Charlie Rose

NeilMacCallister  04/17/2011 02:32 PM Report

Yes! ..and we can call those Democrats who ran from their jobs in Wisconsin, to hide out in Chicago, the "Flee Party"!!!

NeilMacCallister  04/17/2011 02:26 PM Report

John, ..your desire to keep printing money until it has absolutely no present or future value, is just so darn "in tune with the times"!!

Maybe I could use some of the carrots in my truck as currency when I buy my gasoline!

But how many carrots will gasoline cost when all this happens?

I'll probably have to buy a gun to protect any gasoline I already have, ..how much will guns cost in this coming utopia?

Maybe ALL of us will get guns! ..and cling to them tightly!!

We can call this movement: "Ordnizing for America" !!!

JohnGelles  04/17/2011 06:41 AM Report

The Sunday TV shows will be on in a few hours. They will all assume the high cost of medical care dictates less care and lower cost. They will all forget that pay for care is exchanged for pay for production of what care givers buy with their pay.

Pay is never too high except in comparison with what lower pay for the products would offer.

If we want new remedies for old diseases and conditions, why no pay and move on from there. Assume we need more facilities for the chronically medically needy. Assume we build full care and hospice facilities and fill them up with people like us who need them.

We might then have removed from the roles of the unemployed, all the people doing nothing. We might even build some of these facilities in Mexico and employed many Mexicans who desperately need higher paying jobs than what they have at present.

So far, we would have helped out care-givers and cared-for here and elsewhere. If we paid for this good outcome in newly created money (or newly mined gold discovered by accident just north of the Mexican border by illegals sneaking into America, all would be OK. No one would cry DEFICIT !

There would be no deficits in care, care-givers, fiscal budgets or money to pay for the such new care establishment.

We would have to ramp up production of what new output of food and other necessities was now being bought in the economy. Boom times would return and no one would be under water unless it was to swim with brand new fins and snorkels.

None of the Sunday shows will mention solutions like this that call for full employment and production to meet need. They will all assume the poor and unemployed are in trouble and the rich and ever wanting more than anyone else are who we should celebrate cause they've gotten away with doing the opposite of what their mothers taught them.

JohnGelles  04/16/2011 11:47 PM Report

Most of the TV chatter about deficit spending, and the future standard of living of most Americans, assumes that if we struck huge mountains of gold inside our borders we would easily solve our need for greater homeland security, more jobs, a higher minimum wage, affordable health care for all, and and less crime and corruption than we have ever had.

Virtually every one of us see the immediate problem as one of too little money on hand, in the pockets of government, business and individuals, to pay for all we want to buy or produce from scratch. Give us the money and we will finish the job. That is what I hear you all, and everyone else, saying.

Ridiculous -- I hear you shouting now -- as you read my opinion.

We never asked for gold you shout. Especially gold by magic in what amounts to a THOUGHT EXPERIMENT. We want to lower the national debt and raise the rate of private savings. That is what we want. Gelles is just a liar.

[Please continue this for me. I know that you already know where my argument is going.]

NeilMacCallister  04/16/2011 08:31 PM Report

Well BMB, you could just look out your window: See any factories with billowing furnaces? ..See any new constructions crowning the skyline? ..See any ships taking our exports out into the world?

Or do you just see "Home for Sale" signs?

That's what our high taxes got us.

BarackMcBush  04/16/2011 06:46 AM Report

President Obama's plan to roll back the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans—from 35% to 39.6%.

The tax rate the wealthiest Americans paid on the top portion of their earnings at the end of Ronald Reagan's first term was much higher -- 50%.

Under Richard Nixon it was 70%, and under Dwight Eisenhower it was actually 91%. These rates didn't stop the "Job Creators" then. It's funny how the GOP keeps trying to recycle "Trickle Down" Voodoo economics.

NeilMacCallister  04/15/2011 03:53 AM Report

Mr. Lew "obscures with minutia and detail" tabs?

All I heard was his vague promise that President Obama has "a vision", ..though he then says "to put forth a plan has never really worked", and "I really don't think it would be helpful if I discussed ways to save Social Security".

His "Office of Management and Budget" is an office within the White House, and Pres. Obama signs his paycheck.

So it is totally predictable that he here claims "No insurance company would be interested in competing for the healthcare contracts serving 'premium-supported' patients who held out vouchers of only $6,000 dollars per year."

But with 50 million seniors in need, isn't that worth about $300 billion dollars a year?

I'd bet that 1 or 2 "entrepreneurial" companies might bite!

***

Then he could tax stock/commodity tradings to "expand the tax base".

(If I buy a GM truck, I pay 10% sales tax. If I buy 10% of GM, ..how much "sales tax" do I pay????)

And raise margin requirements to reduce the need for future bailouts!!!

tabs  04/14/2011 08:33 PM Report

Mr Lew obscures with the use of minutia and detail.

Further:

"This is who we are. This is the America I know. We don’t have to choose between a future of spiraling debt and one where we forfeit investments in our people and our country. To meet our fiscal challenge, we will need to make reforms. We will all need to make sacrifices. But we do not have to sacrifice the America we believe in. And as long as I’m President, we won’t." Barrack Obama 4/13/11

The irony is that the system he believes in has led us to the brink of ruin.

NeilMacCallister  04/14/2011 03:32 PM Report

Excuse me, ..but did President Obama say here that "We cannot afford a trillion dollar tax cut for every millionaire and billionaire in this country?"

That would be a lot of trillion dollars!!!

***

And didn't he just give several trillions of dollars to Wall Street's "millionaires and billionaires" in 2009?

(..Warren Buffett bought himself a new train set!)

Is the President now asking for that money back???????

JohnGelles  04/14/2011 03:26 PM Report

Item: U.S. ambassador to China Jon Huntsman, a Republican with potential presidential ambitions, has advised officials that he intends to leave the post during the first part of this year, the White House said

Item: General David Petraeus is the choice of some to become President-elect in 2012.

These two, more than any others have me hoping to see them run.

Jack Lew and Barack Obama have me convinced they are not up to the job of re-industrializing the USA.

Deficits do not matter. Military capability to prevent nuclear proliferation and deaths in our homeland from attack by terrorists matter.

Poverty matters. Nations can prevent it. Individuals can mostly just talk about it.

Pollution matters. It must be contained at all cost.

Education and training from cradle to grave matter. They pay for themselves with future production of necessities. They ought to be free to parents whose children are counted on to defend America in the decades to come.

Manufacturing matters. Energy matters. Health matters. The care of seniors is not

Jack Lew has a conventional set of beliefs that cannot solve our problems. He thinks Obama is an effective leader for domestic economic recovery. I agree Obama is better than some. But he has failed the workers who elected him.

We need a leader who will not tax away investment money from the private sector if we need it for recovery.

NeilMacCallister  04/14/2011 01:23 PM Report

Pres. Obama/Charlie Rose: "We plan to cut the deficit by 4 trillion in 12 years."

"Deficits" are year-to-year budget over-spendings. You are saying you will reduce "over-spending" in the next 12 years of budgets (none of which have yet been written) by "4 trillion dollars". That has no meaning.

The real question is how much do you plan to add to the National Debt by overspending?

rickado  04/14/2011 12:47 PM Report

Charlie rose when will you if ever have working class americans on your show to address some of their problems with what the politicians are advocating. At their level I'm sure the world appears quite different then from where I sit. I would advocate cuts for all the working class if it wouldn't effect my life. retired seniors are bombarded with increases from all sides cities, counties, state and when you live on a fixed income where are these extra dollars we are required to pay supposed to come from. the politicians seem to think that middle class american are their piggy bank. I listen to these experts on your show talk and some of the time what they say is pure dribble they forgot what it's like to try and get by every month with less disposable income

REMant  04/14/2011 10:53 AM Report

After telling us of the seriousness of the debt in his oration yesterday, the president spent the remainder appealing to enthusiasm for spending, and telling us what he, the savior of mankind, WILL NOT DO.

Aside from the fact that $4 trillion is not nearly enough to wipe out the debt, he continues to blame the previous admin for all of it, neglecting the Keynesian/monetarist project the country has been embarked on for half a century. He simply misses the entire point. Govt spending is merely a symptom of the profligacy of the Federal Reserve. Shut that down and you will have no problem cutting spending, because the Congress won't have the funds to spend unless they risk a taxpayer revolt as in California. It's the Fed that keeps that from happening. Mr Boehner says Washington has a spending problem, not a revenue problem, but clearly, it has both, and the cause is the dependency encouraged by easy money. It would be different if the Fed stuck to setting realistic interest rates, but in the absence of that the GOP has to realize that wealth is the result not of making desirable investments and hard work, but merely of inflationary asset appreciation.

Obama, himself, just seems unable to draw a conclusion. Maybe it's all that sophistry he imbibed in law school. It reminds me of "Field of Dreams" - utterly pointless romanticizing - and about crooks at that. It's too bad we have no more way of getting rid of corruption than the Egyptians.

Some individual points taken from the prepared copy:

"I want you to know that one of the reasons I kept the government open was so I could be here today with all of you." <--makes no sense, GWU is a private institution and the president can surely talk whether the bureaucracy comes to work or not. Why students? Well because he is going to argue THEY are the future, he is cutting THEIR debt, because he doesn't want to hurt THEM in the process, hence not cut education and so forth. I am supposing he fears they might march on the White House and wants to redirect them to the other end of Pennsylvania Ave. In any case, he did not deliver this address before a nursing home.

"To give you an idea of how much damage this caused to our national checkbook, consider this: in the last decade, if we had simply found a way to pay for the tax cuts and the prescription drug benefit, our deficit would currently be at low historical levels in the coming years." <--presumably he's talking about higher progressivity, but that neglects the increasing poverty of the nation as a whole, so it is a straw man.

"On top of that, we faced a terrible financial crisis and a recession that, like most recessions, led us to temporarily borrow even more." <--a LOT more, and unnecessarily

"Ultimately, all this rising debt will cost us jobs and damage our economy." <--tell that to Bernanke

"A serious plan doesn't require us to balance our budget overnight - in fact, economists think that with the economy just starting to grow again, we will need a phased-in approach - but it does require tough decisions and support from leaders in both parties. And above all, it will require us to choose a vision of the America we want to see five and ten and twenty years down the road." <--the economists - all Keynesians - are wrong; the choice is either cuts or no cuts, not both, like Weed & Feed.

"These aren't the kind of cuts that Republicans and Democrats on the Fiscal Commission proposed." <--another bunch of straw men designed to protect Democratic constituencies. After telling us how important it is to cut the debt, he first tells us it will hurt recovery (according to Keynesians), but then that it can't actually be done without pain, so he wants to increase taxes, which will not, of course. The majority of Americans don't agree, and Reagan was a spendthrift and no Republican.

"They want to give people like me a two hundred thousand dollar tax cut that's paid for by asking thirty three seniors to each pay six thousand dollars more in health costs? That's not right, and it's not going to happen as long as I'm President." <--why not? Seniors are presumably richer than juniors, esp those who are not the offspring on baby boomers.

"It's an approach that borrows from the recommendations of the bipartisan Fiscal Commission I appointed last year, and builds on the roughly $1 trillion in deficit reduction I already proposed in my 2012 budget." <-- kicking and screaming all the way

"The first step in our approach is to keep annual domestic spending low by building on the savings that both parties agreed to last week - a step that will save us about $750 billion over twelve years." <--but which takes it all out of discretionary spending making up little of the budget, as you said earlier

"The second step in our approach is to find additional savings in our defense budget. As Commander-in-Chief, I have no greater responsibility than protecting our national security, and I will never accept cuts that compromise our ability to defend our homeland or America's interests around the world." <--i.e., he won't touch it, nor get out of the Iraq and Afghanistan or Libya, but will eliminate more waste, which he also said earlier will not do the job

"Our approach lowers the government's health care bills by reducing the cost of health care itself." <--like last year, either a fantasy or another soak the rich scheme, which so far has not worked, esp since the Fed has undercut it

"I will not allow Medicare to become a voucher program that leaves seniors at the mercy of the insurance industry, with a shrinking benefit to pay for rising costs" <--again, not because of collusion, but because of the Fed

"As I said in the State of the Union, both parties should work together now to strengthen Social Security for future generations. But we must do it without putting at risk current retirees," <--the Ryan proposal specifically excludes them, so another straw man. There is nothing wrong with saving for this either.

"But we cannot afford $1 trillion worth of tax cuts for every millionaire and billionaire in our society. And I refuse to renew them again." <--taxes on the rich alone will not balance the budget, as I think you also said earlier. The tax base needs to be broadened, not reduced.

"I believe we should go further. That's why I'm calling on Congress to reform our individual tax code so that it is fair and simple - so that the amount of taxes you pay isn't determined by what kind of accountant you can afford." <--really, a flat-rate tax, without the mortgage deduction?!

"Some will argue we shouldn't even consider raising taxes, even if only on the wealthiest Americans. It's just an article of faith for them. I say that at a time when the tax burden on the wealthy is at its lowest level in half a century, the most fortunate among us can afford to pay a little more....Others will say that we shouldn't even talk about cutting spending until the economy is fully recovered. I'm sympathetic to this view,....But doing nothing on the deficit is just not an option....Finally, there are those who believe we shouldn't make any reforms to Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security out of a fear that any talk of change to these programs will usher in the sort of radical steps that House Republicans have proposed." <--you haven't left much wiggle room, however

While we should be grateful for the tax support of ppl like Zandy, I would look at the Fed as Messrs Paul et fil and the classical economists have been saying all along. It won't, of course, pay the debt down, but it will force the issue, keep it from getting larger, and take away the security blanket that has kept Americans from facing reality. In many ways refutation of Keynes and the liberal optimism it has supported is akin to maintaining the earth is not at the center of the universe, and I expect it will take as much effort to unseat.

I am not surprised the vice president was catching up on his sleep. He's going to need it. BTW, unlike several of his predecessors, Mr Lew is not an economist, but has been a Democratic policy person since he graduated from college.