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$2 Billion For Broadband Cut From Stimulus Bill
pdabbadabba points out a CNN report on changes to the planned economic stimulus bill (the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 [PDF]) that will remove the $2 billion allocated to broadband development. The changes also eliminated smaller amounts allocated to NASA, the National Institute for Standards and Technology, and the National Science Foundation. $16 billion in school construction funding was removed, as well as another $3.5 billion for higher education construction. A variety of environmental projects were also cut or reduced (half of the $7 billion set aside for energy-efficient federal buildings, half of the $600 million for hybrid federal vehicles), and over $8 billion in health-related provisions are gone. The bill will likely go to vote in the Senate on Tuesday.
is this an indication that all ISP's in the country are full of boardmembers making over 500k a year? no internetsoup for you!! seriously though, I envision america's internet infrastructure to be as badly in need of repair/upgrades as their roads/water/electrical infrastructures. why the pullout? is this just so you naughty people wont pirate Britney's new tracks so fast?
Frankly, the telco's were given million of dollars to expand broadband years ago and essentially pissed the money away. As for education spending, I've always said it should be cut and prioritized. The idea that money allocated to education actually goes to educate kids is a sick joke in this country. Higher education? Many universities sit on huge sums of money and still get government help so I'm not losing sleep over that one either. This is supposed to be a stimulus bill but it's been nothing but an attempt to get all the candy out of the bag and eat it at once. With less than 20% of any of it slated to go into effect in the first year the Obama "pass it or else" mantra is exposed as rhetoric.
"Bipartisanship" isn't useful in this context, because one party is working from macroeconomic theory and reason, and the other party is working from the ideological mantra of "Spending Bad. Tax Cuts Good." To the Congressional Republicans, things like school construction won't result in jobs for construction workers: apparently magic pixies will simply drop the new schools out of the sky in exchange for our money.
President Obama needs to realize that it's the U.S. Congress, not the Snuggle-Senate, and beat some heads together to get good policy through. The $800b he proposed was too small to begin with, and all of these cuts make it more likely that we're not going to have enough stimulus to do anything useful.
I'm a lawyer, but not yours. I wouldn't represent someone who thinks taking legal advice from Slashdot is a good idea.
have a majority and don't have to cowtow to the Republicans? I mean, there is such as thing as compromise, but listening to everything the other party says despite the fact that the American people resoundingly rejected said party is just stupid. I know now why the Republican party insists that the Democrats have such a loser mentality. For god sakes, grow some fucking balls!
Monstar L
That was all the best stuff! And why does education (especially higher ed) always get the axe first?
It is easy to show voters the bridge, highway or transit money you got for your state or district. It is hard to show off rural broadband, or a new federal hybrid car as creating jobs for your locality. The school funding was lost because it likely was only going to fill coffers depleted by property tax drops. Hard to stand in front of something they were likely going to build anyway and claim credit.
$100 million from law enforcement wireless (original bill $200 million)
$100 million from FBI construction (original bill $400 million)
Need to keep pumping that taxpayer money into law enforcement so they can keep us safe from "obscene porn" http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/optf/ and continue to win the drug war.
An aircraft carrier cost about 10-15 billion to build and equip with planes. A new light rail line in my home town is projected to cost 2 billion. With a third of this being tax cuts (and tax credits/welfare) and some going to extend unemployment/medical care, where does the other 500 odd billion go? All this did was cut about 100 billion of pork the senators tried to tie onto the bill. What return will we get from a 500 billion dollar investment? Better services, better infrastructure? We haven't rebuilt the world trade center site yet, so infrastructure projects won't create jobs for years.
are merged later. Likely some of those will be added back.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Cutting higher ed and broadband gives the Republicans what they want: Keep the sheep stupid and uncommunicative.
So, will Monday night's speech ditch the theme of "bipartisanship"? Isn't getting him any votes anyway.
Well at least they got rid of the $246Million gift to hollywood. (no thanks to you kennedy/kerry!)
Still a ways to go though.
It is designed to have a long lasting impact. They do not want to release all at one. They want it spread out over 2-3 years, to change the mental state of ppl.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
16 billion in school construction funding was removed, as well as another $3.5 billion for higher education construction.
By all means cut that waste out of the stimulus package. We can't have people going to school and learning things, nothing worthwhile could ever come from that. I've got an idea, let's take that money and give it to the military to spend on some crap hole half-way around the world. That's a much better investment.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
There is no difference between the parties these days when it comes to spending.
They both want to spend *more*. There is a slight difference in what they want it spent on, but only a little.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
He promised more than he gave. No surprise there- just like every politician through history.
What is it's purpose?
Deleted
The perhaps most effective thing in the packet in long term would have been building faster and better broadband connections. It enables people to search for work more effectively, communicate and network better, work remotely, and self study.
Not that I care, I live outside US and have still some 2 terabytes of bandwidth to use this month :)
I believe we are seeing change all right...of the short variety.
For those who were sucked into the reality distortion field, this should serve as a dose of reality. Washington will change when hell freezes over.
Some days it's just not worth
chewing through my restraints.
Have you even read this thing? Its full of pork that does nothing for 'stimulus'.
650 Million for converter boxes?
350 Million to buy back watershed lands?
1 Billion to the census dept for ???
the list goes on and on. Very little of it will actually stimulate anything.
Just obama rewarding those who get him elected. Typical
That stuff should not be in a STIMULUS bill. Each of those things should be in their own separate bills.
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. . . that half of the US population doesn't even want broadband?
My sister opened a computer store in Hawaii. She sells C shells by the seashore.
Payback.
Same old same old, trickle down, give to the fat cats and watch them get fatter... oh and there might be a crumb or two left for you guys to fight over...
If you're sitting around a poker table, and you don't know who the patsy is, then it's you. Everyone wants this bill, because they think "the other guy" will get screwed more. Everyone cries foul play when THEIR pork gets cut.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
1 billion seems like a lot. That said, there is probably a justification for it. Who uses census data? I bet it isn't just the government, but private industry as well. Having good stats about your citizens might make it easier for private industry to forecast things. It might provide better population growth models for cities that use them (hint: if you've ever read the EIS for any kind of mass transit, they make heavy use of population growth to figure out ridership, tax revenue to pay back bonds, etc).
Some things seem kind of boring. Kind of like a water heater. It costs a bit of money and you might be tempted to get a cheap-ass one, but if you invest in a better one it will pay back over the long term. 1 billion to the census guys might be something like that.
IANCE (i am no census expert)
Lastly... converter boxes = people go out to cash in on said converter box at Best Buy / Frys and maybe buy some other shit while they are at it. Plus those fuckers owe us these coupons anyway--dont forget they sold that spectrum for a bazillion bux, so they better damn well fork over the cash for converter boxes.
The stimulus bill is for jump-starting the economy. We need to give it a good crank to restart the stalled engine, not use the starter motor to move the car.
Those projects should be in a bill whose focus is long term growth, which I would fully support once the economy is self-supporting again.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
You know, the congressional budget office is just one group. And most people bitching are bitching about the items in the bill, now the general concept of a stimulus package.
The fact we are in a recession isn't up for debate. If you want to bitch, you should offer a solution. If you think there should be no solution, well, sorry buddy but that is just not right.
The Democrats have near absolute power at this point.
Why are they still bothering with the Republicans?
The other side of that education issue, whether the money is going directly to the kids or not, is that the money is being used. If that money is cut from the budget, it's going to put a huge strain on state budgets to make up for it, and if the other states are like mine right now, there is a huge budget crunch. The last thing I want to see is teacher lay offs, adding to unemployment isn't going to help us get out of this recession.
The essence of the Democratic plan is first Marx and then later Keynes, both of whom have been tried and failed for the last 100 years, repeatedly. Democrats would have us believe that if we take a bunch a big pile of money and give it to worthless people, then somehow we will have an economic recovery. What a crock! Yeah, like giving money to a bunch of crackheads in the ghetto or old ladies in mobile homes is going to accomplish anything. It's simply not.
The simple fact of the matter is, if Democrats REALLY wanted to stimulate the economy and distribute money evenly, then why not simply write checks to everyone, like George Bush did. That's Keynes in his purist and simplest form. Instead, we got a few hundred billion for welfare - as if that doesn't have enough money already, and a few billion for building some windmills, and then a few billion of a few things that might actually be useful, but you know that the Dems will never finish any of their projects and will wreck them the same way they have managed to wreck all of the major cities in the USA.
The only way there will be economic recovery is when there are enough layoffs for companies to be profitable. That will jack up the stock market, and from there, there will be capital to re-invest in the economy, ultimately creating more jobs where they are needed. This is actually already happening. Layoffs are coming, the stock market is going up, gradually, and some companies are going to be profitable. Unfortunately, we all know that Democrats will bitch about companies being profitable, and will prolong the recession in the interests of accumulating power, just like those traitors did during the Great Depression.
This is my sig.
It's lots of fun to criticize those nasty Republicans for blocking this bill. We can all call them names and blame them entirely for the mess and feel really good about ourselves in the process. But I approach this from a different perspective. As one of the ever-shrinking group of people who pay the freight for these wonderful government programs I thought I would share a few numbers with this forum. When we talk about $800B, how much is that really? Well, take a gander at the following statistics:
- there are 138 million taxpayers in the US
- the top 10% of earners pay 71% of the taxes
- the income cutoff for the top 10% is $109K
So, doing some simple math I compute that those top 10% (roughly 14 million taxpayers) are responsible for $800,000,000,000 times 0.71, or about $40,000 each. Think about that. Someone who makes $109,000 per year is going to have to come up with another $40,000 in taxes. Also remember that many people file jointly, so that $109,000 is really more like a married couple, both of whom work, each making $54,000. Now how many slashdot posters are we talking about here? I would wager there are quite a large number of posters on this board in that top 10%. How many of you have $40,000 laying around that you are willing to give to the government to build schools in another state, or to give broadband to people in the boonies, or the myriad other "critical programs" that need your hard-earned money?
The numbers in this post are for the 2006 tax year and were obtained from http://www.ntu.org/main/page.php?PageID=6
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
How come Cleveland has more spending on its public schools than most other G8 nations, but they are all shitholes. Maybe the students are stupid and unwilling to learn? Maybe they come from a culture that denegrates education before it even starts? I mean, how come Democrats always talk about more money for schools and for public institution but at the same time, continue to spend billions on an arts and media that does nothing but continually denegrate culture, learning, and refinement? I mean, people are only doing what you tell them, and you are telling them to do stupid stuff.
This is my sig.
You just wait until we Republicans become protectionist, and make Democrats be the party that tells the blue collar that a bunch of assholes in China took their job. The natural set of American values are on our side, not yours, and it is only voter anxiety about the effects of trade that bring the blue collar to you. But, West Virginia is the canary in the coal mine for the Democrats. We will run vowing to kick all the Asian products out, dial back those European countries that did not help us in the war, and we'll see how you people fare trying to argue that French and Chinese people have a right to American jobs.
This is my sig.
I'm not a big fan of govt programs. They don't work and become mired in bureaucracy. More often still they become pork-barrel rewards to those contributors who are prepared to navigate they byzantine contracting maze to their monetary reward. The honest do not have patience nor overhead to support the navigation.
That said, I initially supported Paulson's 7 page bailout. He knows much more than is obtainable in the public domain, and if he's afraid enough to go on bended knee to Nancy, I'm afraid too. I was alarmed but not suprised when the House rejected it -- there's no way Paulson could tell them everything. It would cause panic. But then I saw the larding the Senate delivered. Paulson could tell those dudes and obviously didn't have a very compelling case. No-one would dare lard 9/11 or Pearl Harbor bills. So I conclude Paulson was mostly trying to spead the blame.
Cutting the most useful function is a frequent response of bureaucracies (political and corporate) when being ordered to cut. They think it will stop the calls to cut. And it doesn't have strong individual interests/defenders like pork. Just general diffuse interests. So it gets cut.
Unfortunately, broadband is in this category. Nevermind that it would help spread advantages that America does have, and increase participation. The next Einstein is out there, but it won't help if s/he stays buried in the anonymous masses.
as always, they managed to pull off a stunt for their leashholders. excuse me but there can be no less strong language here. it is exactly that. cut off funding for broadband public development so that everyone keeps sitting in at&t, comcast's lap.
Read radical news here
And while we are at it, lets dump Brown vs. Board of Education too while we are at it, eh? After all, if a state wants to start segregating schools you can just move to another state, right? Or if the state wants all their public schools to teach intelligent design, you should either hold your nose or move--under no circumstance should you appeal to those pesky activist judges in the the federal courts, right?
Want to improve education? Operate at the neighborhood level. The community can figure out the best way to educate their kids. But the devil is in the details and here in America, we value providing a fair chance to anybody regardless of socio-economic status. That means the federal government has an obligation to make sure a child in one state has as good of an education as in another. That means that regardless of what crazy sounding idea the neighborhood comes up with, a student there should graduate with the same knowledge as from some other place. One of the easiest roles the federal government can play in ensuring equity is leveling the playing field so all school districts get the same funding.
PS: good luck with killing the teachers union--you wouldn't win an election on that platform.
And corporal punishment? Seriously? I've been trolled, haven't I :-)
That is basically turning the government into a credit card. People would go buy HDTV's that last 5 years. We would go pay off debt with new debt (or are you assuming this money is magic money that we never repay?). We would blow it on hookers and booze (those last 1 day). But we would *not* buy an energy grid that would enable us to invest heavily in distributed power tech like wind or solar--those would give us returns for hundreds of years. We would not go repair a road and keep it around for another 40 years. We would not go build a light rail to keep our children's children moving around our cities. Nope. Hookers, booze and HDTV's--none of that lasts more then 10 years. We just flushed a couple trillion down the drain... nice.
What you propose is refinancing your house to buy new spinnaz to bling out your Escalade. Your plan basically has us refinancing our damn country to buy more bling. Haven't we dont that already? Isn't that a good part of the reason we are in this damn mess now? You think doing more of it will help?
You dont refinance your damn house to buy a fucking boat or a new car! You refinance your damn house to build a kitchen or put another floor on it. You know, something that will increase the value of the house. If we are gonna refinance our country, lets spend the money in a way that improves the value of the country... not go spend it on hookers and booze.
Yes, we all like the idea of getting geeky things like broadband, and NASA projects, schools, colleges. But the root of the issue is that if government spending lead to economic health, we would not be in this mess. Over the past 6 months or so, government spending has managed to more than DOUBLE our national debt. We are now throwing around the term "Trillion" as if it were a sane thing to do. "Sure, we will spend 1.4 Trillion dollars, and everything will get better." It does not matter how the money is allocated, spending it is a bad idea. All it will do is put us deeper in the hole. The other problem is that none of the action that the government is taking is actually designed to help the economy, it is designed to help out their buddies. So far, we have given Billions of dollars to banks that have used it to buy other banks, rather than help people. We have given Billions of dollars to corporations, and they use it to pay bonuses, and go on vacation. The solution is not to specify what they can spend the money on. The solution is to NOT spend the money. And nobody seems to even notice that the government is now purchasing interest in banks, manufacturing, real estate. If this were happening 50 or 70 years ago, it would be seen for what it really is: a government attempt to socialize our country.
"See the hill, take the hill"
When you give someone a tax break, you become less of a bloodsucker, than you were before, when you were taxing them higher... Or did you call telcos "bloodsuckers" over something else?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
it's a great one for a politition
because it can't be refuted. regardless
of how good or poor the schools actually are,
there is some measurement somewhere which
will produced the desired result.
Only time and debt destruction can fix it...
Exactly. That's why when I read the headline my first thought was GOOD.
Fixing this problem by taking on more debt is like helping a trauma victim by stabbing him.
As nice as it would be to have the IT sector get a big slice of pork, it's just not in the national interest. And that's how we have to think for the next few years. "What's good for me" will have to take a back seat sometimes to "what's good for the country."
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
It's actually quite easy to spend $800b, just don't let the government do it. If you must "stimulate", just send a check to the people that you are taking the money from in the first place. That would be almost $3000 apiece for every man, woman and child in the USA.
The function of this money is solely to line the pockets of the wealthy. Anything that provides a benefit to us peons obviously reduces the amount going to the paymasters, and therefore bad.
i'm not in the top 10%.
i kind of agree with your argument, but your
stats are flawed. here's why.
of the top 10%, the top 5% of taxpayers pay
6/7 = 85%.
i'm not for such highly progressive tases nor
am i for such highly progressive pay as we have
now. it makes both sides of the argument
disingenuous. i think that having such
progressive pay and taxes unnecessarly pits
the haves agains the have nots.
Now, as far as your assertion that there endowment is down 30-50%, I doubt that. They have their own money management office that has some very sharp folks investing. Not your typical IRA or retirement money manager like we peons have. Let's say you're right. So now it's down to only 17 billion! Boo hoo! I'm sure they're starving over there!
If they really need it make up for short falls, then why does it keep increasing every year? Ah, more donations - you may say. That's true. As a matter of fact, people who have never even attended Harvard give them money. What I'm saying is, Harvard could piss their entire endowment away, and there would be plenty of folks out there who'd give them money. Why? Because Harvard (and all the other Ivy League schools for that matter) have a name. They'd have their money back in a few years.
As far as research is concerned, I don't know. But the thing is, I see they get a lot of corporate and Government grants for research. I never see anything about Harvard themselves funding something.
Whatever. You can't lump in an Ivy League university with the rest of US higher education. Those folks are in their own league and I would be incredibly surprised if they ever have financial difficulties.
This was only modded "flamebait" because it was actually "+1, Uncomfortable Truth" to the left-wing retards who tend to get mod points on Slashdot.
The whole system is broken.
If you can read this sig, congratulations, you have your glasses on!
Tax cuts. More tax cuts and tax rebates and tax credits. It really works, I've seen it.
You get your tax cuts, you take your receipts to that little 4x5 H&R Block kiosk in the middle of Walmart, you walk around while they prepare them, they cut you an advance refund check, and you take it over and buy a new flatscreen Vizio TV to hang on the wood panelling in your trailer. And that stimulates the economy.
Duh.
The corps, politicos and average Americans are in one big staring contest right now.
Corps want government assurances that they can't/won't ever have a bad day and a ton of handouts before they'll start doing business as usual (fucking the average American for their ungodly gain). Politicians are going about their usual spinster ways, spreading as many sound bites about how they're right and the other guy is wrong so that come election day they can trot out their "record" (which will likely be wrong either way, but spun to sound like they're right).
And your average American sheeple is standing around waiting to follow orders. All along not realizing that once all is said and done, we'll be worse off over the long haul, but hazily satisfied that SOMETHING happened rather than nothing at all, and we'll all go back to living in our overly medicated stupor (prescribed or otherwise), thankful for a new season of $SHITTY_REALITY_SHOW or $MINDLESS_DRAMA_OR_SITCOM will give us just enough emotional boost to go to bed feeling anything.
No sig for you!!
Come on, seriously. This wasn't even close to "interesting" or "insightful", it was pure partisan wingnut horse manure with a side of outright lies and a dessert of strawmen.
To the Congressional Republicans, things like school construction won't result in jobs for construction workers: apparently magic pixies will simply drop the new schools out of the sky in exchange for our money.
No, to the Congressional Republicans, school construction is something that should be handled by the local governments and not on the federal level, because the more layers of bureaucracy you have, the more money is wasted.
All of this is coming out of the tax pie. A real Republican/conservative simply believes that the size of the federal government should decline and then, should the local population (state/county/city/village/etc) decide certain services are indeed necessary, that the taxes should be raised on that level to provide them.
The less bureaucracy you have, the more money you can spend on what you actually want it to go to. This is not a hard concept, yet somehow it is impossible for the left wingnuts to comprehend.
If you can read this sig, congratulations, you have your glasses on!
One wants to spend it here, the other wants to spend it offshore by "investing" in the spread of democracy. I'd say the offshore "investors" kinda got a negative return on their investment, wouldn't you?
I'd even go so far as to say part of this mess is because we choose to "liberate their freedoms" instead of fixing our fucking busted ass infrastructure and building new infrastructure like a modern electric grid. Had we done that instead of freedom fighting, we might be in a place were we wouldn't be dependent on those evil terrorists who hate our freedoms (but not our fries).
In short, Nader is an idiot. The two parties, in fact, are not at all the same and if one doesn't see that after eight years of the freedom-fighter crowd, said person is a fool. You think we'd be in Iraq right now if the other guy won 8 years ago?
There is a big fucking difference in how democrats vs republicans spend. Huge, in fact.
Taxcuts for the rich aren't the solution to everything. And I've never seen a taxcut build public infrastructure, which is crumbling all over the country. Of course, GOP would rather sell everything to their buddies at companies like Haliburton so they can then charge tolls and fees in perpetuity-- "taxes" are bad though. Morons. Never mind that the GOP-solution-to-everything tax-cuts haven't worked yet and 8 years is plenty of time to demonstrate the GOP's abject fiscal failure...conversely investment by the Feds has worked before. The facts are something fundamentalist neocons aren't ever going to bother with...for a fundie, they are always right no matter what because they are right. Got it? Circular reasoning, the GOP way.
I agree with you 100%. Which is why pretty much the only thing the feds can legislate is bills that level the financial playing field. The *can* however, say words that have no legal impact. Words like "read to your children instead of park them in front of the TV".
This sounds good on the surface, but I'm not sure it is "correct" and you'd have to tack on things that would make some uncomfortable. I'm thinking things like sex-ed, contraceptives, abortion, adoption... that kind of thing. People are gonna do the nasty no matter what it does to their tax status--you best provide people options to both prevent pregnancy and help them out in case they do get pregnant. There is probably a reason nobody proposes what you say, even if it might a workable solution. It would be a mess politically--but I think if somebody was bold enough we could pull something off--it wouldn't be exactly what you want though.
Better yet, make hours spend doing volunteer work with non-profits (and schools) something you can deduct the same way as other charitable donations. As always though... how do you value the hourly wage? I can see a million ways to exploit either of our plans if not careful.
why is our sector always the absolute bottom of the barrel with these people?
Boosting broadband will create a ton of jobs. It will also ripple down the economic landscape by creating a new customer base for the online services industry.
They're using their grammar skills there.
A letter from the CBO about the stimulus bill (PDF)
Instead of relying on someone else's bias to interpret things for you, how about doing some digging and go to the source?
Please tell me where in the linked CBO document it says the stimulus bill will be harmful?
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The majority of Slashdot mods probably know enough math to see why the parent is complete BS. I'm not going to rehash the reasons... but the upshot is that you can't take the average amount payed and assume that the guy earning $109k will need to shoulder as much as the guy earning $10M.
And yet, it's modded insightful. Gee, could that be because people, when they really want to believe something, will lie to themselves to convince themselves that they're right? Naww.... I'm sure all the mods' fingers slipped.
This is a bit off track, but seriously? You think teaching intelligent design is something a taxpayer funded school should be doing? Good sir, I beg to differ. Ain't that a violation of another one of those pesky lines in the constitution--you know, the one about separation of church and state?
What if the community doesn't have a large enough tax base to pay for it? What if they barely have any tax base to pay for a quality eduation? Fuck 'em? Move to a place with rich parents who generate a more substantial tax base?
You agree with this, yet you cannot see how letting communities or even states be entirely responsible for school funding can lead to huge disparity in education between geographic regions?
This is a cop-out to avoid solving problems. Obviously different areas cost less. You either adjust the payout based on geography or do something. You dont bury your head in the sand over silly semantics.
That said, there is no way in hell you could give different dollar amounts based on cost-of-living. Politically, it would never work. If it were possible, the IRS would have forked over a larger rebate check last year for us in Seattle because our cost of living is higher then in Po-dunk, USA. Sucks, but that is life...
You dont seem understand why these systems exist and why they might have evolved into what they are now. The world is more complex then when George Washington was president.
This bill was intended to throw money into the US economy by way of creating jobs. As each paycheck gets cashed, the money is inserted into the local economy. The key is that the US government is borrowing to do it. That's necessary because nobody else is willing to lend or borrow at the moment.
Oddly, it's my opinion that if congress simply pulled rank on the banks and forced home mortgages to be capped at 4 or 5 % regardless of original terms we'd be in better shape. The collapse is because banks double and triple sold/bought insurance for all the poorly written home mortgage loans. With all the eligible buyers and low initial credit rates, people bought more than they could afford (or borrowed and spent from the phantom gains in housing). Here's the thing: if everyone just continued to pay their mortgages (standard default rates as typical), nobody would panic.
Instead, the banks called their foolish acceleration clauses and pushed people into foreclosure. With foreclosures, prices went down and nobody could sell for the inflated market and were therefore underwater and had to go bankrupt instead of selling their house and moving on. Had the collapse not happened and the government put some real, hard rules out there we'd see reductions in investment income and a slowdown in the economy until actual values caught up with phantom values (still a housing retreat, but not as drastic). Nobody would get rich, and very very few would be destitute. The economy would falter as the credit-driven spending would subside. It would be slow, but not the catastrophe we've seen.
The simple fact is that people, as a whole and as a small but significant portion of individuals, cannot be trusted to deal honestly with money. Self regulation simply cannot occur in the financial sector. The congress, sad to say, doesn't have the backbone to put in regulations for fear that they, themselves, will be prevented from becoming wildly rich(er) (again, people and money).
The world will not collapse if growth goes to zero, contrary to the markets. But the people who make markets will be hurt by the fact that they provide little to no value, and will suffer greatly relative to their current positions. Think about it - if growth and inflation went to zero, would it really affect you in a significant way? Every dollar you saved would be a dollar for you to spend in retirement. We expect growth because we expect inflation. It's not really necessary for average folks like us. It only matters to those who don't work for a living, but use cash as a tool for making money.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Why don't we try solving problems instead of partisan bickering. We all want the same damn thing--a good education for our kids, right?
Pretty much everything you said is right on. My main argument was (at least I hoped), that the federal government can ensure that everybody gets the same funding (and please dont play the "OMG different cost of living" semantic game that pudge did, you know what I mean... sheesh ;-).
I'd argue very strongly that a child born in po-dunk USA with a tiny tax base gets the ability to access the same learning materials and brainpower (i.e. teachers) as somebody living in some rich suburb full of software engineers. As to how that funding is actually managed, that is up to the neighborhood or city.
All I know is I'm gonna make my way to the White House and steal some of those money tree seeds because it's not fair that Obama is the only one who gets to use them!
Yes, you have just seized the senator by the balls there.
There are still enough corrupt asshats left in congress to block any and all good ideas to put people back to work. They are still stuck with the idea that tax cuts solve all problems, but are too short sighted to realize that the last 8 years of tax cuts and outsourcing jobs overseas are what got us here in the first place.
I do not hold the republicans solely @ fault here though. The dem side has sought to put plenty of wasteful pork like "Family Planning" crap in their bills as well. I also don't think much of Obama's idea to give 1K to the poor that don't even earn enough to pay taxes @ all. Give them jobs so they earn enough to pay taxes. Give them a shovel and a road to build. What's so hard about that?
All these people just don't get it at all. Everyone in America needs to write their senators and representatives, both republican and democrat, and demand they get with the program and write legislation that will put money into the hands of the working class in the form of jobs and tax cuts. People need to feel warm and fuzzy enough to spend money on new homes and consumer goods. Only that will turn the economy around.
Tax cuts for billionaires won't work, they never have, they never will.Many here don't realize the 2001 (republican) congress with a republican president are the ones that authored all the shady legislation (think derivatives and other stupid ideas) that snowballed into the recent global economic crash.
"Suppose you were an idiot...and suppose you were a member of Congress...but I repeat myself." Mark Twain
Exactly the reason why educational funding was included as a large part of the stimulus bill - because schools are generally locally and statewide funded. But local and statewide funds are currently drying up with the sudden downturn, so we're looking at a lot of major communities being forced to trim education spending in order to balance their budgets, since they're generally not allowed to take out loans and sell bonds like the fed can. Let's see how well it serves the local economy when teachers start losing their jobs.
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
Something people, and especially the politicians, seem to be forgetting is that this is a stimulus bill to get the economy going again.
Anything that doesn't support the goal of fixing the economy doesn't belong in this bill, no matter how much we think that particular chunk of funding is needed.
Who else would it be :-)
(PS: Texans amuse me, they are also the best drivers in the country :-)
I was at first in favor of this stimulus, but I'm back to feeling that we're not the good guys anyway. I'd prefer to take my chances and let it fail completely so that a different mindset might have its opportunity to rise from the ashes.
But what about those who are unemployed right now? The states don't have enough money to cover their asses until your plan (or anybodies) gets a foothold. And if they are unemployed, maybe you can make them a little more happy by giving them a job, even if it isn't ideal so instead of handing them an unemployment check every month you hand them a paycheck. If they are happy, maybe they'll go take their spouse to dinner or go buy that bike so they can get to work. Then the bikeshop can make payroll and their employees can go take their lovely significant others out for a dinner and maybe buy that new couch. Beats cutting them all a bunch of unemployment checks, doesn't it?
Hmmm... Sounds like the idea behind this stimulus thingy, doesn't it? Gotta do something in the short term for the long-term stuff to take effect. your corporate tax idea might work, but it won't happen overnight. Neither will any other long-term "get us all moving in the right direction" plan.
It is hard to accept but Westerners have lived way beyond their means for way too long. You can try to feel all warm and fuzzy all you like but it is not going to create the kind of wealth that will enable you to pay off your debts and buy a bigger home.
Politicians are bending over backwards to pretend this failing financial fault-line can be repaired with more regulation and government involvement but it can't. The only way out of the mess is the hard way. Tighten you belts literally, learn to do with less, stop sending all your kids to college and instead learn how to produce something valuable that other people will want to buy. Basically start to ignore the government and think and look after of number one first. Yes, that is you and yes that is selfish and yes that is good.
I always like this comparison: When flying as a passenger in large airliners you are told that in case of decompression of the cabin you need to put on your own oxygen mask first before you help the elderly and kids. Why? Because while you a breathing oxygen you will retain the ability to help others. Retaining the ability of action will be essential to get through this rough patch which thanks to Obama Hussein's spending spree will last many years longer than it needed to.
The only thing governments can do for us is get out of the way, cut spending, cut regulations, cut taxes, cut subsidies and allow the great American spirit of your forefathers return. Grow a back bone and get over your tall puppy syndrome. Stop leaning on your union and politicians and get on with your life that is yours to live.
(I still can't believe you people voted in a muslim socialist as your president. Maybe there is no hope left)
So we could all buy HDTV's and new hubcaps for our cars. I mean, we partially got into this mess by treating our homes as credit cards and then foreclosing on the house, why not re-fi the country and go buy more of the same, right?
Really though... writing a check to all of us is a really, really bad idea. Sure it would stimulate the economy, but once the buzz wore off we'd have have nothing to show for it but some new plasma screens and some new bling for our cars. Really, it would be doing *exactly the same thing* that got us into this mess in the first place.
If we are gonna stimulate the economy, lets *not* do what we've been doing. Lets actually use the loan to build *long term investments that last hundreds of years* instead of fucking spinnaz for the jeep, okay?
The current deficit was over 10.6 TRILLION dollars when Obama took office. The amount of this package will add less than 8% of the current deficit. It is designed to stimulate the economy over a long haul as opposed to just giving money to a presidents friends. In addition, looking OVER the pdf from the CBO, it says that estimates are that GDP will be down .1 to .3 % in 2019 due to this. Yet, they do not say what the estimates are WITHOUT it.
So, here are my questions to you. The CBO said numerous times during the 80's and 00's that your republican deficits were costing America's future GDP a great deal. Did you OBJECT JUST ONCE to reagan's or bush's deficits? No? Why am I not surprised.
In this case the last 2 years have failed in trying to just let time and debt destruction have a stab at it, so now its time to try a different strategy.
Perhaps I'm missing your point, but exactly what was being done over the last two years that you'd call debt destruction?
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
I'm not for the bailout either, for many of the same reasons you name. I'd rather they fix the leaks and repair the machinery. Then wait until things recover and heal on their own.
Any time I hear the bailout amount is being lowered I get happy. This is all money that will have to be paid back someday. We don't need more debt in the economy to fix things. We need LESS.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
"if one doesn't see that after eight years of the freedom-fighter crowd"
Perhaps it's hard to tell the difference because *both parties voted to invade Iraq*. In fact our current secretary of state endorsed the war and continued to support the war both in the senate and while she ran for president. If she is against it now, it's merely a matter of convenience. And she is hardly unique. The democrats only were "against" the war was it was politically expedient to do so.
In fact, go down the role call of democrats and republicans and see who voted to go to war. You'll note that everybody was for it. Everybody.
And the poster below said it pretty well; both parties want to spend spend spend, the programs may be different, but now we're quibbling about where the receipts came from, not from inherent goodness of reckless deficit spending.
As I am in the Broadband field and a crap load of gov't money would be great.
Tax cuts don't help much if they are saved, which is likely. The banks don't need more deposits -- they are afraid to lend even though the Fed rate is at 0%. I think our leaders should forget about the stimulus and just nationalize insolvent banks. This is a way to let the insolvent banks go bankrupt without causing too much disruption to the financial system. This would instantly restore the credit markets and then the government could control credit using fiscal policy again. They can re-privatize the banks later, as was done in Sweden when they had their credit crisis.
Maybe I'm different than the rest of you, but if I worked for it, I would like to keep it. I'm sick of being taxed out of 50% of everything I earn, so that it can be given to someone who doesn't deserve it.
Why do you think the money is all yours? Just because you're lucky enough to get someone to pay it to you? Is everyone entitled to every last cent of what they "earn" regardless of how they obtained it?
You and I would have virtually nothing if it wasn't for the society we live in. Left to our own devices, we'd be lucky to have a fraction of what we enjoy (I'd probably be eating the squirrels in my back yard).
And, if the society we live in is sick and needs the money, I'm certainly not going to complain.
While we can argue about how to fix the country, or whether the country is actually broken, there's no excuse for complaining about paying taxes if taxes are what's needed.
Ireland's economy is down the shitter at the moment, and the government has been trying for ages to find where they can cut 2bil euro from the budget. Their solution: Instead of attacking small groups of people who wont do anything and dont matter, they attack everyone. Massive pension levies on public sector workers and big tax hikes on everyone else.
all of this hate in the country for something that the American government was going to spend on broadband!
No, the inflation rate is currently around 0% or slightly negative. See http://www.inflationdata.com/inflation/Inflation_Rate/CurrentInflation.asp.
I have created a group on barackobama.com called get the stimulus right. Once again we must band together as we did with FISA and make sure that this package is what it is supposed to be, instead of just another round of tax cuts.
Everyone do what you can and call every senator tomorrow and get this right. We cant afford 800 billion wasted. We need it to be spent right to create jobs and modernize the American Economy.
What good are tax cuts if we don't have work in the first place?
This the NEA that Republicans always bitching about? The one that pays for art and orchestras and stuff? The one with the 144 *million* dollar budget? That's about 50 cents for each of you a year..
This is a liberal media, from movies, to books, to magazines, to the fine arts, that routinely emphasizes magical, emotional thinking over rational thinking. It is a multibillion dollar industry that subsists entirely on selling people emotional pap for what they want to hear, that celebrates self destruction, idolizes the weak, rationalizes dishonesty... and the biggest criticism or thing to do is to be hip, be cool, don't be too white, and hey, white people put man on the moon - even Gil Scott Heron got up from his rats and his self pitying fixes long enough to notice that. For the last 30-40 years we've had nothing but a steady diet of how smart you are is equated directly to how you look, that intelligence is tied to talking, but really, the best role model for intelligence and study was in fact that very guy that everyone rips with the big glasses and pocket protectors and wanted to have a normal 1950s lifestyle, not some fricking MTVish Real World teenage drama.
In my book, anyone that is hip, or even too well spoken, is probably stupid in some fundamental way.
This is my sig.
The problem with the spending plan isn't just that the U.S. can't afford it, it's fundamentally flawed in it's approach. Buying $10B worth of widgets with borrowed money will not only fail to stimulate the economy, but it has a significant chance of making it worse, since it doesn't chance the primary thing wrong with the world economy: the last 4-8 years was driven by consumer indebtedness by the overvaluation of real estate.
Thus, to "get us back" to where we were a year or two ago, we'd have to have a stimulus plan that would be about 8-10 times as large as what is being proposed. But then, the additional money would put inflationary pressure on the world economy that people would be worse off.
There is no real "fix" for this.
Here's the fundamental problem... you keep making this out to be "oh the republicans are bad the democrats are trying....". What utter B.S. I don't care if you change the labels. This isn't a democrat versus republican "thing".
Both parties are pandering. Neither are acting in the interest of what's best for this country. I sure as hell hope Obama succeeds, but right now he looks less like FDR and more like Jimmy Carter. The congress looks like it's populated by half-wits who seem more concerned with whoring to special interests than to fixing the things that are wrong.
We spend more time yelling about abortion, and religion and we're afraid to talk about the real issues because it's racist or uncomfortable or it's stuff that we don't want to talk about because it means hard work. We won't get back on track spending another trillion that we can't afford. The right answer are there in front of us, but we've turned into a bunch of wussies and we seem to lie around hoping someone will get us a job or give us an HDTV or stop us from getting fat.
Meanwhile we look at what's happening as if it's the Superbowl, with "your" team one political party and "my" team the other one and we cheer when our team wins a vote with no idea if it's really good for the country. We all need to grow up.
College students and educated, i.e. those having a BS and higher degree from US universities voted by great measures for Barak Obama to become the President of the United States of America.
Republicans -- i.e. the GOP dominated by "Evangilical Christans" otherwise known as White Supermisists, are now in Pay-Back mentality to deliver their message of hatred and bigotery onto those whose opposed their Savior -- Sara Palin -- who still wanders the wilderness.
Looks like trench warefare is now high, and will enter into every state of the Union.
I'm not going to get involved in the big debate over Keynes vs. the gold bugs. Just on the actual topic of the subject note...
The House had a $6B broadband appropriation, divided between rural (Dept. of Agriculture) and not-necessarily-rural (NTIA) programs. The Senate totally rewrote those sections. Sen. Rockefeller (D-Verizon) added about $2B for "advanced broadband" defined as 100 Mbps down, 20 Mbps up, in the form of a corporate tax credit, for new service to any residential customer. Even if only a tiny percentage took the higher speed, and it was totally closed to competitive Internet or telephone services.
So the grant could not be used by most standalone ISPs, because they're generally not profitable (so no need for a tax credit), or aren't Corporations (partnerships, municipalities, non-profits, etc., don't get anything). Nor could cable (upstream speed limits) or AT&T (U-Verse is too slow). The money had exactly one recipient in mind, It was a subsidy for pulling FiOS in suburban areas to compete with established cable companies and ISPs. The "underserved" areas could include Tampa, New York City, Short Hills, Santa Monica, or Chevy Chase.
The subsidy would have added precisely zero new FiOS lines, since it would have covered their existing plans. It was just more money for Ivan Seidenberg's bonus. Good riddance!
I'd like to buy homeland for our 10 million people. http://twitter.com/mahadiga
Well, since there is a very real risk of deflation, I don't see some inflationary pressure as such a terrible thing. If inflation starts to become a problem, the Fed can always raise interest rates. Lowering interest rates, however, is rather difficult when they are almost zero.
What are you trying to say here? Would you argue that the best course of action for the government is to do what ordinary people do when their revenue falls? Because that worked great in 1932.
Please share the answers with the rest of us who aren't as enlightened as you are.
I know bridges and roads and stuff are important, but our electronic highways are critical to our ability to compete in the world, and are lagging well behind other nations. Between the high percentage of tax cuts, and these last few bad decisions, I have the feeling the middle class got the short end of the stick again.
Does this place morph into a Republican haven on the weekends, or what? I'm seeing "no, cut taxes instead!" and "everything is pork!" modded up to the sky, while the sensical posts are ignored. Sheesh...
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
Does this place morph into a Republican haven on the weekends, or what? I'm seeing "no, cut taxes instead!" and "everything is pork!" modded up to the sky, while the sensical posts are ignored. Sheesh...
On one of the Sunday talk shows I listened to a Republican congressman say that all this infrastructure rebuilding won't create jobs. It's just Democrat spend, spend, spend. When asked who would be doing the construction and is that not a job, he said "no" it's not a 'real' job because it's temporary. After the building has been built the job goes away so it doesn't count as job creation. I did an actual double take at the TV. He was serious or at least came across as serious.
Considering new home construction is like nonexistent right now all those unemployed construction sector workers could be put back to work. I considered not only the one construction worker but also the ripple effect. It would help save jobs of the entire construction supply chain. Concrete suppliers, lumber suppliers, electricians, furniture manufacturers... all the way up and down the building supply chain. But no, it's just Democrat spend, spend, spend because it won't create any 'real' jobs.
I thought, I was hoping, we'd put this insanity behind us. I'm supposed to give the benefit of doubt that they love this country like we do but they just have a different approach. But it's hard with this level of insanity not to believe they're not out to destroy us as a nation.
JMHO
Disclaimer: This post made out of frustration. Fully expecting -10000, troll, flame points I made it anyway. It's like we can't put the past behind us or that we have and it's now biting our back side. I wish it would go away so we can move forward.
Click here for a paper with details on the above.
Click here for a PowerPoint presentation on the above.
Family planning is not "wasteful pork". The main reason for doing this is that it will STIMULATE THE ECONOMY. The doctors, nurses, receptionists, etc, etc, are all going to be more employed, and spend more money. The fact that it'll also reduce the number of unplanned/unwanted pregancies is a nice side effect.
The plan is not to give people $1k who are paying no taxes at all. It's to refund taxes to working poor people, who although they are paying little or no federal income tax, are paying plenty of payroll tax. Federal income tax != the entire tax burden, as much as the GOP would like you to think so. And the reason for doing this... wait for it... it STIMULATES THE ECONOMY. This measure puts money in the hand of people most likely to spend it right away, which the effect you want.
People need to stop going on and on about the amount of spending in the bill. Economic demand has fallen through the floor - in these circumstances, spending is the entire point. More is better, at least right now.
The problem is that tax cuts are not very stimulative when compared to federal spending:
http://mediamatters.org/rd?to=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.house.gov%2Fsmbiz%2Fhearings%2Fhearing-07-24-08-stimulus%2FZandi.pdf%23page%3D4
The link is from testimony to Congress about the stimulative effects of various measures (higher numbers are better). Looking particularly at the table on page 5, you can see that almost every type of spending beats almost every type of tax cut. And the guy giving the testimony (a guy by the name of Zandi, with Moody's - http://www.economy.com/dismal/bios.asp?author=25) is said to have been a McCain advisor, so it's not like this is a partisan thing.
We've been doing the tax cut thing for years. It didn't work. Now let's try something that does.
... is that the Senate is cutting out the parts that have the most immediate stimulative effect! They cut something like $40B in direct aid to states, which would have been used to avoid layoffs in public schools, firehouses, and police stations; to prevent deferral of road maintenance and construction projects; and similar stuff. Hopefully some of this stuff cut by centrist morons in the Senate will be restored in conference.
... this has been shown to be much less stimulative than public works type projects, as people tend to save the money (or equivalently, pay down debt) instead of spend it. See here:
http://mediamatters.org/rd?to=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.house.gov%2Fsmbiz%2Fhearings%2Fhearing-07-24-08-stimulus%2FZandi.pdf%23page%3D4
I have a crazy idea: maybe we should start building factories and start *MAKING DURABLE GOODS* we can sell, rather than having a GDP built up so much on services.
...never ceases to amaze me.
Yeah, that's why after the past 8 years of cutting taxes (for rich people), the economy's in such great shape now!
Here in the reality based world, there are actual working solutions to our economic problems that don't involve shoveling more money at the richest segment of society. Your argument that tax cuts would be a better stimulus are simply wrong - the tax rebate of last year had very little effect, as most of it went into savings.
The reason is because, just like the Great Depression, there really are no answers to deal with the current economic downturn. Only time and debt destruction can fix it...
the new deal put people to work, allowing the destruction of debt.
Stripping these programs out in favor of tax cuts for people who have employment and therefore dont need them is the stupidest, greediest thing i've ever seen.
If you want to accomplish an extrication from this situation, the best way is to take that money and mail it to anyone making 40k a year or less.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!