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Ah..somebody is speaking the truth. How mysterious and rare. Our oil deposits are like retirement accounts that will continually appreciate. Their value will only accelerate as oil grows more scarce. So why are the conservatives saying we should plunder them now? It is insane, unless a person is totally negligent in their planning.
It is super important to speak the truth about this and make clear which party is fiscally responsible. The readers of Salon know this...but not the working stiffs who vote Republicans because they don't read the news or follow the issues, they just let themselves be swayed with "wedge issues."
So speak up, Obama, and all you resurgent Democrats. Tell the truth about which party is fiscally responsible!
Here's another "Big Lie" that should be pointed out: the idea that Reagan led an economic revival. Ronald Reagan's "boom" was based on maxing out the national credit card (i.e. running up debt). It's time Democrats stopped letting Republicans put an unrealistic gloss on the fiscal malfeasance of the Reagan years.
After Clinton bit the bullet and raised taxes (inspiring all sorts of predictions of economic doom around 1994) which actually led to a stronger economy and a surplus, George W. Bush took things to a new height, essentially using Clinton's surplus to pay off Bush's richest donors. Republicans like to say that the Clinton economic boom ended a few months before Clinton left office, but they neglect to point out the Republican's intentionally kneecapped Clinton toward the end and refused to cooperate in any initiatives for the last 10 months or so of Clinton's term. That was when things started trending down.
But it was Bush who really pulled a fast one, and again, this seems to have gone right over the heads of the less savvy voters who tend to fall for wedge issues. Here it is: Bush's tax cuts were NOT (as he maintained) designed to stimulate the economy. They were designed to pay off his big donors. For stimulus purposes, a dollar is a dollar (and poor people are much more likely to spend a "stimulus" check, but leave that aside for now). Why on earth should Bush's giveaway of the federal surplus have been based on *percentage of income*? The original rationalization of Bush's tax cuts was that they would stimulate the economy in a time of possible recession, so all all taxpayers should have gotten the same amount of reduction *in dollars* rather than in *percentage*. No way should the tax reduction have been based on percentage of income! That had the predictable effect of increasing the gap between rich and poor dramatically during W's tenure. This year's tax rebates were a slight pay-back, distributing the same amount to everybody so it had more impact on the poor than the rich, but it should have been that way from the beginning. Instead, Bush basically skimmed off Clinton's (the nation's) surplus and used it to repay his wealthy corporate and "top 1% of income" donors, one of the most amazing and galling political tricks in many a year and the cause of our current deficit.
