What has Trump done right so far?

PeterZ wrote:

gcomeau wrote:Yeah because the guy who spent the last 8 years doing that while you guys berated him for it couldn't run for a third term...


https://www.mercatus.org/sites/default/ ... a-vero.png

Obama used the Porkulus year, the absolute highest level of expenditure ever as his new baseline

Every president uses the last budget of his predecessor as his new baseline. So your complaint here is really "But Bush ran spending up HUGELY as the starting point for Obama's presidency!"

Which yeah, he did. Even if you *don't* count the final implosion year. Kind of the point. Glad to see you're completely missing it though.

Second... WORST RECESSION SINCE THE GREAT DEPRESSION.

You don't get to deal with that for free unless you believe in the Presidential Magic Wand. It is a freaking *miracle* that spending held where it did under Obama and they still managed to pull the economy out of its nosedive.

He spent more ever year of his presidency that any other year in history.

Except the one before he took office. Which is the entire point. Bush ramp spending UP. Obama bring spending back down WHILE dealing with the worst economic catastrophe in the better part of the last century. Which is EXACTLY what you just claimed you wanted to see... but when Obama actually did it all you give is grief.

More than any other bush year. The population grew only 8% in his term but his lowest year's expenditure was more than 8% higher tha Bush's penultimate year. The growth in expenditures was not, then, a function of increased population.

Considering that's a graph of per capita numbers.... duh?

How hard is it to overspend less based on that obscene Bush final year? Not very.

WHILE trying to prevent the total impending collapse of the entire economy and then repair all the damage that catastrophic near miss caused?

You try it. Do you actually HAVE a magic wand you aren't telling the rest of us about?

On top of that he stifled the economy to well below historic average in post recession recoveries.

Your own article cited in support refutes your claim.
I point this out AGAIN, since you seem to be adept at ignoring it.

CRC wrote:"If you're so very worried about the water levels, which Captains do you want in charge? The ones making the holes smaller, or the ones making the holes bigger? It's a simple enough question."

See, the numerical answer to this question would be Bush over Obama in absolute deficit and debt contribution terms.

Which is the exact same thing as saying "well Captain Bush who blew a hole in the side of the boat quit as captain 2 seconds later before all the water rushed in, then Captain Obama who took over after him had LOTS of water rush in while he repaired the giant hole.

So obviously I prefer Captain Bush in terms of water in the boat."


Is that, in fact your answer? You think the guy who ripped a hole in the boat is the better captain than the guy who fixed the hole?

The dynamics of the system though, make any numerical comparison useless.

No, they really don't. the numbers are actually quite simple. You just don't like what they say.

Trump appears to be trying a different approach based on growth.

It is just depressing that you think Trump is trying an approach based on anything whatsoever... he doesn't have the attention span to construct an approach based on anything. He just flails around making pronouncements between twitter outbursts and latching on to any good news to claim credit for it whether he had anything to do with it or not.

gcomeau wrote:

PeterZ wrote:How hard is it to overspend less based on that obscene Bush final year? Not very.

WHILE trying to prevent the total impending collapse of the entire economy and then repair all the damage that catastrophic near miss caused?

You try it. Do you actually HAVE a magic wand you aren't telling the rest of us about?

PeterZ wrote: On top of that he stifled the economy to well below historic average in post recession recoveries.

Your own article cited in support refutes your claim.
I point this out AGAIN, since you seem to be adept at ignoring it.

Dude, FDR managed 8.1% compounded annually for the first 8 years of his presidency after the Hoover fiasco (1933-1934). GDP rose from 0.862Tr in 1934 to 1.49Tr in 1941. I don't count the first year as it is part of the prior administration's budget. That was THE WORST financial catastrophe we have faced by any measure.

Obama didn't face anything nearly as bad and he managed only 2.1%. That qualifies as stifled as I have said over and over again. Does Bloomberg disagree? Sure. So what? The only President who did worse than Obama was GWB.

We can have as many opinions as you or I want to cite. Those opinions matter less than the hard numbers: Obama's average growth rates after his recession was worse than any other President except GWB. Compared to the recovery from the Worst financial disaster we have faced, his recovery was incredibly weak....One might even say stifled.

Is his decision to police the borders correct, just not his methods?

I'm not sure it's even that simple Cthia.

I think it's his philosophies and attitudes behind how he polices the border, behind why he polices the border, that are wrong.

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Annachie wrote:I'm not sure it's even that simple Cthia.

I think it's his philosophies and attitudes behind how he polices the border, behind why he polices the border, that are wrong.

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You are absolutely correct here. You disagree with why he policies the border, many here agree with him.

We do not want to have open borders and incent the creation of an underclass. Set the criteria for immigrants and let any apply for admission. Our immigration policy should incorporate people who want to join our society rather than remake it into the society that failed them at home.

Set some number of persecuted minority refugees we allow in to enter in addition to the core immigrants. But economic refugees are not nearly in the same class as persecuted minorities. Allowing massive blocks of economic refugees into a country will greatly impede assimilation and promote the creation of an underclass.

Yeah, I agree with his reasoning.

PeterZ wrote:

gcomeau wrote:Your own article cited in support refutes your claim.
I point this out AGAIN, since you seem to be adept at ignoring it.

Dude, FDR managed 8.1% compounded annually for the first 8 years of his presidency after the Hoover fiasco (1933-1934). GDP rose from 0.862Tr in 1934 to 1.49Tr in 1941.

Dude, FDR got to direct his stimulus the way he wanted it because his party had crushing control of congress as well, so it almost all went into infrastructure programs. One of the most effective forms of economic stimulus that exist.

Obama had to deal with a Republican presence in Congress sufficient to filibuster any stimulus spending, and which DID filibuster it until over half the spending was dedicated to tax breaks and just barely enough Republicans broke ranks to allow his to do *something* to fight the disaster. Tax breaks however are one of the LEAST effective stimulus measures that exist.


In order to stimulate the economy you need money circulating in it. Money spent on infrastructure automatically goes to the businesses and workers making that infrastructure happen, it's a direct injection.

Tax breaks you just have to hope the money gets spent rather than shoved in somebody's bank account to just sit there doing nothing.


(And in the meantime all the GOP state legislatures were laying off public sector workers and driving up unemployment... the exact opposite of what they should have been doing)

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_90Kz52W9Bs/V ... pt2014.PNG


So again, if you want someone to blame for the recovery not being more impressive than it already was... you can either blame the person who was patching the holes in the hull. Or the people with the drills and axes merrily putting new holes in it.

We can have as many opinions as you or I want to cite.

That's an amusing thing to say when you have only cited one and it disagreed with you.

gcomeau wrote:Is that, in fact your answer? You think the guy who ripped a hole in the boat is the better captain than the guy who fixed the hole?

gcomeau wrote: No, they really don't. the numbers are actually quite simple. You just don't like what they say.

According to the actual numbers, if that is what you are really going by, it is Obama that ripped a whole in the boat and then took credit for fixing half the hole. by the numbers:
FY Deficit
2000 -236.24
2001 -128.23
2002 157.75
2003 377.59
2004 412.73
2005 318.35
2006 248.18
2007 160.71
2008 458.55
2009 1412.69
2010 1294.37
2011 1299.59
2012 1086.96
2013 679.55
2014 484.62
2015 438.4
2016 587.41

Notice the HUGE deficit numbers in 09, 10, 11 and 12. Now I know you are going to argue that we should consider all of these years to be "Bush" deficits. (That's real handy isn't it?) Now these are the actual numbers and I see what they say. You cannot deny that Obama deficits were far more than Bush deficits. To assign them to Bush is pure irrationalism. (See I don't assign them all to Obama because I am far more rationale about the argument, but since you want to go to the extremes, have at it.)

gcomeau wrote: It is just depressing that you think Trump is trying an approach based on anything whatsoever... he doesn't have the attention span to construct an approach based on anything. He just flails around making pronouncements between twitter outbursts and latching on to any good news to claim credit for it whether he had anything to do with it or not.

Gee so much for progressive tolerance. I guess you would prefer the political double speak, pablum and lip service paid out over the past 8 years.

How does it feel to know that Obama is responsible for Trump and Trump's authority at the moment?

How does it feel that Reid doomed any Dem seat at the table in the Senate?

How does it feel to know that the Dems are responsible for Trump? (Bernie would have won.)

At least Trump is going to promote capitalistic individualistic growth over socialistic nanny state progressive failed model types.

At least a growth based deficit/debt reduction is the only hope there is as there is zero appetite for curbing the entitlement crowd.

As good old Ben said: “When the people find that they can vote themselves money that will herald the end of the republic.”

And as is attributed to Aristotle: "Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms."

Taken all together, I basically predict that when the pendulum swings back and the Left takes power, they will ensure that we skip the democracy phase altogether. And that is still Trump's #1 "right so far" - delaying this outcome for at least a few more years - until I retire and can afford to become a good socialist.

And if he's is successful in delivering the goods, maybe 16 years - the left's #1 nightmare - 8 years of Trump + 8 years of Ivanka...

CRC wrote:

gcomeau wrote:Is that, in fact your answer? You think the guy who ripped a hole in the boat is the better captain than the guy who fixed the hole?

gcomeau wrote: No, they really don't. the numbers are actually quite simple. You just don't like what they say.

According to the actual numbers, if that is what you are really going by, it is Obama that ripped a whole in the boat and then took credit for fixing half the hole. by the numbers:
FY Deficit
2000 -236.24
2001 -128.23
2002 157.75
2003 377.59
2004 412.73
2005 318.35
2006 248.18
2007 160.71
2008 458.55
2009 1412.69
2010 1294.37
2011 1299.59
2012 1086.96
2013 679.55
2014 484.62
2015 438.4
2016 587.41

Notice the HUGE deficit numbers in 09, 10, 11 and 12. Now I know you are going to argue that we should consider all of these years to be "Bush" deficits.

One little detail you appear to be unaware of.

That "FY" up there? That means those are Fiscal "years".

The 2009 budget? That's for the fiscal year beginning in October 2008. And you see the way budgets work is, you write them before the spending they set the budget for happens.

So unless you want to claim Obama got sworn in in January 2009 then went back in time and created the giant deficit in the budget for the fiscal year that was already almost half over... yeah, pretty sure I'm blaming it on Bush.

Since It Was His Budget.


Obama added a little bit to the deficit that year with emergency stimulus spending that got passed in the final months, but the deficit was already WELL north of a Trillion dollars before he even took the oath of office. So once again, we know who smashed the hole in the boat. And it was Captain Bush.

Then you see how after that year the numbers keep getting smaller and smaller? That's what we refer to as patching the freaking hole.



(I have no idea what the heck most of the rest of your rant was even about)

gcomeau wrote:
Dude, FDR got to direct his stimulus the way he wanted it because his party had crushing control of congress as well, so it almost all went into infrastructure programs. One of the most effective forms of economic stimulus that exist.

Obama had to deal with a Republican presence in Congress sufficient to filibuster any stimulus spending, and which DID filibuster it until over half the spending was dedicated to tax breaks and just barely enough Republicans broke ranks to allow his to do *something* to fight the disaster. Tax breaks however are one of the LEAST effective stimulus measures that exist.


In order to stimulate the economy you need money circulating in it. Money spent on infrastructure automatically goes to the businesses and workers making that infrastructure happen, it's a direct injection.

Tax breaks you just have to hope the money gets spent rather than shoved in somebody's bank account to just sit there doing nothing.


(And in the meantime all the GOP state legislatures were laying off public sector workers and driving up unemployment... the exact opposite of what they should have been doing)

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_90Kz52W9Bs/V ... pt2014.PNG


So again, if you want someone to blame for the recovery not being more impressive than it already was... you can either blame the person who was patching the holes in the hull. Or the people with the drills and axes merrily putting new holes in it.

We can have as many opinions as you or I want to cite.

That's an amusing thing to say when you have only cited one and it disagreed with you.

Here is the perfect case of POV filtering understanding. We will not agree, so why bother. You will excuse Obama anything to further your point and I will likely cut him so little slack that should some uninterested 3rd party find the point at the center between our positions, we will find a position approaching being agreeable to either of us.

So, I believe you are way to the unreasonable left and you find my position unreasonably right. Plus ca change, hien?