Hope & Change With New Congress
 

With new Congress members coming on board and the Republicans taking back the House...what do you think will be the outcome. Also, the Feds are planning on buying $500 billion more in US Bonds...where in the hell are they getting the money. :mad:

The so called party of no was meaningless as the Socialists held Pres, House & Senate. The race to deficit spend (and blame Bush for deficit spending!!!), the interference in the private sector by firing executives and taking over companies and the coming gas tax, Value Added Tax, bankrupting of coal companies etc. has to be stopped or their will be no makers left for the takers to take from. Apparently this minor nuisance fact doesn't register with them for some reason. There is a clash of ideas: Go free market capitalism which built the country into the richest country in the world or to adopt the socialism which is destroying Europe and now spreading in South America. Bring on the Partisanship....better that than lock & load.

AKL :confused:

I am somewhat optimistic at a better balance of power in Washington.

In California it was a Democratic (unions & trial lawyers) rout. I can already hear the trucks and moving vans rolling as the rest of the industrial companies here pack up and flee the state heading for Ariz, Nev., NM, Tex. This will be a historic job killer election for us. I guess I better learn to pick lettuce and strawberries.

I wonder just how much can be done with the GOP only having control of the house and not the senate as well. On the other hand, I'm glad the GOP didn't sweep the elections on capitol hill (although they sure did sweep the governors races) because I truly feel they would have reversed everything done in the last two years, not done anything stellar in the process, and it would nearly guarantee Obama's second term.

Last night I turned to my wife and said, "Let's see what this latest batch of village idiots can do to screw up the country. I'm sure they have new and innovative ways to make things worse."

The biggest thing facing us right now is all the Bush tax cuts expiring at the end of the year. If Obama gets his way, we are all going to pay far more than our fair share come January 1 to live in this country, except for the welfare recipients (comprised of legal and illegal immigrants) who will get bonus handouts and free healthcare.

Drew, thank you for giving Allen a target-rich environment.

I cannot image he and a couple of others on this board are now loaded for bear.

mmmm bear.



"socialism is already here, and you like it. Or at least, I would assume you like most of the services provided in the narrative above. "

Unfortunately no, I do enjoy many of their uses of course. That does not inherently mean I like the way I must receive them.

Often times it is not that the service does not "work" but rather its quality compared to what it could be. A prime example: I went to the post office a couple of weeks ago to RMA some red seatbelt fabric for an upcoming project for the box. I sent it via postoffice.

Service guy: Do you want insurance?
me: is there not insurance already up to 100.00$?
service guy: no
me: what happens if the package does not make it to the destination... what will happen
service guy: nothing. you will have no recourse. you could however, purchase package tracking for X dollars.
me: will that do anything for me?
service guy: well, you will know if it gets there.


compare to UPS who has free tracking, insurance up to $100.oo and the like.

so it is not that we do not have the service or that we do not like them its just that it could be better.


PS. the postal service is currently a black hole for federal money. that is another issue all together.

That is pretty interesting to be sure, however, I doubt we could pull it off. the US plays a vastly different role in the world compared to Norway.

to put it in perspective,

Norway population: 4.9 mil
New York population: 8.3 mil

our largest CITY is almost double the population of their whole country. Size matters in these things. Their model would not work here in the United States there is no one size fits all.

Culture, Population, Land Mass, History, Religions all play a role.

However, Defense spending should be that large. Our federal Government has very little powers granted to it by the constitution but that has been abused over the decades.

I am a Constitutionalist in my opinion and I personally think SS and medicare can go the way of the dodo. it is just more money our federal government has no right to take and give.

Drew

Tone you rhetoric down.

Thank you. :)

Well considering we are currently engaged in a war that is reason for the size of our military. Once we pull out of Afghanistan you will see our military shrink. as far as 80% on our AF and Navy. Idk that seems rash.

Like I said I understand what you are saying but I just do not agree on the fundamental level. I believe in the Constitution that is the foundation of this country. We are where we are now because of it and we are in dire straits because we abused it. IMHO of course.

PS. I just think he wants you to tone down your vulgarity. not so much content.

I am not asking, I am telling you.

With all due respect.

Quote: And with the savings from these cuts, we could give free healthcare to every man woman and child in America, even the illegals, and still have money left over for things like our failed public education system. But don't get me started on that. Teachers Unions are probably the single biggest threat to this country.

I see, you think that giving teachers no rights or a fair salary to compensate them for their investment in time and money so that they can educate the next generation properly is wasteful. Teachers should be responsible for their actions but it is the actions of the parents which force many of the school board's rules.

What part of the word illegal gives them the same rights, and benefits of a legal tax paying citizen

Besides all this stuff, I hope and pray that the Free Trade Act is abolished and we can once again become a productive society.

no need to be disrespectful. He IS the boss... it is his forum. Would you let someone come into your house and disrespect you or your rules no matter how frivolous that visitor deems they are?

I know I would not.

On 2nd thought, it's not worth it. I've got better things to do with my time than argue with an internet forum mod on a power trip. You all can consider this my resignation from the Lounge...lol

Well while BL is a moderator he is also the owner. All I am is saying is that his house his rules whether you or I like it.


As far as killing a forum. This forum is one of the most if not the most active Porsche Boxster forums still in operation.

Yeah, I got that. Peace.

later dood.

I personally think that SS should have remained supplemental and not considered one's sole source of income in retirement (a view held by far too many ignorant Americans) by setting it up right in the first place. Had they told everyone that once they drained their government savings account they would receive no more money, we'd be in a far better place today.

I'm certainly not counting on getting any SS monies, even though I've been forced to give tens of thousands to it through the years.

And if I do get a check, I will dump every penny of it into a Porsche. The wife already told me I could do it if we kept saving for our retirement the way we've been doing :)

Haha there you go. personally if they were to take these monies and invest it for the people I would be down for that. Being, what you put in is what you get out. but otherwise the current system is crock. Much like how most companies go for a 401k approach rather than the old pension.

http://thehill.com/opinion/columnists/ab-stoddard/127615-obamas-turn-to-change

Interesting article on the voter demographics and impications for the next two years.

Randall, I suggest you go back and read my post on the history of SocSec. If it was left alone as it was promised and the govt. didn't take it and spend it on the "Great Society" crap, it would be there for all who HAD to contribute to it. How come Congress has a private plan for their retirement and are all not on SS? How come the dangers of the market doesn't seem to apply here only the paying public?

The Dept of Agriculture has as many employees as their are farmers in the country, now why is that? Dept of energy has a 24.7 billion dollar budget for this year alone. To do WHAT? Latest junket to India will cost 2million a day, includes 40 aircraft, 3 choppers and armored cars. Therefore, NO, I do want the money I put into SS. Just abolish all of these nonsense Depts that do nothing but insure an army of democrat voters and return the money to the SS fund.

AKL ;)

I agree with the overkill in Fed Depts. If this country was like Bear Stearns, we would be deemed bankrupted and corrupted...oh crap, we are like them. SS is a good thing as long as it is not run by the Government. The Democrats raid anything they can to get money for the promises that they made so they can stay in power. :barf:

The more I read the paper and blogs, the more I seem to think I am in the minority who think that people place a REALLY disproportional amount of attention on these elections in the context of the economy or the stock and bond markets. Look at the big picture for a minute...the U.S. economy is $14 trillion. The Federal budget accounts for a a very small part of that. Nearly half that budget goes to defense and war spending. The amount of money that the govt could target to boost the economy is tiny. Certainly not anything close to being enough to reverse a decades long slump in wages and job growth that hit the wall 10 years ago now.

Look at this way, taxes today are lower than they have ever been in recent memory. Google is paying 2% in taxes through perfectly legal measures. Warren Buffett challenged any of his wealthy friends to a $100,000K bet if anyone of them could show an effective tax rate that was higher than that of their own secretary.
Corporate taxes as percentage of GDP have fallen by 50% in the last 30 years.
Today, even after two years of Obama-Pelosi-Reid you have never payed less in taxes as an hourly worker, a salaried worker, a investor or a a Wall Street private equity partner (who pay a mere 15% on their carry). On top of that we had something in the order of $300 billion in tax incentives, larger than either the 2001 or 2003 tax cuts. Trillions upon trillions of dollars NOT collected in taxes and what has that produced as far jobs and wage growth? ZILCH. In other words reducing taxes is certainly better than raising taxes but it will not move the unemployment needle from 10% to 5%. That's become abundantly clear now. We're now into a full decade of these low tax rates with nary a whiff of inflation and the jobs did not come.
Clearly other things are at play here. It's not what the govt chooses to do or not..but what consumers are choosing to do. They whine about govt not doing enough to create jobs and then head for the Apple store to buy a $700 Ipad from a company that employs 1 U.S. worker for every 10 it hires. That's one way to increase profits 70% during 10% unemployment! But apple consumers are not alone...not by a mile. You simply have to be living in Bizzaro land to think that 24/7 consumption of foreign goods would not catch up to us sooner or later. Well this is that reality. And don't think that putting up all these Wal-Marts and Costcos wasn't going to put a seriuos dent in the number of small biz retaliers either. .. 10% unemployment would have come sooner but we had a nice 5 year binge of bundled and securitized credit to keep the faux wheels of consumption turning. That air bag support under our feet has been gone for two years now.

At any rate. Elections are almost pointless in the context of economic turnarounds. The govt is not gong to save you. It is your own every day consumer choices. We are barking up the wrong tree while giving those who do have the ability to hire Americans (Fortune 500s) a pass. It's an interesting knee-jerk reaction that prevalent today: the economy is bad? Well let's start talking about Congress and Obama. Huh? If unemployment is 10% that's because it's perfectly fine with Wal-Mart, Coca-cola, Johnson & Johnson, Exxon, Yum, Merck, Altria and all the others sitting on trillions in excess cash. They make money just same since their customer base has now exploded with Asian and South American consumers now accounting for greater than 50% of sales. And the stock market is back to its pre-bubble normal, they're not too worried about anemic U.S. worker wages. Has anyone stopped to think that 8-10% unemployment is now the new normal?

Okay now as far as the political soap opera that has little to do with reality,
The election was a bit of a double-edged sword for the Republicans. It surprised me in that this was the first time that the House flipped without the Senate. Tha's a red flag for something not being okay with the disgruntled voters. The Republicants and Dimocrats due as they always do, vote in lock-step. Elections are decided by independents. They distrust Republicans as much as they distrust Obama. The latest polling I read in the WSJ said they gave 55% to the Repubes and 45% to the leftys. That's interesting given the state of the economy. I would have pegged it at close to 70% for the GOP. But when you consider that 2/3's of independts considered themselve moderat to liberal (more like fiscal conservative-social liberals) it becomes a little clearer. About a 1/3 are solidly against Obama. The President is currently polling at 44-48% If he can reel in a 1/3 of the left leaning indys he'll be very close to 50%. If the Republicans come up with no good ideas, particularly ones that don't move jobs higher, at least 40% of the indys will move to Obama and that will for sure put him above 50%. The problem is that the GOP is racing to the hard right, even McCain is on board. If this results in a Sarah Palin/Sharon Angle/Bachmann type Republican it's a whole new ball game for Obama because nearly 70% of indy's can't stand Palin or think she's a deal-breaker. The frightening part if you're a Republican is that Palin & Co. haven't a single critic in the elected Republican leadership for fear of the backlash.The only critics are a smarty pundit or GOP strategist here and there like Krauthammer "She has a frightening lack of subsatnce". You need an equally popular opposing force to derail her Presidential run. Where's that going to come from. It would have to be on the level of Hillary vs. Obama and I don't see that happening ever because Palin is singing all the right tunes for the sort of Republicans who turn out to vote and get energized.

The election was almost like a challenge to both Obama and the resurgent Republicans: show us what you can do DIFFERENTLY. No fighting, no repealing without alternatives that show results in two years (they're not waiting long term).
If the Republicans decide to just fight for two years throwing up things they know will get vetoed it will electrify the Republicans and Democrats but will not pass muster with independents. The thing to keep in mind is that they will not give one-party control to either side. That means either we get Republican President (likely) with a very tone-down Congress (yeah right!)...or Obama part II with a fully Republican Congress. Bill Clinton all over again.

Bottom Line
 

The elections have insured that Washington will accomplish nothing over the next two years. And anytime Washington accomplishes nothing it is far better than anything they have ever accomplished.

True lol,

Keep in mind that shrinking the government is a good thing. they have outgrown their rights given to them by the constitution. it may not be as big in some areas as lets say defense budget but at least defense is one of its duties.

the D-fence budget will shrink come july when we start to withdraw from Afghanistan and decrease the military.

AMEN TO THAT!

Actually, I think what the GOP will do is use the investigative powers to expose much of what Obama has been doing by executive fiat.

Perhaps a new head of the EPA?>?

Ha! Had not made this correlation, no matter what side you lean towards, the last 4 years have indeed been like a ridiculous "reality show"

it is truely amazing how few people realize that the govt has neither the pockets nor the man power to move that unemployment needle from 10% to 5%. That is entirely up to consumer's choices. If they buy from companies that have an interest in taking on more U.S. workers then we will see big movement on jobs.
If we continue to buy from companies that are morely likely to take rising revenues and simply send jobs off-shore, then we get what we have today. Compounding matters is that companies that export jobs to lands where labor equals 1/10 of U.S. wages (not including benefits of course...) are obviously more attractive to Wall Street. We argue about which way the govt should or should not spend a trillion dollars to stimulate job creation while sending 12x's that amount to companies that export jobs, both blue collar (China) and white collar (India).

What Congress could do is simply start a campaign to encourage consumers to buy from companies A thru Z which have pledged increasing jobs X% in 2011.
A yearly pledge of sorts. Surely they will want something in return but at least we are informing the consumer about which companies have a long term plan that involves American workers. Andy Grove who built Intel was recently complaining about this in the tech sector recently in a Wall Street Journal Opinion piece: "every tech firm wants to send every job possible to China as part of a 'China Plan'...but where's the USA Plan?".

Consumers will not spend money that they don't have or believe will not be there in the future (on average).

What the Feds CAN do is figure out how to stablize things, take less money from taxpayers, and stop passing laws that create massive uncertainty.

That would be a start.

Good luck with that! :D

buy american.....wait...isnt this an import forum ?

We should have annexed Germany when we had the chance! :D

The last time I bought a washing machine, I tried to buy "American."

Good luck on that score.

:confused:

i think we can/do tell 75 % of the world what to do ...the other 25 % we have to talk/force them into it....alot dont like us but tough muffins....give us a hard time and we will burn your huts down...i like that

Problem is, the credit card we use for hut burning implements is in danger of being refused. Peter Schiffs theory on QE2 is that Fed would like to maintain the appearance of normalcy and avoid the panic that would result if the Treasury had an auction and no buyers showed up. It is widely acknowledged that QE can't lower interest rates much from where they are. So why do it? Because rates might spike dramatically if the Treasury's big auction party was greeted with crickets. Not to mention all the fun that would ensue given we have an adjustable rate mortgage on our national debt invested in short term bonds.

Zerohedge had a much more negative take on this QE stuff but I'm not familiar with them enough to know if they are credible. Schiff is the gold standard in my book, so to speak. GLD = :D

tell pete schiff the US issues the credit cards and uses them...no one can afford not to accept them...still dont believe...well then the president can make one phone call to the mint ....print mees sum of dat green stuf hommie

well that was quick...The Republicans shot up jobs by 151,000! :D
Since December 2009 jobs have risen by 875,000.


check out the trend chart. that dotted line excludes all those temp census workers

Printing the green stuff - easy. Printing value to go along with it? Haven't figured that one out yet. The dollar is down, and commodities are up, lately. More than enough to wipe out recent stock market gains. The "whiff of inflation" mentioned earlier is poised to be a gale wind in the coming months.

the new powers to be promised to get rid of the obama care asap....now the fng,s are claiming not until 2013......boy are they fast liars oooppps learners

They don't have the votes in the Senate. However, they can stop funding different pieces of it from the House side.

Lets see how they do this. I do believe they will bring it to a vote in the House, if only for symbolic reasons. It would be good to have a bill come out of the House that the Senate refuses to pass. Keep shoving it in the Dems face.

symbolic reasons....what a way to run a railroad.

I don;t think the House gets to rewrite the Constitution. The rules require two or three to tango.

That is the way it is! :)

Technically, the Constitution can not be re-written, only modified. To do so would require a vote in the affirmative by 2/3 of each house, then 3/4 of the States OR 2/3 of the State's Legislative bodies have to request a Constitutional Convention and 3/4 of the States then have to approve. Therefore, it always takes three to tango - the House, the Senate and the States.

Interestingly, especially given the constant "Obama is rewriting the Constitution" rhetoric, the President has no role in amending the Constitution.