Several weeks ago, I cautioned us to be wary of politicians bearing gifts. Well, today we know some of the details – we are about to get almost $800 billion in government spending that is supposed to reach into every neighborhood across the land, stimulate the economy, and create or save roughly 3½ million jobs. Do you believe it? Do you feel better off so far? Let’s start with a few basics:
1. How much is $800 billion? Well, if you had spent $1 million per day, every day, since the birth of Christ, you’d be in the neighborhood. Or if you simply gave every man, woman, and child in this country $2,600, you’d be about there.
2. If we pay down this debt by increasing the amount of the budget allocated to interest from 8% to 10% (a 25% increase), we’ll have to reduce other spending by perhaps $75 billion a year, and continue to do so for the next 20 years to pay this down. As John McCain said on “Face the Nation” last week, “It’s intergenerational theft!”
3. What does a single state’s share of the goodies look like? Let’s take mine – Georgia: $1.7 billion for Medicaid, $1.2 billion for education, $1 billion for roads and bridges, $333 million for special education, $90 million for public housing, $82 million for child care, $33 million for homelessness prevention, $20 million for Head Start, etc. – a total of $5.9 billion for what? Does any of this look like it creates lots of jobs? Does any of this address mortgages or the credit crisis?
Our senior senator, Johnny Isakson, proposed an amendment to the “stimulus” that would have reduced mortgage rates to 4% and provided an incentive payment to anyone buying a home in order to jump-start the real estate, mortgage, and home building industries. Of course, his amendment was defeated along party lines. The Harry R. and Nancy P. railroad would not be side-tracked.
But I’ll leave you with these 3 questions to consider: if mortgages led us into this mess, should not mortgages lead us out of it? And if the single largest asset for most of the middle class is the family home, must we not stabilize the value of homes as our first order of business? And if bad mortgages are plugging up the credit markets, should we not lower mortgage rates and restructure salvageable mortgages as a first step to re-liquidate these markets?
Face it, the stimulus is one big Democratic orgy of special-interest spending with little in the way of economic recovery except wishful thinking. I know talking about economics is not very sexy, but I have never in my lifetime seen anything like this for big-government log rolling, and it is downright scary!
It sure is. I liken it to a hostile takeover. We’ve socialized the mortgage industry, the banks are in transition, and health care is next. You gotta “love” it when a plan comes together. Great minds think alike, Dad. A couple of weeks ago in a post entitled, Enabling Mediocrity At Taxpayer Expense: Yes We Can, I called it an “orgiastic exploitation of responsible Americans.”
Idiot me, took a few to figure out who this author is, but Georgia gave it away. Don’t know each other, but if you read this Chuck, great son you have and I enjoy the passion.
We were promised “change” and boy are we getting it. MORE!!! Gov’t in your pocket and business. (that is a change from what they were already trying to do…juz sayin’)
Promised “no pork” , were we not ? Promises, promises.
All I see happening is a gap widening between “us” (taxpayer who ultimately supports their agenda financially) and “them” (Titans and Gods above all law and moral standing). But, hell, if I had the world by the balls I might take all I could get away with too.
The problem is culminating into historical repetition of every empire : eventually they fall by their own devices or by the hands of others waiting in the wings for their enemy to become weak and exploitable. 9/11 showed the latter; our economic atrocities show the former. Combine the 2 : Mighty Babylon, see how she falls.
From what I have observed and researched, I project a negative impact (thats how few created) of new jobs created from said stimulus and spending . Many of the construction projects to be done are well…….sold out to Mexican labor as it is and well……yes, they are coming back too. The selection of so-called “skilled” labor out of Carp. or Labor Unions is a whole new can of worms to deal with. “3.whatever” new jobs is the same old sale to appease ignorant masses.
I agree, the mortgage mess is the biggest factor in our downfall. Look at it this way, the banks and realtors created it but no one is spanking their butts, just the ignorant homeowner who was brainwashed into the con game. People refuse to think for themselves, well, they just have no time with running Sam to soccer practice and Julie to dance lessons and the salon and the video store and Survivor’s on at 8pm and……..Regardless, “they” feed upon the ignorant masses.
Banks are being “bailed-out” in the effort to open up the credit market, get dollars rolling again, you know get the “peoples” spending money again. Banks are NOT !!! loaning money and restructuring their criteria to open the markets up. Just the other day, a credit card (business account) was closed due to “interior criteria” as explained. Yeah, that was due to not paying them enough interest. Regardless, in all the bank bailout, they know it will not help the vast majority of suckers out there that really need it.
Maybe that bas*^*rd who said “the American people aren’t smart enough to know how to spend their own money” was right. We sure don’t prove him wrong, and well…they continue to take advantage of that. If everyone actually did protest and refuse to buy gas on those certain days when it was $4+/gal, then they would listen. Yeah right, what good is for .5% to protest ? That is our only hope. We have numbers , numbers that out-number them by the millions.
Maybe it’s just the circle of life, the big fish always eat the little fish. I wish they didn’t enjoy it so damn much.
If we little people really mattered, that $800MIL would be divied amongst us to all go on shopping sprees, but …….that’s not the issue, the consumer and taxpayer is not really a part of their equation.