I am sick of hearing about Bush. Why can't you just stick to what this president has done and is doing Bottom line is his economic policies stink . He gave our stimulus money to 34 green companies that went Bankrupt because he invested in companies before the technology was proven. Now he want to tax us to death to pay for his mistakes.

Sorry David. Obama won. I know that part makes you happy. But with the win comes the acknowledgment that good, bad, or indifferent, its all on him now. The "blame Bush" era is over. The mechanisms Obama has tried to implement for economic stimulation are all in place. If they don't gain traction, its Obama's fault, not Bush's.

and if they do gain traction, is it to obama's credit chris L?

Yes, when I was in junior high school, I dealt with a lot of bullies. As I said, they were all cowards. Two or three of them turned out to be decent people when they grew up. It never crossed my mind that I might be the problem--since I never spoke to them or engaged them in any way. I was quite small physically when I was a child. And I wore glasses, and, well, I read a lot and that provokes some people. Though I never did anything to engage these bullies, I did stop running from them, and that's how I learned that they were, generally speaking, cowards. Oh but Chris L, you already knew all of this, from your background checks, and my picture...

The economy remains OURS, Chris L. Neither your threats nor your misrepresentations of other people's positions change that. It's not warm, it's not fuzzy. It's a fact.

since we are in the business of over-generalizing, let me add a bit to the second philosophy.

the second group believes that favoring tax policies which tend to concentrate wealth in the hands of an infinitesimally small group is not necessarily a bad thing for society as a whole, because the trickle-down effect will take care of all those not in the infinitesimally small group.

the corollary to this philosophy is that we should have voted for romney and simply waited for his cayman island retirement account to trickle a few nickels down to the hoi polloi to enable them to buy a cheap pair of second hand sneakers. thanks but no thanks.

Mike, you speak of political rhetoric and the political elite. This will not change soon. Look to the future. We survived Bill Clinton and will survive Obama.

Francis, I agree with you 100% we will survive Obama. The question is what kind of government do we, as a people, want. Do we want to be dependent on an authoritative centralized government who micromanages our lives. Or; do we want a smaller government with greater individual freedom and responsibility.

I personally vote for a smaller government with greater individual responsibility. When you look around at our community you find that we are extremely charitable and responsible people. While it is critical that we have some level of government to provide for basic infrastructure and rule of law, we do not need a government that micromanages our lives.

By micromanaging, do you mean telling people who can and cannot be married? By micromanaging, do you mean guaranteeing some sort of health care for the poor as well as the rich? Or does micromanaging include telling women that they can or cannot use birth control, or control their own bodies? This micro-managing--are you suggesting that's exclusively a Democratic thing? Innnnteresting...
We were SO lucky that we had a Bill Clinton. And President Obama is worthy of his re-election. Try working with him for a change, rather than "surviving" him, or working against him and your fellow Americans.

David, It sounds like we have some common ground to work with. As I stated we should be looking at how the actual implementation of policies has worked up to this point.

Can you accept the premise that it is necessary to study and understand what affects existing government policy have had in solving problems before it is possible to know what effects future proposed policy might have on the electorate?

The voting people of America--all of them Americans--re-elected President Obama. Start there, and see where you wind up.

Wouldn't a fair comparison be with employment at the end of the Bush GDP recession, rather than before the meltdown caused by Republican policies had full effect?

The economy is better off now than it was four years ago.

...and not nearly as good as it could have been by now, with no end in site for unemployment for 23Million unumployed Americans.

how long bush is to be blamed depends on the extent of the initial damage. it took a long time for the people of hiroshima and nagasaki to bounce back. there are still lingering effects of the bhopal gas leak tragedy.

Kelly - Republicans didn't break the economy, Democrats did, with their strong arm tactics of pressuring banks to loan $$ to people who couldn't afford to pay it back, then encouraging over-leveraging and speculation by "gauranteeing" these loans by Fannie and Freddie, and finally failing to oversee what Wall Street was doing with the likes of Barnie Frank and Chris Dodd as the chairs of the House and Senate Finance Committees (whose job it is to oversee these financial trends).

Sure, FindBalance, that's why Europe's finance sector melted down at exactly the same time - because the Community Reinvestment Act, passed in the 1970s, suddenly went into force for the entire developed world.

The finance sector, unburdened by Bush era enforcement of even the inadequate regulations already on the books, brought about the meltdown. They took the risks they took because they could make money fraudulently hiding the risks and leaving others holding the bag.

Kelly, you conveniently ingore the Dems part int he meltdown, both directly and oversight-wise. The following paragraph you wrote is so incorrect in everything it states:
"The finance sector, unburdened by Bush era enforcement of even the inadequate regulations already on the books, brought about the meltdown. They took the risks they took because they could make money fraudulently hiding the risks and leaving others holding the bag"
1. Bush era enforcement is blaming Bush and R policies. This is gross mischaracterization because this responsibility lies with the House and Senate Finance committees, which were chaired by Frank and Dodd for a number of years leading up to the meltdown. The SEC also did not do their job, and that organization doesn’t change from administration to administration
2. They took risks because Frank pushed for easily accessible, cheap money, backed by Fannie and Freddie – that *purely* Democrat policy took all the risk away from the banks
3. They did not hide anything, let alone do it fraudulently. If they had, why are people not in jail? Even Obama did not put anyone in jail.

Explain to your eager readers, Find, just how Barney Frank made his influence so irresistible to financial institutions (and we all know how innocent they are) while Congress and the Presidency were in Republican hands. Neat trick!

If Frank could do that, I'm sure he could also magically subvert the European financial system.

Your theory of how the meltdown happened is simply and completely ridiculous.

By the way, Fannie and Freddie were very late to the party. They were the bigger suckers that Wall St. needed, but even there the motivation was profit and market share - private incentives - not mainly a public policy goal.

Again with the condescension, Kelly – you’re a real peach.
And again, also, you are so off base on so much. What you are saying is that when the Dems were in the minority in 2001 and 2002, Frank had no influence; so I guess he and the other Dems in Congress just shouldn’t have shown up! But we know Barney did show up, and in 2003 when the Republicans began to take a hard look at loaning money to people who could not afford to pay it back, Barney led the charge against, bringing a letter to Bush signed by other Dems, begging them not to tighten qualification rules because that was the engine driving the economy.
And I already explain how Barney made his influence so irresistible to financial institutions (I love how you demonize things that aren’t govt-controlled), but you just ignore it again. First, he pressured banks to give these loans (after all, he was a US Rep, and his mission and passion were that everyone in America own their own home), then he had Fannie/Freddie guarantee them (Wall Street didn’t ask for these guarantees, Barney handed it to them!) – no, F&F were not late to the game, Frank hid the impact to them until the very end.
And you continue to ignore the fact that the House and Senate were Dem in the end years of Bush’s presidency, exactly when the financial walls came crumbling down. Yet you would have us believe the Dems were not culpable at all.

RE Frank “magically” subverting the European financial system – I know you’re not that stupid, Kelly, but maybe you think the readers are – the ‘EFS’ was collateral damage in the meltdown – Frank didn’t have to do anything special, the EFS was just affected when it happened.

BTW Kelly, now that the election is oveer, I am looking forward to my reduction in MA income tax rate when I file for 2012, as you noted.

FindB, there's no arguing with the chip on your shoulder, but your facts - those are simply wrong.

Check your history. The Republicans held both houses of Congress throughout the first six years of Bush/Cheney - except for some back and forth in the Senate in 2001 and 2002. Anyone who's looked at the mortgage crisis without cherry-picking the data will tell you that private interests caused the meltdown. See http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/20/opinion/nocera-an-inconvenient-truth.html.

Last I checked, the regulators are all in the Executive Branch. They were under instructions not to regulate, even to the extent that regulations were already in place.

By the way, Democrats are not blameless. Bill Clinton did ally with Republicans and centrist Democrats to repeal Glass-Steagall, which was a mistake of epic proportions.

I guess you must think all those German loans into Spain had nothing to do with the European financial panic. You do realize that Europe's economy as a whole is close to ours in size, don't you? But Barney Frank was still able to pull it down around his ears!

Look, the Fox-tested, GOP-approved fairy tale that the financial panic occurred because of the government is flat wrong. They're lying to you for a reason. Owning up to the truth would leave them out of power forever.

Funny, I point out your condescension, and right away you accuse me of having a chip on my shoulder.

FYI - I get my info from a lot of sources, and come to my own conclusions. Fox didn't tell me Frank and Dodd were chairs of the House and Senate Finance Committee leading up to the meltdown, nor did they tell me that the SEC really doesn't operate under an administration's influence, regardless of whether they are R or D; I just think they are mostly on the side to protect Wall Street, whether through incompetence (Bernie Madoff) or other.

Look, I think we both laid out enough info for the reader to be better informed of alternate points of view on the same events.

Also, I agree with an updated form of Glass-Steagall to separate the monies between service and investment within a bank. That's the kind of regulation I agree with, because it prevents extremes. Why that hasn't been done yet is beyond me.

Correction of bald error is not condescension. If you accuse me of sarcasm, I'll happily own up to it.

We don't have Glass-Steagall because not enough other states have elected people like Elizabeth Warren to Congress.

By the way, putting investment banks and commercial banks under single enterprises won't work. They need to be separate to keep incentive and risk aligned.

The Bush SEC drastically lowered enforcement through its political appointee Chris Cox:

"During Cox's tenure, penalties imposed on companies fell 84 percent, from $1.59 billion in 2005 to $256 million in 2008."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/31/AR2009053102254.html

Barney Frank and Chris Dodd probably had less than zero influence over Bush Administration finance regulators.

Nope, the 2008 financial panic and subsequent Great Recession were squarely the fault of laissez-faire Republican ideology, which puts the interests of the already obscenely rich ahead of an orderly and non-catastrophic market.

Oh yeah --- forgot to add:

HILLARY IN 2016

I would not declare victory for Hill-dog just yet. Remember, when Obama needed some deflection of the Benghazi matter, Hillary fell on the sword and claimed the lax security was her fault. I would wait to see how the investigation into who knew what and when plays out. She may have committed political Hari Kari so that Obama could win 2012.

But first, we need to get past the media smokescreen of Generals who can't keep their pants on.........

Linda, Thank you for putting a smile on my face. I absolutely love the irony contained in your statement "it's white, white, white; it's been strangled by Norquist, the evangelicals, the 'tea party' and nuts like Bachmann, Perry and the pizza guy"

I agree with you about removing Harry Reid from a leadership position. That would be a good start. Depending on who would replace Mitch McConnell I could agree with that too.

Please continue to promote the stereotype and ignore reality. It will make our job easier in the long run. Thank you for posting and I hope to see more comments from you.

and the one person who i thought was sane and reasonable that i could even think of voting for, jon huntsman, got nowhere in the primaries. they seem to prefer nuts or flip floppers to sane and slightly right of center candidates. the only way to reform them is by punishing them election cycle after election cycle until they get the message.

Max, I liked Huntsman as well. Unfortunately the current state of the system is such that he was not able to get the traction and press coverage he needed to go forward in the election process. I also think that the people in this country are not ready for someone like Huntsman yet.

It will take a lot of work to get the majority of voters to stop blindly following the sound bites and talking heads on TV. I think that can happen but there has not been enough education done at the grassroots level yet. Just look at some of the comments on this thread and you will find partisan political soundbites regurgitated as hard facts.

Don't give up. We can change the system. It just will take a lot of hard work and time.

And this from Representative Hank Johnson (D-GA)
http://www.northboroughgop.com/index.php/member-blogs/89-elitists/199-ranting-of-the-lunatic-left

except hank johnson is not considered by the democrats as a potential 2016 presidential or vice presidential canddiate. rubio by contrast was strongly in the running as romney's running mate and is almost a certainty for a 2016 presidential primary run.

i am not even sure whether rubio believes what he said, but he has to exude stupidity to appeal to his southern evangelical base. that in my opinion is really sad. huntsman was the only candidate who refused to act stupid and said he believed in evolution and that he believed the science of climate change. and he got nowhere in the primaries. this necessity to deliberately put on a stupid hat in the primaries will continue to plague the republican candidates.

There are two separate pieces to this comment that I want to address. The first piece is the assertion that Marco Rubio used poor judgement in the way he answered the question because his answer pandered to evangelical Christians. The second piece is the question itself.

First did Marco Rubio use poor judgement and did he pander? Let's go all the way back to the actual transcript of the interview to determine what was asked and what was answered. http://www.gq.com/news-politics/politics/201212/marco-rubio-interview-gq-december-2012?currentPage=2

GQ: How old do you think the Earth is?
Marco Rubio: I'm not a scientist, man. I can tell you what recorded history says, I can tell you what the Bible says, but I think that's a dispute amongst theologians and I think it has nothing to do with the gross domestic product or economic growth of the United States. I think the age of the universe has zero to do with how our economy is going to grow. I'm not a scientist. I don't think I'm qualified to answer a question like that. At the end of the day, I think there are multiple theories out there on how the universe was created and I think this is a country where people should have the opportunity to teach them all. I think parents should be able to teach their kids what their faith says, what science says. Whether the Earth was created in 7 days, or 7 actual eras, I'm not sure we'll ever be able to answer that. It's one of the great mysteries.

He pointed out how irrelevent and off topic the question was and that he was not qualified to answer it. This is not an ignorant or pandering answer. It was a logical answer to an illogical question.

The second component of the comment is the question itself. When you look at the questions that were asked in the order they were asked it is not hard to come to the conclusion that this particular question was a setup. It was designed to be a gotcha question. His answer to an absurd question was going to be spun in a negative way. The question was completely out of the blue and totally irrelevant to anything else being discussed. It is the interviewer that should be taken to task for his poor performance and lack of journalistic standards.

Go read the questions by the interviewer in the order they were asked and you will see the absolute absurdity of the question along with the obvious bias in portions of the other questions.

mike: why such pretzelling in answer to a simple question? and so what if it's a gotcha question? answer it straightforwardly. if the republican base is not anti science, the answers are that the age of the universe is 13.7 billion years (yes that first decimal place is important; that's how accurate the estimates are) and that the age of the earth is 4.5 billion years old. he could have then added that written biblical records say something else, but that he has no wish to participate in an unproductive science versus faith discussion. that he chose not to do that is very telling.

Ah, the 50% myth! Or 47% if you're Mitt Romney.

I guess you think Social Security and Medicare are handouts.

I guess you think veterans' benefits are handouts.

I guess you think a public school education is a handout.

I guess you think the Earned Income Tax credit is a handout - and you'd rather have its recipients stop working.

The social safety net is significantly less generous now than it was 30 years ago. Effective tax rates on the wealthy are significantly lower.

Yet today's extremist Republicans in Washington and on Fox want you to believe that we're headed for some non-existent socialist apocalypse.

I don't them to be extremist, just practical at predicting the future based on all the people who depend on the govt to do things for them. Your first 3 points are not handout because the recipients paid into them one way or other, but the EIT is (and what is their incentive to improve their situation in life if they are getting $$ for nothing), and you forgot about many others, including what Obamacare will morph into within 15 years (my prediction).

Linda and Kelly, This subject is a prime example of how we have adopted the terminology and premise of the political elite to the detriment of the American people.

The Political Elite have successfully convinced a very large percentage of the population that anyone who wants to reform government to make it more efficient and cost effective actually want to do away with SSN and Medicare. They have convince people that those of use who promote reform and efficiency want to starve senior citizens and deny medical care to those in need. This is a patently false characterization of our position.

The dirty little secret is that the Political Elite spread these lies for selfish reasons. The Government Sector has not gone through the restructuring that every other industry has gone through to bring it into the 21 Century. Our government operates as if it is still 1970 using the same, now obsolete, workflows and processes that were used 50 years ago.

It is time to modernize government systems and that threatens the current status quo. This is the reason they tell us the sky is falling and other lies when someone talks about reform.

FindB, you obviously don't know how the EITC works. To get it, you have to be working, and it only goes away gradually, as you improve your income.

You thought the whole government was too stupid to think of your simplistic objections? Really, Democrats aren't in the business of giving money away just to make us feel better. We actually want people to have jobs.

Thanks for the name calling Kelly, and for pointing out what I know and don't know. David Nolta would be proud.

I do understand how EITC works, and it's a handout with no incentive to improve your own situation.. As you point out, you get less when you make more, which is really a disincentive to make more.

And Dems want you to work, yes, so the govt can take more to spend more. And people to whom they give money will keep voting for them, hence keeping them in power. At first this is not destructive, but we are way past that in this state, as 1 party Power have lead to Corruption; now all that's left is for Absolute Power, which will lead to Absolute Corruption.

FindB, under your theory of incentives, all taxation would remove all incentive to improve oneself. I have no idea what tax bracket you're in, but say it's 35%. So the IRS leaves you only 65 cents out of any additional dollar you make. Since you're losing some money, according to you, you should only care about the 35 cents, not the 65 cents. Obviously wrong...

You think the working poor have no incentive due to the EITC. Nonsense. The poor are a lot like you and me. They want a better life. If they can get paid another $10,000 and their EITC goes down $2,000, they're still incented to gain that income. That's why Ronald Reagan signed the EITC into law.

Here's more explanation: http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/key-elements/family/eitc.cfm.

By the way, I didn't call you a name. I said you didn't know something, which you clearly don't.

Kelly - You hit the the ideological difference on the head. My theory of incentives is that you get to keep what you earn (a theory agreed to by the Founding Fathers), while libeeral theory of incentives is that the govt decides on the incentives! That is not freedom.

Also, a question to you Kelly - if the working poor want a better life, how many of them achieve it? How many who are on any kind of assistance ever get off it, let alone get reduced assistance over time? Honestly, I never hear any studies on that.

states that have larger populations and states that are economically well off will increasingly be voting for the democratic party.

Yes, because that is where the greatest number of people on welfare live, and since by votere, they get the most from Dems, why would they vote for anyone else?

Rich, educated blue states subsidize poor, uneducated red states. Our economies are healthier, we have much higher rates of health insurance, and we have fewer social problems.

We get a better quality of life. Often not a better quality of weather, though...

You want an honest discussion, Kelly? Some what you say is acceptable for a govt to provide to its underpriviledged, but we are past the point that it is constructive, and it is now destructive, and on many levels, including that our govt is getting too powerful, and we are more and more working for the govt to provide our society, and that is not a free people.

The world might disagree. I am in fact sure that, generally speaking, the world disagrees.

on its face, innocent enough, right?

Start clicking around. You will get tips on how to qualify for food stamps and Medicare, etc, as an immigrant.

"the economy continues to improve" - Tell that to the 18,000 people from Hostess that are out of work.

Boy, I'd love to see the questions they used to determine explicity and implicitly people's racisms; now is that racism only against blacks, or did they measure racism against whites? There is already a good # for that, though - 93% of blacks voted for Obama (how do you liberals like your kind of spin aimed back at you?)