Day: October 20, 2009

Whose Idea Was It?

For over a week now there has been a war of words between FOX News and the White House…..which moron thought this would be a good idea?

Of all the issues that need addressing by the White House….they spend their time swatting at a fly, in this case it is FOX News.  The AP has touched on this situation:

White House unhappiness had been building. The president himself said there is “one television station that is entirely devoted to attacking my administration.” Fox’s coverage of health care demonstrations over the summer, former administration official Van Jones and the community activists ACORN clearly knocked the administration off stride.

The White House blog attacked Fox commentator Glenn Beck for “lies.”

Several critics have questioned the wisdom of Obama’s approach.

“Whether or not you like Fox News, all of us in the press need to be concerned about the administration of President Barack Obama trying to `punish’ the cable news channel for its point of view,” wrote television critic David Zurawik in the Baltimore Sun.

The people voted for a man of vision and wisdom….but the kids play that they are doing now….shows neither wisdom nor vision……people voted for change, but somehow this is not what they thought change would look like.

I realize politicians think their sh!t does not stink, but petty name calling and childish little games is not what they should be involved in at this time or for that matter any time.  But come on dudes…you are giving their accusations and lies credence when you attack them outright…..do to FOX what you guys do to the people and their wants..IGNORE THEM!

All IN Or All Out!

Daily Agitator

Or as I like to call it…the Federal Agitator……

I have heard all the slang….corporate welfare….vampire capitalism….generational theft……you have heard them all also….maybe my memory is a little longer than yours….but it has all been out there for months or longer.  But what are they talking about?  These are all so cute little slogans that mean nothing.  Instead of trying to explain stuff to the public, politicians, economists and others resort to lame labels to daze and confuse….so far they have been very successful.

Let us take it from the top……corporate welfare…..thanx to wiki for the definition:

a pejorative term describing a government’s bestowal of money grants, tax breaks, or other special favorable treatment on corporations or selected corporations. The term compares corporate subsidies and welfare payments to the poor, and implies that corporations are much less needy of such treatment than the poor.

Then there is the term “vampire capitalism”….originally it was a Marxists term for the way they saw capitalism working…draining the life blood out of the worker and the economy.  It has been resurrected recently as a defining term for the TARP and TALF.

Then we come to the phrase “generational theft”….one that the conservatives love when attacking Obama and his policies…..The Republican response to President Obama’s stimulus package and budget proposals have been nothing but predictable. They warn us that we are about to “saddle our children and grandchildren with debt,” debt so profound that it amounts to “generational theft.”

But in this case it can be used to describe the money that the government has thrown at the banks….somewhere the grand total will be about $23+ trillion and that would be a huge chunk of generational theft…it stole savings…it stole retirement…it stole school accounts…it lessened the amount of money that family’s have on hand for those important issues…

All this claptrap is leading up to my point…..we should decide onced and for all….when it comes to the economy….we need to be ALL IN or ALL OUT…this teetering between a little here,  a lot there……there is a time, but beyond that we need to be clear on this situation.  Alan Fein writing in the Huffington Post back in March:

First, right now, debt is required. There seems to be a breathtaking consensus among economists that government debt is necessary now, because only government can create the kind of demand that will open the spigots clogged with cash hoarded by nervous banks and investors. A bank is afraid to make a loan to a steel company that would like to modernize and fire up a steel mill, if there are no orders for steel. If the steel company comes to the bank with a government contract for girders for overpasses on the interstate, the bank will loan the money, the mill will light up, workers will get paychecks, and they will spend at the local stores and groceries. Those stores and groceries will hire workers, buy goods from suppliers, who in turn will hire workers and buy goods. All this will flow from building things we actually need.

This economy and society needs for the government to be ALL IN…we either make the necessary adjustment in the economy or we do nothing and let the disastrous decisions of the companies that cause the downturn,  work their magic….

As far as generational theft goes…it is a piece of crap to even hint at such a thing….Fein made a good point:

But there is another reason that this kind of debt is not “generational theft”: Unlike the run-up of government debt over the last eight years, the Obama plan is to spend money on things that will actually benefit the next generation. If we borrow money like the Bush Administration did, and in the end you have nothing to pass on to the next generation except for new bridges and schools in Baghdad badly built by a Halliburton subsidiary, that’s generational theft. If, on the other hand, we build schools, bridges, power grids and infrastructure here in the United States, we are creating wealth and the means of more production that our children and grandchildren will actually use. If we borrow money to repair parts of the federal interstate system so that bridges don’t fall down when our children and grandchildren drive over them, that’s not generational theft. If we borrow money to shore up the levees and wetlands that would protect the next generations of New Orleans-ers, that’s not generational theft.

If the government cannot go ALL IN then their best action would be ALL OUT and we can sit back and watch the recession become a depression and the US become not much more than a 3rd world nation…with all the trappings of the 3rd world….low education, bad health, hunger, no industrial output, etc…..

Is It A Tax Increase?

Taxes…Taxes….Who gets the taxes?

Congress has been all a twitter (pun intended) about the tax increases proposed by the Obama admin and then the admin shakes its head and promises NO new taxes….the question is….is there tax increases or not?

If it is a government program, whether Dem or Repub, it will contain tax increases…but sometimes they are hidden by flowery language….but a tax increase by any other name is still just that…a TAX INCREASE.

And the Baucus bill that was voted on does just that…though it is not a final draft, it will help word the final bill.

Page 29, sentence one of the bill introduced by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont) says: “The consequence for not maintaining insurance would be an excise tax.”

And the rest of the bill is clear that the Finance Committee does, in fact, consider it a tax: “The excise tax would be assessed through the tax code and applied as an additional amount of Federal tax owed.”

The bill requires every American, with few exceptions, to carry health insurance. To enforce this individual mandate, the Senate Finance Committee created the excise tax as a penalty for people who don’t have insurance – and it can run as much as $3,800 a year per family.

Even the House draft has wording that is a tax, it is just that plain and that simple:

The House bill also refers to the penalties for not carrying insurance as a tax. It calls for a “tax on individuals without acceptable health care coverage” and amends the tax code to implement it.

Conservatives Dems wanted it, the bill, to be deficit neutral and about the best way to do that is to raise taxes…in some fashion or another.
I want the politicians to STOP playing these damn silly games…..ALL programs, whether from Conservs or liberals, have to be funded….and who do you think is the funding mechanism?  (I will give pause for thought).
My point is that no matter which of the power elites are in power….taxes are the revenue needed to fund the government…..taxes will go up and those in the power offices will deny that it is taxes…..no matter what you call it people….you will pay and pay and…….it is not a Repub thing or a Dem thing…it is just simply….REALITY.