What's bad about stimulus, what's bad about big government?


Firing off some thoughts. If you want to respond, feel free, as always!

Democracy for Most: Fear, Big Spending and Small-minded Leadership Collide

Did you know that there are some vocal, far-left liberals in our government who are wishing for MORE AND MORE AND MORE so-called "stimulus spending" ?
Isn't 800 billion and something dollars -- crazy piles of tax dollars -- ENOUGH??!! There is no faith in capitalism in these few, influential people. And the failure, quite succinctly, is not in capitalism, but in business morality, government regulation, and in the very people who are now claiming to break us out of this economic mess.

HOWEVER, the fact is, THAT AMOUNT MIGHT NOT be enough spending. Yes, it is true. But it is enough for now, God willing. So, am I agreeing that big government is the solution to our problems? No. Am I agreeing that we ought to bail out banks that failed on their own misdeeds, greed, and merits? HELL, NO!

There are things wrong with this whole mess, from the broad stimulus to the TARP bank bailouts. Sadly, it is not all appropriate. But it is necessary, if for nothing else, to try to maintain order. Is that rational? I think it is, but I have an overactive imagination. I worry about robberies and burglaries going up, and suicides. I worry about house break-ins and murders. These, too, will go up as order goes down. And a bad economy, almost as part of its definition, creates disorder.

Disorder, and the fear of it, is part of the reason why bad economies wind up opening doors to socialist and communist leaders. So, keep in mind that the fear of disorder needs to be tempered, because, mark my words, otherwise we are looking at a Chavez-like, or Nazi-like, or Sweden-like, government.

Those models are all bad for a state as large and influential as ours, one that was built on liberty and freedom, not big government services for all. We would, seriously, become the sad, one-party beast that the USSR was. The U.S. cannot absorb that without being torn apart for one thing, so don't even wish for anything close to that. Capitalism is not to blame: Greed, sloth, power-hungriness among business and government leaders is to blame. Ethics are to blame. Socialism is not the solution, but a furthering of the problem.

What's shocking to me is, it seems certain Democratic leaders are working on closing out the GOP, and short-time leaders, in a manner of ways. That is far more dangerous than the stimulus package.

Nancy Pelosi
has supported bills that blockade the "minority" party from having influence, and ones that hurt new representatives of any party in gaining leadership roles in committees, from holding leadership roles in committees. In other words, Pelosi believes in seniority beats merit or willfulness for leadership roles. Seeing this, Pelosi apparently believes, in essence, that Obama should not have been elected, since he clearly did not have seniority. After all, if one limits the effectiveness of the minority party and newbies, one is obviously in seniority and the majority party -- how much more lame and creepy could a power play be?

I quietly suspect that people such as our new president frighten bureaucrats like Pelosi. That is what is dangerous, not the stimulus package. That is what puts up signals of socialism, one-party leadership, etc. The stimulus, in that sense, would be the least of our problems as taxpayers and citizens.

One thing to keep in mind is that more than $300 billion of this stimulus is in the form of tax cuts, which means more money in the hands of the private sector. But only tax cuts cannot save the unemployed and those who need Food Stamps -- whether they intend to get off of Food Stamp program, I won't comment on my feelings there. Tax cuts cannot create jobs for contractors to do government projects, so that folks can get back to work. As much as it seems ironic that the government getting things done takes precedence over the private sector getting credit and freedom to get things done, at least it is not pure spending with no jobs being created, ever. (They are not the same -- you bring in more than $400 a week as a FAMILY, and you cannot get food stamps. Unless, of course, you have several kids.)

However, while this so-called "stimulus" is avoidable, that is only for those who truly have no fear of losing everything, including a way to get food. Propping up our economy is, I fear, a necessary evil. Why? Because things are that bad. There are millions upon who are struggling, and they ought to be regarded highly for that struggle. Those companies who are doing all they can to retain jobs ought to be regarded highly. However, those who are connecting this stimulus with expansion of government are the ones who ought to be chastised. And they exist. They are running our Congress.


Why do we need stimulus?

Well, I am not sure we "need" it, but I prefer doing something over sitting and letting things fester. Mind you, part of this is still tax cuts! The stimulus is like pumping water into a reservoir, what we are currently doing is sustaining the reservoir. We need to pump in "water" -- MONEY -- until the real economy, the PRIVATE BUSINESS entities, and the banks and financial markets, get back into the swing of things. OK, so it's settled then, huh? Not really.

That simple idea sounds good until you get into how that will -- or might -- create later inflation, and weakening of the dollar, etc., etc. I won't go into all that, as it will bore people and I am not going to try to do a rational economist's job of guessing what all could or might happen.

Bush failed our country in many ways. Bush did succeed in areas.

Obama is already playing the illogical game of taking specific criticisms and mocking them by alluding that they refer to the broad or general (this is a basic fallacy in the study of logic -- in other words, it is DUMB). He did so at his first news conference regarding at least three statements having to do with the current move to suck $1 trillion into such things as renovating gov't buildings with unproven (in other words, new materials that force renovation AGAIN in as little as five years due to moisture problems and other things) "green" concepts, and some type of homes for polar bears (this is going to create JOBS??!!). What a shame. What a sham. What a professional candidate.

If Obama, for one, truly wants the U.S. to succeed, he will stop lying, first and foremost, about what pulled us out of the Depression.

In short, it was WW II, not the New Deal, that finally took us out of the Depression. FDR was a great leader, an incredibly determined and inspired and inspiring man. He was not the bringer of salvation to the economy, though, as he simply propped it up long enough, and barely, for a bloody world war and sacrifice by millions in everyday life, and at war, to carry us through. We ought to have LEARNED the lessons from the things that went right and the things that went wrong from 1933 to 1941, and after WW II ended (unemployment was still relatively high for some years).

Simplistically, the demand for bombs and things from Europe early in WW II, our eventual involvement in WW II, and the tide of the war, cured the sickness of stock collapse and world and U.S. economic depression. Even noted historian Doris Kearns Goodwin points this out, as well as the Smithsonian Institution, and many other rational sources.

It is only strange, big-government-oriented economists who insist that more and more and more spending is the fix, and that that was what solved the Depression. What those people are, sadly, are ideological fools, not economically logical experts.The quickest way to bigger government is through scaring the populace into giving up all their money nad control of the economy to government. Big mistake. The government ought to be a small, decent WATCH DOG on business. That is all. They have a hard enough time with that!


Here's one reason why FDR was a great leader: he believed in the idea of U.S. government as it was created and in U.S. capitalist economics. Thank goodness he respected them to some degree, or we'd have turned out quite different after WW II. He has been accused of being socialist, just as Obama has been and is being accused.

Though I don't fault the folks who believe -- or, at least, suggest -- and say those things: They are reacting to a trend of behavior that could be wrong-headed, and even drastically wrong, if they ran along certain paths. Debate is what keeps democracy alive. I try not to castigate anyone who seems to be remotely keeping some grasp on reality as I know it. Mind you, that is a day-to-day effort. If not for these folks who suggest that Obama is a socialist, if he were indeed one, or being told this was the way to go, then how easy would socialism become? I think it would be too easy. I am very glad that folks call Obama a socialist, for that reason. I don't believe he is one, but I also don't want to see our state go that way, realistically.

To call the liberal, and big government Obama a socialist, I think that is going too far, realistically. FDR and BHO both have folks who are anti-taxpayer, anti-free enterprise, around them. Big government is what both men were not sheepish of supporting, and they had some like minds around them. But they themselves made it clear they were, and are, not against these things. Obama managed to do this in his first news conference, on Feb. 9, 2009. Sadly, he also failed miserably to inspire confidence in all but the Obama Kool-Aid drinker, for other comments he made.

Big government, my friends, IS SOCIALISM. That's how socialism gets headway, with broad government growth without a reason but for big spending, along with a frightened and poor, desperate and humiliated populace: That was the story of every South American fascist of socialist state, the story of the USSR, of Nazi Germany, of Mussolini's Italy, of Franco's Spain.

I hope Mr. Obama succeeds as president -- there will be failures and low spots, weaknesses and ill-gotten ideas, but every president has had and will have these. I hope the country does, too. But I hope Obama does not succeed in illogical arguments, in misleading, in holding taxpayers and businesses hostage for non-job-creating stimulus, or in socializing the U.S. These things ought not to succeed!!


- jR

WHY ARE WE BANKRUPT :: one problem's impact, lots of links


Some links that someone else compiled follows. I found them on an activist Web site. I hope the links work. If not, just look the facts up. It beats trusting your government -- it is called being informed. The government prefers that you are not that, clearly. That is WHY BIG GOVERNMENT IS, AND ALWAYS WILL BE, A BAD THING.

The bigger government is, the less they actually wind up doing for the good of the common man, because power corrupts -- even if that simply means that that power makes people lazy and glib and smug. It is still corrupt. Not caring about your duties is simply akin to corruption.

However, the country, Bush or Obama aside, is failing, thoroughly, to be a caretaker of tax dollars and to regulate such efforts. See the following examples, which regard ONLY illegal alien costs. This is ANNUALLY. This is just one little problem in the U.S. today. Add to this the errors of bad regulative efforts against banking, financial markets, etc. Add to this the cost of the RAISED SALARIES that our U.S. Congress accepted for themselves, in December 2008. Add to that the cost of the stimulus. Where is all the money coming from? You, and me. Anyone who pays taxes.

What are you getting out of it, if you are a "victim" of the current economic crisis? If you are unemployed, and living in Florida, you get a grand total of $275 a week. Some states offer better. If you are in a union, perhaps you get better in most cases. However, if you are in an auto union, you will likely be working in a non-union, Japanese-owned factory come 2010. If you're lucky.

Anyways, just some thoughts on one "little" segment of where your tax dollars were going, and will still be, even while billions of dollars are going out to banks and job creation that the government is sanctioning.


WHY ARE WE BANKRUPT

Boy, was I confused. I have been hammered with the propaganda that it is the Iraq war and the War on Terror that is bankrupting us. I now find that to be RIDICULOUS.

I hope the following 14 reasons are forwarded over and over again until they are read so many times that readers get sick of them. I also have included the URL's for verification of all the following facts.


1. $11 Billion to $22 billion is spent on welfare to illegal aliens each year by state governments.

2. $2.2 Billion dollars a year is spent on food assistance programs such as food stamps, WIC, and free school lunches for illegal aliens.

3. $2.5 Billion dollars a year is spent on Medicaid for illegal aliens.

4. $12 Billion dollars a year is spent on primary and secondary school education for children here illegally and they cannot speak a word of English!

5. $17 Billion dollars a year is spent for education for the American-born children of illegal aliens, AKA anchor babies for these illegals who are still illegals even though they have US kids, note.

6. $3 Million Dollars a DAY is spent to incarcerate CRIMINAL illegal aliens. This is NOT a tiny segment of the prison population. (See next.)

7. 30% percent of all Federal Prison inmates are illegal aliens.

8. $90 Billion Dollars a year is spent on illegal aliens for Welfare & social services by the American taxpayers.

9. $200 Billion dollars a year in suppressed American wages are caused by the illegal aliens.

10. The illegal aliens in the United States have a crime rate that's two and a half times that of white non-illegal aliens. In particular, their children, are going to make a huge additional crime problem in the US .

11. During the year of 2005 there were 4 to 10 MILLION illegal aliens that crossed our Southern Border also, as many as 19,500 illegal aliens from Terrorist Countries. Millions of pounds of drugs, cocaine, meth, heroin and marijuana, crossed into the U. S from the Southern border.
Verify at: Homeland Security Report: http://tinyurl.com/t9sht

12. The National policy Institute, estimated that the total cost of mass deportation would be between $206 and $230 billion or an average cost of between $41 and $46 billion annually over a five year period.'

13. In 2006 illegal aliens sent home $45 BILLION in remittances to their countries of origin.

14. "The Dark Side of Illegal Immigration: Nearly One million sex crimes are Committed by Illegal Immigrants In The United States."
Verify at: http://www.drdsk.com/articles.html


The total cost is a whopping $ 338.3 BILLION PER YEAR.

Are we THAT stupid?


Hmm. I think we have been. Will we stop being that stupid?


- jR