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Mr Alan
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Quote: from Gminn03 on 7:16 pm on Feb. 4, 2005
Broken Leg,
Its easy to blame 9/11 and "we are at war."
[snip]
Its easy to say tax cuts to the rich and large corporations will spur the economy.
[snip]
If you work at a local plant where jobs are being exported or companies are eliminating overtime due to less business, it doesn't help. The fact is over the last four years, we have lost more jobs than created.
[snip]
Well let's see. We are at war, and 9/11 did happen and it caused damage to the US economy, the stock market, the job market, and the budget deficits (the US government taxes capital gains, corporate profits, and individual income). Of course it was not just 9/11, it was the internet bubble of the late 90's and the accounting scandals during the 90's also (the majority of them). The US paid over $40 billion in cash just to NYC because of the 9/11 attack.
The Bush tax cut gave a larger percentage cut to lower and middle class people than to the rich. See my post on page 6 of this thread for the details. Hopefully you can understand the math.
http://bkkx.com/cgi-bin/forum/topic.cgi?forum=18&topic=118&start=50
No large tax cuts for big corporations. Most business tax cuts were for small business, such as be able to deduct insurance premiums from AGI for self-employed people. True, most big corporations paid little or no taxes in 2002 or 2003, because they made little or no profit.
There is nothing Bush has done to encourage jobs to go overseas. That has been a long term trend for many years. No one noticed it much until unemployment rose in the US. The one thing that Bush has done to keep jobs in the US, is to weaken the dollar, to make US goods cheaper overseas. Japan Airlines Corp. (JAL) said Friday it would buy 30 737 small passenger jets from Boeing Co., with an option to buy an additional 10. JAL's announcement that it would buy new jets followed its decision in December to purchase 30 new 7E7 mid-sized airliners from Boeing, with an option to purchase 20 more. Libya also purchased some Boeing jets today.
Actually, with today’s job and unemployment numbers released today, there was a small net job gain since Bush took office. Unemployment fell to 5.2% (from 5.4%). This is a small miracle since the economy was in a tailspin by the time Bush took office, and then 9/11, wall street scandals hit after that.
I know it is hard to escape the liberal propaganda machine and get the true facts about what is happening, but you should give it a try.
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Thai Girls : Meet Sexy Thai Girls
Posted on: 11:08 pm on Feb. 4, 2005
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Gminn03
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When Bush took office in 2001, the economy wasn't in a tailspin. 9/11 did have some effect on it. The tax cuts given in 2001 gave around $300 to each person that year. I haven't seen a check since then. The rest of it is to be paid off in the future. Giving $300 to the middle class one year and over $50,000 over so many years to the rich per person to someone who is already rich doesn't make much sense. I'm not talking about lowering tax rates on your income, I'm talking about the check in the mail.
When the Enron scandal started, the administration made no major efforts to look into it until 9 months later. I won't quote any websites or statistics, because this is fact. Maybe the fact Bush and Cheney were once connected to Enron might of had something to do with this. I won't even get into halburton, Cheney being connected to it, and the administration giving a huge contract to Halburton in Iraq and paying them right away even after Halburton was found to be overcharging the US government.
The economy is slowly improving, but the deficit has hit record highs. We are paying interest on the deficit and that hurts the nation. Based on the large deficits and tax cuts, I would think the economy would have greatly improved, being all that money was going into defense contracts, etc. With all the money going out, we could have extended unemployment benefits in 2003 when the economy was in trouble, but Republicans were against it.
The states are cutting their programs and raising taxes. The high gas prices don't help either. Some nations are buying other currency in bulk and considering moving away from the dollar in the future. A lower dollar means buying things such as food and imports cost more.
I never said Bush was doing anything to export jobs, but he has done nothing to stop them either. He didn't seem to be at all interested in this fact during the election in 2004.
The main idea of this was to show how the jobs in my state were compared to 2001. I had tons of jobs to choose from and they paid well. Now, the few quality paying jobs that have been created have over 100 people fighting for them. I don't call that something to get excited about.
The liberal propaganda machine is called general information. This includes fox as well, which is very much conservative. You lean heavily towards a certain party and can't see any flaws in the administration, so I'll leave it at that. I am open to seeing the flaws in my own party.
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Bangkok Women : Meet Sensual Bangkok Women
Posted on: 2:42 pm on Feb. 6, 2005
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Mr Alan
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Gminn03,
I never said there were no flaws in the Bush administration. But I also like to get the facts straight:
1. US Economy wasn’t in a tailspin by January 20, 2001? Both GDP (Gross Domestic Product) and the stock market has serious declines in 2000 before Bush took office. Here is a link for GDP and The NASDAQ 100 index:
http://www.bea.gov/briefrm/gdp.htm
http://money.cnn.com/quote/quote.html?pg=qu&sid=144065&osymb=QQQQ&time=10yr&uf=0&x=32&y=7
So I don't know what your definition of tailspin is, but there were serious declines in major economic indicators by the time Bush took office or very shortly there after. Also, the capital gains that were wiped out in the market crash (before January 20, 2001) cost the US Treasury hundreds of billions in tax revenue.
2. The Bush tax cuts gave middle class people a greater percentage tax cut than rich people. I documented that in previous posts using actual income tax rates from 2000 (last year of Clinton) and for 2004. This does not include the one time rebate you received. The facts are indisputable, even if you can't do the math.
3. The government agencies who regulated Enron were the SEC, NYSE, and Justice Department. Bush only controls the Justice Department (indirectly) and there are many career attorneys (including Democrats) whose responsibility it is to pursue illegal corporate activities.
You don't have any idea when they began their investigations because that information is not always made public. If the government did release prejudicial evidence or information about the investigation publicly, or if the President did make public statements about Enron, the execs would have gotten off Scott-free for prejudicing the potential jury pool. There is such a thing in the US as “due process” and corporate criminal cases take a long to pursue if you actually want a conviction, rather than just publicity for going after them.
4. The stuff about Halliburton is pure crap. They are about the only US firm that can perform the kind of work that is needed in the Middle East. Maybe you think the US should have hired a French or Russian oil services firm? Cheney had no ties to Halliburton once he took office. Every single firm that has performed services to the US military or NASA, etc, on a cost plus contract over the years has been accused at one point or another of overcharging because of the complexity of administering those kind of contracts. Every single last one of them.
Quite a few Halliburton employees have been killed in Iraq. If you want to bid on that work, be my guest. The Halliburton stock price (HAL) is just about the same as when Bush took office, and quite a bit lower than during most of the Clinton administration.
5. Bush actually did do about the only thing that a President can legally do keep jobs in the US. He sought (and got) a devalued dollar. That makes US made goods cheaper abroad and increases jobs at home. If you have any other (legal) suggestions, I would like to hear them.
6. After the stock market crash of 2000, then crashed again after 9/11, and crashed again after the corporate accounting scandals of 1995-2000 were revealed in 2002, the US economy and job market has suffered. Yet, you still have not tied the weak economy to any specific Bush administration policy. The US economy tends to have cycles of boom and bust, not related to any government policy, and not easily fixed by any government policy. Sometimes, shit just happens, man.
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Thai Girls : Meet Sexy Thai Girls
Posted on: 3:56 pm on Feb. 6, 2005
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