I am sooooooooo tired of the endless whining by Republicans that they were shut out of the writing of the Stimulus Package and that, if they had been able to participate, it would have passed with overwhelming support of both parties. Bull.
But our useless media, of course (including NPR), continue to repeat this idiocy, to rail against Pelosi (who has become this decade's Hillary Clinton).
Now, I realize that these blow-dried, 6-figure media figures can't be expected to actually report on anything, but couldn't NBC or CNN or ABC hire an unemployed liberals arts graduate to watch C-SPAN? If they had, they would have learned that Republicans were involved. I watched the mark-up committee; I watched the arguments on the floors of both chambers.
Dozens (maybe a hundred or more)of amendments were offered by both parties. Most, but not all, of the Republican amendments were defeated. But a number of the tax cuts survived solely to garner Republican support - not that they did much good.
What proposal did Republicans think would gain bipartisan support? A $450 billion dollar bill focused almost solely on tax cuts.
The Republican amendments failed not because they were not allowed to participate but because they implemented Republican theories of government and spending. Republicans, it should be obvious to our dolts in the media, lost the election in Nov. 2009 by substantial majorities. They have no right to expect a Democratic President and a Democratic Congress to throw over Democratic principles in favor of Republican principles.
One wouldn't think that this simple fact should need to be pointed out to those self-defined experts on politics. Republicans lost. Lost. Lost. If they want to have some input, they have to be willing to step outside their hard-right ideological base. If they don't, they cannot expect Democrats to move right to join them. That is what elections are about.
To quote Republicans after 2000: get over it.
Showing posts with label stimulus package. Show all posts
Showing posts with label stimulus package. Show all posts
Friday, March 6, 2009
Monday, February 9, 2009
The Stimulus Package - What I Wish Obama Would Say
Instead of relying on the same points Obama has been making for weeks now, I wish Obama would do the following (quotes are my attempt to imitate his pattern of speech).
1. Emphasize that this is a global crisis
"You know, this is not just a U.S. crisis. Countries around the world have been pouring money into their own banks with their own TARPS. Did you know that Iceland, the country of Iceland, the entire country!, has gone bankrupt? And, just as we are putting together a financial stimulus package, so are they. In short, there are a lot of people around the world who believe that what we are doing is the right thing to do. And they're putting their money where their opinions are. "
2. Give a brief economic lesson.
"A lot of you are wondering why your tax dollars should be used to bail out rich bankers who made bad decisions. You wonder why, when you've been prudent and have a mortgage you can afford, your tax dollars should be used to help the person who wasn't prudent. And, you know, it isn't fair. But sometimes punishing the bad guy can hurt the good guy even more. If we hadn't stabilized the financial system, and if we don't continue to work to make it healthier, we could have been faced with a situation like that which occurred in the Great Depression. Thousands of banks failed. People lost their life savings. In today's terms, you might not have been able to go to your ATM or write a check on your bank. And it won't help your financial situation any if half the houses on your block or in you neighborhood or city are abandoned. So, yes, it's not fair that your tax dollars have to be used to bail out the bad guys but, in this case, the alternative would be worse.
"Second, there's an economic concept you need to understand. It's called the paradox of thrift and it works this way. Too many of us have gotten too deep in debt over the past decades. And now we've gotten religion. We're buying less and saving more. And, under normal circumstances, that's good. If you've still got a job, you want to save in case you lose it. If you don't have a job, you have to save. But what happens when everybody stops buying and starts saving at the same time? Companies can't sell enough. So they shut down factories and lay off workers. And those workers spend less because they have less to spend. So companies cut back further. It creates what economists call a deflationary spiral. And that is what we fear. There is almost nothing economists fear more because it is hard, really, really, really hard to get out of such a spiral once it gets in motion.
Now, it would be irresponsible for you as individuals in this economic environment to spend money you don't have. And State governments can't help. They have to balance their budgets. In an economic downturn, their tax receipts decrease, so they have to cut services. And that, too, contributes to this deflationary spiral. The only entity that can spend money is the Federal Government. And, yes, it is borrowed money. But it is borrowed money to buy goods and services that American workers create. To generate the demand that will keep businesses from shutting down more factories or laying off more people. And that's what the stimulus package does.
So, finally, that's why I'm asking you to bail out banks and the auto companies and people with bad mortgages, because if we don't do this, all of you who have been careful, have done the right thing, will get hurt, too. As you sometimes tell your children, don't cut off your nose to spite your face."
3. Focus on the three major parts of the stimulus package:
"Now, I know the stimulus package is big. But it needs to be big because we have a big economy and we need to give it a big kick in the pants to get it started.
And it has the three key components it needs. First, it gives tax cuts to working Americans because we know you're hurting. Second, it helps the people who are out of work by increasing the number of weeks of unemployment insurance - because the people who are out of work aren't responsible for the length of this downturn and it is going to be long - and helping them keep their health insurance by helping them pay for COBRA. Third, and most important, it spends money on things we should have been spending money on anyway: roads, bridges, school, information technology, etc.
Is this a perfect bill? No. It would have been if I had written it, of course, but I didn't. We live in a democracy. The Congress has over 500 members, each representing a district or state. And they all want to do what is best for the people they represent. And they should. That's what you hired them to do. So, the bill's a compromise. That's what we do in a democracy. We compromise. There are tax cuts for Conservatives and spending for Liberals. But no earmarks. None.
So does the bill have a perfect mix of tax cuts and spending? Probably not. Will all of the money be spent in the most effective way? Probably not - although we're going to do our darndest to make sure that most of it does do what we expect. Will it work all at once? No. Will we have to do more? Probably. But we are in the worst worldwide economic crisis in our lifetimes. Make no mistake. This is not an ordinary recession. This is a major crisis. And this stimulus package is a down payment, a critical down payment, on turning the economy around. So call, email, write your representatives and Senators and tell them to vote for this bill. It is time we got started on the road to recovery."
1. Emphasize that this is a global crisis
"You know, this is not just a U.S. crisis. Countries around the world have been pouring money into their own banks with their own TARPS. Did you know that Iceland, the country of Iceland, the entire country!, has gone bankrupt? And, just as we are putting together a financial stimulus package, so are they. In short, there are a lot of people around the world who believe that what we are doing is the right thing to do. And they're putting their money where their opinions are. "
2. Give a brief economic lesson.
"A lot of you are wondering why your tax dollars should be used to bail out rich bankers who made bad decisions. You wonder why, when you've been prudent and have a mortgage you can afford, your tax dollars should be used to help the person who wasn't prudent. And, you know, it isn't fair. But sometimes punishing the bad guy can hurt the good guy even more. If we hadn't stabilized the financial system, and if we don't continue to work to make it healthier, we could have been faced with a situation like that which occurred in the Great Depression. Thousands of banks failed. People lost their life savings. In today's terms, you might not have been able to go to your ATM or write a check on your bank. And it won't help your financial situation any if half the houses on your block or in you neighborhood or city are abandoned. So, yes, it's not fair that your tax dollars have to be used to bail out the bad guys but, in this case, the alternative would be worse.
"Second, there's an economic concept you need to understand. It's called the paradox of thrift and it works this way. Too many of us have gotten too deep in debt over the past decades. And now we've gotten religion. We're buying less and saving more. And, under normal circumstances, that's good. If you've still got a job, you want to save in case you lose it. If you don't have a job, you have to save. But what happens when everybody stops buying and starts saving at the same time? Companies can't sell enough. So they shut down factories and lay off workers. And those workers spend less because they have less to spend. So companies cut back further. It creates what economists call a deflationary spiral. And that is what we fear. There is almost nothing economists fear more because it is hard, really, really, really hard to get out of such a spiral once it gets in motion.
Now, it would be irresponsible for you as individuals in this economic environment to spend money you don't have. And State governments can't help. They have to balance their budgets. In an economic downturn, their tax receipts decrease, so they have to cut services. And that, too, contributes to this deflationary spiral. The only entity that can spend money is the Federal Government. And, yes, it is borrowed money. But it is borrowed money to buy goods and services that American workers create. To generate the demand that will keep businesses from shutting down more factories or laying off more people. And that's what the stimulus package does.
So, finally, that's why I'm asking you to bail out banks and the auto companies and people with bad mortgages, because if we don't do this, all of you who have been careful, have done the right thing, will get hurt, too. As you sometimes tell your children, don't cut off your nose to spite your face."
3. Focus on the three major parts of the stimulus package:
"Now, I know the stimulus package is big. But it needs to be big because we have a big economy and we need to give it a big kick in the pants to get it started.
And it has the three key components it needs. First, it gives tax cuts to working Americans because we know you're hurting. Second, it helps the people who are out of work by increasing the number of weeks of unemployment insurance - because the people who are out of work aren't responsible for the length of this downturn and it is going to be long - and helping them keep their health insurance by helping them pay for COBRA. Third, and most important, it spends money on things we should have been spending money on anyway: roads, bridges, school, information technology, etc.
Is this a perfect bill? No. It would have been if I had written it, of course, but I didn't. We live in a democracy. The Congress has over 500 members, each representing a district or state. And they all want to do what is best for the people they represent. And they should. That's what you hired them to do. So, the bill's a compromise. That's what we do in a democracy. We compromise. There are tax cuts for Conservatives and spending for Liberals. But no earmarks. None.
So does the bill have a perfect mix of tax cuts and spending? Probably not. Will all of the money be spent in the most effective way? Probably not - although we're going to do our darndest to make sure that most of it does do what we expect. Will it work all at once? No. Will we have to do more? Probably. But we are in the worst worldwide economic crisis in our lifetimes. Make no mistake. This is not an ordinary recession. This is a major crisis. And this stimulus package is a down payment, a critical down payment, on turning the economy around. So call, email, write your representatives and Senators and tell them to vote for this bill. It is time we got started on the road to recovery."
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
HARRY MARKOPOLOS - HIS OWN WORST ENEMY
Listening to this man's testimony (Feb. 4, 2009) was fascinating, not just for what he did but for who he is. This is a man who is so close to being your typical web jerk that is easy to understand why he might have been ignored.
He honestly believed that he was endangering his life by reporting on Madow.
He left an envelope for the head of the SEC in a library he thought the man would be at, and made sure he left no fingerprints.
He offered to go undercover (change his name, appearance, leave his family), etc., to expose the fraud for the sake of the country.
He doesn't know the people at the SEC but he is confident that ALL of the senior staff should be dismissed and that all of them are so dumb they couldn't find first base in a baseball stadium.
For anybody who spends much time on internet forums, these characteristics and the sense of self-righteousness, are all too common of a certain kind of net flake. That he supplied the SEC with detailed information backing up his allegations doesn't change this. Indeed, it is typical. There are people on the web who can write pages and pages and pages of complex text and calculations proving that perpetual motion machines do work and the earth does not revolve around the sun. (Pharyngula regularly exposes the "intellectual" diatribes of anti-evolutionists.)
I don't mean to excuse the SEC. They are clearly understaffed. They get hundreds of thousands of complaints and I don't even know if they have a method for logging them into a central database (issuer of the complaint, nature of the complaint, object, documentation, etc.) But Markopolos's personality and his persistence are so typical of a certain kind of internet pest that I can partly understand why he was ignored.
He honestly believed that he was endangering his life by reporting on Madow.
He left an envelope for the head of the SEC in a library he thought the man would be at, and made sure he left no fingerprints.
He offered to go undercover (change his name, appearance, leave his family), etc., to expose the fraud for the sake of the country.
He doesn't know the people at the SEC but he is confident that ALL of the senior staff should be dismissed and that all of them are so dumb they couldn't find first base in a baseball stadium.
For anybody who spends much time on internet forums, these characteristics and the sense of self-righteousness, are all too common of a certain kind of net flake. That he supplied the SEC with detailed information backing up his allegations doesn't change this. Indeed, it is typical. There are people on the web who can write pages and pages and pages of complex text and calculations proving that perpetual motion machines do work and the earth does not revolve around the sun. (Pharyngula regularly exposes the "intellectual" diatribes of anti-evolutionists.)
I don't mean to excuse the SEC. They are clearly understaffed. They get hundreds of thousands of complaints and I don't even know if they have a method for logging them into a central database (issuer of the complaint, nature of the complaint, object, documentation, etc.) But Markopolos's personality and his persistence are so typical of a certain kind of internet pest that I can partly understand why he was ignored.
"BAD" GOVERNMENT SPENDING
There's been a lot of news coverage on all the "wasteful" government spending in the stimulus package - thanks to the Republicans' ability to sell their message, the media's lack of interest in anything remotely resembling research, and our MIA Democratic leaders.
Why the Washington Mall spending was attacked is beyond me. By all accounts, the Mall is a national disgrace. Fixing it up would mean hiring workers, buying landscaping supplies, sweeping, repairing/replacing public bathrooms, etc. This is spending. People get hired. Supplies get bought. And the result is a necessary improvement of a national monument. Yes, it does mean spending money in D.C., which may be the real problem, but unemployment there is high, so why not?
Buying hybrid cars for government employees? Yes, it benefits those terrible government civil servants. But the Detroit 3 are bleeding. January sales were even worse than the worst expectations. I don't think Detroit cares who buys the cars and they sure have cars to sell.
Finally, let's be brutally honest here: the Federal government could spend 40 million dollars buying dog food and handing it out to dog owners around the country and that would be stimulative. It would help not only the producers and sellers of dog food but would relieve dog owners, temporarily, of an expense - and they could spend that savings elsewhere.
In an economic disaster like this one, with a deflationary spiral a real threat, there is no such thing as bad government spending. Yes, ideally, the money should be spent on projects (like the Washington Mall or repairing school buildings) that will have long-term benefits, but in this environment, even Washington pork isn't all that bad.
Why the Washington Mall spending was attacked is beyond me. By all accounts, the Mall is a national disgrace. Fixing it up would mean hiring workers, buying landscaping supplies, sweeping, repairing/replacing public bathrooms, etc. This is spending. People get hired. Supplies get bought. And the result is a necessary improvement of a national monument. Yes, it does mean spending money in D.C., which may be the real problem, but unemployment there is high, so why not?
Buying hybrid cars for government employees? Yes, it benefits those terrible government civil servants. But the Detroit 3 are bleeding. January sales were even worse than the worst expectations. I don't think Detroit cares who buys the cars and they sure have cars to sell.
Finally, let's be brutally honest here: the Federal government could spend 40 million dollars buying dog food and handing it out to dog owners around the country and that would be stimulative. It would help not only the producers and sellers of dog food but would relieve dog owners, temporarily, of an expense - and they could spend that savings elsewhere.
In an economic disaster like this one, with a deflationary spiral a real threat, there is no such thing as bad government spending. Yes, ideally, the money should be spent on projects (like the Washington Mall or repairing school buildings) that will have long-term benefits, but in this environment, even Washington pork isn't all that bad.
BIPARTISANSHIP REPUBLICAN-STYLE
Thanks to the fact that Obama, Pelosi and Reid have been MIA when it comes to selling the stimulus package or defending how much they've given in to Republicans, Republicans have managed - with the help of our clueless media - to define "bipartisanship" as doing things the Republican way. It seems never to have occurred to CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, etc., etc., that "bipartisanship" means BOTH parties have to give a little. None of them is asking what Democratic ideas Republicans have accepted.
Now, I've spent hours watching C-SPAN hearings. There have been a number of bipartisan amendments. But the Republican amendments that have failed have been the same old Republican ideas (you know, the counterpart of the partisan "liberal pet projects"): across-the-board income tax cuts (5%), reducing the corporate income tax, a tax holiday from payroll taxes, tax credits for business, etc., etc. And the projects they oppose are the projects they've always opposed.
But the ordinary American watching cable wouldn't know this. And it isn't all the fault of those overpaid mannequins who pretend to be journalists. Democrats are not doing what they should be doing.
Now, I've spent hours watching C-SPAN hearings. There have been a number of bipartisan amendments. But the Republican amendments that have failed have been the same old Republican ideas (you know, the counterpart of the partisan "liberal pet projects"): across-the-board income tax cuts (5%), reducing the corporate income tax, a tax holiday from payroll taxes, tax credits for business, etc., etc. And the projects they oppose are the projects they've always opposed.
But the ordinary American watching cable wouldn't know this. And it isn't all the fault of those overpaid mannequins who pretend to be journalists. Democrats are not doing what they should be doing.
PELOSI AND REID - MIA AS USUAL
Has anybody noticed how the Republicans have hijacked the debate over the stimulus package? Well, I have. And Rachel Madow has. But Pelosi and Reid? Not so much.
Now, Reid's being MIA isn't so hard to understand. He's a Democratic Senator from the Republican state of Nevada and he's up for reelection in two years. And, oh yes, Tom Daschle, the former Democratic Majority Leader of the Senate and another Democrat in a Republican state (South Dakota) lost his reelection. So Reid doesn't want to upset his Republican voters. (Why Democrats would elect as Majority Leader a man beholden to Republican voters is a matter only a political shrink could explain.)
But Pelosi's inability or unwillingness to fight Republicans is harder to understand. She comes from a liberal district in one of the most liberal cities in the country, San Francisco. Yet, since she became Majority Leader, bipartisanship (read: appease the Republicans at all costs) has for her, as for Obama, been a mantra. She apparently believes, even after an overwhelming Democratic win in Nov. 2008, that the Republicans and Independents who switched parties really still believe in Republican policies. Republicans play to their base. Pelosi not only ignores hers, she is so unsure, apparently, of the rightness of Democratic ideas, that she believes she can't sell them to the very people who voted for them.
What did we ordinary voting Democrats ever do to deserve two such lily-livered Congressional leaders?
Now, Reid's being MIA isn't so hard to understand. He's a Democratic Senator from the Republican state of Nevada and he's up for reelection in two years. And, oh yes, Tom Daschle, the former Democratic Majority Leader of the Senate and another Democrat in a Republican state (South Dakota) lost his reelection. So Reid doesn't want to upset his Republican voters. (Why Democrats would elect as Majority Leader a man beholden to Republican voters is a matter only a political shrink could explain.)
But Pelosi's inability or unwillingness to fight Republicans is harder to understand. She comes from a liberal district in one of the most liberal cities in the country, San Francisco. Yet, since she became Majority Leader, bipartisanship (read: appease the Republicans at all costs) has for her, as for Obama, been a mantra. She apparently believes, even after an overwhelming Democratic win in Nov. 2008, that the Republicans and Independents who switched parties really still believe in Republican policies. Republicans play to their base. Pelosi not only ignores hers, she is so unsure, apparently, of the rightness of Democratic ideas, that she believes she can't sell them to the very people who voted for them.
What did we ordinary voting Democrats ever do to deserve two such lily-livered Congressional leaders?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
