Deficit Does Not Mean Default

by Dick Mac

Every statement, every plan, every nuance of the so-called "conservative" movement in the United States is false. I am beginning to think that people on the right aren't just clueless, I now believe they are pathological liars: from the Presidential candidates, down to the individual tea party supporter.

The history of the 20th Century shows that the way of life created by the New Deal and further enhanced by the Great Society was a major success. Our way of life before 1980, created the middle class, generated more wealth and more opportunity, created more millionaires and more billionaires than any other way of life, system of government, or economic policy in the history of mankind.

Then, a very small number of very wealthy people realized that msot Americans are without the ability to reason for themselves (see, Tea Party Express, Tea Party Patriots, Tea Party), and could be easily manipulated to undermine their own well-being.

Starting with Ronald Reagan as their front man, supply-siders got Americans signed-up. After decades of prosperity, Reagan convinced America that their streets, schools, hospitals, space program, regulatory commissions, research institutes, and global diplomatic control were folly, a waste of money, and were actually hurting them.

Reagan then led us down the primrose path back to the good-old days of 1929. Now, the same people who made Reagan the first American Government Saint have convinced us that deficit spending is the problem.

Well, America was founded on a deficit and our entire economic system (the one that is being destroyed by the supply-siders) is founded on maintaining deficits. It's how you create and build wealth. These supply-siders have told us that they are eliminating the deficit, when in reality the supply-siders are the people who have created the largest deficits in the history of mankind.

Under the governance of supply-siders (on both sides of the aisle), America has generated a public debt that is 100% of our gross domestic product, yet we are unable to maintain our country! We only spend 16% of our GDP on social programs, so the problem is not social programs! Yet the supply-siders have convinced us that we do not need health care, education, research, or anything else that makes a society a society. They tell us we need to spend the equivalent of more than half our GDP on defense contractors and corporate welfare; because if you push the money to the top, it will trickle-down and create jobs (this has never been true and will never be true).

They have been promising since 1980 that by pushing all the money to the people at the top we would become even wealthier than ever before. In reality, we have gotten nothing from the people at the top, even though we keep giving them more, and the only time we have seen growth was when we stopped doing that for a few minutes. In fact, since embracing supply-side economic theory, we have watched our economy crumble.

There are a few people in Congress who are not afraid to tell the truth, and none of them are affiliated with the tea party. My favorite, and the man I voted for in the last Democratic primary, is Dennis Kucinich. Yesterday, he said this about the debt crisis created by the House of Representatives:

We are the United States of America, the greatest country on Earth! We envision wealth, we do not default; we create wealth, we do not default; we build wealth, we do not default.

The tea party and the supply-siders (is there a difference?) will allow our nation to default. Some of them have them have invested their personal wealth so they will profit handsomely from a default (Eric Cantor), some are just power-hungry (John Boehner), and some are just so clueless and bigoted they are entertaining (Michelle Bachmann). No matter their standing in God's world, they are wrong and they are destroying America for their own gain.

Right-Winged Nutters and Tea Party Hobbits

by Dick Mac

The name-calling has started in earnest, and it's the right slinging the mud against the right!

In a discussion about public debt, British Minister Secretary of State for Business, Vince Cable told BBC television last Sunday:

The irony of the situation at the moment, with markets opening tomorrow morning, is that the biggest threat to the world financial system comes from a few right-wing nutters in the American congress rather than the euro zone.

See, Reuters Congress "nutters" risk global finance: UK minister

Then yesterday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who has nothing to lose by being candid within a party that rejects his right-wing extremism in favor of far-right-wing-nut-job-extremism, quoted a Wall Street Journal editorial:

The Republican House that failed to raise the debt ceiling would somehow escape all blame. Then Democrats would have no choice but to pass a balanced-budget amendment and reform entitlements, and the tea-party Hobbits could return to Middle Earth having defeated Mordor.

See, John McCain Mocks Tea Party, Sharron Angle, And Christine O’Donnell On Senate Floor, at Mediaite

As the GOP extremists get crazier, even the crazy Republicans begin to make sense! Keep it up, boys, we need you to continue showing your real colors!

Political Statements/SQL Statements

Every movement has a database of its members and supporters. These days, everything is electronic and databases are now easier to maintain than ledgers.

Effective data management has been streamlined by the introduction of Structured Query Language (SQL, pronounced "sequel"), a relatively simple computer language that allows fast and powerful data manipulation.

From wikipedia:

The most common operation in SQL is the query, which is performed with the declarative SELECT statement. SELECT retrieves data from one or more tables, or expressions. Standard SELECT statements have no persistent effects on the database. Some non-standard implementations of SELECT can have persistent effects, such as the SELECT INTO syntax that exists in some databases.

Queries allow the user to describe desired data, leaving the database management system (DBMS) responsible for planning, optimizing, and performing the physical operations necessary to produce that result as it chooses.

A query includes a list of columns to be included in the final result immediately following the SELECT keyword. An asterisk ("*") can also be used to specify that the query should return all columns of the queried tables. SELECT is the most complex statement in SQL, with optional keywords and clauses that include:

• The FROM clause which indicates the table(s) from which data is to be retrieved. The FROM clause can include optional JOIN subclauses to specify the rules for joining tables.
  
  
• The WHERE clause includes a comparison predicate, which restricts the rows returned by the query. The WHERE clause eliminates all rows from the result set for which the comparison predicate does not evaluate to True.
  
  
• The GROUP BY clause is used to project rows having common values into a smaller set of rows. GROUP BY is often used in conjunction with SQL aggregation functions or to eliminate duplicate rows from a result set. The WHERE clause is applied before the GROUP BY clause.
  
  
• The HAVING clause includes a predicate used to filter rows resulting from the GROUP BY clause. Because it acts on the results of the GROUP BY clause, aggregation functions can be used in the HAVING clause predicate.
  
  
• The ORDER BY clause identifies which columns are used to sort the resulting data, and in which direction they should be sorted (options are ascending or descending). Without an ORDER BY clause, the order of rows returned by an SQL query is undefined.

The following is an example of a SELECT query that returns a list of expensive books. The query retrieves all rows from the Book table in which the price column contains a value greater than 100.00. The result is sorted in ascending order by title. The asterisk (*) in the select list indicates that all columns of the Book table should be included in the result set:

SELECT * FROM Book WHERE price > 100.00 ORDER BY title

See, SQL at wikipedia.org

In the example above, the results would be rows of titles of every book in the database priced over one hundred dollars.

If you open-up the database of Tea Party supporters who have accounts at the Tea Party website, they will likely be listed as USERS. Each USER is a row and each row has many columns for information like email address, name, ZIP Code, religious affiliation, donation amounts, etc. Fields can be strings of text, Yes/No, Ratings, Numeric, Financial, etc.

When a Tea Party staff member wants to find all the tea party supporters in Park Slope, Brooklyn, she would enter:

SELECT * FROM users WHERE zip = 11215; ORDER BY user

This would return a list of all users in the database that live in ZIP Code 11215.


The geeks at thinkgeek.com have taken the SQL statement to a new level. Intended to be an observation about computer users, their SQL Query t-shirt can be interpreted many ways.

From your t-shirt to God's ear, this is the perfect embodiment of Tea Party collective intelligence.

The t-shirt query asks to return all those who have a clue greater than no clue. The results are zero.

In the database of Tea Party supporters, there is nobody with a clue!

Buy your thinkgeek SQL Style t-shirt here

Thanks to Eram for the heads-up!

Protecting Marriage At Any Cost

by Dick Mac

I think many people want to protect marriage.

In New York this past Sunday, a number of taxpayers took real action to protect marriage: they got married.

From Niagra Falls to Long Island, same-sex couples married.

Kitty Lambert and Cheryle Rudd were the first. They married just after midnight, on July 24, 2011, at the falls in Niagra Falls, NY. The falls were lit like a rainbow, reminiscent of the rainbow flag that signifies diversity in world culture.

This is a joyous time for New York.

All their lives, homosexual New Yorkers have paid taxes and been denied equal protection under the law. Now, at least as wedded couples, they have the protections afforded all married couples: they can visit each other in the hospital, they are considered next of kin for legal and financial matters, they cannot be shut-out of end-of-life or funeral planning by hostile relatives, they cannot be made homeless by the vagaries of the laws of intestacy, they are protected the way all couples should be protected.

Every little step counts, and this step is worth every celebration afforded it!

Congratulations all!



Couples wed on 1st day gay marriage is legal in NY

Heartwarming Pictures Of The First Gay Couple Getting Married In New York State

The Problem Of Social Programs And National Debt

by Dick Mac

Only one Western nation is working to eliminate social programs for its citizens during its most difficult economic times. This nation spends about the same as its two closest comparable peer nations, but it is unable to provide a safety net of any substance while its peers provide remarkable services.

All are democracies, all are free-market economies, all are former colonies of and political and cultural descendants of England, all enjoy remarkable technological advances, their citizens travel far and wide, and people from all over the world flock to their doorsteps. They have populations that are very mixed, they are melting pots. They have so much in common that they are basically siblings. One of them, however, can't seem to make things work.

The journalist Ray Medeiros did some research into the gross domestic products (GDP) and deficit spending of three Western nations: United States of America, Canada, and Australia.

These three nations are culturally and economically similar.

In particular, he focused on the impact of social programs on the countries' overall financial standing.

He found that all three spent about the same percentage of their GDPs on social programs:

USA spends 16.2%
Canada spends 16.9%
Australia spends 16.0%

Canada and Australia get more bang for their buck than the USA because they have a single-payer health care system for all citizens, whereas the USA has a single-payer system for only senior citizens. Sadly, the USA is about to eliminate that, too.

Neither Canada nor Australia are wacky socialist countries; in fact, Australia may now be more like the America of militia and rebels, cowboys, gold-rushes, diplomats and entrepreneurs than America. America sacrificed its get-up-and-go to Reagan's misinformation of our nation from people who can change the world to a bunch of Hollywood cowboys (tough on screen, but really a bunch of grovelling pantywaists behind the scenes - like Reagan himself).

Canada's GDP is $1,300,000,000,000 and it's public debt is $561,000,000,000, which is less than half. So, Canada runs a deficit that is half of its GDP, provides single-payer health care for all citizens along with a robust social welfare program, and is generally a stable culture.

Australia's GDP is $1,200,000,000,000 and it's public debt is $264,000,000,000, which is less than 25%! Australia also provides single-payer health care and a robust social welfare program. Australia, too, is a stable nation with a stable culture.

The United States GDP is $14,000,000,000,000 and our public debt is about the same; we run a public debt of roughly 100%. Yet we provide no health care for the majority of the citizenry, and our social welfare system has been systematically dismantled by the current and previous four Presidents.

The USA spends the same percentage of its GDP (16%) on social welfare, and runs a public debt double and triple the size of its peers.

Using math, one can see that social spending is not the problem!

Still, as Canada and Australia out-America the USA, we suffer a bunch of television blow-hards determining public policy, a once great political party serving tea instead of whiskey, and the ruling party sucking bon-bons and letting the USA be further co-opted as a plaything for failing, bloated, welfare-taking corporations.

And yet, as the money is pushed to the top so that it can trickle-down and make America a greater place, we are debating the elimination of health care services for the oldest and sickest Americans, and giving them a stack of vouchers they can use in the open market to get medical care.

In these troubled economic times, we need to spend more, not less, on social programs; we need to provide them as we provided social programs before Reagan (that is, stop giving the money to private corporations to provide public services), and find where the real bloat in our budget lies.

Our deficit problem is not social spending.

America's Debt Problem Is Not Caused By Social Programs