You can't have it both ways... either the President isn't important or
he is. Choose one and be consistent.


He is important for many things..how I live my daily life isn't one of them.

If the results stink and someone's telling you that they don't,
regardless of whether they actually had any control over the situation
at all, what does that tell you about that person?? Think carefully...
there is only one conclusion.

Just because someone says something doesn't usually make it so. and stinking is
pretty subjective..I think a lot of bands stink but ohters disagree..so there
may be many conclusions or no conclusion..just opinion.

John A. Chiara
SOS Recording Studio
Live Sound Inc.
Albany, NY
www.sosrecording.net
518-449-1637

"Pete Dimsman" wrote in message
...
This ain't so funny. Please explain how anybody with a half a brain
could look at these charts and then proceed to vote for Bush:


http://www.academycomputerservice.co...s/unemploy.jpg

http://www.academycomputerservice.co...obcreation.jpg

http://www.academycomputerservice.co...s/deficits.jpg

Oh, it goes to show you that even people with half a brain know better than
to vote for Kerry :-)

Just because someone says something doesn't usually make it so.

John Kerry pointed this out in his speech at the Democratic Convention.


Joe Egan
EMP
Colchester, VT
www.eganmedia.com

Logan Shaw wrote in message ...
playon wrote:

On Fri, 10 Sep 2004 22:30:18 GMT, Logan Shaw
wrote:

Bottom line is, the economy was already very shaky when Bush took
office

This is probably true, but you didn't address the issue of the
deficit... GW is obviously to blame for taking the country back in to
the red. The buck stops there.

Hmm, seems like the deficit happened because after the economy tanked,
tax revenue dropped precipitiously. You no longer had random guys
with 1 year of experience at something making $60,000. They went
back to the same $30,000 a year kind of job he had before the boom,
and since income tax is progressive, that means they paid less than
half the tax. Also, how much capital gains tax do you think the
federal government collects when every stock on the whole dang
exchange just lost a lot of its value and is continuing to coast
steadily downward? Tax-savvy people who are already getting out
of their investments are going to take a loss and claim that on
their income tax, reducing their tax burden and reducing the
government's revenue.

Actually, Bush did give out that bonus tax rebate ($300 for single,
$600 for married filing jointly) in 2001, but I don't know whether
that was enough to cause the deficit. There was also that tax
relief act that Congress passed in mid-2001, the one that's
supposed to phase out the "marriage penalty". Interestingly,
it seems to have had pretty broad support (including John Kerry's
support). I guess before 9/11, we all just didn't believe the
economy was really going to get bad.

Going back to the revenue thing, pretty much all levels of government
were affected just like the federal government was. The Terminator
got his shoe in the gubernatorial door because California was having
very big budget problems. Where I live, the city government had a
series of meetings to try to figure out how to stay solvent. They
had to cut their budget by like 25% or something. People talked about
having a state income tax here in Texas, which we don't have now,
and which is never a popular idea when it's suggested. In other words,
the federal government is definitely not the only one that suddenly
found itself with a big deficit.

- Logan

State governments have found themselves with big deficits because tax
receipts are down at the same time that unfunded Federal mandates are
up.

Talk to a City or County official sometime about how much Federal
grant money they have received to fund their required increased
security and you'll probably get an earful.

In regards to TX:

I did some projects in conjunction with some state of Texas people
(they worked for the state) around 1999 - 2000 and we were talking to
them about how if Bush got elected how it might benefit them.

They told me at the time they really, really hoped that didn't happen
because he had basically run up the state deficit, handed out tax
money, totally screwed the education system, dumped unfunded mandates
on local cities and counties, etc.

They said to watch what would happen if he got elected and predicted
he'd do the same thing to the US deficit and government that he did to
the TX government.

I do know that in the early/mid 1990's the Texas DOT (the guys above
were a different group in TX, I worked with the DOT first) was one of
the most advanced DOT's in the country, they were one of the pioneers
of using Airborne GPS to replace/supplant ground control and had a
bunch of people that were really experts in the field.

Bush came in, basically ransacked the DOT and sent them back to the
stoneage, and now the TX DOT is a shell of it's former self.

Given that roads and the maintenace of them are fairly important it
was a pretty bad thing to have done.

I have my own term for this new style of Republican....I call them
"credit card republicans" because all they do is run up bills and
don't get the money to pay for them.

We're into this FOUR YEARS NOW, and looking at almost $500 billion
deficits, if I was a conservative small government republican I'd be
highly ****ed off.

Blaming it Clinton was handy for a couple of years but that was an
enternity ago and as far as the costs of the war go, they are only
about 25% of the current deficit.

"IN THEORY", a war should pump up the economy, especially a long drawn
out one like we are seeing, but we're not getting that bump.

With Vietnam at least the defense spending during that time period
contributed to economic growth, but these days all we seem to be
growing are Walmart jobs.

Analogeezer