vladtweano:
'Rebutting the hot air with facts.'

Ha. More like 'rebutting the hot air with myopic faith in the almighty church of BUSHSUX.'

About the American Progress Action Fund
The American Progress Action Fund is the sister advocacy organization of the Center for American Progress. The Action Fund transforms progressive ideas into policy through rapid response communications, legislative action, grassroots organizing and advocacy, and partnerships with other progressive leaders throughout the country and the world. The Action Fund is also the home of the Progress Report.

Who is the Center for American Progress?
'The Center for American Progress is a nonpartisan research and educational institute dedicated to ... [challenging] conservative thinking that undermines the bedrock American values of liberty, community and shared responsibility.'

In other words: just another frothy arm of the Church of BUSHSUX. I'm not at all impressed.

Let's examine some of these litte 'factual' bits they provide, yes?

FACT — POVERTY RATES HAVE INCREAED UNDER BUSH
Other FACT - So has the threshold for establishing poverty.
Other fact - Outside of the U.S., poverty means <$730/year/family of 4, while here it means <$17,463/year/family of 4. Outside of the U.S. poverty means rickets, polio, cholera--here, it means no cable.

The reality, is that most of the poor here don't really know what the fuk poor means. Of those that do, most of them don't know what coercive poverty means--they got poor all by themselves.

FACT — BUSH TAX CUTS TARGETED AT HIGH-INCOME HOUSEHOLDS
Other fact - The income tax targets high income households.
Other fact - The lowest 20% in income recieve taxes, while the top 20% pay ~80% of the tax burden--including that part that the lowest 20% get for nothing.

The reality is that the people who benefitted the most from the tax cuts were those who don't pay taxes anyway. The government not stealing as much from the rich as the poor would like is not a benefit for the rich--it's just less stealing.

FACT — BUSH PROPOSED FIRST CUT IN EDUCATION SPENDING IN A DECADE
Other Fact - The past egregious spending on public education has not proven effective--perhaps teaching might work instead.

FACT — SCIENCE EDUCATION HAS SUFFERED UNDER BUSH’S TERM: No Child Left Behind has actually hurt science education, by testing exclusively on math and reading. Some “teachers are being told to stop teaching science and get back to reading and math,” complains Gerald Wheeler
Other Fact - Being unable to read or perform math causes science to suffer much more.

The reality is that spending on education does not improve education nearly effectively as accountability does. And I don't mean accountability to tests--I mean accountability to those paying for it. Accountability will only come from the rewards of success, and the consequences of failure, of these public institutions of indoctrination competing with private institutions of indoctrination.

FACT — BUSH HAS INCREASED DEPENDENCE ON FOREIGN OIL
Other Fact - Bush had nothing to do with our nation's dependence on foriegn oil.

The reality is that our own demand for oil is 100% resposible for our dependence on foriegn oil.

FACT — HSA (Health Savings Account) USERS MORE LIKELY TO HAVE DIFFICULTY PAYING MEDICAL BILLS
Other Fact - People who save for their own health care now are having difficulty paying for the governmet subsidized healthcare in already in place.

FACT — HSA COST SAVINGS ARE ILLUSORY
Other Fact - The costs of unaccountable government bureauocrcy and insurance administration are not illusory.

FACT — HSA USERS PAY MORE OUT-OF-POCKET COSTS
Other Fact - It's their healthcare; they should pay for it from their own pockets.

FACT — HSA USERS MORE LIKELY TO AVOID, SKIP, OR DELAY HEALTH CARE BECAUSE OF COSTS
Other Fact - Everyone avoids, skips, or delays all kinds of things (like BBPs, for instance) because of costs--so what?

FACT — BUSH TAX CUTS WOULD WORSEN THE DEFICIT
Other Fact - Government over-spending is the only thing that makes deficits worse.
Other Fact - These shitheads like to pretend that Bush invented deficit spending.

FACT — TAX CUTS WILL COST $3.4 TRILLION OVER TEN YEARS
Other Fact - Tax cuts cost nothing; but one payer healthcare would cost trillions.

FACT — PERMANENT TAX CUTS OVERWHELMINGLY FAVOR THE WEALTHIEST
Other Fact - You cannot cut the taxes of those who do not pay taxes.
Other Fact - Mathematically tax cuts must be somewhat proportional to the amount taxed, so neccessarily, if there are tax cuts, those who pay the most taxes (the rich in a progressive system) will have more of their tax burden cut.

FACT — DEFICITS CAUSED BY TAX CUTS NEGATE ANY POTENTIAL ECONOMIC BENEFITS (OF THE TAX CUTS)
Other Fact - Government spending on social security, public education, medicare and medicaid, farm subsidies, corporate bail-outs, minimum wage protections, the war on poverty, the war on drugs, and the war on terror are what really negated economic benefits of the tax cuts.

FACT — JOB GROWTH UNDER BUSH LOWEST SINCE WORLD WAR II
Other Fact - The Federal minimum wage is higher than it has ever been since WWII.

FACT — FEDERAL SPENDING ON WORKER EDUCATION AND TRAINING IS LOW
Other Fact -Federal spending on worker education and traing is still $1.5 billion too high.

FACT — WORKERS ARE LOSING PENSIONS
Other Fact - Workers perfoming tasks worth $0.50/hour are getting paid $7.50/hour to do them--which in turn requires workers who perfom tasks worth $7.50/hour to get paid $15.00/hour so they can afford that $5.00 double skim half decaf hazlenut latte the first asshole is serving.

mundhra:'UPROAR!'

vladtweano: 'Your endless one-note chorus of 'Bush critics just hate Bush' comes from the same ideological low road that you accuse the Bush critics of using.'

vladtweano: 'It eschews pragmatism entirely in favor of the assumption that the criticism will cease when 'their' candidate is elected, a position as mired in politics as the windmill you tilt at .'

vladtweano: 'Your dismissal of the source of this article could be easily countered with a dismissal of your rote chapter & verse from places like reason.com, tech central station and the cato institute. '

vladtweano: 'Your voluminous refutations offer plenty of openings for argument, and logical fallacy, but what they really provide is messy cover for an easy way out, so I won't be suckered in.'

vladtweano: 'Besides, you long ago pledged to 'defend this fuk to the bitter end'. In short, Lokes, you just love Bush. You looooooooooooooove him. You are the high priest of the church of Bushsucker. I'm not impressed.'

ENERGY:
By identifying only Mideast oil imports for reductions, Bush was ignoring some of the largest sources of U.S. petroleum, among them Canada, Mexico, Nigeria and Venezuela. The U.S. considers Venezuela a source of political instability in the region; relations with Mexico have been strained over immigration; and violence has curbed nearly 10 percent of Nigeria's oil output.

HEALTH CARE:
Noting that the government must help provide health care for the poor and elderly, Bush asserted, 'We are meeting that responsibility.'

HEALTHCARE continued:
It is true that a new prescription drug benefit took effect this year, a new entitlement for up to 42 million disabled and older people. But implementation has been rocky: Mark McClellan, the administration's top Medicare official, recently acknowledged that tens of thousands of recipients probably didn't get medicine due to confusion and computer glitches, prompting some lawmakers to seek an extension of the May 15 signup deadline to work out the snafus.

HEALTHCARE continued:
The number of uninsured has increased nearly 5 million since Bush took office in 2001, to 45.5 million in 2004, two-thirds of the total from low-income families, according to the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation.

HEALTHCARE continued:
And while total federal spending on the health care 'safety net' for the uninsured edged up from 2001 to 2004 - adjusted for inflation, slightly more than 1 percent - spending actually decreased from $546 to $498 per uninsured person due to the jump in uninsured, the Kaiser group said.

SOCIAL SECURITY:
Bush said Congress did not act last year on his 'proposal to save Social Security.' In fact, his plan does not take care of Social Security's future solvency; instead, he wants to let younger workers divert some of their Social Security payroll taxes into private investment accounts to take advantage of the possibilities for a better return.

SPENDING:
The president said that 'every year of my presidency, we have reduced the growth of non-security discretionary spending.' That doesn't tell the full story because the category he cited omits big-ticket spending items like Iraq, natural disasters such as Katrina and homeland security.

SPENDING continued:
He spoke of saving taxpayers $14 billion next year if his budget proposals are adopted, not mentioning some of those savings would come from health care programs such as Medicaid.

nocal:
FACT — BUSH TAX CUTS WOULD WORSEN THE DEFICIT
Other Fact - Government over-spending is the only thing that makes deficits worse.
Other Fact - These shitheads like to pretend that Bush invented deficit spending.

'For being so against big gov't, you don't seem to care about gov't overspending.
Other fact - These shitheads remember that we had a surplus after Clinton.'

nocal:
FACT — PERMANENT TAX CUTS OVERWHELMINGLY FAVOR THE WEALTHIEST
Other Fact - You cannot cut the taxes of those who do not pay taxes.

'Who can afford tax lawyers? Who can afford to pay accountants? The rich. There are loopholes aplenty, because politicians are, by and large, rich. Therefore, the rich manage to get away with manipulating the system and not paying as much as you might think they do.'

What this article says:
''Treasury Secretary John Snow:...the president's (Bush) legacy will be one of having significantly reduced the deficit in his time,' and said Clinton's budget was a 'mirage' and 'wasn't a real surplus.'

Snow has some support for his view. 'Capital gains receipts were unusually high' during the last years of the Clinton administration, said Ed McKelvey, senior U.S. economist at Goldman, Sachs & Co. in New York. He estimated that when the budget surplus reached a peak of $237 billion in 2000, capital gains tax payments were about $90 billion higher than the norm for the early-to-mid 1990s.

Government forecasts for continued surpluses depended on those tax payments continuing, Snow, 66, said. 'You're going to make a lot of mistakes if you forecast based on a bubble,' he said. 'Bubbles burst.'

James Lucier, a political analyst at Prudential Equity Group Inc. in Washington and former economic research director at Americans for Tax Reform, said the projected surpluses weren't real because of the 'artificial' way Congress accounts for spending.'