ATS Survey Results: The U.S. Debt Crisis

reply to post by AKASAZZIN


Normally I can't stand him, always viewed him as another partisan hack, but he's dead on in that commentary.

reply to post by SkepticOverlord


I think the bozos in Washington finally need to concede their power....to the people

with all this bs, now we have a super congress comitee? meeting behind closed doors to do what?


I think Jefferson, said it correctly it went something like this. "To have a people afraid of the Government, you have Tyranny, To have a people not afraid of the Government, you have Liberty."

It is obvious the people are afraid of the Government, well I say in 2012, get brave and vote all of these crooks out!!!!


I hope the house and senate enjoy their all expenses paid vacation this month, off of the backs of the people!!


As far as the poll results, I do not understand how things are in Washington, when their is so many people saying what they are doing is wrong. Something is wrong here...

Did'nt these people vote these guys in? Or did everyone get fooled and lied to...

This past decade and leading into this one I have seen nothing done in Washington, to help the people, besides cut our taxes only to raise our debt ceiling....

Don't forget to vote in 2012. I just hope we have some decent people to vote for...

I like the first question the most. I'm surprised that there are many people here who wants this corrupt financial system to finally end. Our old system really have to go and there is no reason to prolong the inevitable collapse. Let go of it and replace it with something that is people-oriented and not business-oriented.

reply to post by neo96

i think im wrong here but once upon a time that platform the teaparty ran on is what liberalism use to be?

smaller government more freedom etc?

GEE, and I thought it was the "platform" that Tom Jefferson, George Washington, Sam Adam, Ben Franklin... used to promote a WAR.

Yer,what a great way to get the left and righters going...

They are all the same,people are still having trouble understanding this.

They are trained to be this way and make it look like partys are different when they arent.

Alot of people seem to be surprised at the first questions result of the poll...
But if you think about it,i think people want it to happen to somewhat level the playing field.
It isnt such a crazy idea as most of you might think.
As in,if im going down because of these stupid finicial crisis's which i didnt create,let alone support.Im going to take you all down with me.

Something drastic has to happen,otherwise you will be in the same position a couple years down the track,if not less.

everything needs to be reset,otherwise your just layering debt and problems on top of debt and problems,if you dont make it collapse,its will collapse on itself soon enough.

They are eco-terrorists.
They dont care about you or anyone else,they are playing games with you.

And youll be paying the price of the game unless you stop it.Then the game isnt so fun anymore is it?

The only way the parties stand a chance is if they have a McCarthy revival. Out with the terrorists, in with the communists, that way we can boost defense spending more and put our economy in fifth gear, straight to hell. But at least the politicians will keep their jobs. That is the most important thing!

Hi,

I was looking closer into the graphs as it seemed interesting.

But there is so much contradiction? - Why?

It is like when asked: Is the tea party corrupt: YEAH, is the "other" corrupt: YEAH. Makes my head

It seems if you check out the percentage it is amazing how much it contradicts from question to question making me wonder if that could be the reason that U.S. has all their troubles right now?

I'm impressed with the format of the results. Very slick. I think the results are a wash, however. ATS isn't to blame, I think ATS asked those questions honestly, but the numbers are so skewed, especially when it comes to thinking that all sides are corrupt, and the tone seems to lean towards the conservative end of the spectrum, which, honestly, I myself am suspicious of ( I keep thinking of the arses that tried to fix the Paul Revere entry on Wikipedia to make Sarah Palin look like less of an arse herself ). I just don't personally believe that this community is skewed to the right. I think the Tea Bagger types voted multiple times just to look good.
Maybe I'm the paranoid one now. Hmmmmm...........

reply to post by moonzoo7


Really? That's funny, alot of the "tea bagger" types were lodging the same complaint. Guess nobody's happy unless everybody supports their political ideology...

ATS, you aren't showing the result very well when using graphs that slant from one side to the other. On the combined spending cuts and increased revenues question, strongly disagree is at 25% and strongly agree is at 23%, yet because of the wonky graph, 25% looks vastly larger than the 23%. Has no one taken a college statistics class showing graphing/polling errors?

Just make a simple bar graph so we can actually see what the results are. Unless you want to skew the results.

Originally posted by 27jd

Originally posted by nenothtu
That will change over time, if they bother to actually get out and engage Tea Party folks in dialogue and learn something of the reality on the ground.

Many of us can't embrace the Tea Party, because the majority of the movement consists of people who are all for small government fiscally, but socially they are not.

You don't have to "embrace" them to hold enough dialog to gain an understanding of them, at least. They appear to me to be a bit too complex and diverse to be put into a single 3 or 5 word pigeon-hole, as I see so many here trying to do in order to merely demonize them.

I don't "embrace" communism, either, but I'm willing to talk to communists enough to gain an understanding of how they see things from their perspective, and find where we may have similar perspectives. Those areas are the strong points, the anchor points for getting things accomplished. Stressing differences leads only to more and deeper division.

Besides, without engaging in productive dialog, how are you to show them the error of holding two diametrically opposed views concerning a dislike of huge government on the one hand and a love of huge government on the other? Alienation, as many here do, isn't going to get the point across.

Which is why the talking points issued from the higher ups invariably require alienation. They sure as hell don't want us to get on the same page, because that would be the end of them.

Personally, precisely what you point out here is why I identify myself as a "conservative", but not a "tea partier". It's my belief that ANY intrusion of government into my world, or yours, is a BAD thing. It needs to be cut down and pruned back across the board, whether fiscal or social. It's got no business digging deeper into my pocket or entering my bedroom without knocking. That, to my mind, is one of the problems in the US. Too many folks wanting to mind everyone else's business, without having their OWN ducks in a row.

Originally posted by Bicent76
with all this bs, now we have a super congress comitee? meeting behind closed doors to do what?

Oh, debt crisis averted. Yay! Lets go spend more!

Lets start with that 72 Billion at the Debt Auction next week!

“They had us all breathless that the country, if we didn’t have something happening today, was going to default. That was a lie and they continued to use it even after members of Congress explained many times, no we don’t default...
www.infowars.com...

SUPRISE !!!

Do we feel used yet?

Originally posted by Dbriefed
No one can say that Pelosi/Reid/Obama are less corrupt than grass roots anti-tax citizens.

I also hoped for a debt ceiling impasse, as that would FORCE the government to cut spending 40% immediately. The government has raised spending that much in the last four years.

THEY'RE SPENDING TOO MUCH!!!

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/fdbde51665d9.png[/atsimg]

There are literally HUNDREDS of redundant agencies and bureaucracies in government. Immediately cut half, their roles are redundant anyway either to existing Federal agencies or existing State agencies.

Maybe they're spending too much. Sure, I can agree there.

But do you really think that htey'll do the intelligent thing and cut redundant and dead agencies? No, those are barrels of pork for lots of legislators. Do you think they'll cut military spending down by half or more? No, 'cause that's more pork, AND our nation fetishizes warfare, so it's bad for re-election.

So what to cut? Hmmm. How about all those services that the plebs use? Let's cut social security... okay! Oh! let's slash education... you betcha! And let's talk about medicare "reform" that is really a tax giveaway to our Insurance co donors, hell yeah! While we're at it, we could cut out road services. And you know what, all those EPA regulations that limit heavy metals in the water are REALLY hard to enforce, let's kill them. OSHA is so 1920, that can die... Oh, let's also cut FEMA and other disaster funds, that'll work great!

These are the things you ask for when you want government to "cut spending." You're asking them to keep their pork barrels AND to bend you, the taxpayer over said barrel. "Duuuuuur I want spending cuts!" is unhelpful. What you mean to say is "Our military does not need a strategic helium reserve; we no longer have dirigibles! Let's cut the budget of this particular program!"

But that would mean you have to actually INFORM YOURSELF about where the spending is going.

Originally posted by nenothtu
That, to my mind, is one of the problems in the US. Too many folks wanting to mind everyone else's business, without having their OWN ducks in a row.

We're definitely of like mind. And for the record, I chose the entrenched liberal AND conservative politicians as significantly corrupt, and the 'Tea Party' republicans as only somewhat. We'll see how it goes. The original movement was IMO legitimate. But, my impression of them now, is that they've been hijacked by the establishment and will theatrically voice displeasure on behalf of their base, but not actually affect legislation. People are calling this latest monstrosity a "victory" for the Tea Party, I guess if they tell people that enough, they'll believe it. To me, it doesn't seem to be the case.

reply to post by Bob Sholtz


I obviously don't speak for everyone when I say this, but I voted "Strongly Disagree" because of the fact it wants to increase taxes.

Taxes don't solve anything.

Originally posted by Hilltaker

But there is so much contradiction? - Why?

It is like when asked: Is the tea party corrupt: YEAH, is the "other" corrupt: YEAH. Makes my head

Where is the contradiction in believing that politicians are corrupt? As I said before, red is not blue, but they are BOTH colors. Republicans are not Democrats, but they are BOTH politicians.

As far as the Tea Party politicians go, they really haven't been in DC long enough to get corrupted very well, but they are an unknown quantity (I don't care whether people claim to know them or not - they don't), and most people fear the unknown. On top of that, THEY are politicians, too, or they wouldn't have run for office.

Americans in general seem to have a healthy mistrust of politicians in general, so it's not surprising that the survey reveals that they see corruption when they look at DC, particularly in light of the past several years and several administrations.

What I find odd is that people here seem to think that politicians are corrupt, but oddly they always think the OTHER guys politicians are more corrupt. Not so, they're ALL politicians.

Originally posted by 27jd

Originally posted by nenothtu
That, to my mind, is one of the problems in the US. Too many folks wanting to mind everyone else's business, without having their OWN ducks in a row.

We're definitely of like mind. And for the record, I chose the entrenched liberal AND conservative politicians as significantly corrupt, and the 'Tea Party' republicans as only somewhat. We'll see how it goes. The original movement was IMO legitimate. But, my impression of them now, is that they've been hijacked by the establishment and will theatrically voice displeasure on behalf of their base, but not actually affect legislation. People are calling this latest monstrosity a "victory" for the Tea Party, I guess if they tell people that enough, they'll believe it. To me, it doesn't seem to be the case.

Originally, I had toyed with the idea of joining the Tea Party movement, when they first started up, precisely because they were NOT Republicans. Then Sarah Palin opened her yap, and out rolled some BS. Now, honestly, I didn't have anything against her, and still don't, but when she spoke at a Tea Party function and urged them to "ally" with Republicans, I saw the handwriting on the wall, and stepped away from both of them, Tea Party and Palin alike.

That was the end of my Tea Party affiliation. If I wanted to be a Republicrat, I'd have stayed in that party, rather than getting out when the getting was good. As it turns out, there seems to have been a takeover of sorts, and I mark THAT speech as the beginning of it.

Damned neocons. They are neither new NOR conservative, and seem to be trying to snatch up anything that they think they can get support from. I'm older, and can recall a different Republican party than the one we have now. A "big government" Republican is no Republican at all, but they seem to have taken over the asylum and the name.

Now they're trying to take over the Tea Party, After that, I Reckon they'll tackle the absorption of the Democrats. Might start smaller and try to absorb the Libertarians, but I think they'll have more trouble with that takeover than they would the Democrats!

Damned neocons. It still gets under my skin a bit when folks mistake them for Republicans when all they've done is to co-opt the name and trash the party.

reply to post by SkepticOverlord
Nice job on the Survey; it turned out pretty much exactly as I expected, including the reaction to the Tea Party, which was expected since they would in fact not approve of the same people that disapprove of them, Gays,Liberals, Anti-Gun, the Godless etc.

Heh....

People that took this survey indicate in general that they-

Blame Obama and the dems most.
Believe Obama and the dems are less corrupt.
Support NO revenue increase policy (if you mention the words democrat, liberal or Obama).
Believe a combination of cuts and revenue is the best policy (the dems policy).

This indicates to me that many people here understand what is needed, but will argue against their own understanding if you attach a political lable to the policies.