Bush Economy the worst since Herbert Hoover

[bitkahuna]

Originally posted by lex400sc
You are all horribly off-topic in pointing the finger back at Clinton and the big bad liberals.

I don't think ANY President deserves all the credit or all the blame.

The problem I'm pointing out with George Bush is his idiotic supply-side delusion in his obviously failed economic policy. If tax cuts didn't work in 2001, didn't work in 2002, didn't work in 2003, what the hell makes you think they will work in 2004?

What is your solution?

An uncertainty that Bush breeds on a weekly basis. Bit, you remember the message of fear in media from Bowling, right? I can relate if all back to Bush's Orange Alerts, and all the July 4th press conferences warning of ominous attacks and imminent threats.

I agree that completely nebulous alerts and warnings do no one any good. The message is something like this: "You should be very scared because there's lots of bad people out there who want to hurt you. But hey! Don't worry, go shopping!!!"

Then there was the overblown threat of Anthrax.

When a Senator gets sent anthrax that's very serious. I'd say that situation was more overblown by the media than by the government.

And how dare whichever jackass said "you're just lazy if you're unemployeed"?! Riiiight wise guy! People have been steadily losing jobs for more than three years non-stop and by some fuzzy logic there exists a bunch of phantom jobs for the millions of unemployeed, but they are just too lazy to apply for them?

Here I disagree with you. Look in any paper in the nation, or online, and there's THOUSANDS of positions to fill. Unemployed people are too lazy to do something in a field they're not currently in, instead waiting for a job at the inflated pay rate they had before, which doesn't appear. The longer they wait in denial, the staler their skills become in many cases, and the less employable they are in the field they were in. People who are unemployed for more than a few weeks should take ANY job.

However, we have a president who has undone years of international and environmental progress.

On Iraq of course we disagree. But do you believe he shouldn't have gone into Afghanistan either?

On the Middle East, another favorite topic, Abbas has resigned and the situation is back to square zero. Clinton 'failed' also with Camp David accords, but I don't blame either Bush or Clinton. Unless these yoyos really want to work it out nothing proposed over here is going to make any difference. And I'm convinced that neither side really wants peace yet.

[bitkahuna]

Originally posted by 93LexoGS300
[BYou’ve always fail to recognize this was caused by Clinton. His eight years of presidency saw a huge economic upturn, but after the Enron scandals we realized why: Clinton failed to watch over these large companies that inflated profits and earnings, therefore leading to even more investment.[/b]

Do you believe Clinton personally should have watched Enron's books?

Regardless, you're giving any government too much credit. There's no way they can watch all the corporate shenanegans (sp?) that go on.

[BAWLEX94]

just cause there was a bunch of high fiving earlier when i was the only one around arguing, Im gonna go ahead and give lex400sc a hearty : "amen brotha"

[J.P.]

"Here I disagree with you. Look in any paper in the nation, or online, and there's THOUSANDS of positions to fill. Unemployed people are too lazy to do something in a field they're not currently in, instead waiting for a job at the inflated pay rate they had before, which doesn't appear. The longer they wait in denial, the staler their skills become in many cases, and the less employable they are in the field they were in. People who are unemployed for more than a few weeks should take ANY job."


Welcome to my world. Talking to people making $130,000 a year on their last job, out for work for 12 MONTHS now, I call up offering something in the 80's and they get all pissy like that is an insult. Let's get real people#@!

[bitkahuna]

Originally posted by jpa2400
Welcome to my world. Talking to people making $130,000 a year on their last job, out for work for 12 MONTHS now, I call up offering something in the 80's and they get all pissy like that is an insult. Let's get real people#@!

Right. I was laid off in 2001. I took another job paying about 25% less. Still way better than unemployment! Two years later I'm making more than I was in the job I was laid off from.

[J.P.]

Because you set pride a side and did what you had to! A side from making WAY more then unemployment, you filled that void on your resume as being an out of work chump that no one wants.

[2Lexus430s]

Man, I leave for a hour and all hell breaks loose....

"Jesus Christ, I should have known better that this thread was going to spill over into a Clinton-Liberal whinefest. You are all horribly off-topic in pointing the finger back at Clinton and the big bad liberals. Well, it is their fault... sorry Granted the recession began in the final months of Clinton's terrm, but recessions are a normal part of the economic cycle, they occur regularly and usually only last no more than 11 months (until recently). Oh, I forgot, is there a War going on? or maybe perhaps HUNDREDS of large companies found in corporate scandle forced to lay thousands (even millions) off. Oh yeah, we can't forget about ALMOST ALL of the Large Airlines laying Thousands off. Must be Bush's fault SCLexus, you like to blame Clinton for 9/11 also I don't blame Clinton for the attacks on 9-11, I blame him for the lack of action before the attacks..Clinton thought "lets just shoot a couple of tomahawk Missles at NOTHING..that should scare them", but you forget that Bush got memos from domestic AND foreign intelligence which detailed the attacks to a degree, and he had nine months in office before they were to be carried out. lack of information by the Clinton admin caused for failure of reaction by everyone after that How careless of the gung-ho security President to pay such little attention to such a large threat for so long. ask Clinton, he had plenty of intel as well. MORE SOLDIERS HAVE DIED UNDER CLINTON'S PRESIDENCY THAT BOTH THE BUSH'S TO THIS DAY I sometimes wonder if he knew and allowed the attacks to be carried out only because it would open the door to an unabated all-out assault on the Middle East. But I digress..." about time we have a president that wants to protect your a$$, not just try to get a$$ like Clinton

[2Lexus430s]

"SCLexus, I can tell, is a product of the Reagan Era. He is hardcore partisan, blindly attacks everything Democratic, and I'm sure he's one of the ones that loves democracy but wishes the Democrats would just go away (what a great democracy a one-party system would make! ). is it just me, or do the Democrats place SO MUCH MORE blame on Republicans.. There is not 1 thing that a republican can do without getting on EVER democrat to try to come up with something wrong with it. There isn't a whole lot that Republicans blast about democrats. He is the last of the great conservative dinosaurs that still uses the term "liberal" as a bad word, most people just go ahead and consider it a bad word lol. It makes me chuckle when I hear it too."

[2Lexus430s]

Lets talk about lay offs for a second.

My Company had to cut some costs (because of the economy) about 3 months ago. The way we were going to do this was to change some positions within the company. We either had to lay off 340 people in our IT/LAN department or restructure and move some of them to other departments.

In our IT/LAN department a level 1 IT Specialist makes between $41,000-$48,500 per year.
We offered 300 IT Specialist the choice to either switch to the IT/TECH department (pretty much the same job, but dealing with outside companies and not internal IT) or collect a severance of 1 month full pay per calendar year they have worked..

The difference in pay for the 2 positions is only that an IT/TECH Level 1 has a salary between $40,500.00-$47,900.00 and requires them to learn 1 more program. Also, we would not reduce anyone’s pay if they were making over the salary cap.

Guess how many decided to quite?????
271 people just because they got angry that we would switch there position and only give them a 30 day notice!!!!! That’s pathetic!!!

About 40 of them have come back looking for their old job. But guess what, we have already rehired, so many of them are out of luck.. However, we did allow some of them to come back to work.

That shows you the mentality of many people. Pride will bring you down..

[LB Lex]

Originally posted by bitkahuna
Do you believe Clinton personally should have watched Enron's books?

Regardless, you're giving any government too much credit. There's no way they can watch all the corporate shenanegans (sp?) that go on.

Granted, Clinton would not have found everything that was going on, but there was no corporate accountability at the time, no one was watching or even ensuring through independent auditing what these companies were doing. These companies had free reign to do as they please and they did and now people lost their retirement money and governments lost their investments. My dad lost close to $250k that was invested in Enron, now he might only see a couple pennies on the dollar, if anything at all. So many people didn't trust the stock market after this fiasco, that's why people invested in real-estate.

I'm not blaming it all on Clinton, but his failure to oversee companies in booming times helped to exacerbate the problem. Likewise Bush is not fault-free, like I said above his tax cuts were worthless.

[2Lexus430s]

Can anyone say "Double Taxation on dividends" I LOVE Bush for that..

[lex400sc]

Originally posted by 93LexoGS300
Granted, Clinton would not have found everything that was going on, but there was no corporate accountability at the time, no one was watching or even ensuring through independent auditing what these companies were doing. These companies had free reign to do as they please and they did and now people lost their retirement money and governments lost their investments. My dad lost close to $250k that was invested in Enron, now he might only see a couple pennies on the dollar, if anything at all. So many people didn't trust the stock market after this fiasco, that's why people invested in real-estate.

I'm not blaming it all on Clinton, but his failure to oversee companies in booming times helped to exacerbate the problem. Likewise Bush is not fault-free, like I said above his tax cuts were worthless.

Once again, you guys are pointing all the fingers at Clinton, while forgetting that Bush didn't do jack to prevent Enron from it's illlicit activities. Bush either didn't know or didn't care about what they did until hundreds of thousands of employees and investors were left out in the rain. Then he very cautiously proceeded to denounce corporate scandals and it really must have hurt to ask his Attorney General to pursue charges on some of his best buddies. Oh you forgot that Enron, Arthur Andersen, Halliburton, and others were the largest contributors to Bush's past and present campaigns? Yeah and they were all accused of and many of them convicted of defrauding investors, padding the books, tax evasion, etc. At least Clinton wasn't in cahoots with these companies, but somehow it's more his fault than Bush's right? I'm glad at least Bit caught this discrepancy in logic...

Originally posted by SCLexus3.0
Can anyone say "Double Taxation on dividends" I LOVE Bush for that..

And you dare to call liberals self-interested? Listen to youself!... I wonder where your loyalties would lie if the GOP didn't cater to your tax bracket so generously Bush misleads people by saying that more people will invest money into the stock market with this new tax cut. Except that nearly every stock issued today is issued as hybrid preferred stock and common stock, neither of which qualify for the cut. The dividends that are exempted are those paid to execs in older, traditional firms like banks, insurance companies, and utility companies. Most were acquired in the '50s by modern day millionaires and billionaires that aren't actively trading them today. These dividends make up the majority of big time executive salaries and now they are not being taxed for it! If ever you had a doubt that the GOP caters to the rich, here's your proof.

[lex400sc]

Originally posted by SCLexus3.0
Oh, I forgot, is there a War going on? or maybe perhaps HUNDREDS of large companies found in corporate scandle forced to lay thousands (even millions) off. Oh yeah, we can't forget about ALMOST ALL of the Large Airlines laying Thousands off. Must be Bush's fault [/b]

Hundreds of large corporations? Boy you sure do have a knack for embellishment... You think that layoffs are the cause of a recession, maybe you should go back to school because it is actually the result of one.

Bush is at fault on the warfront. I agree we had to disrupt al Qaeda operations by disintegrating their network in Afghanistan, but that was really chump change comparatively. The Iraq war is what's really biting us in the ass. How many hundreds of billions of dollars will we be eclipsing according to Bush's new figures just to remove a benign dictator such as Saddam? Meanwhile the regime in North Korea happily enjoys it's newly gained respect from the Bush Admin. Talk about ass backwards prioritization. How much safer would the world be if North Korea was reintegrated with the South as a democratic, capitalist, nuclear-free Korean peninsula and Saddam was still nickel and diming it in his own country? Think about that for a second...

Originally posted by SCLexus3.0
I blame him for the lack of action before the attacks..Clinton thought "lets just shoot a couple of tomahawk Missles at NOTHING..that should scare them

Now you are just jumbling up historical events. Okay, let's grant you the blame towards Clinton for a second, now what blame would you cast upon George Bush for neglecting high-probability intelligence for 9 months?

And let me clarify the "shoot a couple of tomahawks" comment you made so that your confusion doesn't spread on to others. Clinton was bombing alledged WMD plants in Iraq in 1999 after inspectors were expelled, which has absolutely nothing to do with 9/11/2001. At the time Osama actually endorsed the coup of Saddam's regime by fundamentalists.

Originally posted by SCLexus3.0
lack of information by the Clinton admin caused for failure of reaction by everyone after that
ask Clinton, he had plenty of intel as well.

You just made the most blatantly contradictory statement ever. First Clinton has a "lack of information", then "he had plenty of intel as well"???? LOL, make up your mind, which is it?! The CIA and FBI was doing the same exact thing during the Clinton Admin as they were the early Bush Admin! How does Clinton have more intel than Bush when Bush inherited Clinton's office? And knowing that Bush inherited more resources subsequent to the attacks, how does that make Clinton more accountable, especially since he wasn't able to act upon the execution of the attacks? You don't make any sense at all.

Originally posted by SCLexus3.0
MORE SOLDIERS HAVE DIED UNDER CLINTON'S PRESIDENCY THAT BOTH THE BUSH'S TO THIS DAY [/b]

Right, and Clinton was in office for 8 years, while both Bushes' combine for a total of 6.5 years. Clinton used peacekeepers to restore order in many volatile regions around the world. Bush Sr. waged a war with 31 other nations in Iraq and then retreated back to the safety of southern Kuwait afterwards. If you're going to make comparisons, at least be fair and thorough.

Originally posted by SCLexus3.0
about time we have a president that wants to protect your a$$, not just try to get a$$ like Clinton [/b]

How is the Iraq War protecting us? We lost 300 more soldiers than we would have had he not went to Iraq. How did Bush protect us from 9/11? What he says, what he does, and what he means are not at all the same thing. That is the art of politics.

Originally posted by SCLexus3.0
[Bis it just me, or do the Democrats place SO MUCH MORE blame on Republicans.. There is not 1 thing that a republican can do without getting on EVER democrat to try to come up with something wrong with it. There isn't a whole lot that Republicans blast about democrats.[/b]

LOL, It's funny to hear that coming from your mouth. Wasn't this a thread about Bush that swiftly turned a corner into a Clinton bashing fest? Who was the perpatrator of that tangent again? Oh yah... Then you accuse Clinton of all the bad things that happened in Bush Jr.s term and apparently the buck stops just short of Bush Sr.'s term. Convenient...

Originally posted by SCLexus3.0


most people just go ahead and consider it a bad word

I like how eager you are to speak for everyone. You must think you're the voice of America too What's it like being so arrogant and closeminded?

[2Lexus430s]

Today, there is a 35 percent tax on corporate income and then stockholders also pay regular income taxes on dividends received. After this double taxation, an investor in the 27 percent tax bracket receives less than 48 cents for each dollar of earnings a corporation designates for dividend payments. This encourages investors to speculate on volatile stocks which might "pop" and provide a quick killing since the capital gains tax on a profitable stock sale is 20 percent. This is to encourage companies and investors to return to the long-term dividend strategy rather than the short-term capital gains strategy.

[lex400sc]

Except that who issues dividend stock anymore? All the stocks that stimulate the economy are common and preferred stock. Neither qualify under Bush's plan. Dividends are horded by the board members.