When candidates lie with impunity no wonder there is no sense of community…

posted by Bill Arnett @ 12:46 PM Permalink

…and it is the consensus of the NYT Editorial Board that none of the presidential candidates are being the least bit honest when it comes to speaking of taxes.

Excerp of editorial titled, "Empty Talk on Taxes":

One of the toughest questions that will face the next president is what to do about taxes. There can be no real progress on health care, rebuilding the military or any other major issue without dealing with rising budget deficits and mounting debt from nearly eight years of profligate spending and tax breaks for the wealthy.

This is the reality:

To restore the health of the budget, let alone keep ambitious campaign pledges for spending more money, the next president, regardless of which party wins, will have to tax the American people more than any of the candidates has been willing to admit.

Senator John McCain’s tax talk is particularly divorced from reality

I absolutely agree and have known for some time now that this country is not long going to be able to maintain a viable government at the current rate of spending.

But it is also my opinion that the editorial board raises the answer within the first paragraph where they state: "…There can be no real progress on health care, rebuilding the military or any other major issue without dealing with rising budget deficits and mounting debt…." America has become so militaristic, aggressive, and war-like that unless we cease spending three quarters of our budget for 'future combat systems' that don't work, there is no way the U.S. can survive. So if you strike 'rebuilding the military' for future senseless wars, a solution for the rest of our financial problems becomes obvious: with the trillion dollars a year or more added back into our budget process the needs of the country could easily be cured, maybe without a tax increase at all.

I don't know where America went wrong, besides electing war pigs who would rather kill poor people instead of helping and enlightening them, but the America of old has died or is at least in a coma, and NONE of the presidential candidates offer any hope for a return to real values.

You remember: equal rights for all, habeas corpus, no draconian surveillance programs, no spy satellites aimed at Americans, no phone and internet eavesdropping operations, no compiling of unverified and therefore useless "Terrorist Lists", no torture, and a decent regard for the welfare of our fellow men.

Unless we stop our barbaric, but now accepted ways, and return to being Americans with a government that actively pursues peace and stop spending all OUR money being thrown into the black holes of bush's Iraqi Oil War and, soon, his Iranian Oil War, and the military in general, we are doomed as a society.

We are barreling down the road, downhill with the wind at our backs,and with virtually the entire world rooting for and awaiting our downfall (we are, after all, the most aggressive, cruel, war-like, and war-making nation on earth).

Unless we severely cap military spending, eliminate the 'future combat systems' that rely on horrifically expensive, unproven and, in many cases NOT YET INVENTED technologies, we are doomed to keep repeating the mistakes founded, funded, and perpetuated by the bush maladministration.

Labels: Budget, Bush, bush as chimp, bush war doctrine, conspiracy, corruption, disinformation, economics, flip-flops, foreign policy, military industrial complex, neocons