Tag Archives: Republican ideas

Republicans: Consumer bureau too powerful

Corporations, Government, Military, Politics • Tags: , , ,

The title of the post is directly from the title of the article I am going to discus.  Basically what the Republicans seem to be saying is that banks should have all the control on how to foreclose on a loan and the government should get out of that and other financial transactions that are best left to private industry hands! In other words let the free market rule. The symbol of the Republican party is an elephant. Of course the thing most remember about elephants besides the fact that they are huge and have very tough skin is that they have long memories.

It must seem to the Republicans that the economic meltdown of two years ago is ancient history! The agency they are complaining about hasn’t even taken effect yet and already they want it gone.  I am guessing that the main reason for that is because it was instituted by the Democrats when they had the power in the house. In their minds anything Democrats do must be wrong by its very nature. Never mind that leaving it to them is what caused the near financial meltdown as Mr. Bush was leaving office.  I wonder what we could have done with the trillions of dollars needed to fix that mess as well as the mess Mr. Bush made in foreign invasions.One thing I hope the Republicans do forget completely is the Bush Doctrine of invading anyone who makes us feel uncomfortable.

I am just a simple guy but I am convinced that the only thing that keeps capitalism from self imploding on a regular basis is the regulations our  ”responsible” government representatives put in place to reign in those yahoo’s greed.

But what do I know.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/2011-03-16-consumer-finances-warren.htm

Cutting Spending (Republican Style)….. 4

Politics • Tags: , ,

There is an article in the Christian Science Monitor (see the link at the bottom of the post)  about how the Republicans want to cut spending on the federal budget. When Mr. Bush was in office and borrowing hundreds of billions of off budget dollars to fund his wars there was not a squeak from any of them. They suddenly got religion after the fact I guess. I wonder if it has anything to do with a Democrat now holding the White House???   Anyway, here is an excerpt from the article.

One of the plans is the measure passed by House Republicans, which cuts nearly $62 billion from fiscal 2010 levels. It’s also $100 billion less than President Obama’s fiscal 2011 budget proposal. The GOP measure makes cuts in virtually all elements of nondefense, discretionary spending.

I applaud budgetary constraints, but how they get there is very troubling! The Republicans are proposing taking it all out of “nondefense”. There is something terribly wrong with this.  The military budget currently makes up 60% of the discretionary spending and is not taking any of the hit in budget tightening? Military spending has doubled in less than eight years where the rest of discretionary spending has only gone up a fraction of that.  But their view is that all of the savings must come from the other 40%.  In other words we should eliminate policemen on our streets so that we can maintain “peacekeeping” forces in Iraq, Japan, England, South Korea, Germany and dozens of other places.  As if none of those countries can afford to do that themselves?  Instead, we should lose 200,000 jobs in the U.S. so that we can keep the Afghan tribal leaders appeased.  I might agree with the $62 billion if it were to be apportioned consistently; that is taking $38 billion of it out of our war machine and then the remainder from maintaining stability and safety in our own country.  Taking the military spending off the table is insane to me. But who said the current crop of Republicans are sane!

But what do I know…

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20110305/ts_csm/367633

Smaller Class Sizes…

Government, Money, Politics • Tags: ,

The debate about class sizes has gone on for decades. Some say there are too many kids in one class and some say otherwise.  When I was in Catholic grade school decades ago there were usually about 30 40 kids in each classroom.  I think it is much lower than that today but I’m not sure.  But, I do know that I believed I got more than enough of the teacher’s attention even with that class size. In those days those nuns had a tendency to wrap knuckles with a ruler if you didn’t meet up with their expectations!  I got my knuckles wrapped more than once :)

But getting back to today’s Wizard of Id cartoon. Leave it up to the king to come up with such a unique solution to smaller class sizes. Given the Republicans are now in control of the House of Representative this strip came at a very opportune time; they just might take this solution seriously. That is if they don’t have to pay the kids minimum wages. But I expect the Republican’s will have a thing or two to say about minimum wages too. Let’s roll back everything except millionaire tax breaks and sky high military spending. That’s the Republican solution for all our problems.

http://www.arcamax.com/wizardofid