What conservatives keep forgetting is that Bush set the bar so low that all Obama has to do is be COMPETENT and he’ll be an enormous improvement. I think he’s more than competent. I think Republicans and conservatives are going to do a lot of sobbing over the next eight years. Couldn’t happen to a more deserving bunch.
It’s interesting to see the popular fixation on Presidential approval rating. We’ve taken a number whose main utility is providing fodder for an evening news story and pretending instead that the vicissitudes of public consensus reflect a reasonable analysis of competence.
Half the public has an IQ below 100. Few of them, in my opinion, follow the political process carefully enough to understand how Washington works. Most of them seem naive enough to believe the President runs the lawmaking–particularly Congress–more influentially than he does. None of them are privy to all the specific details which the President incorporates into decision-making, whether the issue is economics or security.
The Presidential approval rating is, in short, a pooling of ignorance.
When it’s high, bet on it to drop. When it’s low, bet on the one with minimal approval to remind us (accurately, if sometimes plaintively) that a current approval rating is only a first draft of history.
Agreed. I’ll never forgive those traitors in the Republican party, and the way their selfish manipulations, lies, greed, and fool wars hurt the country and killed hundreds of thousands of people.
These people’s leaders deserve a war crimes tribunal, especially that despot Bush, the torturer.
Yeah! Let’s pass a stimulus bill!
What precisely does nothing to stimulate the economy? You’re not contending that construction projects create no jobs, are you?
There seems to be this idea floating around that there is a big difference between spending and stimulus but really greater government spending is a form of stimulus. Some types of spending will have a quicker impact than others but most forms of spending will have a significant impact on the economy and can be considered stimulus particularly over the 2-3 year horizon which we are talking about. A broad spending package across many states and sectors will definitely stimulate the economy and that is what has been passed.
So… When is he going to start being competent? Because so far, this administration has been one big screwup.
I think the phrase you are looking for is “trickle down.”
Money trickles down from whatever its source is, in one way or another, sooner or later, even when control of a big piece of it starts in narrower hands and doesn’t seem directly related to broader wealth.
He’s already done a number of things, such as closing down Gitmo’s illegal prison and opening up Presidential papers for inspection. Stimulus packages take time, and he has delivered that. He’s had some problems with Cabinet appointees, but that’s normal nowadays.
And I do not think your preconception is widely shared.
He closed down Gitmo? News to me. He announced that they intend to close down Gitmo in a year. We’ll see if that actually happens. But note that the result will not be the release of everyone there, but simply the creation of a new ‘Gitmo’ somewhere in the U.S.
He delivered a horrible stimulus package that he allowed Pelosi and Reid to write behind closed doors. It’s packed with Pork and stupid ideas, and will do more harm than good. He had an opportunity to draft a real bipartisan stimulus which would have had the confidence of the country, and chose not to.
If the meaning of that apparent non-sequitur is that people should speak nicely of the republicans so they’ll cooperate with such things as a stimulus bill, you are wrong. They’ve demonstrated that they have zero interest in cooperation, and want to see Obama fail even if they wreck the country in the process. The Republicans as a whole have no concern for America, only for their own power and in indulging their malice. And in any case they’ve proven their utter incompetence and amorality.
Obama needs to realize that the Republicans are not the “Loyal Opposition”; they are the Disloyal Opposition.
He has been prez for a couple weeks. Obama said he would close Gitmo. The repubs said Gitmo and torture were good things. Because it is not closed yet, does not escape that now we recognize it was a bad idea. That is a huge difference. He will close it. Bush built it and defended it.
Captain, you raise an interesting question, and one which has received far too little attention.
I could perhaps best illustrate the difference between stimulus and pork in this bill by contrasting two kinds of education which are in the bill. The bill contains money for job training. It also contains money for Head Start programs, to train four year olds.
Now, we are looking for short-term stimulus. I contend that the short-term effect of increasing Head Start programs will be too small to measure. Job training, on the other hand, will provide both short and long term stimulus to the economy. Yes, both stimulate the economy, any money which is borrowed and spent will do that. But “any stimulus” is not what we want. We want short-term stimulus, and we want bang for our buck.
If Obama had been ahead of the curve, at the start he would have said something like “OK, here’s the criteria. The only things that will be allowed in the bill will be those that provide a broad short-term economic stimulus. Here’s a list of the categories we’ll accept. Now, bring on your ideas.”
Instead, he passed it to Pelosi and Reid. They’ve added Head Start and STD programs and money for the Census and a host of things that are perhaps good programs, but will have infinitesimal short term economic gain. Can anyone argue that preventing a few STDs is going to make some large change to our economic situation?
Someone else above said that it’s only a few percent of the bill that’s pork, so what’s the big deal? I despise this argument. First … depends on what you call “pork”. For me, the grants to the states are pork, and they are a huge part of the bill. California has been immensely and foolishly profligate with its money. Now y’all propose to bail them out, using my kid’s money. I disagree entirely.
The California state bureaucracy is loaded to the gills with fat. It will never be cut unless it has to be cut. Here, now, is the chance. Here is where the state should cut, before it drains our budgets for decades … but oh, no, run to Uncle Sugar and get some money to keep the porkfest alive. That way, we can have perpetual ham and bacon in the California Government. Disgusting.
Second, it is my kids pocket that you are blithely taking the money from. I’m willing for that to happen, but not for any pork. Not for 50% pork, not for 5% pork, not for 0.5% pork. None. Obama stood by and said nothing while they stole from Sasha and Malia’s future to pay for things like new furniture for the Homeland Security headquarters … I’m not that sanguine. What, like the Government is short of desks and chairs, and we are doing the economy some great service by buying them new furniture? If they’ve got more asses than chairs in the Government, I know which numbers I’d change to fix that …
Finally, to return to the OP, great damage has been done to the Democrats in this whole process. This is because whether or not the bill is full of pork, it is seen as full of pork by lots of people, myself (a lifelong Democrat) included. This is absolutely a loss for the party, and one it can ill afford this early in the game.
It is also a loss for Obama. I had expected better of him. However, like I said before, I see it as a rookie mistake … but others will not be so understanding.
Sorry, could you maybe rewrite this with some actual numbers and an analysis of how – if you agree that these programs will have benefits, albeit long-term – this >1% of the bill will hurt your children? Especially since you don’t even address whether the other 98% of the bill will improve the economy (thereby helping your children)?
Could I rewrite it with more numbers? Sure. Will I? No. It is a red herring. Numbers are not the point. The point is that job training for folks who have lost their jobs provides quick stimulus to the economy, and Head Start training for three year olds does not.
Waste is waste no matter what anything else does in the world, regardless of numbers. Pork in an appropriations bill doesn’t suddenly become worthwhile because the rest of the bill is valid. If you don’t understand that, numbers won’t assist the process. If you think new chairs for government asses is not wasted money in a stimulus bill, me providing “actual numbers” won’t help.
But heck, I’ll try to assist you. The actual numbers are, we want to borrow money that your kids will have to repay because we have only 33,192,436 government chairs to fit 33,214,977 Government asses… feel better now? Did the numbers clarify whether chairs belong in a stimulus bill?
In any case, the “1%” is your number, not mine. I haven’t a clue what your cited 1% of the bill even contains, much less what benefits it might have. I fear if you want explanations of your own numbers, the mirror is the proper place to look. You want “actual numbers” regarding your mythical 1%? Go out and get them yourself, you are the only person who even knows what’s in the 1% you cite. Me, I’m discussing what should and shouldn’t be in a stimulus bill, and whether Obama has hurt himself in the process of passing it.
I think a Stimulus Bill should only contain things that actually provide short-term stimulus to the economy, and that Obama has not done himself or his party any favors by how he has handled the process.
See that? Not a number in that whole statement.
If you think that statement needs numbers, then I invite you to come up with some.
I’ll pass.
What, buying shit from companies doesn’t help their business?
Thanks for just proving that you don’t actually have a basis for your argument beyond a “feeling.”
Sure, you’re entitled to your opinion, but it’s clear you haven’t used many facts to come up with it. As to the 1% I used, I assumed that the programs you were talking about were included in the >2% number we talked about earlier in the thread. Oh, and you also somehow managed to write up a large reply to my post without ever addressing a single argument in it.
Funny how that works.
EDIT: Also, just to clarify, you are the one making a claim in this thread. Therefore the onus is on you to provide some kind of evidence or reasoning for your argument. Saying “I’ll pass” isn’t an argument.
Can Head Start spend $2 billion without hiring some laid-off teachers?
Jobs don’t just supply a kick to the economy but a continuing kick. They spend as long as they are working.
Redoing mortgages is the same idea. Staying in the house and making payments will shore up banks and help the general economy.
Pouring money into the banks will just break us. They don’t lend and they buy up solvent banks just spreading their poisonous policies and liabilities to more of the system.
Robot nannies.