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"Train wreck; nightmare; total failure - any of these would describe Obama's run."
Wow, I wonder what we would be calling Obama's run if the economic disaster headed our way when Obama took office had actually gone from great recession to depression as many feared, and if we were still in Iraq and hearing the added American body count every night on the news, and if we still had millions of Americans not able to get health care coverage because of pre-existing conditions as well as runaway health care costs, if Osama bin Laden were still at large, if thousands were still being laid off in droves, retirement funds gutted and home equities still in the tank...
by former Bush administration official Pete Wehner:
The message being sent to voters is this: The Republican Party is led by people who are profoundly uncomfortable with the changing (and inevitable) demographic nature of our nation. The GOP is longing to return to the past and is fearful of the future. It is a party that is characterized by resentments and grievances, by distress and dismay, by the belief that America is irredeemably corrupt and past the point of no return. “The American dream is dead,” in the emphatic words of Mr. Trump.
Obama inherited a nation in the throes of the worst economic crisis in three generations. A nation embroiled in unwinnable senseless mideast quagmires.
By contrast, his predecessor inherited a prosperous America at peace.
A crude but valid measure of any administration is to compare the condition of the country at the beginning and end of their term.
In an interview with CNBC’s John Harwood, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who is running for the Democratic presidential candidacy, said he could back a 90 percent top marginal tax rate.
Harwood brought up that some have likened efforts to combat income inequality to Nazi Germany. Sanders noted sarcastically, “When radical, socialist Dwight D. Eisenhower was president, I think the highest marginal tax rate was something like 90 percent.”
Harwood followed up by asking, “When you think about something like 90 percent, you don’t think that’s obviously too high?” to which Sanders replied, “No.”
He continued, “What I think is obscene…when you have the top one-tenth of one percent owning almost as much as the bottom 90.”
Sanders is right that the top marginal tax rate, that paid by the wealthiest Americans, was around 90 percent under Eisenhower — it was actually 92 percent in the 1950s. Today, the top marginal tax rate is 39.6 percent, although the richest 1 percent end up paying less than that on average and the average rate actually fell for many years.
So far, many Republican presidential candidates have proposed a radically different approach: a flat tax. Sen. Ted Cruz (TX), Sen. Rand Paul (KY), and Ben Carson have all backed this idea. The details of each proposal differs, but the basic premise is an attempt to simplify the tax code by only having one rate that everyone pays, rather than the current system in which rates increase as income increases. An analysis of one flat tax plan put forward by Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) found that it would raise taxes for those at the bottom of the income scale by between $102 and $462, while the tax bill for those making more than $1 million a year would decrease by about a half million dollars.
It would also lower government revenue by between $500 billion and $1 trillion a year. If a candidate wanted to maintain the current level of revenue, it would require taxing everyone, rich or poor, by at least 25 percent.
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, tweeted a startling statistic to his followers on July 22, 2012: "Today the Walton family of Walmart own more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of America."
Our ruling
The statistic correctly compares the combined net worth of the bottom 41.5 percent of American families with the six Walton family members. We think the additional points -- that many people with a negative net worth are not necessarily poor and that percentages about wealth distribution can be deceiving -- are important and interesting. Nevertheless, Sanders’ claim is solid. We rate it True.
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, tweeted a startling statistic to his followers on July 22, 2012: "Today the Walton family of Walmart own more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of America."
Our ruling
The statistic correctly compares the combined net worth of the bottom 41.5 percent of American families with the six Walton family members. We think the additional points -- that many people with a negative net worth are not necessarily poor and that percentages about wealth distribution can be deceiving -- are important and interesting. Nevertheless, Sanders’ claim is solid. We rate it True.
Perhaps the success is that the subject of income and wealth inequality is becoming a bit more consequential to more and more people, and only after there is better understanding and concern regarding this issue, will there be any chance of progress. Not much success mind you, but the issue is well worthy of consideration (unlike too many of the misguided posts we read here). Maybe not success but progress is made when Obama, Trump and other political leaders bring the matter to the forefront.
Not sure how "jealousy" explains any of that, but what can you do about the simpletons in the peanut gallery?
I wouldn't say Obama's presidency has been a total failure but it surely hasn't been anything close to a successful one. Looking at his presidency on a scale I'd put him here:
Sure am glad the time was taken off the bike for that!
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Obama presidency - failure or success?
