No one is saying that the debt isn't a problem, it just isn't the only problem.
The Kock brothers and other like minded folks who are funding the Tea Party, are using the debt problem as an excuse to gut environmental regulations, and anything else they see as in their way of making more money at our expense. They also want the tax burden off of themselves and put onto everyone else. The common theme of the Tea Party is more profit and less tax for the billionaire class, more pollution, more sacrifice, and fewer benefits for those suckers who work for a living.
The debt is the biggest problem in America today - just start counting to a trillion - I'll get back to you
assuming you count 2 numbers per second, to count from 1 to 1 trillion it will take you:
500 billion seconds or
8,333,333,333,333 minutes or
138,888,888 hours or
5,787,037 days or
15,854.89 years... then multiply that by 14 - that''s our national debt.
national debt clock
Sure there are other problems - no one said there wasn't - the problem has been ignored for too long .. and has been exasperated by the past administration (or two).
Why dont you count to 320,904,110,042.04 and not post again until there, that our debt in 1965..
I agree with you debt is one of the biggest issues in America today, but the Tea Party is crackpot and partisan.. It only an issue to them because Obama. Debt has been building to skyrocket since Reagan, half the tea party would make him part of Mt. Rushmore though.
Through that debt going up and up and up we have had a republican in office the majority of the time. With them pushing the same old plan, i dont see a answer in that.
so, according to Gramps: people that make more than he will ever see in his life don't actually work? As a millionaire, I must tell you that I have worked my ASS off for many years and will continue to WORK it to the best advantage I can until I am dead. And no, I won't just GIVE you any money.. how do you think I got this way? BY EARNING IT.
You misunderstand. I have nothing against rich people, God bless them for being productive and beating the odds. I am not a millionaire, but I live better than my family's previous generation and a hell of a lot better than the one before that. I did it the classic American way with education and hard work.
My problem is with some who see a golden opportunity to gut our American liberal democracy into something resembling a Banana Republic, a haves and have-not extreme with no one in the middle. Guys like this want no checks or balances on their own activities. They want to use their wealth and power to get the government to give them whatever they want at the expense of the rest of us.
A perfect example is this Fracking method of getting energy out of the ground. It is cheap and convenient for energy companies to do this, but it creates an environmental disaster, which has terrible health consequences for people who live nearby. Well some of these companies see the Tea Party as a way to gut environmental laws, get a total disconnect between the damage they cause and their own liability and so on.
If you are already fabulously rich and want to make even more money by harming me or the place where I live, well I am going to have a bit of a problem with that!
I don't see the correlation between having debt or environmental regulation. It's not a question of having only one or the other.
At $1.5 trillion/yr deficit, the environment, AGW, and all your big worries will pale in comparison to the financial distress coming our way. A true financial default by our beloved federal government will bring pain that will make the last few years look like a walk in the park.
It's a lot like housing prices. If the situation is unsustainable, it WILL be corrected either by doing it ourselves or on a financial day of reckoning. The fall will be devastating.
I also want to add that I still don't use credit cards, I use cash from savings.. that is I don't borrow money, and didn't borrow to begin with (excepting a mortgage) that has been paid off for years now. I don't wish to harm anyone, that is why I didn't borrow and refuse to borrow. Some would have me punished for that, but mind you.. I PAY A SHITLOAD in taxes every year.
No credit is the way to go!
To defend gramps, the majority of us will never be "rich" without being born into it.
Cant say i know any selfmade millionairs. Other then a few retires who didnt get that way till well after being retired and having savings to gamble and play with to make more money. And yeah, plenty of people work hard every day, more so then you or me ever will.. And they die poor. Sorry dude, no white picket fences and free health care in the American Dream.
Again, I am not calling for a class warfare. I am sounding an alarm that class warfare has been going on for some time now, but in the opposite direction from the way we were warned about.
Not to single out the Koch brothers, who are just two of many such people, but they fund anti environmental material, climate change skeptics, some of this Constitutional fundamentalism, and a bunch of other different movements with a common theme that they will benefit in some way from these activities.
It wouldn't be so bad if they were honest or had any integrity, but these groups are propaganda machines which spew out erroneous material at a fantastic rate.
I see your koch brothers and raise you one George Soros.
Then there's groups like the annenberg foundation.
The left is just getting pissy about the rich guys and groups on the right taking pages form their own playbook.
Sorry.
What specific misinformation campaigns has Soros funded?
Here is one of many articles on the subject...
The Soros Threat To Democracy
Here on Open Secrets .. the unbiased site that I keep on trying to get Gramps to look at .. gives an EXCELLENT breakdown between the Koch Brother and Soros
As far as other BIG political contribuotrs facts about how much BIG money the Dems get .. out of the top 20 donating groups .. 4 give equally to both parties, one to the repubs ..and 15 to the democrats.
Mac points out the major difference between the dueling rich guy's information competition. The level of disinformation on the Right is alarming. The ACORN video is a great example; it is pure unadulterated bullshit but was accepted as a perfectly valid piece of information.
There is no real corollary for this from progressive sources.
So bloomberg's fake or felonious straw purchase program to shut Dow gun shows doesn't count?
Also, I wouldn't say the level is alarming. I think the big difference is how blatant it is.
The left takes a bit more care in covering it up.
Big_T
Ostriches (and too many hard core democrats and republicans) with their head buried in the sand agree with this article.
The largest debt since WWII ..... already exceeds the size of the entire economy, according to government estimates.
On foreign policy - Cables show China used debt holdings to press US