take some effort but I urge you to resist the temptation to retreat to the bromides that the Dems have drilled into you.
Matt, what is it with the vendetta against the “rich”, or the 750,000 fellow citizens that need their comeuppance. Do you really think that if we took every dollar they made that we could solve our debt, deficit or the projected 53 TRILLION DOLLAR social security deficit. I know these people give you something to focus your hatred on but is that really productive. I would aks that you turn your gaze to what is currently going on in DC with regard to deficit spending caused by run-a-way entitlements, stimulus designed to prop up the public sector at the expense of the private sector worker. Hatred of the “bourgeiosie” is a mind numbing trap designed to halt critical thinking. And, for the content of your post, I think it may have succeeded.
I do not condone excessive govt spending for foolishness. I also note that the Keynesian spending that Roosevelt instituted did not do especially much (except keep people from starving via the CCC, WPA, PWA, etc.) for the economy in general. It took WWII (and massive spending) to get us over that depression. In this burst of “Keynesian spending” the money has gone to corporations as well as other govt entities and hasn’t done very much good for the little man still suffering from job and wage loss. Perhaps the idea of giving each taxpayer 1,000,000 wasn’t so far fetched in retrospect; it probably would have done more good for the hoi polloi then the billions spent bailing out the Citis and the AIGS….
However, if you are to be “pure” in your principles, you cannot condemn all Dems and support all Repubs; the staunch anti tax, anti spend stand the GOP takes now is just political bloviation at this point; they had ample opportunities under Bush but did not take them nor did they make a big deal out of the massive war spending (much of which went to their cronies) for especially, Iraq. So pardon me if I bristle over historical revisionism and the rife hypocrisy. if elected and the Dems are kicked out, I see little ultimate change after the populace forgets…and it will.
As for Buffet, Gates, etc.,…these guys aren’t rich, they are MEGA rich and show their mettle by giving away a lot of their wealth. These are not the “rich” a la Fuld and ilk, so comparisons really are not apt.
My point is, you cannot dump on the Dems and lionize the GOP…they are all cut from the same sleazy cheesecloth these days.
Until we can get some representatives in Congress that truly debate and compromise, and truly care more about the American constituency rather than the next election or the “party” line, I see no end in sight. And, although originally I had an open mind, the clowns that the tea party has put forth scare me more than DeMint.
never thought i’d agree with you, Youngin’, but you’ve said it. Seems like us moderates are a dying breed…you’re either far out to the left and think Obama is The Answer, or you’re far out into the right and are convinced he’s Satan. No wonder we hate politics.
Please read and review the 10th Amendment to the US Constitution. None of us NEED a better idea, other than to elect officials who vow to no longer usurp states’ rights.
We honestly should have let AIG and the banks fail.
Cass, at last, we agree, somewhat. I certainly cannot abide Repub who haven’t had the backbone to limit entitlements and, in the case of Medicaid Perscriptions, added ballast to an already leaking system. I will no longer hold my nose and vote for them as an alternative to a big spending Dem. George B did not help the situation and, for that faux pas, he will not found on Mt Rushmore.
Believe it or not, the only candidate I ever volunteered to work for was Phil Sharp, an Indiana Dem who must have been elected because of my humble effort. I haven’t gotten involved in politics until now as it is clear that we are at one of those points in history where standy idly by while there is a tectonic shift to a political ideology that is a retread of 20th century utopian dreams cannot go unchallenged.
Wonderful FDR extended the Great Depression by 8 years with his disastrous Keysian spending policies and make work programs and high taxes. Progressive spending didn’t work then and hasn’t worked for the current President. It is impossible to spend your way to prosperity. The answer is to reduce government spending which is a giant leech draining the blood out of the economy and cutting taxes so people will have money to spend and invest and create jobs. These progressives never learn and they only make a bad situation worse.
The “spend our way out of debt” and “borrow our way out of bankruptcy” just defies simple common sense. Our V.P. ignorantly made the comment we need to spend our way out of this problem??? Thankfully, he will be finished after ONE term as well as his idiot community organizer.
This president had THREE actual jobs prior to this election whereby George Soros force him up our rearends. He has never made a paycheck much/less made a payroll for his own employees. Therefore, his ideas to “create jobs” solely consist of Chicago politics of paying every liberal back for their support the Chicago way. Illegally. WHEN the Republicans take over, we need to appoint a special prosecutor to have all the adminstration officials involved with asking candidates to walk away from Senate races in return for jobs in this admin. and prosecute them all including the head community organizer for FELONY election fraud.
The Dems are following the path of this Jimmy Carter on steroids and will get totally tossed on the street justifiably.
As far as you prius driving liberals, get the H E L L out of my way. I will run your butts over with my big gas hogging SUV. If we drilled here and supported this country in lieu of the Arabs that elected this idiot, we would put all unemployed back to work based upon drilling and new refineries.
But NO!, The treehugging whiners are worried about the sex life of some damn animal. Well, I come before animals and will continue to do so.
So, get ready for drilling in Anwar and Wyoming etc.
Here comes real businessmen back to the Congress to AGAIN clean up the liberals mess.
I like your comments a lot AZInsMan. We are hopeful after the Tsunami on Nov 2nd, we can start bringing the thugs to justice. We can start with the Progressive/Communist Czars the organizer in chief has brought in to try to reshape the country into their image. Start with Cass Sunstein and work right through the rest of them. Please don’t leave out Turbo Tax Tim, the EPA, Energy Department who all have radicals heading them up. There is a lot of work to do to get these people out of office and prosecuted. Did I forget Barney Frank and Chris Dodd?
Interesting on-line debate, with Dems and Republ each spinning opinions and pointing fingers. The “fact” that I find most interesting is that “fault” is aimed at the President, regardless of which political ideology (conservative or liberal) is in control. Here are two irrefutable “facts” that should never be discounted. 1) The power to “spend” or “not to spend” lies with the Congress, NOT the President. 2) Our Congress has been controlled by Dems overwhelmingly since 1985. Dems controlled the Senate 15 of last 21 years and House 20 of the last 23 years; much of that with a Republican in the White House.
If you are going to blame a Party for spending, keep these facts in mind: the President may be accountable, but the Congress is responsible. Spin it any way you want it.
You are right Bill the Agent. Congress does submit spending bills to the President and it is up to him to sign or veto. We have had a Progressive, big spending Congress for much of the past quarter century. The big problem the country has is that they have spent the country into almost bankruptcy with the current agenda being pursued. We can’t afford this anymore and Nov 2nd is a start to reverse this mentality. Bush’s big failing, particularly in the last 2 years of his administration is that he bought into the big spending ways and kept signing the big spending bills. He should have been vetoing much of it. Now, we have that spending on steroids and it is much worse with all the radicals in office currently. The Tsunami is coming!
Jr has it right, the problem over the years has been a progressive agenda which is progressive light when Repubs are in and progressive heavy when Dems are in e.g. Bush the Elder and the 1990 ADA, Clinton and FMLA in 1993 and Bush the junior with medicare perscription. The heavy hand of government is laid by both parties and dates back to Teddy Rooseverlt (light) and Wilson (heavy). The combination of the Ivy league educated “boyx club” has been an ever expanding gov role in the Amercian people’s lives and a nibbling away of freedom from gov. We are currently in an American Great Awakening of what this combination has wrought and the embodiment of that angst and political anger is the Tea Party. The waves that are being created will wash over both Dems and Repub who think it is business as usual and those who pray at the alter of a bipartinship where a bad idea is not called out and defeated but one where one side proposes to spend 1 Billion dollars and the other claims victory in the middle by agreeing to spend ONLY half a Billion. Both slap each other on the back and claim victory to BOTH their Dem and Repub supporters. You either have principles you can stand on, or you don’t.
Good one Tom. One only has to look at Mr. Reach across the aisle McCain and Lindsey Graham to see they are Progressives at heart. They are not quite as bad as the leftists, but bad for the country none the less. They are both Cap & Trade boys and are for most big spending tickets that come their way. I can’t believe the good people of Arizona will send Johnny Boy back to the Senate. He was also for immigration/amnesty before he was called out for it and had to change his tune and be tough on enforcement of the border when he was running in a tight Primary race. He won’t change after being elected again and he and his buddy Lindsey will continue their misguided ways. Graham will get beat when he has to run in 12, hopefully. He is a disgrace.
Would accept such a position? What would motivate a person with such credentials to take this position? Certainly not the salary.
Those with higher political aspirations and those who do not need the money, but are interested in a challenge.
A more accurate word for “challenge” is BS. And this position will be just one more bent on f—ing the industry up similar to what’s going on now with this petty, thin skinned, progressive bunch of idiots up there now. All of them are as sharp as a bag of hammers.
Why are you being so disrespectful to all hammers?
There is no need to include them with this bunch.
THEY FORGOT TO ADD IN WINDOW WASHING AND ARSE WIPING… THEY WE WILL HAVE A FLOOD OF APPLICANTS ! YEAH RIGHT.
Here is yet another wasteful bureaucratic job created at taxpayers expense. The new U.S. Insurance Chief will need a staff, an office, get benefits, travel to meet with each state’s respective Insurance Commissioner and so on. I feel better we have a new Insurance Chief as taxpayers continue to empty their wallets to pay for the Obama/Democrats programs.
Another fine job creation by the Obama Administration!!!
How did we manage to make it 225 plus years without such a position. This seems to be a prelude into getting the Feds ready to usurp more power from the States. Healthcare was exempted to make this palitable but fear not, it will eventually be added once the “exchanges” are found to be fraught with problems. This crowd does not do anything without planning out the steps in advance all while embedding the regulations with problems that demand their solutions.
Obama did say his policies would create jobs, didn’t he? The problem is they are all government jobs to regulate every aspect of our lives. These leaches are draining the life blood out of the American People and must be thrown out of office so we can restore this great country.
How true. This 21st Century version of Progressivism is being rejected again. It took them a slow 100 year march to get a Pres who holds early 20th Centrury luddite like visions of the evil “robber barons” who ruled yesteryear. They can’t deal with the fast pace of reality, so reality must be chaffed down to a crawl. That way they can comprehend how best to exert maximum government involvement and control over “big coroporations” and profit makers, all while ignoring that government “waste” far exceeds the profits they decry. Call this 21 Century statism, socialism, or proressivism, it is all made from the same worn cloth.
This position is already filled. This was signed, sealed and delivered long ago to a “yes-man/woman” the administration had in mind.
Typical posts from this crowd. Nothing but criticism and not one orginal idea on how to prevent another “too big to fail” fiasco like AIG. Maybe we should just do nothing and hope it never happens again. Or we can just throw rocks at attempts to prevent “too big to fail”.
Typical response from head in the sand liberals (..no better ideas??). The part of the industry that “failed” was the part overseen by, guess who, the Federal government! So what do they want to do? Why of course take oversight from the States (where oversight actually works) and give it to a Federal oversight system that failed miserably! This is Dodd, Frank and Emanuel politics at its best.
Wrong buddy. The failure happened because of the following;
– Investment Banks were writing insurance (credit default swaps) that had no oversight
– The insurance was in the bond market arena, which isn’t regulated, so there was zero transparency.
– The unregulated rating agencies slapped A grades on bond investments that were far from A.
–
Too bad I can’t make the connection between a Fed Insurance Czar and too big to fail, a condition brought on by government prompting of loans to unqualified people. The gov encouraged everyone to write loans and make ooodles of money while laying off the risk to insurers who developed esocteric “derivatives” such as credit default swaps to hedge what was know to be high risk loans. Let’s see, how created this mess and now has the “solution”. By the way, the SEC failed to do its oversight job and ignored warnings from a small agency called the Commodoties and Futures Trading Commision run by Brooksley Born. One of the key players in ignoring her advice was Larry Summers, currently about to depart the Obama econ team. And you wonder why there is solid skepticism of the gov ability to prevent another TBTF.
My apology, I didn’t advance an idea. Here is one, the Fed government should have done its job! More regulations make TBTF more possible. AIG, Goldman and all the other financial institutions should have been allowed to fail, one thud at a time. Liking pulling off a bandaid, quicker is better than slowly. The DC crowd has treated us to the latter and the public is now wise to how the rich were protected at all costs. Meanwhile, Pres O still tries to pass of his “change” message all while proclaiming he is for the little guy and opposes those dark foreces of “fat cat” bankers. Give me a break.
Too much commentary on what whom and why the past was soo bad. Lets just hope the person dumb enough to take this job will talk some sense into those “idiots” in DC. McCarran-Ferguson still has some validity and hopefully the person who takes this job will preserve what he can and put in place some firewalls to the derivative markets and keep financial instruments out of the PC markets. That’s just my two cents.
amen
Typical post from a Liberal sympathizer who believes in big, bigger and more government! There is no need for yet another bureaucratic government agency. At a time when every American is tightening their financial belts, Congress and the Administration creates yet another department at the expense of taxpayers. If Congress was properly doing their job, we wouldn’t yet another government agency. So don’t scold the commentators of this thread when we object to yet more government. I do believe we are a little more intelligent than liberals give the American people credit for. Many of us run our own businesses and know what it’s like to make payroll and meet our financial obligations while living within our means. Government does not live within their means and once this agency is created with however many new employees it will be difficult to do away with it. Obama and this Democratically controlled Congress is taking this country in the wrong direction and they know it!
Anyone who thinks this Administration can do a better job of regulation of the Insurance Industry than the states is living in a dream world. All they are about is consolidation of power so they can control every aspect of our lives. Their buddies in Congress, Frank, Dodds, Schumer etc were the root cause since they controlled the committees regulating the financial industry including Fannie & Freddie, AIG, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, I could go on. These corrupt people should be occupying a cell with Bernie Madoff for what they perpetrated on the American People.
For those Dems who still believe their party is for the downtrodden, I offer the following for review. Robert Rubin (Sec of Treas under Clinton and Goldman Sachs veteran) Alan Greenspan (Clinton approved) and Larry Summers (Clinton Sec of Treas and current Obama econ adviser) along with Hank Paulson (Bush Sec of Treas and Goldman guy), Barney Frank (Fannie supporter supreme) Chris Dodd (Freddie supporter and recipient of the Countrywide Friends of Angelo “special mortgages”, including a nice home in Ireland). Dems, do you get the point, you are now the party of “fat cat” bankers, big unions (including SEIU’s Andy Stern, currently under investigation for using union money for no show jobs) and George Soros. Now you know why many Dems are moving toward the T party.
I hope that everyone who has posted their opposition to this new federal agency will get out and vote in about 4 weeks to turn this country around and onto the right track. There are very few current officeholders who deserve re-election and it’s up to all of us to get rid of those who don’t. This is no time for apathy – our future as a nation of free people is at stake because the more the government becomes involved in our daily lives, the less freedom we will have. Centralized governmental control has not worked in the past and there is no reason to believe it will ever work because it attempts to defy natural economic laws(much like trying to defy gravity). Unfortunately, we continue on a path in that direction while, having found that it doesn’t work as “advertised”, European countries are beginning to move away from it. And, I haven’t even mentioned the numerous times our government has violated the constitutional limits on its power.
Credit default swaps are NOT insurance, nor are bonds. The failure falls squarely on the shoulders of the Securities and Exchange Commission and Banking Oversight Commissions – both of which are Federal agencies, and both of which failed in their duties.
What a great idea!
Let’s bring back the guys who passed unfunded Medicare Part D, started the two longest (and debt-financed) wars in US history, turned a surplus into a $1.3 trillion deficit, and gave a trillion dollar bailout to morally-bankrupt Wall St firms!
We need these guys back in office so they can add another $4 trillion to the deficit to cut taxes for the rich again, get Wall St back to it’s pre-crash state of non-regulation, widen our war to include Iran and further increase defense spending!
We need guys who are ready and able to demonize $35,000-a-year teachers and police officers in the press while they buy hookers for the hedge fund manager donors that made $500 million apiece last year and paid a 15% tax rate on it!
We need people who will finally prove that Barack Osama Bin Hussein is a Kenyan Muslim terrorist who has been trained since his birth as the anti-Christ to destroy the American empire using his Marxist regime!
…when will people wake up to the fact that the D’s and R’s are equally liable for the deficit, out of control defense spending and growth of government?
…when will people be willing to acknowledge that they sat on their hands for eight years of ruinous spending and growth of government under Bush II?
How quickly we forget…
Matt, You sound like one of the new White House Czars with this tirade. We didn’t start the wars, we were attacked. If it was your Chosen One in charge, he would have rolled over and apologized for making them mad. I do agree with you about the corruption in Wall Street and those people should be prosecuted along with Turbo Tax Tim, Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Chuckie Schumer and all the rest of the dudes which started the financial meltdown. Remember, Democrats have been in charge since 07 and they were setting the spending agenda, bailouts and other disastrous legislation which have all but ruined our economy. Bush’s big fault was losing his backbone and not vetoing the majority of it.
Yes, how quickly they forget that it was under the Bush regime and Paulson that the bailouts started. That Geithner worked for BUSH. That TARP was a done deal under a lame duck GOP regime.
You all are infinitely better at creating revisionist history than Mao Tse Dung or Josef Stalin, or Goebbels, for that matter.
If you are going to dump on something and someone, get your facts straight.
To those of you who want to throw the incumbents out, regardless of party, who do you suggest we vote for? We have a choice of Tweedle De Dum or Tweedle De Dee..and this is just how they want it…no viable third party…even in state and local contests. Dems becoming the “party of fat cat bankers” only resulted since the “fat cat bankers” go to the power and Bush pretty much eroded that of the GOP in his 8 years…where else were they to put their dollars to buy influence and entree at the time? How many of those “fat cats” do you think vote Dem when they are in the solitude of the voting booth?
This country is in the severest recession since the great depression measured by job loss and wage erosion, among other factors. This was NOT started by Obama and the Dems and you all need to admit that fact, as Matt so eloquently recounts. I think you all secretly believe (or hope) that Obama surely is Superman since you expect him to wave a wand or “gesticulate magically” to correct these issues so long in the making. Our job loss, now hitting the white collar sector, has been exacerbated by the export of our jobs as well as the importation of “necessary” foreign workers which surely isn’t being done by the “working class.” This has not been addressed by either party. It is so much easier to set us at each others throats over “states rights” issues, for instance, and if Obama is a Muslim or a citizen, and to divert us from the draining of America by global corporations…but I guess that is OK, right? While the white collar sector (not even to mention the blue collar one) is desperate for jobs, the corporations went whining to the feds that they needed to import yet MORE foreign white collar workers! How patriotic!
MR, your posts are useless; the wrong facts you post turn me off what may be valid points of argument. Tom, you are reverting and I expect better from you.
How do you people expect to make a believer out of me if you can’t even get your facts straight?
and liberals.
SHUT UP AND GO AWAY! YOU’RE NOT IN CHARGE HERE!
Cass, your facts are askew. Geitner is a protege of Robert Rubin and Larry Summers, both Dems (all three now Treas Sec under Dem Presidencies)and all heavily involved with Wall street through either Citigroup or Goldman Sachs. Overlooking these facts makes me believe you have lost your honest perspective. Let me remind you that Warren Buffet, Bill Gates and George Soros are industry titans who would seem to fit your anti-big business vitriol but all of whom are big O supporters. Also, the Dems held power since 2006 and encouraged the regulations that led to the mortgage bubble that is the nexus of this recession. And even if you can’t grasp these facts, you must know by now that the Obama Keynesian cure is not working. I know the shock of all this may have exacerbated your cogintive dissonance, but I have faith that you can overcome the hyperbolized rationalization and conclude that anyone, including Repubs, that expresses a positon that government (spending) can cure our economic miasma should be designated a pariah and kept, or swept, from office. We need only look to the civil unrest in Europe to see our future, so it may take some effort but I urge you to resist the temptation to retreat to the bromides that the Dems have drilled into you.
Matt, what is it with the vendetta against the “rich”, or the 750,000 fellow citizens that need their comeuppance. Do you really think that if we took every dollar they made that we could solve our debt, deficit or the projected 53 TRILLION DOLLAR social security deficit. I know these people give you something to focus your hatred on but is that really productive. I would aks that you turn your gaze to what is currently going on in DC with regard to deficit spending caused by run-a-way entitlements, stimulus designed to prop up the public sector at the expense of the private sector worker. Hatred of the “bourgeiosie” is a mind numbing trap designed to halt critical thinking. And, for the content of your post, I think it may have succeeded.
Tom…you’re back in real “Tom” form. Thank you.
I do not condone excessive govt spending for foolishness. I also note that the Keynesian spending that Roosevelt instituted did not do especially much (except keep people from starving via the CCC, WPA, PWA, etc.) for the economy in general. It took WWII (and massive spending) to get us over that depression. In this burst of “Keynesian spending” the money has gone to corporations as well as other govt entities and hasn’t done very much good for the little man still suffering from job and wage loss. Perhaps the idea of giving each taxpayer 1,000,000 wasn’t so far fetched in retrospect; it probably would have done more good for the hoi polloi then the billions spent bailing out the Citis and the AIGS….
However, if you are to be “pure” in your principles, you cannot condemn all Dems and support all Repubs; the staunch anti tax, anti spend stand the GOP takes now is just political bloviation at this point; they had ample opportunities under Bush but did not take them nor did they make a big deal out of the massive war spending (much of which went to their cronies) for especially, Iraq. So pardon me if I bristle over historical revisionism and the rife hypocrisy. if elected and the Dems are kicked out, I see little ultimate change after the populace forgets…and it will.
As for Buffet, Gates, etc.,…these guys aren’t rich, they are MEGA rich and show their mettle by giving away a lot of their wealth. These are not the “rich” a la Fuld and ilk, so comparisons really are not apt.
My point is, you cannot dump on the Dems and lionize the GOP…they are all cut from the same sleazy cheesecloth these days.
Until we can get some representatives in Congress that truly debate and compromise, and truly care more about the American constituency rather than the next election or the “party” line, I see no end in sight. And, although originally I had an open mind, the clowns that the tea party has put forth scare me more than DeMint.
I am digging a root cellar…
never thought i’d agree with you, Youngin’, but you’ve said it. Seems like us moderates are a dying breed…you’re either far out to the left and think Obama is The Answer, or you’re far out into the right and are convinced he’s Satan. No wonder we hate politics.
Last time I checked, we still had a 1st Amendment.
Please read and review the 10th Amendment to the US Constitution. None of us NEED a better idea, other than to elect officials who vow to no longer usurp states’ rights.
We honestly should have let AIG and the banks fail.
Cass, at last, we agree, somewhat. I certainly cannot abide Repub who haven’t had the backbone to limit entitlements and, in the case of Medicaid Perscriptions, added ballast to an already leaking system. I will no longer hold my nose and vote for them as an alternative to a big spending Dem. George B did not help the situation and, for that faux pas, he will not found on Mt Rushmore.
Believe it or not, the only candidate I ever volunteered to work for was Phil Sharp, an Indiana Dem who must have been elected because of my humble effort. I haven’t gotten involved in politics until now as it is clear that we are at one of those points in history where standy idly by while there is a tectonic shift to a political ideology that is a retread of 20th century utopian dreams cannot go unchallenged.
Wonderful FDR extended the Great Depression by 8 years with his disastrous Keysian spending policies and make work programs and high taxes. Progressive spending didn’t work then and hasn’t worked for the current President. It is impossible to spend your way to prosperity. The answer is to reduce government spending which is a giant leech draining the blood out of the economy and cutting taxes so people will have money to spend and invest and create jobs. These progressives never learn and they only make a bad situation worse.
The “spend our way out of debt” and “borrow our way out of bankruptcy” just defies simple common sense. Our V.P. ignorantly made the comment we need to spend our way out of this problem??? Thankfully, he will be finished after ONE term as well as his idiot community organizer.
This president had THREE actual jobs prior to this election whereby George Soros force him up our rearends. He has never made a paycheck much/less made a payroll for his own employees. Therefore, his ideas to “create jobs” solely consist of Chicago politics of paying every liberal back for their support the Chicago way. Illegally. WHEN the Republicans take over, we need to appoint a special prosecutor to have all the adminstration officials involved with asking candidates to walk away from Senate races in return for jobs in this admin. and prosecute them all including the head community organizer for FELONY election fraud.
The Dems are following the path of this Jimmy Carter on steroids and will get totally tossed on the street justifiably.
As far as you prius driving liberals, get the H E L L out of my way. I will run your butts over with my big gas hogging SUV. If we drilled here and supported this country in lieu of the Arabs that elected this idiot, we would put all unemployed back to work based upon drilling and new refineries.
But NO!, The treehugging whiners are worried about the sex life of some damn animal. Well, I come before animals and will continue to do so.
So, get ready for drilling in Anwar and Wyoming etc.
Here comes real businessmen back to the Congress to AGAIN clean up the liberals mess.
I like your comments a lot AZInsMan. We are hopeful after the Tsunami on Nov 2nd, we can start bringing the thugs to justice. We can start with the Progressive/Communist Czars the organizer in chief has brought in to try to reshape the country into their image. Start with Cass Sunstein and work right through the rest of them. Please don’t leave out Turbo Tax Tim, the EPA, Energy Department who all have radicals heading them up. There is a lot of work to do to get these people out of office and prosecuted. Did I forget Barney Frank and Chris Dodd?
Interesting on-line debate, with Dems and Republ each spinning opinions and pointing fingers. The “fact” that I find most interesting is that “fault” is aimed at the President, regardless of which political ideology (conservative or liberal) is in control. Here are two irrefutable “facts” that should never be discounted. 1) The power to “spend” or “not to spend” lies with the Congress, NOT the President. 2) Our Congress has been controlled by Dems overwhelmingly since 1985. Dems controlled the Senate 15 of last 21 years and House 20 of the last 23 years; much of that with a Republican in the White House.
If you are going to blame a Party for spending, keep these facts in mind: the President may be accountable, but the Congress is responsible. Spin it any way you want it.
You are right Bill the Agent. Congress does submit spending bills to the President and it is up to him to sign or veto. We have had a Progressive, big spending Congress for much of the past quarter century. The big problem the country has is that they have spent the country into almost bankruptcy with the current agenda being pursued. We can’t afford this anymore and Nov 2nd is a start to reverse this mentality. Bush’s big failing, particularly in the last 2 years of his administration is that he bought into the big spending ways and kept signing the big spending bills. He should have been vetoing much of it. Now, we have that spending on steroids and it is much worse with all the radicals in office currently. The Tsunami is coming!
Jr has it right, the problem over the years has been a progressive agenda which is progressive light when Repubs are in and progressive heavy when Dems are in e.g. Bush the Elder and the 1990 ADA, Clinton and FMLA in 1993 and Bush the junior with medicare perscription. The heavy hand of government is laid by both parties and dates back to Teddy Rooseverlt (light) and Wilson (heavy). The combination of the Ivy league educated “boyx club” has been an ever expanding gov role in the Amercian people’s lives and a nibbling away of freedom from gov. We are currently in an American Great Awakening of what this combination has wrought and the embodiment of that angst and political anger is the Tea Party. The waves that are being created will wash over both Dems and Repub who think it is business as usual and those who pray at the alter of a bipartinship where a bad idea is not called out and defeated but one where one side proposes to spend 1 Billion dollars and the other claims victory in the middle by agreeing to spend ONLY half a Billion. Both slap each other on the back and claim victory to BOTH their Dem and Repub supporters. You either have principles you can stand on, or you don’t.
Good one Tom. One only has to look at Mr. Reach across the aisle McCain and Lindsey Graham to see they are Progressives at heart. They are not quite as bad as the leftists, but bad for the country none the less. They are both Cap & Trade boys and are for most big spending tickets that come their way. I can’t believe the good people of Arizona will send Johnny Boy back to the Senate. He was also for immigration/amnesty before he was called out for it and had to change his tune and be tough on enforcement of the border when he was running in a tight Primary race. He won’t change after being elected again and he and his buddy Lindsey will continue their misguided ways. Graham will get beat when he has to run in 12, hopefully. He is a disgrace.