The Bush administration announced this week that federal budget deficit declined this year, and for the third year in a row.
Jack Cafferty examines the claims and points out, “They’re lying!”
Bonus factoid:
There has been more debt accumulated during the administration of President Bush than during all of the previous presidents combined.
(This and some 70 other media clips from the past week are now posted at Hominid Views.)
The dollar will drop 11.6% against the Euro in 2007, according to MSN Money senior markets editor Jim Jubak.
http://articles.moneycentral.m.....pping.aspx
That means if you shop in Euros, this year’s inflation rate is 11.6%.
Saudis, for example, shop in Europe for most of their stuff. But first they have to convert the dollars we give them for their oil to Euros. When they get 11.6% fewer Euros for our dollars, naturally they want 11.6% more dollars for a barrel of oil. Oil hit $83 today.
(BTW, forget about ever buying Saudi oil for $11 again, like we were doing just before Dubya was appointed president.)
The nice thing about our currency being devalued at a rate of 11.6% per year, though, is that you progressively lose less money each year as the dollar devalues toward zero; and the best news of all is that your hard-earned dollars will never become worthless. They will approach Absolute Zero, but will never quite reach it; no matter how bad the fiscal policies of Republican administrations get, your hard-earned dollars will retain at least an infinitesimal value:
1st year: $1.00 worth 100 cents of purchasing power
2nd year: $1.00 worth 88.4 cents; you lose 11.6 cents
3rd year: $1.00 worth 78.1 cents; you lose 10.3 cents
4th year: $1.00 worth 69.0 cents; you lose 9.1 cents
5th year: $1.00 worth 61.0 cents; you lose 8.0 cents
10th year: $1.00 worth 32.9 cents
15th year: $1.00 worth 17.8 cents
25th year: $1.00 worth 5.2 cents
26th year: $1.00 worth 4.6 cents
See how that works? By the time you’ve had 26 years of 11.6% Republican Inflation, you’re losing barely over 1/2 cent per year! So, the longer this goes on, the better it looks! If you start saving money at age 21, by the time you retire at age 66 you’ll need an electron microscope to count your money. But the upside of this is you’ll be losing less than 1/10th of a cent on each dollar to Inflation every year!
Click here for photo of retirees withdrawing money from bank to buy a loaf of bread circa 2032. http://www.mises.org/images3/wheelbarrow.gif
The best thing about Bush’s fiscal policies is that wingnuts have to shop in the same grocery stores we do, where a 16 oz. TV dinner that cost $1.89 a couple years ago is now a 9 oz. TV dinner that costs $2.59.
And candy bars are now so small you eat them with a tweezers.
The nice thing about the Bush Inflation is that it will solve our traffic problems without expensive new roads and mass transit! That’s right, $300-a-barrel oil will reduce traffic congestion to ZERO! And you’ll be able to walk or ride your bicycle to a theme park and get a ride in a real car around a 100-foot oval track for only $95.
My master got busted again for claiming a phony “BS” degree — this time when she was hired as Elections Director in 1986:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.c.....ue13m.html
@5 Canine felon voters should be euthanized!
Goldy,
Here’s a chance to correct a wrong statement in your post.
You quoted Caferty saying “There has been more debt accumulated during the administration of President Bush than during all of the previous presidents combined.”
That’s not accruate. Here is the data: http://www.cedarcomm.com/~stevelm1/usdebt.png
You can see Bush 2 added about 3 trillion to the debt (which was just under 6 trillion when he took office). So, the Caferty statement is totally false and inflammatory.
I hope you fix this false accusation. Otherwise, one could ask if Caferty (and by association Goldy) lies about this one thing, what else is Caferty (and by association) lying about?
The Bush administration insists on NOT including the cost of the Iraq occupation in the deficit.
That’s retarded.
One of the best things about Clinton was his Secty of Treaury, Rubin. Rubin understands the difference between short term profit and long term growth. Bush does not.
For Roger and others enthusuast8c about the market, just remember your dollar has depreciated by about 1/3. That pretty much wipes out the “gain” in the stockmarket.
Bill Anderson at 7:
Typical wingnut. Did you even read the post? Goldy did not write the post. There is no quoting of Cafferty other than to say “They’re lying”.
I choose to believe the that the “factoid” is absolute truth. Just like the wingnuts who believe the absolute truth that we are winning the war in Iraq, gas prices aren’t really that high and Bush is telling the truth.
Fucktard!!
Cafferty is absolutely correct. To #7 I say, if the best argument you can put forth to support your drunken, idiotic president is he has only borrowed as much as ALMOST all the other presidents combined, it just proves what a worthless sack of shit presidency this has been.
Lies, lies, lies and more damned lies. The butt-sniffing dog DOOFUS, Puddybud and the rest lap them up on cue.
They NEED to believe in the lies.
@7: Nice link, but you obviously didn’t read the text there either. Pretty funny.
@7, 8 – So if a wino makes $2.35 a day from panhandling, and spends $6.99 a day buying a bottle of Thunderbird, he’s making a profit of $4.64 a day if he declares his drinking habit “off budget” and doesn’t include the Thunderbird in his expenditures? Just askin’ …
Bush’s Fed chairman recently increased the supply of M3 because the last pile of M3 vanished along with the CDOs.
The principal function of a Republican Treasury Secretary is to help Wall Street figure out new ways to steal from Main Street after Main Street wises up to the old ways.
The Holy Grail of Wingnut Economics is giving Wall Street authority to manage Social Security like a company pension plan.
Another Private Contractor Fiasco
Republicans continue to love contracting out, despite one contracting disaster after another.
For example, Alaska Airlines replaced its union baggage handlers with a private contractor who hires street criminals for minimum wage, and now everything from video cameras and X-Boxes to guns are being stolen from AA’s checked baggage.
As another example, the nonprofit group ACORN paid street people to register voters on a piece-rate basis (just as Tim Eyman does to collect initiative signatures, and ended up with a bunch of phony voter registration forms (just as Tim Eyman files thousands of invalid signatures).
Well, here’s another example of what happens when officials listen to the wingnut mantra that private enterprise can perform government services cheaper and better than government workers can do them:
“SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (Oct. 13) – Animal control workers seized dozens of dogs and cats from housing projects in the town of Barceloneta and hurled them from a bridge to their deaths, authorities and witnesses said Friday. Mayor Sol Luis Fontanez blamed a contractor hired to take the animals to a shelter. …
“Fontanez said the city hired Animal Control Solution to clear three housing projects of pets after warning residents about a no-pet policy. He said the city paid $60 for every animal recovered and another $100 for each trip to a shelter in the San Juan suburb of Carolina. …
“But instead of being taken to a shelter, the pets and strays were thrown 50 feet from a bridge in the neighboring town of Vega Baja, according to Fontanez, witnesses and activists …
“Animal Control Solution owner Julio Diaz said he went to the bridge when he heard of the allegations, but remains unconvinced that the dead animals are the same ones his company collected.”
Quoted under fair use; for complete story and/or copyright info see http://news.aol.com/story/ar/_.....0000000001
Roger Rabbit Commentary: I’ll bet that lying bastard votes Republican, too.
Bill Anderson,
If you listen, Cafferty gives his figures “$5.2 or $5.3” trillion to “a shade under $10 trillion” and calls that a doubling of the national debt. It’s hard to argue he was trying to mislead by the “doubling” statement, since it is obviously an approximation.
The amount of debt at the start of the Bush administration, as reported by the treasury, was $5.6 or $5.7 trillion (depending on which day you chose in 1st Quarter of 2001).
Using either the figures Cafferty reported or the U.S. Treasury figures, Cafferty certainly would have been more accurate saying, “The Bush Administration has accumulated nearly as much debt as have all previous administrations combined.”
Either way, it doesn’t qualitatively change the story.
BTW: Many economists would argue that the absolute debt is not the best measure of Bush’s fiscal recklessness. They would argue that the debt as a percentage of GDP is the proper measure. And under Bush it has been atrocious! Here is a video of Cafferty interviewing Pete Peterson, former Secretary of Commerce under Nixon. Nixon’s former economic adviser takes the Bush Administration to the woodshed over debt and fiscal recklessness.
WOW..such venom. Even the soundpolitics nuts spew less when they accuse me of being a nutroot. Does either side care to be civil and address issues instead of entering into immediate namecalling when facts are presented that contradict positions?
The only reasonable post in response to mine was from Darryl. I did listen carefully. He did say “shade under $10 trillion” — when in fact the debt is just barely over $9 trillion. It’s not even at 9.1 trillion. Why make a big deal?
Because Darrly quotes a guy accusing the Bush government of lying..while he’s busy provably lying himself!
It adds no credibility to your side of the argument to quote a demonstrable liar accusing the other side of lying.
So, Darryl does give Cafferty a suggesiton on somewhat more accurate language (though it’s gone up 3.8 trillion since he took over at 5.25 trillion — NOT EVEN CLOSE to doubling).
It’s exactly this kind of exaggeration that Cafferty rails against, Darryl doesn’t check but repeats and pretty soon the lies become believable. Isn’t this exactly what you accuse the rebublicans doing?
And yes it does qualititatvely change the story. It calls into question all the data that Cafferty presents (and you forward) using the exact same logic that he uses (If Cafferty is lying aobut this, what else is he lying about)????
though it’s gone up 3.8 trillion since he took over at 5.25 trillion — NOT EVEN CLOSE to doubling
The 3.8 trillion figure you cite was from a chart that was rather conveniently not dated. You’re giving Cafferty a hassle about his numbers when yours aren’t any better. Why?
# 21 — Don’t you think thet’s a leeeetle bit UNCIVIL?
Sorry. Make that, “Why are you being such a hypocrite, asshole?”
Better?
Bill Anderson,
“He did say “shade under $10 trillion” — when in fact the debt is just barely over $9 trillion. It’s not even at 9.1 trillion.”
The current $9.05 trillion figure is, obviously, well short of the projected national debt by the end of the Bush administration. As the chart you link to shows, by the end of his term, the projected national debt is just a shade under $10 Trillion. I should also point out that last month Congress raised the debt ceiling to $9.815 trillion.
Obviously, if one wants to compare the reign of Bush to all previous Presidents, one would use the projected figures for the end of his second term.
“And yes it does qualititatvely change the story.”
How do you figure? No matter how you slice-n-dice the numbers, by the end of his disastrous reign, Bush will have accumulated nearly as much debt as have all previous Presidents combined.
I mean, do you believe that it makes Bush’s “stewardship” of America qualitatively better because he will add to the debt a little less than (instead of equal to) all previous presidents combined?????
What is this? Are we debating exactly how many strokes we’ve taken up the ass, or trying to measure blood loss with a thimble while the aorta spurts madly on?
What this is that showing one side is lying when calling out the other for “lying”.
Then one side’s proponents quotes the liar as if fact. This is the same thing that the other side did about Saddam and WMD. It’s the same TACTIC … not the same level of importance (anticiapating more irrelevant rage from the hard core types here).
Those of us who aren’t 100% agreeing with everything either republicans (like the folks at soundpolitics) or democrats (like the folks here) say are tired of the partisan lies that have taken over both parties.
It’s awful.
@26 Perhaps you yearn for the good old days when people rationally debated issues and were civil to their political opponents. Such as, e.g., Kansas in 1858 …
My point is, if you’re waiting for partisans to not behave partisanly, you’ll wait a long time, Bill.
@26 (continued) Those of us with a sense of (and knowledge of) history feel a sense of relief and good fortune that shooting hasn’t broken out yet between Republicans and Democrats.
Take what you can get, Bill, take what you can get.
@25 “how many strokes we’ve taken up the ass”
Baseball rules, Art. Remember the baseball rules: If their pitcher hits one of our guys, our pitcher is gonna hit one of their guys. Taking it up the ass is normal when the other side gets in power. When it’s our turn to be in power again, we’ll pay them back. That’s how the world works.
The first thing we’re going to do is tax the shit out of Republicans to pay for the programs they hate most! Republicans love money. Therefore, the best way to hurt them is take their money! So that’s what we’re going to do. And we’re going to spend it on giving health care for poor kids until they choke on their bile.
Well, I am sure all us adults who took economics in college understand that the national debt under herr bush has doubled during his presidency, but why let the facts get in the way.
Bill A., there is a website called wikipedia that will spell it all out for you if you know how to read it.
While you are there, look at the part that breaks down annual debt growth under the two parties. You might come to realize that both parties are not to blame, that the Republican party is fiscally drowning this nation in debt whenever it is in the White House. Bush the elder was actually the worst debtor in chief ever. Worse than Reagan, who actually QUADRUPLED the size of the national debt when he was in office. Clinton spent the first three years of his presidency getting a handle on the previous twelve years of fiscal mis-manangement. When Carter left office in 1980, the national debt was $918 BILLION. It now stands at $9 TRILLION.
When Clinton left office, Alan Greenspan was worried that Clinton’s debt reductions might hurt the economy because it was going to pay down the debt too fast. George W. quickly put Mr. Greenspan’s worries to rest with an insane plan of cutting taxes on the rich by…….BORROWING MORE MONEY!!!!!!!!!
This should be the best years of American economics. With China opening up, and the baby boomers in their peak earning years, our economy could have put America on the path to a lasting position of economic domination.
So, if you want to believe that both parties are equally responsible, go smoke that particular opium pipe in private.
But the people who know better, who understand economics think you are just a Republican who is trying to escape accountability by painting everyone with the same broad brush.
Bill Anderson,
‘What this is that showing one side is lying when calling out the other for “lying”.’
So…um, do you disagree with the point that Bush will have accumulated nearly as much debt by the end of his presidency as have all previous Presidents combined?
Do you believe that Bush’s has been a good steward of our national finances because, rather than doubling the debt during his presidency will only have raised it by a factor of 1.8????
“Then one side’s proponents quotes the liar as if fact. This is the same thing that the other side did about Saddam and WMD.”
Bullshit. If the Bush administration had given us counts of the WMD they claimed they would find, and only found 80% of them, we wouldn’t be accusing them of lying!!! It was the guarantees that they would find WMD, combined with the 0% find rate that strongly calls into question their veracity.
And Hillary already has chalked up over 700 Billion in new planned spending. With being the numero uno hauler of federal Pork to New York, can you give me an estimate of the deficit under Hillary Clinton?
Oh such vigilant keepers of the federal purse strings?
GS @ 33
Come-on…do you REALLY believe that Hillary has a budget made up for 2009? I mean…really :-)
BTW: The last time a Clinton left office, there was a budget surplus and part of the National Debt had been paid off.