Day: February 10, 2009

2009 Anal-Ocity

And yet they just continue to pop their chops…..some of the best quotes have come out of the mouths of Texans….and the beat goes on.

In an interview with National Journal’s Hotline, Republican Rep. Pete Sessions of Texas suggested his party could follow the model of the Taliban in its legislative battles.

“Insurgency, we understand perhaps a little bit more because of the Taliban,” Sessions said. “And that is that they went about systematically understanding how to disrupt and change a person’s entire processes. And these Taliban — I’m not trying to say the Republican Party is the Taliban. No, that’s not what we’re saying. I’m saying an example of how you go about [sic] is to change a person from their messaging to their operations to their frontline message. And we need to understand that insurgency may be required when the other side, the House leadership, does not follow the same commands, which we entered the game with.”

I cannot make this stuff up…it just keeps getting better and better

Random Thoughts

The continuing series of notes that I took and they did not necessarily make it into a post but that I still want to put them here for others to see and comment on.  Knock yourselves out…have fun….

1–Did Friday the 13th really need to be a re-make?

2–Is it me or does Rove and Rush look a lot a like?

3–Wassup with an Obama Chia Pet?  Is it cute or is it a bit racist?

4–Postal Service would like to cut delivery to 5 days a week.

5–I think we should keep Gitmo open—but use it to house all the Wall Street CEOs….sound like a good plan?

6–a statue celebrating the shoe thrown at Bush has appeared in Tikirt, Iraq.

7–NYC is considering a law ban the use of salt in restaurants.  Let me see no smoking, no trans fats, no cel usage while walking, will they come tuck me in at night and bring me my cocoa?

8–Iran launches first space debris, oh sorry, satelite(?).  A new space race begins?

9–A-Rod lied then apologizes …..why do these guys like politicians see the errors of their ways only after they get caught lying their fool heads off?

10-Rhiana gets the crap beat out of her by “nice guy” Chris Brown.  Why?  She is way too HOT to ever wanna hit.

What Is Behind The “Bad Bank” Idea?

The deepening recession is at least partly a product of a prolonged crisis in credit markets. Major banks have cut back on lending, unable or unwilling to part with their deposits. Even banks that have received billions of dollars in fresh capital from Washington have been slow to lend. That’s because their balance sheets, like those across the financial industry, are tainted by investments in complex securities that almost no one wants to buy, most of them tied to bundles of mortgages with rising default rates. Illiquid and losing value, these assets make it hard to judge a bank’s health. That uncertainty, in turn, makes it difficult for banks to raise money for new loans and investments.

The Bush administration sought to attack this problem in the fall with a new, $700-billion Troubled Asset Relief Program to buy the banks’ dicey holdings. It never followed through on that idea, but now the Obama administration is considering a similar approach that could be even more expensive. One plan being floated would have the government create a “bad bank” that would acquire troubled assets from commercial banks, insurance companies and segments of the credit market. The strategy is aptly named, because it’s a bad idea.

Like the original TARP, the bad-bank idea has some merit. Rather than unloading assets (which might include securitized car loans and credit card debt in addition to mortgage-related investments) at fire-sale prices, this bank would wait for markets to recover, then sell them gradually. The theory is that many of the assets have real value, which would become easier to divine over time as foreclosures ebb and the economy rebounds. Meanwhile, scraping the sludge off lenders’ books would eliminate much of the mystery about their condition, enabling credit markets to return to normal and hastening the end of the recession.

Basically, what this is doing is helping banks to stabilize and horde their capital….I still have not found a way this will help anyone on Main Street..,,,Dammit!  You guys need to think demand not liquidity.  How many times has this got to be impressed on you before  real stimulus is tried?

As always Washington is playing a dangerous game with people’s lives and if they are not careful the Repubs will return to power in 2010…is that what you guys really want?

Stimulate, Not Spend!

Apparently CNN and I agree on this situation.  From a CNN commentary from Mitt Romney:

First, there are two ways you can put money into the economy, by spending more or by taxing less. But if it’s stimulus you want, taxing less works best. That’s why permanent tax cuts should be the centerpiece of the economic stimulus.

Repubs just cannot let go of the Laffer Curve theory—-spending will stimulate–I guess cutting taxes is all the GOP has at this time.

Second, any new spending must be strictly limited to projects that are essential. How do we define essential? Well, a good rule is that the projects we fund in a stimulus should be legitimate government priorities that would have been carried out in the future anyway, and are simply being moved up to create those jobs now.

Third, sending out rebate checks to citizens and businesses is not a tax cut. The media bought this line so far, but they’ve got it wrong. Checks in the mail are refunds, not tax cuts. We tried rebate checks in 2008 and they did virtually nothing to jump-start the economy. Disposable income went up, but consumption hardly moved.

Fourth, if we’re going to tax less and spend more to get the economy moving, then we have to make another commitment as well. As soon as this economy recovers, we have to regain control over the federal budget, and above all, over entitlement spending for programs such as Social Security and Medicare. This is more important than most people are willing to admit.

Fifth, we must begin to recover from the enormous losses in the capital investment pool. And the surest, most obvious way to get that done is to send a clear signal that there will be no tax increases on investment and capital gains. The 2001 and 2003 tax cuts should be extended permanently, or at least temporarily.

Okay Romney and I agree somewhat, but all the clap trap about tax cuts is wrong in my opinion.  We have had 7 years or more of them and we still find ourselves sucking air in the economy…..so if no one is buying why would businesses create supply that will just sit and rust?

So but if you want to create demand then all cash should go to those people making less than $25,000 a year, these peole will spend it, all of it.  Given to others in the middle class and it will go to savings or such…it will not stimulate the economy.

May I suggest that we stop lying to the people, someone is gonna pay higher taxes eventually….so start now and any damage to the deficit can be lessened.

Some Projects Are Shovel Ready

This is a piece that I found at the website of the Independent Institute written by Robt. Higgs.  He has done a pretty good job of breaking down the stimulus plan and what it contains.

Given the gargantuan amount of money being appropriated in this bill, you might think that it certainly must portend a great deal of economic stimulus, especially if you, like most Americans, labor under vulgar Keynesian misconceptions about the effects of government spending—you know, more government spending is always good (it has a “multiplier” effect) and more government debt is no problem (we’ll be dead before our kids and grandkids get saddled with the lion’s share of the burden of paying off this additional debt, directly or indirectly, and nobody really gives a damn about future generations, right? What did they ever do for us?).

Well, those might have been your feelings if you hadn’t bothered to look inside this stimulus-sausage factory, to see what ingredients go into the product. I can’t recite all of them here, complete with all of the preservatives and the spices, but some are as follows:

Amtrak, $1 billion; child-care subsidies, $2 billion; National Endowment for the Arts, $50 million; global-warming research, $400 million; carbon-capture demonstration projects, $2.4 billion; digital TV conversion coupons, $650 million; renewable energy funding, $8 billion; mass transit, $6 billion; new cars for the federal government, $600 million; modernizing federal buildings and other facilities, $7 billion. These items are only some of the small potatoes, however. Note that, in most cases, the amounts given are actually additions to amounts made available elsewhere in the budget.

Bigger-ticket items include: bridge repairs and other highway projects, $30 billion; broadband and electric-grid development, airports, and clean-water projects, $40 billion. Notice that these are the sorts of public-works projects usually implied when the legislation is discussed in general terms, yet they add up to less than 10 percent of the total spending.

Almost a third of the total spending is targeted for income-transfer programs, including: refundable tax credits, $82.7 billion; Medicaid, $81 billion; food stamps, $20 billion; public housing, $7.5 billion; COBRA insurance extension, $30.3 billion; unemployment insurance, $36 billion; and various others. Education will get $66 billion more than it gets elsewhere in the budget. The motto there: no education bureaucrat or teacher-union member left behind.

Call me old-fashioned, but when I gaze upon all of this booty, I don’t see stimulus; I see rip-off. The Democrats are using the alleged crisis as the pretext for a monumental looting of the taxpayers (present and future) in the service of rewarding—whuda thunk?—the interest groups that put them in power.

All of this comes, of course, close on the heels of the gigantic Republican rip-off of last October’s bailout bill, by which we peasants were plundered to transfer hundreds of billions of dollars to the owners, managers, and creditors of banks and other financial institutions—all under the pretext, of course, that the impending financial catastrophe meant that “something had to be done” at once.

Well, something was damn sure done then, and something even worse is being done now. The list of beneficiaries from these piratical actions differs, to be sure, but the common denominator remains: ROBBERY—robbery most foul, and on an almost unthinkably grand scale.

With all the exposure and the BS that is flung from both sides of the aisle it is difficult for the average person to get a good grasp on what is what.

Fairness Doctrine

Haven’t heard about the Doctrine? That’s because it’s a rule that was abolished more than 20 years ago by the FCC.

Yet, heated discussion about the Fairness Doctrine has recently circulated over the airwaves of both progressive and conservative talk radio programs.

Originally introduced in 1949, the Fairness Doctrine required broadcasters to allow time to discuss controversial topics of public interest. Stations were also required to air contrasting viewpoints of those matters, although equal time was not a part of the rule.

During the Reagan administration, the rule was abolished by the FCC, which argued the Doctrine hurt public interest rather than help it.

In the wake of a Democratic Party stronghold in Washington and the popularity of opinion-driven talk radio programs around the country, some AM radio hosts have expressed concern over a reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine.

Some Democrats in Congress, including House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi, have expressed support of the Fairness Doctrine. However, no legislation has made its way to the floor of either house in this session of Congress or the last.

But personally, I think it should be required that opposing points of view should be on all news shows and stations…..it is the only way the American people will know the whole story about the situation.  But on the other side of the coin, shows like those of Rush and Bill-o would probably lose part of their audience if truth and fairness were the rule.  Bashing does NOTHING but deepen any division in the electorate.