So, is the House economic stimulus package an honest attempt to save the economy or a cynical, opportunistic, bordering on criminal, attempt to take advantage of a tragic situation and bring back Reaganomics? Neither? Both? Discuss among yourselves if you feel like it.

are you kidding?? the house passed that those that were not elligible for a rebate but filed last year will now get the rebate...

i said to cindy...good! now i don't have to look for a job for another year...

bitch threw something at me..? go figure.

i mean, $600 is more money than i've made for a decade....i thought i did a good job????


you all can wag what you want...what you need to do is wash your nasty asses!

Pat, being the cynical bastard I am, it just looks like more corporate welfare to me. Everyone wants lower taxes, everyone bitches about somebody getting a cent of "their" money, but nobody complains about the HUGE dollars that go to corporations-dollars that DWARF the money which goes to social welfare.

Our government is set up to keep the rich and powerful as they are, rich and powerful. Fucking reverse Robin Hood. Profits before people.

We just finish the largest economic expansion in history in the 90's, and these mega-corps are crying about this so-called recession. You mean after 10 fucking years of HUGE profits, they didn't save a few bucks so they could ride out a downturn?

So in rides the government with bailouts. The least they could do is insist that workers be protected from layoffs in exchange for the free money, but they don't even have the balls to do that. That might mean that the CEO's might have to suffer with a few million less this quarter. We couldn't have that now, could we? What a joke.

Here in MN, the state workers just finished a strike, in which they were criticised for being unpatriotic for fighting for their few pennies raise. Our dumbass Governor threatens they, ridicules them, even as he just recently got a raise. And now, many of these same local politicians who couldn't find the few pennies to throw at these dedicated workers are going to bat for a local BILLIONaire baseball owner, who wants PUBLIC tax dollars to fund the Twins new stadium. It just makes me wanna scream.
Nice little plutocracy we have, all the while kidding ourselves we live in a democracy.

Plutocracy? I thought it was becoming a police state. Or is it a plutocratic police state that we're on the road to?

Not that I'm worried or anything. Nuh unh, not me.

Good to see you back, lcj.
I'll never forget what you said one time to somebody here a while back about Pat. I hope you don't mind me quoting you.

"As someone who's probably not far from you politically, let me give you some advice. (I realize you didn't ask for it)
<center>DON'T MESS WITH PAT !</center>She knows what the fuck she's talking about! And I'm not one who throws compliments around that much. She taught me much in our endless debates, and I thank her for that. Frankly, I wish she'd run for office. That's one Dem I'd vote for."
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Looking forward to more endless lcj vs. Pat, debates.
I'll try to keep Larry away, he's dangerous!

lcj...i'm as cynical as you on this one. i think it's a definite attempt to take advantage of a tragic situation. they bailed out the airlines that were in trouble before 9/11..then the airlines still lay off workers. now, they're going to hand out billions and billions of dollars to companies that will do the same. mark works at ibm which, according to the local paper, would get around 14.2 billion...and mark comes home today to tell me that there are going to be layoffs. fortunately, he's not going to be affected..this time, but i don't see any trickle down here...and without that, just how is this supposed to stimulate the economy? didn't we try trickle down once before? i certainly hope the senate does some major revisions on the bill, and will be writing my senators!

The mystery, to me, Pat, Deb, lcj, is the stock market...why, when all indicators, national & internat'l are gloomy, does the dow jones, stay as high as it is?... smells like artificial voo doo economics, at work. Even more intriguing will be the movement of oil company stocks, as Saudi Arabia tries to placate their indigenous radicals, and the US, at the same time..

true, levi, tiz good to see lcj, again...
welcome back, lcj

I'll never really understand the stock market. Normally, for the last couple of decades, it loves layoffs. Then recently, before 9/11 it liked good employment news. I really don't know why it rebounded as much as it has lately. No place else to put everyone's retirement money?

That may be, Pat..a place for retirement $$, for some,,,On Wall St it's as if, world events happen in order to effect the market...anthrax shows up, so, medical testing company's stock rises, we move on Afghan & defense companys' stock booms.
Even the whole "dot.com" boom of a few years ago. some companys that never produced a penny of profit had stock values thruu the roof. ....no sense of "real life" values
I'm reading Joan Didion's "Political Fictions" a series of her essays on pres primary campagins. She describes the campagin process as one big performance art theater, run by parties and the media, to generate "fan support" for candidates. Issues or reality aren't welcome, there
There is a kind of national unity, now, re "war on terrorism" and yet, Isreal is pointing out the "disconnect" in play, with the way our coalition, is formed.
That's how it seems to me. a whole lotta smoke & mirrors, masking our national "disconnects"
I hear Joni Mitchel, singing "and we've got to get ourselves, back to the garden"
I dunno......

Well, I don't know if it's really smoke and mirrors anymore. The disconnects in this situation are out there for anyone to see, but whether they're avoidable is a whole other thread. I'm not starting that one at this point.

The fiscal thing what got me at the moment. I did write to one senator so far. I really do realize that we've gotta prime the pump on the supply side, too. We're capitalist, no matter how anyone feels about that, and business won't provide jobs if they're not doing well. So, I'm not against any and all corporate bailouts but hey..unemployment benefits and medical benefits are basic stuff that need to be augmented in times of trouble especially when they weren't all that adequate to begin with. And it's not too much to ask companies that are getting bailed out not to do layoffs. It would help the companies who didn't want to lay off, too. The stock market gets really pissed at them when they won't lay off workers, so sometimes they downsize when they had more than enough work to go around, thereby - and I've seen this - incurring overtime expenses and sacrificing efficient productivity. It might help to stem the trend of layoffs just to make "the street" happy if there were significant tax benefits to keeping people employed and liabilities when there are large layoffs.

Trickling down is no way to take care of a population. I mean..just the imagery there is bizarre when you think about it.

yes, Pat, the disconnects are very visible, now, but, seldom thru mainstream media, which is the primary info source of the majority of people.
I would hope that, in the course of our military actions to halt terrorism, we look deeply into why such a nihilistic brand of faith as radical fundamentalism, has taken hold, in the world, so rapidly.
While in no way, am I "rationalizing" terrorism, in many countries, people see that they have been "disenfranchized" from the resources of their homelands, and their governments. This disenfranchisement has been carried out by a "coalition" of western-based corporations, western governments, and repressive elite. often military leaders, of their own lands who placed their own power and well-being, ahead of the needs of the people.
Bin Laden and his ilk have exploited the Muslim equivalent of the "Robin Hood" legend, without the "giving to the poor" part.
and given an outlet to peoples frustration, thru "faith" and "jihad"
We have a resonant counter-legend: equality, freedom and liberty, we need to do a better job of demonstrating it, as well as "marketing" it

Bumper said "While in no way, am I "rationalizing" terrorism, in many countries, people see that they have been "disenfranchized" from the resources of their homelands, and their governments. This disenfranchisement has been carried out by a "coalition" of western-based corporations, western governments, and repressive elite"

Change the Western to a Northern and you have the seem type of thinking here in the backwoods of Tennessee and North Carolina, the best way to get the road to your house paved is to sell it to someone from up north or from Flordia in fact the top twenty percent of the homes (cost wise) belong to outsiders, the problem with that is they cause the taxes of the long term residents to go way up, (the property increases in value but as it has been the family farm for over a hundred years, no one living on the property sees the value added)So the long term resident is being forced out by outsiders....We don't have too many terrorist but it sure breeds red necks and churchs, way too many churchs..

Well, if your point is that there is no justice, I guess that's true enough. Nathen, that's the way all areas get developed. Local governments can prevent it if they want to. Most of them don't see the problem until it's too late. And then, of course, you've got local landowners who feel they should be able to sell their property to whomever they want and get what they can for it. And of course, not all of them are wealthy, so there's sympathy for their positions, too. At which point it becomes a vicious circle of over-development. That's how Long Island got to be what it is. It was mostly farms a few decades ago. I don't think the fact that the majority of the first "outsiders" came from about 50 miles away instead of another region of the country makes all that much difference to the way those things work. If it's happening where you are, then get involved in making sure that there's a plan for development rather than just letting it happen haphazardly. At least in this case there's something that local people can attempt to do.

Bumper said:[

quote]
yes, Pat, the disconnects are very visible, now, but, seldom thru mainstream media, which is the primary info source of the majority of people.
[/quote]


It's pretty clear from mainstream media, too, Bumper. I've looked at a lot of alternative media lately, too, though, and found that the bias there is incredible. Huge parts of history or current events are ignored or left out to suit whatever angle they're coming from. Not in every case - but in a lot of them.