THE greatest heist ever

[mqbush]

What did Bush do with Clinton’s $5 trillion surplus? He claimed he sent it back to us in checks. But $5 trillion divided by 300 million people,-every child, every homeless person, every prison inmate, every adult,-comes to over $16 thousand each. A family of four would have received $64 thousand. Does anyone recall cashing checks like that? No, because it didn’t happen. The checks that HOUSEHOLDS received were around $600. That’s maybe $75 billion, or 1.5% of the $5 trillion. Where’s the other 98.5%?

Shortly after this, it came out that the Pentagon had misplaced possibly $3 trillion. Before this could become a scandal, we were distracted by 9/11. Curious that Ground Zero at the Pentagon that day was the accounting department….

Before the end of his first term, Bush had run up a debt of yet another $4 trillion.

Let’s see now; $5 trillion divided by $1 million per windmill electric power generator yields 5 million windmills. Each windmill generates enough power for 500 European homes, 400 American homes, several thousand rural African homes. So say an average of 1,000 homes per windmill. That means Bill Clinton’s $5 trillion surplus could have provided many years worth of green power to 5 billion homes, more than twice the number of homes than exist in a world population of six and a half billion people. (And, to critics: it doesn’t have to be windmills. It could be solar panels, tidal generators, geothermal converters, or any combination of a broad range of green and eternal technologies. And it’s also understood that you’ll challenge the figures. So, OK, let’s say only one billion homes could be powered greenly for many years with this money. Only a billion homes. Green. Years. How does your math work?)

THIS is what to do with money, positive things that enhance the lives of the world’s people. NOT waste it all forever on killing people, destroying countries, stashing staggering sums in offshore private accounts.

Can anyone conceive of an adequate punishment for the Bush mob? It’s not possible, there can never be justice here. It will remain a blot on our history for all time.

[flor de jasmim]

1. speaking of $$ - any final word on Obama's fund-raising last month?

It's rumored to be higher than 30 million, and possibly much higher

[mqbush]

6. $30 million or more in one month? That's enough to pay a family's

health insurance premiums for about SIX THOUSAND YEARS.

[rurallib]

2. Uh - there was no $5 trillion surplus

may want to do a wee bit of research.

[elizfeelinggreat]

3. thanks for the reminder

Although I'm sure many of us were never distracted, we were shocked and awed. :(

They need to be punished or we will see this behavior over and over again.
Sara Taylor, anyone?

[Warpy]

4. Punishment for the BFEE?

I won't believe in justice until I see Stupid and Jebbie fighting over a piece of mildewed pizza out of a dumpster, preferably the day they were released after a long stretch in Leavenworth and the day before they were picked up for a trip to the Hague to answer for the PNAC along with the other signatories and enablers.

Unfortunately, justice will probably arrive only on their deathbeds when they're dying in a nice warm home of extreme old age as they realize all the lying and cheating was for nothing because nothing is what they'll take with them when they leave this world.

[sinkingfeeling]

5. There was no $5 trillion surplus... that was a projected amount across 10 years back in Jan. of 2001

Here is what the CBO said about the $5.6 trillion projected surplus in the January 2001 report: "Moreover, projections that are quite different from the baseline ($5.6 trillion) also have some significant probability of coming to pass. For example, the figure suggests some probability, albeit small, that the budget might fall into deficit in 2006, even without policy changes." – underline added PDF file of report file: page 20 https://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/27xx/doc2727/entire-report.pdf

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=980CE3DA163BF93AA15751C1A9669C8B63

We did end 2000 with a $230 billion surplus.

http://archives.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/09/27/clinton.surplus/

"WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Clinton announced Wednesday that the federal budget surplus for fiscal year 2000 amounted to at least $230 billion, making it the largest in U.S. history and topping last year's record surplus of $122.7 billion."

[mqbush]

7. $5 trillion projected is still $5 trillion , money we haven't seen.

And the actual surplus for the year Bush said he was giving it back was still several times more than what we did get back.

[mqbush]

8. And $5 trillion projected could still have bought those

windmills, a half million each year. The point is, vast amounts of money, whether billions or trillions, are thrown away irretrievably all the time instead of used productively.

[DCKit]

10. Ah, but it IS productive.

Just not in the way we would like. There is little ongoing profit for energy companies when the source of the energy is limitless and free and the only cost involved is the equipment required to capture it. Think of coal fired power plants, then imagine the coal is free.

Having no cash to invest in alternative energy will drive our oil-based economy to it's bitter, disastrous end.

[sinkingfeeling]

9. It's hard to 'spend' $5 trillion when it never existed.

[mqbush]

12. A reasonable projection of $5 trillion, managed by a proper

chief executive, would have provided funds for such a project over the course of the years it would take to even make all those windmills. There may not have been a $5 trillion lump sum of cash at the end of fiscal 2001, but any future project relies on reasonable projections of revenues that don't exist yet.

[lostnfound]

11. Out of the $5 trillion projected Bush was able to give us a $3 trillion war

How are we feeling about that purchase, anyway? Satisfied?

All that projected government surplus money must have given the GOP billionaires the jeebies. Needed to get it diverted quickly so that it never ended up in public hands. What a bad example had the people actually been permitted to see the effects of a government surplus put to good use. No way to avoid a universal healthcare program, for example, when the excuse 'we don't have the money' is all gone.