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The American Presidency: Gekko/Galt 2012! (Or: Ruh-roh, RomRy!)

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    Edith_Bagot-DixEdith_Bagot-Dix Registered User regular
    If PBS gets money borrowed from other countries through the transitive property, then so does the Department of Defense.

    WHY IS OBAMA PAYING OUR SOLDIERS WITH CHINESE MONEY?! WHY IS OBAMA TURNING OUR VALIANT SOLDIERS INTO FOREIGN MERCENARIES?!

    You clearly don't understand how the government budgets work.

    Every line item on the budget has an associated Patriotism Value. Similar the source of every tax dollar is also assessed for its Patriotism Value. What makes the budget so difficult is that the CBO has to find the best possible match. Obviously the most Patriotic things are funded first.

    The take away point here is that the money from the people with the highest Patriot Value - that is, far right fundamentalist Christian billionaires, goes to fund the highest Patriot Value projects, like funding the CIA, building an aircraft carrier, or keeping a pot smoking hippie in jail. The complication is that money contributed by liberals, and other people with low Patriot Value, can't be used exclusively to fund anything - not even Planned Parenthood. Their money is a conduit for evil spirits, and the only solution is to include some high Patriot Value funds as a counter balance. This isn't perfect, since sometimes low Patriot Value funds accidentally find their way into what should be high Patriot Value projects, like the military, and then all of sudden you have things like Abu Ghraib and gays being let in. Borrowed money from China is the lowest possible Patriot Value, so it's only ever used for things like funding PBS, paying liberal Supreme Court justices, and the like (and look what happened when they accidentally paid John Roberts with some!)



    Also on Steam and PSN: twobadcats
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    BurtletoyBurtletoy Registered User regular
    Preacher wrote: »
    SyphonBlue wrote: »
    Apparently some guy just opened fire at the Family Research Council, so expect some ads soon about left-wing terrorists.

    I'm sure Romney will claim this was an Obama campaign spokesman before the day is through.

    Four years ago, I'd have treated a comment like this as chuckle-worthy absurdity. But now that we have Poe's Law: The Campaign in progress, it's time to visit InTrade...

    "Today was a new low for the political discourse and the Obama campaign, sending armed agents into the Family Research Center, Obama should be ashamed of this action which is unfit for the office of the president"

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    ViskodViskod Registered User regular
    Oh I'm quite certain the event wont go by without someone making mention of how the left has 'demonized' organizations like the Family Research Council by attempting to make them sound like hate groups and I'm sure Mitt Romney will blame the excessively negative campaign that the President has been running and Obama's 'war on religion' as catalysts.

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    AtomikaAtomika Live fast and get fucked or whatever Registered User regular
    Preacher wrote: »
    Finally some cuts Romney would make that would totally shore up the budget!

    "[T]here are programs I would eliminate. Obamacare being one of them but also various subsidy programs -- the Amtrak subsidy, the PBS subsidy, the subsidy for the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities. Some of these things, like those endowment efforts and PBS I very much appreciate and like what they do in many cases, but I just think they have to stand on their own rather than receiving money borrowed from other countries, as our government does on their behalf."

    Yes the trillions we spend on amtrak, pbs, NEA and NEH are totally gone, see you suckers later, budget FIXED!

    Man, Romney just won my "Bullshit GOP Talking Points" bingo game.


    Yeah, let's cut all these programs that make up 0.000000000000001% of the budget. That'll set us straight.

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    BurtletoyBurtletoy Registered User regular
    Hah!

    http://content.usatoday.com/communities/onpolitics/post/2012/08/mitt-romney-dog-seamus-devo-song-/1
    The tale of how Mitt Romney's dog was once strapped to the roof of the family station wagon is being immortalized in a new song and smartphone app.

    Devo, the New Wave-punk rock group, has recorded a single that satirizes the story of Seamus, the Irish setter of Romney who got sick during the 12-hour drive to a family vacation in Canada.

    The single, Don't Roof Rack Me, Bro (Seamus Unleashed), will be released on Aug. 26, the day before the Republican National Convention begins in Tampa. It also happens to be National Dog Day.

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    JohnnyCacheJohnnyCache Starting Defense Place at the tableRegistered User regular
    Erich Zahn wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    Or he [b built dozens of Mormon funeral homes where churches once stood[/b].

    Main Temple does a lot to fuck around with zoning and try to get rid of their opponent's properties/planned constructions.

    Most of the time it's Southern Baptist, but they made the Quakers take their signage down and kept the Unitarians Universalists/Metros from moving in til they just fucking gave up.

    Dude

    the mormon church, for all the good it does and for all the very real truth in that one episode of southpark, is a great example of why you should keep your church out of your government. That chocolate and that peanut butter make one terrible candy.

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    OctoparrotOctoparrot Registered User regular
    just reading through the thread.

    dbrock is amazing.

    On January 20th, he'll be saying, "Obama's doomed his reelection chances!"

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    DehumanizedDehumanized Registered User regular
    Burtletoy wrote: »
    Hah!

    http://content.usatoday.com/communities/onpolitics/post/2012/08/mitt-romney-dog-seamus-devo-song-/1
    The tale of how Mitt Romney's dog was once strapped to the roof of the family station wagon is being immortalized in a new song and smartphone app.

    Devo, the New Wave-punk rock group, has recorded a single that satirizes the story of Seamus, the Irish setter of Romney who got sick during the 12-hour drive to a family vacation in Canada.

    The single, Don't Roof Rack Me, Bro (Seamus Unleashed), will be released on Aug. 26, the day before the Republican National Convention begins in Tampa. It also happens to be National Dog Day.

    Sounds like they maybe updated their song "Don't Shoot (I'm A Man)" from their last album. It had a pretty prominent outro with the lyric "Don't Taze Me, Bro".

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    SammyFSammyF Registered User regular
    edited August 2012
    I'm predicting that it will be more listenable than Will I Am's Yes We Can.

    Also easier to dance to.

    Also less likely to include Scarlett Johansson's half-hearted attempt at singing.

    Equally weird to play during sexual intercourse, however.

    SammyF on
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    DivideByZeroDivideByZero Social Justice Blackguard Registered User regular
    The Obama campaign should just flat-out run Romney singing the national anthem as their theme song.

    First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKERS
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    AManFromEarthAManFromEarth Let's get to twerk! The King in the SwampRegistered User regular
    SammyF wrote: »
    I'm predicting that it will be more listenable than Will I Am's Yes We Can.

    Also easier to dance to.

    Also less likely to include Scarlett Johansson's half-hearted attempt at singing.

    Equally weird to play during sexual intercourse, however.

    But will it be better or worse to play during sex than Thatcher speeches?

    Lh96QHG.png
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    CouscousCouscous Registered User regular
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/08/15/its-not-clear-what-romney-would-actually-cut-to-make-his-budget-add-up/

    “[F]irst, there are programs I would eliminate. Obamacare being one of them but also various subsidy programs — the Amtrak subsidy, the PBS subsidy, the subsidy for the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities,” he told Fortune, according to interview excerpts in Playbook. Romney also wants to “tie the compensation and benefits for federal workers to those which exist in the private sector,” claiming that it would save about $47 billion a year.

    The problem is, eliminating federal supports for Amtrak and cultural programs would barely save any money. Repealing Obamacare would actually add to the deficit, given the net savings that are in the health-care law. And the savings that Romney projects for tying federal compensation to private-sector levels seem to be overblown, according to recent figures from the Congressional Budget Office. Overall, the cuts that Romney specifies would just be a drop in the bucket, and they still don’t explain how his budget would produce the savings that he promises.

    Here’s how it breaks down: In fiscal year 2012, the federal government spent $1.42 billion on Amtrak, $444 million on PBS, and $146 million on the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities. Getting rid of all these subsidies would have saved the government about $2 billion this year — chump change relative to the scale of cuts that Romney wants.

    ...

    Finally, Romney’s proposal to tie federal compensation and benefits to private-sector levels would likely produce less than the $47 billion yearly savings that he estimates. Romney is correct that compensation for federal employees is higher than private-sector workers with comparable responsibilities and education: Federal wages are 2 percent higher on average, federal benefits are 48 percent more, and overall compensation (wages and benefits) is 16 percent more, the CBO said in a January 2012 study.

    Since the federal government spends about $200 billion a year on compensation for the civilian workforce, according to the CBO, adjusting it to private-sector levels would save about $28 billion annually — significantly less the savings that Romney projects. ”Frankly, I can’t see that you come anywhere close to that kind of an annual dollar savings,” says John Palguta, vice president for policy at the Partnership for Public Service.

    Overall, how much of a dent would these cuts make? In 2013, Romney’s proposed changes would actually increase the deficit by about $4 billion, because the net savings would be outstripped by the loss in revenue due to repealing Obamacare. In later years, however, more savings would begin to accrue: If continued over a decade, eliminating spending on Amtrak, PBS, and the NEA and reducing federal compensation appears to offset the $109 billion in lost revenue from repealing Obamacare, resulting in at least $211 billion in savings by 2022. (That’s assuming that program spending levels and federal compensation remain constant over the next 10 years, so it’s just a back-of-the-envelope calculation to get a sense of the magnitude of these cuts.)

    But that’s still a very long ways off from achieving the $9.6 trillion in non-defense cuts that Romney’s budget would demand: $211 billion in spending reductions, for instance, would be about 2 percent of the total cuts necessary. What’s more, in the same Fortune interview, Romney promised that “infrastructure is going to see very substantial investments over the coming decade,” suggesting that he wouldn’t cut funds from that area either. And the other specific cuts that Romney has publicly detailed — to Planned Parenthood, foreign aid, etc. — are similarly small.

    So Romney still has a lot of explaining to do about how he would actually make the cuts that his own budget demands, as the spending reductions he’s specified so far would only make a small dent, at best.
    He could always close the *insert very popular tax break*.

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    AbsalonAbsalon Lands of Always WinterRegistered User regular
    Octoparrot wrote: »
    just reading through the thread.

    dbrock is amazing.

    On January 20th, he'll be saying, "Obama's doomed his reelection chances!"

    I'm still thinking from a constant "Obama loses" perspective simply because there is no reason to get my hopes up.

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    SammyFSammyF Registered User regular
    SammyF wrote: »
    I'm predicting that it will be more listenable than Will I Am's Yes We Can.

    Also easier to dance to.

    Also less likely to include Scarlett Johansson's half-hearted attempt at singing.

    Equally weird to play during sexual intercourse, however.

    But will it be better or worse to play during sex than Thatcher speeches?

    Trick question. No one actually listens to Thatcher speeches during sex; they just lie back and think of England.

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    PreacherPreacher Registered User regular
    SammyF wrote: »
    I'm predicting that it will be more listenable than Will I Am's Yes We Can.

    Also easier to dance to.

    Also less likely to include Scarlett Johansson's half-hearted attempt at singing.

    Equally weird to play during sexual intercourse, however.

    I've heard Scar Jo half asses more than just singing.

    And by that I mean she's a dead fish in bed.

    I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.

    pleasepaypreacher.net
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    SammyFSammyF Registered User regular
    Preacher wrote: »
    SammyF wrote: »
    I'm predicting that it will be more listenable than Will I Am's Yes We Can.

    Also easier to dance to.

    Also less likely to include Scarlett Johansson's half-hearted attempt at singing.

    Equally weird to play during sexual intercourse, however.

    I've heard Scar Jo half asses more than just singing.

    And by that I mean she's a dead fish in bed.

    First off, no you haven't.

    Second off, it's not like 50 million people haven't told her that she could get away with it.

    Or get away with lying there screaming "SERVICE ME, DRONE."

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    AManFromEarthAManFromEarth Let's get to twerk! The King in the SwampRegistered User regular
    SammyF wrote: »
    SammyF wrote: »
    I'm predicting that it will be more listenable than Will I Am's Yes We Can.

    Also easier to dance to.

    Also less likely to include Scarlett Johansson's half-hearted attempt at singing.

    Equally weird to play during sexual intercourse, however.

    But will it be better or worse to play during sex than Thatcher speeches?

    Trick question. No one actually listens to Thatcher speeches during sex; they just lie back and think of England.

    The lady's not for turning ifyouknowwhatimean

    Lh96QHG.png
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    ElJeffeElJeffe Moderator, ClubPA mod
    Preacher wrote: »
    Yes the trillions we spend on amtrak, pbs, NEA and NEH are totally gone, see you suckers later, budget FIXED!

    Man, Romney just won my "Bullshit GOP Talking Points" bingo game.

    Yeah, let's cut all these programs that make up 0.000000000000001% of the budget. That'll set us straight.

    Ah, but Obama is planning to increase funding for all those liberal boondoggles by 10,000% each. So by cutting them, Romney will actually save... waitaminnit...

    (multiply by the derp factor...)
    (carry the hurr...)

    ...all the moneys. Deficit solved!

    I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
  • Options
    AManFromEarthAManFromEarth Let's get to twerk! The King in the SwampRegistered User regular
    Absalon wrote: »
    Octoparrot wrote: »
    just reading through the thread.

    dbrock is amazing.

    On January 20th, he'll be saying, "Obama's doomed his reelection chances!"

    I'm still thinking from a constant "Obama loses" perspective simply because there is no reason to get my hopes up.

    It's smart to be cautious, because of something called TEMPTING FATE.

    But dbrock takes any wind that blows as the herald of galactus

    Lh96QHG.png
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    Brutal JBrutal J Sorry! Sorry, I'm sorry. Sorry. Registered User regular
    edited August 2012
    Preacher wrote: »
    SammyF wrote: »
    I'm predicting that it will be more listenable than Will I Am's Yes We Can.

    Also easier to dance to.

    Also less likely to include Scarlett Johansson's half-hearted attempt at singing.

    Equally weird to play during sexual intercourse, however.

    I've heard Scar Jo half asses more than just singing.

    And by that I mean she's a dead fish in bed.

    Christ man, this thread can be depressing enough to read. We don't need any more American dreams crushed.

    Brutal J on
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    PreacherPreacher Registered User regular
    ElJeffe wrote: »
    Preacher wrote: »
    Yes the trillions we spend on amtrak, pbs, NEA and NEH are totally gone, see you suckers later, budget FIXED!

    Man, Romney just won my "Bullshit GOP Talking Points" bingo game.

    Yeah, let's cut all these programs that make up 0.000000000000001% of the budget. That'll set us straight.

    Ah, but Obama is planning to increase funding for all those liberal boondoggles by 10,000% each. So by cutting them, Romney will actually save... waitaminnit...

    (multiply by the derp factor...)
    (carry the hurr...)

    ...all the moneys. Deficit solved!

    Spool you changed your avatar!

    I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.

    pleasepaypreacher.net
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    dbrock270dbrock270 Registered User regular
    I went to my local county fair today and got some Obama and Sherrod Brown bumper stickers and yard signs from the Democrat's booth.

    The Tea Party and the GOP had a large presence there too.

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    PreacherPreacher Registered User regular
    dbrock270 wrote: »
    I went to my local county fair today and got some Obama and Sherrod Brown bumper stickers and yard signs from the Democrat's booth.

    The Tea Party and the GOP had a large presence there too.

    Was there presence located next to the deep fried twinky booth?

    I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.

    pleasepaypreacher.net
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    SyphonBlueSyphonBlue The studying beaver That beaver sure loves studying!Registered User regular
    SammyF wrote: »
    Preacher wrote: »
    SammyF wrote: »
    I'm predicting that it will be more listenable than Will I Am's Yes We Can.

    Also easier to dance to.

    Also less likely to include Scarlett Johansson's half-hearted attempt at singing.

    Equally weird to play during sexual intercourse, however.

    I've heard Scar Jo half asses more than just singing.

    And by that I mean she's a dead fish in bed.

    First off, no you haven't.

    OH SHIT YOU CAUGHT HIM

    LxX6eco.jpg
    PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126
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    AManFromEarthAManFromEarth Let's get to twerk! The King in the SwampRegistered User regular
    I'm so glad my county fair is in February so we don't get politics in the way of the dunk tank clown with AIDS

    Lh96QHG.png
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    Dark_SideDark_Side Registered User regular
    edited August 2012
    Couscous wrote: »
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/08/15/its-not-clear-what-romney-would-actually-cut-to-make-his-budget-add-up/

    “[F]irst, there are programs I would eliminate. Obamacare being one of them but also various subsidy programs — the Amtrak subsidy, the PBS subsidy, the subsidy for the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities,” he told Fortune, according to interview excerpts in Playbook. Romney also wants to “tie the compensation and benefits for federal workers to those which exist in the private sector,” claiming that it would save about $47 billion a year.

    The problem is, eliminating federal supports for Amtrak and cultural programs would barely save any money. Repealing Obamacare would actually add to the deficit, given the net savings that are in the health-care law. And the savings that Romney projects for tying federal compensation to private-sector levels seem to be overblown, according to recent figures from the Congressional Budget Office. Overall, the cuts that Romney specifies would just be a drop in the bucket, and they still don’t explain how his budget would produce the savings that he promises.

    Here’s how it breaks down: In fiscal year 2012, the federal government spent $1.42 billion on Amtrak, $444 million on PBS, and $146 million on the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities. Getting rid of all these subsidies would have saved the government about $2 billion this year — chump change relative to the scale of cuts that Romney wants.

    ...

    Finally, Romney’s proposal to tie federal compensation and benefits to private-sector levels would likely produce less than the $47 billion yearly savings that he estimates. Romney is correct that compensation for federal employees is higher than private-sector workers with comparable responsibilities and education: Federal wages are 2 percent higher on average, federal benefits are 48 percent more, and overall compensation (wages and benefits) is 16 percent more, the CBO said in a January 2012 study.

    Since the federal government spends about $200 billion a year on compensation for the civilian workforce, according to the CBO, adjusting it to private-sector levels would save about $28 billion annually — significantly less the savings that Romney projects. ”Frankly, I can’t see that you come anywhere close to that kind of an annual dollar savings,” says John Palguta, vice president for policy at the Partnership for Public Service.

    Overall, how much of a dent would these cuts make? In 2013, Romney’s proposed changes would actually increase the deficit by about $4 billion, because the net savings would be outstripped by the loss in revenue due to repealing Obamacare. In later years, however, more savings would begin to accrue: If continued over a decade, eliminating spending on Amtrak, PBS, and the NEA and reducing federal compensation appears to offset the $109 billion in lost revenue from repealing Obamacare, resulting in at least $211 billion in savings by 2022. (That’s assuming that program spending levels and federal compensation remain constant over the next 10 years, so it’s just a back-of-the-envelope calculation to get a sense of the magnitude of these cuts.)

    But that’s still a very long ways off from achieving the $9.6 trillion in non-defense cuts that Romney’s budget would demand: $211 billion in spending reductions, for instance, would be about 2 percent of the total cuts necessary. What’s more, in the same Fortune interview, Romney promised that “infrastructure is going to see very substantial investments over the coming decade,” suggesting that he wouldn’t cut funds from that area either. And the other specific cuts that Romney has publicly detailed — to Planned Parenthood, foreign aid, etc. — are similarly small.

    So Romney still has a lot of explaining to do about how he would actually make the cuts that his own budget demands, as the spending reductions he’s specified so far would only make a small dent, at best.
    He could always close the *insert very popular tax break*.

    And that doesn't even include the fact that he wants to increase defense spending by leaps and bounds, expanding the troop numbers and building more warships. Even though warships are kind of archaic thing of the past at this point, and ridiculously vulnerable to cheap, modern explosives, but I digress.

    Dark_Side on
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    HevachHevach Registered User regular
    Dark_Side wrote: »
    Couscous wrote: »
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/08/15/its-not-clear-what-romney-would-actually-cut-to-make-his-budget-add-up/

    “[F]irst, there are programs I would eliminate. Obamacare being one of them but also various subsidy programs — the Amtrak subsidy, the PBS subsidy, the subsidy for the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities,” he told Fortune, according to interview excerpts in Playbook. Romney also wants to “tie the compensation and benefits for federal workers to those which exist in the private sector,” claiming that it would save about $47 billion a year.

    The problem is, eliminating federal supports for Amtrak and cultural programs would barely save any money. Repealing Obamacare would actually add to the deficit, given the net savings that are in the health-care law. And the savings that Romney projects for tying federal compensation to private-sector levels seem to be overblown, according to recent figures from the Congressional Budget Office. Overall, the cuts that Romney specifies would just be a drop in the bucket, and they still don’t explain how his budget would produce the savings that he promises.

    Here’s how it breaks down: In fiscal year 2012, the federal government spent $1.42 billion on Amtrak, $444 million on PBS, and $146 million on the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities. Getting rid of all these subsidies would have saved the government about $2 billion this year — chump change relative to the scale of cuts that Romney wants.

    ...

    Finally, Romney’s proposal to tie federal compensation and benefits to private-sector levels would likely produce less than the $47 billion yearly savings that he estimates. Romney is correct that compensation for federal employees is higher than private-sector workers with comparable responsibilities and education: Federal wages are 2 percent higher on average, federal benefits are 48 percent more, and overall compensation (wages and benefits) is 16 percent more, the CBO said in a January 2012 study.

    Since the federal government spends about $200 billion a year on compensation for the civilian workforce, according to the CBO, adjusting it to private-sector levels would save about $28 billion annually — significantly less the savings that Romney projects. ”Frankly, I can’t see that you come anywhere close to that kind of an annual dollar savings,” says John Palguta, vice president for policy at the Partnership for Public Service.

    Overall, how much of a dent would these cuts make? In 2013, Romney’s proposed changes would actually increase the deficit by about $4 billion, because the net savings would be outstripped by the loss in revenue due to repealing Obamacare. In later years, however, more savings would begin to accrue: If continued over a decade, eliminating spending on Amtrak, PBS, and the NEA and reducing federal compensation appears to offset the $109 billion in lost revenue from repealing Obamacare, resulting in at least $211 billion in savings by 2022. (That’s assuming that program spending levels and federal compensation remain constant over the next 10 years, so it’s just a back-of-the-envelope calculation to get a sense of the magnitude of these cuts.)

    But that’s still a very long ways off from achieving the $9.6 trillion in non-defense cuts that Romney’s budget would demand: $211 billion in spending reductions, for instance, would be about 2 percent of the total cuts necessary. What’s more, in the same Fortune interview, Romney promised that “infrastructure is going to see very substantial investments over the coming decade,” suggesting that he wouldn’t cut funds from that area either. And the other specific cuts that Romney has publicly detailed — to Planned Parenthood, foreign aid, etc. — are similarly small.

    So Romney still has a lot of explaining to do about how he would actually make the cuts that his own budget demands, as the spending reductions he’s specified so far would only make a small dent, at best.
    He could always close the *insert very popular tax break*.

    And that doesn't even include the fact that he wants to increase defense spending by leaps and bounds, expanding the troop numbers and building more warships. Even though warships are kind of archaic thing of the past at this point, and ridiculously vulnerable to cheap, modern explosives, but I digress.
    Not to mention, aren't we already overbuilding them to the point that we just sold several for scrap that hadn't even touched water yet?

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    PreacherPreacher Registered User regular
    I'm so glad my county fair is in February so we don't get politics in the way of the dunk tank clown with AIDS

    Wait the clown has aids or the dunk tank? I'm confused more than a Mitt Romney medicare statement.

    I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.

    pleasepaypreacher.net
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    AManFromEarthAManFromEarth Let's get to twerk! The King in the SwampRegistered User regular
    Preacher wrote: »
    I'm so glad my county fair is in February so we don't get politics in the way of the dunk tank clown with AIDS

    Wait the clown has aids or the dunk tank? I'm confused more than a Mitt Romney medicare statement.

    First one, then the other.

    Lh96QHG.png
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    AManFromEarthAManFromEarth Let's get to twerk! The King in the SwampRegistered User regular
    Though the rules of english say that "dunk tank clown" is one noun so...

    Lh96QHG.png
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    CommunistCowCommunistCow Abstract Metal ThingyRegistered User regular
    edited August 2012
    Lets play the game called "has this been posted yet?"

    Gallup tracking poll shows Ryan pick hasn't provided a bounce for Romney

    CommunistCow on
    No, I am not really communist. Yes, it is weird that I use this name.
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    enlightenedbumenlightenedbum Registered User regular
    I didn't post a bouncedate today. Gallup's steady, Rasmussen is up to 47-43. Scary.

    Nate did an analysis of this yesterday, came to a conclusion that there might be a one or two point bounce.

    Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
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    PreacherPreacher Registered User regular
    OBAMA IS DOOMED DOOMED!!!

    I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.

    pleasepaypreacher.net
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    Dark_SideDark_Side Registered User regular
    Hevach wrote: »
    Dark_Side wrote: »
    Couscous wrote: »
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/08/15/its-not-clear-what-romney-would-actually-cut-to-make-his-budget-add-up/

    “[F]irst, there are programs I would eliminate. Obamacare being one of them but also various subsidy programs — the Amtrak subsidy, the PBS subsidy, the subsidy for the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities,” he told Fortune, according to interview excerpts in Playbook. Romney also wants to “tie the compensation and benefits for federal workers to those which exist in the private sector,” claiming that it would save about $47 billion a year.

    The problem is, eliminating federal supports for Amtrak and cultural programs would barely save any money. Repealing Obamacare would actually add to the deficit, given the net savings that are in the health-care law. And the savings that Romney projects for tying federal compensation to private-sector levels seem to be overblown, according to recent figures from the Congressional Budget Office. Overall, the cuts that Romney specifies would just be a drop in the bucket, and they still don’t explain how his budget would produce the savings that he promises.

    Here’s how it breaks down: In fiscal year 2012, the federal government spent $1.42 billion on Amtrak, $444 million on PBS, and $146 million on the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities. Getting rid of all these subsidies would have saved the government about $2 billion this year — chump change relative to the scale of cuts that Romney wants.

    ...

    Finally, Romney’s proposal to tie federal compensation and benefits to private-sector levels would likely produce less than the $47 billion yearly savings that he estimates. Romney is correct that compensation for federal employees is higher than private-sector workers with comparable responsibilities and education: Federal wages are 2 percent higher on average, federal benefits are 48 percent more, and overall compensation (wages and benefits) is 16 percent more, the CBO said in a January 2012 study.

    Since the federal government spends about $200 billion a year on compensation for the civilian workforce, according to the CBO, adjusting it to private-sector levels would save about $28 billion annually — significantly less the savings that Romney projects. ”Frankly, I can’t see that you come anywhere close to that kind of an annual dollar savings,” says John Palguta, vice president for policy at the Partnership for Public Service.

    Overall, how much of a dent would these cuts make? In 2013, Romney’s proposed changes would actually increase the deficit by about $4 billion, because the net savings would be outstripped by the loss in revenue due to repealing Obamacare. In later years, however, more savings would begin to accrue: If continued over a decade, eliminating spending on Amtrak, PBS, and the NEA and reducing federal compensation appears to offset the $109 billion in lost revenue from repealing Obamacare, resulting in at least $211 billion in savings by 2022. (That’s assuming that program spending levels and federal compensation remain constant over the next 10 years, so it’s just a back-of-the-envelope calculation to get a sense of the magnitude of these cuts.)

    But that’s still a very long ways off from achieving the $9.6 trillion in non-defense cuts that Romney’s budget would demand: $211 billion in spending reductions, for instance, would be about 2 percent of the total cuts necessary. What’s more, in the same Fortune interview, Romney promised that “infrastructure is going to see very substantial investments over the coming decade,” suggesting that he wouldn’t cut funds from that area either. And the other specific cuts that Romney has publicly detailed — to Planned Parenthood, foreign aid, etc. — are similarly small.

    So Romney still has a lot of explaining to do about how he would actually make the cuts that his own budget demands, as the spending reductions he’s specified so far would only make a small dent, at best.
    He could always close the *insert very popular tax break*.

    And that doesn't even include the fact that he wants to increase defense spending by leaps and bounds, expanding the troop numbers and building more warships. Even though warships are kind of archaic thing of the past at this point, and ridiculously vulnerable to cheap, modern explosives, but I digress.
    Not to mention, aren't we already overbuilding them to the point that we just sold several for scrap that hadn't even touched water yet?

    Hadn't heard about that, but I have to wonder if the Navy even wants more ships. I mean, clearly Romney just pulled a bunch of random shit out of a hat in front of some military audiences, because he thinks he can just blow smoke up people's asses for votes. I just it find comically sad that he can promise trillions in cuts out of one side of his mouth, and from the other promise billions in military spending without anyone in the media batting an eye.

    I am somewhat heartened though that policy wonks are finally starting to point out that you can't really achieve austerity without contracting the US economy in the process. And I suppose for the hyper rich it doesn't matter, but well...it's becoming fascinating how close the current political/social environment of the US is mirroring the social conditions that led up to the french revolution.

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    PantsBPantsB Fake Thomas Jefferson Registered User regular
    I didn't post a bouncedate today. Gallup's steady, Rasmussen is up to 47-43. Scary.

    Nate did an analysis of this yesterday, came to a conclusion that there might be a one or two point bounce.

    And that it was about half of similar bounces.

    The tracking polls don't have a lot of credibility though. So we'll see in the next 10 days or so.

    11793-1.png
    day9gosu.png
    QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
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    PreacherPreacher Registered User regular
    Dark_Side wrote: »
    Hevach wrote: »
    Dark_Side wrote: »
    Couscous wrote: »
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/08/15/its-not-clear-what-romney-would-actually-cut-to-make-his-budget-add-up/

    “[F]irst, there are programs I would eliminate. Obamacare being one of them but also various subsidy programs — the Amtrak subsidy, the PBS subsidy, the subsidy for the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities,” he told Fortune, according to interview excerpts in Playbook. Romney also wants to “tie the compensation and benefits for federal workers to those which exist in the private sector,” claiming that it would save about $47 billion a year.

    The problem is, eliminating federal supports for Amtrak and cultural programs would barely save any money. Repealing Obamacare would actually add to the deficit, given the net savings that are in the health-care law. And the savings that Romney projects for tying federal compensation to private-sector levels seem to be overblown, according to recent figures from the Congressional Budget Office. Overall, the cuts that Romney specifies would just be a drop in the bucket, and they still don’t explain how his budget would produce the savings that he promises.

    Here’s how it breaks down: In fiscal year 2012, the federal government spent $1.42 billion on Amtrak, $444 million on PBS, and $146 million on the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities. Getting rid of all these subsidies would have saved the government about $2 billion this year — chump change relative to the scale of cuts that Romney wants.

    ...

    Finally, Romney’s proposal to tie federal compensation and benefits to private-sector levels would likely produce less than the $47 billion yearly savings that he estimates. Romney is correct that compensation for federal employees is higher than private-sector workers with comparable responsibilities and education: Federal wages are 2 percent higher on average, federal benefits are 48 percent more, and overall compensation (wages and benefits) is 16 percent more, the CBO said in a January 2012 study.

    Since the federal government spends about $200 billion a year on compensation for the civilian workforce, according to the CBO, adjusting it to private-sector levels would save about $28 billion annually — significantly less the savings that Romney projects. ”Frankly, I can’t see that you come anywhere close to that kind of an annual dollar savings,” says John Palguta, vice president for policy at the Partnership for Public Service.

    Overall, how much of a dent would these cuts make? In 2013, Romney’s proposed changes would actually increase the deficit by about $4 billion, because the net savings would be outstripped by the loss in revenue due to repealing Obamacare. In later years, however, more savings would begin to accrue: If continued over a decade, eliminating spending on Amtrak, PBS, and the NEA and reducing federal compensation appears to offset the $109 billion in lost revenue from repealing Obamacare, resulting in at least $211 billion in savings by 2022. (That’s assuming that program spending levels and federal compensation remain constant over the next 10 years, so it’s just a back-of-the-envelope calculation to get a sense of the magnitude of these cuts.)

    But that’s still a very long ways off from achieving the $9.6 trillion in non-defense cuts that Romney’s budget would demand: $211 billion in spending reductions, for instance, would be about 2 percent of the total cuts necessary. What’s more, in the same Fortune interview, Romney promised that “infrastructure is going to see very substantial investments over the coming decade,” suggesting that he wouldn’t cut funds from that area either. And the other specific cuts that Romney has publicly detailed — to Planned Parenthood, foreign aid, etc. — are similarly small.

    So Romney still has a lot of explaining to do about how he would actually make the cuts that his own budget demands, as the spending reductions he’s specified so far would only make a small dent, at best.
    He could always close the *insert very popular tax break*.

    And that doesn't even include the fact that he wants to increase defense spending by leaps and bounds, expanding the troop numbers and building more warships. Even though warships are kind of archaic thing of the past at this point, and ridiculously vulnerable to cheap, modern explosives, but I digress.
    Not to mention, aren't we already overbuilding them to the point that we just sold several for scrap that hadn't even touched water yet?

    Hadn't heard about that, but I have to wonder if the Navy even wants more ships. I mean, clearly Romney just pulled a bunch of random shit out of a hat in front of some military audiences, because he thinks he can just blow smoke up people's asses for votes. I just it find comically sad that he can promise trillions in cuts out of one side of his mouth, and from the other promise billions in military spending without anyone in the media batting an eye.

    I am somewhat heartened though that policy wonks are finally starting to point out that you can't really achieve austerity without contracting the US economy in the process. And I suppose for the hyper rich it doesn't matter, but well...it's becoming fascinating how close the current political/social environment of the US is mirroring the social conditions that led up to the french revolution.

    Most of the military doesn't want extra budget items. But Paul Ryan knows they are lying because the Obama admin told them to do so.

    I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.

    pleasepaypreacher.net
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    HevachHevach Registered User regular
    http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/08/15/13300632-thats-the-difference-between-our-plans-on-medicare?lite

    New entry in the Obama calling a spade a spade parade:
    Now, this is something I've got to point out here because they are just throwing everything at the wall to see if it sticks.

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    JohnnyCacheJohnnyCache Starting Defense Place at the tableRegistered User regular
    Even if they don't want "more ships" they would retire an old one and take a new one, though. why field an old 70s ship when you can have an iDestroyer? It's more intuitive.

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    ClevingerClevinger Registered User regular
    I don't know how reliable Purple Strategies is, but:

    Colorado: Obama 49%, Romney 46%

    Florida: Romney 48%, Obama 47%

    Ohio: Romney 46%, Obama 44%

    Virginia: Romney 48%, Obama 45%.

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    enlightenedbumenlightenedbum Registered User regular
    edited August 2012
    Not at all. They're run by an obnoxious hack Republican (Alex Castellanos, for reference).

    enlightenedbum on
    Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
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