Author
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Topic: Jobs for America........
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jwhop Knowflake Posts: 2787 From: Madeira Beach, FL USA Registered: Apr 2009
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posted September 23, 2004 04:18 PM
Kerrynomics: An Agenda for Calamity Ralph R. Reiland Thursday, Sept. 23, 2004 Without the small business sector of the economy, America would be flat on its back - economically, politically and militarily. And presidential hopeful John Kerry has consistently taken positions over the past decade that are a direct threat to the strength and survival of entrepreneurial activity and small businesses in this country. That’s the ominous conclusion of a new report from the D.C.-based Small Business Survival Committee, “Bigger Government on the Way? Senator John F. Kerry’s 10-Year Voting Record on Key Small Business Issues.” Damage America’s small business community and here’s exactly what is at stake, based on the officials numbers. In its latest survey, the Small Business Administration reports that small businesses make up more than 99.7 percent of all employers in the United States and create 75 percent of the net new jobs in the American economy. In short, we’re not talking about the financial interests of just some small business owners - we’re talking about the backbone of the American economy and the bulk of the nation’s jobs and paychecks. With a start-up rate of over 500,000 new companies per year, it’s the entrepreneurial and small business sector that’s more than making up for the jobs that are being lost through outsourcing and downsizing in the more monopolized and multinational sectors of the American economy. As a case in point, women-owned small businesses now employ more people in the United States than all the Fortune 500 companies combined. Reviewing a decade-long history of Senate votes from the 103rd Congress in 1993 through the 108th Congress in 2003 on legislation important to small business, the Small Business Survival Committee (SBSC) finds Senator Kerry’s record to be “unsettling.” Overall, on an array of matters that impinge directly on the bottom line of the nation’s key source of new employment, SBSC reports that Kerry voted on the side of small business “a mere 13 times out of the 101 votes that SBSC rated during the past decade, giving him a weak 13 percent rating on key small business issues.” Year after year, on issue after issue, Kerry’s votes on small business issues reveal an approach that time and again threatens to undermine the strength and vitality of the precise sector of the American economy that’s now shouldering the greater part of job creation and innovation. “Senator Kerry voted against small business 94 percent of the time on tax-related legislation rated by SBSC,” says research associate Chris W. Myers. “Given 34 opportunities to support business on tax issues, Kerry chose to do so on only two occasions.” On regulatory reform, SBSC reports that Kerry voted against small business 25 out of 30 times. Currently, companies with fewer than 20 employees spend an average of almost $7,000 per worker per year in order to comply with federal regulations, nearly twice the amount of large firms. “It’s important that this burden of regulations be reformed and minimized for small businesses,” Myers argues. “However, based on his legislative record, that doesn’t appear to be a goal of Senator Kerry.” On votes over the past 10 years in the area of legal reform, the SBSC analysis shows Kerry voting in opposition to small business 90 percent of the time. “Frivolous lawsuits hurt investment, job creation and the overall economy,” explains Myers. “Unfortunately, Senator Kerry stands in the way of meaningful and common sense reform.” On health coverage issues, “Senator Kerry voted against the interests of small business 100 percent of the time,” reports SBSC. “These ranged from votes against the passage of health savings accounts to votes against allowing self-employed small business owners to deduct their health insurance expenses to help make health coverage more affordable.” Taken as a whole, John Kerry’s legislative record with respect to small business and the issues that matter most to this sector shows a preference for higher taxes, less affordable health coverage, more burdensome regulations, more frivolous lawsuits, and more government spending - an agenda that’s the perfect prescription for fewer business start-ups, more bankruptcies, less entrepreneurship, less economic growth, more unemployment, slower income growth, smaller take-home pays, more poverty, more regulators, more lawyers and bigger government. Stated in macro terms, Senator Kerry is calling for a $2 trillion expansion in government spending for new federal programs over the next decade, over and above what’s already projected, while at the same time he supports an agenda that places roadblocks in the path of small business growth and in the expansion of jobs and tax revenues that will flow from that growth. Bottom line, it doesn’t add up. Ralph R. Reiland is the B. Kenneth Simon Professor of Free Enterprise at Robert Morris University, a restaurateur, and a columnist with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/9/23/95833.shtml IP: Logged |
LibraSparkle unregistered
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posted September 23, 2004 04:25 PM
Bush's Economics Unsustainable by Ralph R. Reiland "Conservatives – never all that comfortable with the moderates of the party anyway – are starting to shift in their chairs, and many would leave if they had a place to go," writes Brendan Miniter, assistant editor of the Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal.com Web site.
Miniter is referring to the anger among Republicans over Bush's escalating budget deficits and double-digit spending increases over the past three years. "Today," says Miniter, "the party is morphing into what it once sought to unseat – big-spending politicians, interested only in holding onto power." In "Spending Like a Drunken Democrat: Bush drives the nation towards bankruptcy," Peter Eavis warns in the Feb. 16 issue of The American Conservative that the current explosion in government spending is putting the United States on the road to insolvency. "Forget the liberation of Iraq, George W. Bush will be remembered as the president who bankrupted America," writes Eavis. More officially, an appendix chapter titled "Stewardship" in President Bush's 2005 budget paints an alarming picture of what Americans are in for in the long run. It forecasts a nation where more than half the income of future generations will be socialized by the federal government, with federal spending rising from approximately 20 percent of the gross domestic product this year to 53 percent in 2080. Add another 20 percent for state and local taxes, and what that's saying, straight from the White House, is that tomorrow's workers will be expected to live on two hours of take-home pay out of every eight-hour workday. Dutifully, in other words, they'll be expected to show up at the nation's offices and factories each day at 9 a.m. and watch every dime they've earned until 3 p.m. disappear into the government's coffers. In a word, it's a scenario that makes current budgetary trends, as the budget itself puts it, "unsustainable." Much of this projected long-term increase in federal spending comes from interest on the debt, the result of today's red ink and the nonstop deficits that the 76 million-strong baby boomers will generate once they begin retiring. It's projected that the price Americans will be paying in interest payments on the federal debt, measured as a percent of national income, will be equal to what we're now spending on everything at the federal level – equal to what we're currently spending on defense, homeland security, education, agriculture, health care, transportation, research, transfer payments, interest, Social Security and Medicare combined. Bottom line: George W. Bush entered the presidency following three consecutive budget surpluses – a $69.2 billion surplus in fiscal 1998, a $124.4 billion surplus in 1999, and a record $237 billion surplus in fiscal 2000. The forecast at the time was for a federal surplus of $4.6 trillion over the next 10 years. Today, the Congressional Budget Office is projecting a buildup of $2.4 trillion in red-ink spending over the next decade, a $7 trillion switch. The war on terrorism, of course, has hiked defense spending, but the Bush administration has made little attempt to bring nonmilitary spending under control to offset the higher Pentagon budget. Non-defense discretionary spending, for instance, which decreased by 13.5 percent under Reagan, increased by 23 percent in the past three years. And what's next is a flood of red ink for the new prescription drug program, the largest jump in entitlement spending in 40 years, plus some further federalization of education, more skirmishes in the drug war, a man on Mars, new bonuses for marriage, more subsidies for religion, a new parrot jungle in Iowa and some hefty federal handouts for a string of new ice skating rinks in Alaska. The result? Overwhelming debt burdens and impossibly high tax rates for future generations. And a warning from David Boaz at the Cato Institute: "Bush and his aides should be worrying about the possibility that libertarians, economic conservatives and fed-up taxpayers won't be in his corner in 2004 in the same numbers as 2000. Given a choice between big-government liberalism and big-government conservatism, the leave-us-alone voters might decide that voting isn't worth the trouble." February 18, 2004 Ralph R. Reiland is a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review columnist and the B. Kenneth Simon Professor of Free Enterprise at Robert Morris University. Copyright © 2004 LewRockwell.com http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig4/reiland2.html IP: Logged |
jwhop Knowflake Posts: 2787 From: Madeira Beach, FL USA Registered: Apr 2009
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posted September 23, 2004 04:52 PM
Very nice LS but the fly in the ointment in the piece you posted is that economic growth means more jobs, more industrial and economic output, more businesses and individuals paying taxes and paying more taxes. A multiplier on the taxes the government collects. Those mounting tax collections shrink or eliminate the deficit and don't sink business activity and jobs creation which continue to climb, producing more tax revenue for the government. That's the cycle when taxes are radically cut as they were under Kennedy and Reagan. The very same arguments were made against tax cuts and high spending. In the Reagan years there was a hue and cry against big tax cuts and large outlays in military spending...an unprecedented buildup it was said with red ink as far into the future as the eye could see. Reagan was right, you can give tax cuts to spur the economy while spending huge sums without sinking the country in debt that can never be paid. Reagan's tax cuts touched off the second largest economic boom in American history and the longest lived over the years. Clinton should have been kissing Reagan's feet because it was Reagan who set the economy spiraling upward that Clinton enjoyed taking credit for. Further, the 400 billion budget deficits of today are a smaller percentage when measured against the economic output of today's economy than the deficits during the Reagan years were when compared to the total economic output of America for those years. i.e., a smaller percentage compared to the GDP. IP: Logged |
Randall Webmaster Posts: 4782 From: The Goober Galaxy Registered: Apr 2009
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posted September 25, 2004 12:12 AM
Kerry has also voted many many times against gun owners. He wants the UN to disarm all Americans. What is so hypocritical is he poses for the cameras shooting hunting rifles hoping to dupe everyone into believing he is pro gun rights. ------------------ "Never mentally imagine for another that which you would not want to experience for yourself, since the mental image you send out inevitably comes back to you." Rebecca Clark IP: Logged |
paras unregistered
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posted September 25, 2004 12:31 AM
Yup, that's just awful, Randall. The American citizens' right to bear arms is written into the Constitution for very good reasons.And I'm certainly all for small businesses. Looks like Kerry sucks just as bad as Bush. When are we going to get a real person to vote for, instead of a "politician"??? Oh, that's right, the current system doesn't allow anyone but "politicians" to run for President... Well, that's another reason Americans have the right to bear arms. The founding fathers foresaw the possibility that government could become an apathetic juggernaut, and the common people might not be able to change the system by its own methods. I'm sure anyone whose livelihood depends on the current system would love to ensure that no one had guns except their own forces of aggression -- the police and military. Kind of like when Japan invaded Okinawa and banned the carrying of swords in public. Of course, that's how we got karate. And how the nunchaku, tonfa, sai, and kama came to be weapons. Can't carry swords? Grab the farm tools, and learn how to use your hands and feet. So I guess there'll always be a way to bring about needed change in the current system, whether they take away our "weapons" or not. IP: Logged |
LibraSparkle unregistered
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posted September 25, 2004 12:49 AM
I really would rather vote for a real person than a polititan... BUT... do you think a real person could handle the BS they deal with? I wonder if it's possible that it's politics itself that sucks the realness out of them???IP: Logged |
Randall Webmaster Posts: 4782 From: The Goober Galaxy Registered: Apr 2009
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posted September 25, 2004 09:46 AM
Kerry is far worse than Bush could ever be. Kerry is the UN poster child. http://www.nraila.org/Issues/FactSheets/Read.aspx?ID=161 ------------------ "Never mentally imagine for another that which you would not want to experience for yourself, since the mental image you send out inevitably comes back to you." Rebecca Clark IP: Logged |
LittleLadyLeo unregistered
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posted September 25, 2004 01:53 PM
I've been thinking this for a long time, but now I'm going to say it. Kerry is a Communist. Every piece of policy he promotes reeks of government control and lack of individual responisbilty. Using Americans' growing sense of entitlement (which is pathetic in and of itself) John Kerry and other Liberals are slowly but surely adopting a policy reminiscent of Cold War Soviet Union policy. And we saw how that worked out.I'm really tired of people complaining about the economy. Don't people realize that after 9/11 our economy could have, and probably should have, totally collapsed? That was one of the many reasons the terrorists struck the World Trade Center, the international symbol of American economic power. The Bush administration should be praised for its economic policies that kept us from complete ruin. LLL
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quiksilver unregistered
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posted September 25, 2004 11:20 PM
Thank you, Jwhop and LS for posting both of these articles. Certainly, this reader has walked away with more information and understanding than she had originally logged on with!!! IP: Logged |
Petron unregistered
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posted September 26, 2004 12:22 AM
i think i read sum1's post about kerry giving "comfort" to the "enemy"... you would think that secretly selling high tech anti aircraft missiles to an "enemy" nation proven to sponsor terrorism would be immediate grounds for impeachment, but i suppose not if its being done secretly by the whitehouse....i wonder whatever happened to those missiles?i dont know but the guy helping to do it is now of course the favorite one on the board of the NRA!!!, ill bet he becomes president of the NRA soon, and ill also bet many would vote for him for president of the usa.... oliver north http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB113/ and while were on the subject of reagan boosting the economy by pouring billions into the military industrial complex through arming countries like iraq to the teeth...... I've heard all the stuff before that the US supplied the chemical weapons Iraq used on Iran. It's been denied by Cap Weinburger who was in a position to know but then again....... Weinberger too participated in the transfer of United States TOW missiles to Iran during the Iran-Contra Affair. Weinberger was later indicted on several felony charges of lying to the Iran-Contra independent counsel during its investigation.....im suprised he hasnt got a place in the bush administration too!!
i'd like to think kerry was always the guy "investigating" things like iran contra because of his patriotic nature, but more likely he's the guy who helps cover everything up when things go wrong..... in private, i'll bet bush would hug, kiss, and hold hands with kerry just like he does with those saudi sheiks in fact kerry and bush are ninth cousins, twice removed.... IP: Logged | |