It is criminal and against the constitution for the congress to refuse to collect taxes for the proper operation of government and its obligations that are already set. They can debate the programs and eliminate or reorganize but they cannot constitutionally defund the government of the USA. Unless they want to admit the USA is not a country but a corporation. And now private entities want to take it over.

If it is that then we are all stock holders and reserve the right to hire the CEO and we want Obama!

I voted your comment up only because of your comment about those infernal ads...which is why I never play videos via this site or anywhere on MSNBC. I spend my time actually watching the channel and that's all the eyeballs of mine they're gonna get.

Learn to read between the lines. The American farmer planted huge amounts of land to corn this year, and even with the drought condidtions that estimate by the Secretary of Argriculture is that we will probably have the 3rd largest corn harvest in our history.

A goodly part of the rise in food prices being forecast is not due to the drought so much as to the rise in all commodity speculation, including arricultural commodities by Wall Street banks and Hedge Funds due to the easy money made available by the Federal Reserve trying to boost the economy. And with tensions rising in the Middle East again, Oil futures are now up again, and expected to continue rising...$92 a barrel for West Texas Crude, and nearing $110 a barrel for Brent. Gasoline prices average increase $0.11 a gallon already since the first of the month, and that is with WTC oil at $82 a barrel back then.

It's looking bad all around for Obama's relection chances, so every dollar they can get out in borrowed money to that sector of the economy will be heklicoptered in, no doubt, adding more to the burden of our children and grandchildren.

Keith,

Your ignorance is showing..What about the Rebublicans in the Senate who have fillibustered more times than any other time in the history of our government? Any bill introduced that would create millions of jobs, and be completely funded adding nothing to the deficit and they have blocked it. What, no problem with that Keith? And the Dems want to give tax breaks to create jobs in the U.S instead of tax breaks to outsource. Your wonderful Republicans in the Senate blocked that as well.. No problem with that Keith?

I think the over the cliff idea is a great idea, and support it whole heartedly

Obama's and the Dems $1.6 trillion of deficit funded spending on stimulus programs from the $800 billion recovery act in 2009 to the cash for clunkers to the cutting in half the last two years the FICA payroll taxes that robs the Social Security Trust Fund and the $80 billion alone to GM in TARP funds that were never voted on to be used for anything other than the stalilizing of the nations financial system and recapitalization of the bank only gave us a brief sugar high, and the latest plan for stimulus light is simply more of the same that would be sent out in patronage fashion to the swing states as an attempt to buy the reelection of Barrack Obama, and spent on wasteful, non shovel ready projects and schemes just as the majority of the original stimulus finds were, Brad. The country simply can not afford that...its over. That's what the voters said in 2010. That was the Congressional mandate.

As to the tax breaks, why they will be passed by the new Republican Administration with the support of a Republican controlled Senate and House after the November elections. Never fear, Brad.

I don't fear..I believe when it comes down to actually voting, people will not choose to go back to the policies that we have followed since Regan and never have worked.

The stimulus would have been much more effective if Obama didn't have to cave to the Right and make 40% of the stimulus more tax breaks. If we could have put that to our infrastructure, things would be different.

Let me ask you Keith, if tax breaks to the "job creators" is such a good idea, and we have had the Bush Tax Cuts for almost 12 years, where are the jobs? Other than tax give aways and deregulation "bills" masquerading as a jobs bill in the House, what have the Republican Senators and House Members done to help stimulate job growth?

Brad, I'll take the jobs and the economy under the Ronald Reagan and the Volker Federal Reserve conservative fiscal policies and tax cuts over the profligate borrowing and spending of Barrack Obama and easy money policies of the Bernanke Federal Reserve any day.

As to the tac cuts under Bush which countered the financial assets and dot.com bubble bursting og the last year of the Clinton Administration, and the serious damage to the economy by 9/11, the jobs added and economic growth up to 2005 were pretty darn good. Unfortunaetly, Greenspan at the Reserve targeted a low level of inflation that came with that growth by a rapid series of jacking up the discount rate for borrowing, stopping and reversing the growth and sending Wall Street off ob their disasterous search for profits with the housing bubble underwriting with financial unsound mortgage and home equity loans ratcheted up with 40x leverage and crazed play with derivatives of credit default swaps that were never capatalized, hence the housing bubble bursting and the financial system freezeup that ushered in the last recession. But, the immediate effects of that financial recession (not an inventory and a goods over production recession) already targeted by the TARP recapitalization of the banks in 2008 before Obama came to office.

What the Republicans in the House and Senate have accomplished since the voters spoke in 2010 was to hold off the tax increases desired by Obama, and stop as well as they could without being able to get a budget passed because of the intransigence of the Democrats in control of the Senate the wasteful spending of huge sums of borrowed money that the consumers and business community know would lead surely to higher taxes.

Obama has renewed his call for taxing, borrowing and spending, the Senate democrats are threatening to take the country over the fiscal cliff if they don't get to tax more, borrow more, and spend more, and that has caused three straight months of retail sales declines as the consumers hold on to the few discretionary dollars they have, and the employment numbers and manufacturing numbers and hence the GDP numbers for the last 4 months show a steady slide south. There is a capital strike by business and the investor class and a spending strike by our consumer class due to the threat of higher taxes. Pure and simple, Brad!

Let's analyze the borrowing and spending you are saying is PBO's. When he got to the office the first week, he was briefed. He found out that there were two wars and the previous GOP adm did not provide the customary "war tax", maybe because he did not know. Then he found out that there was a LAW that gives (yes, given) subsidies that came out of our taxes, (yes taxes we all pay) to companies that were moving abroad. Y, because Bush, thought It wasn't his money. Now during Bush we lost 43,000 INDUSTRIES that keep on trickling down for over 4 years. With those we lost 5 million jobs. We are still losing because the obstructing GOP congress does not want to cancel that law.

Who benefits from those subsidies? Not the US or its people. Only the stock holders of those corporations which pay slave wages abroad, and still sell their substandard product here in the US. Then, because they may have an office here (the are now multinationals) they get a tax refund for paying taxes abroad. Who does that benefit? You? Me? The middle class? The poor?

Now lets take the Norquist pact. A Pledge to an ex-con that prohibits them to follow constitutional law. They cannot raise taxes to accommodate for the regular operation of the government. Our government have had programs in place for over 60 years. They have always been there, Obama did not create the Food Stamps program nor the medicaid nor Social Security, nor Medicare. But they are obligation of the USA to its people. Then the two unfunded wars plus the subsidies, none of that is President Obama's. Those bills or debts were there already.

Now, the money has to come from somewhere. If we don't raise taxes, then we still have to meet our obligations. So, just as Bush did, money has to be borrowed. The only one who was able to do without borrowing was another Democrat Clinton who found a more cooperative congress.

Our economy is a Supply and Demand economy. And people who work for very good wages pay for homes, vacations, insurances, food, clothing, cars, toys and so on. Now, remember most of those are imports. Toys, electronics, clothing, prescription drugs. So, we are consumers. Not producing but taking.

What does PBO wants to do. He wants to 1st, get rid of the subsidies, 2n, strengthen Social Security by creating a temporary jobs provision by repairing our infrastructure, (which was what China did at first). Why, because 40% of the money invested in infrastructure comes back to us in revenue. Take a course. 3rd, he wants to reward companies who hire here, our workers with a big tax break. All companies should be encouraged only by applying love of country and its people but the tax break come in handy. and 4th he want to give the middle class the first 250k in income a tax cut, and after the first 250K the Clinton taxes will be applied. If you are too greedy and think you will starve if you pay more taxes think about those who earn less but pays a higher rate. Common sense and a love for your neighbor will help with that.

Those four items do not reflect the desire of a crazy person. Those have been done before and they have worked.

Some will fool themselves and say that Bush had a 4% unemployment that was a lie. People just stop looking for a job way before Obama came into office. I know a couple of those. And I know a couple of others who committed suicide. B/c they "never saw anything like it".

The so called jobs that Bush created were in the military. What happens with those, well, their wages and big officers salaries, and Black Water/Accademia included came from our coffers increasing the debt. Then Bush gave money to Iraq in the billions of dollars.

Somethings got to give. If "atlas stop holding the world" then Government has to take over. The GOP leadership has been deceived by the Ayn Rand's philosophy of egoism w/o realizing that we all have the same right to be egoists.

I say if we don't go "offthecliff" we will be in bigger trouble. We have to do something. We, the people are between the sword and the wall. And we the people have been managed by unscrupulous financiers who have perpetuated an unfair and criminal status. 15% controlling 93% of the wealth while the bottom 85% of us sharing only 7% of the wealth of the country.

The 85% only wants jobs with living wages and benefits that will allow to take care of our families without depending on government. But in the meantime we have to let the safety net for those less fortunate. Do the math, how much is 85% of the population and find out the wealth of the country and divided it by the value in people of the 85% and see how much are we each are getting for our hard work.

Hope you have a large attentions span. I have come to believe GOPer don't like to read much.

You mean they won't tax You mean they wont tax the rich. They will tax those who cannot pay. Like the middle class, and the poor. The wealthy will remain with a 15% or less rate while we will continue paying over 20%. There is no way to fix it unless the corporations get to be free of taxes in order hire and pay low wages. You are as dumb as the lowest GOPer. Brainwashed to the max. What make a person vote against his own interests? Deception, and confusion. "shock doctrine".

"One deceit needs many others, and so the whole house is built in the air and must soon come to the ground” Baltasar Gracian

“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act” George Orwell

For those who want to be Christian: "He who oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker,but whoever is kind to the needy honors God."
Proverbs 14:31

"Defend the cause of the weak and fatherless; maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed.
Rescue the weak and needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked. "
Psalm 82:3-4

Well, that's entertaining. Fiction usually is!

Wow, issues.

@Keith Longey can't handle the truth! Otherwise, he would be aware that Reagan started the dive into the economic abyss with Reaganomics. While the economy was not in good shape when Reagan was inaugurated, his fear of the Evil Empire led to reckless and unnecessary buildup of our armed forces to cow leaders of the USSR into negotiations (e.g., with Gorbachev at Reykjavik) could have occurred with minimal increases in defense spending, as the percentage of GDP the USSR consumed on their military was unsustainable. At most, Reagan got the USSR to the negotiating table a year or two earlier than would have happened had the US increased its defense spending within sustainable limits as opposed to using so much deficit spending on our side.

Bush-41 continued the unsustainable Reaganomics, Clinton got us on the path to being debt-free, with 4 years worth of budget surpluses (of which Newt was connected to only 2 years, not the full 4 as he claims). Repealing Glass-Steagall was a very bad idea, especially with the resulting problems that led to the housing bubble exploding, which was a significant causal factor leading to the Great Recession.

Had Bush-43 not had an MBA, he may not have been so foolish as to have pushed for the very unpaid for '01 & '03 tax cuts for the very rich, (of which not all are business owners, just minority shareholders, or just got rich through inheritance), who will only create new jobs if the Middle Class has enough discretionary income to create the demand for the products, leading to an insufficient supply of those products. Simply put, a healthy market economy requires sufficient demand to not only buy stock on hand, but necessitate additional production to satisfy the demand - which means job creation only if, after production has been maximized with the employees on hand, there is still insufficient supply to satisfy the demand.

Supply-Side economics will lead to a sustainably healthy economy only with sufficient upfront market research to find out what the potential customers, on the demand-side of the equation, want. For the suppliers to stipulate what the customers can obtain is arrogant, and a good way to lead to a customer revolt - a large part of what lead to a significant percentage of US customers to reject "Made in America" for "Made in Japan" in the '70s; a better product for a better price. Granted, some of the defection was associated with the fact that union labor led to additional product expense which, when passed on to the customer, made the product not worth purchasing. (As it should be) Needless to say, product desirability is substantially increased if interactions between management and labor is a cooperative enterprise, rather than strictly top-down; e.g., employees having a sense of ownership in the production process, through stock-options, ability to provide feedback which can lead to a better product, and so on. [Harley-Davidson is a good example; when the company was bought out by AMF, from which management knew about making volleyballs but nothing about making motor cycles, there was a substantial period of time where Harley became a laughingstock, leading to increased popularity of motorcycles made by Yamaha, Kawasaki, and Honda. When employee revolt lead the employees to leveraging their way into a feeling of ownership and control over the production process, they were able to produce motorcycles that were good enough to gradually reclaim marketshare. "Made in America" had regained the substance it had lost. Unfortunately, in large parts of the marketplaces, as "Made in America" regained pride in production on the part of labor again, business owners increasingly outsourced more and more of the production process, first to Maquiladoras (in Mexico, which is not offshore, just across the border), which really boomed in the aftermath of NAFTA, then to India, Korea, China, the Caribbean - in either case, foreign labor on foreign soil was more easily (and legally) treated like slave labor, horrifically underpaid & overworked, and almost always in unsafe conditions - none of which NLRB, Dept. of Labor, or OSHA would tolerate and which only undocumented alien labor would accept, given likely deportation as the alternative.

I'm retired, and nolonger on anyones payroll, but I certainly paid my fair share of taxes over my career, a whole lot of them in my last 5 years after ny children were grown and raised and I cashed out of my residential real estate at a time I made a pretty good profit. And while I still pay taxes with investment income, and social security and employer pensions, and do have dividend income and some capital gains from a well diversified porfolio of mostly IRS and 403b and taxable investment accounts from my working two jobs most of my adult life firmly in the "middle class", and an not anxious to see the dividend and capital gains taxes ratched up as Obama and the Democrats wish to do, it wouldn't hurt me that badly. I am not in the over $200,000 range of annual income earners that would be so adversely affected by the tax increases, although both of my children in their duel household families would come close to being affected.

My concern comes from my knowledge of Public Administration and finance, Business Administration, and Economics..and I assure you I have more education in those areas and more experience in the private sector and labor organizing than does President Obama and Joe Biden and Sen Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi combined. So I post here and elsewhere, donate to conservative politicians, and work dilgently locally on get out the vote efforts to help spread the word and win the battle for the effective way to get out of this quackmire of a stagnant economy made worse by the foolish and frankly ignorant policies of Obama on our economic, fiscal, energy, and strategic defense and a sane health insurance and health care delivery reform effort.

Keith Longey - You talk the conservative talk but you most certainly don't walk it. In fact, I find your statement above to be littered with inconsistencies. If you truly believe what you espouse and were a man of principle you wouldn't take Social Security nor an "employer [employee] pension", which one can presume from your self-aggrandizing posturing was acquired through your claim of experience in "Public Administration." Another sign of hypocrisy found rampant within the world of "retired" righties is the availing themselves of Medicare and/or any of the other programs deemed socialistic by those with the conservative bent.

As to your claim of experience in "labor organizing." Unless your work in the "private sector" entailed undermining labor rights, that would not be a qualification among those that preach the conservative agenda. Furthermore, had you actually "worked two jobs most of my adult life," one could surmise that you delegated the role of parenting to someone else. Perhaps some publicly funded day care, or similar after school program, or perhaps you hired a low wage immigrant, or dumped them off at grandmamas, for you never mentioned the support or participation of a spouse in your endless list of accomplishments. In a healthy society, its citizenry should not be required to "work two jobs" most of their lives. That is the sign of caste system and not something one should be proud to write home about.

In conclusion, your polemic has the smell of bovine fecal matter and therefore I dismiss it as just another vomitus - reeking like every other bobbleheaded, conservative machination that I come across daily.

One correction and one presupposition: The cap is $250K, not $200,000 as you misstated, so, praise be… your "children" are safe in their "duel [dual income?] household families" (what - like two families living under one roof in constant battle?).

What kind of nonsense is that? I was married 27 years, I've been single for the last 22 years. Both of my children have high levels of income from their employments, and one un married but in a committed realtionship with her life partner, and the other is married, and his wife is also a high level earner.

I worked in private sector and government sector employments, and was an active union member and and office holder in both. And I did my share of parenting, obviously as the results are there to see in the success my children have had in life. And I paid my share of taxes and FICA taxes and Medicare taxes, and what conservative doesn't want to see a return of the taxes they paid. I also contribute to charity, but I don't want a government that decides they will confiscate my money to pay to the charitable concerns they choose...after taking a whopping cut for their "bureucratic administrative expenses"of course.

Well said, b113. You see your words are at least as good as mine, if not better.

The first thing you Repubs want to say is the Gov should be involved in everything. I agree on somethings, however, the Gov has to regulate something because it can't be expected that companies will regulate themselves. If businesses or industries were allowed to do so without any Gov. regulation this country would really be a mess. the funny thing is, whenever something goes wrong like, for example; a storm, fires, flooding. The same people that don't want Gov. involvement or taxes are the first looking for Gov. to come in and assist with recovery. I can remember the time during the so call great Reagan era when he deregulated the trucking industry and airline industry all the tires on truck flying off on highways killing people and planes falling out the sky's because of the lack of poor inspection standards, no standards time of use for vehicles. In a perfect world some of the people that believe that there should be less regulation and believe that these corps will regulate themselves will be in use of or flying on one of the vehicles or planes that doesn't have any Gov regulation but self regulates crashes due to faulty equipment and/or lack of scheduled maintenance that they fought for. Wouldn't that be ironic? Their ass crippled because the plane or vehicle they were in screws came loose because they weren't required to be checked...

ROTFFL. I'm not convinced>>>>

Keith

"America doesn't have a taxing problem, we have a spending problem." Nice GOP talking point there, Keith. In fact, everything you say sounds like something cut and pasted from Republicans or Fox News.

I assume you're going to vote for Romney. Why in the world would you do that? Everything for him is done behind closed doors (I believe his term is "quiet rooms"). He wouldn't dare release any more tax returns...that Swiss amnesty program would be HIS Waterloo. If you're wealthy, voting for him would make sense. If not, why would you vote against YOUR own best interests?