Random Politics & Religion #13

go get Saddam, I want his gun.

No means other than replaying Trump's own words. Thanks for reiterating my point.

So watched Clinton and Trump's monologues at that charity thing. Trump couldn't resist more than 12 minutes being civil...to think he started off so well actually saying good jokes(the best jokes), but then just couldn't contain himself and started being vicious again with that "she is so corrupt" etc.

I love the irrational fear that a President Trump will somehow roll things back for the rights of gay Americans to how they were during the first Clinton Administration; so the solution is to elect the Clintons' again. Battered Wife(Person) Syndrome.

A Clinton administration is honestly equally as scary, there is a good chance our Proxy war in Syria will become an actual war.

Bettering our relationship with Russia could potentially allow us to enter peace talks on behalf of the Syrian rebels.

People often forget that the Iraq war was not only voted by congress but was also wanted by a majority of people.

Except any attempt at engaging with Russia is considered an act of treason to any democrat/liberal out there. Case in point: Vic's notorious viewpoints that Russia is still our enemy, and you are a xenophobe lunatic if you think otherwise.

Remember Clinton's claim that the 2008 financial crisis was a direct result of "trickle-down economics"? Never mind that it was really about the housing crisis and her husband and his administration's inane idea that everyone can afford a house, so they forced banks to make loans that would have otherwise been denied.

Remember Clinton's claim that the 2008 financial crisis was a direct result of "trickle-down economics"? Never mind that it was really about the housing crisis and her husband and his administration's inane idea that everyone can afford a house, so they forced banks to make loans that would have otherwise been denied.

During the first presidential debate, Hillary Clinton tried to fix blame for the Great Recession on a cherished part of conservative economic policy -- tax cuts.

"Trickle-down did not work," Clinton said, referring to a derisive name for tax cuts that dates from the presidency of Ronald Reagan. "It got us into the mess we were in, in 2008 and 2009. Slashing taxes on the wealthy hasn’t worked."

Later in the debate. Clinton doubled down on that argument, saying, "Well, let’s stop for a second and remember where we were eight years ago. We had the worst financial crisis, the Great Recession, the worst since the 1930s. That was in large part because of tax policies that slashed taxes on the wealthy, failed to invest in the middle class, took their eyes off of Wall Street, and created a perfect storm."

We had usually heard from experts that the Great Recession stemmed most directly from the bursting of a housing bubble that led to a financial-sector meltdown. So we wondered whether economists thought Clinton’s argument held water.

First, some history: President George W. Bush enacted two rounds of tax cuts, though critics said that richer Americans benefited disproportionately. It is these cuts -- coming on top of previous rounds of tax cuts for wealthier Americans -- that play a prominent role in Clinton’s assertion at the debate.

Most, though not all, of the economists we contacted -- liberals, conservatives and in between -- expressed skepticism about the linkage Clinton made. (For their part, our friends at the Washington Post Fact Checker gave the claim Three Pinocchios out of a possible four, in large part based on the analysis of a 663-page report from 2011 by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission.)

That said, when we contacted the Clinton campaign, they stood by the assertion. Two of the campaign’s arguments stand out as plausible:

• Bush administration regulators took their eyes off Wall Street.

• Bush’s tax and budget policies fostered income inequality that, in turn, promoted unsustainable investments by the wealthy in homes owned by families with stagnating income and uncertain abilities to pay them back.

We found one expert who strongly sided with Clinton’s analysis -- Robert S. McElvaine, a historian at Millsaps College who has written about the Great Depression and the Great Recession. (The Post’s Fact Checker found a couple more that had been put in touch through the campaign.)

"It’s not the tax cuts for the rich per se, but their effect of concentrating income at the very top that was the major cause of the Great Depression," and, in turn, the Great Recession, McElvaine said. When income is too concentrated, he said, the rest of the population doesn’t have enough to maintain sufficient demand, and the economy suffers, he said.

So there is at least some support for a lack of Wall Street regulation and income inequality for setting the stage for the financial crisis that spawned the recession.

However, the economists we checked with expressed skepticism -- some strongly so -- about Clinton’s assertion that the recession emerged "in large part" due to tax policies.

On the left, Dean Baker, co-director of the liberal Center for Economic Policy and Research, said he wouldn’t just call tax cuts a minor factor in causing the recession -- he said he "can't think of any way they were a factor at all." If anything, he said, "the conventional wisdom goes the other way -- tax cuts tend to increase the deficit, which pushes up interest rates and in turn drags down house prices."

On the right, Dan Mitchell, an economist with the libertarian Cato Institute, agreed. "Hillary is spouting nonsense," he said. "No economic theory links tax cuts -- or, for that matter, tax increases -- to financial market meltdowns."

Other economists we contacted echoed these sentiments.

"Clinton is on solid ground criticizing Bush’s tax cuts, but blaming them for the recession goes too far," said Bruce Bartlett, a former Ronald Reagan aide who has sometimes broken with some conservative orthodoxies. "One can certainly say that the Bush tax cuts failed to raise economic growth or lower unemployment to any significant degree, and one can argue that the Reagan tax cuts were not especially stimulative as well. But to argue that the Bush tax cuts caused the 2008-09 recession is a stretch."

Harvey Rosen, a Princeton University economist who was an official in the administrations of both Bush and his father, said that tax cuts seem like an unlikely culprit, because "historically we’ve had relatively low rates without terrible -- or any -- recessions." He added that low tax rates "would not make my list of the top 10 reasons for the recession."

Instead, Rosen pointed to a "housing bubble in the United States and Europe that was fed by excess liquidity and poorly regulated mortgage markets." This became a problem, he said, when large financial institutions that had huge amounts of assets dependent on high housing prices found themselves with too little capital to stave off failure when the market crashed.

"After a number of financial firms failed, it caused a panic, and confidence in the financial system collapsed," Rosen said. "With the collapse in confidence came a collapse in credit markets -- no one was able to borrow -- which ultimately caused a contraction of the real economy."

Brookings Institution economist Gary Burtless added another factor: the irrational psychologies of the bubble, on the part of both homebuyers and lenders who felt empowered to pursue risky arrangements in the absence of strict regulation. "By the middle of the 2000-2010 decade, a great many loans were made that prudent lenders would not have made in the 1990s or ever the early 2000s," Burtless said.

This, in turn, led to the "end of a housing boom, a sharp decline in housing prices, widespread mortgage defaults, widespread mortgage securities defaults, and a lack of assets to cover the losses at nine large financial institutions -- Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, the CitiCorp holding company, and the AIG holding company," said Lawrence White, an economist at New York University’s Stern School of Business.

Our ruling

Clinton said the Great Recession emerged "in large part because of tax policies that slashed taxes on the wealthy, failed to invest in the middle class, took their eyes off of Wall Street, and created a perfect storm."

It’s broadly accepted that lack of Wall Street regulation played a role, and it’s arguable that income inequality helped set the conditions. But an ideological cross-section of economists agreed that the recession was primarily caused by a housing bubble that turned into a financial crisis, and that it was caused by many factors more significant than low taxes.

So for Clinton to say that tax cuts for the rich "in large part" caused the Great Recession is a significant exaggeration. We rate it Mostly False.

Its funny too because in the podesta emails it clearly states that she still has the same opinion on gays and gay marriage, making it pretty clear that she is just pandering to them to get elected.

Trickle-down economics was a good idea that simply forgot about the greed of corporate owners making it a terrible failure.

polar opposite side of the coin to of communism

They don't say anything of the sort. "Clearly", lol.

They don't say anything of the sort. "Clearly", lol.

But we all know that since it's something negative about your lord/savior, you are therefor going to ignore it

Isn't this the way most people treat their lord/savior(s)/etc.?

And here's why the Republican party won't learn ***from Trump's landfill fire of a candidacy. It wad all the media's fault, sure. Not that Trump never had any business running in the first place.

As in if anything wrong is said about that being, they are either going to ignore said criticism and/or have a crusade against the criticism to the point of silencing (either figuratively or physically) the opposition into submission?

If that's the case, then yes. And that's what the liberals/democrats have been doing for the past 8 years.

They don't say anything of the sort. "Clearly", lol.

Its hard to see anything clearly when you close your eyes before seeing it.

I would argue that her personal opinion on gays doesn't matter one flying *** as long as they're treated equally under the law. That's sort of the point, isn't it?

And that's what many of the GOP still do with Reagan.

I realize we're like a dickhair away from an election, but man, you need to relax. So do a few of the liberal posters around. Getting entirely too worked up over things these days.

Or maybe I've just been around Nik too long, but c'mon. No one is changing anyone's deeply-seeded opinions and throwing around party tags as dire insults isn't going to get anyone anywhere on a website for a pair of sinking ship MMOs.

*** it, man. Let's go bowling.