{"id":19436,"date":"2015-01-20T21:55:54","date_gmt":"2015-01-21T02:55:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/?p=19436"},"modified":"2015-01-20T22:12:54","modified_gmt":"2015-01-21T03:12:54","slug":"sotu-so-so","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/2015\/01\/20\/sotu-so-so\/","title":{"rendered":"SOTU, So So"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, I have been watching the State of the Union Address.\u00a0 Most of the discussion about economics was not bad.\u00a0 Of course claiming that negotiating a trade agreement that the Congress is not allowed to see, but big corporations are writing for us is NOT<\/strong> a way to benefit middle-class wage earners in our country or any other country.<\/p>\n

Raising taxes by eliminating unfair loopholes for the oligarchs is a great idea.\u00a0 It takes from their grasp the money they are storing up to destabilize our economy.\u00a0 However, balancing the budget with this money is an extremely bad idea. (See my previous post Replacing the Budget Constraint with an Inflation Constraint<\/a>.)\u00a0 Perhaps Bernie Sanders and his new chief economist on the Senate Budget Committee can finally knock some sense into the President’s head and into the heads of all Democratic candidates who might run for President in 2016. (See my previous post Is It Time for MMT To Become Mainstream to Save Us from the Second Global Financial Crisis of the Millennium?<\/a> which links to the article Bernie Sanders opens a new front in the battle for the future of the Democratic Party<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

When the President got to foreign policy, he talked about using diplomacy as well as military power, but every initiative he wanted Congress to pass was an authorization to use the military.\u00a0 He talked about opposing Russia in the Ukraine even though that problem was fomented by our giant corporations trying to gain unfair economic advantage.\u00a0 I don’t see how applying our military might to aid the profits of our oligarchs helps the middle-class in this country or any other country.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the President would have gotten around to talking about non-military efforts such as reaching agreements with Iran and easing pressure on the Cuban people.\u00a0 But my BS limit had been exceeded, and I just had to turn it off.<\/p>\n

The unfortunate upshot of this speech is that everything that the President proposed and I support will not make it through Congress.\u00a0 Everything that the President proposed that I vehemently oppose will sail through the Congress, and be approved by the President.\u00a0 So maybe calling this so-so was far too high praise to give this speech.<\/p>\n

The rest of you can comment, and tell me what, if anything, I missed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, I have been watching the State of the Union Address.\u00a0 Most of the discussion about economics was not bad.\u00a0 Of course claiming that negotiating a trade agreement that the Congress is not allowed to see, but big corporations are writing for us is NOT a way to benefit middle-class wage earners in our country […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[166],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-19436","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-stevegsposts","7":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19436"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19436\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19442,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19436\/revisions\/19442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}