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Former First Lady Nancy Reagan Dead At 94 (nbcnews.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Former first lady Nancy Reagan has died, according to a spokeswoman with the Reagan Library. She was 94. The cause of death was congestive heart failure, according to her rep Joanne Drake. "Mrs. Reagan will be buried at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, next to her husband, Ronald Wilson Reagan, who died on June 5, 2004," Drake wrote in a statement. May she rest in peace.
stuff that matters
Don't use drugs, kids.
On average.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
To cannabis legalization!!
Because only the wealthy are allowed to enjoy themselves before they hear the piper.
Bong hits. ("Just say yes")
I don't respond to AC's.
Not at a library.
Try Facebook next time.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
What exactly did Reagan do that previous administrations back to Truman's hadn't done?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Other random people dead at ages other than 94!!!
No news articles about that.
Nancy Reagan had nowhere near the level of awesomeness that was Eleanor Roosevelt, but she did a few things.
After Ronald Reagan's term in office, she devoted most of her time to caring for her him. He was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 1994, until his death at the age of 93 in 2004. Nancy remained active within the Reagan Library and in politics, particularly in support of embryonic stem cell research, until her death in 2016.
She was also well-known for her "Just say no" campaign on drugs; for replacing the White House China with a full service order from Lenox for the first time since the Truman administration; and for renovating the White House when it was in a state of disrepair, largely with private donations.
i shouldn't respond to the troll.. but... i'm not a huge Reagan fan either, but it was Congress and the President that implemented any of the policies you're upset about. She may have had some influence, but the buck stops at those elected and empowered to draft and enforce legislation.
Caused Americans to imprison more of its population than China.
Set in motion 40 years of trickle down that the fall out from is just starting.
America was so much better before them and I dont believe will ever recover without revolution.
To many one set of rules for wealthy and another for peons.
It is no longer fixable. As the damage has already been done and no ones life is long enough for do overs one is all you get.
Trickle down did more damage to blacks than slavery, 200 years wont restore a thing.
https://soylentnews.org/ does not have this.
What exactly did Reagan do that previous administrations back to Truman's hadn't done?
Americans don't care what their politicians do, only what they say. Reagan talked like a conservative, but governed like a liberal, running big deficits, negotiating with Gorbachev, continuing and expanding most social spending, etc. So conservatives loved him and liberals hated him. Bill Clinton did the opposite: he talked like a liberal, but governed as a conservative. He cut welfare, balanced the budget, pushed through free market reforms and free trade agreements, and sent bombers into the Balkans. So liberals loved him, and conservatives hated him.
heart failure.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Let me be the first/second/upmteenth one to say: news for nerds, stuff that matters? In what possible way this relates to anything that might even remotely interest anyone technically/computer inclined?
I guess she was a borg - otherwise why slashdot
"You learn something out of everything, and you come to realize more than ever that we're all here for a certain space of time, and, and then it's going to be over, and you better make this count."
RIP
Reagan did not start out negotiating with the Soviets, he initially scared the crap of them and they were convinced that Reagan was going to start a war with a pre-emptive nuclear strike. Reagan slowly transitioned to a defensive posture and then finally to a de-arming posture (The Dead Hand by David Hoffman touches on this and the Soviet militaries view of the west... it's a great read).
Reagan is not a demi-god but he was a lot shrewder and capable than a lot of people want to give him credit for.
I am sure she'd like it. It's such a wholesome family friendly song!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
of the Reagan administration, the one who pushed Chief of Staff Don Regan out the door (in Reagan's second term), and later made sure that Ollie North didn't get traction in his campaign for US Senate ("he lied to Congress, and he lied to my husband. That's what I think.").
So yeah, very influential.
Both were standing against strongly opposed congresses for most of their administrations.
We're still waiting for the 'spending cut' parts of Grahm-Rudman. We should never accept another 'taxes now, spending cuts later' deal until the first is fulfilled.
What you are putting on Ron and Bill is more on Tip and Newt. If that's credit or blame will depend on your views.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
And I really 95 KPH mean it! Many East German Trabant cars with two-stroke, two cylinder, lawn-mover-type engine could go just as fast, with communist mandated 55 MPG fuel consumption included with the purchase.
Once again, Slashdot is behind the curve, I read this on TMZ 5 hours ago!
Then read "firehose". Or become a patron and see news items after they're vetted but before they hit the front page.
I see two complaints a lot:
- It's not news for nerds / stuff that matters.
- It's slow.
You can't have both fast and filtered. It takes time to sift the jems from the slush.
Further: faster processing means more errors, while better (though still "imperfect") filtering means later stories. And there's no way to get the filtering right for all readers: I'm constantly finding stories I consider "news for me (a nerd) and stuff that matters (to me, a nerd)" to attract a chorus of one, or (as in this case) both, complaints.
I like Slashdot's setting of the fast - filtered tweak knob. I can always skip stuff *I* don't consider interesting, and it has a HELL of a lot of stuff I *AM* interested in, presented in a timely enough manner to be useful (when the rest of the media ignores it completely or warps it out of recognition).
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
How do we get these gorblimey posts?
Did you forget to check to post AC? It's ok it happens sometimes.
"Don't blame the executive branch: blame the legislators!"
vs.
"Don't blame the legislative branch: blame the president!"
No, fuck you: I'll consider them both responsible! That's how you "stop the buck" is you simultaneously hold them both 100% accountable.
It SHOULD be common knowledge the the President's office is, at-least in practice, primarily: a designated fall-guy for the "sins" of Congress.
I don't believe that the whipping boy should be spared to focus the contempt on it's rightful place. The president's primary job is to keep congress in-check and if you forgive his failure to do so he has very little incentive to do so.
History books aren't kind to those executives who are ineffective at this duty.
Oh man. Where to start?
http://listverse.com/2015/01/1...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The Reagan Administration stands as the only US administration that was ever convicted of crimes against humanity.
And that doesn't even count his domestic policies that hollowed out the middle class and started our slide into the economic inequality we have today. He dumped crack cocaine into the inner cities to fund illegal wars in Central America and turned the School of the Americas into a training center for hit squads that massacred innocent people, including Jesuit priests and nuns.
He was by far the president that did the most lasting damage to the United States of America.
You are welcome on my lawn.
How can they tell?
You are welcome on my lawn.
Liberals don't run deficits. Liberals tax and spend. Under Obama the deficit has come down at a record rate.
Clinton gave Bush a budget surplus, Bush blew that so fast that people don't remember.
It's the Republicans' near demonic desire to defund government that drives debt and deficits, because you can't cut your way to prosperity, but you can cut yourself into a recession.
See Iraq and Afghanistan wars for proof, you would think you'd raise taxes during war, instead, Bush sent everyone a check. Literally.
You're repeating a common line about things that are easily disproven.
You may not like that liberals want to use government to solve problems with your tax money, but they will raise taxes to pay for things. Conservatives seem to think bombs and tanks are free, because America!
But to be fair she lived much longer than most rich voters.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
. Under Obama the deficit has come down at a record rate.
[CITATION NEEDED]
Nancy Reagan was born the same year the flow chart was first described in the literature. You can read the paper here.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The witch is dead!
Ding dong!
She was predeceased by her astrologer by more than a year. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...
Reagan did not govern like a liberal. That's the most ignorant thing I've ever heard and considering some of the conservative comments around here that's saying a lot.
Yes, he ran up huge deficits. So has every other modern 'conservative'. It's part of their playbook--literally. Look up the Two Santa Claus Theory. When conservatives are in power they spend like drunken sailors to pump up the economy and make themselves look good (and their corporate buddies rich). See Dick Cheney's 'deficits don't matter' quote. They don't matter--until a liberal is in office, at which point conservatives start screaming about the debt in an attempt to make sure that liberal programs don't get enacted.
See, liberal economic policies gave us a nation with a huge middle class, strong unions and worker protection, and massive economic prosperity because those things are how you get massive economic prosperity for all. So much so that the middle and lower classes started getting politically active in the 60s because they had the economic freedom to do so. This scared the hell out of conservative strategists because their policies only lead to bubbles followed by crashes and are generally deeply unpopular. The destruction of the middle class has been deliberate and cynical, to make sure people are too busy working multiple jobs and worrying about things like paying for college and retirement on salaries designed to support neither. Such things used to be benefits of living and working here.
The whole business of attributing things like massive debts to 'liberals' when it's actually conservatives doing it is just another part of the strategy. The federal government was cut in size while Clinton was in office and increased in size massively under W's frat boy administration, but people like you never admit that if you even know it because Fox News doesn't cover that.
So Reagan governed EXACTLY how conservatives govern. Hell, he wrote the modern book on it. His biggest 'failing' in that regard was he was pragmatic and actually worked with the other side. That is also unacceptable in modern conservative 'my way or the highway, even if I'm in the minority' thinking.
For one thing he "proved that deficits don't matter" and paved the way for the big-government republicans of the past 25 years.
Citation
Thanks to Nancy Reagan we can now blame the astrologer instead.
What exactly did Reagan do that previous administrations back to Truman's hadn't done?
Caused Americans to imprison more of its population than China.
Hmm. Maybe.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/U.S._incarceration_rates_1925_onwards.png
Reagan was president from 1981 to 1988. So, he started as President after the curve of prison rate started to rise, but before it has significantly diverged from baseline. The curve continued to get steeper after he left, with the steepest part right at the transistion from (George H.W.) Bush to Clinton
Hmm, why is it clear that Serbs were the major dicks? There was no good party in the Balkan wars. The US did choose to side with Muslim terrorist organizations and as thank for the support veterans of the Muslim terrorist army in the Balkan destroyed the Twin Towers on 9/11 and became the inspiration of what is now IS. Yet we insist to say that the Serbs were the wrong doers while the others were the victims.
If the IS threat isn't controlled soon, the Balkan will become a new battleground again. There are already village whose population fully support IS and have replaced any Bosnian flags with IS flags. Will the US again support the Muslim terrorist organizations? Or is it now clear that you should never support any Muslim organization, whether they claim to be moderate, conservative or claim they are the victims?
But nobody noticed.
Totof
Do not forget to mention that she was responsible for the use of astrology in the decision-making process at the highest level.
Conservatives don't believe that you should tax to support spending.
They believe taxes should be cut. While they continue spending just as freely as liberals do.
Shame she's passed as I was very interested in dating this woman.
What exactly did Reagan do that previous administrations back to Truman's hadn't done?
Americans don't care what their politicians do, only what they say. Reagan talked like a conservative, but governed like a liberal, running big deficits, negotiating with Gorbachev, continuing and expanding most social spending, etc. So conservatives loved him and liberals hated him. Bill Clinton did the opposite: he talked like a liberal, but governed as a conservative. He cut welfare, balanced the budget, pushed through free market reforms and free trade agreements, and sent bombers into the Balkans. So liberals loved him, and conservatives hated him.
Both Presidents (and in fact, all Presidents since) have been Corporatist. Left, Right, sure it matters on many issues, - but both were "open for business" - ie, sellling off or leasing public lands [Both], enacting corporate friendly legislation like the DMCA [Clinton] repealing Glass-Steagall [Clinton] tax rate reform (lowering the top marginal tax rate to 28%) [Reagan], Union-busting (PATCO) [Reagan], and expanding the military industrial complex [Reagan].
All of these helped businesses. Sometimes they helped the taxpayers, though most of that is crumbs compared to what the Corporations/Wealthy got.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Clinton never had a surplus (we accumulated debt every single year since Ike), and the debt has exploded under President Obama, averaging 2.4 times that of President Bush; President Obama has averaged over 1.1 trillion dollars in new debt every year of his presidency. SOURCE
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Reagan did not start out negotiating with the Soviets, he initially scared the crap of them and they were convinced that Reagan was going to start a war with a pre-emptive nuclear strike.
That was seriously frightening, since their response to what they perceived as preparations by us for war was to move to launch-on-warning status, which means that an error could have catastrophic consequences.
In terms of technology, this was all a consequence of the adoption of MIRV warheads in the 70s, in which a small number of missiles launched could take out most, or possibly all, of the missiles of the other side, giving the first side to launch an overwhelming advantage.
It apparently never occurred to Reagan that the Soviets might find our moves threatening. He was so fixed in the viewpoint that the Soviets were the ones with evil intent, that he was unable to consider that they might see us as the aggressors.
Reagan slowly transitioned to a defensive posture and then finally to a de-arming posture (The Dead Hand by David Hoffman touches on this and the Soviet militaries view of the west... it's a great read). Reagan is not a demi-god but he was a lot shrewder and capable than a lot of people want to give him credit for.
He had good and bad points.
Another former FLOTUS, of a former POTUS. Who cares?
The real question, is what do we call the FLOTUS is trump becomes the POTUS? She's not the "first" lady, if you know what I mean.
I suggest Presidential Consort, or Presidential Concubine.
PCOTUS, works.
It's easy to reduce deficit when it nearly quadrupled it in the beginning of his term. Its still higher than most recent years prior to his presidency. People make numbers match their preconceived notions by zoning in on very specific parts. Forget the fact that the national debt is the highest it has ever been and increased dramatically during Obama's term.
What has Obama been spending the money on?
Would Slasdot have commented if Bianca Hoogendijk had died this week? Or Hannelore Graser? They are respectively former dutch and german 'first ladies'. And I will not even start on Joachim Sauer (the current husband of Angela Merkel. But then most Americans will ask "Who is Angela Merkel".
As a nerd of long standing I like Slashdot. But I am often offended by the USA-centric attitude of the editors. Why not include an european or asian collaborator? I am available.
Paai
I don't know if the deficit has come down at a record rate under Obama but he certainly has reduced the deficit from where he started. Here is a post by David Brin that shows how the rate of increase in the national debt increases under Republican administrations and drops under Democratic administrations, at least since Nixon:
So Do Outcomes Matter More than Rhetoric?
know what else we are still waiting on??? The wall that was supposed to be built when reagan granted amnesty
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
IIRC the war on drugs and "Just say no" popped up on his watch. And, you know, stuff...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
BLM tee shirts
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
One of the big reasons that the debt "exploded" under Obama is that the Bush administration used accounting tricks to keep the cost of Afghanistan/Iraq off the books until Obama decided it was time to be honest about it. That plus the great recession he was handed upon entering office.
We can start doing drugs again.
> He dumped crack cocaine into the inner cities to fund illegal wars in Central America
Yeah, that's a load of bullshit.
By far the president that has done the most lasting damage to the United States of America will be Barack Hussein Obama.
Beating out only Jimmy Carter.
My first "-1 Troll", and for a non-troll post!
Most don't appear to recognize the bona fides of this J.G. Ballard piece and its relevance to the Nancy Reagan story.
Your grandmother didn't try to stop us from getting high.
Here is some more trivia for you, on Earth 151,600 people die each day, and more than twice that number are born.
Americans don't care what their politicians do, only what they say. Reagan talked like a conservative, but governed like a liberal, running big deficits, negotiating with Gorbachev, continuing and expanding most social spending, etc. So conservatives loved him and liberals hated him. Bill Clinton did the opposite: he talked like a liberal, but governed as a conservative. He cut welfare, balanced the budget, pushed through free market reforms and free trade agreements, and sent bombers into the Balkans. So liberals loved him, and conservatives hated him.
Reagan's administration suffered because it had a Democratic congress. Clinton's administration benefited because he had a Republican congress.
You can thank the Republican congress for much of what people credit Clinton for, especially fiscal restraint and welfare reform.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Yeah, I thought that too for years. But it turns out, like MK-ULTRA, the Reagain/Crack Cocaine connection is absolutely true. Documents have come to light since the 80s that prove it.
In fact, the Reagan Administration admitted to it in secret testimony to Congress.
http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEB...
You are welcome on my lawn.
I say you both annihilate yourselves, for the good of humanity...
Because we don't give a s..t about you Balkans. So please fight your own wars...
What did Reagan do that was so bad?
1) Converted the US from world's leading creditor nation to leading debtor nation. In about ?5 years.
2) Institutionalized massive deficits and debt (including debt growth), all in the name of voodoo "supply side" economics (now signally failing again in Kansas), which in this case was pure Keynesian deficit spending, only on guns and tax cuts for the rich.
3) Slashed/outright deleted longstanding and effective social programs such as federal funds for housing subsidies (this one brought us the street homeless in numbers never before seen and now considered normal). That's right: but for brief periods of economic distress, the US did NOT before Reagan usually have a significant population percentage stuck living homeless. Nope.
4) Outright use of clearly racist "dog whistle" political tactics, like using "states rights" language at his FIRST EVER, highly-publicized and scripted presidential campaign stop at Philadelphia, Mississippi where in 1963 the KKK lynched three civil rights workers. This was NOT DONE BY MISTAKE.
I'll check below before adding more, but there truly is a list about how this poor brain dead puppet was used as a figurehead and the damage it caused. Like does Iran/Contra come to mind? Among other atrocities, that got a minimum of 10 tons of cocaine (cooked into crack) dumped into US cities according to the mid 1990s CIA Inspector General report...
More, such as:
4) The USSR was going to fall over, it was only a matter of time. That system just simply didn't/couldn't/was never going to work. Everybody from academic economists to the CIA/DIA etc. knew it by the 1970s; it was leaking out into academia when I was there in 1978. All Reagan did was pour government money we didn't have (hence the debt) to weapons manufacturers and political cronies, massively distorting our economy and debt while the CCCP finished falling over. I was in the high tech industry and saw all the military HW and SW jobs (I'm a SW dev and tech writer). I knew folks who worked on little things they couldn't talk about (like the poor MX missile guidance system HW engineer I shared a house with who got drunk and couldn't handle it and got sent back home to Mommy; I was THERE, folks.) YOU WOULDN'T BELIEVE HOW MUCH MONEY THERE WAS. EVERYWHERE. I mean, literally and figuratively, always caviar on the open bar.
Oh, it was bad, all right.
PS We all knew SDI was a joke given the system complexity (just how the FUCK are you going to test that?), space itself eating the HW, and that nobody could get the lasers to lase, anyway...
Once you start incorporating Congress into the story your fairy tale falls apart. The best parts of Clinton's governance was the Republican congress that controlled spending and the growth of government. You can thank the Clinton administration for Enron, and the internet bubble. On the other had Democrats in Congress blocked reform of the mortgage industry that the Bush administration tried to pass to head off the meltdown that occurred and badly damaged the economy. The Democrats even cheered during a State of the Union address over their blocking the reform! And working two jobs? Thank Obamacare. Before Obamacare it was becoming common for even fast food jobs to offer healthcare benefit. After Obamacare that pretty much stopped and lots of full time jobs in the economy turned into part time jobs to get around Obamacare's taxes, penalties, and regulations. Companies shut down expansion plans to stay under the limits. And who brought Obamacare? 100% Democrat created and passed.
Your description of events in the 1960s is more than a little confused as well.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
True
PPS - my rant about the HW and SW jobs above is not just historical, but why this is News for Nerds. Jesus, the nerds were running things and getting huge money and telling the Pentagon "Yeah, we can build you three of those, sure." Raytheon, Marlborough MA
Not sure if someone already posted that he slashed spending for long-term care and mental health facilities, putting incapable people in the streets where they remain today and making us the black sheep of both the civilized world and our own consciences. /S but that's a small price to pay for slashing taxes on the wealthy and enabling the take-over of the electoral system by people with too much money not to spend it investing in more perks for their classes.
because he rolled back decades of banking, Wall Street and Commodities trading reform, not because of what he said. He also supported horrifying acts of violence in South America, helped destroy Unions and oversaw the end of American Manufacturing. His Rhetoric also paved the way for the dismantling of what little safety net we had (which to be fair Clinton actually did, but actual liberals don't like him either).
As a rule, the American left hate people for what they did, not what they said. But then again the American left has gotten so small over the years that I don't blame you for not noticing us.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Your link does not say anything about Reagan dumping crack on inner cities. It says the administration looked the other way when they had indications that some of their Central American friends were running drugs.
This could be good or bad depending on opinion. There are plenty of people (often those who are also anti-Reagan) that are adamantly against the War on Drugs. If spending money on fighting drug importation and distribution is a waste of time and money, looking the other way is at worst neutral.
If you are for the War on Drugs, looking the other way is bad, but it is still not the same as actively 'dumping crack in the inner cities'.
Pretty much every powerful political, military, and business leader in Central America had ties to the drug trade in the 80s. It would not be possible to deal with any of these countries if the criteria were that no one in the organization could be tied to drugs.
There may be many bad things about the Reagan's administrations attempts to support the overthrow of communist/left-leaning administrations in Central and South America, but your ridiculous hyperbole makes all of your points suspect. If you want to convince people of your point, try taking a more rational stance on the topic.
Take a look at the debt I linked to. You cannot "hide" things off the books - spending above income still shows up in the national debt regardless of on-or-off budget. You'll find that Obama racked up debt a lot quicker than the Bush. It's not military spending - it's Government largesse to millions of people. The facts don't lie - spending has skyrocketed under President Obama, and the debt reflects that very fact.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Social benefits, welfare, subsidized medical, and food stamps. About $0.70 of every dollar of spending by the Federal Government is spent on Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, welfare payments and servicing the national debt. Everything else - defense, IRS, EPA, transportation, education, customs, research, etc - comprises the other $0.30. SOURCE
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Hmm, why is it clear that Serbs were the major dicks?
Murdering 8000 civilians at Srebrenica was certainly dickish.
"they were convinced that Reagan was going to start a war with a pre-emptive nuclear strike"
Good thing "the Russians" didn't do the same thing, or react t the us "threads" leading the world closer and closer to nuclear war?
And Reagan had ties to them all.
So the best you can say is Reagan gave tacit approval to the CIA flooding the inner cities with crack cocaine. The documents that survived Ollie North's "shredding party" confirm this.
And never forget:
Here's a list of them, too:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/...
"...the worst ever."
You are welcome on my lawn.
The logic (or lack of it) implied by your question:
1) Some people have murdered other people
2) Some new guy murders someone
3) It's not to be considered, because others did it before him
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Oliver North was the scapegoat remember? And they stood him up in Congress and tried to paint him as a freedom fighter hero. SHIT How can you forget RayGun admitting "there were things I was not aware of" after it was uncovered . Remember the CIA airplanes that had ex GI pilots that said "Cocaine going north, and Guns going south." All while NANCY (the story is about her remember?) says "Just say NO" Well I did and said NO way (bong Hit) I am afraid everything about fighting wars is just selling Wall Street firm's weapons to both sides if possible. SAD
The poor should dress better...
Watashi wa chikyubutsurigakusha desu.
Social security and medicare are paid into by workers separately from the general budget (and social security is only paid out to workers who've paid in). They're self-funding, so it's disingenuous to lump them in with the general federal budget.
This space intentionally left blank
In Reagan's defense, he did sign the law requiring emergency rooms to treat patients who don't have money -- so his legacy on health care is mixed.
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Said Nancy's skeleton
Just say No
Said the Rasta skeleton
Blow Nancy Blow
-
on no.
Reagan did not govern like a liberal.
maybe from todays viewpoint he would be considered a liberal.
but make no mistake: in his day he was the epitome of conservatism.
once again you prove youre delusional
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
1. What BS. The us has been a creditor for a long time. In 1835 the full dept was payed off (only time ever). It lasted until 1836. If you care to see reality try this..
https://upload.wikimedia.org/w...
2. At least this one has some truth to it. He did increase the deficit in real terms.The rest of it is just religious blather. Half of people believe in personal responsibility. Half of the people believe in collectivist responsibility. Sign-up for your camp, I have yet to see conclusive evidence for either side.
3. Given that more than a quarter of chronic homeless are mentally ill I would say it is probably more the fault of getting rid of institutionalization. The push to get rid of institutionalization was from many places (of which Reagan was one). See this for real information
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
4. Hmmm, looks like your conspiracy nut hat is showing. I would stick to policy and stop jumping at shadows if I was you. Oh, oh, I said shadows isn't that some code word for something else... I must be a racist...
4 (the second one).Hmmm, in a world without the US would the USSR have fallen as quickly... Probably not (they were doing well at the expand to acquire capacity plan for a while). In a world where Reagan wasn't pushing so hard would the USSR have fallen over as quickly... Probably not (It was probably military spending that helped push them over). Would they have fallen eventually? Yes, everything dies eventually.
As to how much money there was I find it hard to care that much. There is probably some waste that needs to be dealt with. That being said Defense spending as percent of GDP continues to go down. It looks like success to me.
http://www.usgovernmentspendin...
holy shit, reading comprehension fail... you are agreeing with my post, dumbass. thanks, btw
Because serbs always are and always been dicks, maybe you should read a little history and background to world war one which is the background to world war two. The best part is that croat people were even more bloodthirsty and gave the serbs some ass kicking, unfortunately not enough since the serbs are trying to start up another mess again. Hopefully this time the serbs will not only be kicked to the curb as usually but down the sewers so that they finally understand people are tired of their damn conflict starting and maffia running.
"averaging 2.4 times that of President Bush"
This kind of cherry picking of numbers is dishonest. If Bush runs up a huge debt (he did) , then Obama would have had to run an enormous *surplus* in order to achieve the same debt average. Slashdot users have all had algebra, so this shouldn't fool them.
"we accumulated debt every single year since Ike,"
That depends on whether you consider intra-government debt a real part of the debt. If you consider social security to be another government program with its own taxes and expenditures, then the government ran a surplus.
Play Command HQ online
He didn't sign law because of his "compassion", he did it so that there wouldn't be "universal health care", and so that he could throw mentally sick people onto streets.
There's nothing disingenuous about totaling government taxes and expenses to find the deficit. The legal construction of social security is political game playing. Lumping it in with everything else is not.
Play Command HQ online
Bush didn't rack up huge debt numbers right away because he inherited a tiny deficit. He had to build up speed. It's funny you so intent on the debt numbers, but you're trying to shift the blame for it to the guy that seen lower deficits and away from the guy who blew up the deficit.
Play Command HQ online
Actually, SSI and Medicare are not self-funding; they've been running in the red for several years now. They are drawing out of the total Federal revenues. And the funds are not a "lock box" for you - the Supreme Court has ruled there is no right to any Social Security payment. Its funds have been part of the official budget for nearly 50 years, and funds have been used to buy T-bills (loans to the Federal Government) since the beginning, by statute. FICA payments are made to the Federal Government, those funds are loaned to the Federal Government, and the Federal Government has no legal requirement to pay back any of it. Does that mean it's separate and self-funding? In any real sense of those words - not a chance.
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It was Clinton's tax increase in '93 that lead to the huge decrease in deficit. Democrats ran congress at that time, and basically lost control because of that increase.
Each year that reagan proposed a budget, his proposed deficit was higher than the budgets that were eventually passed by the Democratic congress.
"Before Obamacare it was becoming common for even fast food jobs to offer healthcare benefit."
Pure fantasy land. Under Obamacare, the only way a fast food worker can't afford insurance is if they have the bad luck to live in a state that's run by a Republican governor who is refusing federal medicaid money.
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And how many were pardoned by Bush?
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A good idea, but it really shows the contradiction in Republican healthcare thinking. Without any good healthcare coverage, the emergency room becomes the walk in clinic for the uninsured, who must then pretend that they can't pay.
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Americans don't care what their politicians do, only what they say. Reagan talked like a conservative, but governed like a liberal, running big deficits, negotiating with Gorbachev, continuing and expanding most social spending, etc. So conservatives loved him and liberals hated him. Bill Clinton did the opposite: he talked like a liberal, but governed as a conservative. He cut welfare, balanced the budget, pushed through free market reforms and free trade agreements, and sent bombers into the Balkans. So liberals loved him, and conservatives hated him.
Correct. Reagan was a social conservative, but a fiscal liberal. Clinton was a social liberal, but a fiscal conservative. The former is the worst option, and the latter is the best option... most of the time.
Read about the Nolan Chart or Political Compass to get an idea of politics beyond the simple one-dimensional "left-right" spectrum as portrayed in the US. You'll find that the mainstream republicans are not even remotely representative of their constituents, who probably expect fiscal conservatism at the very least.
Ya...pretty much you are just a fucking Demcrat Fanboy. Were you even alive in 80s?
You think that #4 is tin-foil hat stuff?
Here is a quote from the architect of Reagan's southern strategy, Lee Atwater
You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968, you can't say "nigger" — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger."
—Lee Atwater, Republican Party strategist in an anonymous interview in 1981
Here is more stuff about Lee Atwater: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Atwater
More stuff on Dog Whistle Politics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog-whistle_politics#United_States
Lee up and got brain cancer, then decided to change his ways, this movie makes an interesting evening, invite your politically active friends and see how they react: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boogie_Man:_The_Lee_Atwater_Story
Nah. That was slapping their own base in the face with NAFTA, while at the same time energizing right wingers with gun control laws.
The reason I'm focused on debt is because it's an absolute. Games are played with on/off budget deficits, etc (witness those claiming Clinton balanced it, had a surplus). The debt shows the real spending - if you spend more than you bring in, you have a deficit, the debt goes up. So many items are "not counted" in the official deficit that it's crazy. So look at the actual change in debt from year to year, not the reported deficit. That will tell you how much was actually spent relative to revenues...
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In some other universe where the hijackers were from Serbia, and not Saudi Arabia?
Fuck the Reagans. They were human waste.
Reagan was a fascist piece of shit who was responsible for many of the more draconian
measures employed by the Federal government. I don't believe a thing like hell exists but
I'd like to believe it does and that Reagan is roasting there for eternity.
Uh, no. The ADDED debt per year is what I'm talking about. Ignore the reported "deficit" numbers, they're cooked big time. Look how much is added to the national debt every year - that will tell you how much excess spending went on. President Bush was terrible, adding $5 trillion to the national debt. President Obama has doubled that, adding nearly $10 TRILLION to the national debt. That's the problem - and the real way to look at spending/revenue. And the last time we had an actual surplus - our debt went down - was back when Eisenhower was in the White House, about 60 years ago.
As far as SSI and intragovernmental debt, per GAAP standards that is debt and must be accounted for. It's owed money - it's not just "disappeared". Yes, the Government can welch on its promised obligations to people, but until it does so - that debt is legitimate and must be accounted for. Even if the CBO and the Government try to claim it isn't. If you have a loan from your 401K (like the Federal Government taking loans from the Social Security fund), then lenders will consider that as debt - which is correct (a financial obligation you have to pay).
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Congress controls the Purse...
And we can blame the Republican Congress that controls the fucking Purse for the deficits in the Obama administration.
You have too much time on one of your hands.
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
Actually it is the Republicans that is keeping things from being worse under Obama. Obama and the Democrats agreed to a deal on spending called sequestration thinking they could use it to screw the Republicans, but they have been hoisted on their own petard. The Democrats want to greatly expand spending, but can't force the Republicans to do it.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Pure fantasy land: Under Obamacare . . .
Your used the wrong punctuation. You should have used a colon (as shown above) instead of a period. With that change your statement is more or less correct.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Why don't you work your way through this short piece .... for starters.
Democrats Were Wrong on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac - The White House called for tighter regulation 17 times
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
The woman loved her husband dearly and the man was shot by an assassin, with bullet fragments right next to his heart. She knew at the time that her husband was FAR closer to death than the public was told - and the entire government security apparatus had failed to keep him safe.
It's no wonder that she grasped for any and all straws for hopes that her husband could be kept safe. Ron, loving his wife as dearly as he did, would surely have tried to buy her a little peace by allowing her to influence his travel schedule when it would have no significant effect if he travelled on Tuesday instead of Wednesday.
Astrology is dumb, but mostly harmless and it probably provided this woman who was in extreme distress at the time with some sense of having bought a tiny bit more safety margin for her husband. Post about YOUR intellectual coolness right after some random stranger nearly succeeds in murdering your spouse/parent/child to prove your superiority to Nancy, else try thinking before you post in the future.
Perhaps it never matters to you liberals because every assassin of Presidents in US History has been a Democrat or an Independent.
Perhaps it does not matter to a secular person like you, who views all human beings as just animals - just automated meatbags with no spiritual side and nothing that lasts beyond physical death. Why do you even bother to worry about the poor or about your descendents? It makes no more sense than a chipmunk worrying about such things if you are just an animal - you should live fast, getting all the pleasure you can and reproducing as much as possible and then die-off to leave more resources for your offspring. Of course, as just an animal there's no reason for you to worry about your offspring or even to concern yourself with how many you have, so you're just left with seeking as much pleasure as possible and then dying and forgetting all the pleasure you had. Alas, your existence is utterly pointless.
The 55 MPH speed limit in the US was a Jimmy Carter (Democrat) thing. It was a plan by the typically feckless dimwit to deal with the energy shortages at the time that were caused by his idiotic energy and foreign policy actions. Jimmy Carter was a typical liberal moron who bought-into the delusions of John Holdren, who was then peddling tales of impending global shortages of energy, minerals, and food and who is now President Obama's Science Advisor.
Instead of growing a brain and trying to solve the problems the country suffered under, Jimmy put on a sweater and went on TV to tell Americans to drive slower, and turn down their thermostats. He had no apparent concern for elderly people who would die in their cold homes, or the time people lost driving long distances at slower speeds in much of the country. Jimmy and his supporters blamed American's problems on the American people who he said were suffering from "malaise" and he claimed the world had become so complex that no one person could handle the Presidency anymore. Jimmy and his moronic policies were what elected Reagan in a gigantic landslide that no young person alive to day has ever seen. When Ronald Reagan was re-elected in 1984, he won every state but the home state of his Democrat opponent Walter Mondale (Minnesota).
False. Congress allocates what goes into the purse; the President decides what to spend of that purse. Both can limit the other (Congress can allocate less than the President desires, and the President can spend less than Congress desired).
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Once you start incorporating Congress into the story your fairy tale falls apart. The best parts of Clinton's governance was the Republican congress that controlled spending and the growth of government.
And yet they completely tanked with Bush Jr.
You can thank the Clinton administration for Enron, and the internet bubble. On the other had Democrats in Congress blocked reform of the mortgage industry that the Bush administration tried to pass to head off the meltdown that occurred and badly damaged the economy.
You can thank Reagan and the Republican senate for Enron and the banking meltdowns. Bush Sr didn't try to pass any legislation, in fact, I don't recall any such thing. Under Bush Jr, when the Reps had both houses of congress, they failed to push any bill through even though supposedly the Bush Jr white house asked for it 17 times. Somehow that sounds Fox newsish, considering all the other crap they pushed through.
The internet bubble was a separate thing that may or may not have had a government cause. I'd argue likely not, except for the "no tax" bit in 97 or whenever that was passed.
And working two jobs? Thank Obamacare.
You are smoking crack. The two jobs bit has been around for at least 2 decades.
Before Obamacare it was becoming common for even fast food jobs to offer healthcare benefit.
Fast food jobs are specifically restricted to under 32 hours excepting managers if they have insurance. Even Walmart does this and has prior to ACA.
After Obamacare that pretty much stopped and lots of full time jobs in the economy turned into part time jobs to get around Obamacare's taxes, penalties, and regulations. Companies shut down expansion plans to stay under the limits. And who brought Obamacare? 100% Democrat created and passed.
Your description of events in the 1960s is more than a little confused as well.
Don't get me wrong, ACA was the right concept, horrible implementation. Single payer is the way forward, or you are advocating to leave people dying in the streets.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
I disagree on motivation, though not on outcome. Conservatives think of themselves as fiscal downsizers but aren't in practice. In practice they fall in love with big schemes and grand projects. That's what gets them in trouble on the spending front.
There's a cognitive dissonance between their self-image and their actions. I totally believe that they believe they will balance the budget and downsize government. It's in the doing that they fail. The only things they successfully downsize are social programs which don't meet their test of appropriate conservative grand gestures.
All comments directed towards actual, elected conservative governments. I'm not here to argue core right wing ideology; that's for others who care about such things.
Her politics weren't my politics, but I believe that respect is due to her and her husband.
According to Kitty Kelly, Nancy was quite famous for using her mouth way before she started saying stupid things publicly with it (such as "Just Say NO").....
THIS, folks, THIS is the one and only reason why this story is even remotely interesting to nerds - specifically male nerds (who, I am given to understand, love Love LOVE to get a blowjob)....
Then you must not remember the country's state before him. It was spun into a mess after Nixon resigned, floundered under Ford, and almost went to hell under Carter. "Trickle down", waah. It's how the economy worked: by investing in business. The problem started in the 1990s when CEO salaries and bonuses started going up like crazy, and corporation heads didn't use their invested money wisely. Did Clinton do anything to regulate that? The Internet was coming into it's age, and IT businesses were fueling the US economy, notably Microsoft, AOL, and Sun, so he didn't touch it. Unfortunately, those fat cats got used to living high off the hog like they did during the dot com bubble and haven't readjusted to the modern economy.
You don't want to be a government and a net creditor. That means that *you* are left holding the bag when everyone else defaults.
It sounds nice to be the country that "owns" other countries, but the thing to remember is that sovereign states can't be forced to pay up at bankruptcy court. If they default, they go into the shitter and all, but they were probably already in serious trouble to begin with. So holding the now worthless IOUs when that happens is not a plus.
Yes, I understand how one might rebel against the idea of buying more things than we have money to pay for, as it seems irresponsible. However, there's nothing wrong with being in debt as a country, especially US dollar denominated debt if you're the US government. As long as you can pay the bills in dollars, you pretty much can't go into default. You can trash your currency by printing money to pay it off, but you won't go into default.
There is one thing that people forget about a country like China "owning" the US debt. They aren't holding US debt because they want to buy the USA. It doesn't work that way. The US isn't a publicly traded stock corporation, it is a government. What they want is to be able to make money on safe decent yield US bonds as a hedge against all that fucking with their own currency not being enough. They get nothing from forcing the US into default since their investment is just that, an investment. They want to make nice safe interest and preserve the value of their reserves with US bonds.
I see no problem with US debt being held by other countries. I do agree that it can get out of control, but the biggest threat to our current economy is not the size of the debt, but rather Congress continuing to fuck with *payment* on the debt when we have the means to do so. That is when we run into trouble for no reason.
Don't get me wrong, I want a smaller government, but that's not because I care much about the debt situation. We ran a lower proportion of debt to GDP during the Great Depression than we have today, and it didn't help us for shit.
Nope, you just jumped from tin-foil territory back to religion. I know, you hate the guy. Having never met him I feel a rather lack of either hate or love for him. That being said here is why its hard to believe this stuff.
1. The Talk sections of these wikis are just a riot to read. Many diverse opinions to read
2. As with Nostradamus you can convince your-self that you can find the hidden meaning you want in anything.
3. The Lee Atwater storyyou linked in both the paragraph before and after the one you cited says things like "Now [the new Southern Strategy of Ronald Reagan] doesn't have to do that. All you have to do to keep the South is for Reagan to run in place on the issues he's campaigned on since 1964 and that's fiscal conservatism, balancing the budget, cut taxes, you know, the whole cluster." Now I know you take that to mean these are just coded messages but that seems to be more your problem than theirs.
4. A better link in my opinion would be this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
That being said I don't buy it. I wouldn't equate "welfare queen" nor "young buck" with blacks so those seem kind of odd to me. Both are good examples of known fraud in the system. Further it uses the example of him changing his language (same point just trade young buck out for young fellow) as proof that he was racist. So even when he changed the words he used because someone found it offensive it still was just proof he was racist.
The reality of the situation seems to be that he obviously didn't believe the same things you do (see original economic theory as religion post) so that make him a heretic. I understand, it just doesn't seem to help to raise the level of discourse. I would be more interested in why you think the work he did that eventually ended up with old BJ.C. signing the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act was such a bad thing.
Clinton is a square shooter. Clinton 2016!
>And how many were pardoned by Bush?
Just exactly enough. And Poindexter wound up at RW thinktanks and startups until GBII got anointed/installed/whatever-you-call-it.
George H. W. "I Was Out of the Loop" Bush's own diaries list explicitly that "I am one of the few who knows all the details" about Iran/Contra. That diary finally wound up in front of a federal court. But nothing stuck.
Uh, no. The ADDED debt per year is what I'm talking about. Ignore the reported "deficit" numbers, they're cooked big time. Look how much is added to the national debt every year - that will tell you how much excess spending went on.
I mean, if only there was some commonly agreed upon definition for the word 'deficit' and some publically available data or source to determine what it was. but you know those dictionaries...you cant trust them.
and that congress...they never ever tell us what budget they've passed
and trying to get revenues and expenditures out of the treasury dept, or the CBO? impossible!
your ignorance would be hysterical if it wasn't also so sad.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
the deficit IS THE CHANGE.
its added to it EVERY YEAR.
f'ing moron.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
no, they are not running in the red (patently false misinformation)
speaking to SS, which you evidently need a lesson on, yes, it is a pay-as-you-go system, which is a sort of self-funding setup.
as long as there are workers paying it, there are payments going out.
SS is not a savings account you pay into and then withdrawal from.
SS is a direct cash transfer from current workers to current beneficiaries.
It has a defined benefit amount.
The Trust Fund exists because for decades they took in more money than they paid out.
There were many more workers than beneficiaries.
and if they paid out everything they took in the benefits would be out of whack with the cost of living, and produce bad effects on the economy.
and, while they generally assumed population would grow over time (more workers than beneficiaries), making the system sustainable, even they knew it would be useful to have a cushion; besides, they needed an account to deposit the money in and withdraw from anyway in the process.
and by the time it was overhauled in the 1960s under LBJ it was obvious population might contract or slow down, and with periods of economic reduction or drops in labor, placing even more emphasis on maintain a healthy trust fund.
So they stocked the surplus away into the Trust Fund also.
Im oversimplifying a lot here: technically all payments into and out of SS go through the Trust Fund.
But the Trust Fund itself grew in size to be more than the sum of its intakes and payouts because of said mismatch.
(And also technically there is two trust Funds, one for SS for old age, and one for SS for disability)
the part that is running out of money is the surplus in the Trust Fund which is separate from the mechanics of how SS itself operates.
having this account, aka Trust Fund, was useful because it allowed payouts to remain steady during periods of reduced revenue.
it also allowed the monies within to be invested in various ways to allow it to keep its value, rather than lose value due to inflation.
and some of that surplus has been used over the years to increase benefits amounts to keep the relative value of the benefits constant as inflation occurred and the cost of living increased, while wages didn't (aka, the last 40 years).
now with boomers retiring and the workforce (as a % of population) shrinking therefore there will be more people receiving benefits.
enough such that the trust fund (the surplus from decades of taking in more than being paid out),if used to keep benefits at their current level will run out.
but that is just the surplus in trust fund. .
because the entire SS system is a operated as direct cash transfer from workers to beneficiaries is impossible for it to run out of money
Benefits may go down, and that what people are trying to avoid. But benefits will never cease as long we have an economy where people are still working.
but the Trust Fund is also solvent as its current levels for many years yet.
(so no, it's not in the red)
and making it perpetually solvent is as simple as raising the income cap from 113k/yr (ie, if you make more htna that, you still only contribute to SS as if you make 113k/yr) to 250k/yr which would make the Trust Fund solvent til around the year 2150. and removing the cap entirely would make it solvent forever, and allow benefits to be increased dramatically as well.
the Trust Fund will never actually run out of money.
it will just no longer have a surplus, and will only consist of the sum of its intakes and payouts as money transits the system.
--
as for the claim that congress has played hooky with the moneys, no they haven't.
by law, the money cannot be used in the general fund. it cannot be touched or tapped directly by congress.
there can no direct transfers or borrowings.
the confusion here comes from a very simple misunderstanding:
remember that the Trust Fund gets invested to maintain its value? they did that by buying government
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Clinton did have surpluses
http://www.factcheck.org/2008/...
And most of the debt under Obama is STILL related to the ongoing War on Terror and recovering economy.
And while the Average may be high, that ignores that the actual year-year values have been trending downward.
So again.
You posted BS.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
No, you "f'ing moron", the reported deficit is NOT the change in the debt every year. The reported deficit is for the ON-BUDGET items only, not all items. For example, the 2014 budget deficit was reported as $483 billion. Yet if you look at the debt added, it was nearly $1.1 trillion.
I guess if you want to swallow what the Government is peddling, be my guest. But in any rational, thinking mind - adding $1.1 trillion in debt does not equate to only a $483 billion deficit. Those two numbers are not equal. Go ahead, continue to be the "f'ing moron" and take what your Federal leadership tries to sell you...
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See my response to your moronic statement above. It's clear you don't have any understanding. The reported deficit is NOT the actual deficit. Time and again, you see the "deficit" being maybe 30-40% of the actual debt racked up annually. I gave you the numbers earlier; for 2014 the deficit was reported as $483 billion, but nearly $1.1 trillion was added in debt. You tell me what the real deficit is (HINT: it's NOT what the Federal Government reports). IF you choose to educate yourself about the actual numbers, AND if you had a bit of integrity, you'd apologize and admit I'm correct. We'll see...
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Huh. Do we believe dywolf's ramblings, or the OASDI's trustees who state "Social Security’s cost exceeded its tax income in 2013, and also exceeded its non-interest income, as it has since 2010." Personally, I'll trust the SSI trustees over you - they have a bit better handle on the situation, and they legally put their own butts on the line with their annual reports (which have reported a negative income balance since 2010 - like their summary states).
Now, you may not be aware of the term "running in the red", but when your income is less than your expenditures, then your cash flow is negative - it's "in the red". SSSI is in the red, per standard GAAP. And if it continues, then the savings/trust fund will eventually run out - and you either cut benefits (meaning: change the promises you've made) or you close altogether. But it is, truly, running in the red. Ask any accountant if a business spending more than it takes in would be considered in the red...
But then again, you still believe that having a deficit of just $483 billion can equate with adding nearly $1100 billion in debt.
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Deficit: 1. the amount by which a sum of money falls short of the required amount.
Now, somehow the Federal Government claimed the deficit in 2014 was "just" $483 billion. Yet it had to borrow nearly $1.1 trillion to cover what it decided to spend. So which is correct? What was the actual shortage? HINT: it wasn't $483 billion.
So what's your definition for deficit? In fact, when have you EVER posted a link to anything? I've backed up what I've posted, and apparently that gets your panties in a bind. That's your problem, not mine. You're showing your failings here, not me.
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Uh, no. Let me explain this to you, so perhaps you can learn a bit. It's OK to admit your error - we are all wrong until we learn what is correct.
The measure of a deficit is how much you spend beyond your income. If you make $100,000, but spend $120,000 then you have a $20,000 deficit. Your debt - what you owe others - increases by $20,000. With me so far?
Now, check the national debt records
. What will you discover? Every year since Eisenhower, the national debt has gone up. Every Single Year.
Go back to my opening example - if you spend more than your income, you have to borrow money. Your debt goes up. So how can one "claim" to have a surplus whilst having your debt go up? It's simple! And I'll explain it to you:
You lie.
There are two ways to do this:
First, you simply don't count all your spending. Let's say of that $100,000 in spending, $30,000 of it was on a nice vacation. So you claim "that vacation is not part of my normal spending, so it's not part of my budget, so it doesn't count". You try to claim that your spending was "only $90,000" now, so you actually have a surplus of $10,000! But in reality, do you have a surplus? No - that vacation is still on your credit card, you still owe that $30,000. Your financial position is still the same - you have a $20,000 deficit. But your "budget" had a surplus, because that vacation wasn't part of your budget. It was spending, but since you didn't put it in a given column, you can claim a budget "surplus" even though you actually racked up more debt.
The second way is to defer payments to keep cash flow positive. Say instead of a vacation, you decide to not pay 6 months of your mortgage. Your mortgage is $4,000 per month. Your actual spending is now just $96,000 - that's less than your income! Hurray - you have a $4,000 surplus, no deficit! But do you really have surplus? No - you have at least $24,000 more in debt. But rather than pay your debt, you kept some cash in your pocket. Your actual financial position is a $20,000 hole - but you can "claim" you have a surplus because you still have some cash in your pocket.
The Clinton "surpluses" were a combination of these two - many items were taken "off budget", and others were deferred until later years. The debt still increased, even though the "budget" was in surplus. It was simply word and accounting gimmicks - and the fact that "Factcheck" fell for it says a LOT about their ability to read through the BS.
There, you've been educated, so hopefully you won't make the same mistake again of falling for it!
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