Day: February 16, 2010

Bullsh*t Ideas!

In the last year there has been a number bullsh*t ideas that have been offered to the people as solutions to problems…..to me they are just what they smell like….MANURE!

Here are some of the more smelly of the lot…….

The new idea (pause here for laughter) of giving the shareholders the vote on whether CEOs can get a bonus….sounds like a good idea…correct?  try agin it is BS!  Why?  Most of the shares held are held by funds of some sort and they will decide who gets the cash…YOU have very little to say about it…..it is crap!

Next is the inevitable idea of privatizing Social Security….yet again…this is a continuous thing for the Repus….they have hated SS since the beginning and eventually they will get their way and the seniors in the U S will be f*cked!  If they had their way every accdount for retirement would have been wiped out inn the latest economic thing….but they try and try….and soon they will get their way….

Now on to one of my favs…the health savings Acount (HSA)…..a proposal to let people have a health account instead of real reform….this helps NO one but the banks and funds….futhermore the next economic crisis will wioe these accounts out just like the one now wiped out many 401ks…..another Repub idea to destroy the middle class (my opinion)….

Allowing corporations to fully fund political campaigns…the conservs on the Supreme Court is allowing this….the Congress is attempting to lessen this but time will tell…..for now corporations have it all….

Finally, I recently heard yet another inevtiable proposal…..Conservs say that lowering the corporation taxes will create jobs…..the figure they use is corporate tax is a  bout 30-35% in the US…one of the highest in the world….but the proponents of this fail to mention all the tax breaks and incentives that corporations already get from the government…in reality the “real” tax is much much lower…but yet it is proposed everytime the word deficit is mentioned…….

As usual there is always more and more BS proposals….this one is yet another GOP stand-by…..reduce the payroll taxes…..you know what that means, right?  Cut payroll taxes and the government will have less money to spend of pet projects from the Congress….it would also mean less deductions for FICA….which would make it even less solvent than now….which would make it easier to kill the program altogether….this may well be the plan all along……

Most of these BS ideas are inevitable….especially from the GOP….but yet they have very little validity when working on real solutions to real problems….just your typical slogans, talking points and lies….but what’s new?

Don’t Look Now But It Is Not Over!

We hear daily conflicting reports on how the economy is doing….first it is good, then after adjustments, not so good….we hear that banks are paying out massive bonuses and still using taxpayer cash…..we hear lots of manure daily, weekly and monthly on the condition of the American economy……investors are thrilled at the news…but the rest of us wait for our turn for attention…

Neil Barofsky of the TARP Fund office sees something a little different than the media:

Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general for the US bank bailout, released his quarterly report to Congress Saturday, saying, “It is hard to see how any of the fundamental problems in the [financial] system have been addressed to date.”

The document claimed that the financial system is more dangerous now than ever before because banks have reason to think the government will step in again when their speculative bets go bad. “Even if TARP saved our financial system from driving off a cliff back in 2008, absent meaningful reform, we are still driving on the same winding mountain road, but this time in a faster car,” Barofsky wrote.

Following the financial meltdown, the biggest banks grew even bigger as they bought up their failed rivals. As Barofsky put it in his report, “To the extent that huge, interconnected, ‘too big to fail’ institutions contributed to the crisis, those institutions are now even larger, in part because of the substantial subsidies provided by TARP and other bailout programs.”

The report emphasized that, despite the trillions of dollars provided by the bailout, the banks have continued to decrease lending. Barofsky stated, “Although there was this public disclosure that the purpose of these programs was to increase lending, very little, if anything, was done to encourage or direct lending.”

The report does not sound too cheery about the future of the economy…….it seems that the same conditions that caused the economic problems are still there and waiting for the next chance to throw a monkey wrench into the machinery of the economy…..no amount of cash thrown at a problem will solve it if the underlying conditions remain…it is NOT rocket science….it is common sense….