The political elite, including the president, and the courtier press that services the elite, all seem to define the economy through the deficit.

The very deficit they didn’t give a shit about when Bush and Cheney were in charge.

The silliest part of the whole thing is that the Obama administration is saying exactly the same thing that they criticize the Republicans for saying:

“the fiscal position gradually deteriorates mainly because of
the aging of the population and the high continuing cost
of the Government’s health programs.”

“an aging population and a continued high level
of health costs will pose serious long-term budget problems.
Under current policies, Medicare, Medicaid, and
Social Security are projected to absorb a much larger
share of Federal resources than in the past, limiting what
the Government can do in other areas.”

“Population aging also poses a serious long-run budgetary
challenge. Because of lower expected fertility and
improved longevity, the Social Security actuaries project
that under current law in which the normal retirement
age rises to 67, the ratio of workers to Social Security
beneficiaries will fall from around 2.9 currently to a little
over 2 by the time most of the baby boomers have retired.
From that point forward, the ratio of workers to beneficiaries
is expected to continue to decline slowly. With fewer
workers to pay the taxes needed to support the retired
population, budgetary pressures will steadily mount and
without reforms, trust fund exhaustion is projected by the
Social Security Trustees to occur in 2036. The country
also faces the challenge of reforming the tax code to make
it fairer and simpler and to provide sufficient revenue to
meet long-run commitments. Resolving the long-run fiscal
challenge will require a comprehensive approach, one
that restrains spending growth but also addresses the
sufficiency of the tax code.”

The President’s Budget 2013

I thought he already did what you wanted?

“every single good idea to bend the cost curve and start actually reducing health-care costs are in this bill.”

Barack Hussein Obama

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-house-democratic-congress

This isn’t a credible source, but it will have to suffice.

Good catch Mr. Warnick.

Bad catch Mr. Cav.

This is why I say I am always right. Because I am and I have whitehouse.gov to prove it for me.

I don’t care who his audience was.

He said “every single good idea to bend the cost curve and start actually reducing health-care costs are in this bill.”

There is no out of context. Your post above completely misstates what he said.

He lied. You know it, I know it, and everyone who doesn’t work for MSNBC, Media Matters, the Chicago thuggery machine, and the West Wing knows it.

When Congress struck a deal to avert the fiscal cliff, it also dealt a quiet blow to President Obama’s health overhaul: The new law killed a multibillion-dollar program meant to boost health insurance competition by funding nonprofit health plans.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/01/15/co-ops-were-supposed-to-replace-the-public-option-now-they-are-dead/

Thanks Ronald. As you may suspect, as the debates proceed into the arcane minutea, I, not being an economist, do occasionally find myself, shall we just say…in over my head?!

Tangential, and possibly vindictive, but shouldn’t we be trying to find a way to make pension funds start demanding that corporations look to outsource top management as the salaries and bonuses of current management is robbing the stockholders.

“It doesn’t make sense to lie to members of Congress about something they know. They knew the public option wasn’t in the bill. Everybody knew.”

So what you are saying is that if someone lies to a room full of professional liars, then it doesn’t really count as a lie?

What ever your excuse is, Obama said ““every single good idea to bend the cost curve and start actually reducing health-care costs are in this bill.”

Your previous point about other things not being in the bill is totally irrelevant.

He lied. You know it and I know it and everyone who doesn’t work for MSNBC knows it.

Never said it had to be solar cells, I just pointed that out as an example.

And Germany collects a lot of taxes from the people working for those solar cell manufacturers. And all of the requisite industry, silicon ingots/wafers, chip fabrication in general(lots of chip makers have plants in Dresden, Germany);

“That is about 31 cents per kWh.”

There are more then enough locations that pay that much during peak hours, And if the coal industry wasn’t able to cost shift the environmental problems onto the public dime solar would look even better.

But as I said it doesn’t have to be solar, could be nuclear, or not energy related at all. Or even a single investment, $600 billion dollars, or more likely some smaller chunk of that in order to maintain diversity, But even $100 billion from CA’s pension fund invested right, could bring alot of jobs to that State.

So long as the fund was investing in things that brings jobs to our shores, it would benefit indirectly. We only need to find a way to bring some of that indirect benefit into the pension fund.

Increasing the employment level and wages would greatly improve tax revenue.

But, it will be more than made up for in the savings derived from diminution of petroleum consumed by the military as they redirect their attention sans pursuit of petroleum. Not to mention the savings derived from not having to pay the contractor class (read; Leeches)

See how easy that was?

“Spending on the wars and on added security at home has accounted for more than one-quarter of the total increase in U.S. government debt since 2001.”

Stiglitz and Bilmes,

And these wars were pursued without raising taxes. Indeed, with tax cuts for the rich thrown in at the same time, during the Bush years.

And wasn’t there some sort of prescription drug shenanigans where John Boehner passed out checks on the House floor for their successful attempt to massively rip-off the coffers?

No. That was distribution of tobacco lobby Money. The Medicare prescription drug benefit was to cost more than $1.2 trillion over the following decade. A much higher price tag by FAR than President Bush suggested when he narrowly won passage of the law in late 2003.

A small potato here, a small potato there, pretty soon we’re talking about REAL spuds!

Guess what Larry? obama shut down the federal study on the effects of fracking on the environment, How do you like him now?

The CEO of Whole Foods called obama a Fascist for his passing of the new FDA regs that sanction many organic foods, How do like him now Larry?

It is going to fun to watch eat crow after all the ass kissing crap you have said about obama

The right wing would love that plan, first it instantly turns medicare and social security into welfare programs, because the taxes don’t come from wages they will no longer be earned benefits. And second if the carbon tax is successful, it provides a slowly diminishing return and would strangle those government services of needed revenue.

RDH,
Keep smoking those doobies. Call me when you need some more potato chips.

Larry,
A carbon tax would make all electricity coming from fossil fuels more expensive, especially coal. So while a FIT is very different from a carbon tax, both end up causing electricity to be much more expensive.

Compare to what?

“Can you image being an immigrant and trying to learn this language?”

Funny you should mention that, considering many of the ****ed up spellings come from Dutch and French typesetters working in London in the 14th and 15th centuries.

In addition to never learning correct spellings, these typesetters would add extra letters to words, needless syntax and other odd bits. This was because they where paid by the letter!, Thing is however, that many of these ‘errors’, mispellings, and changes became the accepted spellings for many words.

Example, Shakespears tombstone spells friend as ‘frend’!

We all have to put up with this garbage because a couple frenchmen couldn’t be bothered to learn the language properly that they where printing books for!

And the illegal translation of the bible didn’t help, ( non Latin versions of the bible at the time where heretical, and would often cause translators to lose their heads.. literately). Banned books would often misspell words or add other errors to hide the origin, and where often made in haste with error prone to avoid the authorities at the church.

So, their you go, religion and money the source of all evil in the universe!

I don’t think James I and VI was breaking the law.

I suppos wee kood all rit in foniks lik RDH wants.

I am well aware of Tyndale. I wasn’t talking about Tyndale. I was talking about the son of Mary Queen of Scots.