# Bachmann announces she's running **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [June 14, 2011, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bachmann-announces-shes-running/585382 "2011-06-14T01:22:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 15
**Author:** ![Recovering\_Republican](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d2c977/32.png) [@Recovering\_Republican](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Recovering_Republican)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2011, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bachmann-announces-shes-running/585382/281 "2011-07-03T16:20:32Z")
> [@SenorBeef](#): > > Haha yeah, any school that doesn’t demand you worship Jesus is definitely a liberal indoctrination camp. > > People who send their kids to private school are more affluent, they clearly care about their kids’ education, the schools themselves can afford to pay the best teachers, are more likely to have smarter kids etc. It’s these factors, and not the forced religion, that makes private schools come out ahead. You seem to think that if you just start forcing a mandatory state religion down someone’s throat, you’ll somehow carry over all these advantages, and there’s no reason to think so. Teaching kids falsehoods from the beginning is not a way to improve education, and if you just introduced religious education into all schools without all of the other advantages, you wouldn’t do anything to improve the situation. To start with, most people who send their kids to parochial schools aren’t “affluent”. My parents weren’t “affluent”. My dad was a sheet metal worker and my mom an art teacher. Real, blue collar folks. But they considered Catholic education to be important (even though today, two of their five kids are not practicing Catholics.) And obviously, you don’t know what a teacher at a parochial school gets paid. It is nowhere near the pay that a public school teacher gets. What I am not advocating is forcing religion, what I am advocating is competition. If you give parents a real choice, the education establishment, like any other service enterprise, would be forced to improve their service or face extinction. You would get more specialization, more gearing towards the needs of the child. Incidently, I don’t want the subject of education to bog down this thread, which should be about Bachmann, so I started a thread on education in “Great Debates”. Check it out. ---
**Author:** ![Recovering\_Republican](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d2c977/32.png) [@Recovering\_Republican](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Recovering_Republican)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2011, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bachmann-announces-shes-running/585382/282 "2011-07-03T16:27:48Z")
> [@Chicagojeff](#): > > Look I went to catholic school in Chicago as well.. (Ignatius if you were wondering) and if you want to inflict fiction on your child then either send them to Loyola or another church related school. YOU have that choice.. And we also have a choice as to whether we medicate our kids. My son was diagnosed with a mild form of Asperger’s when he was in first grade. My EX and I disagreed on somethings.. but not medicating the boy was not one of them. With time.. assistance and dedication it only shows up slightly socially. > As for religion class.. i enjoyed it with Sister Budesky.. great tales of a far off land. But when we signed up for Ignatius we kind of acknowledged that aspect. You go fooling around with religion in public schools then you’ll have the pentacostals fighting with the seventh day adventist ticking off the Jehovah Witnesses.. THATS EXACTLY what a teacher needs to deal with.. A couple points here. I’m not qualified to comment on your son’s case, but what I have seen is that a lot of kids who aren’t really that bad get medicated, to make them more pliable, not easier to teach. My own desire would be to chuck public education altogether, or at least make it have to compete on an even playing field. Parochial Schools do a good enough job where you and I can have this conversation- in writing. The ironic thing is that in Chicago, the public schools are so bad that non-Catholics are fighting to get their kids into Catholic schools. My niece even had a muslim girl in her class. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2011, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bachmann-announces-shes-running/585382/283 "2011-07-03T16:36:43Z")
> [@Recovering\_Republican](#): > > Okay, Bachmann- The thing is, she’s a lot closer to the mainstream than you guys think. […] I think she also represents the party’s fringe Error, error, does not compute. Abort, Retry, Fail ? ---
**Author:** ![Typo\_Knig](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/cdc98d/32.png) [@Typo\_Knig](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Typo_Knig)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2011, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bachmann-announces-shes-running/585382/284 "2011-07-03T16:36:59Z")
> [@Recovering\_Republican](#): > > My niece has ADHD. So does my brothers’ nephew, although I kind of doubt it. That kid can totally focus in on a video game or something he’s actually interested in. I’m sorry for your family, it’s a rough situation as I know all too well. My family therapist said that Attention Deficit Disorder is a poor name for what is really Attention _Regulation_ Disorder. I swear my daughter would not leave the computer if the house was burning down around her. > [@Recovering\_Republican](#): > > In my niece’s case, her mother didn’t let them drug her up on Ritalin. Instead the Catholic School she went to (the same one I went to 30 years ago) taught her concentration and study techniques. I hope those study and focus techniques are more modern and humane than the whack-the-kids-with-a-ruler approach that you and my wife experienced in Catholic schools. Based on my wife’s experience Catholic school teachers vary from fantastic to “don’t let this person in the same room as a student”. Just like teachers in any school. It is awfully hard to fire a nun … > [@Recovering\_Republican](#): > > I do think it’s over-diagnosed. I also think that the schools just find drugged kids easier to manage than unmedicated ones, Allow me to introduce you to my daughter, who has idiosyncratic reactions to just about med you give her - including antibiotics. Put her on amoxycillin for an ear infection and she’ll be psycho for a week. Easier to manage - I wish! > [@Recovering\_Republican](#): > > and frankly, if you are just sitting on your ass waiting for that big pension at 55, that’s awesome. Again, so what if 20% of them can’t read their diplomas. Not your problem. None of my kids teachers have been biding their time. My kids have have some bad teachers, but zero of them were just waiting for their pensions. And aren’t the Republicans trying to take away those barely adequate pensions? At the same time that CEO payout and giant bonuses on Wall Street are inviolate. :rolleyes: > [@Recovering\_Republican](#): > > Meanwhile, the Democratic Party keeps cashing those big checks from the NEA and AFT, and keeps getting loads of dependent graduating every year who vote Democratic Good - we’re back to politics! You do not want to compare the money and support from teachers to what the 'Pubbies get from Wall Street. Wall Street can give more money in 5 seconds than all of the teachers combined can in a year - or ten. It was not teachers who created the mortgage crisis, and leveraged the economy into the biggest crisis since the 1930s, it was Wall Street. > [@Recovering\_Republican](#): > > and if someone dares suggest “Hey, maybe little Johnny might do better at that Catholic School.” you get the ACLU out their screaming about some imaginary wall between Church and State. You went to Catholic school, so I can safely assume you are some sort of christian. Therefore, you have no idea what it’s like to be a religious minority in this country. Really, you don’t. The separation of church and state is one of the core features of our republic, that has kept us from descending into the sectarian violence that raged over Europe until WWII, in Ireland until very recently, and over the Middle East to this day. With that background can you not see that sending public tax money taken from people of every religion into the schools of one particular religion might be a problem? None the less, if your kid has identified _serious_ special needs that cannot be met in the public school system, you can get the kid placed in another school, under the requirement for a “free and appropriate public education”. I’ve not had to do this for my kids, and I’ve heard it can take a _lot_ of doing - meetings, doctors, parent advocates, lawyers. It is not done lightly or easily. I’ve only heard of it being done for severe cases after all other avenues have been exhausted. The target program must be shown to be more appropriate for the child, not just some hand-waiving that says school X will straighten the kid out. I have even heard of kids being placed from the public schools into a local religious school that specializes in Autism. ADHD is a more “routine” problem that schools can deal with. If the particular school or teacher is not working out, you as a parent can ask for changes. You’re pushing against the normal course of the system, so you have to work for it, but it can be done. A public education is not a gift card that guarantees you a full ride at Choate for zero money out of pocket. > [@Recovering\_Republican](#): > > And of course, as I point out, Democratic politicians NEVER inflict Public schools on their own kids. When I went to Catholic Schools here in Chicago, I got to hob-nob with the children of the Chicago Machine Elite, baby. “Ha-ha, your dad’s under indictment!” Good times. Don’t say “never” - Jimmy Carter sent his daughter Amy to DC public schools while he was in the White House. I’m sure there are local exceptions also. I roll my eyes at this also. I’m sure there are politicians living in my county who pay a ton of money to send their kids to tony private schools, when the kids would get as good an education, and have happier and more normal lives if they went to my county’s excellent public school system. ---
**Author:** ![Recovering\_Republican](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d2c977/32.png) [@Recovering\_Republican](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Recovering_Republican)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2011, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bachmann-announces-shes-running/585382/285 "2011-07-03T16:40:52Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > Error, error, does not compute. Abort, Retry, Fail ? Please read the statement in context… then maybe you’ll understand it. ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2011, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bachmann-announces-shes-running/585382/286 "2011-07-03T16:41:01Z")
> [@Recovering\_Republican](#): > > well perhaps you can win some of those extra seven states Obama was talking about, or Biden can go on TV, just like FDR did during the Great Depression. > > Oh, wait, THEIR mistakes don’t count. Dumb. There is a list of 32 gaffes by Bachmann just lately. Palin is a joke. Obama has misspoken. Do you believe he thinks there are more than 50 states? But Bachmann and Palin have shown an ignorance of history . You really should read the gaffes they have made and try and understand that not understanding the revolution, not knowing where Lexington and Concord are, not knowing about Reveres ride and so many other bits of stupidity ,show a real genuine lack of knowledge. Those are not just misspeaking. They are displays of ignorance. ---
**Author:** ![Recovering\_Republican](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d2c977/32.png) [@Recovering\_Republican](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Recovering_Republican)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2011, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bachmann-announces-shes-running/585382/287 "2011-07-03T16:59:59Z")
> [@Typo\_Knig](#): > > I hope those study and focus techniques are more modern and humane than the whack-the-kids-with-a-ruler approach that you and my wife experienced in Catholic schools. Based on my wife’s experience Catholic school teachers vary from fantastic to “don’t let this person in the same room as a student”. Just like teachers in any school. It is awfully hard to fire a nun … I look at the brighter side of the thing. I have so many fun “psycho nun” stories I can regale people with today. I have some of the imitations down pat, and I always get laughs with them. > [@](#): > > None of my kids teachers have been biding their time. My kids have have some bad teachers, but zero of them were just waiting for their pensions. And aren’t the Republicans trying to take away those barely adequate pensions? At the same time that CEO payout and giant bonuses on Wall Street are inviolate. :rolleyes: I’m not defending what goes on on Wall Street. I think the main reason I consider myself a “recovering” Republican is that the GOP have become the “Goons of Plutocracy” and put their interests above the rest of us. But the Guy I’m Not Supposed to Talk About hasn’t exactly been taking them to the woodshed, has he? Other than Bernie Madoff, how many of them have been put in the dock. (And seriously, with a name like “Made-Off”, how could you not put him in the dock?) As for the pensions the problem is, the revenues are not there in the states to support them. If you try to raise taxes to get them, companies just move to other states (preferably “Right to Work” ones) or other countries. While I do consider CEO salaries and perks to be obscene, at the end of the day, they are private entities. Frankly, I don’t see the logic of paying a guy an 8-figure salary when his company fails. > [@](#): > > Good - we’re back to politics! You do not want to compare the money and support from teachers to what the 'Pubbies get from Wall Street. Wall Street can give more money in 5 seconds than all of the teachers combined can in a year - or ten. It was not teachers who created the mortgage crisis, and leveraged the economy into the biggest crisis since the 1930s, it was Wall Street. Again, not defending Wall Street, but they actually play both sides of the fence. With the awful Citizens United Decision, they can do more damage. They go with who will represent their interests, and who will win. Wall Street gave a bunch of money to Hillary until she lost, and then to the other guy when he pulled out ahead. > [@](#): > > You went to Catholic school, so I can safely assume you are some sort of christian. Well, you’d be wrong. I’m actually an agnostic. Actually, I consider myself to be a Deist more than anything else. I think there’s a higher power, but I don’t accept he’s the Abrahamic God. > [@](#): > > Therefore, you have no idea what it’s like to be a religious minority in this country. Really, you don’t. The separation of church and state is one of the core features of our republic, that has kept us from descending into the sectarian violence that raged over Europe until WWII, in Ireland until very recently, and over the Middle East to this day. > > With that background can you not see that sending public tax money taken from people of every religion into the schools of one particular religion might be a problem? No, actually, I can’t because what I see are people sending their kids to schools run by religions they don’t belong to because the public schools are so awful. > [@](#): > > None the less, if your kid has identified _serious_ special needs that cannot be met in the public school system, you can get the kid placed in another school, under the requirement for a “free and appropriate public education”. Can you please point out where the constitution says that is government’s job? > [@](#): > > I’ve not had to do this for my kids, and I’ve heard it can take a _lot_ of doing - meetings, doctors, parent advocates, lawyers. It is not done lightly or easily. I’ve only heard of it being done for severe cases after all other avenues have been exhausted. The target program must be shown to be more appropriate for the child, not just some hand-waiving that says school X will straighten the kid out. I have even heard of kids being placed from the public schools into a local religious school that specializes in Autism. ADHD is a more “routine” problem that schools can deal with. If the particular school or teacher is not working out, you as a parent can ask for changes. You’re pushing against the normal course of the system, so you have to work for it, but it can be done. A public education is not a gift card that guarantees you a full ride at Choate for zero money out of pocket. All valid points. but here is the problem. The spending for “special needs” is much greater than non-special needs, and it goes up with the severity of the disability. So again, what we are not doing is real cost-benefit analysis. The kid who might become an architect or a doctor might be neglected because we are concentrating resources on a kid who will probably never be more than a menial laborer. > [@](#): > > Don’t say “never” - Jimmy Carter sent his daughter Amy to DC public schools while he was in the White House. I’m sure there are local exceptions also. > > I roll my eyes at this also. I’m sure there are politicians living in my county who pay a ton of money to send their kids to tony private schools, when the kids would get as good an education, and have happier and more normal lives if they went to my county’s excellent public school system. I think all politicians should be REQUIRED to send their kids to the same public school their constiuents attend. They’d pay a lot more attention to the problems then. ---
**Author:** ![Recovering\_Republican](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d2c977/32.png) [@Recovering\_Republican](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Recovering_Republican)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2011, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bachmann-announces-shes-running/585382/288 "2011-07-03T17:08:45Z")
> [@gonzomax](#): > > Dumb. There is a list of 32 gaffes by Bachmann just lately. Palin is a joke. > Obama has misspoken. Do you believe he thinks there are more than 50 states? > But Bachmann and Palin have shown an ignorance of history . You really should read the gaffes they have made and try and understand that not understanding the revolution, not knowing where Lexington and Concord are, not knowing about Reveres ride and so many other bits of stupidity ,show a real genuine lack of knowledge. Those are not just misspeaking. They are displays of ignorance. Guy, I’m not defending anyone’s gaffes, because they are gaffes, and just not that important. You guys are the ones fixated on gaffes. What is going to be important is where the economy is and who has the perception of leadership ability to fix the problems. Let’s leave Palin aside because I truly doubt she is actually running. Frankly, looking at Bachmann on the stage in NH, she was spicy when the rest of them were vanilla. She had a clear idea of who she was, what she was about, and how she was going to go about it. If the lot of them were on a desert island, she’d be the one who’d get the shelters built. Yes, she’s pretty far to the right, but she walks the walk. She and her husband fostered over 20 kids over the years, kids other people threw away or couldn’t handle. Forget about whether she believes in talking snakes or not, that’s what people find admirable. ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2011, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bachmann-announces-shes-running/585382/289 "2011-07-03T17:14:54Z")
Still wrong. Her statements are not gaffes. They show a lack of knowledge and understanding. They are not slip ups, but displays of a lack of understanding and knowledge. You can not hand wave them away as just the same examples of misspeaking. They are discussions of some duration displaying a severe lack of knowledge. Do you really not understand that? ---
**Author:** ![Recovering\_Republican](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d2c977/32.png) [@Recovering\_Republican](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Recovering_Republican)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2011, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bachmann-announces-shes-running/585382/290 "2011-07-03T17:27:13Z")
> [@gonzomax](#): > > Still wrong. Her statements are not gaffes. They show a lack of knowledge and understanding. They are not slip ups, but displays of a lack of understanding and knowledge. You can not hand wave them away as just the same examples of misspeaking. They are discussions of some duration displaying a severe lack of knowledge. > Do you really not understand that? No I simply don’t care. Neither does anyone else. they care about what a MESS the economy is. They care about leadership. They don’t care who would win on an episode of _Jeopardy_. If they did, we should make that computer that just beat the two grand champions the next president. Whether or not Bachmann knows where John Wayne was born isn’t really that important. It’s whether she can extracate us from this current mess or not. I know one advantage she’d have in her favor, she’d have co-operation in Congress. ---
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2011, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bachmann-announces-shes-running/585382/291 "2011-07-03T17:29:57Z")
Fuckin pointy heads and their book learnin don’t know shit ---
**Author:** ![Recovering\_Republican](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d2c977/32.png) [@Recovering\_Republican](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Recovering_Republican)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2011, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bachmann-announces-shes-running/585382/292 "2011-07-03T17:57:44Z")
> [@SenorBeef](#): > > Fuckin pointy heads and their book learnin don’t know shit Well, I go back to a point I made earlier. Jimmy Carter was a nuclear physicist. By any definition he was smart. Was he an effective president? Nope. Hell, man, five bucks says you probably work in a job where you are smarter than your boss, but he’s got the leadership skills and people skills to get things done and you don’t. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2011, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bachmann-announces-shes-running/585382/293 "2011-07-03T18:28:59Z")
> [@BobLibDem](#): > > The CBO says [the stimulus worked.](http://crooksandliars.com/jon-perr/cbo-latest-confirm-success-stimulus). It would have worked better if the Republicans hadn’t sabotaged it as much as they could. I can’t count the number of times I’ve had to shoot that particular claim down. The CBO did NOT say the stimulus worked. Their job is to try and give updates on the stimulus, and what they do is simply re-run the original models used to generate the pre-stimulus estimate of its effect, updating the forecast based on changes to legislation. The CBO report in question is [here](http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/110xx/doc11044/02-23-ARRA.pdf). Notice that it’s a year and a half old, so it can’t possibly reflect what has actually happened as a result of the stimulus. There are a number of economic papers out now that are looking at actual, measured effects of the stimulus, and ALL of them have found that its impact is far lower than what was predicted. Some news articles about this: [Economists: The Stimulus Didn’t Help](http://money.cnn.com/2010/04/26/news/economy/NABE_survey/) [More Evidence on Why the Stimulus Didn’t Work](http://johnbtaylorsblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/more-evidence-on-why-stimulus-didnt.html) [Economists: Stimulus not working, Obama must rein in spending](http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/peter-roff/2010/06/10/economists-stimulus-not-working-obama-must-rein-in-spending) [The data shows that the money the government pumped into the economy had next to no effect.](http://www.themarknews.com/articles/1203-the-stimulus-didn-t-work) [The data show government transfers and rebates have not increased consumption at all.](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204731804574385233867030644.html) [Intel CEO: Stimulus Didn’t Work](http://www.midasletter.com/index.php/intel-ceo-stimulus-didnt-work/) [NY Times Economix: The Minimal Impact of the Stimulus](http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/02/the-minimal-impact-of-the-stimulus/) [Greenspan: Fed’s Massive Stimulus Had Little Impact](http://www.cnbc.com/id/43598606) It’s also a myth that the economy was ‘worse than what was thought’, and that the stimulus avoided a much deeper recession. By the time stimulus money was making its way into the economy, the recession was already over and the economy had stopped shedding jobs. There have been several papers out looking at the actual data on the stimulus after this point, and it shows that the stimulus had almost no impact at all. There are several reasons for this: One, as Obama himself joked, there were not nearly as many ‘shovel ready’ projects as was claimed. Second, a big chunk of the stimulus went to temporary tax cuts, and we have plenty of evidence from Bush’s tax cut stimlus attempts that temporary tax cuts don’t change spending behavior much. Third, the Democrats used the stimulus money as a slush fund to pay off their own states and special interests, whether or not that money would be stimulative. There’s evidence that the states used the stimulus money to simply replace their own spending, so net spending didn’t go up - state deficits just didn’t rise as much as they otherwise would have. In addition, the public unions were big beneficiaries of stimulus money in the form of pay hikes, and giving upper-middle class people pay increases does not do much to stimulate the economy. Finally, there’s good evidence from Christina Romer herself that increased debt is seen by the economy as the equivalent of a tax increase, so borrowing money to use for fiscal stimulus is self-counteracting. So to some up: When the CBO ran the _same models_ use to _estimate_ the effect of the stimulus in the first place, they amazingly found roughly the same results. But when other economists inspect the _actual data_ from the past two years, they are finding much smaller or even no effect from the stimulus. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2011, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bachmann-announces-shes-running/585382/294 "2011-07-03T18:37:21Z")
> [@Recovering\_Republican](#): > > Well, I go back to a point I made earlier. > > Jimmy Carter was a nuclear physicist. By any definition he was smart. Was he an effective president? Nope. You know, I keep hearing that he was a nuclear physicist, but I’ve never seen any evidence of that. From what I can tell, Carter graduated from Annapolis with a general Bachelor of Science degree, and then when he later applied for nuclear sub duty he attended a navy sponsored one-year tech program to qualify him as an officer on a nuclear sub. I’ve seen this described as him having a ‘degree in nuclear physics, with additional graduate work’, but really what it sounds like to me was that he had a very typical Annapolis degree and the equivalent of a one-year technician’s license program. If anyone has better information than that, I’d like to see it. ---
**Author:** ![Finagle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b19c9b/32.png) [@Finagle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Finagle)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2011, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bachmann-announces-shes-running/585382/295 "2011-07-03T19:09:20Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > There are a number of economic papers out now that are looking at actual, measured effects of the stimulus, and ALL of them have found that its impact is far lower than what was predicted. > > Some news articles about this: > > [Economists: The Stimulus Didn’t Help](http://money.cnn.com/2010/04/26/news/economy/NABE_survey/) > > [More Evidence on Why the Stimulus Didn’t Work](http://johnbtaylorsblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/more-evidence-on-why-stimulus-didnt.html) > > [Economists: Stimulus not working, Obama must rein in spending](http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/peter-roff/2010/06/10/economists-stimulus-not-working-obama-must-rein-in-spending) > > [The data shows that the money the government pumped into the economy had next to no effect.](http://www.themarknews.com/articles/1203-the-stimulus-didn-t-work) > > [The data show government transfers and rebates have not increased consumption at all.](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204731804574385233867030644.html) > > [Intel CEO: Stimulus Didn’t Work](http://www.midasletter.com/index.php/intel-ceo-stimulus-didnt-work/) > > [NY Times Economix: The Minimal Impact of the Stimulus](http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/02/the-minimal-impact-of-the-stimulus/) > > [Greenspan: Fed’s Massive Stimulus Had Little Impact](http://www.cnbc.com/id/43598606) Sam, if you’re just going to Google “Stimulus failed” and publish the results, you might prune the results better. One of these cites relates to Canada’s stimulus and the last one relates to QE. A bunch of the others are opinion pieces or based on surveys. So it’s a bit difficult to evaluate your arguments. You can Google “Did the stimulus work?” and find just as many “yes, it probably helped” results. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2011, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bachmann-announces-shes-running/585382/296 "2011-07-03T23:22:01Z")
I looked at every one of them, but I didn’t have a lot of time this morning. If you’d like, later when I have time I can link to some peer-reviewed recent papers which say the same thing. You can start with [this one.](http://web.econ.ohio-state.edu/dupor/arra10_may11.pdf) From the introduction: > [@](#): > > Our benchmark point estimates suggest that the ARRA created/saved approximately 450 thou- > sand state and local government jobs and destroyed/forestalled roughly one million private sector > jobs. State and local government jobs were saved because ARRA funds were largely used to o- > set state revenue shortfalls and Medicaid increases rather than boost private sector employment. > The majority of destroyed/forestalled jobs were in growth industries including health, education, > professional and business services. That’s a net LOSS of 550,000 jobs due to the stimulus, according to this paper. ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2011, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bachmann-announces-shes-running/585382/297 "2011-07-03T23:36:32Z")
Whats your zero point? When Bush left jobs were dropping at an incredible rate. If Obama came in and stopped the bleeding, would that be good? But you could not say he created jobs, but obviously saved them. If jobs were lost at a much lower rate after the stimulus, would you say no jobs were created? It is a bad game of semantics. The stimulus saved millions of jobs, cut the bleeding and created a lot of jobs. But the Repubs slashing a lot of the program and insisting of still more corporate tax cuts, hurt the impact of the stimulus. Tax cuts have been demonstrated clearly since Reagan, to be job killers. They do not create jobs. ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2011, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bachmann-announces-shes-running/585382/298 "2011-07-03T23:47:41Z")
> **[CHART OF THE DAY: It's Official: Obama Is Creaming Bush When It Comes To Jobs](https://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-jobs-lost-in-the-bush-and-obama-administration-2010-2)** Here’s the chart on job creation from Bush to Obama. Obama is doing a hell of a lot better than Bush. ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2011, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bachmann-announces-shes-running/585382/299 "2011-07-04T00:11:28Z")
> **[Bachmann's Waterloo - FactCheck.org](https://www.factcheck.org/2011/06/bachmanns-waterloo/)** > > Rep. Michele Bachmann officially joined the presidential campaign trail, but made a flurry of false and misleading claims along the way. The Minnesota Republican appeared on two ... Bachmann is not making minor errors. She is lying over and over. ---
**Author:** ![China\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/779978/32.png) [@China\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/China_Guy)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2011, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bachmann-announces-shes-running/585382/300 "2011-07-04T00:35:35Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > I looked at every one of them, but I didn’t have a lot of time this morning. If you’d like, later when I have time I can link to some peer-reviewed recent papers which say the same thing. > > You can start with [this one.](http://web.econ.ohio-state.edu/dupor/arra10_may11.pdf) > > From the introduction:That’s a net LOSS of 550,000 jobs due to the stimulus, according to this paper. Yep, and you missed this part of the paper: “It is important to note that we do not have enough precision in our estimates to conclude that number of jobs lost/destroyed was (probably) greater than the number created/saved. Our estimates are consistent with there being a net positive (but not large) number of jobs saved/created. We leave completing an evaluation of crowding explanations for future research.” Read the conclusion, which is full of “more research needed.” Maybe you can find where the authors make a solid case for the AARP “crowding out” private sector jobs. I mean, their biggest arguement was that (paraphrase) State Employees are better educated and “would” have found private sector jobs had their State jobs not been saved by the Fed government spending…" Again, you have a long history of throwing out bullshit cites that maybe sound good at a first glance but don’t really say what you claim they say. Thanks for playing. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bachmann-announces-shes-running/585382.md?page=14) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bachmann-announces-shes-running/585382.md?page=16)