Pointing to reality is "fearmongering"

February 8, 2009

IT AIN'T FEARMONGERING IF IT'S TRUE.... Just today, the LA Times has a good report on the unprecedented pressure on state budgets right now -- pressure that will not be alleviated by the federal recovery plan because Sens. Collins & Co. believe state aid isn't stimulative enough. While state shortfalls will lead to painful cuts in practically every state, Nevada is poised to get hit much harder than most.

The Times report noted, for example, that Nevada is "facing the most serious shortfall," and lawmakers will have to cut a striking 38% from its state budget. The impact across the state will be both drastic and unavoidable, most notably in the state's public schools, which will soon face a 15% cut.

It wasn't surprising, then, that Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) criticized Senate "centrists" for cutting $40 billion in state aid from the stimulus package, noting that the aid, which appeared in the House version, was intended to stop states from "laying off cops and firefighters, money to help keep teachers going." Republican Sen. John Ensign of Nevada rejected Frank's comments, labeling the remarks "fearmongering." Indeed, Ensign seemed encouraged by the fact that state budgets, including his own, would have to be slashed, calling the budgets "bloated." He said, "What we should be doing is cutting back."

Got that? As the recession worsens, and government spending is needed to prevent more Americans from losing their jobs, a leading Republican senator whose own state is about to get pummeled, believes it's a good idea to "cut back."
I can think of a variety of ways to respond to this nonsense, but I think Matt Yglesias summed things up nicely:

The idea that it would be good for states to cut back in the midst of the recession is stupid. The idea that the recession won't, absent federal aid, lead to layoffs of state employees such as teachers and firefighters is also stupid. But the idea that it's simultaneously true that the reason we should eschew aid is that states need to cut back and also true that it's fearmongering to warn of layoffs is doubleplus stupid. What does Ensign think cutbacks consist of? States will be reducing vital services. The cutbacks will have the immediate impact of reducing the incomes of laid-off families and beneficiaries of state programs. That will have an additional impact on businesses where the newly laid-off teachers and cops used to work.

And the reduced level of service will have its own bad economic impacts. Cutting back public safety budgets will mean fewer cops on the beat. That means more crime which will further reduce economic activity. State cutbacks to child care subsidies will make it harder for people who lose jobs to find and accept new ones. The cutbacks to mass transit services that are happening across the country will introduce additional rigidity into the labor market and reduce patronage of businesses that people are accustomed to reaching via transit. And in the most severe cases, cutbacks in assistant to the severely impoverished will have a decades-long impact on the well-being of their children.

Sen. John Ensign is entirely comfortable with all of these developments -- those dreaded state budgets are "bloated," after all -- but doesn't want anyone to acknowledge this publicly. Pointing to reality is "fearmongering."
It's not enough for congressional Republicans to stand in the way of sound economic policy during a crisis; they also want to discourage everyone from talking about it

• Pointing to reality is "fearmongering" - sm
  • Fear SHOULD be acknowledged - It's part of the equation. sm

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Rush just seems to have a problem keeping all his pills straight. What does that tell you. He's was buying stuff in parking lots. He was visiting multiple doctors. He has other people's medications on him and yet, he slams someone about pill use ...hypocritical I say.

We hate Bush, we hate Rush, we hate Rove...that is the right's mantra. Everytime we point out something that the right cannot defend or they just simple disagree with...out comes the ***the left's hatred is so palpable we can feel it. They are so negative and hateful about everything and everyone, ***   That is just not true. I personally have not hated anyone in politics since Nixon and I was young then and did not realize that hating him would accomplish nothing other than making me angrier and angrier. So that ***the left hates*** falls on deaf ears here.

that liberals get a HUGE PASS when it comes to verbal spillage.  I've heard some of the most hateful things come out of Howard Dean and all we hear about is what Karl Rove said, and a lot of it was taken out of context.  He didn't say ALL Democrats, he said SOME liberals, i.e. Move On.Org and George Soros.  There WERE groups demonstrating against the war in Afghanistan.  That was a fact.  And how does the Democratic party get by with a former KKK member (Byrd)?  That wouldn't be allowed for 2 seconds on the Republican side.

Please feel free to enlighten us.

You should try to relax.  Music always helps me.  Try this.  LOL.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjXyqcx-mYY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBk32JsV9l8

    From the faux populist gibberish mouthed by speaker after speaker, you would never have known that the Republicans have been in power over the past several years and used that titanic power to lead the country to its present sorry state.

http://www.truthout.org/article/running-from-reality

Summary
On the defensive over the extent of multiple McCain homes, the GOP candidate strikes back. But his TV spot gives an oversimplified and misleading account of how Obama bought his own $1.6 million house in Chicago.

The ad says Chicago power broker Tony Rezko got "political favors" including "$14 million from taxpayers." But there's no evidence of any connection to the Obama home purchase. The $14 million was to build apartments for low-income seniors. Obama wrote a letter supporting the "worthy" project, but both men say Rezko didn't ask for the letter.

It says Rezko "purchased part of the property [Obama] couldn't afford." Rezko's wife did buy an adjoining tract but later sold the land at a profit. Obama paid market price for his home.

McCain launched the attack after Obama ran one capitalizing on McCain's inability to recall for an interviewer how many homes the McCains own. Obama's ad says it's seven. The best tally we've seen puts the figure at eight, counting all the apartments and homes owned by McCain's wife, Cindy, and various family trusts, for themselves and their children.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/154782

So you don't need to research the NAU?  I hope the sand will protect your little brain when all heck breaks loose.

The concept of the NAU has been actively pursued by our government (Bush) and the government of Canada and Mexico since 2005.  Check it out.

The blueprint President Bush is following was laid out in a 2005 report entitled "Building a North American Community" published by the left-of-center Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). The CFR report connects the dots between the Bush administration's actual policy on illegal immigration and the drive to create the North American Union:

At their meeting in Waco, Texas, at the end of March 2005, U.S. President George W. Bush, Mexican President Vicente Fox, and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin committed their governments to a path of cooperation and joint action. We welcome this important development and offer this report to add urgency and specific recommendations to strengthen their efforts.

What is the plan? Simple, erase the borders. The plan is contained in a "Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America" little noticed when President Bush and President Fox created it in March 2005:

In March 2005, the leaders of Canada, Mexico, and the United States adopted a Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP), establishing ministerial-level working groups to address key security and economic issues facing North America and setting a short deadline for reporting progress back to their governments. President Bush described the significance of the SPP as putting forward a common commitment "to markets and democracy, freedom and trade, and mutual prosperity and security." The policy framework articulated by the three leaders is a significant commitment that will benefit from broad discussion and advice. The Task Force is pleased to provide specific advice on how the partnership can be pursued and realized.

To that end, the Task Force proposes the creation by 2010 of a North American community to enhance security, prosperity, and opportunity. We propose a community based on the principle affirmed in the March 2005 Joint Statement of the three leaders that "our security and prosperity are mutually dependent and complementary." Its boundaries will be defined by a common external tariff and an outer security perimeter within which the movement of people, products, and capital will be legal, orderly and safe. Its goal will be to guarantee a free, secure, just, and prosperous North America.

Here is the link if you want to read more.

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=14965#continueA

I cannot believe there are people living today who actually believe that there are not hidden agendas in our government and that "we the people" actually know what is going on.

I keep seeing posts telling us to "drop ridiculous charges", etc about Obama's b/c.  You may not realize this yet, but we are just MTs here voicing our opinion that we do not believe the b/c issue has been resolved (because it hasn't) and that we are glad there are others (judges, lawyers, politicians, etc) who are suing and taking this to the supreme court.  However to tell us to "drop the charges" is just too silly.  We're not the ones who are going to courts, only voicing our opinions.  And last I knew that is what this site is for. 

I see many posts with interesting articles written by jounalists and people who have been involved in the case since it all began (and even people outside the country), and those posts are met with such replies all screaming how any article that is posted is not a "credible source".  I saw someone give news headlines and was told "show us a credible source".  Yet time and time again those same people will come back and cite pro-Obama sites like Factcheck.org, PolitiFact, Huffington Post, etc as credible sources (I even saw someone state Obama's own website as a credible source - had to laugh at that one).  

People from all over the country (and the world) are writing articles about this.  That means there is something to it.  People who are journalists, lawyers, etc, are not going to write articles based on nothing.  If it was all based on nothing we'd be seeing more lawsuits filed against the people writing the articles. 

On this board I see that the people who want the issue resolved and are looking forward to hearing what the supreme courts have to say, and the outcome of all the other numerous lawsuits are doing just that and voicing their opinions.  No need to treat them with disrespect.  You can post your own post on why you believe what you do.  We are all entitled to our opinions, and I enjoy reading the articles.

So let me just say once more....people on this board - we are just MT'sn not the actual people going to the courts suing Obama, hence we have no "charges to drop".  We leave that to more capable hands.  We are voicing our opinions here and will continue to do so until the issue has been resolved.  Don't tell us it has been resolved otherwise there would be no court cases out there.

Lets all wait and see.  And as my grandma used to say to me when I was little "Stop being so silly, you silly goose you".

Reality is truth.  I don't expect you to understand anything concerning the truth, though.  People who see reality for what it is are simply just sick and tired of being lied to, whether it's by Dumbya or by those of your ilk.  Thank God you don't represent the majority of Americans or we'd be in worse trouble than what we're in now.

Trying to communicate with you is impossible, so I choose not to participate in that endeavor any longer.

You have a nice evening now.

It wasn't long ago that I was told by my conservative mtstars buddies that poverty in American was not as bad as we thought.  To them poverty only meant you didn't have extra spending money and that the impoverished had color TVs, air conditioning, cars, the whole enchilada.  They even went through the spiel of posting articles to support them.  It has always been my opinion that poverty is alive and well in America and Katrina has unfortunately revealed this to us all too tragically. -------------------- Katrina Reveals Poverty Reality

Thursday, September 08, 2005 By Kelley Beaucar Vlahos PHOTOS VIDEO Click image to enlarge STORIES • Was Katrina Looting Justified? • Homeland Security Secretary Explains Katrina's Relief Efforts • Complete Hurricane Katrina Coverage • How to Help Stories of the grinding poverty among the survivors of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans vividly illustrate what many say is a forgotten truth of modern American life — that pockets of desperate poverty still exist in a country of unsurpassed wealth and privilege. Underscoring that reality, a report by the U.S. Census Bureau (search) released the same week Katrina hit the nation's southeast announced that the national poverty rate rose for the fourth straight year despite continuing growth in production and political rhetoric that the nation's economy is on the upswing. Click here to read the U.S. Census Bureau's report. According to that report, the number of Americans living under the poverty line grew by 1.1 million in 2004 for a total of 37 million people nationwide. That equals 12.7 percent of the total U.S. population. It is the fourth annual increase. [Poverty] is a problem in America that hasn't gone away — it just went underground for a while, and it shouldn't have, said Sheila Zedlewski, director of the Urban Institute's Income and Benefits Policy Center. Through images of the predominantly black residents of New Orleans pleading for help, leaving destroyed homes with nothing but the clothes on their backs, America got a wake-up call according to Sheldon Danziger at the National Poverty Center at the University of Michigan. People are putting these things together, and it will be interesting to see if the attention of the public stays on this, he said. As a country we'd like to think we moved beyond it, but in reality, [poverty] is still a substantial problem. Others caution against putting too much weight into the new numbers, pointing out that they do not reflect the public assistance low-income individuals and families receive, like Medicaid (search) and welfare, and do not distinguished between truly impoverished individuals and those who are temporarily poor. The poverty rate began to climb in 2000, the year it hit a 26-year low of 11.3 percent of Americans living under the poverty level, according to U.S Census Bureau figures. That was the lowest point since 1974, when the number was 11.2 percent. The highest point of poverty in recent times was in 1993 at 15.1 percent. Before that, was in 1983, at 15.2 percent. In 2004, according to the latest study, the poverty rate among African Americans remained the same — at 24.7 percent. Hispanics also saw no change in their poverty rate at 21.9, while whites saw an increase, from 8.2 percent to 8.6 percent. Asian Americans experienced the only decrease, from 11.8 percent to 9.8 percent. The poverty rate among American families remained at 10.2 percent of the population in 2004. The Office of Budget and Management (search) defines a family of two adults and two children with a median household income of $19,157 or less as living in poverty; or a family of two with no children, making $12,649 a year. Median household income went unchanged in 2004, according to the census bureau, at $44,389. Blacks continue to have the lowest median income among all ethnic and racial groups, making $30,134 annually. Wages earned among Americans, however, declined in 2004. For men over 15 working full-time, year round, the real median earnings declined 2.3 percent from 2003, to $40,798. For women with similar work experiences, wages declined by 1 percent to $31,223. And while unemployment has gone down from 5.5 percent in August 2004 to 4.9 percent in August this year, unemployment among blacks is still the highest in the country, at 9.6 percent in August compared to 4.2 percent for whites and 5.8 for Hispanics. In New Orleans, where blacks make up 67 percent of the population, 27 percent of the residents are living below poverty level according to a recent study by Total Community Action, Inc. (search), a public advocacy group based in New Orleans. Click here to read that study. But some warn that the new census bureau figures may not be an ideal measure, given that they do not take into account the impact of public assistance on a household, or recent tax cuts and child tax credits. Others say the poverty rate had been in steady decline since the early 1990's and see the recent increases as the tail end of the 2000 recession. It's a bit unfortunate to link the hurricane with the issue of poverty in this country, as though there has been no reduction in poverty since the 1980's, said Rey Hederman, senior policy analyst for the Heritage Foundation. Since a high point in 1983 the poverty rate for the U.S has been on a decline, aside from the four years following the brief recession in 1989 and the most recent hike, according to the Census Bureau. Like other economic analysts, Hederman believes the growth in productivity in the U.S economy will eventually produce more jobs and higher incomes for workers. But so far, Hederman admits, that hasn't happened. We've got strong productive growth but wages have been relatively stagnant. It's a bit of a paradox as to why it hasn't happened sooner, said Phillip Swagel of the American Enterprise Institute, who blames, in part, the Internet bust six years ago. Nonetheless, he calls today's economy the most golden era for productivity growth in more than 50 years. In the short term, it means that firms have been able to produce more without hiring more people, Swagel continued. But in the long term, it will mean that wages and income will go up. It takes time for that relationship to take hold. But on Wednesday, the Congressional Budget Office (search) announced that hurricane's damage to the southeast could reduce national economic growth by nearly a percent at time when forecasters were hoping for a three to four percent increase by the end of the year. It also expects a loss of 400,000 jobs in the labor market. Some say that inner cities that have never fully recovered from past economic recessions will no doubt be the hardest hit. I think for the last 25 years, we have had an economy where most of the gains have been concentrated in a small percentage of the workforce, said Danziger. [The] rising tide has not lifted all boats, the economy has shifted so that a smaller portion of the population gets the increases, and the rest is simply happy to have jobs that experience no wage increase or income increases. According to the recent Total Community Action study, poverty rates have remained stagnant in New Orleans in the last 40 years and even without the near total destruction of the city, have been the highest in the nation. It would be ironic that it would take a disaster like this to focus [national attention] on this, Rep. Mel Watt, R-N.C., and member of the Congressional Black Caucus (search), told FOXNews.com, Every area of our lives these disparities exist and we have tried to focus on them all year. Minority populations left behind in many cities often suffer from bad schools and are at a real disadvantage compared to their suburban middle class and affluent counterparts, say experts. The poverty differences by education, by race, by central city versus the suburbs, are long standing, said Danziger, who also said that by leaving New Orleans' most disadvantaged, immobile residents behind the hurricane clearly brought that into stark contrast. The Urban Institute’s Zedlewski admits that over the last several years more resources have been focused on the symptoms of poverty — poor education and healthcare. If you look at the long haul it is true progress has been made, she said, adding that more needs to be done, particularly in the African American community, regarding single motherhood, the high rate of incarcerated males and investing in adult education. Swagel, who recently left his job as chief of staff for the White House Council of Economic Advisors (search), believes the current administration has put into place policies — notably tax cuts — that have stimulated growth and are benefiting middle and lower income families the most. I would say our policies are on the right track, he said. They are working in the right direction, and we should not reverse course when things are improving. Watt doesn't buy the tax cut stimulus scenario. As soon as this President came in and passing these massive tax cuts, [the poverty rate] turned and went in the opposite direction, he said. This administration is about supporting people of higher income and it makes no bones about it. Meanwhile, thousands of displaced people from New Orleans are looking for jobs, and trying to begin new lives in places like Houston and Baton Rouge. Poverty advocates hope that in the long term, available education and job training opportunities, as well as the higher wages that have been promised by economists, aren't out of reach.

Katrina Reveals Poverty Reality

Friday, September 09, 2005 By Kelley Beaucar Vlahos PHOTOS VIDEO Click image to enlarge STORIES • Was Katrina Looting Justified? • Homeland Security Secretary Explains Katrina's Relief Efforts • Complete Hurricane Katrina Coverage • How to Help Stories of the grinding poverty among the survivors of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans vividly illustrate what many say is a forgotten truth of modern American life — that pockets of desperate poverty still exist in a country of unsurpassed wealth and privilege. Underscoring that reality, a report by the U.S. Census Bureau (search) released the same week Katrina hit the nation's southeast announced that the national poverty rate rose for the fourth straight year despite continuing growth in production and political rhetoric that the nation's economy is on the upswing. Click here to read the U.S. Census Bureau's report. According to that report, the number of Americans living under the poverty line grew by 1.1 million in 2004 for a total of 37 million people nationwide. That equals 12.7 percent of the total U.S. population. It is the fourth annual increase. [Poverty] is a problem in America that hasn't gone away — it just went underground for a while, and it shouldn't have, said Sheila Zedlewski, director of the Urban Institute's Income and Benefits Policy Center. Through images of the predominantly black residents of New Orleans pleading for help, leaving destroyed homes with nothing but the clothes on their backs, America got a wake-up call according to Sheldon Danziger at the National Poverty Center at the University of Michigan.