The Myth of the "Obama Economy part 1
Feb 23, 2013 15:42:15 #
The Problem
There are three words, when uttered together that turn me apoplectic: The Obama Economy. A recurring theme among conservatives has been that President Obama has had enough time to fix the economy, the recovery is anemic and that he cannot keep blaming Bush 43. That is if it is even acknowledged that the economy was in free fall when Obama took office. Also, I frequently hear statements like He didnt cause the recession, but he made it worse Neither statement holds water. The New York Times wrote on 9.1.2012: NOT since 1933 had an American president taken the oath of office in an economic climate as grim as it was when Barack Obama put his left hand on the Bible in January 2009. The banking system was near collapse, two big car manufacturers were sliding towards bankruptcy; and employment, the housing market and output were spiraling down.
How did we get here?
At the start of the Reagan Presidency, the national debt stood at less than $1T or 33% of the GDP. After 8 years of Reagan, the debt stood at almost $2.7T or 52.6% of the GDP a growth of 186.6%. Bush 41 did his part too by adding another 55.6% in just 4 years, bringing the debt to $4.2T or 65.9% of GDP. Clinton also contributed with another 35.6% over his eight years. This despite the popular belief that Clinton left a surplus to Bush 43 ( the debt actually grew from 4.4 Trillion in 1993 to 5.6T in 2000) However, it is true that the annual deficit was trending downward during those same years as was the deficit in terms of the percentage of GDP. In fact, at the end of the Clinton Administration, the US was on track to pay off its debt and accumulate $2.3T in savings by 2011 according to the non partisan Congressional Budget Office. Then, enter Bush 43 who blew it up with whopping 89% increase bringing it to $10. 7T at his departure. This is the result of the fact that Bush 43 continued where Reagan and to a lesser extent Bush 41 left off with supply side policies that reversed the trend of the Clinton years and added enormously to the debt. 49% of the increase under Bush was due to his spending increases and 24% because of tax cuts. It should also be noted that the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 7,949 at the end of Bush 42s term, down 24% during his second term alone. It was at 10,587 at the start of his first term and achieved an all time high of 14,164 as recently as October 9, 2007, just before the crash of 2008. It has now gained about 60% from its low point.
Yes it is true, in Obamas first term, another 5.7 T hit the books and the debt stood at 16.4 by the end of 2012 The important question is why the continuing rise of the debt on Obamas watch. When you subtract $1.6 trillion for George W. Bushs wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, $1.4 trillion in interest payments for outstanding debt dating from the Bush administration, and $1.6 trillion in lost revenue from Bushs tax cuts, the number dwindles to $1.1T in debt authorized by congress, as well as the president. Furthermore, much of government spending was caused by Bushs recession, during which more people were forced to apply for food stamps and other public assistance.
The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities wrote in September of 2012: If not for the Bush tax cuts, the deficit-financed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the effects of the worst recession. since the Great Depression (including the cost of policymakers actions to combat it), we would not be facing these huge deficits in the near term. Currently, unemployment continues to be unacceptably high and more or less unchanged, the debt is growing, and the expansion of the economy is painfully slow. But is it fair to call it the Obama economy, suggesting that if he didnt cause it, he at least made it worse.
Lets not forget that the annual deficit has been decreasing however slightly over each successive year under the Obama Administration. The average decrease in the deficit over 3 years with Obama in office was 114.5B while the first 7 years of Bush 43 saw an average increase of 56.7 B and for the final year it was 100.4B
Yes, things could be better and people, particularly the jobless are understandably impatient. So lets look at what Obama has accomplished and tried to accomplish, keeping in mind that the list would be longer and the economy stronger in a less partisan political environment .
There are three words, when uttered together that turn me apoplectic: The Obama Economy. A recurring theme among conservatives has been that President Obama has had enough time to fix the economy, the recovery is anemic and that he cannot keep blaming Bush 43. That is if it is even acknowledged that the economy was in free fall when Obama took office. Also, I frequently hear statements like He didnt cause the recession, but he made it worse Neither statement holds water. The New York Times wrote on 9.1.2012: NOT since 1933 had an American president taken the oath of office in an economic climate as grim as it was when Barack Obama put his left hand on the Bible in January 2009. The banking system was near collapse, two big car manufacturers were sliding towards bankruptcy; and employment, the housing market and output were spiraling down.
How did we get here?
At the start of the Reagan Presidency, the national debt stood at less than $1T or 33% of the GDP. After 8 years of Reagan, the debt stood at almost $2.7T or 52.6% of the GDP a growth of 186.6%. Bush 41 did his part too by adding another 55.6% in just 4 years, bringing the debt to $4.2T or 65.9% of GDP. Clinton also contributed with another 35.6% over his eight years. This despite the popular belief that Clinton left a surplus to Bush 43 ( the debt actually grew from 4.4 Trillion in 1993 to 5.6T in 2000) However, it is true that the annual deficit was trending downward during those same years as was the deficit in terms of the percentage of GDP. In fact, at the end of the Clinton Administration, the US was on track to pay off its debt and accumulate $2.3T in savings by 2011 according to the non partisan Congressional Budget Office. Then, enter Bush 43 who blew it up with whopping 89% increase bringing it to $10. 7T at his departure. This is the result of the fact that Bush 43 continued where Reagan and to a lesser extent Bush 41 left off with supply side policies that reversed the trend of the Clinton years and added enormously to the debt. 49% of the increase under Bush was due to his spending increases and 24% because of tax cuts. It should also be noted that the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 7,949 at the end of Bush 42s term, down 24% during his second term alone. It was at 10,587 at the start of his first term and achieved an all time high of 14,164 as recently as October 9, 2007, just before the crash of 2008. It has now gained about 60% from its low point.
Yes it is true, in Obamas first term, another 5.7 T hit the books and the debt stood at 16.4 by the end of 2012 The important question is why the continuing rise of the debt on Obamas watch. When you subtract $1.6 trillion for George W. Bushs wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, $1.4 trillion in interest payments for outstanding debt dating from the Bush administration, and $1.6 trillion in lost revenue from Bushs tax cuts, the number dwindles to $1.1T in debt authorized by congress, as well as the president. Furthermore, much of government spending was caused by Bushs recession, during which more people were forced to apply for food stamps and other public assistance.
The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities wrote in September of 2012: If not for the Bush tax cuts, the deficit-financed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the effects of the worst recession. since the Great Depression (including the cost of policymakers actions to combat it), we would not be facing these huge deficits in the near term. Currently, unemployment continues to be unacceptably high and more or less unchanged, the debt is growing, and the expansion of the economy is painfully slow. But is it fair to call it the Obama economy, suggesting that if he didnt cause it, he at least made it worse.
Lets not forget that the annual deficit has been decreasing however slightly over each successive year under the Obama Administration. The average decrease in the deficit over 3 years with Obama in office was 114.5B while the first 7 years of Bush 43 saw an average increase of 56.7 B and for the final year it was 100.4B
Yes, things could be better and people, particularly the jobless are understandably impatient. So lets look at what Obama has accomplished and tried to accomplish, keeping in mind that the list would be longer and the economy stronger in a less partisan political environment .
Feb 23, 2013 15:51:57 #
The Myth of THE OBAMA ECONOMY Part 2
Initiatives and the outcomes
So what has Obama done, or attempted to do to stimulate the economy, create jobs, reduce the debt , and avert another financial meltdown and recession?
Passed the Stimulus: He signed $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in 2009 to spur economic growth amid greatest recession since the Great Depression. Weeks after stimulus went into effect, unemployment claims began to subside. Twelve months later, the private sector began producing more jobs than it was losing, and it has continued to do so for twenty-three straight months, creating a total of nearly 3.7 million new private-sector jobs.
Passed Wall Street Reform: He signed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (2010) to re-regulate the financial sector after its practices caused the Great Recession. The new law tightens capital requirements on large banks and other financial institutions, requires derivatives to be sold on clearinghouses and exchanges, mandates that large banks provide living wills to avoid chaotic bankruptcies, limits their ability to trade with customers money for their own profit, and creates the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (now headed by Richard Cordray) to crack down on abusive lending products and companies.
Turned Around U.S. Auto Industry: In 2009, he injected $62 billion in federal money (on top of $13.4 billion in loans from the Bush administration) into ailing GM and Chrysler in return for equity stakes and agreements for massive restructuring. Since bottoming out in 2009, the auto industry has added more than 100,000 jobs. In 2011, the Big Three automakers all gained market share for the first time in two decades, and have now fully reimbursed to government
Passed Health Care Reform: After five presidents over a century failed to create universal health insurance, signed the Affordable Care Act (2010). It will cover 32 million uninsured Americans beginning in 2014 and mandates a suite of experimental measures to cut health care cost growth, the number one cause of Americas long-term fiscal problems. I include this not being unaware that Obamacare has been derided as job killing and too expensive .However, there is considerable information that contradicts the claims about its effect on jobs and may well create jobs by expansion of the health care industry. And, while there are expenses to consider, those opposed need to consider the benefits of having universal coverage such as avoiding expensive emergency room use as primary care for the indigent, a decrease the instances of lost productivity and thus tax revenues, savings in state and federal disability payments, and the unquantifiable human cost of major illnesses and death which are more frequent in those without coverage.
Cut Taxes on Small Businesses: Obama either implemented or renewed 14 tax cuts for small businesses five of which are still in effect.
Revived the Manufacturing sector of the economy Over ½ million since 2010. After nearly a decade of steep declines, American manufacturing jobs have begun to rebound since the beginning of the Obama administration, as the slide that occurred under President George W. Bush and during the Great Recession has largely been reversed.
And what have the republicans done? They engaged in systematic obstruction at every turn. A few cases in point:
The American Jobs Act The issue most often cited when the dreaded words Obama Economy are uttered is unemployment which is only now beginning to show signs of improvement. It too impacts significantly on revenues as well as the need for government services. Obama has tried to improve the jobs picture through a number of legislative initiatives including a more robust stimulus package but political opposition prevailed On September 8, 2011 President Obama laid out a series of policy proposals known collectively as the American Jobs Act. The plan included stimulus spending in the form of immediate infrastructure investments, tax credits for working Americans and employers to encourage consumer spending and job growth, and efforts to shore up state and local budgets to prevent further layoffs of teachers, firefighters, police officers, and other public safety officials.
The American Jobs Act never became law, however, because Republicans opposed it from the start, blasting it as another form of failed stimulus that wouldnt help the economy. (They ignored the fact that the first failed stimulus, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act,wasnt a failure at all.) One month later, the GOP blocked the bill in the Senate, preventing the creation of more than a million jobs and the added growth that multiple economists predicted would occur if the bill passed.
The Veterans Jobs Corps: The Los Angelis Time reported: President Obamas proposal to create a Veterans Jobs Corps to stem high unemployment among recent military veterans was shelved Wednesday after Republicans in the Senate balked over the five-year $1-billion cost, The article went on to say The measure had been on Obamas to-do list for Congress, a modest set of initiatives aimed at boosting the nations sluggish economy that Republicans have largely rejected. The jobs bill would have hired veterans who served in the military since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to work on federal public lands projects and would have established a network of job training centers.
Insourcing: In July 2012, Senate Republicans blocked the No.1 item on the president's congressional "to-do-list," refusing to allow a vote on a bill that would give tax breaks for companies that "insource" jobs to the U.S. from overseas while eliminating tax deductions for companies that move jobs abroad. The Bring Jobs Home Act would provide a 20% tax break for the costs of moving jobs back to the United States and would rescind business expense deductions available to companies that are associated with the cost of moving operations overseas. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, had warned Democrats before the vote that his party would want to amend the bill -- possibly with hot-button issues like repealing the health care reform law or extending the Bush-era tax cuts for all income levels.
Other initiatives on Obamas part worthy of note :
Let Space Shuttle Die and Killed Planned Moon Mission: Allowed the expensive ($1 billion per launch), badly designed, dangerous shuttle program to make its final launch on July 8, 2011. Cut off funding for even more bloated and problem-plagued Bush-era Constellation program to build moon base in favor of support for private-sector low-earth orbit ventures, research on new rocket technologies for long-distance manned flight missions, and unmanned space exploration, including the largest interplanetary rover ever launched, which will investigate Marss potential to support life.
Invested Heavily in Renewable Technology: As part of the 2009 stimulus, invested $90 billion, more than any previous administration, in research on smart grids, energy efficiency, electric cars, renewable electricity generation, cleaner coal, and biofuels.
Created Recovery.gov: Web site run by independent board of inspectors general looking for fraud and abuse in stimulus spending, provides public with detailed information on every contract funded by $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Thanks partly to this transparency, board has uncovered very little fraud, and Web site has become national model: The stimulus has done more to promote transparency at almost all levels of government than any piece of legislation in recent memory, reports Governing magazine.
Killed the F-22: In 2009, ended further purchases of Lockheed Martin single-seat, twin-engine, fighter aircraft, which cost $358 million apiece. Though the military had 187 built, the plane has never flown a single combat mission. Eliminating it saved $4 billion.
Initiatives and the outcomes
So what has Obama done, or attempted to do to stimulate the economy, create jobs, reduce the debt , and avert another financial meltdown and recession?
Passed the Stimulus: He signed $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in 2009 to spur economic growth amid greatest recession since the Great Depression. Weeks after stimulus went into effect, unemployment claims began to subside. Twelve months later, the private sector began producing more jobs than it was losing, and it has continued to do so for twenty-three straight months, creating a total of nearly 3.7 million new private-sector jobs.
Passed Wall Street Reform: He signed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (2010) to re-regulate the financial sector after its practices caused the Great Recession. The new law tightens capital requirements on large banks and other financial institutions, requires derivatives to be sold on clearinghouses and exchanges, mandates that large banks provide living wills to avoid chaotic bankruptcies, limits their ability to trade with customers money for their own profit, and creates the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (now headed by Richard Cordray) to crack down on abusive lending products and companies.
Turned Around U.S. Auto Industry: In 2009, he injected $62 billion in federal money (on top of $13.4 billion in loans from the Bush administration) into ailing GM and Chrysler in return for equity stakes and agreements for massive restructuring. Since bottoming out in 2009, the auto industry has added more than 100,000 jobs. In 2011, the Big Three automakers all gained market share for the first time in two decades, and have now fully reimbursed to government
Passed Health Care Reform: After five presidents over a century failed to create universal health insurance, signed the Affordable Care Act (2010). It will cover 32 million uninsured Americans beginning in 2014 and mandates a suite of experimental measures to cut health care cost growth, the number one cause of Americas long-term fiscal problems. I include this not being unaware that Obamacare has been derided as job killing and too expensive .However, there is considerable information that contradicts the claims about its effect on jobs and may well create jobs by expansion of the health care industry. And, while there are expenses to consider, those opposed need to consider the benefits of having universal coverage such as avoiding expensive emergency room use as primary care for the indigent, a decrease the instances of lost productivity and thus tax revenues, savings in state and federal disability payments, and the unquantifiable human cost of major illnesses and death which are more frequent in those without coverage.
Cut Taxes on Small Businesses: Obama either implemented or renewed 14 tax cuts for small businesses five of which are still in effect.
Revived the Manufacturing sector of the economy Over ½ million since 2010. After nearly a decade of steep declines, American manufacturing jobs have begun to rebound since the beginning of the Obama administration, as the slide that occurred under President George W. Bush and during the Great Recession has largely been reversed.
And what have the republicans done? They engaged in systematic obstruction at every turn. A few cases in point:
The American Jobs Act The issue most often cited when the dreaded words Obama Economy are uttered is unemployment which is only now beginning to show signs of improvement. It too impacts significantly on revenues as well as the need for government services. Obama has tried to improve the jobs picture through a number of legislative initiatives including a more robust stimulus package but political opposition prevailed On September 8, 2011 President Obama laid out a series of policy proposals known collectively as the American Jobs Act. The plan included stimulus spending in the form of immediate infrastructure investments, tax credits for working Americans and employers to encourage consumer spending and job growth, and efforts to shore up state and local budgets to prevent further layoffs of teachers, firefighters, police officers, and other public safety officials.
The American Jobs Act never became law, however, because Republicans opposed it from the start, blasting it as another form of failed stimulus that wouldnt help the economy. (They ignored the fact that the first failed stimulus, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act,wasnt a failure at all.) One month later, the GOP blocked the bill in the Senate, preventing the creation of more than a million jobs and the added growth that multiple economists predicted would occur if the bill passed.
The Veterans Jobs Corps: The Los Angelis Time reported: President Obamas proposal to create a Veterans Jobs Corps to stem high unemployment among recent military veterans was shelved Wednesday after Republicans in the Senate balked over the five-year $1-billion cost, The article went on to say The measure had been on Obamas to-do list for Congress, a modest set of initiatives aimed at boosting the nations sluggish economy that Republicans have largely rejected. The jobs bill would have hired veterans who served in the military since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to work on federal public lands projects and would have established a network of job training centers.
Insourcing: In July 2012, Senate Republicans blocked the No.1 item on the president's congressional "to-do-list," refusing to allow a vote on a bill that would give tax breaks for companies that "insource" jobs to the U.S. from overseas while eliminating tax deductions for companies that move jobs abroad. The Bring Jobs Home Act would provide a 20% tax break for the costs of moving jobs back to the United States and would rescind business expense deductions available to companies that are associated with the cost of moving operations overseas. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, had warned Democrats before the vote that his party would want to amend the bill -- possibly with hot-button issues like repealing the health care reform law or extending the Bush-era tax cuts for all income levels.
Other initiatives on Obamas part worthy of note :
Let Space Shuttle Die and Killed Planned Moon Mission: Allowed the expensive ($1 billion per launch), badly designed, dangerous shuttle program to make its final launch on July 8, 2011. Cut off funding for even more bloated and problem-plagued Bush-era Constellation program to build moon base in favor of support for private-sector low-earth orbit ventures, research on new rocket technologies for long-distance manned flight missions, and unmanned space exploration, including the largest interplanetary rover ever launched, which will investigate Marss potential to support life.
Invested Heavily in Renewable Technology: As part of the 2009 stimulus, invested $90 billion, more than any previous administration, in research on smart grids, energy efficiency, electric cars, renewable electricity generation, cleaner coal, and biofuels.
Created Recovery.gov: Web site run by independent board of inspectors general looking for fraud and abuse in stimulus spending, provides public with detailed information on every contract funded by $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Thanks partly to this transparency, board has uncovered very little fraud, and Web site has become national model: The stimulus has done more to promote transparency at almost all levels of government than any piece of legislation in recent memory, reports Governing magazine.
Killed the F-22: In 2009, ended further purchases of Lockheed Martin single-seat, twin-engine, fighter aircraft, which cost $358 million apiece. Though the military had 187 built, the plane has never flown a single combat mission. Eliminating it saved $4 billion.
Feb 24, 2013 08:51:41 #
James E.
Loc: Ohio
Wasted billions on green energy added millions to food stamps Auto companys should have went under and revamped to eliminate the horrible union contracts.Has set this great country back a hundred years, he and the corrupt congress. term limits and a balanced budget or we will become Greece!
Feb 24, 2013 09:29:50 #
OBAMA SPENT HIS FIRST TERM TRYING TO STRAIGHTEN OUT BUSH AND CHENEY MESS WITH NO HELP FROM THE GOP. he is now trying to fix problems that remain having to fight the GOP AGAIN. they first hog tied him with the fiscal cliff and now the sequester they hate him so bad they are not going to let him sponsor anything. thats up to you people,are you going let the GOP do it or speak up? email your congressmen and vote them out when the time comes,set turm limits. penalized those business that are moved out of theUS.my middle class no longer exists, it takes all my money to exist and too much to get a help program of any kind. we need strong unions back to promote the middle class again.we need to raise the minimum wage to help poverty out
Feb 24, 2013 09:53:25 #
James E.
Loc: Ohio
You should maybe try to understand that Obama had a democrate controlled congress his first two years in office also the crash came from Dodd and Frank putting people into houses they could not pay for. The sequester was his making not the GOP. Our corporate taxes are he hghest in the world making companies move out of the states to stay in business this all to support this nanny state of Mr. Obama why, because they all will vote for him. Wake up they are spending the money that you say you don't have to buy votes so they can send more money and buy more and pretty soon we will all be the same, POOR.i own a business and I can tell you if the wage is raised there will be fewer part time employees and this cost will be passed along to you so your money will not go a far as it does now. Congress and the president are econ eliterate you can not spend your way out of poverty.
Feb 24, 2013 11:01:53 #
The Myth of THE OBAMA ECONOMY : Part 3- A Response to my critics who continue to be in denial. By Richard Lee 2.23.13
I previously posted parts 1 and 2 of the Obama Economy which dealt primarily with the debt and unemployment, and which is still available on this page. Since then, I have been relentlessly attacked by those who cannot accept that it was the Republicans, starting with His Holiness Ronald Reagan who are primarily responsible for where we are today with regard to the national debt. One of the most ludicrous claims now being peddled is that the national debt that were saddled with is the fault of congressional Democrats who took over Congress in 2007.So the story line goes; Obama was one of those Senators, therefore he inherited the mess from himself. Really folks? Im further astounded that these folks are now fallaciously and preposterously trying to pin the blame, not only for the debt, but also for the 2008 financial and housing meltdown on Democrats. This drivel is nothing more than an attempt to obfuscate the evidence to the contrary, since they were unable to actually refute my original argument.
For starters, they completely ignore the fact that the vast majority of the debt that was added during the Bush years was from before 2007. In addition, while the Democrats held a majority of the house during the 110th (07-09) and 111th (09-11)congress, their hold on the Senate was tenuous at best. For the 110th congress, there was an even split of 49 to 49 with 2 independents. The Democrats held the largest majority, 57 seats during the 111th congress, but still short of the 60 needed for a super majority. So, neither party was in complete control of congress. And, although, admittedly, the Democrats had the upper hand, there were forces at work, and policies in place, that could not be easily reversed. And oh yes, Bush was still president until the beginning of 2009.
In any case, the seeds of both problems; the debt, and the financial meltdown were laid long before 2007, as we shall see. I will also add that while the Bush apologists will try to peg our problems to the Democrats in congress, they offer little evidence showing that the Democrats were actually to blame. For the most part, they act as though the mere presence of the Democrats in congress destroyed the economy. Similarly, they will point out that the Dow was over 12,000 on the day that the Democrats took over congress, before crashing, as though to say that this congress brought down wall street as well. Time and again, the tactic has been to take events that are correlated in time and claim cause and effect. Doing so without evidence is an egregious violation of a basic principle of scientific research. Then again, science is not a strong point of certain folks.
In addition, another myth perpetrated by those who would blame the Democrats for deficit spending during the Bush years, have asserted that it is congress and not the president who controls the budget. However, this is a gross oversimplification at best and willfully misleading. The fact is that the Executive prepares the budget request, after which each house of congress passes a budget resolution which must then be reconciled. The president has veto power, which Bush did not exercise. He did however, request and receive debt ceiling increases 19 times.
Currently, there continues to be a hysterical chorus of conservative voices lamenting Obamas out of control spending that is adding to the deficit while they ignore the revenue side of the ledger as Bush did previously, and the current House Republicans are now. They also ignore the fact that according to the Wall Street Journal, during Bushs first term, federal spending grew by 7.3% and in his second term, by 8.1%. During Obamas first term it grew by just 1.4%.
In reality, deficit spending can be laid squarely at Bushs feet. He did in fact add to the debt by virtue of his administrations policies abetted by Congressional Republicans. I do not wish to rehash the history that I laid out previously, but it seems that some things must be repeated to sink in. When Obama took office, the Bush tax cuts that were passed in 2001 and 2003 when Republicans, for the most part controlled both houses of congress, were already in place, the country was is the throes of the recession, and there was no political will to raise taxes at that point. In addition, the country had be saddled a $10.7T Debt, left behind by Bush and his predecessors with more bills coming due from the unfunded wars. In his final year alone, he added 15.9 %. 49% of the increase under Bush was due to his spending increases and 24% because of tax cuts. In addition, The two wars were raging. Afghanistan was prolonged long after the goal of rousting Al-Qaida and getting Bin Laden were forgotten, largely as a result of the distraction by the bogus Iraq debacle. Yes, Democrats voted to fund these wars. There was little choice other than to leave American service personnel at risk, and allow bad situations to get worse. And, lets not forget that Bush and his cronies get us into Iraq under false pretenses.
Now, to turn to the declining economy and the crash of 2008. While during much of Bushs reign, things appeared to be going well on the surface, the economy was a ticking time bomb which finally exploded in 2008. There is wide agreement that the domestic economic downturn was related to a world- wide recession, but also, in no small part, the result of the banking crisis here at home, especially the mortgage melt down that resulted from a lack if government oversight leading to shoddy lending practices. And there was the AGI and the auto industry collapse as well to deal with. Those crisis, in turn can be seen as the result of decades of deregulation which to some extent, had bi-partisan support, which we will look at below.
Closely related to the sub-prime mortgage debacle was the Housing bubble. Irrational exuberance, in the housing market, fueled by low interest rates led many people to buy houses they couldn't afford, because everyone thought housing prices could only go up. In 2006, the bubble burst as housing prices started to decline. This caught many homeowners off guard, who had taken loans with little money down. As they realized they would lose money by selling the house for less than their mortgage, they foreclosed. An escalating foreclosure rate panicked man y banks and hedge funds, who had bought mortgage-backed securities on the secondary markets and now realized they were facing huge losses. By August 2007, banks became afraid to lend to each other because they didn't want these toxic loans as collateral. By December 2008, employment was declining faster than in the 2001 recession. What was behind all of this? The roots can be traced to at least 1978
The following is excerpted from A Short History of Financial Deregulation in the United States by Matthew Sherman of the Center for Economic and Policy Research:
1978, Marquette vs. First of Omaha Supreme Court allows banks to export the usury
laws of their home state nationwide and sets off a competitive wave of deregulation,
resulting in the complete elimination of usury rate ceilings in South Dakota and Delaware. This is why credit card companies can ignore your state's usury law, which limits the amount of interest that can be charged on a loan, and charge whatever rate they want. Next time you pay your credit card bill, make note of where they go. Most likely it will be Delaware or South Dakota. It's no coincidence that South Dakota is the home state for subprime card issuer First Premier Bank which gained notoriety for offering a card with an interest rate of 79.9 percent .This one decision added billions to consumer debt.
1982, Garn-St. Germain Depository Institutions Act Bill deregulates thrifts almost entirely, allowing commercial lending and providing for a new account to compete with money market mutual funds. This was a Reagan administration initiative that passed with strong bi-partisan support. Then in 1987,The GAO declares the deposit insurance fund of the savings andloan industry (FSLIC )to be insolvent as a result of mounting institutional failures.
1994, Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act This bill
eliminated previous restrictions on interstate banking and branching. It passed with broad bipartisan support.
1996, The Federal Reserve under, Alan Greenspan, a close associate of Queen of Greed Ayn Rand and a Reagan appointee, reinterprets the Glass-Steagall Act several times, eventually allowing bank holding companies to earn up to 25 percent of their revenues in investment banking. Passed in 1933 as the Banking Act, Glass-Steagall was chipped away over the years and eventually repealed during the Clinton Administration with the Gramm-Leach-Billey Act of 1999. Some experts believe that the acts repeal contributed to the 2008 financial crisis, and the law served as a basis for the Volcker Rule of the 2009 Dodd-Frank reform bill.
1999, Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act With support from Fed Chairman Greenspan, Treasury Secretary Rubin and his successor Lawrence Summers, the bill repeals the Glass-Steagall Act completely. Youll recall that Greenspan, a Reagan appointee was a champion of deregulation who supported tax cuts that contributed to the deficit, and the privatization of Social Security. The easy-money policies of the Fed during Greenspan's tenure has been suggested to be a leading cause of the subprime mortgage crisis
That brings up to the next major event leading up to the crash. The crisis at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mack. True, the two government backed corporations were enmeshed in accounting scandals that lead to a shakeup in top management, and were on the ropes beginning in 2004. Congress saw a need to impose regulations would oversee the pair more like banks, imposing strict requirements on their ability to take excessive risks. For the first time in history, a serious Fannie and Freddie reform bill was passed by the Senate Banking Committee. The bill gave a regulator power to crack down, and would have required the companies to eliminate their investments in risky assets. If that bill had become law, the mortgage meltdown may have been averted. Or not. What we do know do know is that the Democrat minority blocked the vote by threatening a filibuster, tantamount to an actual filibuster. According to Karl Rove writing for the Wall Street Journal, Democrats opposed regulation in large part because the Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs) were an important source of funds for community groups allied with the Democratic Party, and they were run by Democratic power brokers like former Clinton Office of Management and Budget Director Franklin Raines and Walter Mondale's 1984 campaign chairman, James Johnson. And so the Bush reform died. Even coming from Rove, I will concede that there may be a degree of truth to this. But Rove also admits that at least some of the opposition to reform was honorable and that the two corporations fought and presented a plausible argument against more stringent regulation. We should not jump to conclusions without knowing for certain what the Democrats motives were or exactly why the negotiations broke down. And even if Obama and the Democrats were wholly culpable in the Freddie/Fannie diabolical, is it fair to say that it was this alone was the major cause of the housing downturn, and subsequent wider economic woes ?
First, the reality is that theres plenty of blame to go around, and it doesnt fasten only on one party or even mainly on what Washington did or didnt do. As The Economist Magazine recently noted, the problem is one of "layered irresponsibility with hard-working homeowners and billionaire villains each playing a role." Heres a partial list of those alleged to be at fault:
 The Federal Reserve, which slashed interest rates after the dot-com bubble burst, making credit cheap.
 Home buyers, who took advantage of easy credit to bid up the prices of homes excessively.
 Congress, which continues to support a mortgage tax deduction that gives consumers a tax incentive to buy more expensive houses.
 The Clinton administration, which pushed for less stringent credit and down payment requirements for working- and middle-class families.
 Mortgage brokers, who offered less-credit-worthy home buyers subprime, adjustable rate loans with low initial payments, but exploding interest rates.
 Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, who in 2004, near the peak of the housing bubble, encouraged Americans to take out adjustable rate mortgages.
 Wall Street firms , who paid too little attention to the quality of the risky loans that they bundled into Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS), and issued bonds using those securities as collateral.
 The Bush administration , which failed to provide needed government oversight of the increasingly dicey mortgage-backed securities market.
 Collective delusion, or a belief on the part of all parties that home prices would keep rising forever, no matter how high or how fast they had already gone up.
Secondly, we must ask, what role did Fannie and Freddie play in inflating the housing bubble? Contrary to conservative talking points, the answer is very little. During the bubble, loan originators backed by Wall Street capital began operating beyond the Fannie and Freddie system that had been working for decades by peddling large quantities of high-risk subprime mortgages with terms and features that drastically increased the chance of default. Many of those loans were predatory products such as hybrid adjustable-rate mortgages with balloon payments that required serial refinancing, or negative amortization, mortgages that increased the unpaid balance over time.
So, even if Obama and the Democrats were responsible for the Freddie/Fannie crisis, and even if their motives were nefarious as alleged by Carl Rove and others, to say that todays continuing economic problems are a direct result of that one episode is more than a small stretch indeed. The U.S. economy is enormously complicated. Claiming that a single piece of legislation was responsible for (or could have averted) the crisis is just political grandstanding. Yet conservatives continue to harp on Fannie and Freddie since it seems to be one of the few things that they have to hang a hat on.
It should also be noted that while others had been fighting for Fannie-and-Freddie reform for more than a decade, McCain, while critical of Obama and the Democrats, signed onto the bill a full year-and-a-half after it was introduced. And he reportedly didn't do too much for the bill beyond co-sponsoring it and issuing a statement. Yet, Republicans continue to pound the Democrats without placing one iota of responsibility on the Republican controlled Congress or President Bush. Instead, more allegations are levied. One blogger wrote: We now know that many of the senators who protected Fannie and Freddie, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Christopher Dodd, have received mind-boggling levels of financial support from them over the years And, as usual, this has been swallowed whole by those on the right who will stop at nothing to discredit Obama and the Democrats.
The allegations of payoff to Democrats was picked up by Mc Cane during the 2008 presidential campaign when he said While Fannie and Freddie were working to keep Congress away from their house of cards, Senator Obama was taking their money," and "He got more, in fact, than any other member of Congress, except for the Democratic chairmen of the committee that oversees them. Lets look at this. According to Politifact, Corporations cannot give directly to candidates. However, Obama did in fact receive upwards of $126,000 from employees of Freddie and Fannie. What Mc Cain and other accusers failed to mention is that both candidates also received money from Freddie and Fannies boards of directors. The amounts: $16,000 to Obama, $165,400 to Mc Cain. So once again we have those on the right taking a small thread of truth and spinning it to make Obama look like the bad guy.
Lastly, What if the financial crash of 2008 was really caused by income inequality? Not greedy bankers, not reckless homeowners, but the ever widening-gulf between the rich and the poor? And what if the lack of social services like health care made things much, much worse
This is the startling new theory from Raghuram Rajan, the University of Chicago economist who became famous for standing up at a Federal Reserve meeting in 2005 and warning that Wall Street was out of control and headed for a global crash. Think about it.
My final words of advice are these: If you continue to try to make Obama and the Democrats the sole villains for all that is wrong with the economy, youre going look foolish. You will have considerably more credibility if you accept the blame when appropriate to do so. Stop oversimplifying complex problems, stop repeating sound bites from Fox News ,and stop cutting and pasting twaddle from heavily slanted web sites such as World Net Daily or TheReaganCooalition.com. Start checking facts and start thinking before you write. Values aside, we progressives recognize that were not perfect or blameless and conservatives should do the same
I previously posted parts 1 and 2 of the Obama Economy which dealt primarily with the debt and unemployment, and which is still available on this page. Since then, I have been relentlessly attacked by those who cannot accept that it was the Republicans, starting with His Holiness Ronald Reagan who are primarily responsible for where we are today with regard to the national debt. One of the most ludicrous claims now being peddled is that the national debt that were saddled with is the fault of congressional Democrats who took over Congress in 2007.So the story line goes; Obama was one of those Senators, therefore he inherited the mess from himself. Really folks? Im further astounded that these folks are now fallaciously and preposterously trying to pin the blame, not only for the debt, but also for the 2008 financial and housing meltdown on Democrats. This drivel is nothing more than an attempt to obfuscate the evidence to the contrary, since they were unable to actually refute my original argument.
For starters, they completely ignore the fact that the vast majority of the debt that was added during the Bush years was from before 2007. In addition, while the Democrats held a majority of the house during the 110th (07-09) and 111th (09-11)congress, their hold on the Senate was tenuous at best. For the 110th congress, there was an even split of 49 to 49 with 2 independents. The Democrats held the largest majority, 57 seats during the 111th congress, but still short of the 60 needed for a super majority. So, neither party was in complete control of congress. And, although, admittedly, the Democrats had the upper hand, there were forces at work, and policies in place, that could not be easily reversed. And oh yes, Bush was still president until the beginning of 2009.
In any case, the seeds of both problems; the debt, and the financial meltdown were laid long before 2007, as we shall see. I will also add that while the Bush apologists will try to peg our problems to the Democrats in congress, they offer little evidence showing that the Democrats were actually to blame. For the most part, they act as though the mere presence of the Democrats in congress destroyed the economy. Similarly, they will point out that the Dow was over 12,000 on the day that the Democrats took over congress, before crashing, as though to say that this congress brought down wall street as well. Time and again, the tactic has been to take events that are correlated in time and claim cause and effect. Doing so without evidence is an egregious violation of a basic principle of scientific research. Then again, science is not a strong point of certain folks.
In addition, another myth perpetrated by those who would blame the Democrats for deficit spending during the Bush years, have asserted that it is congress and not the president who controls the budget. However, this is a gross oversimplification at best and willfully misleading. The fact is that the Executive prepares the budget request, after which each house of congress passes a budget resolution which must then be reconciled. The president has veto power, which Bush did not exercise. He did however, request and receive debt ceiling increases 19 times.
Currently, there continues to be a hysterical chorus of conservative voices lamenting Obamas out of control spending that is adding to the deficit while they ignore the revenue side of the ledger as Bush did previously, and the current House Republicans are now. They also ignore the fact that according to the Wall Street Journal, during Bushs first term, federal spending grew by 7.3% and in his second term, by 8.1%. During Obamas first term it grew by just 1.4%.
In reality, deficit spending can be laid squarely at Bushs feet. He did in fact add to the debt by virtue of his administrations policies abetted by Congressional Republicans. I do not wish to rehash the history that I laid out previously, but it seems that some things must be repeated to sink in. When Obama took office, the Bush tax cuts that were passed in 2001 and 2003 when Republicans, for the most part controlled both houses of congress, were already in place, the country was is the throes of the recession, and there was no political will to raise taxes at that point. In addition, the country had be saddled a $10.7T Debt, left behind by Bush and his predecessors with more bills coming due from the unfunded wars. In his final year alone, he added 15.9 %. 49% of the increase under Bush was due to his spending increases and 24% because of tax cuts. In addition, The two wars were raging. Afghanistan was prolonged long after the goal of rousting Al-Qaida and getting Bin Laden were forgotten, largely as a result of the distraction by the bogus Iraq debacle. Yes, Democrats voted to fund these wars. There was little choice other than to leave American service personnel at risk, and allow bad situations to get worse. And, lets not forget that Bush and his cronies get us into Iraq under false pretenses.
Now, to turn to the declining economy and the crash of 2008. While during much of Bushs reign, things appeared to be going well on the surface, the economy was a ticking time bomb which finally exploded in 2008. There is wide agreement that the domestic economic downturn was related to a world- wide recession, but also, in no small part, the result of the banking crisis here at home, especially the mortgage melt down that resulted from a lack if government oversight leading to shoddy lending practices. And there was the AGI and the auto industry collapse as well to deal with. Those crisis, in turn can be seen as the result of decades of deregulation which to some extent, had bi-partisan support, which we will look at below.
Closely related to the sub-prime mortgage debacle was the Housing bubble. Irrational exuberance, in the housing market, fueled by low interest rates led many people to buy houses they couldn't afford, because everyone thought housing prices could only go up. In 2006, the bubble burst as housing prices started to decline. This caught many homeowners off guard, who had taken loans with little money down. As they realized they would lose money by selling the house for less than their mortgage, they foreclosed. An escalating foreclosure rate panicked man y banks and hedge funds, who had bought mortgage-backed securities on the secondary markets and now realized they were facing huge losses. By August 2007, banks became afraid to lend to each other because they didn't want these toxic loans as collateral. By December 2008, employment was declining faster than in the 2001 recession. What was behind all of this? The roots can be traced to at least 1978
The following is excerpted from A Short History of Financial Deregulation in the United States by Matthew Sherman of the Center for Economic and Policy Research:
1978, Marquette vs. First of Omaha Supreme Court allows banks to export the usury
laws of their home state nationwide and sets off a competitive wave of deregulation,
resulting in the complete elimination of usury rate ceilings in South Dakota and Delaware. This is why credit card companies can ignore your state's usury law, which limits the amount of interest that can be charged on a loan, and charge whatever rate they want. Next time you pay your credit card bill, make note of where they go. Most likely it will be Delaware or South Dakota. It's no coincidence that South Dakota is the home state for subprime card issuer First Premier Bank which gained notoriety for offering a card with an interest rate of 79.9 percent .This one decision added billions to consumer debt.
1982, Garn-St. Germain Depository Institutions Act Bill deregulates thrifts almost entirely, allowing commercial lending and providing for a new account to compete with money market mutual funds. This was a Reagan administration initiative that passed with strong bi-partisan support. Then in 1987,The GAO declares the deposit insurance fund of the savings andloan industry (FSLIC )to be insolvent as a result of mounting institutional failures.
1994, Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act This bill
eliminated previous restrictions on interstate banking and branching. It passed with broad bipartisan support.
1996, The Federal Reserve under, Alan Greenspan, a close associate of Queen of Greed Ayn Rand and a Reagan appointee, reinterprets the Glass-Steagall Act several times, eventually allowing bank holding companies to earn up to 25 percent of their revenues in investment banking. Passed in 1933 as the Banking Act, Glass-Steagall was chipped away over the years and eventually repealed during the Clinton Administration with the Gramm-Leach-Billey Act of 1999. Some experts believe that the acts repeal contributed to the 2008 financial crisis, and the law served as a basis for the Volcker Rule of the 2009 Dodd-Frank reform bill.
1999, Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act With support from Fed Chairman Greenspan, Treasury Secretary Rubin and his successor Lawrence Summers, the bill repeals the Glass-Steagall Act completely. Youll recall that Greenspan, a Reagan appointee was a champion of deregulation who supported tax cuts that contributed to the deficit, and the privatization of Social Security. The easy-money policies of the Fed during Greenspan's tenure has been suggested to be a leading cause of the subprime mortgage crisis
That brings up to the next major event leading up to the crash. The crisis at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mack. True, the two government backed corporations were enmeshed in accounting scandals that lead to a shakeup in top management, and were on the ropes beginning in 2004. Congress saw a need to impose regulations would oversee the pair more like banks, imposing strict requirements on their ability to take excessive risks. For the first time in history, a serious Fannie and Freddie reform bill was passed by the Senate Banking Committee. The bill gave a regulator power to crack down, and would have required the companies to eliminate their investments in risky assets. If that bill had become law, the mortgage meltdown may have been averted. Or not. What we do know do know is that the Democrat minority blocked the vote by threatening a filibuster, tantamount to an actual filibuster. According to Karl Rove writing for the Wall Street Journal, Democrats opposed regulation in large part because the Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs) were an important source of funds for community groups allied with the Democratic Party, and they were run by Democratic power brokers like former Clinton Office of Management and Budget Director Franklin Raines and Walter Mondale's 1984 campaign chairman, James Johnson. And so the Bush reform died. Even coming from Rove, I will concede that there may be a degree of truth to this. But Rove also admits that at least some of the opposition to reform was honorable and that the two corporations fought and presented a plausible argument against more stringent regulation. We should not jump to conclusions without knowing for certain what the Democrats motives were or exactly why the negotiations broke down. And even if Obama and the Democrats were wholly culpable in the Freddie/Fannie diabolical, is it fair to say that it was this alone was the major cause of the housing downturn, and subsequent wider economic woes ?
First, the reality is that theres plenty of blame to go around, and it doesnt fasten only on one party or even mainly on what Washington did or didnt do. As The Economist Magazine recently noted, the problem is one of "layered irresponsibility with hard-working homeowners and billionaire villains each playing a role." Heres a partial list of those alleged to be at fault:
 The Federal Reserve, which slashed interest rates after the dot-com bubble burst, making credit cheap.
 Home buyers, who took advantage of easy credit to bid up the prices of homes excessively.
 Congress, which continues to support a mortgage tax deduction that gives consumers a tax incentive to buy more expensive houses.
 The Clinton administration, which pushed for less stringent credit and down payment requirements for working- and middle-class families.
 Mortgage brokers, who offered less-credit-worthy home buyers subprime, adjustable rate loans with low initial payments, but exploding interest rates.
 Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, who in 2004, near the peak of the housing bubble, encouraged Americans to take out adjustable rate mortgages.
 Wall Street firms , who paid too little attention to the quality of the risky loans that they bundled into Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS), and issued bonds using those securities as collateral.
 The Bush administration , which failed to provide needed government oversight of the increasingly dicey mortgage-backed securities market.
 Collective delusion, or a belief on the part of all parties that home prices would keep rising forever, no matter how high or how fast they had already gone up.
Secondly, we must ask, what role did Fannie and Freddie play in inflating the housing bubble? Contrary to conservative talking points, the answer is very little. During the bubble, loan originators backed by Wall Street capital began operating beyond the Fannie and Freddie system that had been working for decades by peddling large quantities of high-risk subprime mortgages with terms and features that drastically increased the chance of default. Many of those loans were predatory products such as hybrid adjustable-rate mortgages with balloon payments that required serial refinancing, or negative amortization, mortgages that increased the unpaid balance over time.
So, even if Obama and the Democrats were responsible for the Freddie/Fannie crisis, and even if their motives were nefarious as alleged by Carl Rove and others, to say that todays continuing economic problems are a direct result of that one episode is more than a small stretch indeed. The U.S. economy is enormously complicated. Claiming that a single piece of legislation was responsible for (or could have averted) the crisis is just political grandstanding. Yet conservatives continue to harp on Fannie and Freddie since it seems to be one of the few things that they have to hang a hat on.
It should also be noted that while others had been fighting for Fannie-and-Freddie reform for more than a decade, McCain, while critical of Obama and the Democrats, signed onto the bill a full year-and-a-half after it was introduced. And he reportedly didn't do too much for the bill beyond co-sponsoring it and issuing a statement. Yet, Republicans continue to pound the Democrats without placing one iota of responsibility on the Republican controlled Congress or President Bush. Instead, more allegations are levied. One blogger wrote: We now know that many of the senators who protected Fannie and Freddie, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Christopher Dodd, have received mind-boggling levels of financial support from them over the years And, as usual, this has been swallowed whole by those on the right who will stop at nothing to discredit Obama and the Democrats.
The allegations of payoff to Democrats was picked up by Mc Cane during the 2008 presidential campaign when he said While Fannie and Freddie were working to keep Congress away from their house of cards, Senator Obama was taking their money," and "He got more, in fact, than any other member of Congress, except for the Democratic chairmen of the committee that oversees them. Lets look at this. According to Politifact, Corporations cannot give directly to candidates. However, Obama did in fact receive upwards of $126,000 from employees of Freddie and Fannie. What Mc Cain and other accusers failed to mention is that both candidates also received money from Freddie and Fannies boards of directors. The amounts: $16,000 to Obama, $165,400 to Mc Cain. So once again we have those on the right taking a small thread of truth and spinning it to make Obama look like the bad guy.
Lastly, What if the financial crash of 2008 was really caused by income inequality? Not greedy bankers, not reckless homeowners, but the ever widening-gulf between the rich and the poor? And what if the lack of social services like health care made things much, much worse
This is the startling new theory from Raghuram Rajan, the University of Chicago economist who became famous for standing up at a Federal Reserve meeting in 2005 and warning that Wall Street was out of control and headed for a global crash. Think about it.
My final words of advice are these: If you continue to try to make Obama and the Democrats the sole villains for all that is wrong with the economy, youre going look foolish. You will have considerably more credibility if you accept the blame when appropriate to do so. Stop oversimplifying complex problems, stop repeating sound bites from Fox News ,and stop cutting and pasting twaddle from heavily slanted web sites such as World Net Daily or TheReaganCooalition.com. Start checking facts and start thinking before you write. Values aside, we progressives recognize that were not perfect or blameless and conservatives should do the same
Feb 24, 2013 12:51:43 #
Omuslim is destroying the economy on purpose. He hates America and look at us!! 4 years of him and we're in worse shape than when he took office. He is a disgrace and a traitor. He should be in prison, not the WH. What a god-awful joke he is!!!
Feb 24, 2013 13:08:56 #
James E.
Loc: Ohio
how much more spin can you come up with to justify socialism,there is nothing complex MR. it only people with the idea if we make everyone the same we have done our job its workfare not welfare and stop spending our childerns future. Nothing is free other than the so called progressives ten year plan to this country's demise.
Remember USSR only had a five year plan.Your defense of this idiot Obama's Senate record is insane, voting record------present.
Remember USSR only had a five year plan.Your defense of this idiot Obama's Senate record is insane, voting record------present.
Feb 24, 2013 13:19:24 #
James, it's apparent that you didn't read what I wrote very carefully. I don't think that I even used the work "socialism" once. You're off topic.
Feb 24, 2013 13:22:21 #
im ashamed our children have to go to bed hungry with no bed to go to. if we raised the minimun wage maybe people would be able to get off food stamps and welfare.obama had to make concessions to get off the fiscal cliff and the other thing is doing the same thing. tax loopholes need to be closed. big business is running the country the unions are being beat down by young people who know nothing about the history.people are working harder for less.are you aware of the high cost pensions our congressmen get plus get rich on the job and won't help the president the people voted in.taking our business out of US needs to be penalized.vote these congressmen out that won't represent us. put in term limits. get involved.
Feb 24, 2013 13:22:49 #
Iana, please tell me what you're talking about. What evidence do you have that he hates America? How are we worse off? And by the way this is a forum where we are supposed to be respectful. Calling the President Omuslim is NOT respectful and makes me want to call you an.....I wont say it but it's hard not to.
Feb 24, 2013 13:28:19 #
Feb 24, 2013 13:39:08 #
What am I looking at Iana?? Spell it out. Give me examples of how we are worse off. Give me proof that Obama is a Muslim and Hates America. We are here to deal with facts, not sound bits from Fax news. Show some smarts or go somewhere else.
Feb 24, 2013 13:39:11 #
Feb 24, 2013 14:06:00 #
Thank you judgeglenda.I was beginning to think that this was just another gathering place for idiots
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