Don't businesses provide JOBS?
Sure they do. But, the problem is that Bush (like his father and Reagan before him) don't care a whole lot about high-paying jobs for the middle-class. Unfortunately, that's where the booming economy and the majority of the tax-revenue comes from. The conservatives are still trying to milk the absurd and long-discredited "trickle-down" theory which states that if you give tax-breaks to millionaires, they'll be able to hire more people to mow their lawns and clean their toilets.
Clinton didn't put an end to more than a decade of Republican budget-irresponsibility and turn deficits into surpluses because he was a brilliant economist (he wasn't). He did it because almost entirely without his help, the high-tech sector of the US economy kicked itself into overdrive and started providing high-paying jobs that allowed ordinary people to buy houses, cars and all sorts of other things that they couldn't afford before.
Clinton got to stand around and claim credit for a booming economy that, honestly, he had almost nothing to do with but at least he didn't do anything to screw it up like Bush has been doing. Instead of stemming the tide of "outsourcing", Bush is encouraging it. I'm sure that's one of the reasons that Michael Moore is so pissed at Bush. Dubya is doing exactly the same thing to the USA that Roger Smith did to GM - and for the same reasons: Shallow, short-term, unenlightened greed. That is, the opposite of the sort of constructive and productive greed that Gordon Gekko called "good" in the film Wall Street.
Thanks, Slick! You succeeded in keeping foreign oil workers employed and oil sheiks rich at the expense of Americans. No thanks. W has the right idea - if and until no one drives cars anymore, it makes no sense to buy oil overseas when we can provide a much higher percentage of it for ourselves right here at home.
That's pure fantasy. The US's oil-consumption is such that if we used only domestic oil, we'd be bone dry in a couple of decades. As a nation, we use upwards of 20 million barrels/day.
Now, instead of piddling around talking about pie-in-the-sky ideas like hydrogen fuel cells, we could start gearing up for serious bio-diesel production and start giving the money that we're currently sending to the Persian Gulf to American (or even Canadian and Mexican) farmers. Wouldn't that be better?
For those who don't know, "bio-diesel" is a fuel similar to ordinary diesel and which can be burned in any diesel engine with no modification whatsoever. It is refined from vegetable oil (e.g. rapeseed, soy, canola, coconut, etc) instead of petroleum using technology that has been available for decades. This fuel has the added benefit (for those who worry about carbon dixoide emission contributing to global warming) of not increasing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere when burned. It also doesn't stink like petro-diesel when you fuel your car or when the engine is running.
The top five percent of wage earners pay 50% of all income taxes.
You say that like it is a bad thing.
Why shouldn't those who pay the MOST in taxes get the MOST back?
Because that isn't how a progressive tax system works. Next you'll be arguing for a poll-tax.
You think those who paid the least in taxes - or none at all - should have gotten more back?
The best way to pass tax-savings on to the taxpayer is as follows:
1. You either wait until there is a savings (i.e. budget surplus) or else you create one by lowering government spending until it is less than the incoming revenue. Republicans don't have a great history of doing either one.
2. As and when there is a surplus, you first use it to pay down the national debt. If there is no debt on the books, you then return the surplus to the taxpayers as a flat rebate by increasing the personal exeption until the total revenue for the year is reduced by the amount of the surplus. This means that everyone will recieve an equal benefit and those whose incomes are near to the level of the exemption anyway will have their tax burden fall to $0 and the IRS won't have to process their return at all which will, in turn, create slightly more saving for the following year.
The idea of lowering taxes by percentage or any other method which results in a disproportionate benefit to th wealthy is nonsense and flies in the face of the basic values on which this country was founded.
President Bush is a good man.
Not really by any measure I can find. He is an incompetent administrator, a failed businessman, a marginal intellect (to judge by his SAT scores and subsequent college grades) and when his country needed his service in Vietnam, he slunk off to the Texas National Guard where his family pulled strings to get him preferential access to the program.
Well, I suppose he doesn't kick his dog and if not, he can't be all bad.
He's a good president.
By what measure? Compared to Clinton, the economy is in the toilet, America's reputation and stature in the world community is at an all-time low and things don't show any signs of changing anytime soon.
we haven't had a truly great president since Reagan.
Actually, we haven't had a great president since Kennedy. Reagan wasn't a great president. Ford and Nixon were better if you want to talk about Republicans only. So was Eisenhower. Reagan's only real claim to fame was that he might have been a great improver of national morale. The country felt better about things than they had in a while. Maybe it was because of Reagan and maybe it would have happened anyway - some people think these things are cyclical like most things in the world. Still, I'll give Reagan the benefit of the doubt and say that he was a great cheerleader. As an executive he left a lot to desire. His domestic policy was hypocritical and ultimately ineffective and his foreign policy was confusing to both our allies and enemies.
President Bush is a far cry better than anything the liberals have to offer - Lurch Kerry doesn't stand a chance.
We'll see this November. The way I see it, Kerry will win by about 20 electoral votes. Remember, the ONLY reason that Bush beat Gore was because Nader split the vote in Florida and another state whose name escapes me for the moment and also because lots of moderates (myself included) coudn't get worked up about either candidate and stayed home. We're not going to stay home this time and a lot of us think that Bush is an even bigger disgrage to the office than Clinton was and that's saying something.
I ran the electoral math a while ago and Kerry is going to give Bush serious trouble. Look at it this way, the only big (20+ votes) state Bush has "in the bag" is his home state of Texas. Every other single big state (California, New York, Illinois, etc) is in Kerry's pocket. Add New England and the other typically Democrat states (e.g. Washington and Oregon) and the couple of states in the south he's going to pick up coutesy of his VP and the election is going to go Kerry's way.
Those of you who want to appease terrorists and the french by voting for Kerry, might I suggest you all move to Spain? You'll be in good company, because those folks just elected a socialist out of fear, too.
Actually I'm voting for Kerry because we need a strong man in the White House. Compared to Kerry, Bush is a weakling and a fool.
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