Photo : Congressional Democrats Celebrate VictoryLooks like our DC Democrat masters will have their way, forcing our country to consume itself to save itself.
Price Tag (with interest) : ~ $1,200,000,000,000.00
Transparency? Deliberation? Measured Action? Fuggedaboutit!!
This bunch literally can't spend money fast enough or with enough reckless abandon.
Also looks like the only bi-partisan coalition in the U.S. House was the one AGAINST the Economic Patriot Act of 2009....err, economic "stimulus"...err, massive special interest bunco scheme.
Seven Democrats joined every last Republican in voting against this Pelosi-Reid Obamanation.
Our lone Congressman Mike Castle did the right thing. (Thanks, Congressman!!).
This bill is bad for Delaware and bad for America. It makes George Bush's wacko big deficit government fantasies look amateurish by comparison.
Lord knows the Grand Democrat Stimulators on the Potomac have absolutely perfected Bush's political playbook of duplicity, secrecy, fear-peddling and arrogant steamrolling of any dissent.
Bravo Democrats!
Image : Basic Schematic of Democrat Government's Plan for AmericaThe truly sad thing about the fear-mongering tyranny of the stampeding jackasses in Congress and the White House is that this is how they will continue to drag the country down their road to collectivist ruin through unparalleled economic insolvency.
Let's not forget, this nearly $800,000,000,000.00 epic fraud on the American people is just the beginning for this profligate junta.
Now begins the real pork-barrel social engineering as the porcine party of power moves on to the business of really ramming their will down our throats as they craft the rest of the bloated federal budget.
I never thought I could ever be as disgusted with a president as I was with George W. Bush but Obama dispelled that notion, right quick.
God help us all. We're truly going to need it with such unprecedented official recklessness.
Comments
The fraud was already committed, Tyler, by the Wall Street tycoons, aided and abetted by the Republicans in power who essentially looked the other way, producing the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Have you commented about this?
The Obama/Dem approach is to focus on job creation, a demand side approach which will get employed people spending again, but even this approach has been diluted already by compromising with the Repubs on the quantity of tax cuts. Tax cuts are about 40% of the package, a half again higher than the original House version. Isn't this a compromise in the direction you favor?
I realize that your Libertarian ideals call for no action other than tax cuts, as implied in your other piece, otherwise let the markets self-repair. My question to you is, while the markets are self-repairing, what do we do about the people who are suffering right now, most through no major fault of their own, especially the unemployed no longer covered by even UI, and have no medical insurance coverage?
I suppose, had you had your way, you would have cut out the extension of unemployment insurance from 26 weeks to 46 weeks. You would also have cut out the medical cost deduction increase. You would have cut out the investment in green energy technology and the streamlining of medical records digitally. Am I correct?
I suppose you would support scrapping the remaining $350 billion of the TARP plan which would focus on toxic assets and mortgage restructuring and relief.
Perhaps I am putting words in you mouth that don't belong.
Nevertheless, I just can't understand how tax cuts alone will create jobs and help the suffering. I believe that the Dem plan will, and that it has a good chance of turning the economy positive, at which time we need to keep belts tightened for years in order to pay down the huge additional debt that will have been created.
You might say, this crisis will require a permanent lowering of our standard of living. That's our punishment for decades of neglect. But we can still prosper in terms of the necessities plus modest extras, if we lower our expectations of the easy life on too much borrowed money on credit cards and mortgages we cannot really afford.
Perry Hood
I pretty much stopped reading when you began characterizing my positions, either directly and implicitly.
Maybe someone else will bother wading through it.
I certainly welcome you reading and commenting, but...
Tyler has a point. You ask Tyler "have you commented about this?" rather than checking to find out that he has done so on multiple occasions.
You "realize that your libertarian ideals call for no action other than tax cuts," which pretty much only emphasizes that you haven't been reading this blog very long and don't take the time to see what people have written before you characterize their positions.
You "suppose" Tyler (or I) would oppose unemployment extension instead of either checking our positions or asking it as an honest question.
You're right: I oppose the digital records streamling provision because (a) it is poorly written [I've read it in all three versions, have you?]; (b) lack any accountability provisions; (c) and even in terms of a stimulus economic policy (ala Mark Zandi) lacks "bang for the buck". It further lacks either any national standard; it simply throws up to $15 k to any physician who pretty much claims to have hired a data tech.
The remaining $350 K TARP funds? If you know how they are going to be spent you are better than the administration (either Bush or Obama) because they really haven't told us. Are you sure they are being used for toxic assets? The first 350 K was appropriated under one pretense and then used in an entirely different way that has had little positive effect.
Nobody here said the crisis required lowering our standard of living, You did.
In short, the measure here is that you won't be personally abused, but if you expect to offer policy prescriptions, offer your own rather than attributing views to other people (without doing the courtesy of checking to see what views they have), give up your stereotypes, and do your homework.
Otherwise: you do stand to either be embarrassed or ignored when all you offer is unsubstantiated assertions and straw men.
But he does illustrate part of the political problem.
How do we encourage Obama and his army to live up to the rhetoric of the campaign when these kinds of blinders are worn so frequently?
Perry makes the immediate assumption that fiscal conservatives (or fiscal realists as I would prefer) are heartless, cruel bastards sipping martinis in their McMansions with nary a thought to the poor, the down-and-out, and those who are struggling day to day. We have huge bank accounts, a summer home in Rehobeth, and a yacht to take us south in the winter.
Nothing could be farther from the truth.
Then, on the other hand, fiscal realists may make the assumption that Perry is a tree-hugging hippie liberal who has never seen a government spending program he didn’t like.
That is probably not true as well.
I have the same loathing that Tyler has of this profligate and wasteful bill. I have read it. There is much in there that is not targeted towards job creation (or salvation). The waste in implementing this will be huge. There are insipid social agenda items buried deeply in this legislation, and the sheer bulk of it defies common sense. It is the wrong thing to do.
That being said, there are things in the bill that are needed. The unemployment fund needs to be shored up; if you don’t know someone who is on unemployment right now then you just don’t know very many people. I have friends who are on their last extension, still can’t find work, and are sweating bullets. I believe our society needs to provide a safety net. But I also believe we should pay for it, and that it should be managed smartly.
Perry, I am a fiscal realist but if you saw my balance sheet you would laugh your ass off. I am struggling as many people are. But the last thing I need is a set of huge government initiatives. Give me a break on my taxes, and I might go out and get that television or car. I might even buy a house.
The assumptions and impressions that “liberals” and “conservatives” have of each other are no more than media-induced caricatures with the truth lying somewhere in between.
The solution? I fear there is none, except to try to have an understanding of where the other person is coming from, to eschew the high-handed hubris, talking-head buzzwords and personal attacks. A little civility can go a long way sometimes.
One of my major frustrations is that there are very few people that actually read legislation; they rely on the media to tell them, and it so often very far from the truth. We are all busy, but to take that time would open some eyes on both sides. Too often, people talk out of their ass. That serves no purpose whatsoever.
Just my two cents. Or, maybe it’s only one cent now. Or a yen.
That said, I do not have the detailed knowledge of this now passed R&R Act that several of you have, and I commend you Shirley for wading through the whole thing.
True, I have not been here long, so am unaware of previously taken positions by you, Tyler. A link would have helped.
On the Act, Obama claims that over a two year period it will "create or preserve over 3 million jobs". I like that! That sets an expectation, one metric upon which we can judge success.
Moreover, with jobs in free fall, it makes sense for jobs to be a significant focus of the Act. I frankly don't understand in sufficient depth to question this 3 million projection; I can only say that highly regarded economists are behind this figure.
Regarding the size of the package, $800 billion adds about another 6% to our debt as a percentage of GDP, bringing it from 70% to 76%. At the end of WWII we were at about 120%, suggesting that where we are currently may well be manageable. Some say the package could well be much larger, and should be.
What I've learned from this dialogue is that I need to better familiarize myself with what each of you are saying/have said, and look more deeply into the details of the Act, as Shirley has done, as well as historical experiences with depressions and recessions. It seems to me that Obama is trying to learn from the actions of FDR, who was successful with job creation, therefore a reasonable model to use, I would think.
Perry Hood
I struggle every day as a self-employed sole practice attorney, and have had to take on more and more debt, sinking fast, just to meet my other debts, for a long time now.
I don't want a handout or a bailout. But I want the big spending national statist do-gooder masters of the universe the f**k out of my and everyone else's lives. I want my freedom, in short, and I want everyone else to have theirs...to the MAXIMUM their lives permit, not what's leftover when Nancy, Harry, and Barry get done with us.
I don't have any children, but I want a future for our world that is far better than what we have today : arrogant out-of-control paternalistic statism and governmental expansionism. History has shown this the road to ruin.
This, at heart, is why I am so absolutely disgusted with the utter greed and political self-service inherent in "spend spend spend" (the lifeblood of future generations) now now now, like it's all so much Monopoly money.
I have read the legislation as much as humanly possible and what I see is just more more more of the same corpulent unaccountable fatass special-interest driven government as has always existed, but now infects our country like an aggressive virus.
Very rarely, if ever, do I make personal or broad-brush assumptions or statements about individuals or groups. The closest I have done to this is to speak of the culpable parties, whether political or institutional or, at most, in half-hearted response to those who are shallow attack dogs painting caricatures of those they condemn as irredeemable evil.
That said, the most dangerous thing about the tyranny of people who think like Perry Hood is that they are absolutely clueless about the tyranny they propose for ALL OF US, not just themselves.
I don't want to drag the rest of the world into my political viewpoint, I want the world - as a diversity of free human beings - to be free of the impositions of the ideology of others, no matter how well intended.
It's pretty simple really. But I find that it is a losing battle when the other side offers so many false promises and phony salvation, playing upon fear.
There is much truth to the old saw that ignorance is bliss. Unfortunately the flip side is that acute awareness can be living hell.
A far more thoughtful response.
I disagree with a lot, but I am between kids' Saturday sporting events so I don't have time to do so right now.
One note: a link would have helped is possiblity legitimate, possibly not: you can't really link, in a practical sense, to every previous post you've written on a similar subject, or the posts themselves become nothing but links. What we have here is an ongoing policy discussion that presumes to some extent that people are keeping up.
I do realize that makes it difficult for newcomers so I will try to provide you some links this evening to get you started. :)
Using some labels, I've run across a piece of yours that you would probably recommend to me:
"A Libertarian Stimulus Package"
http://delawarelibertarian.blogspot.com/2009/01/libertarian-stimulus-package.html
Tyler posted a comment indicating that he liked your suggestions.
I will continue to work the labels, but if there is another one or two that you think pertinent, please pass them on to me, though I would ask you not to spend much time on it.
Thanks again,
Perry Hood
Search "complex nonlinear system"
Who knew?