My Country Tis of Thee, Drowning in Hypocrisy...

It seems that lately the divisiveness and nasty rhetoric in American politics keeps hitting new lows. Since the housing market crash and the election of Barrack Obama, it has gotten worse and worse as each month goes by. While both sides are quite guilty of finger pointing, it seems that the downright nasty rhetoric is coming mostly, but not entirely, from the right. They have blamed and accused the Democrats of pretty much everything except the kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby... The media champion of this cause is Fox News, which is owned by News Corp., and company ran by an Australian and has a Saudi Prince as a major investor. This alone calls their intent into question, since both of these individuals are profiting from the American system of business through investments. Also given that this rhetoric seems to favor Big Business and the wealthy, it deserves a great deal of scrutiny. So let's look at the numbers:

First we'll look at the National Debt, which has gotten alot of press lately. The Repulicans, and more specifically the Tea Party have accused the Left of being responsible for the majority of our National Debt. But the numbers point out something very different:

DEBT BY ADMINISTRATION


DEBT BY TERM


DEBT BY YEAR

(Republican Administrations highlighted in red) Source.

Reagan, Bush 41 and Bush 43 are responsible for $10 trillion of the $14 trillion we are currently endebted for. Are the Republicans taking any sort of responsibility for this? Nope, they would rather just spin some revisionist history on the American people and count on the fact that we are all so lazy and stupid that we will just accept it as fact and move on... and in a lot of cases it's working like a charm. Seems the Tea Party membership is snookered.

Now let's move on to the myth that the current Administration is going to continue to increase the budget deficit year after year:

Federal Receipts and Outlays

Source.

The average of the last two years is the same as George Bush's last year in office, and then it begins to decrease in the next two years to a level that could be offset by the expiration of the Bush Era tax cuts. Mind you these figures are from before the debt ceiling proposed budget cuts. By these figures, if we were to implement the comprehensive package of budget cuts, entitlement reform and revenue increases that the President proposed and the vast majority of the American people wanted, we could be in a surplus situation, and able to actually pay down the debt in just a few short years!

Next up is the 'Big Government' myth:

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/1c2e99acb208.jpg[/atsimg]
Source.

Current levels of government employees are lower that at anytime during the Reagan Administration, which recorded the highest levels of government civilian jobs in the history of our nation. Now granted that there has been an increase in government employees since the Obama Administration has taken over, but the majority of that was in the military sector which was long overdue being as how the military has been engaged in two wars with record low numbers in personnel to get the job done. One must also consider that the size of the nation's population has grown at a rate that far exceeds the growth of government jobs. The government has had to learn to do more with less. I see this everyday in my job at the local VA Medical Center. The staff takes care of an ever increasing amount of Veterans with too few doctors and nurses, and THEY GET THE JOB DONE! Due to their increasing commitment to preventative care, the number of inpatients has decreased while the number of Veterans served in the outpatient clinics keeps increasing.

Next myth on the chopping block is the accusation that the current Administration, and the Left in general are responsible for tremendous job losses in this country:



While it is far from enough to even cover the increasing number of people entering the job market, this chart shows that the assertion that the current Administration is costing America jobs is false. Now would be a good time for our 'job creators' to show us why we shouldn't let the Bush Era tax cuts expire on them.

Which brings us to our last little 'fallacy'. The 'job creator'/class warfare argument:

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/6b6cc5ea2d19.jpg[/atsimg]
Source.

The only tax increases that this Administration has asked for is to roll back the tax structure on the highest tax bracket to that of the Clinton Era. We are only talking 4.6% increase on those making more that $250,000. The irony, and perhaps the most glaring example of the spin being put out on those of us who fall below that mark is that the same politicians who REFUSE to consider letting the Bush Era tax cuts expire on the wealthy are perfectly content to let the payroll tax cut expire on the rest of us...

I am totally convinced that this entire circus has been cooked up by the wealthy and the corporations that they own and run to convince those who are below them that it is in their best interest to protect Daddy Warbucks and his trillions. They are conspiring to keep their money and their control over the masses no matter what the cost to the nation as a whole. I recently read a facebook post by a conservative former high school classmate stating that the recent east coast earthquake was the result of our Founding Fathers rolling in their graves... I have to agree, but it's because of the snow job that the power elite is perpetrating on the citizenry that is causing them to do so... Food for thought, my friends, food for thought...

www.thedailyshow.com...

Thanks for the thread..Nice summary.

Most people do not care to look at the facts..

Let's see how the die-hards alter these facts to conform to their spoon fed beliefs.

Peace

During the Bush years, I scratched my head at the "conservative" party moving forward with very expensive programs and policies - borrowing to pay for wars, borrowing to hand out tax cuts - until the bills are due under a different party's watch - and then they are the party of fiscal conservatism?

Hypocrisy for sure. Thank you for the stats and the thread.

reply to post by JaxonRoberts

Fox News, which is owned by News Corp., and company ran by an Australian and has a Saudi Prince as a major investor.

I have been intending to point that fact out for ages now. Thank you for taking the time to address it! The American "right" is totally mesmerized by a couple of foreign billionaires that are best served by string the U.S. political pot. Fox is a sham. And they borderline on the true definition of treason, as laid out in the US constitution:

"Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort."

reply to post by spav5


Yeah, it's amazing how those silly facts get in the way, isn't it? I'm a Centrist, but the hypocrisy coming out of the Right makes me want to scream! The current batch of 'Conservative' presidential hopefuls come off as complete lunatics, and while I find the current Administration incompetent, I'll pick incompetent over bat crap crazy any day of the week!

what a load of crap seriously what a load of CRAP!!!

the rhetoric? hows about going around calling obamas detractors racists,redknecks,terrorists et al.

whose the party going around telling those same detractors to go to hell and they are unpatriotic and they are the enemy.

nah bs that dog dont hunt and everyone has links on here and heres one for people to look at or not.

www.usdebtclock.org...

and click on the green and red arrow circles to see the debt for any given year

bush spent 1 billion a day obama is spending 5 billion a day.

and dont like fox news DONT WATCH IT.

what a slanted op and yeah HYPOCRITICAL.

reply to post by neo96


So in other words, you didn't bother yourself with those pesky statistics because they don't jive with your 'beliefs'... I hate it when the facts are inconvienent! Guess the Elite have you right where they want you, now don't they? Get back to me when you are actually ready to debate the numbers... For the Record, Bush was responsible for $4.5 TRILLION dollars of the debt... facts are facts...

Honsetly? If a republican spends like a liberal, walks like a liberal, quacks like a duck....

Seriously, there's reason to complain about plitical spending period, no matter which side is funding it. The reason I HAVE to compain about it when a Democrat is in office is because the Democrats won't. They didn't need my help for Bush or any other "Republican".

Originally posted by neo96


what a slanted op and yeah HYPOCRITICAL.

By all means Neo, please refute it with facts. (A.K.A. conservative kryptonite). I mean, we're all adults, no? So, let's check the rhetoric at the door. Bring something of substance to the table.

You know, this is just like the thread that posts how many "wars" DEMOCRAT PRESIDENTS started--all factual . No party lives 100% to it's own rhetoric. And I know I've stated at least once, in one of these threads,that as long as what the person says matches your core beliefs, you won't notice when there's a discrepancy.

Since you work for Veterans Affairs....

President Harry Truman passed Executive Order 10122, which ripped the military disability retirement program from Veterans Affairs and put it under DOD. By doing this, Truman was able to move Billions from Veterans Affairs...to DOD. This is when DOD started using it's Budget, to start loaning money to other countries to buy military hardware. Truman figured it was better to create jobs....than provide for those stupid disabled veterans who got broken serving their country.

Democrats have always cut Federal Appropriations to Americans.....to cut from their paychecks and kill the middle class.

Bill Clinton came up with the "Quadrennial Defense Review" where he cut nearly every Wage Grade (blue collar) Civil Service job in DOD, along with entire military units....so they could be contracted out. Cheapo labor....Big Corporations out of Virginia or Philadelphia get all those contracts and siphon off Billions every year out of American labor....while the people doing those contracted jobs make barely anything and don't know if they will be kept on when the contract comes due again in a few years.

There's been a fleecing of America for decades....and where has all the money gone they ripped from the Middle Class? All invested growing China. Who's profiting from that money ripped from us?

Ronald Reagan faced with a bankrupt country had a Trust Fund created for alll the Federal Agencies/Retirement Funds. He put a little money in them and said go invest it....so you have something to operate off of. Now where did allllll of those Federal Agencies put their money? Where the highest profit margin is of course, CHINA.

The DOD spends $50 Billion Annually paying it's Retiree's. It's Retiree Trust Fund now has over $400 Billion in it. How did they make so much money?...So fast? C-H-I-N-A.


America has been systematically taken down to:
A: Keep Federal Agencies going
B: Be able to fund their MASSIVE amount of retired people
C: Rob America of Wealth by those in the know controlling those Funds.



The Republican-Democrat paradigm is mute. They both are the same, the play you see on TV is just that.


Bill Clinton cut so much from DOD the nation couldn't defend itself. The States, scared pee-less then exploded THEIR funding of their National Guard/Reserve military...which only gets Federally Funded when the President calls them up. So the States couldn't afford what they did to have a Defense.....

And that's when the Credit Bubble occurred to generate Revenue for what they did.

Their next step in the plan was to topple China, make them pay reparations for 50 years. But China was "assisted" and has modernized militarily beyond what they expected....so now they can't topple China.

China won't let them run the printing press...so the next step is....oh you are going to love it....

End the United States. North American Union. No more US Constitution. Europe is scared poopless....they know Spanish will be the majority in 2020 from what occurred in America.....and a Super Powered Latino with Nukes scares the bejesus out of England.

So England/Europe also have a plan.....a secret one.....make America the beoch. Europe/Russia/China topples the US and makes them pay reparations for 50 years...it'll get rid of the Latino threat to them...Europe/Russia/China will all get what they want out of what's left of America.

They will toppled the United States within 24 hours. Would be a good time now...they know Obama won't launch his nukes....nobody will go nuclear. The US military has been cut to its tiny size right now for a reason...

America's being made the Beoch. When the Federal Government/Military can't afford PEOPLE....failure is imminent.

Rome could afford mercenaries only....look at what America can afford only now....mercenaries. Can't even afford to have it's own military.

Oh, and I'm noticing something that is off.

What bills passed, each year, accounts for what increase or decrease in this schematic? Some bills are passed that don't have a financial effect immediately. Some financial policies effects take more than 3-4 changes in power before they actually begin majorly affecting our debt.

For instance: most grants that go unused become part of that stupid infomercial that always comes on, spewing crud about grants from up to 3 years previous can still be applied for? When is the money counted agaisnt our debt--when the bill is signed for this use or when the money actually goes into the hand of the person who wins the grant?

Who pushed to put the seperated untouchable funds from Social Security and moved it to the general fund, so it could effect the national debt in a positive manner, yet now has grossly endangered Social Security's ability to fend for itself?

See, it's not enough to say "these overall things happened in this presidency" without giving a full detailed picture. Even with the year-by-year breakdowns, this is not even remotely a full picture. This is not like a war where you can say: "It was declared x day and the first wave was sent out on y day"? Oh, wait, it is. We know what programs and policies are potentially bankrupting us.

Don't get me wrong, I know that there's been Republicans who have spent far more money than I've ever wanted them to, but making everything this simple is well, simplistic.

I went in to Obama's election stating that as far as the economy was concerned, he was a lame duck from the begining. The benefist of undoing what Bush did wouldn't be felt until after Obama's 4 years were up--the only problem is he's added to the problem.

I am glad someone was able to collect the necessary resources to show the facts without any pesky political rhetoric blocking it. So thank you for that Jaxon. However there are a few issues that I would like to raise. Do not interpret this the wrong way because I am not attempting to deflect blame, it will go where it is deserved.

Increase debt/GDP

Dwight D. Eisenhower
1953 – 57 | -11.0%
1957 – 61 | -5.2%

Richard Nixon / Gerald Ford
1969 – 73 | -3.0%
1973 – 77 | +0.2%

Ronald Reagan
1981 – 85 | +11.3%
1985 – 89 | +9.3%

George H.W. Bush
1989 – 93 | +13.0%

George W. Bush
2001 – 2005 | +7.1%
2005 – 2009 | +20.7%

That is what I want to pick apart. Okay, as we all know the GOP of pre-1980 was nothing like the GOP of post-1980, the difference? It was taken over by a new crop of Republicans, led by Ronald Reagan, and backed by the William F. Buckley ‘National Review’ types coming from the 1950s. Mr. Reagan had brought into his administration, for the first time, a new group of Conservatives who would eventually, by the late ‘90s, push the old Conservatives out. These New Conservatives are today known as Neoconservatives.

Dwight D. Eisenhower was the last Republican administrations before the Neocons came in (They first played minor roles in Nixon administration). With them they brought the ideas of ‘supply-side economics’ which in 1980 George H.W. Bush called “voodoo economics”. These are not exactly the types of people you would want left to manage your checkbook, to say the least (you also may not want to leave them with your neighbors; they are prone to starting fights).

As Dick Cheney famously said, “Reagan taught us that deficits don’t matter”. Au contraire, they do matter Mr. Cheney. What the Bill Kristol’s and Richard Perle’s forget to tell you is that they do not come from any Conservative tradition, these are just disgruntled Democrats who either left the party just before the 1960s (Ronald Reagan) or followed Henry “Scoop” Jackson, a war monger who had a deep connection to the military industrial complex. These types revolted against the change within the Democratic Party occurring throughout the late ‘60s and early ‘70s with the rise of Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern, not to mention they loved the New Deal programs but despised the Great Society.

That is the reason for Reagan giving a campaign speech for Harry Truman in 1948.


13 years later giving his infamous “Socialized Medicine” speech.


The conservatives of principle and the heart were chased out during the 1980s and ‘90s by these people posing as Conservatives but really nothing more than a front group for big business and globalism. They rally the Conservative know-nothings to their aid with cries of “socialism! Abortion! Gays! God!” but the fact is they could not care less about those issues past the point of getting themselves elected. Is it any wonder Karl Rove, an Atheist, pushed the wedge issues in 2004?

Just as many angry Liberals point out how the Democratic Party has been corrupted by Wall Street many Conservatives (the real conservatives) make the same argument about today’s GOP. Yet just like the working schmuck in the Democratic ranks they will show up and vote for the idiot anyway.

Thus, while neo-conservatives despised the New Left, they continued to embrace an unexamined liberal faith in the big government created by liberals from Woodrow Wilson through Franklin Roosevelt to John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. Several of them - such as Ben Wattenberg, Elliott Abrams, and Penn Kemble - came out of the ranks of democratic socialism and its commitment to organized labor. Even though they criticized various aspects of the welfare state, they continued to believe a welfare state was both legitimate and inevitable. Irving Kristol himself writes in his Reflections of a Neo-Conservative that "a conservative welfare state … is perfectly consistent with the neo-conservative perspective."

In foreign policy, though the neo-conservatives were anti-communist, they focused mainly on the Soviet Union rather than on China or internal domestic subversion, and they continued to regard "McCarthyism" - the legitimate and necessary investigation of domestic subversion - as an evil. They also favored a foreign policy that, while anti-communist, centered around what came to be called "exporting democracy" - that is, using American power to undermine right-wing anti-communist governments that were less than liberal or democratic, and fostering their replacement by "democratic" governments that were often simply democratic socialist in orientation. As the Cold War wound down, "exporting democracy" and opposing "isolationism" became the major neo-conservative foreign policy goals, reflected in their almost universal support for NAFTA, the World Trade Organization, and United Nations "peacekeeping" missions.

www.thenewamerican.com..." target="_blank" class="postlink">Source

The fact is in this 2012 race on the GOP side we are much closer to true conservatism in rhetoric but that is where it ends, in rhetoric. With Reagan the Conservative movement finally was forced to accept the New Deal and to work within its framework. They have no problem spending, building size of government, spying on citizens, and launching “wars for democracy” because they are the same types cut out of the Roosevelt-Truman cloth just without the responsibility of actually reducing the deficit.

A “humble foreign policy” and social issues got them in the door in 2000, they kept the door open in 2004 with wedge issues, and now they are trying to re-open the door with rhetoric of a conservative while you have “universal healthcare” Mitt Romney, “open borders with Mexico” Rick Perry, “You can’t have welfare but I damn sure can” Michele Bachmann, yeah… it really looks like they have changed.

The closest candidate to anything of true conservatism is Ron Paul but he is a Libertarian, not a Conservative.

Great post Jaxxon
Funny how the only Republican to reduce spending by GDP was Nixon. Yet he is considered a pariah now by the neoconservatives.
You've done good work getting your figures however you do know that they've monkeyed with the figures to make things appear better. That said, perhaps there has been less growth in government under Bush Jr,, yet the amount of government outsourcing has skyrocketed to pad the pocketbooks of their corporate sponsors.
I don't believe there is any substantial difference between the 2 major parties, they simply attend to different parts of the same agenda.
Glass- steagal was repealed under Clinton yet the fallout didn't occur until 9 years later under Dubya. OBL became public enemy #1 under Clinton as well yet 9/11 happened while Dubya was on watch.

Back to what I believe was your main point, I agree the amount of whining about ending the Bush tax cuts is nothing short of the rantings of a spoiled 4 year old. How is it unfair to pay more in to the very system that made you rich in the first place? Theyshould pay more, lots more. And if they had any sense they would realize it is to their own benefit to do so. Without a vibrant economy there will be no creation of new wealth.
The rich are not creating new jobs with their new-found wealth, indeed it has always been the middle class entrepreneurs who start new businesses that have always created the most jobs. The rich are simply sitting on their money essentially removing it from the economy.

There is a reason why you don't ride your horse until it dies from exhaustion. You might want to ride it tomorrow.

reply to post by JaxonRoberts


I mistrust stats as they can be fudged to lean one way or another. But they do make me look harder at the issue.

But you point out that 10 Trillion of the debt was caused by Reagan, Bush 41 and Bush 43.

By my math, it took over two decades to pile up that debt, but in two and a half years Obama's admin has added another 4+ Trillion.

Doesn't look for the Dems in that case.

Looks to me that your one sided argument may have a flaw in that specific case.

But yep, both sides are guilty of raising the debt ceiling and kicking the can down the road. It's going to end badly if it is not addressed soon.

You get a S & F for the title, alone!

I find it hilarious that we are conquering the world under the auspices of spreading freedom, liberty and justice, yet every chance we get these are being stripped from the American people.

We are stupid for not figuring this out, as a nation (sooner)

reply to post by Pervius


I stopped reading your post after your first point. Since it was pure crap there was no need to read further. The Department of Veteran's Affairs (formerly the Veteran's Administration) has always been a part of the Department of Defense. Also, Veteran's disability pensions are paid out by and administrated by the VA. No Vet has ever had their pension or disability benefits "sent to China"... Now I don't know if you noticed, but in the OP I had charts and sources to back up my claims. You do not. This is a practice that used to be followed quite religiously here on ATS, but now rumor and innuendo have taken over.

Sources or it ain't true and your argument is rendered invalid... NEXT!

reply to post by JaxonRoberts


Thank you for these proven facts. This information will be an important factor regarding my voting process in 2012.

Off topic so forgive me but how did you copy the charts into your post? I've not been able to figure that one out yet.

Thanks