Take this design, but make it ten times larger. Build a few hundred of them. Then, with unemployed citizens at the controls, converge on the Capitol, and make it clear that tax cuts are of no use to the unemployed, the homeless, and those bankrupted by health care costs. The "stimulus" bill, a bastard child of phony bipartisanship in which three Republican senators are able to compromise the will of the American people and make a full 35% of the stimulus a series of tax cuts, reflects the total corruption of our political system. The Democrats, too timid and dumb to assert their power--given to them by the people--have allowed the Republicans to dictate the terms of this package, which is too small and terribly misdirected.This is a scandalous crime! The need is for jobs, jobs, jobs! God damn it, how many times do I have to scream at the Obama administration that you should not waste time or energy trying to compromise with people who are fanatical ideologues who would rather destroy a nation than face the reality of their own failures and the sheer idiocy of their belief that tax cuts solve everything.
A thousand giant spider robots. How cool is that? Robots are beautiful. Spider robots are magnificent.
4 comments:
Give me a fuckin break. Still blaming the Repugs?!?!? The Demonrats wrote this fucking disaster of a "stimulus". It is the Demonrats that have assured that my children and my grandchildren will be paying for failed policies on both sides of the isle. This 1,071 page pork spending bill is a fucking train wreck. I wonder exactly how many of our elite congress will actually bother to read this nightmare before voting?
I blame both side for this fiasco, but how you can only blame the Repugs is beyond me. Last I checked the Demonrats have had congressional power for over two years now.
C.
May I quote myself in this post and suggest that you reread it: "The Democrats, too timid and dumb to assert their power--given to them by the people--have allowed the Republicans to dictate the terms of this package, which is too small and terribly misdirected."
The Dems failed--I blame them and not the Republicans, because Obama could have learned from the Repubs that power ought to be used, not negotiated. Obama and the Democrats have more of a mandate that Bush ever did, yet Bush was much more effective at jamming legislation through, again thanks to the limpness of the Dems spines. Now that they are actually in power, they still act like they've been beaten and are begging not to be thrashed again.
Reid and Pelosi are disasters, and Obama is too cautious. So I'm not blaming the Republicans for doing what they do when the Dems fail to act. I'm blaming the Dems for failing to assert themselves, knowing fully that the Republicans are not interested in compromise but only on domination, or sabotage.
If someone tries to reason with a hungry bear, he gets his head ripped off. That's not the bear's fault, you dig? So I'm blaming the Dems for thinking that reasoning with ideologues is somehow useful.
Oh yeah--it was the Repubs who took us into this massive debt, expansion of government, two wars, and the current recession. Obama's been in office three weeks. Do you really think he's supposed to fix it all by Valentine's Day?
I understand your point, but the fact is that the Dems wrote this bill....you dig?? The final version was released last Thursday night at 11:00 pm, and it was passed on Friday. So much for Obama's new era of transparency. This is the single largest spending bill EVER in fucking history, and the American people get less than 24 hrs to review this before it is rammed down our collective throats. I have an inkling that had the Repubs passed a grossly irresponsible bill like this monstrosity you would have blown a circuit or two. But nope, you are blaming the spineless Dems. I do agree that it was largely the GOP that got us into this mess with the single largest expansion of federal government under their watch. (I still think it was the Dems and Clinton that started the whole sub-prime housing mess which is a whole other debate.) The Dems are taking this expansion to a whole new level that we may never recover from. I am not an expert on the economy, but I am pretty well versed on American history, and NEVER in our nation’s history has massive government spending got us out of a recession. Our most prosperous times as a nation were when taxes were low. In all developed countries we have the second highest corporate tax rate. Gee why would companies out source to India or other developing countries?
I also find it comical that many on the left criticized Bush and the GOP of fear-mongering after 9/11, when it seems to me the Obama administration has done the exact same thing with the economy. Seriously, we did not get into this recession overnight, so how is passing a TRILLION dollar spending bill literally overnight going help? (Most of the spending doesn’t even occur until 2010 and later.) I would think a guy as smart as Obama would want to look at this from several angles before ramming this crap through with no oversight what-so-ever. As I have said in the past…meet the new boss….same as the old boss. This bill is a fucking joke, and the American people are partially to blame by voting most of these same asshats back into office when they had a hand in getting us into this mess. Fuck em all.
In 2010, I am voting every single incumbent out regardless of party.
And no, I don't expect Obama to fix this mess quickly. He is betting his presidency on the effectiveness of this bill. I hope I am wrong, but I think he just sealed his fate.
C.
Now I find this curious--you're angrier about the stimulus bill than about the six years the Repubs held both houses of Congress and the eight that they held the White House that led to the situation in which some sort of stimulus bill was needed. This is like blaming the firemen for using too much water to put out the fire the arsonists set.
As to no federal spending bill getting us out of a recession/depression, even if the current right-wing talking points falsely assert that the New Deal didn't work, WWII was indeed a massive federal spending spree that certainly ended a long downturn. Like it or not, when the free market fucks up big time, usually because crooks hate reasonable regulation (remember the S&L bailout under George Herbert Walker Bush?), the only entity that can fix it is the government. Look how suddenly all the big banks and auto makers become socialists when they lose, but never when they are accumulating massing profits. I
f the private market is so perfect and government so evil, why not let ExxonMobile bail out the banks? Or just let nature take its course in a true free market approach and let massive unemployment and deflation stabilize prices and wages in a decade or so?
As to our most prosperous times being when taxes were low, I suggest you visit the tax tables from the Eisenhower era when corporate taxes and taxes on wealth were much higher, and yet the growth in the US was spectacular. This was when rates on personal income were as high as 90 percent! Also, why did the economy do so well in the 1990s after Clinton raised taxes and was attacked for bringing on a financial Armageddon?
Regarding fear-mongering, Iraq was no threat at all to Americans, but right now unemployment, wage stagnation, and financial ruin are at a lot of doorsteps. Iraq was an abstraction while these things are imminent and quite real. Every day I hear of yet more layoffs, and in my own town and state people are being furloughed, retail businesses are shutting down, and the food banks cannot keep up.
Funny how Osama bin Laden still has his job. Do you still have yours?
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