I have been watching the conversation on the stimulus package with interest. As the debate has gone on a graphic depiction of the problem is etched in my mind.
It is an analysis of the income disparity within the US:
Yes the bottom of the graph is wrong, it should be below 100K-but the bottom line is still the same. Rich bastards are getting a lot richer while the rest of us deal with about the same money as we always did.
Which is why I find it hard to cry salt tears when dickheads Senators like Mitch McConnell cry the blues: “The only thing we know for sure is that it increases our debt and locks in bigger and bigger interest payments every year. In short, we’re taking an enormous risk with other people’s money.”
Funny, he did not have the same heartburn while Bush was spending over 1 TRILLION dollars on a stupid and unnecessary war. What makes it bad is that these are the same individuals who are now decrying “the debt we are putting on our children”-when only four short years ago, they were more than happy to burden our children with just as much debt-to finance a war for worthless Arabs. Who in the end could care less about us.
So maybe you can see why appeals to my better nature about the national debt fall on some deaf ears. ” So let me get this straight, its OK to spend billions on a war for worthless Arabs-but its not OK to spend money to help real Americans. And why is that exactly?”
BTW, the issue is not whether the war in Iraq was right or not. ( It wasn’t). It is about the fact that if you have to do something-you have to pay the bill for it. We should have charged a dollar a gallon tax on gasoline, or on businesses to pay for the war that protected them.
A bill is still a bill.
I’d rather do something to help Americans than I would to help Iraqis, that’s for sure. ( although maybe if we had leveled Baghdad up front in 2003-we would be better off now).
The Republicans new found love of fiscal responsibility is a hollow one. And for that they deserve a beating with one of these:
Will the stimulus bill work? I’m not sure. However that was never the point was it really?
The point was to show the American public that someone, anyone, in a position of public trust-cared about more than some rich, greedy, Wall Street banker. In that regard, I find incredible fault with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. They should both be taken out in back of the Congress and shot. Poorly begun is poorly done and Obama needs to shoot Ms. Pelosi for being a horse’s ass. ( I would have used the “C” word-but I know c**ts who are better than her. I even hold Pelosi in lower esteem than Sarah Palin and that is a saying a lot). Had Pelosi not been so stupid and not allowed the House Democrats to load up the bill with projects that may have been worthy in their own right, but had no business in this particular piece of legislation-we all would have been better off.
Plus, nobody has made an effective case to me for the tax cuts. The issue of the bill is to allow the government to replace stupid businessmen as consumers. All tax cuts do is allow, people to take money and stuff it away. Good for them-bad for the economy. You can be damn sure that all I am going to do with any tax rebate is put it in a money market. Why?
Because the worst is yet to come.
I have mixed feelings myself about the package. I think a stimulus bill is necessary-but then again, I think the idea of a “shot in the arm” for the economy is moonshine. I think that what we are really looking at is the government becoming the replacement consumer-making up for the lack of consumption by people and business for a while till they can get their courage back. There is nothing wrong with that, but it would be nicer if I could feel the government was buying the right things to create the right kind of jobs.As they said in Goodfellas”
Fuck you-pay me!
Actually, if it were me- I would pass a bill that would grow the economy, not just stimulate it. I’d invest in high speed trains like they have in Japan. invest in space and defense-which creates really good jobs at high wages. Work on roads, but more importantly do what it took to fix housing. A lot of whose distress has come because house prices are simply too high.
So if I could, I’d do this to house loans and the other facets of the cost of living:
Why did people get themselves in bad loans? Because they could not get into a decent place to live for an affordable price. Or rather, their expectations about what was a reasonable place to live was too DAMN HIGH! Tell me again why folks need 4 bedroom monstrosities for 700,000 dollars?
A side note-that I find disturbing for a whole bunch of reasons-all of the really big houses in our neighborhood are owned by non Caucasian people. There’s a reason for that, its probably not a good one. Go back and reread the previous paragraph. That did not say what I meant to say.
There is a point where both overseas, and at home-the US is going to have to reign in its appetite. That day has arrived, and we actually may be better off in smaller more affordable places to live. Particularly since whatever jobs that are created are not going to pay the bill for the houses we have.
So forgive me if I have no sympathy for the Republicans right now. They are gambling that the stimulus will fail. If it does-they look like heroes. If it doesn’t-they will look like the uncaring rich bastards they are. I’m rooting for the latter to happen.
The other 99% of us need more than lip service.
Speaking of stimulation by the way: