If the election were held today

I don't think it matters much but Obama would lead us into the dumpster more slowly than any of the Republicans. They would fast-track us to catastrophe.

I think Obama got us there in the first place with his 787 trillion in so called stimulus. You cannot spend your way to prosperity. FDR succeeded because he was fueled by WWII.

About $400 billion of that "stimulus" was tax cuts and lots of the rest was spending spread out over a couple of years and sent to the states. Things would have been far worse without it. The problem was the stimulus was far too small and too much of it went to the rich. If the money had been given to the poor at say $1000 per month extra to all welfare and disabled folks for a couple of years, the increase in consumer spending would have us on much better economic grounds. Money to the poor helps the economy. Money to the rich hurts the economy. Someday someone will point that out with many statistics and be ignored.

micky,

Where does money come from? Money comes from banks making loans. Money comes from the Fed. Money comes from the mint. Money comes from lots of places. But big money interests (the wealthy) control government so money that government helps create goes almost exclusively to the rich. (Social security and so forth are paid for by those who have social security and medicare withheld from their pay.)

Who provided the billions of bailout money for the major banks and the auto industry?

Unless you have some unusual definition of socialism Obama is not a socialist. Socialism involves government control and direction of the means of production in an economy. Giving money to bankers and industrialists (no-bid contracts for example) is not socialism, it's crony capitalism. So either tell me your definition of "socialism" or rethink what you are saying.

The wealth of the U.S. is becoming more and more concentrated in the hands of the few. That's why our economy is tanking. If you can't see that then our views of what's happening are so different we can never agree. Wealth is being redistributed from the middle class and the poor to the very wealthy. The class war was won by the rich over the last 30 years.

The free loaders are rich, not poor. The poor work darn hard to stay alive.

micky,

Where did I say that the poor deserved more money?

What does our economy allow the poor to contribute? (Please be specific.)

Obama can only spend what Congress allows him to spend.

Our tax money goes to the rich, not to the poor. The poor don't have many lobbyists. The rich have over 12,000 and pay them over $2 billion per year. Who do you think control our government? It certainly isn't the poor.

If you think the poor have it so easy give me all your money and live poor.

You don't know me and you haven't read many of my political comments or posts. You make yourself look pretty silly calling me socialist.

AC,
If economics makes any sense at all things would have been far worse without the extensions of unemployment insurance and without the government money going to the banks so that they could resume the loans on which our economy depends.

Of course, you can find those who disagree, some with PhDs in economics. :-)

mickey,

The Democratic Party is also in the pay of the rich. Look at how much money the rich have poured into Democratic campaign funds. It's obvious.

If so much money has been given to the poor why are they so poor? The "welfare Cadillac" was always a myth.

The conservatives insisted that only broken families could get welfare. That broke up millions of families. They also insisted that only those who really deserved the money could get the welfare payments. Therefore a huge and cumbersome bureaucracy was constructed to keep money from the poor. This expanded government, of course, and government spending. It also meant that getting welfare became quite difficult and many who deserved the help did not get any help.

But lots of poor folks did escape poverty thanks to public schools (through colleges) and grants and loans and "Head Start" and such. Such programs really made a difference.

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Read Dickens to see what Conservative compassion produces.

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My solution eliminates all government spending and taxes. It's quite libertarian with no one forced to do anything. So don't tar me with the big government brush. Government help for the poor is better than no help for the poor and it is quite inadequate and destructive at the same time.

In other words, everything you say is bad about government I will probably agree with but point out that the alternatives we have observed in history are worse. We need to institute a striking change, not just "rearrange the deck chairs."

No, micky, try to read for comprehension not error detection. LBJ sold the idea to Democrat and Republican liberals (there were some in those days) on the basis of helping the poor, particularly children. Conservatives (both Democrat and Republican) would only accept the idea if the restrictions on who could get help were included. It was not that the Conservatives objected to helping poor children, it was that they did not want to help poor children if someone else were available to hold responsible for helping them.

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Any time there are government trillions being handed out the "sharks" will come out and take the money. Look at the massive fraud in any government program that has many billions to spend. That kind of money would corrupt the honest charities and enrich the already corrupt ones. Big piles of money cannot be controlled. (See Wall Street)

If you examine the nature of our money you will see why government welfare has many bad consequences. But you will also discover at the same time that lack of government welfare has been much worse. Those able bodied folks that you refuse to support will turn to crime or worse to get the money to live. Those children of able bodied but irresponsible parents will die. (See Dickens.)

There simply is no way to eliminate poverty and it's many ills using government or private charity so long as we retain our physical object money.

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Obama is orthodox and therefore has no solutions to the economic problems we face. Even his advisers are orthodox. (No there are no radical left communist / socialist advisers on his staff so far as I can tell.) If there were orthodox solutions to our problems we would not have these problems. Unless and until Obama gets unorthodox, we will get no actual solutions from him.

micky,

We are talking past each other. :-(

Thanks for trying to educate me. It isn't easy to do. :-)

micky,

I think we are birds of a feather. I think we want the same outcomes for the American people and the people of the world for that matter (health, happiness, prosperity, security, freedom,...) but we have different understandings of how the world works. I really am striving for those desirable outcomes.

I don't even know who is running for president besides OBama

There is no other Democrat so far, but there are 8 Republicans. I have hope for Rick Perry, but I need more information.

I just don't know anymore.

Haven't we learned anything from the debt ceiling mess? I'm sick of both the Republicans and the Democrats. I'm voting third party in the presidential race and voting against allincumbents in other races.

It's time for term limits. The only way we'll get term limits is to vote the incumbents out.

I'm looking for a real candidate -- whether they win or not, my vote will send a message

While I plan to look at all the candidates very closely, I don't think it's a secret that I have a clear favorite:

 

Understood and I think he could have given a better answer. He should have asked- do we have a right to prevent a sovereign nation from getting a nuclear weapon? We might not want them to get the weapon, but there isn't a moral or Constitutional justification I can think of for forcibly intervening.

I'd hold my nose and vote for Obama. The GOP is offering economic suicide so it's an easy choice.

Yup. Economic suicide is probably the polite way to put it. Simple economics. Tax cuts of the sort the GOP proposes are one of the least effective ways of stimulating the economy. Cutting government spending by the drastic amounts the GOP would like to see means that the government will spend much less on goods and services causing the economy to shrink even further. Let's face it, consumers and businesses aren't buying anything at the moment. We have a demand problem. Businesses have done quite well by shrinking inventories, cutting production, and laying off workers. As long as demand is anemic there's no need to increase production. It's a vicious cycle.

Econ 1A, don't need no links for support.

Mighy mouse...

Lol.

Thanks for posting to Point Taken. Hope you have a great weekend!

Don't know, too early for me... If you twisted my arm and forced me today, I'd write in my wife's name. I've done it in the voting booth before, and more than once, LOL.

I really don't know

Even on truthout, the commenters are saying Ron Paul won the Iowa debate, and there was a poll to that effect. But most of the media will not report anything that he said, only that he was there.

Gary Johnson is another candidate you can check out. He is a dark horse, who started out with less money than many of the others, but he was a two-time Republican governor of NM, a 2-1 Democratic state.

He cut the budget there and cut taxes and left the state in balance, though the D who followed messed it up again.

Can we have governance of nations and large groups w/o politics / politicians Aand with attendant big buck involved.

Those promoting smaller government seem to be dismissing that the population with more people, more sick and needy, and more complex demands on government, smaller rather than a growth of government is a retro throwback to earlier times of small-towns.

We can't turn the clock back, we simply must find ways to accomodate a more complex country and world.

I believe we're fortunate to have a President with progressive values at this time in our history. I believe that being a politician is to his credit, anyone in his position who's not one would simply be mowed down post haste. Yes, compromising his core values and campaign promises doesn't sit well but I'll put my money on him and the Dems any day, rather than any GOP comers with their selfish help-their-rich-backers.

Obama, definitely. Though getting the Republican Reds out will take more than just one politician.

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