Now this is a fairly common belief system boiled down to its essentials that comes from the Tea Party, but in it are either misconceptions or confusing code that needs to be defined. So lets take them one at a time: I believe in a downsized government - In fact, the percentage of Americans who work for the government has shrunk sharply in recent years--so much so that a smaller percentage of Americans now work for the government than at any time since 1987 (Business Insider). Its about 7% for all government and when you look at this as a percentage of GDP, government is smaller that it has ever been with this metric. I believe in a very strong defense - This one is code. Does this person mean that throwing money at the DoD make us strong, or does it mean restructuring our military capability to the realities of the threat today and what is possible. Those are two entirely different things so the statement has no meaning. I believe in an open transparent government - Totally agree and probably one of the few places we sort of agree. But does that mean instead of seeing Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning are traitors (strong defense) or heroes? I bet we disagree on this one. I believe that our spending is out of control and that our debt is mind boggling - The deficit has been cut from 10% of GDP to 4% since President Obama took over. Our debt as a percentage of GDP (similar to your debt as a percent of your earnings) is 73%. After WWII it was 122%. We did not pay it off, we outgrew it by growing our GDP. Current policies of austerity are holding back our GDP. So first spending is not out of control, and policies to deal with the deficit through austerity have proved to be counter productive. Finally the size of debt is relevant unless measured against our earnings (GDP), and it is not anywhere near mind boggling. The Home Budget Analogy strikes again. I believe that for most Americans who pay federal taxes....we are overtaxed - the average US household was paying 17.4% of their income in federal taxes, compared to 22% in 1979,(OnTheEconomy). The top 1% were paying 35% in 1979 and less than 28% today. A surprising number of companies in the Standard & Poors 500, 57, have found ways to pay effective tax rates of zero, according to a USA TODAY analysis of data from S&P Capital IQ...The news comes months after after the Government Accountability Office released a report showing that companies in 2010 reported an average effective tax rate of 12.6%, well below the 35% federal corporate tax rate, (USA Today). Finally our tax revenue as a percentage of GDP is much lower than most industrialized countries (Wikipedia). I believe in traditional values - Code! One could assume this means disenfranchising gays from the rights as human beings. But lets examine some other traditional values. We used to tolerate slavery and racism, so should we bring that back? How about womens rights and the ability to vote? Should we revert back to traditional values of disenfranchising women? This statement has no meaning. On the last statement, uncontrolled liberal spending, it is just factually incorrect and she/he should review the Bush spending years or the data above on how that liberal socialist commie Obama has reduced government and spending. But facts are wasted. So my point is simple. People who think like the above, totally ignorant of the facts, and vote for Tea Party morons are a danger to our country. Their solutions make the situation worse and their tactics, crashing the government will destroy the country. But at least this one conservative exposed all their ignorance for all of us to see. I wonder if facts makes any difference these days? ~ Slightner
Posted on: Sun, 27 Oct 2013 03:03:38 +0000
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