Mr Buck,
You wrote-
“In 1969, Dr. Laurence Peter published the seminal book on how bureaucracies work — “The Peter Principle” — and how that affects the lives of every person who comes in contact with them (and that is everyone).

Peter’s work can be summarized in just one sentence: “In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.”

What this means is that if a person works hard and does their job well they will be promoted, but that eventually they will be promoted to a job they are not suited for and cannot do well — their level of incompetence.

These people are rarely fired, but continue on in their new positions making life miserable for the rest of us. This is especially so in large bureaucracies like government agencies.

The immutability of the Peter Principle makes reforming, shrinking or making the government more efficient almost impossible for Democrats or Republicans.”

So now you are ‘blaming’ the present economic, political and social condition of our country on ‘The Peter Principle’? IF SO- then please explain to me President Obama’s ‘rise’ to his presently perceived ‘level of incompetence’ (because surely the President and the Democratically-controlled congress did yield -over the past year- much power to ‘correct’ things in an effort to make our government more efficient)

What ‘hierarchy’ did President Obama C L I M B to obtain one of the most powerful, important political positions on the face of this earth?

Are you referring to his short stint in the Illinois Senate (his senate records lost)? Perhaps his short stint as community organizer counts as a hierarchy to climb on your way to the highest political office in the land? Perhaps his academic credentials including outstanding grades (no access for review by the public) and massive scholarly publications (which no one even knows if they ever existed) while he was president of the Harvard Law Review?

If you are including former President Bush also, at least with President Bush-we have a ‘paper trail’ of his past including the hierarchy he encountered as he ‘rose’ to his so-called ‘level of incompetency’.

You wrote-

‘but the way I see it, Obama is not Bush and that is a huge change for the better. And because of that one change there is still hope, and that’s a good thing, because when we lose hope, we lose everything.’

My response-
Have you ever heard of the phrase ‘jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire?’

Having ‘hope’ , as a character trait in general in life, is a good thing IMO Mr Buck- however –

Having BLIND faith when it comes to our government leaders, their actions and policies is dangerous for any democratic republic.

JohnnyC nails it.

The problem here for Buck is that once again all Obama and the Dems seem to have is the old "blame Bush" mantra.

First of all, the economy tanked AFTER the Dems had taken control of both houses of Congress. So it's disingenuous at best to blame Bush, as Congress passes the laws -- including spending laws -- and all a President can do is sign or veto them.

Further, Obama and the Dems ran on towering but vague promises of "change", and the only change I'm seeing a year later -- when the Dems own it all -- is putting the "Bush spending" into overdrive. The result is staggering deficit projections, and epic unemployment.

There's not a single economy in history that's taxed and spent itself into prosperity.

Last I heard, Bush was clearing brush down in Crawford, Texas. That dog don't hunt anymore. You Dems own it all, and it's time to stop the childish excuse-making and take responsibility for your own actions. There's a reason why the American electorate is voting you guys out of office at every opportunity. You need to think about that.

"""Find me a conservative that was not absolutely disghusted by President Bush's spending habits and I'll bake you a pie."""

Uhhh.... all the fools who voted him in a second term?

You now owe me some larger percentage of 62 million pies.

Brian,

And so it is very clear for you...

I am making the point that (while we were also deficit spending under a conservative president,) that cheap money and bad policy that created and exacerbated the housing bubble made the country appear to not be in a recession. Had the housing bubble been corrected earlier it would have not gotten so out of hand and we may not be in this recession or it would have been a short one during Bush' reign and over with by now.

Get it?

Actually, the U.S. taxed and spent itself out of the Great Depression into great prosperity, when a Democrat finally took office and fixed the problem created by Republicans and the decades of their Gilded Age that broke the backs of the American people and the economy in 1929.

That prosperous world ended when Reagan took his first oath of office in 1981, and started with deregulating savings and loans, which collapsed as a result. Then tax cuts for the rich. Then the gold standard was eliminated. Then Reagan said, “Deficits don’t matter.” Then came Gramm-Rudman which was supposed to reduce deficits, but of course didn’t. And right’s hypnotic mantra of deregulation continued, precipitating this collapse.

The current financial crisis can be traced to the housing bubble which, created by investments tied to sub-prime lending, thanks to deregulation, burst in 2005/2006. People were worse off in 2005 than they were in 2000, with the worst yet to come.

This is the Republican Recession, like it or not, driven by conservative fiscal principles of tax cuts and smaller government, which statistically is really tax increases and bigger government. It is an attempt to return to the Gilded Age pre-FDR; they created it, they wanted deregulation and they got it, and they own the consequences.

The right is doing everything it can to scapegoat the Democrats as the enemy to avoid culpability in this election year. Some blame must be shouldered by those who supported these reckless policies, and sadly, some are Democrats. But they are not the villains in this piece. These policies are not Democratic policies.

We can avoid further catastrophe by not letting fear-mongering and fiscal hysteria dominate the political conversation this year.

And when people live with the consequences of someone’s actions, he is not “gone, gone, gone.” He is very much here, especially for the people who continue to suffer from his policies and politics. We all still suffer from Reaganomics.

Make mine coconut cream.

Julia, your thesis is inaccurate. The US didn't "tax and spend itself" out of the Depression. World War 2 happened, and THAT'S what reversed the economy, followed immediately afterwards by the expansion in the private sector that fueled the government .

As a matter of fact, we're just now reaping the full effects of Roosevelt's policies as Social Security (among other programs) goes bankrupt.

Socialism doesn't work. Communism doesn't work. The examples abound.

European socialism (for those who will inevitably point to it) is only possible because the USA picks up the tab for so many of the expenditures that European nations would otherwise have to spend themselves, such as for their defense and other military activities. If we weren't the "world's policeman", those economies would have collapsed long ago.

"""Here's what doesn't make any sense at all.
If the problem is that "Bush spent too much", how is the cure "We'll fix it by spending EVEN MORE"?
That not only makes absolutely no economic sense whatsoever, it's just plain ridiculous."""

Brian,

I apologize first for what I am about to do by being emotional in context when I say:
EPIC FAIL on your part to understand how the American economy works. For someone who claims such infallible intellectual superiority on the matter and the workings of government you greatly disappoint me.

The American economy is built on debt expansion. If consumers do not keep borrowing more, then businesses have to pull up the slack. If businesses do not increase debt, then the government HAS TO DO IT, regardless of the wishes of the people.

If debt contracts, the entire country falls into a gigantic sinkhole, swallowed with the aid of aggressive foreign countries that will gladly take our land and our freedom.

So it doesn't matter what party is in power, debt expansion MUST occur. The Bush administration knew it and that was why he got started with the bailouts. Obama is just doing what is required of him, since he is not intelligent enough to create a better system of prosperity or figure out how to change the existing. For that solution, see Ron Paul.

Watch this video to understand:
"Money as Debt"

http://video.google.com/videoplay?doc...

Please don't waste time replying until you have watched the video and grasped the explanations within.

Sorry, Manq. It's clearly YOU who have the lack of understanding.

First of all, there are two different issues here. "Bush overspent, but we'll outdo even HIM to fix his mistake", and the separate issue of deficit spending.

You tried to conflate the two. Not even a nice try, so no cee-gar for you.

There's no question the "blame Bush" bandwagon has lost its wheels; you can't even keep your story straight. Did he spend too much... or too little? Which is it today?

As to deficit spending, that functions properly IF... and that's a big "if"... it's kept withing reasonable bounds that can be reasonably expected to be paid back. Just as Joe Sixpack can charge on his credit cards and buy a house through financing IF his income supports such obligations.

These absurd spending proposals from Obama & Company can only be paid back through Draconian tax increases, either directly, or indirectly through inflation and devaluation. Anyone with even the most cursory knowledge of basic economics understands that.

They actually teach this stuff in Econ 101. I paid attention. Did you?

Brian,

The right likes to discredit FDR, but it was the New Deal policies that were the short term catalysts that pulled the country out of the Depression. New Deal policies were also long-term solutions that continued to serve the country very well until dismantled by the right beginning in 1981.

Starting in 1933, FDR’s New Deal brought about increased productivity, turning the economy around. Then, in 1937 FDR, as a concession to conservatives, cut spending, and in 1938, the economy went down again.

World War II helped the economy tremendously, with massive deficit spending and the draft providing nearly full employment. FDR was president for most of the war; Democrat Truman finished it out. Veteran’s benefits, a liberal social safety net, were developed as a economic stimulus to keep the economy going after the war ended.

Productivity continued to increase, providing the means to pay back the war deficits.

And Social Security is not going bankrupt. It is the goal of the right to kill all social programs, and the biggest one is Social Security. That is why Bush tried to turn the safe guaranteed government trust fund over to Wall Street to manage. We know how well that would have worked out for the taxpayers.

Social Security is supported by a dedicated tax put into a trust fund that accrues interest on its surplus. The last projection I saw, over a 75 year period, was a .04 percent shortfall, which is easily corrected. The recession is affecting the fund, but it will recover as it always has.

Remember, the government’s finances are not the same as a consumer’s Visa bill or family budgets or even many businesses. It is far more complicated, as is economics.

The government’s budgets are funded largely by taxes, but with unemployment figures as high as they are, and maybe getting worse, productivity is down, spending is down, private investment is down and so government revenues are down. The government needs to step in and boost its spending to boost productivity.

It does this by spending on public works like roads, bridges, levees and other infrastructure. This is a fundamental and necessary role of government, it is an investment, and has a high rate of return.

Creating jobs> buying goods> productivity increases> payroll taxes increase> spending increases> government revenues recover> investors get all excited and want to invest again> new businesses start-up> more jobs for more people >revenues increase> the deficit is repaid. That is also Econ 101.

Japan ignored this principle, and nearly went bankrupt when its asset bubble burst in the early 1990s, contributing to the “Lost Decade.” They are still recovering. Had Japan aggressively invested in stimulus spending, the recovery would have been much faster. Spend more short term, gain more back long term.

Thank you, Manq. You too.

I am so tired of hearing the same stale right-wing propaganda and willful ignorance.

Here is the Bush legacy the right would like everyone to forget about this election year:

Never forget these points; that Bush took office with record budget surpluses, and left with record budget deficits of $1.2 trillion. Deficits in part from Bush bailing out Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae and AIG, and the hundreds of billions of dollars he committed to auto makers and the bank bailouts.

That is a part of the Bush legacy we all deal with everyday.

The conservatives would like us to forget all that and just believe that Obama did it all by himself in just a few months.

Also, the country had the worst GDP in thirty years – and unemployment reflected that in record numbers. Add in the stock market tanking, so that the last months of the Bush administration, our wealth, retirement and pension funds were nearly wiped out and we were on the edge of economic collapse.

The first order of business for Obama was the economy and the stimulus: Roughly, one third was tax cuts for 95 percent of taxpayers; one third was for extending unemployment benefits; and the remaining third was for public works projects, infrastructure, which continue to help the economy. It is still working, with much of the effect taking place this year.

Considering what Obama inherited, he’s done a pretty good job. One year later, the economy really has stabilized, and is growing by almost 6 percent. New unemployment numbers have steadily decreased. Also as a result of the stimulus, the CBO reports that “in the third quarter of calendar year 2009, an additional 600,000 to 1.6 million people were employed in the United States." For the fourth quarter, the CBO projects an additional 800,000 to 2.4 million. The Dow is up nearly 60 percent and up 2,400 points from where it was when Obama took office. Economists generally agree that the stimulus is working, but we are not out of the woods yet and we need to do more.

He also worked on cutting wasteful spending, and managed to get congress to approve 60 percent of his proposed cuts. He also got credit card reform and stem cell research passed.

He could do more. And I don’t approve of everything, but overall I’m happy. We need more jobs, infrastructure improvement, health care reform, and more. But so far, he has accomplished quite a bit that has helped this country by starting to undo the massive damage he inherited. That is real change.

Brian,

You just proved you don't have a clue.

Quit while you're ahead.

Hahahahaha!

Libs in hissy-fit mode!

Too funny!