On Earmarks: Mr Obama during the campaign apparently promised to do away with earmarks that were added in and not subject to review.
He is now saying that earmarks done right can be targeted boosts where needed – presumably with review. I live in North Carolina now, but I know that several cities along the Erie Canal route have high unemployment and factories that are closed down because they cannot be run profitably in their present condition and it would be an unprofitable investment for their owners to bring them up to competitive condition. I’d like to think that long-term loans to make them competitive and recreate jobs there would be something my congressman or one from California would see worth doing. Likewise earmarks to exploit oil shales, test the effectiveness of tidal power generation, etc., would be things beneficial to the country and get support on review.
Do you have a quote? McCain was obsessed with earmarks, probably to distract form the Pentagon’s trillion dollar budget. Obama emphasized the fact that earmarks account for roughly one percent of the budget. The Rights newly discovered aversion to earmarks is smoke and mirrors, anything to make noise.
He never said all, he said that he’d go “line by line to make sure we aren’t spending money unwisley.” That’s from the first presidential debate.
He’s wavered. The omnibus had a few, the budget a lot more than a few. In neither case did Obama identify or eliminate an earmark. So apparently - what? They’re all justified? Or he just didn’t do it?
What bothers me about it isn’t that he didn’t keep his promise, it’s the attitude of indifference and defeat displayed by Obama’s OMB administrator, who said “We want to just move on. Let’s get this bill done, get it into law and move forward.” Of course, it was also written off as “last year’s business.” In other words, it’s just to big of a fight right now, so let’s blow this huge chunk of money, and we’ll do better next time? That may work flipping burgers, but when you’re talking about billions of dollars it shows a serious lack of sense, and a lack of commitment to the responsible, change making government Obama touted.
No. What Obama did regarding the omnibus bill was the only responsible course of action. If he had taken the McCain path (who by the way is acting like a spoiled child) congress would have been bogged down for weeks fixing the bill and the government would have had to shut down while it was being fixed. Shutting down the government in this economy would probably be a really stupid idea.
The republicans are whining and mewling so they can score political points but following their lead would hurt the country. I’d rather have a president that can think than a cantankerous simpleton shrieking about earmarks while the government grinds to a halt.
Since this was leftover legislation from the previous session they can start on the bills that they write during this term.
Yup, when failure to regulate allows crooks to create huge amounts of fake money, which eventually destroys confidence in the banking system, that’s a failure of Laissez-faire economics.
I suppose there are some who feel that the occasional economic disaster is something to be courted, but that’s just an extremist minority. Most of us prefer a good economy, and feel that collectively we have the power to make one.
By using their good reputation to encourage “trade in high volumes at prices that are considerably at variance with intrinsic values.”
Of course now they no longer have such good reputations, and the country is out some large number of dollars. The neat thing about this though is that the real dollars, and the fake dollars are inextricably mixed up, so that after the nation returns to a system of prices based on intrinsic value, the crooks who started up the speculative markets will retain some large fraction, about 2/3 based on the headline above, of their ill gotten gains. Of course that money came from you and me, so we’re screwed by the government’s failure to reign in the bank’s capitalist excesses, before things when kablooey.
Squink said crooks, not bankers. Bernie Madoff created fake money. He sent out fake statements to his victims about the successful fictitious investments in his fund.
Thousands of crooked mortgage brokers set up phony assessments, straw buyers, and fraudulently arranged mortgages. Properties were sold and resold, with higher prices each time, and new mortgages each time, but the properties never really changed hands at all. That may sound as if you can’t make money that way, but when you get fat commissions on every mortgage you arrange, it’s very lucrative.
These things should have been impossible. Regulations were cut away, though, and the funding for enforcement of the remaining rules was slashed. With no enforcement, it’s the same as having no rules.