Local News | Community Calendar | Classifieds | Business Directory | Real Estate | Weather | Home Commercial messages, profane language or allusions, libelous comments, excessive or continuous negative comments about any person or business, racially derogatory remarks, license plate numbers, prominent use of all capital letters, empty message body, use of anothers or similar screen name as your own, reference or clues to another users identity, use of your own real name, consecutive or repetitive messages from the same person, classified ads, and lost/found notices are not permitted. See Guidelines. Messages are removed at the webmasters sole discretion. Correspondence with site administrators may be posted to this forum. ©1995-2010 Sweet Pea Communications. Contents may not be reproduced without permission. http://topangaonline.com/forums/list.php?6 Fri, 10 Sep 2010 13:40:45 -0700 Phorum 5.2.9a http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4713,4727#msg-4727 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4713,4727#msg-4727 you and obama all animated but mute when it comes to people like the WBC acting like a-holes at funerals for dead
american soldiers?
oh, i know...it's called a double standard.]]> sean Topanga Talk Fri, 10 Sep 2010 11:52:20 -0700 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4714,4726#msg-4726 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4714,4726#msg-4726 > DW: Is that how you think others should view the
> Holy Bible?...lousy books?

E:In the context of over three thousand Americans slaughtered in the name of allah, even a few burned Bibles are nothing. There were at least as many Bibles incinerated in the Twin Towers by your allies the Islamic fascists.]]> Edenite Topanga Talk Fri, 10 Sep 2010 09:42:22 -0700 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4712,4725#msg-4725 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4712,4725#msg-4725

Op-Ed Contributor
Four Deformations of the Apocalypse
By DAVID STOCKMAN
Published: July 31, 2010

IF there were such a thing as Chapter 11 for politicians, the Republican push to extend the unaffordable Bush tax cuts would amount to a bankruptcy filing. The nation’s public debt — if honestly reckoned to include municipal bonds and the $7 trillion of new deficits baked into the cake through 2015 — will soon reach $18 trillion. That’s a Greece-scale 120 percent of gross domestic product, and fairly screams out for austerity and sacrifice. It is therefore unseemly for the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, to insist that the nation’s wealthiest taxpayers be spared even a three-percentage-point rate increase.

More fundamentally, Mr. McConnell’s stand puts the lie to the Republican pretense that its new monetarist and supply-side doctrines are rooted in its traditional financial philosophy. Republicans used to believe that prosperity depended upon the regular balancing of accounts — in government, in international trade, on the ledgers of central banks and in the financial affairs of private households and businesses, too. But the new catechism, as practiced by Republican policymakers for decades now, has amounted to little more than money printing and deficit finance — vulgar Keynesianism robed in the ideological vestments of the prosperous classes.

This approach has not simply made a mockery of traditional party ideals. It has also led to the serial financial bubbles and Wall Street depredations that have crippled our economy. More specifically, the new policy doctrines have caused four great deformations of the national economy, and modern Republicans have turned a blind eye to each one.

The first of these started when the Nixon administration defaulted on American obligations under the 1944 Bretton Woods agreement to balance our accounts with the world. Now, since we have lived beyond our means as a nation for nearly 40 years, our cumulative current-account deficit — the combined shortfall on our trade in goods, services and income — has reached nearly $8 trillion. That’s borrowed prosperity on an epic scale.

It is also an outcome that Milton Friedman said could never happen when, in 1971, he persuaded President Nixon to unleash on the world paper dollars no longer redeemable in gold or other fixed monetary reserves. Just let the free market set currency exchange rates, he said, and trade deficits will self-correct.

It may be true that governments, because they intervene in foreign exchange markets, have never completely allowed their currencies to float freely. But that does not absolve Friedman’s $8 trillion error. Once relieved of the discipline of defending a fixed value for their currencies, politicians the world over were free to cheapen their money and disregard their neighbors.

In fact, since chronic current-account deficits result from a nation spending more than it earns, stringent domestic belt-tightening is the only cure. When the dollar was tied to fixed exchange rates, politicians were willing to administer the needed castor oil, because the alternative was to make up for the trade shortfall by paying out reserves, and this would cause immediate economic pain — from high interest rates, for example. But now there is no discipline, only global monetary chaos as foreign central banks run their own printing presses at ever faster speeds to sop up the tidal wave of dollars coming from the Federal Reserve.

The second unhappy change in the American economy has been the extraordinary growth of our public debt. In 1970 it was just 40 percent of gross domestic product, or about $425 billion. When it reaches $18 trillion, it will be 40 times greater than in 1970. This debt explosion has resulted not from big spending by the Democrats, but instead the Republican Party’s embrace, about three decades ago, of the insidious doctrine that deficits don’t matter if they result from tax cuts.

In 1981, traditional Republicans supported tax cuts, matched by spending cuts, to offset the way inflation was pushing many taxpayers into higher brackets and to spur investment. The Reagan administration’s hastily prepared fiscal blueprint, however, was no match for the primordial forces — the welfare state and the warfare state — that drive the federal spending machine.

Soon, the neocons were pushing the military budget skyward. And the Republicans on Capitol Hill who were supposed to cut spending exempted from the knife most of the domestic budget — entitlements, farm subsidies, education, water projects. But in the end it was a new cadre of ideological tax-cutters who killed the Republicans’ fiscal religion.

Through the 1984 election, the old guard earnestly tried to control the deficit, rolling back about 40 percent of the original Reagan tax cuts. But when, in the following years, the Federal Reserve chairman, Paul Volcker, finally crushed inflation, enabling a solid economic rebound, the new tax-cutters not only claimed victory for their supply-side strategy but hooked Republicans for good on the delusion that the economy will outgrow the deficit if plied with enough tax cuts.

By fiscal year 2009, the tax-cutters had reduced federal revenues to 15 percent of gross domestic product, lower than they had been since the 1940s. Then, after rarely vetoing a budget bill and engaging in two unfinanced foreign military adventures, George W. Bush surrendered on domestic spending cuts, too — signing into law $420 billion in non-defense appropriations, a 65 percent gain from the $260 billion he had inherited eight years earlier. Republicans thus joined the Democrats in a shameless embrace of a free-lunch fiscal policy.

The third ominous change in the American economy has been the vast, unproductive expansion of our financial sector. Here, Republicans have been oblivious to the grave danger of flooding financial markets with freely printed money and, at the same time, removing traditional restrictions on leverage and speculation. As a result, the combined assets of conventional banks and the so-called shadow banking system (including investment banks and finance companies) grew from a mere $500 billion in 1970 to $30 trillion by September 2008.

But the trillion-dollar conglomerates that inhabit this new financial world are not free enterprises. They are rather wards of the state, extracting billions from the economy with a lot of pointless speculation in stocks, bonds, commodities and derivatives. They could never have survived, much less thrived, if their deposits had not been government-guaranteed and if they hadn’t been able to obtain virtually free money from the Fed’s discount window to cover their bad bets.

The fourth destructive change has been the hollowing out of the larger American economy. Having lived beyond our means for decades by borrowing heavily from abroad, we have steadily sent jobs and production offshore. In the past decade, the number of high-value jobs in goods production and in service categories like trade, transportation, information technology and the professions has shrunk by 12 percent, to 68 million from 77 million. The only reason we have not experienced a severe reduction in nonfarm payrolls since 2000 is that there has been a gain in low-paying, often part-time positions in places like bars, hotels and nursing homes.

It is not surprising, then, that during the last bubble (from 2002 to 2006) the top 1 percent of Americans — paid mainly from the Wall Street casino — received two-thirds of the gain in national income, while the bottom 90 percent — mainly dependent on Main Street’s shrinking economy — got only 12 percent. This growing wealth gap is not the market’s fault. It’s the decaying fruit of bad economic policy.

The day of national reckoning has arrived. We will not have a conventional business recovery now, but rather a long hangover of debt liquidation and downsizing — as suggested by last week’s news that the national economy grew at an anemic annual rate of 2.4 percent in the second quarter. Under these circumstances, it’s a pity that the modern Republican Party offers the American people an irrelevant platform of recycled Keynesianism when the old approach — balanced budgets, sound money and financial discipline — is needed more than ever.]]> Dogwood Topanga Talk Fri, 10 Sep 2010 08:28:51 -0700 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4713,4724#msg-4724 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4713,4724#msg-4724 -------------------------------------------------------
> manchild- those 50 members of a goofy florida
> church don't deserve a fraction of the attention
> you've given them.
> but i can see how if you're desperate to lay blame
> this would be your best opportunity.
> keep on, keepin' on, manchild.

DW: sorry to break it to you, seanie, but the entire newswatching world seems to disagree with your little balls of wisdom and appears to find the attention-glutton in Florida of great interest.]]> Dogwood Topanga Talk Fri, 10 Sep 2010 08:10:26 -0700 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4714,4723#msg-4723 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4714,4723#msg-4723 -------------------------------------------------------
> Dogwood Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Edenite Wrote:
> >
> --------------------------------------------------
>
> > -----
> > > E:So don't go.
> >
> > DW: I kinda get the feeling he's not, didn't
> you?
>
> E:Trustfund tommie...
> ...gets his panties in a wad over a few lousy
> burned books.

DW: Is that how you think others should view the Holy Bible?...lousy books? It's interesting because you don't appear to be capable of doing your own thinking and so you're a wonderful exhibit of all the right-wing hysteria out there.]]> Dogwood Topanga Talk Fri, 10 Sep 2010 08:02:14 -0700 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4714,4722#msg-4722 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4714,4722#msg-4722 my brother died that day
do not politicize his death and all the people who died that day
you idiot
the attack was because we had military bases in Saudi Arabia
and we support Israel
get you facts straight
you racist pig]]> sparkey Topanga Talk Thu, 09 Sep 2010 21:31:22 -0700 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4714,4721#msg-4721 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4714,4721#msg-4721 sean Topanga Talk Thu, 09 Sep 2010 21:14:08 -0700 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4713,4720#msg-4720 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4713,4720#msg-4720 but i can see how if you're desperate to lay blame this would be your best opportunity.
keep on, keepin' on, manchild.]]> sean Topanga Talk Thu, 09 Sep 2010 21:09:39 -0700 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4714,4719#msg-4719 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4714,4719#msg-4719 -------------------------------------------------------
> Edenite Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > E:So don't go.
>
> DW: I kinda get the feeling he's not, didn't you?

E:Trustfund tommie doesn't belong there because his sentiments are in solidarity with his allies the Islamic fascists and their Religion of the Perpetually Offended. Tommie thinks America is the "Great Satan" just like they do. That's why he's all gung ho for the victory mosque at Ground Zero where thousands of Americans were incinerated and pulverized in the name of allah...

...but gets his panties in a wad over a few lousy burned books.]]> Edenite Topanga Talk Thu, 09 Sep 2010 13:44:15 -0700 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4714,4718#msg-4718 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4714,4718#msg-4718 ThomasPaine Topanga Talk Thu, 09 Sep 2010 13:25:36 -0700 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4714,4717#msg-4717 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4714,4717#msg-4717 -------------------------------------------------------
> E:So don't go.

DW: I kinda get the feeling he's not, didn't you?]]> Dogwood Topanga Talk Thu, 09 Sep 2010 10:08:18 -0700 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4714,4716#msg-4716 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4714,4716#msg-4716 Edenite Topanga Talk Thu, 09 Sep 2010 10:05:30 -0700 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4714,4715#msg-4715 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4714,4715#msg-4715
If you really want to honor the victims of slaughter and terrorism, you'll stop with the hateful, inflamatory religious intolerance and and unjustified gross generalizations.]]> ThomasPaine Topanga Talk Thu, 09 Sep 2010 09:08:35 -0700 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4714,4714#msg-4714 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4714,4714#msg-4714 Edenite Topanga Talk Thu, 09 Sep 2010 08:43:55 -0700 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4713,4713#msg-4713 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4713,4713#msg-4713 from Margaret and Helen by Helen Philpot

Margaret did we really expect anything less? Religious intolerance has defined the Republican Party for almost 30 years now. A culture of life. Family values. America’s Christian Heritage. The sanctity of marriage. Gays in the military. Prayer in school. A mosque in Manhattan. For goodness sakes, the current leaders of the Republican Party (Palin, Limbaugh, and Beck) have been screaming about a Muslim family in the White House for months now. It was only a matter of time before someone called for a good ‘ole fashion book burning. Does it really matter if that book is the Quran instead of The Catcher in the Rye?

There is just one thing I haven’t been able to figure out yet. How many more groups of people does the Republican Party have to hate before its members finally call for a new platform? Those signs they carry at their rallies are getting pretty full. The print will have to be pretty small at the next Beck rally to fit God Hates Gays, Jews, Blacks, Muslims, Clinton, the Liberal Media, Obama, Pelosi, France, Activists Judges, Environmentalists, Feminists, Mexicans, and small puppies. Maybe they can just print up a sign that simply says God Hates Everyone Who Isn’t Like Me.

And trust me Margaret. The minute Matthew puts this on that web page blog of ours, a bunch of jack-@#$%& are going to tell us that God hates us too and we shouldn’t generalize all Republicans like that. Well all I have to say is if it quacks like a Duck and sets a Quran on fire then it must be a Republican.

If you vote Republican today, what exactly are you voting for? It’s certainly not smaller government. If you vote Republican today you are telling “Pastor” Terry Jones that fifty religious fanatics are more important than any chance for world peace. You are telling Sarah Palin that when it comes to the presidency - pretty is more important than smart. You are telling Glenn Beck that honesty isn’t really necessary if you have your own cable news show on Fox. You are telling Michele Bachmann that hearing voices in your head isn’t cause for alarm. Hell, if you vote Republican today you might as well just shove a few more dollars in Rush Limbaugh’s pockets and a few more pills in his mouth. It’s all very entertaining, I’ll give you that. But considering what they did when we gave them the keys to the car the last time, are you really ready to put them behind the wheel again so soon? I’m just not sure there are that many more countries we can bomb, world religions we can vilify and oil wells we can drill before the rest of the world calls us on our @#$%&.

Here’s a thought. If Pastor Jones is so dead set on burning a book he should just wait until The George Bush Memoirs come out. After all, everyone knows the only thing God loves more than a good book burning is a burning Bush.

If the Democrats can’t muster enough votes to beat this bunch of yahoos then we deserve what we get on November 3rd. Besides, Harold said we could move to Canada and you know how much I love Anne Murray.

Vote Republican and burn a Quran. Same difference. I mean it really.]]> TheThinker Topanga Talk Thu, 09 Sep 2010 07:55:48 -0700 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4712,4712#msg-4712 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4712,4712#msg-4712 10 Republican Lies About the Bush Tax Cuts

So it's come down to this. On Saturday, David Stockman, the legendary Reagan budget chief who presided over the Gipper's supply-side tax cuts, announced that the "debt explosion has resulted not from big spending by the Democrats, but instead the Republican Party's embrace, about three decades ago, of the insidious doctrine that deficits don't matter if they result from tax cuts." The next day, the former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan, who famously helped sell the 2001 Bush tax cuts to Congress, declared them simply "disastrous."

Sadly, Stockman and Greenspan are just about the only voices in the Republican Party speaking the truth about the fiscal devastation wrought by the expiring Bush tax cuts. After all, the national debt tripled under Ronald Reagan, only to double again during the tenure of George W. Bush. And as it turns out, the Bush tax cut windfall for the wealthy accounted for almost half the budget deficits during his presidency and, if made permanent, would contribute more to the U.S. budget deficit than the Obama stimulus, the TARP program, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and revenue lost to the recession - combined. Of course, you'd never know it listening to the leaders of GOP.

And that's just the beginning. Here, then, are 10 Republican Lies about the Bush tax cuts:

* Lie #1: Democrats Plan Across the Board Tax Hikes on January 1st
* Lie #2: Democrats Want a $3.8 Trillion Tax Increase
* Lie #3: Tax Cuts Pay for Themselves
* Lie #4: The Bush Tax Cuts Didn't Add to the Deficit
* Lie #5: Expiring High Income Tax Cuts Will Hurt Small Business
* Lie #6: The Estate Tax Devastates Small Businesses and Family Farms
* Lie #7: The Bush Tax Cuts Helped All Americans
* Lie #8. Extending Bush Tax Cuts for the Wealthy is the Best Way to Stimulate the Economy
* Lie #9. Bush Tax Cuts Produced 52 Straight Months of Job Growth
* Lie #10: The Rich Pay Too Much in Taxes Already

Lie #1: Democrats Plan Across the Board Tax Hikes on January 1st

On July 19, Michigan Republican Dave Camp sent out an email blast warning of the "Democrats' ticking tax time bomb" claiming "Americans to pay higher taxes starting January 1, 2011." On July 20, Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) declared, "Should Democrats get their way, every income tax bracket will increase on Jan. 1, 2011. Every single one."

It's no wonder Politifact deemed the charge "False." As the fact checking site put it:

"For many months, Democratic officials have consistently said that they intend to let only the tax cuts for the wealthiest individuals lapse. The cutoff they usually suggest is $200,000 for individuals and $250,000 for married couples filing jointly. President Obama campaigned on just such a plan."

Which is exactly right. During the 2008 campaign, candidate Obama pledged to roll back the Bush tax cuts for couples earning over $250,000 a year while delivering tax relief for 95% of working households. President Obama has already delivered on the second promise. (Ironically, and despite the Tea Party's rage, total federal, state and local taxes hit their lowest level since 1950.) Last week, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner confirmed Obama's intent to make good the first:

"We believe it is appropriate to let those tax cuts that go to the most fortunate expire."

The shrill voices of the GOP aren't merely lying on this point. The expiring Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, were after all, passed by a Republican Congress and signed by a Republican President. As Ezra Klein recently put it, "Republicans now blaming Democrats for Bush tax cuts."

Lie #2: Democrats Want a $3.8 Trillion Tax Increase

If nothing else, Republicans like Sarah Palin deserve a hand for having the chutzpah to pretend Democrats want a $3.8 trillion tax increase over the next decade.

On Sunday, Palin literally wrote that talking point on her hand in an appearance with Chris Wallace of Fox News:

"My palm isn't large enough to have written all my notes down on what this tax increase, what it will result in.... Democrats are poised to cause the largest tax increase in U.S. history, it's a tax increase of $3.8 trillion in the next ten years and it will have an effect on every single American who pays an income tax."

Of course, this second Republican fraud is merely the flip-side of the first. Restoring upper bracket tax rates to their Clinton-era levels will impact only a sliver of American taxpayers. As ThinkProgress noted:

For one thing, according to the Pew Economic Policy Group, an extension of all of the Bush tax cuts will cost $3.1 trillion over ten years, once the costs of servicing the debt are factored in. But no one has proposed allowing them all expire, and it's incredibly disingenuous of Republicans to claim otherwise, especially since it was a budget gimmick by former President George W. Bush to include the ten-year sunset at all.

Extending just the cuts for the wealthiest two percent of Americans will cost $830 billion over ten years.

Lie #3: Tax Cuts Pay for Themselves

But even that cost is one Republicans refuse to pay. As Jon Kyl, the second-ranking Senate Republican, told Chris Wallace three weeks ago:

"[Y]ou should never raise taxes in order to cut taxes," Jon Kyl said on Fox News Sunday. "Surely Congress has the authority, and it would be right to -- if we decide we want to cut taxes to spur the economy, not to have to raise taxes in order to offset those costs. You do need to offset the cost of increased spending, and that's what Republicans object to. But you should never have to offset cost of a deliberate decision to reduce tax rates on Americans."

Three days later, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) explained how his party miraculously turns bulls**t into gold:

"There's no evidence whatsoever that the Bush tax cuts actually diminished revenue. They increased revenue because of the vibrancy of these tax cuts in the economy. So I think what Senator Kyl was expressing was the view of virtually every Republican on that subject."

It's no wonder, as Ezra Klein joked, that If a Democrat said something like that, "He'd be laughed out of the room."

But how about the Congressional Budget Office's estimations? "The new CBO data show that changes in law enacted since January 2001 increased the deficit by $539 billion in 2005. In the absence of such legislation, the nation would have a surplus this year. Tax cuts account for almost half -- 48 percent -- of this $539 billion in increased costs." How about the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget? Their budget calculator shows that the tax cuts will cost $3.28 trillion between 2011 and 2018. How about George W. Bush's CEA chair, Greg Mankiw, who used the term "charlatans and cranks" for people who believed that "broad-based income tax cuts would have such large supply-side effects that the tax cuts would raise tax revenue." He continued: "I did not find such a claim credible, based on the available evidence. I never have, and I still don't."

Lie #4: The Bush Tax Cuts Didn't Add to the Deficit

Of course, McConnell and Kyl were simply joining Judd Gregg, Tom Coburn, Marco Rubio, Carly Fiorina, Kay Bailey Hutchison and the rest of the new Republican alchemists selling Arthur Laffer's supply-side snake oil. Even John McCain, who voted against the 2001 Bush tax cuts, got the religion just in time for the 2008 Republican primaries, arguing "Tax cuts, starting with Kennedy, as we all know, increase revenues."

But it was House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) who offered the purest expression of that fantasy in defending the Bush tax cuts:

"It's not the marginal tax rates ... that's not what led to the budget deficit. The revenue problem we have today is a result of what happened in the economic collapse some 18 months ago."

"We've seen over the last 30 years that lower marginal tax rates have led to a growing economy, more employment and more people paying taxes."

As it turned out, not so much.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities demolished the mythology promoted by President Bush ("You cut taxes and the tax revenues increase") and the usual suspects on the right. CBPP found that Bush tax cuts accounted for almost half of the mushrooming deficits during his tenure:

And as another recent CBPP analysis revealed, over the next 10 years, the Bush tax cuts if made permanent will contribute more to the U.S. budget deficit than the Obama stimulus, the TARP program, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and revenue lost to the recession put together.

The Bush tax cuts didn't come anywhere close to paying for themselves. And making them permanent is the very worst thing the so-called deficit hawks could do to reduce the U.S. debt.

Lie #5: Expiring High Income Tax Cuts Will Hurt Small Business

As Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) complained, allowing the Bush cuts to lapse for the wealthiest Americans would amount to "a job-killing tax hike on small business during tough economic times." Mike Pence echoed that argument, fretting "the idea that you would raise taxes on small businesses owners and job creators in the middle of this recession doesn't make any sense."

As it turns out, very few small business owners would be impacted.

John McCain introduced this fraud along with Joe the Plumber during the 2008 campaign. McCain proclaimed Obama's plan to restore Clinton-era tax rates for taxpayers making over $250,000 meant "the small businesses that we're talking about would receive an increase in their taxes right now." In February 2009, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) regurgitated the long-debunked talking point:

"I don't think raising taxes is a great idea, and when our good friends on the other side of the aisle say raising the taxes on the wealthy, what they are really talking about is small business."

Of course, they're not talking about small business. As CNN concluded in October 2008, "fewer than 2% of small business owners would pay more under Obama's plan." But in case there was any doubt about the Republicans' deception on the point, the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center quickly put it to rest:

Out of 34.7 million filers with business income on Schedules C, E or F, 479,000 filers fall into the top two brackets, according to an analysis of projected 2009 filings by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.

The other 34.3 million - or 98.6% - would be unaffected by Obama's proposed rate hike.

Lie #6: The Estate Tax Devastates Small Businesses and Family Farms

In June, Florida Republican Senator George Lemieux summed up the impact of his party's successful effort to temporarily kill the estate tax in 2010. "The joke is don't go hunting with your children because right now there's no estate tax in this country this year." But the billions lost to the U.S. Treasury so that the heirs of billionaires could reap a staggering one-year windfall is no laughing matter.

The Republican scam over the so-called "death tax" is as bogus now as it was when President Bush first perpetrated it ten years ago. The "alternative" House GOP budget, fittingly unveiled by Rep. Paul Ryan on April Fool's Day 2009, would eliminate the estate tax altogether. While Nevada Senator John Ensign griped, "It destroys a lot of small businesses and a lot of family farms and ranches in America," House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) groused:

"People who aren't wealthy, who may have built up value in land over generations and many family farms find themselves in situations where they've got to sell the farm in order the pay the taxes."

Sadly for conservative myth-makers, that claim, too, is completely false.

As the Washington Post explained, under President Obama's proposal (exempting couples with estates under $7 million with a 45 percent rate for amounts beyond that) 99.76% of estates would pay no taxes whatsoever. While CBPP estimated that only 1 in 500 estates is impacted by the current law, in 2009 the Tax Policy Center quantified just how few family farms or small businesses are actually impacted by the estate tax proposals under consideration:

We estimate that under the Obama proposal, 100 family farms and businesses would owe tax. (We define such estates as those where farm or business assets are valued at under $5 million and comprise the majority of estate assets.) The Lincoln-Kyl proposal would cut the number to 40. Even under current law, fewer than 2,700 family farms and businesses would owe tax.

And that wasn't good enough for Arizona's Jon Kyl, the second-ranking Republican in the Senate. Thanks to his obstructionism in December, the estate tax temporarily expired for one year as of January 1, 2010. (Barring new legislation in Congress, in 2011 the rate will jump back up to its pre-2001 Bush tax cut level of 55%, starting at $2 million per couple.) That could cost the U.S. Treasury billions this year. In the mean time, the message from the GOP to the wealthiest Americans is "die here, die now, pay less."

Lie #7: The Bush Tax Cuts Helped All Americans

In February 2004, President Bush proclaimed, "we cut taxes, which basically meant people had more money in their pocket." Of course, some people are more equal than others.

As the Center for American Progress noted at the time, "for the majority of Americans, the tax cuts meant very little," adding, "By next year, for instance, 88% of all Americans will receive $100 or less from the Administration's latest tax cuts."

But that's just the beginning of the story. As the CAP also reported, the Bush tax cuts delivered a third of their total benefits to the wealthiest 1% of Americans. And to be sure, their @#$%& was staggering. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities detailed that by 2007, millionaires on average pocketed $120,000 from the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003. Those in the top 1% stashed an extra $45,000 a year. As a result, millionaires saw their after-tax incomes rise by 7.6%, while the gains for the middle quintile and bottom 20% of Americans were a paltry 2.3% and 0.4%, respectively.

And as the New York Times uncovered in 2006, the 2003 Bush dividend and capital gains tax cuts offered almost nothing to taxpayers earning below $100,000 a year. Instead, those windfalls reduced taxes "on incomes of more than $10 million by an average of about $500,000." As the Times revealed in a jaw-dropping chart:

"The top 2 percent of taxpayers, those making more than $200,000, received more than 70% of the increased tax savings from those cuts in investment income."

So it should come as no surprise, as Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders lamented last week, that under President Bush the 400 richest taxpayers saw their tax rates halved - and their incomes double.

Lie #8. Extending Bush Tax Cuts for the Wealthy is the Best Way to Stimulate the Economy

In 1993, Senator Phil Gramm (yes, that Phil Gramm) said of President Clinton's proposal to raise top-bracket tax rates to help erase the Reagan-Bush deficits, "I believe hundreds of thousands of people are going to lose their jobs...I believe Bill Clinton will be one of those people." He was wrong on both counts.

Now, implicit in the Republican propaganda for making the Bush tax cuts permanent at a time of record income inequality is that more windfalls for the wealthy is the best way to stimulate the economy. As Florida GOP Senate hopeful Marco Rubio defended more tax cuts for the rich, "Jobs in America are created by people that have money or access to money."

Again, the numbers tell a different story.

Analyses from the Congressional Budget Office and former McCain economic adviser Mark Zandi concluded that upper class tax breaks provide just about the lowest return on investment (32 cents on the dollar) of any federal stimulus activity. As the Washington Post summed it up:

Why? As the CBO notes, most Bush tax cut dollars go to higher-income households, and these top earners don't spend as much of their income as lower earners. In fact, of 11 potential stimulus policies the CBO recently examined, an extension of all of the Bush tax cuts ties for lowest bang for the buck. (The CBO did not examine the high-income tax cuts separately, but the logic it used suggests that extending those cuts alone would have even less value.) The government could more effectively stimulate the economy by letting the high-income tax cuts expire and using the money for aid to the states, extensions of unemployment insurance benefits and tax credits favoring job creation. Dollar for dollar, each of these measures would have about three times the impact on GDP as continuing the Bush tax cuts.

It is true, as the New York Times and AP each reported over the last several days, that the recent decline in consumer spending among the richest 5% of Americans is contributing to the slowdown of the economic recovery. But giving them more money isn't the answer.

Lie #9. Bush Tax Cuts Produced 52 Straight Months of Job Growth

One month after the start of the recession which bears his name, President Bush in January 2008 proclaimed "America has added jobs for a record 52 straight months." Now, two and a half years later, former RNC chief Ed Gillespie is still bragging:

"The fact is, under the Bush tax cuts, we did have 52 months of-in uninterrupted job creation, longest in the history of the country."

While it is technically true the U.S. experienced moderate job growth between 2003 and 2007, the claim is also irrelevant.

The verdict on President Bush's reign of ruin was pronounced even before Barack Obama took the oath of office. January 9, 2009, the Republican-friendly Wall Street Journal summed it up with an article titled simply, "Bush on Jobs: the Worst Track Record on Record." The Journal noted that "The Bush administration created about three million jobs (net) over its eight years, a fraction of the 23 million jobs created under President Bill Clinton's administration." Just days after the Washington Post documented that George W. Bush presided over the worst eight-year economic performance in the modern American presidency, the New York Times on January 24 featured an analysis ("Economic Setbacks That Define the Bush Years") comparing presidential performance going back to Eisenhower. As the Times showed, George W. Bush, the first MBA president, was a historic failure when it came to expanding GDP, producing jobs and fueling stock market growth.

But it was the release of a Census Bureau report last September ("Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2008") which in 67 pages laid bare the economic devastation and human toll during the Bush presidency. As The Atlantic ("Closing The Book On The Bush Legacy") rightly noted, "It's not a record many Republicans are likely to point to with pride":

On every major measurement, the Census Bureau report shows that the country lost ground during Bush's two terms. While Bush was in office, the median household income declined, poverty increased, childhood poverty increased even more, and the number of Americans without health insurance spiked. By contrast, the country's condition improved on each of those measures during Bill Clinton's two terms, often substantially.

Lie #10: The Rich Pay Too Much in Taxes Already

In February 2009, Minnesota Republican Congresswoman Michele Bachmann declared, "We're running out of rich people in this country." Just in time for tax day two months later, Bush flunkie Ari Fleischer comically expanded on that Republican meta myth.

Unsurprisingly, Fleischer took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to make his plea on behalf of the nation's bedraggled wealthy. The top 10% of taxpayers, Fleischer argued, are "supporting virtually everyone and everything" and "their burden keeps getting heavier." As he put it:

"It's also what's called redistribution of income, and it is getting out of hand."

Oh, it's gotten out of hand all right. Just not, as the data make abundantly clear, in the direction Fleischer claims.

As for the richest 2% of Americans, they will pay more in income taxes if President Obama gets his way. But then again, the last time the top income tax rate was 39%, as it was under Bill Clinton, the United States enjoyed a booming economy, rising incomes, low unemployment and expanding budget surpluses. A booming economy, that is, for everyone.

UPDATE: Almost on cue, Eric Cantor on admitted the Bush tax cuts "dig the hole deeper" on the deficit, but supports making them permanent nevertheless. Meanwhile, Karl Rove doubled-down on the fraud that they led to "the largest amount of revenue being received by the government."

http://www.perrspectives.com/blog/archives/001932.htm]]> TheThinker Topanga Talk Thu, 09 Sep 2010 07:17:00 -0700 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4706,4711#msg-4711 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4706,4711#msg-4711 wars and "homeland security": 35%
subtotal: 83%

entitlement programs: 10%
domestic programs: 7%

Much much more: http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=692]]> TheThinker Topanga Talk Thu, 09 Sep 2010 06:53:37 -0700 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4706,4710#msg-4710 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4706,4710#msg-4710
"numag (35 minutes ago) To show you just how insane some Obama supporters are, the article clearly states that the total public debt when Obama took office was 6.3 trillion dollars. But BillAdkins totally ignores that fact and boldly claims that GW Bush alone contributed 6.5 trillion dollars to the public debt. Sorry Bill, even though the mushrooms created that fantasy in your mind, it doesn't add up, now does it? Here's my prescription for you. Lay off the mushrooms, go to rehab, and then come back after November elections are over."

Drug accusations with no evidence and simplistic misunderstanding of math and economics, you'd think "numeg" is the Ediot using another name. I'll help you 'both' out. If you have $200 in the bank and you spend $6,500 before skipping town, you're in the hole $6,300, yet you've still spent $6,500. Change the comma to a decimal and add the word trillion. Get it now, Ediot? Why is it that Bush always gets a pass from you? Could it be that you're a mindless ideologue tool?]]> ThomasPaine Topanga Talk Wed, 08 Sep 2010 21:58:44 -0700 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4708,4709#msg-4709 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4708,4709#msg-4709
Carter: 42%
reagan 189%
bush 1: 55.6%
Clinton: 36%
bush 2: 89%
Obama: 23%

Of course Obama isn't done yet and the number could either rise or fall, so these numbers are not significant of anything other than why the heck weren't people like you having fits when your last hero increased the national debt 89%. Too busy being hypnotized by faux news.

http://www.skymachines.com/US-National-Debt-Per-Capita-Percent-of-GDP-and-by-Presidental-Term.htm]]> TheThinker Topanga Talk Wed, 08 Sep 2010 21:58:40 -0700 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4708,4708#msg-4708 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4708,4708#msg-4708
The Most Fiscally Irresponsible Government in U.S. History

Current federal budget trends are capable of destroying this country

By Mortimer B. Zuckerman

August 26, 2010


There is an instinctive conclusion among the American public that President Obama's stimulus package has failed to create a sustained recovery. Unemployment has increased, not declined; consumers have retrenched; housing starts have crashed along with mortgage applications; and there is a fear that a double-dip recession may very well be in the pipeline. The public perception, reflected in Pew Research/National Journal polls, is that the measures to combat the Great Recession have mostly helped large banks and financial institutions, and that's a view common to Republicans (75 percent) and Democrats (73 percent). Only one third of either political leaning thinks government policies have done a great deal or a fair amount for the poor.

There is another instinctive conclusion among the American people. It is that the national deficit, and the debts we have accumulated, are of critical political importance. On the national debt, the money the government has spent without the tax revenues to pay for it has produced mind-numbing numbers so large as to be disconnected from reality. Zeros from here to infinity. The sums are hard to describe; it is hard to describe an elephant, but you know one when you see one. The public knows that, shuffle the numbers as you may, the level of debt is unsustainable.

Who could be surprised since millions of voters have discovered that for themselves? As one realizes the morning after the night before, there is an unavoidable penalty for excess. It is unnerving to wake up and learn that you have a mortgage on your home that exceeds the value of the property. Or, and too often both, you have a credit card line that you cannot repay and the issuer has you on the rack for ever bigger compound interest on the debt. The lesson has been well and truly learned that debt catches up with you. Millions understand that they are just going to have to find a way to live within their means—and then still eke out some savings to pay down debt. And there are well over 14 million Americans without a paying job, so the level of discontent is very high. Just how are they going to regain control of their lives?

In a usnews.com post on July 26, Jodie Allen of the Pew Research Center reported that in recent weeks more academic and market economists have been urging the government to defer budget cuts and tax increases and instead provide additional stimulus to a still-fragile economy, some by continuing the Bush tax cuts. But among the public there has been a suggestive shift of opinion the other way, reflecting worries about debt. "Deficit and government spending" has jumped from 10th or 11th place as a priority for the federal government to one that is second only to job creation and economic growth. The drift of opinion is manifest in other recent polls. For instance, a CBS poll conducted July 9-12 @#$%& the most important problem facing the country as the economy and jobs (38 percent), with concern about the budget deficit and national debt way down at 5 percent. Yet CNN (July 16-21) has 47 percent preoccupied first with the economy, and 13 percent with the federal deficit. In a recent Time magazine poll, two thirds of the respondents say they oppose a second government stimulus program and more than half say the country would have been better off without the first one.

People see the stimulus, fashioned and passed by Congress in such a hurry, as a metaphor for wasted money. They are highly critical about the lack of discipline among our political leaders. The question that naturally arises is how to forestall a long-term economic decline.

The Fed has lowered rates dramatically to keep the economy ticking and maybe continue the painfully slow recovery, but at the receiving end there is no feeling of relief at all. People know that the stimulus is about to stop stimulating. They know that money is petering out. They know that states are preparing to cut $200 billion to balance their budgets. They realize that the Great Recession has wiped out huge amounts of wealth and that, unlike other recessions, this will not be followed by the kind of economic boom when people who had sat on their money during the lean years unleash pent-up demand for all sorts of goods and services.

There is no sign of that happening this time around. Households and businesses have kept their hands in their pockets. And so while many think that the only way to revive the economy and to inject more money into it is through governmental spending, the general feeling is that we can't afford that right now. The government will be writing more IOUs on top of those we already can't afford. Why plan a second stimulus if the first stimulus couldn't prevent high unemployment?

Of course, the question remains whether public sentiment coincides with sound economics. The challenge we face as a country is how to get growing vigorously again while achieving fiscal sustainability. We are learning from the Europeans what happens when the risks that came with excessive debt become realities. There seems to be an emerging consensus that if there is to be any additional stimulus, it must be explicitly linked to credible fiscal restraint down the road. This would include a commitment to binding legislation that would change the algebra so that both programs and budget procedures get us on a benign trajectory.

There are two warning signs of a budget crisis: rising debt and the loss of confidence that the government will deal with it. This administration is on the verge of fulfilling both conditions. In fairness, there is no majority coalition in Congress for deficit reduction today. It is also true that the growth of public debt has been driven by a dramatic diminution of tax receipts due to the recession, the extra spending to avoid sinking into a self-perpetuating depression, and all those billions we invested to save the financial sectors from their sins. Voters see the politicians most vociferous about reining in the federal budget as those who are out of power and want to use it against the majority party. Too many politicians claim they are all for balanced budgets—but only by reducing the other party's priorities. Republicans want to reduce social spending. Democrats want to reduce military spending. It is Washington as usual.

Amid the clamor and counterpromises, the historic record is worth keeping in mind. We paid for World War II through growth. The national debt, as a percentage of gross domestic product, fell sharply through the postwar presidencies of Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson (despite the Vietnam War) and continued edging down through most of Nixon's, rising a little with Ford's. We marked time in the stagflation of the Carter years, and then the debt percentage increased dramatically during the Reagan-Bush presidencies. It shot up again to the present dangerous levels under George W. Bush and Obama. The only good years were Clinton's.

An old saying that can apply to the deficit is called the "rule of holes" and goes as follows: "When you're in one, stop digging." But Washington politics remains the barrier. Government programs seem to live on forever. The budget becomes a perpetual-motion machine for higher spending. New programs for new needs get piled on top of old programs for old needs.

Then there are the retirees. Their numbers and their health costs will keep on rising. There were 35 million Americans over 65 in 2000 and the number of retirees is expected to double by 2030. The impending retirement of millions of baby boomers, with their claims on federal retirement programs, comes at a time when both parties seem to be willing to worsen tomorrow's problems to win more of today's votes. The result is that the federal budget is drifting into a future of huge deficits or unprecedented tax increases, or both.

Federal spending is moving toward a higher plateau—from roughly 18 percent of the GDP to almost 25 percent by 2030. We don't know how we are going to pay for this. We don't know how the economy would fare with much higher taxes. We have seen the clouds gathering for years but haven't invested in an umbrella by adjusting federal retirement programs or taking other steps to reduce entitlements. One response would have been to begin gradually phasing in eligibility ages and tying benefits more to income. No doubt we have to think about raising the eligibility age for Social Security and Medicare, perhaps by one month for each two-month increase in average life expectancy. We will have to think of ways to reduce the cost-of-living increases on Social Security benefits for wealthy seniors by slowly increasing their Medicare premiums and leaving everybody else's untouched. We may have to allow the Bush tax cuts to expire, certainly for households earning more than $250,000 (and more for the super-rich) given the concentration of wealth in the top 1 percent of the population. It is entirely appropriate that they begin to make a greater contribution to our longer-term fiscal health.

The United States simply seems to lack a system that can fund the government that the people say they want. We are good at crises, but we do not seem to be good at tackling chronic problems. If we wait until a crisis happens, it will be too late. It is simply not possible to close the gap entirely with the tax increases on the rich that Democratic liberals so desperately believe in. Nor can we close the gap with spending cuts, as the Republicans would like. The liberals will have to concede that benefits and spending ought to be reduced. Conservatives will have to concede the need for higher taxes.

Hope may lie in a new bipartisan panel headed by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, two unique, wise, and centrist political leaders whose characters raise some degree of confidence that they might be able to come forth with productive programs. As former President Clinton said of them, they "are free enough to disregard the polls but smart enough to take them into account."

But let's not forget, current budgetary trends are capable of destroying the country. As Bowles pointed out, according to a Washington Post report, we can't just grow our way out of this. We can't just tax our way out of this. We have to do what governors do—cut spending or increase revenues in some combination that will begin to pull us back from the cliff.

Obama must know that if he doesn't address this, he will be the president who drove us toward a debt crisis. And so too must Congress, for both have now participated in the most fiscally irresponsible government in American history.]]> Edenite Topanga Talk Wed, 08 Sep 2010 21:57:12 -0700 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4706,4707#msg-4707 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4706,4707#msg-4707
Carter: 42%
reagan 189%
bush 1: 55.6%
Clinton: 36%
bush 2: 89%
Obama: 23%

Of course Obama isn't done yet and the number could either rise or fall, so these numbers are not significant of anything other than why the heck weren't people like you having fits when your last hero increased the national debt 89%. Too busy being hypnotized by faux news.

http://www.skymachines.com/US-National-Debt-Per-Capita-Percent-of-GDP-and-by-Presidental-Term.htm]]> TheThinker Topanga Talk Wed, 08 Sep 2010 20:06:32 -0700 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4706,4706#msg-4706 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4706,4706#msg-4706
Obama Added More to National Debt in First 19 Months Than All Presidents from Washington Through Reagan Combined, Says Gov’t Data

Wednesday, September 08, 2010

By Terence P. Jeffrey, Editor-in-Chief


In the first 19 months of the Obama administration, the federal debt held by the public increased by $2.5260 trillion, which is more than the cumulative total of the national debt held by the public that was amassed by all U.S. presidents from George Washington through Ronald Reagan.

The U.S. Treasury Department divides the federal debt into two categories. One is “debt held by the public,” which includes U.S. government securities owned by individuals, corporations, state or local governments, foreign governments and other entities outside the federal government itself. The other is “intragovernmental” debt, which includes I.O.U.s the federal government gives to itself when, for example, the Treasury borrows money out of the Social Security “trust fund” to pay for expenses other than Social Security.

At the end of fiscal year 1989, which ended eight months after President Reagan left office, the total federal debt held by the public was $2.1907 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That means all U.S. presidents from George Washington through Ronald Reagan had accumulated only that much publicly held debt on behalf of American taxpayers. That is $335.3 billion less than the $2.5260 trillion that was added to the federal debt held by the public just between Jan. 20, 2009, when President Obama was inaugurated, and Aug. 20, 2010, the 19-month anniversary of Obama's inauguration.

By contrast, President Reagan was sworn into office on Jan. 20, 1981 and left office eight years later on Jan. 20, 1989. At the end of fiscal 1980, four months before Reagan was inaugurated, the federal debt held by the public was $711.9 billion, according to CBO. At the end of fiscal 1989, eight months after Reagan left office, the federal debt held by the public was $2.1907 trillion. That means that in the nine-fiscal-year period of 1980-89--which included all of Reagan’s eight years in office--the federal debt held by the public increased $1.4788 trillion. That is in excess of a trillion dollars less than the $2.5260 increase in the debt held by the public during Obama’s first 19 months.

When President Barack Obama took the oath of office on Jan. 20, 2009, the total federal debt held by the public stood at 6.3073 trillion, according to the Bureau of the Public Debt, a division of the U.S. Treasury Department. As of Aug. 20, 2010, after the first nineteen months of President Obama’s 48-month term, the total federal debt held by the public had grown to a total of $8.8333 trillion, an increase of $2.5260 trillion.

In just the last four months (May through August), according to the CBO, the Obama administration has run cumulative deficits of $464 billion, more than the $458 billion deficit the Bush administration ran through the entirety of fiscal 2008.

The CBO predicted this week that the annual budget deficit for fiscal 2010, which ends on the last day of this month, will exceed $1.3 trillion.

The first two fiscal years in which Obama has served will see the two biggest federal deficits as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product since the end of World War II.

“CBO currently estimates that the deficit for 2010 will be about $70 billion below last year’s total but will still exceed $1.3 trillion,” said the CBO’s monthly budget review for September, which was released yesterday. “Relative to the size of the economy, this year’s deficit is expected to be the second-largest shortfall in the past 65 years: At 9.1 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), that deficit will be exceeded only by last year’s deficit of 9.9 percent of GDP.”




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numag (35 minutes ago) To show you just how insane some Obama supporters are, the article clearly states that the total public debt when Obama took office was 6.3 trillion dollars. But BillAdkins totally ignores that fact and boldly claims that GW Bush alone contributed 6.5 trillion dollars to the public debt. Sorry Bill, even though the mushrooms created that fantasy in your mind, it doesn't add up, now does it? Here's my prescription for you. Lay off the mushrooms, go to rehab, and then come back after November elections are over.
dennisl59 (46 minutes ago) I don't care how you slice it...we all are owned, lock, stock and barrel, by the Federal Government. And it's been downhill since July 20th, 1969.
BillAdkins (48 minutes ago) numag, I challenge you to prove my numbers wrong. Here, I'll start you out with the link to Bush's FY 2009 budget deficit. C'mon. I'm betting all I'll hear from you are crickets. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/07/AR2009010701156.html
BillAdkins (50 minutes ago) Yes, Bush's average budget deficit for every year in office was $631 billion -- that was truly nonsense.
numag (51 minutes ago) BillAdkins, LOL, you are a funny one. Just make things up as you go along. Those must be some powerful mushrooms.
signsoftimes (51 minutes ago) If President Bush's term had run a little longer, he would have done the same thing Obama has done. Bush started the bailout procedure and Obama felt it necessary to continue the scheme. Bush and the Fed. Reserve were very instrumental in building up the housing bubble and allowed the banks to run their ponzi scheme. Bush was a liberal in disguise. There's not much difference between the two parties. Bush didn't do anything to stop immigration. He talked a lot about abortions but didn't do anything about it.
roblrich (55 minutes ago) I didn't realize Obama had 2-3 supporters left. But he does and we found them hiding here posting nonsense.
BillAdkins (1 hour ago) Oh, and do not forget -- the failed policies of the Republicans in those years of our national nightmare, the Bush Administration, delivered in 2009 through today the lowest tax revenue since the first Great Depression. I say "first" because I think those same happy people who brought you that Great Depression have managed to deliver the Great Depression II. Heckuva job.
BillAdkins (1 hour ago) Chicken feed in comparison to George W. Bush who racked up more debt than all US presidents combined, including Obama. George W. Bush added almost $6.5 trillion to the national debt 2001 - through FY 2009. ALL US PRESIDENTS COMBINED!! Carter left us about $800 billion in the hole; Reagan/Bush ended in 1993 with $4.2 trillion; Clinton ended with $5.7 trillion -- but George W? George W. left us on 1/20/2009 with a $10.8 trillion national debt and a $1.2 trillion FY 2009 budget deficit already accrued as of 1/8/2009 per the CBO. Do the math, Terence, and let's see this headline. GEORGE W. BUSH RAN UP MORE NATIONAL DEBT THAN ALL US PRESIDENTS COMBINED!!
intrigued (1 hour ago) @mauibucky. Sure Bush's $4.1 trillion is much larger than Obama's "measly" $2.5 trillion. Oh wait, except when you take a moment to realize that Bush took 8 years to run it up that much, while Obama has managed it in 19 months. I wonder how high it will go with $1.3 trillion dollar deficits every year. Brother, you have to read the whole article and not just the parts you like.

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Local produce available through Community Supported Agriculture programs
By A.K. Whitney

Editor's note: This is the first of a four-part series on local Community Supported Agriculture programs, which provide consumers with locally grown produce. Part one explains the programs; the remaining segments will show how the allotted produce was used in the preparation of homemade dishes.

"I feel like a trick-or-treater," says the young man holding a large canvas bag, as a woman rummages in a large cardboard box - one of many - set on a long table in front of him.

But the treat she pulls out and puts in his bag isn't candy - it's two ears of corn.

And it's not Halloween, it's a sunny late-summer afternoon in an alley off of Main Street in Santa Monica.

The young man, as well as others in line behind him, also carrying reusable bags, are picking up their week's share of fruits and vegetables - produce they've signed up for through a Community Supported Agriculture program, or CSA.

CSA programs are not exactly new. They've been around for at least 30 years. But thanks to the growing popularity of farmers markets and the locavore movement (that encourages buying food grown in the area, not shipped across country or from overseas), CSA programs are sprouting all over the country. Southern California is no exception.

"They were very limited," said Jonathan Reinbold, executive director of the Tierra Miguel Foundation, a San Diego County-based CSA that provides produce to pickup points in San Diego,

Orange County, Long Beach, Los Angeles, the San Fernando Valley and the South Bay. "Two years ago, there were four (in Southern California). There are at least 13 that I know of now."

Homegrown-food consultant Judy Frankel used to run a CSA of sorts from her small farm in Rancho Palos Verdes.

"I'm not producing enough to do a CSA now," Frankel said, adding that she will, however, supply produce to neighbors. "It does seem like people are very interested in it. People are understanding more about food security. They realize if they buy food directly from the farms they can know what the farm's practices are."

Recent E. coli and salmonella scares have made people more aware than ever of how large-scale farming practices can hurt the consumer, Frankel said. Besides, she added, locally grown tastes fresher and has a lower carbon footprint.

But how is CSA different from supporting farmers by buying produce at local farmers markets?

Prices are comparable - depending on which CSA you join, $25 will get you a nice selection of fruits, vegetables and herbs, enough for about five dinners for two. But CSAs provide a much closer relationship between farmer and consumer. Not only do you buy whatever the farm produces from week to week, you also share in any loss.

"CSA is a way for the growers and the eaters to share in production and preservation of farmland," Reinbold said. "When we have a crop loss as a farm, we are able to share that loss with our members. Right now, we have an abundance, but we don't have refunds. We try to make it clear a Tierra Miguel Foundation CSA is not buying vegetables, you are buying a membership to a farm."

That membership at Tierra Miguel Foundation costs $250, which gets you 10 weeks of shares. Such conditions, not to mention the idea of occasionally getting a fruit or vegetable you don't enjoy or know how to cook - or even learning to eat seasonally, when the nearest grocery store offers strawberries in December - can be a challenge.

"It's kind of an education," said Jenny Suter, a Long Beach resident who has been running a CSA pickup point out of her home for about a year. "It's not for some people."

Suter's pickup gets most of its produce from Tanaka Farms in Irvine.

Tanaka Farms' CSA programs are at more than 70 schools, 10 businesses and two churches in Orange County, Long Beach, Lakewood, Downey, Los Alamitos, Cerritos, Torrance and several other South Bay cities.

"We started in Long Beach three years ago," said Eileen Kato, Tanaka's CSA spokeswoman. "We had Naples Elementary. From there, it took off."

Tanaka charges between $20 and $30 for its shares, and part of the money goes back to the school or church that hosts it, which makes it a great fundraiser, Kato said.

As with the Tierra Miguel Foundation, Tanaka's CSA members help the farm absorb losses.

"If there is a crop failure, we do not lower the price," Kato said. "We will try to put more of another fruit or vegetable in the box. We also will work with other local farms or growers to make sure we have enough produce and fruits in the boxes."

The concern that just one farm will not produce enough variety for a CSA share has led some to start programs that rely on several farms at a time.

CSA California, which supplies produce to Santa Monica, Los Angeles, Echo Park, Westchester, Culver City, North Hollywood and other areas in Los Angeles County, relies on at least four farms per week.

CSA California is run by Topanga Canyon resident Sara Paul. Paul started the CSA two years ago with a partner (he has since moved on to start other programs out of state) after realizing there was a lot of demand for locally grown produce, even among kids at her daughter's school.

"My daughter Angel would bring her lunch, and the other kids would like her lunch better than the school lunch," Paul said, adding that $2 of CSA California's $25 shares help support that school.

Like Tanaka and the Tierra Miguel Foundation, CSA California members accept what they're given (though at the Santa Monica location, the recent offering was a choice between carrots and cucumbers). Members also agree to pick up produce at a predetermined place, whether it's an elementary school, a park or an alley.

But other organizations are making it even easier for customers to try a CSA.

Long Beach-based beachgreens delivers shares of locally grown fruits and vegetables - priced between $30 and $60 - to people's homes in greater Long Beach, Lakewood and Seal Beach.

"I started beachgreens in July 2007 in an effort to make organic and sustainably grown produce direct from local farmers more readily available for the average busy person in the Long Beach area," wrote owner Aliye Aydin on beachgreens' website.

Though customers are expected to eat seasonally, "it takes getting used to - if you're not used to shopping at farmers markets it's a bit of a hurdle," Aydin said, adding that participants can opt out of certain selections.

California Harvest Local Delivery, a company started just three weeks ago, provides the same service in Agoura Hills, Westlake, Burbank, Calabasas, Glendale and other cities in the San Fernando Valley. Shares run between $45 and $70.

"I got bummed with the produce choices at CSAs," said Dawn Gray, who runs the business with her sister.

Both are big fans of pick-it-yourself farms. "I love the idea of getting the produce more local," she said.

Whichever CSA you choose, a question remains: How easy is it to put the weekly shares to good use?

Over the next three weeks, we will write about the experience of being a part of Community Supported Agriculture.

Will we become converts?

Or will we resume shopping for out-of-season produce at the grocery store?

A.K. Whitney is a Los Angeles freelance writer.]]> Julie Topanga Talk Tue, 07 Sep 2010 17:14:11 -0700 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4697,4702#msg-4702 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4697,4702#msg-4702 Three continers with all of the interior connecting sides removed make a spacious open living room. And two more containers make two bedrooms. The slanted metal "exoskeleton" roof helps keep the home cool by convection. As the hot air under it rises and exits the high side, it draws cooler air in from the low side. There are no drainage issues either as all of the containers are supported well off the ground on concrete piers, and a slanted barrier under them guides water safely away from the original cabin's foundation.]]> Edenite Topanga Talk Tue, 07 Sep 2010 11:21:34 -0700 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4679,4701#msg-4701 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4679,4701#msg-4701 Edenite Topanga Talk Mon, 06 Sep 2010 12:44:11 -0700 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4684,4700#msg-4700 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4684,4700#msg-4700 -------------------------------------------------------
> I'm laughing.

...only like a foolish manchild could.]]> sean Topanga Talk Mon, 06 Sep 2010 11:33:54 -0700 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4684,4699#msg-4699 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4684,4699#msg-4699 TheThinker Topanga Talk Mon, 06 Sep 2010 10:53:35 -0700 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4684,4698#msg-4698 http://topangaonline.com/forums/read.php?6,4684,4698#msg-4698 sean Topanga Talk Mon, 06 Sep 2010 10:50:04 -0700