What do you think about GM?

[mjdtexan]

Quote:
You could not have said it better, well, that Hillary thing is a little alarming but you might be right.

I'll be honest, I was hoping Obama (now President) would beat Hillary in the primary because I thought McCain could beat Obama (now President) in a runoff and where I didnt think he could beat Hillary. I've never understood why the GOP selected McCain in the first place. I really like Huckabee for it.

Oh, I know the Moderators have been watching this waiting for it to get out of hand. I really do appreciate that nobody has. I tend to sometimes and I am really trying to watch it.

 

[jjdward]

Quote:
You could not have said it better, well, that Hillary thing is a little alarming but you might be right.

I'll be honest, I was hoping Obama (now President) would beat Hillary in the primary because I thought McCain could beat Obama (now President) in a runoff and where I didnt think he could beat Hillary. I've never understood why the GOP selected McCain in the first place. I really like Huckabee for it.

Oh, I know the Moderators have been watching this waiting for it to get out of hand. I really do appreciate that nobody has. I tend to sometimes and I am really trying to watch it.

Amen on Huck!!

 

[DuckyBoys]

I will never buy a car from a government owned company. In fact, I will boycott anything Obama touches in the private sector. Period. The Federal government just stole assets from private citizens and gave them to an ITALIAN car company and a UNION.

It is treason.

 

[luvarabhorses]

JJ,

So new math, compliments of Google:
50 billion divided by 275 million = 181.818182
182 months/12 months in a year = 15 years in Iraq
We've been there 6 1/2 years,longer than WW2 btw, hopefully will get out in less than 15



Thanks for correcting the "no national debt" error, that seemed too good to be true. If 50 billion is what we have given GM (?) Yes that does seem like a ridiculous amount of money. I have to wonder if he was afraid of,"when Bush was in office, I had a Gm (or related to GM) job, under Obama, I had no job" kind of thing. I LOVE Hillary, I voted for her. I was really unhappy when O got in. I have to say though I see in him what I saw in Bill and that was someone who wanted to try to bend over backwards to make everyone get along. I mean, look what he did and most of that was with Republicans who despised him.

Also JJ the Royal Palms down the road seemed like a good deal to me, hope you get some you are happy with.

To me, like Chris Rock said, Judge Wapner of the People's Court could have solved Clintons problems. If Hillary can forgive him, then maybe the rest of us should. When you look at Iran/Contra and Reagan, Watergate, soldiers dying in Iraq, it gives a lot of meaning to "When Clinton lied, no one died".

To me, keeping us safe is getting us out of debt with China. I HATE being in debt. My house is paid off, I live on a budget where I pay all of my bills on time, I'm comfortable, I feel safe. I don't need tanks patrolling my farm to feel that way. I don't need to start up issues with my neighbors and then blow them up to make them cower in fear of me.
I think after 9/11 we should have retaliated and killed Osama and party. But really, don't you think sending CIA operatives, etc.. would have been a whole lot more effective..and cheaper?

I think this is an accurate link, it's long but I am copying part of it in hopes that some people who disagree with me will read it.

http://bunkinthewest.wordpress.com/...rats-national-debt-and-fiscal-responsibility/


By contrast, the federal deficit refers to how much money the US government is spending over and above its budget in a single year. So the deficit reverts to zero at the beginning of each fiscal year whereas the national debt does not.


Now let’s take a look at the facts. We’ll start with national debt and raw numbers. In 2000, when Bill Clinton left office, the national debt was $5.7 trillion. Today, after seven years of George W. Bush, it is $9.6 trillion. Bush has almost doubled our national debt in eight short years.


But let’s go further back and take a look at the average increases in national debt by president. It is most useful to look at the national debt as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP). GDP is the total market value of all final goods and services produced within the country in a given period of time (usually a calendar year). Since 1945, there have been seven presidential terms held by Democrats and nine held by Republicans. During every term held by a Democratic president since this time, that president has reduced the national debt as a percentage of GDP. The Roosevelt/Truman administration made the greatest dent with a 24.3% reduction. By contrast, only three terms held by a Republican president since 1945 showed a reduction in the national debt as a percentage of GDP. Further, Eisenhower made the most significant reduction for Republicans at a 10.8% decline between 1953 and 1957. This is less than half the decline made by the Democrats Roosevelt/Truman. Even further, every single Republican president since 1973 (beginning with Nixon/Ford) has increased the national debt as a percentage of GDP. Let’s summarize: Since 1946, Democratic presidents increased the national debt an average of only 3.2% per year. The Republican presidents increased the national debt by an average of 9.7% per year. Republican presidents out-borrowed and out-spent Democratic presidents by a three-to-one ratio. Putting that in very real terms, for every dollar a Democratic president has raised the national debt in the past 59 years, Republican presidents have raised the debt by $2.99.


Looking further at federal spending, we find that between 1978 and 2005, Democrats increased federal spending by 9.9% while Republicans increased federal spending by 12.1%. Further, in the same period, Democrats increased the national debt by 4.2% whereas the Republicans increased it by 36.4%. It is true that the Republicans held 4 terms during this time while Democrats only held 3. However, looking at each president since 1978, we see that Reagan increased the national debt by a whopping 89.2% during his two terms. You read that right, Reagan nearly doubled the national debt in 8 years.

Now, you might say, “Well, but productivity increased more during that spending.” Using GDP as a measure of productivity (which is standard procedure), you’d be dead wrong. During the years 1978 – 2005, the Democrats increased the GDP by 12.6% while the Republicans only increased it by 10.7%. The president responsible for the largest increase in GDP, or the productivity of our country, during this time was Bill Clinton, a Democrat, who increased the GDP by 28.4% during his eight years in office.


Some people argue that GDP is an imperfect measure of productivity. So let’s look at job creation. Of all the presidents since 1933, Bill Clinton has created by far the most jobs. During his tenure, he created 22.7 million jobs, a 4.9% increase. The worst president in terms of job creation is George W. Bush. During his first term, he created only 100,000 jobs, a 0.002% increase. On average, between 1933 and the present day, Republican have increased jobs by 0.21% while Democrats have increased jobs by 3.24%.


(A note about Reagan: All of the economic growth experienced during Reagan’s presidency was subsidized by the federal debt. Our federal debt almost doubled during his presidency. Talk about a big spender! He mortgaged our future, and it is abundantly clear by the widening gap between rich and poor that the policies he enacted, Reaganomics, if you will, are not sustainable.)


We can also get an idea of how “big” government is by looking at the national debt as a percentage of GDP (or, to put it another way, how much the government is spending relative to everyone else). Republicans advocate for small government. They portray the Democrats as people who want big government. Looking at the facts, we see that government spending is biggest when a Republican president is in office. Republicans historically have bigger governments than Democrats. Five out of the eight presidential terms held by Republicans since 1945 have seen an increase in government spending as a percentage of GDP, an increase in the size of the government. Zero of the seven presidential terms held by Democrats since that time have seen an increase in the size of the government. In fact, every single Democratic president since 1945 has reduced the size of the government by reducing the amount of national debt as a percentage of GDP.


Looking at Clinton more closely, we see that he presided over the largest economic expansion on record, the fastest income growth most workers had experienced in a generation, and the disappearance of the federal budget deficit. When he came into office in 1993, the federal budget deficit was $290 billion and was projected to be $455 billion by 2000. Clinton made it his number one goal to reduce the national debt. He did so by raising taxes on the wealthy and cutting taxes for the poor. By the end of his presidency, he had eliminated the federal deficit. In 1999, he recorded a federal budget surplus of $122.7 billion. In 2000, he topped his own record with a federal budget surplus of $230 billion. He also made huge gains in the national debt. In May 2000, he made a $216 billion payment on the federal debt, the largest debt paydown in American history. The federal government’s long-term debt in 2000 was $2.4 trillion lower than it was projected to be when Clinton took office in 1992. In September 2000, he explained that the $5.7 trillion national debt had been reduced by $360 billion in the previous three years. He reduced it by $223 billion in 2000 alone. At the 2000 rate of debt paydown, the US was expected to have paid off its entire debt by 2010.


Now, near the end of George W. Bush’s presidency, our national debt is $9.6 trillion. We owe $5 trillion of that to China, a communist country we don’t like and who doesn’t like us. We have made absolutely zero payments on our national debt since Bush took office. Instead, Bush has nearly doubled our national debt, and he keeps spending. The economy is weaker, the dollar is weaker, and we’re further in debt than we ever have been before. We continue to pay for the war and reconstruction in Iraq despite the fact that the Iraq government has a $79 billion surplus earning interest in banks in New York. This is the epitome of fiscal irresponsibility.

 

[DuckLady]

Since we have veered off topic to politics and opinions thereof, this thread has run its course.