Is it the bush administration to blame for whats going

“As we also will be doing, once these corporations are taxed highly…the cosumer always pays in the end.”

This isn’t really true, especially for small companies. I am a partner in one, and we never show a profit because what little profit there is just goes as personal income to the partners. But as our accountant will tell you, paying taxes is a good thing. It means you are making money. Corporate taxes in our business are not what is causing us problems. Under-regulated insurance, yet mandated, insurance premiums are. Yes some of big corporate tax expense is passed on to the consumer, but that’s fine. Having multple venues of tax collection distributes the burden. Why should it be solely on personal income and sales tax?

The over/under regulation pendulem seems to have been swinging pretty far to under for a while.

Regulation is not representatitve of big government. Oversight is not that expense. And look at how big government has gotten with rampant deregulation. Both governement and business need to be regulated, and it needs to be done with extreme transparency. It is the only way we will move forward as a country and still maintain the ideals it was built on.

“PS…Congress couldn’t even pass the energency bail-out without stuffing pork in it…Hello??”

And they did that to appease house republicans who turned it down the first time. And they wanted to include even more deregulation in the bill.

I think you asked the right question. The war in Iraq is the fault of the Bush administration more than Bush himself. It’s amazing how similar the Bush and Johnson administrations were regarding wars in Iraq and Vietnam. There was a lot of disagreement in teh Johnson administration about Vietnam, and Johnson tended to hear what he wanted to hear, that being the more hawkish voices of his team. In the Bush administration, the hawks were obviously Cheney and Rumsfeld, and they trumped guys like Colin Powell when it came to guiding Bush policy.

Gas prices are partly the result of the administration’s wild spending spree and the war in Iraq, but also caused by market speculation, OPEC production quotas, and turmoil in oil producing countries.

I agree with jimahl regarding federal/state/local taxes, and I would add that increasing the national debt is essentially raising taxes on future generations.

As for the subprime loan crisis, again the other posts are right, the seeds were planted decades ago.

But I would also like to add that Congress, especially the 107th and 108th Congresses, also contributed mightily to the problems the US is having today. They passed the Patriot Act, approved the Iraq war, and also approved the Bush administration’s tax proposals. We do not live in an authoritarian state where the president can do as he pleases. Much of what has happened in the last several years would not have been possible without the support of Congress.

There could be no one else to blame for the failures in Iraq, except the Bush administration. They created the “evidence” of a threat out of whole cloth. It was a complete fabrication, and one worthy of impeachment.

And the steep rise in gas prices is due to a few factors, and they lay also at bushes feet, with help from the the republicans in congress. The war in Iraq and the subsequent instability in the mideast is part of the reason, but also the deregulation in the commodities market enabled speculators to effect global prices.

Technically, we do not have higher federal taxes, but due to less federal aid to the states for education and other services have cause state and local taxes to rise. Plus, what good are tax cuts if those policies cause the cost of living to go up dramatically. Instead of paying taxes to government, we are paying taxes (profits) to corporations that already make billions.

And bimjob is correct, the housing market problems started long before Bush. It actually started with reagan. It was in the 80s that waves of governemt deregualtion began, and has continued through Clinton, and has spiraled out of control under Bush/Cheney. While both parties contributed to the mess, it was conservative free market ideas that got the thing started.

Bimjob is also correct in that there is nothing free about a free market. Capitalism unchecked leads to greed and corruption. Conservative will have you believe that government can’t due anything right, and that the free market will always work itself out. Well we can see how well that is working today as they now come to the governemt looking for hand-outs due to their greed and mismanagement..

War in Iraq - yes! Gas prices and taxes - yes and no, it’s not a simple as the war question Bankruptcy - That is due to the ease of sub-prime loans, the lack of any oversight/regulation, and the greed of banks and mortgage companies LIKE Lehman Bros. But the bad mortgages started years ago, before Bush. And when things started to go bad, no one did anything because it was just in isolated areas. When finally it got real bad, it got bad fast. Partly because the big banks and holding companies had been lying about what was going on in order to protect their bottom line. And this is EXACTLY why free capitalism doesn’t work. Don’t get me wrong. I am for capitalism, but with restraints. With out them, the guys with the bankrolls just get more and more greedy, and don’t care that us little guys are going to get raped. They have their money. When Bill Gates drops from $55 billion to $52 billion (or whatever) he can still buy most of the countries in the world. (All right, that’s a gross exaggeration, but you get the idea.)

Instead of paying taxes to government, we are paying taxes (profits) to corporations that already make billions.

As we also will be doing, once these corporations are taxed highly…the cosumer always pays in the end.

From a philosophic (is that even a word?) point view…the “best” between over-regulation and free enterprise happens somewhere in the middle…we only see this “middle” as the pendulum swings thru it…too much goverment, and too much freedom for big business to skim the cream, leaving us “small guys” holding the empty bag…But middle ground is never a stopping place. Just as big free wheeling corporations equal greed and corruption, so does big governemnt…

It seems as tho we live in a junk-yard of laws and regulations…a hoarder’s paradise, an attorney’s paradise (if they’re willing to dig thru the mess)…nobody remembers what’s already on the books, so they create new laws and regs…(with plenty of pork stuck between the pages)…millions of reams of paper nobody has read in 25 years…Simplistic, maybe…however…

Does anybody remember when the sex-offenders in one state were getting free Viagra from the government??? In researching the laws it found that one law counteracted another law, impeded by another law…so there was nothing they could do to stop it. If it can happen in something THS simple, god knows how big a mess they have in more complicated matters…

Maybe a good housecleaning is what is needed as a first step…:)

p

PS…Congress couldn’t even pass the energency bail-out without stuffing pork in it…Hello??