Obama's Katrina
Dionysus
HEAD: Obama's Katrina
By James Pinkerton
The economy is shaping up to be Barack Obama's Katrina. If President George
W. Bush was blamed for his slow response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 --
there was plenty of blame to go around, of course, but the disaster was on
Bush's watch--then Obama will get the blame for his slow response to the
current recession. The difference, of course, is that Katrina afflicted a
city and a few states, while the recession afflicts the whole country.
Unemployment is 9.5 percent and rising fast, certain to go higher than 10
percent. And what is the federal government doing about it? Not much.
And so House Republican Leader John Boehner makes a good point when he asks,
"Where are the jobs?"
On Sunday, Vice President Joe Biden said that the Obama administration had
"misread" the economic indicators. So what are they likely to do about it?
More of the same--which is to say, not much.
The problem the Democrats have--and come to think of it, the country has it,
too--is that even if you want to build something, you can't do it. That
is, you can't do it without plowing through years' worth of lawyers and
environmental-impact-statement-writers, nor without enduring endless
hearings and lawsuits where every last NIMBY gets a whack at the project.
And so even before this terrible recession, America's capacity actually to
build anything--build a highway, build a bullet train, build a power
plant -- had been crippled.
So piling on new money does no good, because the old money hasn't been
getting spent. Getting spent, that is, on bricks and mortar and technology,
as opposed to lawyers and consultants. In the past, "stimulus" was a way to
put blue collars and hardhats back to work. Yet now, the only people being
stimulated are white-collar lobbyists and litigators.
To be sure, Obama's federal government will spend a lot of money. The feds
are asking for $3.5 trillion for fiscal year 2010, and that's not counting
the $787 billion "stimulus" package, as well as trillions in funny-money
income transfers to big banks--including such improbable "banks" as General
Electric, parent company to NBC, MSNBC, and CNBC--through shadowy
organizations, such as the Federal Reserve Bank and the Federal Deposit
Insurance Corporation.
But all that money is pushing the wettest of wet noodles--because
governments, surrounded as they are by Greens and NIMBYs, can't do anything.
On May 27, more than three months after President Obama signed the American
Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 into law, USA Today reported that a
grand total of $2 million of stimulus money had spent in Michigan, the
hard-hit state with the nation's highest unemployment rate. That works out
to 21 cents per Michigander. How much stimulus is that?
And just this morning, The Big Money reports that only $55 billion of the
$400 billion in non-tax-break stimulus money has been spent. Jobless
Americans might ask: What are you waiting for? Indeed, every American might
ask the same question. Because all Americans would benefit from new roads,
new train tracks, new windmills--anything at all.
Democrats are starting to notice that the fiscal contraption of government
leaks more fuel than it burns. "We're disappointed," House Majority Leader
Steny Hoyer on "FOX News Sunday." We're looking at ways to get the money out
more quickly.
Well yes, that would be a good idea. And so Democrats might learn from
their own past. Confronted with 25 percent unemployment in March 1933,
here's the agenda that Franklin D. Roosevelt set for the country in his
first inaugural address:
"Our greatest primary task is to put people to work . . . treating the task
as we would treat the emergency of war, but at the same time, through this
employment, accomplishing greatly needed projects to stimulate and
reorganize the use of our national resources."
But of course, it's deeds, not words, that matter, and FDR and the New Deal
delivered. In his 1990 book, "Our Country: The Shaping of America From
Roosevelt to Reagan" Michael Barone offers one of the best overviews of five
decades of recent U.S. history. Barone recounted the effectiveness of the
New Deal in combating unemployment. By January 1934, less than a year after
Roosevelt took office, the Civil Works Administration employed 4.25 million
people, fully eight percent of the national labor force. In fact, over the
entire course of the the Depression, unemployment peaked in the month that
Roosevelt came into office.
Was there waste, or fraud, or abuse in all this New Deal spending? Sure. But
there was also a huge renaissance in public works around the country, from
the Triborough Bridge in New York to the Golden Gate Bridge in California.
And New Deal programs such as the Rural Electrification Administration and
the Tennessee Valley Authority literally lit up (as well as cooled) life for
tens of millions of Americans.
Conservatives were horrified, of course, but most Americans cheered. Not
only was Roosevelt re-elected three times, but the Democrats kept control of
both houses of Congress all during the 30s and well into the 40s. And by the
way, during the 30s and 40s, America built up the industries that not only
won World War II and the Cold War, but also created the consumer abundance
that we enjoyed for decades thereafter.
So something must have gone right for New Deal Democrats.
By contrast, today's Democrats are not really interested in building things.
They are demonstrably more interested in bailing out banks, and keeping
environmentalists happy. Bankers, of course, deal in intangibles; they make
money without regard to where physical goods are manufactured--although
bankers know that goods are likely to be cheaper in China, so that's their
preference. And the environmentalists, of course, oppose just about
everything. Thus we have the "green-green alliance" -- green as in the
color of money, and green as in Greenpeace. Together, these allies are
working to pastoralize the United States. We can create meadows and forests,
but not jobs.
And if that's the goal, so what if unemployment rises? So what if the real
economy contracts? That's a small price to pay for elite Democrats, who
hold those other, non-productive green objectives closer to their hearts.
Thus the "cap-and-trade" legislation, which passed two weeks ago in the
House of Representatives, is a perfect exemplar of the modern Democratic
mindset: The green environmentalists are happy, because carbon-based energy
production is restricted, and greenback-minded Wall Streeters are happy,
too, because traders will make billions trading trillions' worth of
funny-money carbon contracts.
But there is a catch: People don't have jobs now, and they won't get them in
the future if Obama spends money that doesn't stimulate--and then seeks to
choke what remains of the productive economy through environmental
regulation.
And that, surely, is that a misreading of what the American people will vote
for in 2010 and 2012.
This is Obama's Katrina. You read it here first.
*******************
"At what point then, is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer that
if it ever reach us, it must spring from amongst us; it cannot come from
abroad. If destruction be our lot, we ourselves must be the authors and
finishers. As a nation of free men, we must live through our times or die by
suicide." - Abraham Lincoln
Dionysus
Michael Coburn
> FROM FOX NEWS
>
> HEAD: Obama's Katrina
> By James Pinkerton
>
>
> The economy is shaping up to be Barack Obama's Katrina. If President
> George W. Bush was blamed for his slow response to Hurricane Katrina in
> 2005 -- there was plenty of blame to go around, of course, but the
> disaster was on Bush's watch--then Obama will get the blame for his slow
> response to the current recession. The difference, of course, is that
> Katrina afflicted a city and a few states, while the recession afflicts
> the whole country.
The difference, of course, is that Bush did not have a lock step moron
political (whats left of the Republican idiots) party standing in the way
of doing what was/is necessary. Bush had a totally free hand in dealing
with Katrina and any problem he had was coming from his own moronic base.
> Unemployment is 9.5 percent and rising fast, certain to go higher than
> 10 percent. And what is the federal government doing about it? Not
> much. And so House Republican Leader John Boehner makes a good point
> when he asks, "Where are the jobs?"
He should be addressing that question to the people who offshored all of
them and created a huge financial bubble and not to Obama or the CURRENT
Democrats.
> On Sunday, Vice President Joe Biden said that the Obama administration
> had "misread" the economic indicators. So what are they likely to do
> about it? More of the same--which is to say, not much.
The Democrats wanted MORE stimulus and the Republicans wanted less. Now
the Republicans in typical fashion blame the Democrats because the
stimulus was insufficient.
> The problem the Democrats have--and come to think of it, the country has
> it, too--is that even if you want to build something, you can't do it.
> That is, you can't do it without plowing through years' worth of lawyers
> and environmental-impact-statement-writers, nor without enduring endless
> hearings and lawsuits where every last NIMBY gets a whack at the
> project. And so even before this terrible recession, America's capacity
> actually to build anything--build a highway, build a bullet train, build
> a power plant -- had been crippled.
The typical Republican distraction and straw. These problems have been
constant and are not the CAUSE of the current malady, not or they the
solution to the current malady. Yet the lying pigs must ink the water,
reinvent the language, and lie constantly to defend their previous and
continuing malfeasance and indict the current storekeepers.
> So piling on new money does no good, because the old money hasn't been
> getting spent. Getting spent, that is, on bricks and mortar and
> technology, as opposed to lawyers and consultants. In the past,
> "stimulus" was a way to put blue collars and hardhats back to work. Yet
> now, the only people being stimulated are white-collar lobbyists and
> litigators.
This is actually a half truth. It is better than the typical Republican
no truth. The money has indeed been slow to "tickle out" and that is
something that must be addressed very quickly. It may even be necessary
to have another DIRECT stimulus disguised as a one time tax cut in order
to slide it past the moronic Republicans.
What has happened is that the people in state governments who have to
"let" the contracts for the "shovel ready projects" are being furloughed
to address the decrease in state tax revenues. That decrease has been
brought about by the depression. As the state governments can't print
money like the US government and can't just raise taxes at the drop of a
hat their only recourse is to _CUT_ spending. And those spending cuts
deepen the depression and forestall the "shovel ready" projects.
The next card to be played will should be a direct revenue sharing
stimulus to the states in order to stop the shutdowns of state programs.
There are no doubt some state programs that _should_ be shut down. But
this ain't the time.
> To be sure, Obama's federal government will spend a lot of money. The
> feds are asking for $3.5 trillion for fiscal year 2010, and that's not
> counting the $787 billion "stimulus" package, as well as trillions in
> funny-money income transfers to big banks--including such improbable
> "banks" as General Electric, parent company to NBC, MSNBC, and
> CNBC--through shadowy organizations, such as the Federal Reserve Bank
> and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
>
> But all that money is pushing the wettest of wet noodles--because
> governments, surrounded as they are by Greens and NIMBYs, can't do
> anything.
The current problem is with the state governments and the necessity of
their budget balancing.
> On May 27, more than three months after President Obama signed the
> American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 into law, USA Today
> reported that a grand total of $2 million of stimulus money had spent in
> Michigan, the hard-hit state with the nation's highest unemployment
> rate. That works out to 21 cents per Michigander. How much stimulus is
> that?
The auto industry is a big part of the Michigan economy. Yet the bailout
of that industry is not counted by the rightarded as a stimulus for
Michigan. A typical pig story.
> And just this morning, The Big Money reports that only $55 billion of
> the $400 billion in non-tax-break stimulus money has been spent. Jobless
> Americans might ask: What are you waiting for? Indeed, every American
> might ask the same question. Because all Americans would benefit from
> new roads, new train tracks, new windmills--anything at all.
This is a valid point. I want to applaud it. I feel like calling a
press conference and getting the magazine guys in here. The government
is going to have to bring more of that stimulus money forward and spend
it NOW.
> Democrats are starting to notice that the fiscal contraption of
> government leaks more fuel than it burns. "We're disappointed," House
> Majority Leader Steny Hoyer on "FOX News Sunday." We're looking at ways
> to get the money out more quickly.
I should certainly hope so.
> Well yes, that would be a good idea. And so Democrats might learn from
> their own past. Confronted with 25 percent unemployment in March 1933,
> here's the agenda that Franklin D. Roosevelt set for the country in his
> first inaugural address:
>
> "Our greatest primary task is to put people to work . . . treating the
> task as we would treat the emergency of war, but at the same time,
> through this employment, accomplishing greatly needed projects to
> stimulate and reorganize the use of our national resources."
Nothing wrong with that.
> But of course, it's deeds, not words, that matter, and FDR and the New
> Deal delivered.
Another call to the wire services!!!!!!! A rightard ADMITS that stimulus
is the appropriate action.
Not bad.... Not bad...
I'm impressed. The last part of this rag is actually pretty good.
--
"Those are my opinions and you can't have em" -- Bart Simpson
Dionysus
"Michael Coburn" <mik...@verizon.net> wrote in message
news:h32l8...@news2.newsguy.com...
> On Wed, 08 Jul 2009 08:14:09 -0400, Dionysus wrote:
>
>> FROM FOX NEWS
>>
>> HEAD: Obama's Katrina
>> By James Pinkerton
>>
>>
>> The economy is shaping up to be Barack Obama's Katrina. If President
>> George W. Bush was blamed for his slow response to Hurricane Katrina in
>> 2005 -- there was plenty of blame to go around, of course, but the
>> disaster was on Bush's watch--then Obama will get the blame for his slow
>> response to the current recession. The difference, of course, is that
>> Katrina afflicted a city and a few states, while the recession afflicts
>> the whole country.
>
> The difference, of course, is that Bush did not have a lock step moron
> political (whats left of the Republican idiots) party standing in the way
> of doing what was/is necessary. Bush had a totally free hand in dealing
> with Katrina and any problem he had was coming from his own moronic base.
Your vile bile is of no consequence. I am again reminded your ill humours
are caused by diabetes and arthritis and a truly repugnant disposition; they
power your vulgar misanthropy.
I also know the anonymity of the Internet is the source of your bravado and
if we were in the same room, you'd keep your head in a subservient, downward
alignment, and would call me "sir."
Dionysus
lorad
> FROM FOX NEWS
>
> HEAD: Obama's Katrina
> By James Pinkerton
>
> The economy is shaping up to be Barack Obama's Katrina. If President George
> W. Bush was blamed for his slow response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 --
> there was plenty of blame to go around, of course, but the disaster was on
> Bush's watch--
So was Bush's emgineered economic meltdown of 2008.. wheich we are
still experiencing.
PS: The only way to save the US is to junk 'free trade' (the neocon
WTO)
Dionysus
"lorad" <lora...@cs.com> wrote in message
news:2f1d8d0c-1aa1-40f1...@c36g2000yqn.googlegroups.com...
***********
Your spelling is as atrocious as your understanding of economics.
"Every government interference in the economy consists of giving an unearned
benefit, extorted by force, to some men at the expense of others." --Ayn
Rand
Dionysus
Lamont Cranston
Irony, anyone?
>
> "Every government interference in the economy consists of
> giving an
> unearned benefit, extorted by force, to some men at the
> expense of
> others." --Ayn Rand
>
> Denis
Now there's a real economics expert -- Ayn Rand. ROTFLMAO!
You wingnut kookers are funny, Denis.