$2 Billion For Broadband Cut From Stimulus Bill 658
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.
Great (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Great (Score:4, Insightful)
Frankly, the telco's were given million of dollars to expand broadband years ago and essentially pissed the money away.
Not millions, billions, some two hundred of them (albeit in tax breaks, not cash) and I'm still waiting to see the results from that before I want any more tax money going to those bloodsuckers.
Who is the bloodsucker? (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Re:Who is the bloodsucker? (Score:5, Insightful)
With the world's financial system in the brink of collapse from deregulation, isn't it about time to dump the bullshit right-wing ideology behind that deregulation ?
"the past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth."
...
Sorry, it didn't quote work that way. [nytimes.com]
The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago.
''These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing any kind of financial crisis,'' said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ''The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.''
Not that I blame the right any less, but this whole idea that not regulating is a "right-wing" ideology is ridiculous. Both sides want to look the other way when they are getting their short-term gains. Both sides then want to blame the other when the shit hits the fan. I agree there was a regulation failure. I do not agree it was a right-wing ideology that caused it.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Who is the bloodsucker? (Score:4, Informative)
Except when you actually look at all the facts rather than latching on to one thing and assuming it is the source of all evil, you find out something interesting:
The mortgages backed by that program had a lower than average failure rate. You see, unregulated lending institutions made the majority of the loans that are now going bankrupt, in fact more than 75% of the loans that had gone bad did not involve the companies in the program you cite at all.
Of course, the whole "it's the mortgages" thing is pretty much off track. It was the unregulated trade in "Mortgage backed assets" that caused the problem. That was free market behavior at it's very essence. The banks sold each other worthless bonds because they could find idiots at the other banks willing to buy worthless junk. They paid a rating agency to rate their mortgages as no risk because of the housing bubble, as long as prices on housing skyrocketed even if someone defaulted on the mortgage they could sell the house for more than the mortgage.
Sorry, but the program you cite isn't a culprit in the financial collapse.
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Most of these guys squandered their money the last time they received a serving of pork, so why in the world would we do it again? At least half of this plan's spending doesn't do a thing to "stimulate" (even Obama said as much) and just represent political payoffs rather than "change".
These guys had a chance to really do something, and they've blown it.
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Totaly agree with your assesment, unless we all want to live in caves the only short term solution to the financial crisis is for the government to spend like crazy since neither the population or investors are going to. I dont like seeing my pension savings being turned into confetti by zero interest rates and the prospect of currency collapse as a result of national debt but if the only source of spending in the economy to replace credit card debt is the government then thats what has to happen. No one se
Re:Great (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Strange though it may sound, it is actually quite a difficult thing to spend $800b. When a stimulus package like this goes into effect, while the budget may be quickly allocated to specific projects, the actual draw down can only occur through vouched expenditure, and this can only occur as work is done. With this in mind, actually spending $160b (20%) is still quite an achievement.
However, the fact that the projects are started and have a guaranteed completion should provide more stimulus than the actual cash spend.
I don't know whether the spending is going to the right places, or that it will have the desired stimulus effect, but it's not correct to suggest that this is some kind of ruse just because it appears that the funding is not front-loaded.
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No, easy. (Score:5, Insightful)
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That approach has two side-effects, both horrifying to Washington:
1. The money would be spent on the specific needs of each citizen, and not on the needs of Das Kapital.
2. Any mechanism of consolidation of power to Washington would be eliminated. When "the people" buy a badly needed refrigerator, who will be there to negotiate for another refrigerator for their state senator's vacation home in Florida?
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The problem of that is the following:
- How much of that money would be spent and how much would be saved?
The modern financial system is (or at least was, until recently) a big machine designed to make money go around and around and around:
- People buy stuff; that money goes to companies that sell the stuff; the companies then pay the salaries; the employees buy stuff with their salaries an
Re:Great (Score:5, Insightful)
Strange though it may sound, it is actually quite a difficult thing to spend $800b.
Then why try to spend it all at once? The senate was right to cut down the bill (largely at the insistance of the Republicans although even some "blue dog" democrats grumbled about Pelosi's bill). Trying to rush anything throught Congress virtually guarantees that it will become a christmass tree so overloaded with pork and favored special interest spending that it could easily cost several times more than to pass the measures separately. This is especially true with non immediate spending. They should pass the critical spending first and then work on the other things as time permits and circumstances become more amenable. IMHO, the democrats made too big a deal of their "first 100 days" pledges as if rushing things, regardless of circumstances, was obviously the best way to go about completing the job.
With this in mind, actually spending $160b (20%) is still quite an achievement.
In a macabre sort of way I suppose that is true. However, as a Libertarian I am still horrified at the massive government spending that is currently taking place to make good the ill effects of previous government interventions, which notably include flooding the market with liquidity and allowing the money supply to increase massively in the years following 9/11 in an ill fated attempt to "smooth out" some bumps in the economic road and look where that got us. Now the government wants to cure what is essentially a spending problem, with...wait for it...even more government and consumer spending? Do we cure an alcoholic by offering him even more of his favorite beverage? Certainly not, so how can we cure a spending problem with more spending and making even MORE money available to spend?
However, the fact that the projects are started and have a guaranteed completion should provide more stimulus than the actual cash spend.
I don't know how it is in your state, but here in California it takes CalTrans and state contractors forever to finish highway projects. In some cases it has taken as long as two (2) DECADES after the first load of dirt was scooped to complete what should have been two (2) year or less construction projects. I remain skeptical that more of these types of projects will provide a lot of stimulus to the economy. After all, trucks cannot use new on-ramps and overpasses to move goods until they are actually completed.
I don't know whether the spending is going to the right places, or that it will have the desired stimulus effect
Don't worry, its NOT going to the right places AND it will NOT have the desired stimulus effect.
but it's not correct to suggest that this is some kind of ruse just because it appears that the funding is not front-loaded.
At best, it is an unwelcome distraction to the real problem which is the bad mortgage backed debts that are like sand in the proverbial economic engine, corrupting everything they touch and poisoning by proxy the balance sheets of everyone even remotely connected. The really important question, IMHO, that isn't being asked is this:
How can Amercians, whose real wages have stagnated since the end of the 1970s compared to economic growth and inflation, continue to pay inflated prices for the nation's housing stock? Most americans and particularly young Americans can really only afford a home that costs less than about $150,000 dollars or so and yet in many parts of the nation the price stubbornly refuses to fall below that level. There are too many dollars in the system relative to what average Americans actually produce and earn and until that problem is addressed I think that this economic malaise will continue, even after the "recovery", until this nation addresses its debt and spending problems.
Housing is at the root of this crises, but beyond even that is
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How can Amercians, whose real wages have stagnated since the end of the 1970s compared to economic growth and inflation, continue to pay inflated prices for the nation's housing stock?
Thanks for bringing that up; I've been trying to understand that for a long time (long before the current crisis)
I'm no economics or financial expert, but I've always found it strange that our society looks at houses like some kind of magic money machines--as if they can repeatedly be bought and sold with the prices growing far faster than the salaries of the people purchasing them. How could that possibly NOT lead to a situation where no one can afford houses anymore (or, more likely, everyone buys houses
Re:Great (Score:4, Insightful)
"Many universities sit on huge sums of money and still get government help so I'm not losing sleep over that one either. "
Where did you get this idea? This is a complete utter B.S. Most large state research universities are struggling financially right now. Many have a hiring freeze already. Some had been seeing their state funded budgets erode forever. As for private schools with large endowments, most of those too are having serious financing issues right now. WUSTL, Harvard, etc. Many have instituted faculty and staff hiring freeze as well. What large sums of money are you talking about? Their endowments? They already lost 30 to 50% of value in just one year, and schools generally use the earnings generated by those endowments to beef up their budgets. It is plain stupid to spend the endowment itself because this will seriously compromise the future financial positions of many universities. Based on experiences of many people I know, the freshly minted PhDs in any field are facing the worst job market of the decade.
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According to this page [indiana.edu], The top public university system in terms of endowment is (surprisingly) the University of Texas system (that's all the UofT campuses) with $10 billion. I imagine post-crash it's closer to half that. My own system (University of Wisconsin) had as of 2004 just under a billion. Sounds like we ought to be sitting pretty, uncorking the champagne, eating caviar, a
Re:Great (Score:5, Informative)
I think one of the worst things that republicans have done to this country is to make people feel educated on a subject after ingesting a few sound bites.
Then read this in-depth article on education costs run amok in New Jersey. It's fascinating (and not boring) reading. Unfortunately it will pop your misconcpetions about how well-spent our education dollar is. Maybe after reading this, you can give us a soundbite or two about how spending $500,000 per graduating high school student is good for the taxpayer.
http://www.city-journal.org/html/16_2_new_jersey.html [city-journal.org]
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The problem is the government and the parents.
I just took a look at the private school I attended. Kindergarten tuition is now $8,310, grades 1-8 is $7,630 and high school is $11,690. That gives you a total of $116,110 for K-12 education. The school receives no federal or state tax dollars, and is better than every single public school, and most of the private schools, in the state.
At the very least it's absolutely pathetic that the state manages to spend five times as much money, for poor results.
Re:Great (Score:5, Insightful)
Can that private school kick out the non-performing kids or the ones with poor discipline? I know a lot of teachers and after talking to them I've concluded that the single biggest problem in public education today is discipline (more like the lack of), and their options to deal with it.
My aunt works as a teacher in a private school making less money than a public school but she loves it. Every parent comes to parent-teacher meetings. She has next to zero classroom discipline issues because if the kid continues to be a problem he'll get booted out. The parents know this so they make sure it's not a problem.
The problem in public school is what do you do with the kids who just don't care and have parents who don't care. You can't really kick them out of school, but you don't want them in the classroom slowing down the other students. What do you do?
Re:Great (Score:4, Funny)
Corporal punishment in the classroom? What good would that do? I say punish the parents for their kids' behaviour. That's the way it's supposed to be anyway. The parents have a responsibility for what their kids do. Don't hit the little bastards for stuff they've been taught is okay to do. Hit their fucking parents!
Yes (Score:3, Insightful)
And while we are at it, lets dump Brown vs. Board of Education [brownvboard.org] 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
Re:Yes (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is all too often we mistakely expect (and often demand) equal results regardless of "socio-economic status". Sadly, that's just not possible. Here's an example -- Kids do better in two parent households. Statistically, they end up making more money (read bringing in tax dollars) than those from single parent homes. Want to get equal results? Stop rewarding bad behavior with money. Single parent unemployeed or on welfare? Have another kid and you get no extra money. Offer tax incentives to married/domestic partners. Offer tax rebates for volenteer hours spent at your own child's public school.
Two parent households and involved parents. That will buy you more per dollar spent than tossing money at the "problem". Lets focus on that, why don't we?
Agree (Score:3, Insightful)
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, adop
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Most reputable economists think that with monetary policy maxed out (interest rates are effectively zero), the only thing we can do to stop the bleeding is to use fiscal policy, i.e., spend a ton of money and pray.
Yeesh. What a mischaracterization.
Most reputable economists agree that the interest rates should never have been allowed to get where they are. Constantly jacking them down was foolhardy.
"Spend a ton of money and pray" - the economy has the equivalent of a sprained ankle, currently. "Spend a ton o
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There is no better return on investment than money spend educating children. None. You're talking about the future of this country, literally. If there is a problem then you fix the problem, you don't ignore it.
That's not true, frankly. This article [financialtales.com] goes into some detail about why college educations aren't particularly worth it.
The fact of the matter is that the state spends nearly five times more per student than private education costs, yet delivers significantly worse results. The solution doesn't involve continuing to dump more and more resources into a broken system.
Republicans are Flat-Earth Economists (Score:2, Insightful)
"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
Re:Republicans are Flat-Earth Economists (Score:5, Insightful)
The Republicans are just as clueless as the Democrats in the current situation. 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...
In short.. They can spend $2T if they like, and it will do little to nothing to stop the current problems from advancing. When you are a nation that is 70% consumption and have a 400% GDP debt ratio, there is little you can do to 'simulate" the underlying fundamentals. Meaning, the problem was overstimulation to begin with..
Re:Republicans are Flat-Earth Economists (Score:4, Interesting)
The way I look at it, they have two ways to handle the economic crisis:
1. Do absolutely nothing and let the economy continue to deflate until we get back to pre-housing bubble status. The problem with this approach is that you'll have 25% unemployment, soup lines that are worse than the great depression, and the entire world will take 10-20 years to pull itself out of the mess, if people don't riot and burn the world down first.
2. Dump money into the economy and continue to prop up the housing bubble by buying failed mortgage debt, hoping for a soft landing. This approach is doomed to failure as well because you can't keep pumping money into a bubble hoping to sustain it forever. The bubble is going to either pop quickly or deflate slowly. This approach only kicks the football down the field another 5-10 years for the next generation of politicians to deal with it.
Guess which approach our government is picking? I guess I'd choose option 2 also but either way we're fucked.
Re:Republicans are Flat-Earth Economists (Score:5, Insightful)
A debt crisis is just a generic way to saying that a nations (or world) wealthy class needs to realize their losses... Protecting a nations wealthy, which is what we are currently doing, is not smart and will not work long term because it will ultimately create social unrest. Personally, I would prefer option 3.
3. Realize that an economic collapse is inevitable, be a real leader, and prepare the public for it. Next, seize all major insolvent banks and wipe out bond and shareholders. Also, provide "fast track' legislation for corporate and personal bankruptcies. Next, expand social welfare services during the crisis to make sure that no one starves or is made unnecessarily homeless. Next, provide government sponsored services for newly formed businesses, and individuals fresh out of bankruptcy to help them get back on their feet. Meaning, once the mal-investment debt is destroyed, provide stimulus at a point where it actually has the chance of being used as a real investment.
And finally... Eliminate the fractional reserve banking model forever. It ultimate is the reason for boom and bust cycles, and in the global marketplace its time has come and gone...
Bingo (Score:5, Insightful)
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."
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It's awfully appealing to say "There is no answer" when one's preferred answer isn't working, and the solution that will work is anathema to one's ideology. Not liking the answer doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
See also: Keynes.
Re:Republicans are Flat-Earth Economists (Score:4, Insightful)
I wouldn't bother with a bill in the first place--I don't see stimulating the economy listed as a federal government responsibility in the Constitution--but if you're going to do this at least be honest about it.
With something like 60% of spending happening in 2010 and 2011 they are "stimulative", they're pork-barrel spending. The boy President thinks that any spending counts as stimulus--the only thing this bill will stimulate is more government and more debt.
Some version of this mess will eventually pass, but hopefully we'll strip some of the pork out of it. One thing's for sure--this is not "change we can believe in".
Re:Republicans are Flat-Earth Economists (Score:4, Informative)
I don't see stimulating the economy listed as a federal government responsibility in the Constitution
"Promote the general welfare"
Re:Republicans are Flat-Earth Economists (Score:4, Insightful)
What happens when it was the government's meddling that caused the economic downturn in the first place?
Re:Republicans are Flat-Earth Economists (Score:4, Insightful)
Promote != Provide.
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McCain proposed a 500B plan with the provision that any money not spent after 2 positive GDP quarters would not be spent. That was quickly crushed by the dems as they want to pay back all their campaign donors for the next 10 years.
Re:Republicans are Flat-Earth Economists (Score:4, Funny)
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, money for schools would come from the taxes paid to their local governments by construction workers who have jobs as a result of the stimulus package.
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Well, I don't know about where you live, but where I do we've already had a mess of wasteful school construction. Cities and towns of modest means have built these "Taj Mahal" schools, sometimes approaching $200 Million.
I don't have a problem with giving construction workers jobs as a stimulus, but let's not be arrogantly wasteful about how we spend the money. It's not JUST about providing short term jobs, it's about putting people to work for the long-term good.
How about fixing our bridges and infrastructu
No no no (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
What do you think the 800 billion is going to do? (Score:2)
What is it's purpose?
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Re:Republicans are Flat-Earth Economists (Score:5, Informative)
> You can ALWAYS count on stimulating an economy of the US's size by reducing taxation.
Yeah, so maybe not. Look up the velocity of money, which has fallen through the floor in the last few months. What that means is that people are essentially stuffing their mattresses, and any additional tax cuts will, in fact, not be stimulative. So you need to directly stimulate - and that means spend.
See this:
http://www.urbandigs.com/2008/12/you_want_to_see_what_deflation.html
Also take a good, long, hard look at deflation and what that means, especially in relation to potential tax cuts. Arguably, we are in a deflationary spiral right now.
Re:Republicans are Flat-Earth Economists (Score:4, Insightful)
Everyone screams "LESS TAXATION" and other hoopla to waive their economist e-peen around like it's some giant stick of holy fruition to wake up people you disagree with.
But you know what? I don't think that will help either. For smaller business, maybe, just maybe. Larger businesses already pay next to nothing through creative accounting and the government really doesn't give a shit. Less taxes just makes it easier on them to line their pockets that they are already lining.
Yeah, some business will be responsible and use less taxes to help grow their business, but I have my doubts as to it being a large majority.
Re:Republicans are Flat-Earth Economists (Score:5, Insightful)
Businesses never pay taxes. YOU DO.
Businesses necessarily must make up for less profit by sticking it to their customers (in the form of higher prices or less choice), their employees (less wages, fewer benefits, and fewer jobs), their shareholders (less earnings per share, less dividends).
When you tax businesses, you're just indirectly taxing everyone else related to that business, including YOU. Business taxes appeal to the ignorant, because it makes it seem like someone else is paying, when in reality, it's YOU.
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You have it exactly backwards.
It's the Republicans (fascists though they are) that are right in macroeconomic theory and its the Democrats (socialists) that are in fact, operating in ideological mantra that spending is somehow going to work. It didn't work for Austria, didn't work for us in 1930's, didn't work in 1974 and won't work now.
Re:Republicans are Flat-Earth Economists (Score:5, Insightful)
"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.
Oh my God you are so full of crap. No one is saying that building schools won't employ people. What is being said is, "what happens to those jobs when the schools built?" These are not permanent jobs.
Also, building schools is not what Republicans object to. It's the millions to birth control programs. How does giving out condoms provide jobs? How is money to Amtrak going to produce jobs? Sure, it helps out the people working for Amtrak, but every passenger on Amtrak is NON-passenger on Greyhound or Delta. How does extending unemployment benefits create jobs? How does allocating money so groups like ACORN can purchase houses and rent them out create jobs?
Now these may be great ideas, but they do NOT belong in the "stimulus" package if they do not stimulate. Seriously, how big of a moron do you have to be to NOT understand that?
In other words, don't let the facts cloud your preconceived judgment of "Republicans bad, Democrats good".
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How is money to Amtrak going to produce jobs? Sure, it helps out the people working for Amtrak, but every passenger on Amtrak is NON-passenger on Greyhound or Delta.
Interesting theory, but from Portland to Seattle (for an example) for me is a choice between Amtrak and driving. I'm not going to pay the premium to fly, needing to get out to PDX and then from SEATAC to downtown when I can take Amtrak much easier, and in about the same amount of time.
Greyhound? No thanks, I'll just drive instead. If we're going to help Delta or any airline (as we've done many, many times) why not help Amtrak which is more appropriate for shorter trips?
Re:Republicans are Flat-Earth Economists (Score:4, Interesting)
And apparently, magic pixies will simply open up their checkbooks and give you trillions of dollars in taxes, too.
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.
Don't believe me?
Remember: Your taxes are more than income tax.
Here are some other things you are taxed on: Gasoline. Food. Clothing. Property. Investments. Cigarettes. Beer and Wine. TVs. Cars. Telecom taxes.
An interesting exercise is to take all of your spending for a month, and break it all down into taxes and non-taxes. You'll crap yourself, I promise.
We're getting raped enough with the taxes. Much like the schools, the government has more than enough money. The problem is a lack of accountability and wasteful spending - neither of which you are getting with the new administration.
Oh, don't get me wrong. You didn't have it with the last administration either. I'm not playing sides here, I'm just pointing it out.
More spending is going to help in any case. [wsj.com] Neither will socialism - and make no mistake about it, America is no longer a capitalist nation. That era is now over, thanks to Congress.
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holy shit. You actually believe that, don't you?
Yes, he does believe it and so do I. We've had 8 years of "tax cuts are how you stimulate the economy" and look where we are. But the Republicans continue to oppose the opposite tack as if it's not worth trying. Our schools are foundering. Our internet is slower than any other developed nation. Yet Republicans forced spending on both of those VERY NEEDY PROGRAMS to be cut from this bill. Both would be the epitome of economic stimulus but Republicans are obstructionists yet again. It's simply true. So yes, w
Re:Republicans are Flat-Earth Economists (Score:5, Insightful)
Our schools are foundering. Our internet is slower than any other developed nation. Yet Republicans forced spending on both of those VERY NEEDY PROGRAMS to be cut from this bill.
Our schools are not foundering due to a lack of funding. They are foundering because a powerful public education cartel has driven school spending skyward, making the United States among the world's biggest education spenders, even as student achievement lags.
Re:Republicans are Flat-Earth Economists (Score:5, Interesting)
They are also foundering because:
- We are having to pay OUR tax money to educate the kids of people who illegally entered the country and mooch off all our social services, demanding handouts even as they thumb their noses at our laws.
- Our classes are forced to move at the pace of the slowest fucking idiot, rather than stratifying classes into advanced and non-advanced, moving the smarter kids up to give them greater challenges and keep them from getting bored.
- Thanks to years of parent lawsuits, the very idea of holding a kid back a year because they haven't learned what they needed to learn has gone away. These stupid fucking parents insist "waah but it'll hurt his self-esteem don't you dare cut my kid off from his friends" - I see them every day and want to grab them, shake them, and yell your kid is a fucking moron! He is harming the education of the other kids around him! But nooooo... instead, we socially promote them, so the entire 8th grade class is still trying to read at a 4th grade level. Meanwhile, the smart kids are bored out of their fucking skulls. I've watched a friend's kid actually get sent home with "warnings" from the teacher. What was the kid doing? She was performing like a 4th grader in the 1st grade class. She picked up cursive writing watching her parents. She finished the "math homework" while the teacher was blabbing on trying to teach the rest of the kids how to multiply 2x2, and then got out a copy of The Mysterious Island [wikipedia.org] I'd given as a christmas present and started reading.
US public schools are not foundering because we don't spend enough money. They are foundering because teachers' unions make it impossible to get rid of bad teachers, because school districts do not stratify and have allowed social promotion of retards to become the norm, and because they punish the exemplary kids rather than nurturing their intelligence and love of learning.
And most of this has shit-all to do with monetary spending, too, save for the fact that when the kids of illegals are found in public schools, the administration should be required to report it under penalty of jail time, and INS/ICE should use that as a great opportunity to track down the parents and deport the whole lot.
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The argument about cheap labour: it has always been the political elite (in the US that is identical or overlapping with industrialists or large shareholders) that lobbied against enforcing immigration law - because their factories needed the cheap labour. It's not the ordinary people that support the illegal immigrants.
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Do the calculation.
Pull the kid out: a few thousand extra dollars in school costs each year.
Raise a stink: Probably wind up pulling the kid anyways, BUT in the meantime, subject the kid to untold harassment for being "the smart kid" (harassment was another ongoing problem btw), PLUS all the aggravation and nonsense involved, PLUS any court fees involved, PLUS any court fees defending themselves...
Yeah. If they don't make a stink, the public school won't get fixed. On the other hand, they're protecting their
Oh, Democrats want children to be ignorant. (Score:3, Insightful)
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
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Bullshit.
Taxation can serve one of two purposes.
#1, it can fund actual necessary services that the majority of the populace agrees upon. Things like road infrastructure construction, police/fire/emergency medical services, public parks and recreation facilities, schools, and so on.
#2, it can be a form of "wealth redistribution", which is why the socialists are always playing class-warfare games and insisting on jacking up taxes on "the rich", which they define in ways that make no sense.
Now, taxation can al
Do democrats even realize that they do in fact (Score:2)
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They need to be able to blame somebody when this supposed "stimulus" fails miserably. And I'm hesitant to call it a stimulus because more than 80% of the cash will be sitting in bank accounts untouched for at least a year, obviously not doing much stimulating.
Actually (Score:2)
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Except if you bothered to pay attention even the congressional budget office said that the stimulus bill if passed will do more to hurt the economy in the long term over doing nothing.
http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/feb/04/cbo-obama-stimulus-harmful-over-long-haul/ [washingtontimes.com]
Wake up Sheeple. You are perfectly willing to sit and listen to what 'Dear Leader' says. You listen to the talking heads regurgitate what better suits the Obama agenda and eat it up like its chocolate ice cream on a hot summer day. Just like
How about read the source yourself? (Score:3, Informative)
A letter from the CBO about the stimulus bill [cbo.gov] (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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Re:Do democrats even realize that they do in fact (Score:4, Insightful)
I am sure they would love to ignore the Republicans... Unlike the House rules, however, the senate requires 60 votes to get anything substantial done. Meaning, they have something called filibuster rules that allow individual senators to slow/stop bills in its tracks...
Meaning, the democrats are not trying to be nice and work with the republicans... They are forced to deal with at least 3 Republicans to get the stimulus bill moving forward and they know this... Hence, the reason for the compromise..
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So let them filibuster. Let them hold everything else up and yell loudly to the media that the republicans are against saving America!
stuff that couldn't be tied to a specific district (Score:2)
Notice what didn't get completely cut (Score:3, Interesting)
$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/ [usdoj.gov] and continue to win the drug war.
What is still in the bill? (Score:2)
But then the senate and house versions... (Score:2)
Seems like effective bipartisanship (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Don't invest in education (Score:2)
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.
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Where I live (Massachusetts) there has already been a wasteful construction boom in school construction. Cities and towns of modest means have spent hundreds of millions on school construction. It's government run amok. We don't need to federalize this problem.
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2008/03/22/newtons_taj_mahal/ [boston.com]
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2005/03/31/state_plans_school_construction_probe/ [boston.com]
Change we can believe in. (Score:2)
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.
Good. (Score:3, Interesting)
Has anyone stopped to consider. . . (Score:2)
Good change: Removed a gift to Verizon! (Score:3, Interesting)
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!
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Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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No.
This is about creating jobs. Quickly. While it would be great if you could take unemployed factory workers and have them run fiber to everyone's house, it isn't very realistic. To 'break ground' quickly on this project would require the money going to people who already know how to and have the skills necessary to build this. Realistically, that is only the cableco/telco/and really big ispco that isn't a cableco or telco.
My congressman was not going to stand up in front of the world and ask for money
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:no soup! (Score:5, Insightful)
Here is the problem. Most of this stuff is pork that should be spent and debated on their own merits. In the Stimulus package, it was originally passed off as an emergency bill with no debate. When the Republicans grew a pair, it forces the debate but the so called necessity of spending doesn't offer a proper debate.
Think of this like the bailout bill, there was such a rush to put it out that key politicians including Obama said it doesn't need to be perfect, we can change things later, then we find out that the bail out paid for parties at large resorts and so on. All of the stuff cut from this bill are things that will need more of a debate then what is currently availible to the politicians. So while they are cut from this bill which was basically a spending and appropriations bill before, they aren't off the table, it's just an affirmation to push them to the proper time, place, and environment to consider them. There are no short term job creation or direct financial benefit with them to the public in the near term so they don't need to be included into a stimulus bill by necessity which would bypass the traditional debate surrounding them.
In short, when they drafted the original bill, they went past stimulus and started piling in wish list items, some of which have been rejected for quite some time, some of which might be good for the country but has no direct effect on the goals of the stimulus goal, but most of all deserve to be properly considered in normal debate. Sneaking them into this bill was only an attempt to remove the debate on them, cutting them out doesn't mean they are gone, it just means they will have to go throught normal channels.
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The jobs it will create, if any, are jobs that will be around in 4 to 12 years, not tomorrow or next month or even next year. The idea of the Stimulus is to get jobs sooner then that.
Yes, it will. But it will also take a resource planning comity to select a site for the schools, a study on traffic patterns so you don't
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I know of two schools locally where imminent construction has been put on hold due to loss of state funding. I'd say these qualify as 'shovel ready' and certainly would provide stimulus and necessary infrastructure.
After 8 years of "no time to discuss" in order to pass anti-american legislation, I find your argument that we must stop and discuss anything which might be 'debatable" laughable. Everything is debatable to someone, especially those with a self-serving agenda.
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Science is "pork" on this bill because the purpose of this bill is to stimulate the economy from the bottom up. And /., of all places, should know that science seems to have no place at the bottom of America... Seriously, "science" is such a general term that it doesn't really say what it's for. R&D? That has a future payout, like infrastructure, but only if it succeeds in finding something of value (cure for cancer, AIDS, etc., or proves the toxicity or carcinogenic nature of something, or disproves
Re:no soup! (Score:5, Interesting)
Obama is not your saviour. He is a politician, and the USA is driven by lobbyists whom the best of are backed by the richest corporations.
Want too see how bad things really are for the USA.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=ca2_1234032281 [liveleak.com] Wait till about 2:20 in.
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Not that it makes the plan a good idea. In order for any "stimulus" to work, it must generate more jobs or economic activity than it costs. There is very, very little in this package that does this.
Spot On ! (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:no soup! (Score:4, Insightful)
You missed a crucially important point: Tax cuts have an immediate impact on the economy. Stimulus takes months or years to propagate into an economy.
Re:Do you know who is paying for this? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Let's ignore for the moment that this is deficit spending, so no one's taxes will be raised. You still fail at simple math. A couple making 109K would only owe 40K in taxes if EVERYONE in the top 10% earned EXACTLY 40K, which is patently false. Many people earn more, and would thus shoulder more of the cost. Let me use your own numbers to prove you wrong.
- there are 138 million taxpayers in the US
- 5% of the population earns between 109K and 154K.
- This 5% pays 11% of the taxes.
So AT MOST, your couple would owe 13K, and to get a number that high, I'm still making the false assumption that everyone in that bracket earns the base of 109K (not because it's plausible, but because your link doesn't give a better breakdown). That's a far cry from your 40K.
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I'm glad someone took the GP to task for that horrible bit of innumeracy. I think it's fair to go a little farther and estimate that a 109k household will pay on the order of 2/3 the tax of a 154k household, so we're talking around $8K rather than $13K. That's still quite a bit, and people are justified in their concern that the money be spent in a way which will have a net effect rather than just shifting things around to less efficient uses e.g. from Greyhound to Amtrak.
Let's ignore for the moment that this is deficit spending, so no one's taxes will be raised.
Let's not. Where, exactly, do you t
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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.
Uhh, no. Stop making up math. Two people making $54,500 each do not equal one taxpayer making $109,000. My wife and I together make around $150,000, but, individually, we make about $75,000 each. Thus we are clearly not in that top bracket you are talking about. Only two-adult families with one income-earning worker might possibly fit in your picture, and those A) are rare and B) benefit from cost savings in other ways.
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.
That top 10% is a wide range, you know? Why did you just divide the tax burden equal
Re:Do you know who is paying for this? (Score:5, Informative)
My god.... you actually believe you're doing this math correctly?
If the top 5% pay that much, that makes up $479.5B. The top 10%, according to you, pay a total of $560B. That means that the second highest 5% would pay ~$80B, which, divided over 7M people is about $11,400, which is in direct contradiction to your earlier assertion that someone making $109K would pay $40,000.
To put it simply, you're full of shit, and don't know even the slightest thing about math.
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650 Million for converter boxes?
Which will go to companies who make them and their workers, and hopefully get spent and enter the economy.
You do know that no converter box is made by a US company? This will do wonders for all those Chinese folks, except they are probably made in a mostly-automated factory with 20 employees. It might do some good for Walmart and Best Buy selling them, but not all that much.
We gave up on consumer electronics a long, long time ago. I think the last TV plant in the US closed in the 1980s sometime. And I believe it was in Chicago. All the familiar brands (RCA, Zenith, etc.) are now owned by companies in China