That Bush guy still has some answering to do

Frog blogs on Bush, and as is normal for the left, riddles his post with errors of various sorts:

Bush blew the massive deficit he inherited from Clinton on tax cuts for the rich, corporate welfare and the war (US$2trillion). The inequality of the tax cuts is staggering:

I think they mean surplus – how exactly do you “blow” a deficit?

Together these tax cuts, when fully implemented and if made permanent, mean that in 2012 the average reduction for an American in the bottom 20 percent will be a scant $45, while those with incomes of more than $1 million will see their tax bills reduced by an average of $162,000.

Ah yes, the inequality of tax cuts. So unequal that they increased tax revenue – i.e. they were actually tax increases. FHTDMTCF (Funny how they don’t mention that critical fact.)

Nor do they mention that those rich people pay the vast majority of tax paid, nor do they mention that most of them were hiding their income so weren’t paying that tax anyway.

Now don’t get me wrong. If frog had complained about Bush’s massive non-defence spending increases, I would agree with him that that is where the real problem lies. But he ignores that real problem and flogs his “tax cut” straw man.

Then the Federal Reserve cut rates to below inflation (-2% in real terms) to stimulate the economy and Americans responded by going on a debt fuelled bender. The results of which we’re seeing in the mortgage credit collapse – 1.7m Americans expected to lose their homes in the months ahead – which will no doubt add more to the extra 5.3m Americans living in poverty than when Bush started.

…which has nothing to do with Bush – he can’t tell the fed what do do, just like Clark can’t tell Bollard here. Not for nothing was Greenspan called the most powerful man in the world.

And while Bush increased the US dependence on oil, the Iraq war was part of the reason for the rise in oil prices. Not a clever strategy.

One of many, many reasons including the Russian situation, increasing demand from China, Chavez mouthing off, hurricanes (wait, those are Bush’s fault too) and lack of refineries due to heavy environmental restrictions.

Which is interesting because we have our own burgeoning overseas debt and current account deficit problems. And the housing market is a key part of the problem. Of course a key difference is that the NZ govt has run a surplus not a massive deficit like rip-and-burn Bush.

“Rip and burn” is of course the best way to increase government revenue.

But we too have increased rather than decreased our oil dependence over the course of this govt. Be interesting to see how Key intends to burn the surplus if he wins next year.

Gotta love the left.They spend half the time complaining that Key will bring back the bad stuff from the 1990’s, then they pull this sort of thing suggesting that he’ll do the opposite and increase spending.

Correction: the quoted post was written by Russel Norman, Co-Leader of the Green Party. So the post was not the uninformed ramblings of a deranged blogger, but a communique from the leadership of our no. 3 political party. Fantastic.