Glenn Beck’s Common Sense
Glenn Beck has said that this book is for the American people and not for any one political party. He has written for those who are sick of the corruption in Washington.
Common Sense Excerpt
By 2019, annual interest payments on the national debt will balloon to a projected $806 billion! Why? Because, as you might know from your own credit cards, interest compounds quickly. Making only the minimum payments will result in the unpaid interest being added to our outstanding debt. It’s a cycle that’s almost impossible to pull out of and the damage to our country will almost certainly be irreversible. That $806 billion is more than what it cost us last year to fund the entire Department of Defense ($583 billion), Veterans Affairs ($86.6 billion), the Department of Transportation ($68.7 billion), and the State Department ($18.9 billion) … combined.
Where will all of that money come from? Again, the politicians say “the rich!” or maybe “the greedy corporations!” –but if that’s our plan, then we are set up for a dramatic failure. The total 2008 profits of Exxon Mobil ($42.2 billion), General Electric ($17.41 billion), Wal-Mart ($12.7 billion), and IBM ($12.3 billion) totaled $87.61 billion. If we taxed those profits at 100 percent we still wouldn’t even have one-third of the amount needed to pay the annual interest payment–let alone any of the principal!
So what about the wealthy? Look at it this way: if we took all personal income tax revenue from every American taxpayer for the next decade you would still NOT have enough money to pay off the national debt, even if you exclude interest. And, as a side benefit, we’d have zero dollars to fund the actual government over those years.
This is modern-day slavery, but instead of being sold to work in the fields our children will be working hundred-hour weeks at their jobs to pay off the debts we’ve amassed.
Common sense shouts that if this were happening in your home you’d have to stop spending immediately. So what is Washington doing? The exact opposite. They’re spending even more.
President Obama announced that his 2009 budget was projected to produce a $1,700,000,000,000 deficit. If you break that down you find that we’re spending $4.657 billion every day for a year, which breaks down further to $53,906.64 per second. In the time it takes you to read this paragraph, our government will have spent more than what most Americans make in more than twenty years of work!
Borrowed money has to be paid back–but it won’t be us who will have to do it. Our children will question our sanity for spending money we did not have on “bridges to nowhere,” skateboard parks, tattoo removal, and other pork-laden projects that politicians stuffed into “must pass” legislation. They will wonder why we tolerated such reckless behavior from our elected leaders instead of holding them accountable.
How will we respond? (Beck’s Common Sense pg 25-26)
Wal-Mart is selling Glenn Beck for $5 dollars!
I purchased my copy at B. Dalton for $12 dollars 
but it was worth it 
I'm sorry to say, but I dislike Glenn Beck with a passion...seriously, he is a deeply tragic and frightening individual, especially his support for what would amount to war crimes relating to foreign policy and terror suspects (eg. he believes in summarily executing 'enemy combatants' caught in the field of war, rather than capturing as prisoners of war, and then trying them etc).
But yeah, he doesn't seem to have a grip of some basic economic fundamentals. For example, it's pointless 'cutting' your way out of a recession which has been partly created by a collapse in demand. The best way to reverse an economy in recession, is to create or bolster demand, even if artificially. This was done by FDR during the Great Depression through public works schemes etc all over the US which created demand and jobs, until the private market picked up and could play a part again. It's classic Keynsian economics, to which Obama could be said to somewhat subscribe to. He's surrounded by people who worked in the Clinton admin and were generally neoliberals, in that they wanted further 'reform' (cutting off/privatisation of public assets and services) and more freedom for the market (in that you bail out private entities acting in the market, while limiting the role of the state, the only thing that currently stands in the way between the private tyranny of large corporations and the like). So yeah, it seems the Keysian's have won his ear and he's ready to spend his way out of a recession, but if he wins a second term, I think you'll see major cuts in public services to try and reduce the deficit...something which didn't really exist in any major way until the free-marketeers made it into governments in the US and around Europe a few decades ago.
Don't get me wrong, I'm anti-statist, and don't like the idea of an overbearing government, but in a very different way from people like Beck. Libertarians in Europe are basically what you may refer to as Anarchist's. They want to dissolve the state, and allow people to live in communities/federations of their choosing and make their own democratic decisions. Someone like Beck wants to make sure single black mothers have their welfare checked prised out of their hand and go hungry for not doing well enough as an individual acting within the market, while allowing major corporations to commodify even more aspects of our lives and literaly destroy the environment around us.
I don't like the fact that states exist, but for now I'll have to defend them as our only line of defence against what would be a much worse situation of a private free for all for resources and wealth, which would be controlled by the few only.
Sorry for the rant! :P
Kennedy I don't mind rants.
Question: Why is the mother single and black? Welfare in America is used more by white people than black people. Welfare is used most (not all) of the time by people who just don't want to try in the land of opportunity.
Welfare, in my opinion, should only be used for those who have been fired from a job and/or can't find work. Too many times people think the government owes them a check without doing anything.
I am not an expert in politics but at the same time I am not blind. Obama is ruining our economy. He has quadrupled our debt in the short time he has been in office. This can't be good.
sidenote: I would have to look into this but Glenn says there was a depression in 1920 and it lasted one year. Nobody tried to do anything about it and it resolved itself. Then when the great depression happened people tried to fix it and it took quite a bit longer to get over. My point: Obama thinks he is our savior and that he must save us. People on the liberal media are in love. One lib last week said that Obama is sort of like God. It is getting kind of scary over here.
ABC, CBS and NBC do not report news, they create it. They tell us what they want us to hear. Me listening to Glenn is trying to get the other side of the story. But I also like the guy because he makes a lot of sense.
Lastly I just wanted to let you know that politics is something I am learning about more every day and I don't mind learning people's views such as yours. Thanks for sharing.
PS: Living in England how did you learn about Glenn? I am assuming that his radio or tv show are not being aired there.
Kennedy I don't mind rants.
Question: Why is the mother single and black? Welfare in America is used more by white people than black people. Welfare is used most (not all) of the time by people who just don't want to try in the land of opportunity.
Welfare, in my opinion, should only be used for those who have been fired from a job and/or can't find work. Too many times people think the government owes them a check without doing anything.
I am not an expert in politics but at the same time I am not blind. Obama is ruining our economy. He has quadrupled our debt in the short time he has been in office. This can't be good.
sidenote: I would have to look into this but Glenn says there was a depression in 1920 and it lasted one year. Nobody tried to do anything about it and it resolved itself. Then when the great depression happened people tried to fix it and it took quite a bit longer to get over. My point: Obama thinks he is our savior and that he must save us. People on the liberal media are in love. One lib last week said that Obama is sort of like God. It is getting kind of scary over here.
ABC, CBS and NBC do not report news, they create it. They tell us what they want us to hear. Me listening to Glenn is trying to get the other side of the story. But I also like the guy because he makes a lot of sense.
Lastly I just wanted to let you know that politics is something I am learning about more every day and I don't mind learning people's views such as yours. Thanks for sharing.
PS: Living in England how did you learn about Glenn? I am assuming that his radio or tv show are not being aired there.
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Apologies for the misspelling of the word 'Keynesian' throughout that comment! :P
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