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• despite the increasing budget deficit. When George W Bush took office there was a $236.4 Billion surplus (Source: Congressional Budget Office.) The budget deficit of $446 billion (Source: CNN.) In addition, the national debt has incressed from $5,674,178,209,886.86 to $7,347,867,800,168.01 during the Bush administration (Source: US Treasury Dept. Office of hte Public Debt)
• [Bush Supports] Pre-emptive military action anywhere in the world to prevent potential threats toward the United States " we will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right of selfdefense by acting preemptively against such terrorists, to prevent them from doing harm against our people and our country...To forestall or prevent such hostile acts by our adversaries, the United States will, if necessary, act preemptively." -The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, written by The National Security Council and approved by George W Bush (Sept. 2002) The statement which you claim is one sided says exactly the same thing as Bush's own office policy documents.
• [Bush Supports] addressing the budget deficit, if at all, by cutting government spending (except for defense spending) rather than raising taxes "Many of the tax cuts - including the new, low 10 percent tax bracket, the reduction in the marriage penalty, the doubling of the child tax credit, the phase-out of the death tax, and the increase in small business expensing - are set to expire. This tax relief must be made permanent so families and businesses can plan for the future with confidence." Source: The Bush Line: President Bush's Record of Cutting Taxes from George W Bush's Offical Campaign Website) That sure doesn't sound like he wants to raise taxes and the only other way to balance the budget would be by cutting spending.
• [Bush Suppoorts] Opening more forests in the US to logging and opening more Federal land to oil exploration "President Bush will seek to promote environmentally sound domestic oil production" (Source: A Plan for Creating Opportunity for America's Workers, George W Bush's Offical Campaign Website) and signed the ironically named "Healthy Forest Initative" which opened a huge amount of public land for logging.

And what exactly happens when they "put it in the bank" as you claim? (which they generally do not, but let's say you are right)

Banks loan that money out to people who need loans. That's how banks make a profit -- they receive interest on those loans they were able to make using money people have deposited with them.

So, the money increases in velocity by sheer fact that the bank isn't going to sit on it either; they're going to make the money work for them.

I said earlier that you were wrong though. Most wealthy people do not stuff their money into a bunch of savings accounts earning 0.30%-2.20% APY. Anybody with a clue (and say what you will about the rich, most rich people didn't get where they are by being *complete* morons, President Bush aside) invests that money in higher-returning ventures -- stocks or bonds are the typical example, but many play in real estate or foreign-exchange too. All of those have potentially higher returns than merely keeping money in a bank.

Most of the middle-upper class of America (those in the 2nd quintile of income, roughly), for example, have too much personal liquid wealth from their jobs to save it in a bank, because the FDIC only insures up to $100,000 of savings; most middle-upper income folks have more than that to their names. After that $100k, you're on your own, and for most people in that class, losing their hard-earned wealth is not an option. So they invest in mutual funds or their own private portfolio of stocks instead, in hopes to earn a greater ROI than they would by letting it sit in a bank, since either way, their wealth isn't insured by the FDIC...

But of course, you know all about rich people. They just put their money in the bank and let it do... nothing???... I'm no expert on what the rich do, but I know they don't let their money just sit and rot.

Our economy depends on their re-investment, and so does their personal desire to make more money. The relationship works both for the economy as a whole and for those who invest in it. Welcome to Economics, champ. :-)

Oh, and you might want to check your assumption that the rich aren't taxed very much (see "share of tax liability" for the highest quintile of Americans in individual income taxes. Note that these are percentages, and the value in that cell reads "78"...).

I haven't read the entire paper-- but I did skip right to Section 4, to see the "conclusions", and read that in some detail. I love this bit (below), from section 4, describing the "Effects on Equity" in revising copyright law in favor of the copyright holder:

In the near term, copyright owners would benefit at the expense of consumers. However, if the additional revenues to copyright owners enabled creators to undertake more projects, consumers could also benefit from the greater availability of creative works in the long term.

Yes-- I'm sure the copyright holders would "undertake more projects". Oh-- and, certainly, those works are going to available in the "long term"-- or at least until they're not so profitable as to be sold anymore, at which time they'll be allowed to "fall out of print", will become unavailable to anyone, and will be "protected" for another 100 years (at which time the media they're stored on, and the compression and encryption algorithms used to encode and encrypt them will probably be vastly outdated and outmodded).

The public grants copyright as a social contract to the creators of content. It is a CONTRACT, and it "goes both ways"-- or rather, it did, in the United States, under the original terms of copyright set forth in the Constitution. The amalgamation of shit we have today bears little to no resemblence to the "founder's copyright", and is skewed heavily in favor of the copyright holders.

Copyright is granted BY THE PEOPLE. If we don't like the current copyright system-- if we want to "trade music files", or download movies "P2P"-- if the public really belives that's the right thing, we need to CHANGE THE FUCKING LAW.

Personally, I believe it's time for the contract to be renegotiated. Public outcry is a good start. Tell your friends, tell your coworkers. Talk to them about the DMCA and the abuses we've all seen. Talk to them about the efforts, past and present, to outlaw digital versions of technologies that are "protected uses" of analog technologies. Talk about "broadcast flags", and "fair use".

I think I'd disagree with you though I guess its all how you define "any significant way". The Pentagon budget declined from $319.7 billion in 1991 to a low of $266 billion in 1996 and thats not factoring in inflation. It dropped briefly in 1965 and when Vietnam was winding down but otherwise its been up every year since 1962.

From the CBO

The obviously disturbing trend is the fact that its exploded from $295 billion in 2000 to $410 billion now and thats NOT including expenditures in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Bush administration has been running those exepenses on a separate budget in an effort to conceal the true size of the DOD budget and to avoid sticker shock if Americans saw the real figure which must be approaching $500 billion now, $300 billion to $500 billion in 4 years is a massive escalation especially facing a rag tag band of Muslim insurgents with no weapons other than those they improvise.

Its also useful to reflect on the massive inflation during the Reagan years. Bush and Reagan, what a pair of book ends.

1975 87.6 Billion dollars
1976 89.9
1977 97.5
1978 104.6
1979 116.8
1980 134.6
1981 158.0
1982 185.9
1983 209.9
1984 228.0
1985 253.1
1986 273.8
1987 282.5
1988 290.9
1989 304.0
1990 300.1
1991 319.7
1992 302.6
1993 292.4
1994 282.3
1995 273.6
1996 266.0
1997 271.7
1998 270.2
1999 275.5
2000 295.0
2001 306.1
2002 348.9
2003 404.9

Revenues most emphatically did not double, unless you count the economic expansion that followed the tax INCREASE in the first two years of the Clinton administration.

Where in the world do you get the notion that revenues doubled? In fact, federal spending as a percentage of GDP peaked during the Bush I administration.

During the eight years of the Reagan presidency, revenue went from 517.1 billion dollars to 769.2 billion dollars (quite an expansion in absolute dollars, but hardly double the revenue). In the meantime, the public debt went from 711.9 billion dollars to 1.74 TRILLION dollars, more than doubling. (Source is the CBO).

Also, if you look at tax revenue as a percentage of GDP (the total economic output of the nation), during the Reagan years you see that taxes were indeed cut, from 18.9% of GDP to 17.5% of GDP. But if the intention was for that to reduce the debt, that failed. In percent of GDP terms, from 26.1% of GDP to 39.6% of GDP.

If we look at on whom the tax burden fell, individual income taxes were 244.1 billion in 1980 and 349.0 billion in 1986. Corporate income tax went from 64.6 billion to 63.1 billion over the same period. How corporate America suffers!

Social security and Medicare over this time went from 157.8 billion to 283.9 billion.

And the evil "Death Tax" the Republicans love to attack? 6.4 billion to 7.0 billion.

Oh, and while you are blaming Congress for the "spending" side, *All* of the expansion in entitlements were offset by increased payroll taxation. The increase? The defense budget.

Now, understand, I'm not saying this was a bad thing. I think the cold war is over because of this massive increase in Federal spending, but put the blame for the deficits and the debt where it lies: In the budget proposed and pushed by the adminstration.

Again, you can't get the facts from the press on the right or the left. You have to go look at the data.

Nobody in the mass media is telling the story truthfully and completely. Not the traditional news media, and certainly not the right-wing talk radio world.

You will hear the CBO bashed, but remember the Congressional Budget Office is currently run by the Republicans and there sits the data.

Go look at it.

Oh, BTW, from 1992 to 2000, revenue DID double (from 1.091 trillion to 2.025 trillion, and the debt went down from its 1997 peak of 3.772 trillion to 3.409 trillion). However, the budget has gone back into deficit in 2002 and 2003 and the debt is increasing again. We can argue about the cause, but the big new item in the budget is running two major military operations.

Doh! I looked at the second link, not the first.

Here are some actual other sources. DD(x) Frigate info

Cost of the DD(x) frigate, and rollout schedule

When poor or middle-class family saves money on taxes, they buy *groceries*.
No, actually the poor buy a much higher proportion of cigarrettes and alcohol than the rest of the population. The middle class, aren't hurting for groceries, they just may not be able to buy a new car.

Bush cut taxes, maybe, but the bottom 50% or so isn't any better off.
That is because the bottom 50% pay so little of the overall tax as it is.

The top 50% *may* pay 95% of the taxes (doubtful) in terms of the government's total tax intake.
Not doubtful, thats numbers straight from the Government

You sure as hell better be giving some of it back to help people who aren't able to pull the big bucks in through their jobs.
Why? Occupations are a choice in this country. The reason one person makes $30,000 is their services are worth $30,000. If they were worth $150,000 or $2million, then the rational person would simply form their own business and earn that much instead. It's about supply and demand and finding opportunities to create value. They are out there for anyone willing to find and work for them.

Try living within spitting distance of the poverty line, and *then* tell me that the rich deserve their tax breaks
I have. I grew up below the poverty line in fact. I just refuse to believe that the "government" owes me anything. I believe I should be able to work for what I get and nothing more. The rich don't "deserve" their tax breaks because that way of thinking is backward. They just deserve to keep more of what they produce. The only difference between the rich and the poor in this country is the rich understand how to produce. They reallize that they are not dependent on an employer for their job, but instead their ability to make or do something that is worth more to someone else. Simple as that.

Isn't true, there hasn't been any "surplus". When Clinton got out we we're in DEBT and we still are, just worse.

The vast majority of Government spending actually goes to defense programs and funding corporate wellfare not "Socialist" programs, whatever that means. Your stats are wrong and you are an idiot. Please see this for more realistic and accurate depictions of government spending. Or note the discretionary spending figures listed here. You might also want to read some information about military expenditures.

Socialist programs? Wtf is that? How is this insightful? Maybe SOCIAL programs, but socialist? That is absurd. I have pride in my country too, but it is very unfortunate that people like you live here. This ain't the red scare, buddy.

Correction to myself: Trade deficits exist, but they are not inherently harmful.

See here.

See here.

See here.

See here.

Most importantly, read this entire CBO report on the effects of NAFTA.

Is that an ironclad lockbox? Because we all know what happened to that!

The defense budget is the odd-man-out when compared to other budgets.

Thanks to the Internet, it has become trival to check statistics on this sort of thing, which makes the continued repeat appearance of this sort of dogmatic mantra rather depressing.

CBO Historical Data

"Entitlements" (including Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security) have outweighed total "discretionary spending" (of which defense is less than half) every year for more than a quarter-century.

"Discretionary" spending in 2002 was about 350 billion for "defense", $26B "international", and $360B "domestic" spending.

For 2002, entitlements cost about $1.2 trillion, three and a half times as much as defense spending, including over $450B for Social Security, $400B for Medicare/Medicaid, and $424B for other means-tested programs, each of which is more than the total spent on defense.

Note that "defense" spending includes money for items such as personnel salaries ($100B, an interesting comparison to the $50B spent on unemployment benefits), as well as such clearly evil programs as "Military Family Housing" or the "Armed Forces Retirement Home Fund". About $50B is R&D, helping to bring you such horrors as GPS, MRAM, and the Internet. You can see the whole overview for yourself.

Defense spending is currently about 3-3.5% of GDP. It's come down since the early 90s, when it was around 5%. In the "Reagan years" in the mid 80s, it was about 6%. And that was down from spending in the 60s and early 70s, when it was up as high as about 9% of GDP. Over the same period, entitlements have gone from about 6% of GDP, to about 11-12% of GDP. Defense has been cut to about one third, and entitlements have doubled, since the early 60s.

Countries that spending near this percentage of GDP on defense include the UK (~2.5%), France, and South Korea. Countries that spend more include Bahrain, Greece, and Turkey. Countries that spend 10% or more of their GDP on defense include Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. Other NATO allies in the 1-2% range include Norway, the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, Spain, and Canda. Even Japan spends more than 1% of GDP on defense, despite their constitutional limitations.

In what way is defense spending in the US an "odd man out compared to other budgets"? "Providing for the common defense" is, after all, one of the chief purposes for the existence of the US Federal government, even if we neglect "to secure the blessings of liberty" and a bit of "insuring domestic tranquility". There's certainly no shortage of promoting the general welfare going around just due to the defense budget.

By CBO's estimates, NAFTA increased U.S. exports to Mexico by 2.2 percent ($1.1 billion) in 1994--an effect that rose gradually, reaching 11.3 percent ($10.3 billion) in 2001. Similarly, the agreement boosted imports from Mexico by amounts that rose from 1.9 percent ($0.9 billion) in 1994 to 7.7 percent ($9.4 billion) in 2001.

Relative to the size of the economy, the increases in exports never exceeded 0.12 percent of U.S. GDP, and the increases in imports never exceeded 0.11 percent of U.S. GDP. The effects were more significant for the much smaller Mexican economy, however. The increase in U.S. exports to Mexico represented 1.9 percent of Mexican GDP in 2001, and the increase in U.S. imports from Mexico equaled 1.7 percent of Mexican GDP.

<paranoid rant>

You see, GE could give a shit about wind power. All you have to do is follow the money. First of all check out the Energy Policy Act of 2003, as Senator Domenici (NM) promises it will fix a whole laundry list of problems with our energy supply (real and percieved). Do` we really need a new Under Secretary position for energy and science as well as two new Assistant Secretary positions: one for science and one for nuclear energy, I digress.

Anways Being from New Mexico, the home of Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories Don't be so shocked when Domenici's bill is pro nuclear.

Well, John Rice President and CEO GE Power Systems, recently (May 8) sez he's cautiously optimistic that there will be a new nuclear facility in the United States and has spoken with half-dozen major nuclear utilities about building a new reactor .

And I suppose since GE is a member of United States Energy Association and gave about $9 Million in campaign contributions (since 1990), It probably has some say into Domenici's Energy Bill which provisions for up to 8-10 new 1100MW nuclear reactors that The taxpayers (read you and I) would pay, through loans, 50% of the costs to build these. And according to the Congressional Budget Office the risk of default on such a loan guarantee to be very high - well above 50 percent(p.11). The CBO also figures that each of these will cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $3Billion.

< /paranoid rant >

So why the hell would GE develop it's patents on Wind Turbines when the Good Ol US of A is gonna spend $52.6Billion over the next 10 years (p.1) on the Energy Policy Act of 2003.

Just follow the money....

<paranoid rant>

You see, GE could give a shit about wind power. All you have to do is follow the money. First of all check out the Energy Policy Act of 2003, as Senator Domenici (NM) promises it will fix a whole laundry list of problems with our energy supply (real and percieved). Do` we really need a new Under Secretary position for energy and science as well as two new Assistant Secretary positions: one for science and one for nuclear energy, I digress.

Anways Being from New Mexico, the home of Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories Don't be so shocked when Domenici's bill is pro nuclear.

Well, John Rice President and CEO GE Power Systems, recently (May 8) sez he's cautiously optimistic that there will be a new nuclear facility in the United States and has spoken with half-dozen major nuclear utilities about building a new reactor .

And I suppose since GE is a member of United States Energy Association and gave about $9 Million in campaign contributions (since 1990), It probably has some say into Domenici's Energy Bill which provisions for up to 8-10 new 1100MW nuclear reactors that The taxpayers (read you and I) would pay, through loans, 50% of the costs to build these. And according to the Congressional Budget Office the risk of default on such a loan guarantee to be very high - well above 50 percent(p.11). The CBO also figures that each of these will cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $3Billion.

< /paranoid rant >

So why the hell would GE develop it's patents on Wind Turbines when the Good Ol US of A is gonna spend $52.6Billion over the next 10 years (p.1) on the Energy Policy Act of 2003.

Just follow the money....

I think including only the discretionary part of the health budget (leaving out the much larger medicare and medicaid numbers), and also ignoring the fact that most education funding comes from the states (and should), skews the numbers a little. But I guess that's what politics is all about.

But anyway, my initial point was not whether we're spending too much or too little on military, but that it's unrealistic to expect $200 billion to fix a $1.2 trillion problem that we're already throwing more than $400 billion at.

Reagan's tax cuts added to the deficit, not subtracted.

You will notice that even Clinton's record surplus started declining in 2000

Actually, the graph may look that way, but it is more an artifact of the (rather large) sampling interval and the use of a line chart rather than a bar chart (which would have been less misleading, given the sampling interval).

In other words, it looks like there is a declining line at the end of Clinton's term, but that's because you're connecting a very high dot in Clinton's last year (2000) to a lower dot in Bush's first (2001).

For the data from which the graph was generated, go to the source.

Everything else is perception only. It's far easier for the government to raise taxes as long as they can convince the majority of the people that "someone else" is paying for it.

The only way to simplify the tax system and to make it truly fair is to eliminate hidden taxes (e.g., exise taxes and corporate taxes) and double- or triple-taxation (e.g., inheritance taxes), and impose a single rate on everybody with some form of exemption. (The exemption would "untax" the poorest people and basically make the rest of the system progressive.) I personally prefer the mechanism to be a retail sales tax with a rebate mechanism.

--

Actually according to CBO that last time we had a surplus was 1960. http://www.cbo.gov/show doc.cfm?index=1820&sequence=2&from=5

What if "The sun is very big and very hot" had been part of it? Would you deny that factual assertion simply because I'm, in your mind, "one of those people"?

Of course not, that's silly. If you had included the comment about the sun, it would have been the only factual statement in your post. (Of course, I suppose that you could argue that "big" and "hot" are both subjective terms.) Let's go through your original post and forget the refernce to Joe Firmage.

What's sad about it is that it typifies the attitude of just about every corporation on earth; not simply "Can I make money off of this?" but rather "How can I make the most possible money, no matter whose rights I have to step on, as long as I can legally get away with it?" Corporations have no morals. Their only motivation is greed.

Just about every corporation on earth is purely motivated by greed? I disagree. Plus, you still dodge the question as to why this would be wrong. The point of a corporation is to maximize profits. Just because you want to label it as greed doesn't make it evil.

This leads to Microsofts and Exxons and Ted Turners. Big business, big banks, politicians, and all their combined greed is going to destroy this planet (if it hasn't already). They're so afraid of losing a little market share, power, prestige, or profit that they're willing to keep poisoning our air, water, land, and space just to keep the money rolling in.

Now all corporations are killing the planet? The planet has already been destroyed? That is simply absurd. How is Bill Gates poisoning the planet? His company might make poor software, but do you think that this is poisoning the planet? What about Turner, one of your other examples? How is he poisoning the planet? Ok, Exxon had an oil spill. You found 1 example. Congratulations. That must mean that all corporations are evil and greedy.

The money must roll; that is their only concern. This is to me unconscionable.

And this hurts you how?

So what can be done? How do we save ourselves from these self-serving greedy capitalist bastards?

A better question might be (at least here in the US), "How can we save ourselves from the tree-hugging socialists on the left who seek to gain personal power through a constant cycle of increased taxation, redistribution, and dependance?" Yehaw, them evil greedy bastards got to be stopped. I've got news for you. After you "stop" the capitalists, there's no one left to suck the money from. The top 15% of income earners in the US shoulder more that 50% of the tax burden (source: Congressional Budget Office - stats from 1995).

Is there an unfortunate paragraph in the US Code that keeps you from increasing your profits 1.09% because it prohibits toxic waste dumps next to elementary schools? Just buy a lobbyist and send him to Congress and have him whine and pass out gifts and do everything possible to get that paragraph deleted from the law.

Care to back this one up with a fact or two? Yeah, buying votes is wrong, and certainly happens. I'm not denying that. I do deny that all or even a majority of corporations participate in this. The largest and strongest lobbies are typically the government unions. Look at the teacher's union. Good god, you want corruption, start with them.

Greed is the root of all evil, and it is a basic part of human nature... and to me, that is the saddest thing of all.

So now all humans are evil too? I seriously feel bad for you and the dark world that you live in. I see people as inheriently good. The bad ones are few and far between.

Now, regarding Joe Firmage. I have no clue what he's really about, and I didn't judge you because of what might have been said about him. I agree with your distrust of the media, so I can feel for you there. If you say he's your hero, ok. I won't hold it against you. I will, however, strongly disagree with your assertation that humans are evil and are destroying the planet.

In corporate America, it's practically illegal to do anything with money except distribute it to stockholders as quickly as possible. This is great for the stockholders, but is short-sighted, especially tough on the social fabric of a country in which politicians campaign for office mostly on vows to do little or nothing.

Politicians should be doing little or nothing. Everytime a politician does anyting in this country, it costs taxpayers more money. The less they do the better. To say that it is wrong that companies give back the best possible return to their stockholders shows a complete lack of compassion towards the people who pay for this country to operate. The top 15% of income earners in the US shoulder more that 50% of the tax burden (source: Congressional Budget Office - stats from 1995) To say that a company is being greedy when it wants to keep the money that's left over after the government gets done taking its increasingly larger share is just insulting.

Political commentary aside, if you think that this computer giveaway isn't a calculated business descision, you need to re-think. If Ford had said, "Everyone get's $1500 dollars more in matching 401K funds this year," how would this be any different? Would you have even bothered with a story about it? Would it have been the "the most significant technology news in years"? It's a business descision, that is all.