It's funny that those on the left are so enraged about Fox News because they offer a much more balanced approach to reporting than does the main stream media.The typical rant is that Murdoch is a demon, and so on. Yes the prince of darkness, in many Australian cities there is only one major newspaper, a Murdoch paper.Yet, if you watch it-even on the right leaning opinion shows -(they do not hide their tendencies on that station)-(hide under a bushell?? no way shrinking violets like BoR and Hannity???) there is always an opportunity given for those on the left. Often "the last word".
The last word is often interrupted ridiculed or just a shouting match, if they were sincere they would apply the principles you outlined.Trouble is that many refuse to appear because they would be given tough questions instead of softballs. Yes people are invited on and then called "baby killers" or profitting from writing a book exposing their former boss as a fraud? Come on Bruce these guys use all the ruses you accuse Liberals of. Both sides throw bombs, the sad thing is Fox pretends to be balanced where everyone knows its just a stirring by line to take the mickey.
OK some insight on the true nature of the 30 year slide into deficit - simple equation really cut revenue and create a deficit.
The big debt lie
By Gene Lyons
AP
Ronald Reagan
There's nothing remotely conservative about believing in magic. Yet
when it comes to fiscal questions, Republicans are as superstitious as
gamblers around a roulette wheel. Regardless of how much they've lost,
they're confident their system will prevail if they double down one more
time.
How you can tell they're about to do something momentously dumb is
when they're unanimous, i.e., operating on sheer ideology. Show me a
unified GOP, and I'll show you a budgetary disaster about to happen.
That's what makes the pending showdown over raising the national debt
limit so worrying.
But hold that thought.
The betting system the GOP's been playing for the past 30 years is
called supply-side economics. "The theory goes like this," explains
David Cay Johnston. "Lower tax rates will encourage more investment,
which in turn will mean more jobs and greater prosperity -- so much so
that tax revenues will go up, despite lower rates."
To anybody with a passing interest in the material world, it's
clear that this has never happened. Over the same period, the national
debt has risen to more than $14 trillion -- almost 90 percent of it
under Republican presidents.
Meanwhile, ordinary citizens have failed to prosper as President
Reagan's seductive "morning in America" rhetoric promised. Since 1980,
Johnston shows, "the average income of the vast majority -- the bottom
90 percent of Americans -- has increased a meager $303, or 1 percent."
Meanwhile, the income of the upper 1 percent of taxpayers more than
doubled, and that of the top tenth of 1 percent increased more than 400
percent.
Social mobility in the United States lags behind many European
countries. The richest 300,000 American taxpayers currently enjoy
incomes roughly equal to that of the bottom 150 million combined.
Anyway, here's what I mean about the dangers of GOP herd behavior:
Given current conservative hysteria about "runaway spending," it's worth
remembering that the United States last balanced the federal budget in
FY2001 under Bill Clinton.
That was largely a result of the Clinton income-tax increases of
1993, enacted without a single GOP vote amid universal Republican
predictions of doom. They probably cost the Democrats control of
Congress in 1994.
But contrary to Newt Gingrich and the rest, what followed was the
most prolonged economic boom since World War II -- 22 million new jobs
altogether, the only period since 1980 when middle-class prosperity grew
substantially.
Enter George W. Bush and the now-infamous tax cuts of 2001 and
2003. Actually professing to worry that eliminating the national debt
too quickly would throw markets into turmoil, Republicans again promised
lower taxes, higher revenue and boom times.
Again, they were virtually unanimous, voting to cut marginal income
tax rates mainly on the wealthy by 224-1 in the House and 48-3 in the
Senate.
Two wars and a large entitlement increase (Medicare, Part D) later,
no boom took place. At its peak in 2007, the Bush economy had produced
roughly 8 million jobs (7 million of which vanished in the 2007-09
financial crisis).
Budget deficits soared, topping out with the $1.3 trillion FY2009 shortfall President Obama inherited that January.
Somewhat to their credit, when pressed none of Bush's top-level
Treasury people endorsed the supply-side delusion. Aggravated by GOP
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's recent invocations of the
old-time religion, recovering Republican economist Bruce Bartlett
compiled quotes from Bush administration officials debunking the idea.
"Will the tax cuts pay for themselves?" Edward Lazear, chairman of
Bush's Council of Economic Advisors told a Senate committee in 2006. "As
a general rule, we do not think tax cuts pay for themselves. Certainly,
the data presented above do not support this claim."
Lazear's predecessor, Harvard's Greg Mankiw, has written scholarly
articles arguing that the economic boost from tax cuts amounts to
roughly 30 percent of government revenue forgone.
In direct consequence, the national debt almost doubled under
George W. Bush, from roughly $5 trillion in 2001 to more than $10
trillion in 2009.
Also in consequence, every Republican leader now posing as a
hard-line fiscal conservative -- Speaker John Boehner, Rep. Eric Cantor,
Rep. Paul Ryan, and Sen. McConnell -- voted to increase the national
debt limit at least seven times under President Bush. All of them, every
time.
Ironically, of the present players, only Barack Obama made what he
now calls a protest vote against raising the debt limit in 2006.
Under a Democratic president, GOP supply-siders are mad keen to
give the wheel another spin. Republican House members voted 235-4 for
Rep. Ryan's preposterous fantasy of balancing the budget by cutting
millionaires' taxes by $1 trillion and downgrading Medicare to a cheaper
voucher system.
So now the same posers vow to risk the "full faith and credit" of
the U.S. Treasury during a fragile economic recovery unless President
Obama agrees to deep cuts in the nation's social safety net.
A mature electorate would have wised up by now.
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette columnist Gene Lyons
is a National Magazine Award winner and co-author of "The Hunting of
the President" (St. Martin's Press, 2000). You can e-mail Lyons at
eugenelyons2@yahoo.com. More: Gene Lyons
How Republicans became the party of deficits
By Steve Kornacki
Jack Kemp and George Bush
If the debate in today's Republican Party over how to address the
deficit feels a bit one-note, it's because it is. When it comes to
members of Congress, John Boehner's oft-repeated line that "We don't have a revenue problem; we have a spending problem" is the rule among Republicans (with a few notable exceptions).
And when it comes to the party's presidential candidates, it's a
universally held conviction. There is very little disagreement:Deficits
are one of the chief threats to America -- but they can never be
tackled by raising taxes; in fact, taxes must be lowered.
The prevalence of this contradictory posture in the GOPis a
relatively recent phenomenon. And while the story of how it has taken
hold is long and involved, it can be argued that there are really two
critical turning points in the modern era.
The first came in 1980, whenRepublicans staged a presidential
primary campaign that -- by today's standards -- was remarkable for its
ideological diversity. It boiled down to a two-way race between Ronald
Reagan and George H.W. Bush.
The fault lines were clear and well-defined. Reagan represented the
rising Goldwater wing of the GOP-- fiercely anti-tax and
anti-government, staunchly anti-Communist, and far to the right on
cultural issues. In this wing of the GOP, a new economic theory offered
by Arthur Laffer was taking hold: that slashing income tax rates would
actually lead to higher government revenues, with lower taxes spurring
economic growth and increasing Americans' taxable income. In Congress,
Sen. William Roth of Delaware and Rep. Jack Kemp of New York proposed
radical tax relief legislation in the late '70s, and Reagan embraced the
effort in his campaign.
On the other side of the GOPideological spectrum was Bush,
representative of the "town father" wing of the GOP -- pragmatists who
saw a meaningful role for government in Americans' daily lives but who
were wary of bureaucracy and who saw evil in red ink. Bush separated
himself fromReagan on numerous issues (for instance, Bush expressed
support for the Equal Rights Amendment and for abortion rights -- both
of which Reagan and the New Right fiercely opposed). But the biggest
difference between them was on basic economic philosophy. To Bush and
his ilk, Laffer's theories were utter nonsense and a recipe for fiscal
disaster.
"This program of a tax cut may be good politics in the short run
because we are so overtaxed," Bush said of Reagan's plan. "But it would
be a disaster in human and economic terms."
In another speech, Bush declared: "It is impossible for Gov. Reagan
to balance the budget -- an essential component of bringing down
inflation -- if he is to reduce taxes by more than $220 billion over the
next three years."
And in a line that haunted him for years to come, Bush told a crowd
inPittsburgh in April 1980, that Reagan was proposing "a voodoo
economic policy" that couldn't work.
From today's vantage point, it's somewhat amazing to consider how
well Bush did in the '80 primaries. He'd entered the race with virtually
no name recognition (a former CIA director, U.N. ambassador, Republican
National Committee chairman, and two-term congressman), little money
and no organization. Reagan, meanwhile, had come agonizingly close to
stealing the 1976 nomination from Gerald Ford -- and entered the '80
contest as the clear favorite. And yet, Bush managed to stun Reagan in
the Iowa caucuses and -- very briefly -- appeared poised to repeat the
feat in New Hampshire (where Reagan was saved in part by some memorable theatrics).
Even after that, Bush still went on to post another upset in
Pennsylvania before fading for good. His performance was so strong, in
fact, that Reagan -- who had wanted to put a fellow true believer
(perhaps Kemp) on the ticket -- was compelled to offer him the No. 2
slot.
But while Bush's showing was impressive, what really mattered was
that Reagan and his fellow Laffer adherents had won. Within seven months
of taking office, Reagan pushed through Congress and signed into law a
massive reduction of tax rates. Supply-side economics was no longer just
a theory; it was now the official doctrine of the Republican Party --
and the official policy of the United States. In the nearly 200 years
before Reagan took office, the country had racked up a total of about $1
trillion in debt. By the end of his two terms, that number had nearly
tripled. It was during the Reagan years that conservatives learned to
rationalize massive deficits.
Of course, the old Laffer-resistant wing of the GOPdidn't
disappear all at once. Party loyalty (and the scope of Reagan's '80
landslide) persuaded most of them to go along with the new president's
economic program in 1981, but much of the old skepticism -- and distaste
for deficits -- remained. This was true even when it came to Bush.
As vice president, he was unfailingly loyal to Reagan, publicly
backing all of his policies, no matter how strenuously he'd opposed them
as a candidate. It was for a purpose: If he wanted to win the top job
for himself in 1988, Bush realized, he would need at least some of the
Reaganites to be with him.
But even then, there were still glimpses of the old "town father."
For instance, in the '88 GOPrace, Bush was opposed by (among others)
Kemp, who touted himself as Reagan's true ideological heir -- and who
declared that the Reagan Revolution would be "over, gone, dead" if Bush
ever claimed the Oval Office for himself. Bush, for his part, ran on a
pledge not to raise taxes, and fended off another rival -- an old Laffer
skeptic named Bob Dole -- with charges that he was too soft on taxes.
But Bush also resisted Kemp's calls for further dramatic tax cuts, on
the grounds that they'd make the country's ballooning deficits even
worse. Here, for instance, was their exchange during one of the final
'88 GOPdebates:
Bush ended up winning the nomination with relative ease (after an
early scare in Iowa) -- and further won over the Reagan crowd with his
acceptance speech at the GOP convention, in which he promised to fight
any effort fromDemocrats in Congress to raise taxes with words he would
live to regret:
It took Bush until the fall of 1990 to go back on that promise. In a
way, his decision to strike a tax hike deal with Congress was entirely
consistent with his pre-1980 philosophy. The debt was now over $3
trillion (and rising) and revenues were slowing, thanks to a weakening
economy. For the man who had shown his true colors when he'd lectured
Jack Kemp about the evils of deficits, there was only one responsible
choice. The deal Bush cut with leaders in Congress (including Dole, then
the Senate's top Republican, and Robert Michel, the House minority
leader) created a new 31 percent tax bracket, raised the gas tax, and
ended a number of deductions. The goal was deficit reduction.
But Bush faced a revolt from his own party, led by a rising House
Republican star -- Newt Gingrich. One hundred and twenty-six of 173
House Republicans ended up voting against the plan, as did 24 of 43
Republicans in the Senate. The roll call tallies revealed how much the
Reagan wing had grown -- and how significantly the Bush wing had shrunk
-- since 1980.
In many ways, that 1990 budget vote was the last hurrah for the
pre-Reagan crowd. When the economy seemed to worsen in 1991 and 1992,
the right took it as proof of the poisonous effects of raising taxes. In
fact, the early '90s recession actually began before the tax hikes were
passed and put into effect and it technically ended in June 1991 (even
if unemployment and economic anxiety remained high through 1992). But
the right was in no mood to hear this, and the remaining Laffer skeptics
in the GOP quickly concluded that it was in their political interest to
play along. Thus, when Bill Clinton came to power in 1993 and proposed
further tax hikes to fight the deficit, every single Republican in Congress stood against him.
And when Dole grabbed the GOPnomination in 1996, he turned for a
running mate to Jack Kemp -- and, junking years of resistance to
supply-side theory, ran in the fall on a pledge to cut taxes 15 percent
across the board. (That the Bush and Clinton tax increases actually produced record surpluses by the end of the decade had no measurable effect on GOP economic philosophy.)
Dole got the message back then, and just about every ambitious
Republican since then has, too: Republicans like to talk about how bad
deficits are -- but they're not nearly as important as tax cuts.
Steve Kornacki is Salon's news editor. Reach him by email at SKornacki@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @SteveKornacki More: Steve Kornacki
Hannity is a conservative-and proudly biased commentator. He does not present himself as a non-biased journalist (like Amanpour, Dennis the Menace on MTP, Bob Schieffer, Katie Couric, et al) Hannity, by the way gives a lot of airtime to liberals. Regularly; Like Beckel. Once again, my friend; your argument falls flat.
Hannity fell flat because BiBi actually put him in his place explained the 67 borders with land swaps and was almost apologetic for his bad behaviour lecturing Obama. Many liberal Jews dislike BiBi instensely and believe allowing rampatant settlements to be built as bad policy endangering their own security.
Hannity interviewed the guy who wrote the book (on Palin)and just yelled over him, you ask why people don't go on the network simply because the host can't restrain their hatred disdain and own bias, they foam at the mouth, talk over their guest and want to belittle and humilate them, Fair and balanced, no unhinged rabid right wing looneys, Greta on the other hand actually treats her journalism seriously.
So its either blonde bimbos, Food 101 or a bitter twisted old conservative guy or a college drop out. Poor old Rupert he used to buy quality respectable newspapers now he just funds an unabashed right wing rabble.
Well the President looks more presidential everyday and what does Fox do, no commentary no mention of the speech given to a joint sitting of parliament,
Looks more Presidential? Like when he is glaring at Netanyahu while Bibi is dressing him down publicly in the Oral Orifice? Or when he is appeasing terrorists? Or when he is ignoring the slaughter in Syria....saying that Assad should lead the country to democracy? Or when he takes a back seat in Libya? That's presidential leadership?
I saw a report popping up about the speech in England, I believe Bret Baier's show had it, but I didn't listen to the full report. I just now tried to find it quickly, but stumbled on this-seems pretty F & B to me-almost a fluff piece for the prez.https://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/05/23/obama-begins-european-tour-ireland-discovers-irish-roots/instead a couple of minutes to mock a toast given to bettty windsor when they started playing the national anthem, how pathetic, Bruce you have no defence for this disgrace and incompetence.
Again, sorry just heard something in passing about him not timing his toast well or something. Actually, I think I heard that on the radio, not Fox. So, it's ok for the MSM (and by the way, Fox) to point out Bush's verbal flops but not Obama's? C'mon, grow a skin.Totally inept and that insane Hannity "interviewing" the guy who wrote a book against Palin, he uses all the tricks you accuse Liberals of. Again biased unbalanced and in his case unhinged even BoR finds him ridiculous and replusive.
Hannity is a conservative-and proudly biased commentator. He does not present himself as a non-biased journalist (like Amanpour, Dennis the Menace on MTP, Bob Schieffer, Katie Couric, et al) Hannity, by the way gives a lot of airtime to liberals. Regularly; Like Beckel. Once again, my friend; your argument falls flat.
Can you imagine the field day the media would have if Bush signed and dated a guestbook that was off by three years?
Sorry I couldn't resist this:- Why did he have to be so obvious as to rent the house next door? Why didn't he just rent a place in Russia? Because you know "You can see ........... "
lol.
You rascal, you. (wink)
Sorry I couldn't resist this:- Why did he have to be so obvious as to rent the house next door? Why didn't he just rent a place in Russia? Because you know "You can see ........... "
You DO realize she never said this, right?
Bullshit... get off the kool-aid
Who me?
Please explain- I know that you like to come in, throw a totally indefensible bomb, and run away. Care to elaborate?
In Australia we would say you have been on the turps or of course cordial, lime with a twist of lemon or lime...so btw how is summer going or late spring??
Sorry I couldn't resist this:- Why did he have to be so obvious as to rent the house next door? Why didn't he just rent a place in Russia? Because you know "You can see ........... "
You DO realize she never said this, right?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nLmYrSv-S8&NR=1&feature=fvwp
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psyo4JDbJJ4&feature=related
Finally a balanced approach Sarah and Hillary - enjoy
Hannity is the scumbag and beneath contempt as he just hectored the guy
Take a look at these two clips. Seems to me that Hannity presents a respectable position in both clips. No hectoring there. MSNBC's Ed Schultz's audio in the second... is that acceptable, Tony?
https://www.foxnews.com/on-air/hannity/index.html#/v/962095739001/white-house-creates-web-police-post-part-1/?playlist_id=86924
https://www.foxnews.com/on-air/hannity/index.html#/v/962095738001/white-house-creates-web-police-post-part-2/?playlist_id=86924
I saw this live the first link has nothing to do with the book interview??? no look at the part 1 interview you re full of crap etc he just talks over the guy.............over over and over again
When did I defend the other guy who gave a grovelling apology? Stick to the point now you are just throwing bombs? this is rather pointless. Hm listening to your favourite guys talk about taxes, they need to review Bush's actual view on voodoo economics, the equation is pretty simple, cutting revenue blew out the deficit, its not rocket science, when do people actually critique this crazy idea? Ideology triumphs over facts. Now the Fox extra cute dogs great lol!!
Bullshit... get off the kool-aid
Who me?
Please explain- I know that you like to come in, throw a totally indefensible bomb, and run away. Care to elaborate?
In Australia we would say you have been on the turps or of course cordial, lime with a twist of lemon or lime...so btw how is summer going or late spring??
In other words, drunk. Actually the Kool-Aid thing is more insulting (for those with a thin skin) I suppose because it refers to the followers of Jim Jones who blindly followed his orders to commit suicide. But both sides do it; I don't think it's a big deal. Our friend from Cali never offers any intelligent thoughts anyway.
https://www.raptureready.com/rr-kool-aid.html
Hm thank you my friend always layers beneath, OMG please ask the fox guys to play some decent music, lol I have to mute or change channels!!!
A guy here on Sky news just used the Kool aid reference in disucssing today's politics always learning something. They are discussing an ad campaign promoting a carbon tax and being a News organisation pointed out News Corp attempts to be carbon neutral how ironic
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