Re: the debt deal reached Sunday night ...

...completely manufactured "crisis" averted at the 11th hour. Really dramatic. Cue both sides claiming victory and siting crisis as "how hard they work for you!", and cable news all atwitter at the latest pre-approved storyline.

Then when the dust settles, the democrats can go back to selling out to big media and the 'fiscally responsible' republicans can slash any spending on the poor, unless the person in the white house has R after their name, in which case they can go back to spending like drunken sailors.

I hope so.

The Tea Party is turning into an extremely destructive force by taking no-compromise stances in a political process that was built on compromise. They had things so completely fucked up that toward the end Democrats were quoting Ronald Reagan and Republicans were turning down bills that included cuts to programs they wanted cut.

We alternate between multiple political parties and have a system of checks and balances for a reason - to keep things level, and to keep one side's agenda from being pushed too far. You can't govern the country like a four year old who wants dessert but completely refuses to eat their asparagus.

They campaigned on an incredibly shitty platform and it's the GOP's fault for legitimizing the whole charade by conveniently remembering they were supposed to be the ones who hated government spending the second Bush left office. I hope the boneheads who voted these idiots into office remember what transpired here this month when it comes time to vote again. People like Joe "Deadbeat Dad" Walsh and Allen "You Are Not a Lady" West need to be sent packing.

Because in Obama's 1.5 years in office the national debt has increased as much as it did during Reagan's 8 years in office and as much as it did during GWB's second term, despite Obama's campaign promises to end Bush's wars that were so very expensive and costing the nation so much money.

"However, the debt is now so high that the rest of the world wonders if you (the USA) has the capability to pay it back."

What you speak of is a debt per assets ratio. We are quite good compared to the rest of the world I heard we are about 90 GDP to Debt, I was told it was more like 60 when I asked a family member who is an expert in this area so my numbers could be off. In comparison Japan is 180! Greece was close to 140 when all hell broke loose.

If any nation that should lose its AAA rating it should be Japan. America has at least 6 other countries with worse debt to asset ratios that will default sooner. Greece failed because it was a poorer country and creditors became nervous it may not be able to pay it off.

Stop watching Fox News and listening to republicans. This is all 100% manufactored. They are correct in that it went up by a very large margin in 2 years due to the great recession, lost jobs, and new corporate tax holes and with people retiring we will hit that dangerous 140 - 180 mark by 2020 easily. But in 2011 it is fine for now.

(Sorry to not respond to the first part of your post, it's late - glad you did enjoy your trip over here.)

I presume you're equating this to the poor state of education here in the US? First of all, it's not so much that way - for instance California books and teaching ideas are also used on a widespread basis. Truthfully, I ascribe the pitiful state of American educational effectiveness to a few things:

• Bad teachers. Sometimes they're bad because of the system they're in, sometimes it's innate lack of talent. The unions will fight tooth and nail to keep them from being fired though.
• Bad students. Too many parents do little or nothing to help their kids succeed in school, and most schools don't do a lot to make learning fun. This ties in with the sensory/mind overload point below too.
• Bad curricula through political correctness. Things have gotten really insane. For one thing, in most schools there are no longer specific classes for the slower (and troublemaking) students. So, the entire class goes at the pace of the slowest students, driving the brighter students rapidly insane with boredom. Then there is the lovely idea that some students have trouble learning math the "traditional" way. So, instead of only the traditional method of addition being taught, there are three or four other approaches that everyone has to sit through even if 90% of the class learned the first way fine. It takes longer, is actually confusing for most students (which one should I use...?) and is generally a horrible idea. Then there is the pap that is taught in the place of geography, history and social studies...history MUST include examples of various ethnicities excelling, regardless of how important they were in the big scheme of things. This is being taken to a new level of stupidity in California which has just mandated that history classes will teach the contributions of gay, transgender, transsexual and bi folk. There is simply too much meaningless pap and too little rigorous education in English, math and science.
• Sensory/mind overload. Never before in history of humanity have children faced the dazzling array of distractions we have today. Computers, smartphones, video games, TV...the list is staggering. When combined with an overemphasis on pop culture and various time-wasting pursuits, not only is there not that much time for education, but there is a ton of information going into the student's mind that is a distraction from school, and I believe in many cases it literally crowds out the important information. This, by the way, is just as much of a problem for most "poor" folk, as all but the very poorest homes have computers, video games and TVs.

It may be "common sense" to you, but I don't see how you don't realize what you just said is impossible - at least in the sense of providing the "best" healthcare for everyone. There are documented horrible failures of British and Canadian healthcare for instance - you are at the mercy of a bureaucracy in order to get treatment. Often the wait times are measured in months. There is a reason so many wealthy foreigners come to America for major procedures.

Just as with your ideas about taxing the rich, there are unintended consequences. Many doctors are quitting the profession because of 0bamacare.

Wait, does this mean all the Tea party crap is over with?

No. Basically the Tea Party says "if you jump down the abyss you'll find that at the bottom there are lots of money and ponies". As the abyss has not been jumped down, they will keep saying "but if they had jumped down the abyss, you would have found the money and the ponies. If there is a single unemployed american worker it is because they did not blindly followed our guidelines".

Being a demagogue is surprisingly easy, as you do not have to adapt to reality (you expect that reality will adapt to you). The easiest way to discredit them would be to given them power, but history shows how dangerous that can be...

Yeah cause I am sure some lapses in health care are much better than having no chance of having it all, give me a break.

>>The amount of people I ran into that believe dinosaurs roamed the earth 6000 years ago

So you were walking around asking people when dinosaurs roamed the earth? I find that implausible, otherwise - in all my years of living in America, I can't think of one time when, say, a waitress at IHOP casually remarked to me, "Hey, you know the earth is only 6000 years old?"

>>who thought "Holland" was a town in Michigan, not to mention the amount of people who thought they traveled a lot because they saw 10 US States or more, is staggeringly high.

It's always a safe bet to bet on ignorance, though if Holland actually is a town in Michigan, what are you complaining about? There's also a Paris in Texas and a lot of other states as well. And to be fair, France is the size of Texas, and England the size of California, so 10 US States is like visiting half of Western Europe. =)

>>The thing that struck my wife and I on this trip was the enormous discrepancy between rich and poor

You've never been to the UK, then? I'd never seen so many poor or unemployed (and hopeless) people walking around as when I visited Wales for a bit of a castle tour, our drove around in Belfast, or walked around in Ilford / Gant's Hill.

Actually, what really bothered me about the UK was how a middle class existence so closely resembled how our poor people live there. They live in endless rows of identical flats, each of which looks crummier than the Section 8 housing we provide to poor people around here, but probably costs 10x as much.

>>1) Why is it so hard to not let the Texas board of education decide what is said about evolution and history in schools across the nation? Don't you people realize those idiots are insane fundamentalists?

1) Don't believe everything you read on Slashdot these days. California is more influential than Texas in textbook design these days.
2) You should read Slashdot more often. These "insane fundamentalists" struck down the anti-evolution measure by a unanimous vote.

>>3) Why is it so hard to realize the Bush tax cuts are completely uncivilized? Your working class is paying the bills for three wars you shouldn't even be in to begin with, and you are hell bent on letting the richest people in the country screw you out of billions of dollars of tax money?

For fuck's sake, stop getting all of your news from HuffPo. Corporations and Wealthy individuals (top 20%) pay 75% of all income tax in America. The bottom quintile pays NEGATIVE 10%. The middle 60% of America pays the remaining 25%.

I know it's rough when facts don't align properly with your preset sense of reality, but I'm fucking tired of people spreading the lies that the working poor bear the income tax burden in America. When I made 18k a year as a grad student, I paid money into retirement/SSN/Medicare, but I didn't pay anything in taxes.

>>People who deserve a better educational system

It sounds to me like your country needed a better educational system.

Oh, snap.

>>You do know that most of this increase was caused *during* the Bush wars, right? The Bush administration kept it off the books with accounting tricks, Obama brought it back on the books.

Bush and Obama are both responsible for the mess we're in right now. And Barney Frank, for causing the whole housing mess to begin with (as much as anyone in gov't is responsible).

The Tea Party is a bit too hardline for my taste, but they successfully raised a 3rd party opposition to the big-government Democrat party and the big-government Republican party.

All the compromises up till now just kicked the can down the road a bit further, and this one does, too. $100B in annual cuts is insignificant, though the additional $150B automatic cuts will make a bit more of a difference if it triggers.

Typical eurofags, dressed up in Hugo Boss and drove to Paris to go antiquing.

It's only easy while you're in the opposition. Once you're in power, it's extremely difficult to keep up the simplifications (populism) that sound so good to the people.

But as you say, history has shown that might not be a good idea. Make sure they're in a sort of coalition where they are the minority. In other words: if the republicans get to power, and the tea party is a minority group within the republicans, they'll be forced to be more reasonable.

>>As is the whole of congress. What's your point?

My point is that up till now there's been nobody trying to rein in the spending in the capital until the Tea Party revolution occured in 2010, then it suddenly became a priority for both major parties. Give credit where it's due.

>>They are not a third party, they are simply a vocal and somewhat extreme wing of one of the two existing parties

They did it the smart way - third parties have a snowball's chance in Washington of being elected, so they mounted primary challenges to a lot of established Republicans and took over seats that way. If you weren't paying attention at the time, the national RNC was adamantly against the Tea Party (the RNC being made up of McCainites) before they were for it, to paraphrase John Kerry. You might remember the uproar from the Tea Party when the RNC first posted a "Tea Party" page on gop.com - it was widely (and rightly) seen as an attempt by the RNC to grab the reins of the bull.

>>Hah! Cutting $100B out of a $1400B deficit hardly counts as significant

Right... which is why I called it "insignificant". =)

There is no irony, but I think we can all see the disrespect.

Both are spending. One party actually tries to pay for their spending. It ain't the GOP - 'tax and spend liberals' is usually the slur thrown about. That's called fiscal responsibility in most places.

Any 'cuts' to Medicare/Social Security will simply be pushing costs to the states and to individuals. It's great to do so when you are independently wealthy like most of Congress or aren't yet old. Otherwise it's a damn shell game. Are there reforms needed in these programs? Sure. Means testing is the first and easiest one. Bill Gates doesn't need either program yet gets paid for them. The cost of not having these programs will vastly out pace the cost of them.

people should remember that without the Bush tax cuts or wars, we would be DEBT FREE right now. Literally. Not just deficit free but DEBT FREE. Yet even the Dems caved to extending those tax cuts.

You see that? Tax AND spend. We call that fiscal responsibility. As opposed to the GOP, just spend plan that got us here. The VAST majority of the current debt has been rung up by the GOP and cleaning up the mess left to Obama by Bush. The numbers [whitehouse.gov] don't lie.

But go ahead and try to refute that...

The top 1% earn 24% of all income. Top 1% represents over $350,000, but we know of individuals who are making millions. Billions. The remaining 9% of your top 10? They make what, $100-$350K/year? They pay between 28-33%/year, or $28K-$115K, leaving them with between 72-115.5K. That's still pretty decent bank.

For one of those biggier bonus folks (let's say a nice $1M a year to be conservative), we're looking at $770K of wealth left.
See the difference?

If we taxed those guys 50%, they'd STILL have far more than the remaining 99%.
That's the point.

So when someone is able to succeed they should be punished by having a larger share taken away? One should be able to enjoy the fruits of their labor.

I'm not against taxation as it is necessary for roads, police, etc., but I am against one person being taxed at 50% while another gets a free ride simply because one is more successful and productive than the other.

True the numbers don't lie. The rate at which the deficit is increasing has increased in each of Obama's THREE years in office; two of which his party had majority in both houses where he had lots opportunity to turn things around. Blame Bush for creating the hole if you like, but admit that so far Obama's solution for getting out has amounted to: dig faster.

"tax and spend" is inherently more responsible than just "spend". You agree with at least that much yes?

Which is what unemployment insurance explicitly does, yet the GOP decries this as freeloading when in fact those people actually paid for it already. Where your analogy breaks down is that you need to spend to have money coming in. During a recession, both consumers and businesses cut back. This further deepens the recession. What do you do? Just let it hit bottom hard and wait it out? Or do you step in and spend money, deficit spend, to increase demand and thus start economic recovery. Bonus if you have to spend that money anyway, two birds with one stone; i.e. 'infrastructure'.

Again, one party was in favor of this, one decried it.

Have both Dems and GOP been irresponsible? Sure. But one side has at least *tried* to pay for their programs. The GOP flatly has not paid for any of their tax cuts in any way. ("they'll pay for themselves!"). Magic Ponies indeed.

Who caused that recession? Bush and GOP policies.
The main culprit in the recession is not either of the parties, but rather the concept of "everyone should own their own home". Both parties had a hand in inflating the bubble, but ultimately it was our own unwillingness to believe that bad things could happen if we made it easier for more people to get a house.

I do think that GOP policies had a large part in driving up the national debt (tax cuts and two foreign adventures), but the Democrats are just as responsible for the policies that lead to the housing collapse.

From what I've heard, it's mostly spending cuts (where it hurts, likely) and tax loopholes. Most of the debt we now face was put in place by tax cuts former President George W Bush put in place.

So...sunset his taxes (early). I don't even think this topic is mentioned much...the tea party idiots just soak up too much oxygen for anyone else to speak.

Having said that, our tax code is a "populist atrocity". The general public don't seem to know/realize one of the fundamental differences between corporate and individual taxes. This one little tidbit, if applied to individuals and corporations equally, would drastically change our tax discussion.

Folks, corporations are not taxed like individuals. Before you ever see your paycheck your taxes are already paid. Now, let's do a thought experiment. Imagine that you never paid taxes until the end of the quarter (or year). Not only that, but whatever you owed was a FRACTION of your quarterly (yearly) income! So let's say you made $10,000 (gross) that quarter. At the end of it, after you paid for rent, food, utilities, HEALTH CARE, and other odds and ends, you're left with $4,000 (net = gross - 'costs'. I'm assuming going to the movies isn't included in costs). Uncle Sam then says "hey, I want 30% of the $4,000." You pay Sam $1,200 and go on with your life.

That's the tax situation for corporations. It's just maybe insanely unequal to the taxation the general public sees.

If there was ever a time where it is plainly evident to the majority of the Citizens of the United States of America that our career (and just voted in) politicians on BOTH sides ultimately do not truly care or wish to represent their constituents, this "crisis" over the debt is it.

This is the time to increase how many sides there are in politics of all levels - from local to national. We need more accurate representation across the board - this country is not just Democrats and Republicans. It hasn't been for a long time. Of course, the current party in power (because there is very little difference these days between Dems and Repubs) wants to remain in power and thus there are high barriers of entry for the so-called Third Parties. NOW is the time for Americans to push for those barriers to get on tickets to be removed. NOW is the time for those who truly want to see better debate and more accurate representation of their concerns to let their voices be heard. NOW is the time to throw that straw-man argument everyone kicks around when a third party is mentioned right back out there - A Vote for Democrats and Republicans is a Wasted VOTE!

Bring some sanity to American political system by bringing in NEW points of view - Green, Libertarian, Populist, and many others - to the table. Now is truly the time for a change and one which could help the United States move forward - not stagnate, which is what we're doing under our two party system. With the amount of dissatisfaction among the populace, it could happen. The makings of opening our political process are there, waiting for those of us interested in a new path and some actual change in the status quo.

I have no desire to hold an office because, frankly, that kind of power scares me. Representing, _truly_ representing, the hopes, fears, concerns, and wishes of those constituents who helped put you into that office? Yeah, that weighs on a person I would think. With that said, if it would help break open the system and start the movement I spoke of above, I would willingly submit and run for an office - with the full disclosure that I do NOT care who helped me get into office, I will do my best to represent the will (of the majority) of the the people while also representing the party and, of course, my beliefs (which I would share openly).

Interesting. All but one country with an AAA rating has tax payer based medical care and a socialist party in one form or another. I wonder if the country without those "burdens" will be dropped from the list.

I hate to argue with you. Especially about a subject that has been very effective in destroy the US economy. But. Tax cuts and deregulation have created huge numbers of jobs and massive amounts of wealth. The jobs are all over seas and the wealth is in the pockets of anyone with no moral values what so ever; but, it is still true to fact. I'm sorry.