who knew? the majority of the USA citizens are not members of the tea party.

Progressives ideas are intelligent and they work!

I repeat the current white house has less brain power than Sarah Palin.

USA citizens hate the Obama/Bush Wars
USA citizens hate the OBAMA/Bush taxs cuts for the rich

and USA citizens love Social Security and Medicare

It is like the whole country is full of DFH.

Heh. I was just saying that yesterday to someone as regards polling like this.

The continued rational stands on the issues by a majority of the public increasingly indicates what I found by campaigning for a progressive in this area, which has the worst representative in Congress, Ralph Hall. The vote does not reflect voters’ stand on issues.

Interesting that even republicans are not predominantly opposed, 49 to 49, a tax increase on wealthiest.

It is like the whole country is full of DFH.

Which explains why The Villagers inside the beltway blow them off with such regularity.

Well, that and the campaign contributions from the MOTUs.

Apropos raising taxes on corporations and limiting their deductions as well as raising taxes on the wealthiest in our society, aren’t lower tax rates on capital gains, dividends, investment income and hedge-fund management salaries always defended with the idea that corporations have already paid the taxes on this money? Turns out, not so much! (Unless you’re investing in the wrong corporations, I guess.)

Much of the foreign aid money is siphoned and skimmed by friend and foe alike before it ever gets to the recipients, and probably a lot of people know that from the news.

raise income tax on income over 250,000

even framed as badly as that this is what most people want, imagine if it’s framed correctly;

“equalize over all tax so that those making less then 250,000 don’t pay more in over all taxes then those making more, one method would be increasing income tax on those shouldering the lower tax burden”

if it were framed that way it would be hard finding anyone at all who disagreed

now to figure out how to say that same thing with fewer words and we are in business

Progressive deficit reduction ideas have popular support? I am not surprised. Progressive ideas are not, however, on offer by either major party.

this is because neither majority party represents the majority of americans

The limit of acceptable political discourse swings from right of center to far right wing. After all there is a plutocracy to protect.

Turn this chart upside down and you’ll get a pretty good idea of what will actually happen.

Politicians are co-opted by their contributors to soften any progressive stand that they did have and then the voters see them as just a poor imitation of conservatives, so the previously-progressive pols move further to the right to get the support of the remaining voters until half the electorate becomes fully disgusted and disinterested, and don’t go to the polls. Then the aforesaid politicians, to get re-elected, have to become Blue Dogs as look-alikes to the conservatives and we end up two branches of the same party which don’t reflect the views of the majority of voters. That’s democracy?

why would or should any progressive be proposing “deficit reduction ideas?”

“Progressive Deficit Reduction Ideas” seems to me to be buying (and selling) — not rejecting — a very bad frame.

worth a read from john t. harvey:

How to Destroy the US Economy? Balance the Budget

I can think of nothing more fundamentally foolish, more unequivocally self-destructive to our economic well being today than attempting to balance the US federal budget. It is totally unnecessary and every dollar we cut from government spending is a dollar taken from someone’s income. That we should be so enthusiastically pursuing such a policy when there are almost 14 million unemployed workers is mind boggling. How is further lowering the effective demand for goods and services supposed to help? It cannot, of course, and will only serve to make things worse–much, much worse.

This is the most important issue facing our economy today and the terrible irony is that it is completely avoidable. There is no logical reason to be obsessing over the debt and the deficit.

Polls show people think the U.S. spends 24 percent of the federal budget on foreign aid, when the actual figure is less than 1 percent. This might account for it being so high on the list. Either that or they’re counting freedom bombs as foreign aid.

We need to figure what we can do to at least get the WH.Congress and or the MEdia to take some action in response to these poll results…it is as though team Obama lives in another world…the more I see of him the more I see Jimmy C ugh! 3rd party please!

Worst Democratic President of the 20th and 21st Centuries.

Our president has made it clear from the beginning that he has no intention of ever leading on any progressive idea of any kind, ever. He has given away every negotiable position he’s had, and allowed himself to be rolled by the right-wing mendacity of our current politics time after time.

And it won’t get any better; we will shortly hear that the Biden “negotiations” have resulted in trillions being cut from our most critical programs and not a single cent of revenue increased.

Clinton was not much better either…think about it: 8 years of Bubba, 8 years of shit for brains and now a real possibilty of 8 years of Oloser…not to mention the outstanding members of Congress (barf)..and we wonder how we got in this mess?

So was/is “Medicare for All”, single payer, and public option health care plans. All mean nothing to our corrupt Congress. Why worry about public opinion when you have the backing of the CIA-Pentagon-Wall Street Junta?

don’t forget to add Obozo to that honered list!

and this poll is a clear example of why voting is a waste of time as politicians care lees what we think and only work for the few.

I think it was von bismark who said 130+ years ago that the people do not want war, but their govt do. So the govt uses fear and lack of patriotism to force war upon the people.

In other news reuters just said hillary wants to run the world bank. Seems inviting war profiteers to lunch is not enough, she wants to control the check book and make sure she can give them money while pretending it is all about helping the little people. Her book “It Takes a Village” should be called “it takes a village of idiots to let us get away with this stuff” We are the idiots

Man, the US Government really needs to ban these polls of “regular jackoffs”. They make the government look really bad.

I was just saying to a good friend the other day that we have another Jimmy Carter in the White House! What nailed it for me was Obama’s first step to “look like I’m doing something serious about the deficit” was to attack federal employees and freeze their pay.

But this Pew Poll is just stunning. I am in DC where we are fighting tooth & nail with our Democratic DC Council to stop cruel cuts in human services for workers in desperate straits. Hart Research did a poll here that found 85%-91% huge majorities of voters in each ward supported raising taxes on incomes over $200,000, and opposed massive cuts to the social safety net. Voters with self-reported incomes over $100,000 and over $200,000 supported raising their own taxes by percentages in the high-80s.

Our DINO idiots on DC Council, including our DINO Council Chair, propagandized that they had to fight against the “perception” that DC is “over-taxed.” They propagated the Big Lie that the DC voters were out of step with the rest of the country.

Pew Poll shows majorities nationwide support the policies we are fighting for here in DC. Progressive policies are the mainstream. Corporatist Dems are just ignorant tools.

Less war, more progressive taxation, and no cuts to the social safety net. It is like the whole country is full of DFH.

Heh, now that 30% of the 18-34 cohort is unemployed (U-3), along with 25% of their parents (U-6), they are all for damn sure turning into hippies. But aren’t hippies plural? As in “DFHs”?

Semantics matter. Since the PTB insist this is a center-right country, these should obviously be labeled center-right ideas, or at least centrist.

And DFH is plural, they’re all in the aitch.

Since Obama believes this is a center right country, saying he studies and admires Reagan and is proud to be a blue dog, these polls are of interest to him only when they support that view.

Obama will pay attention to polls and fight for popular progressive ideas just like he fought for the public option. Listing out his other campaign promises to progressives as got on the right side of a poll, and his subsequent action of throwing that position under the bus as he adopts the GOP position, gets tiring. Obama will not be moved to any progressive action or defense by polls – only fear of losing an election might change his behavior – and then the behavior change would only last until the votes are counted.

We only control the Senate – and blue dogs in the Senate mean we control little. These polls are useless with an unprimaried Obama and will be difficult to use to influence our legislators in either body. But we must try to influence our legislators none the less.

But we need to steel ourselves for the Obama “smile, laugh, shrug it off, then the speech in line with those polls on how he cares as he does the opposite” routine that is coming.

Margin of error is as much as +/- 6% points depending on the group polled. So questions where the difference among responses is less than 12% points is essentially a push and indicates no statistical difference. In addition, they freely admit that the wording used in the questions significantly alters the survey results.

I note they did not show responses to any questions that would indicate middle-class and lower-income (oops, almost typed “lower-class”) opinions on shouldering more of the tax burden themselves. So this is strictly a NIMBY opinion poll, i.e. “I am in favor of reducing the deficit if it only impacts others.

How shocking that this came from Pew.

Thanks Selise, that was well worth the read.