President Barack Obama Message Board

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Politics : President Barack Obama

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To: Bread Upon The Water who wrote (50170)	2/7/2009 10:55:27 PM
From: geode00	Read Replies (1) of 149317

Stimulus is a broad term for government spending in one way or another. As the spender of last resort, the crafters of the bill have huge leeway to decide what is the most useful way to spend the money. Since everyone is hurting, everyone in Congress wants money to flow their way and wants it to flow immediately. There is always pork because there are representatives trying to get their way for their interests. It is pretty much a capitalist system whose more or less reasonable intentions - everyone fight for your own self interests and may the best idea win (sorta) - are corrupted by campaign financing. If you live in Miami, you want your guys and gals fighting for Miami interests and not those of, say, Michigan. I don't think of Medicaid as pork because I believe we must have single payer national health insurance for both moral and economic reasons. I don't think family planning is pork either but it is a hot button issue. I want family planning because unplanned families are unnecessary in this day and age. We want people to be responsible so let's provide the info and tools to help them be responsible. I also think there are too many human beings on this planet so I don't have a problem with family planning. The planning for the invasion of Iraq, mostly the replacing of Saddam with a more 'friendly' government, took place long before 911. 911 just baked it into the cake. The fear in the country was so strong that Bush could probably have invaded France and gotten away with it (joke). Remember how inane things became? Remember freedom fries (not a joke). People who were talking against the invasion were treated like terrorists. There was no possibility of rational debate. We ended up with pretty much the same thing after the big nosedive in the stock market after Paulson's original bailout was voted down. Fear is amazing. Scare us enough and the public will put up with anything. I'm hoping (not really a joke) that we are so scared that Obama can push through single payer national health care even if he doesn't really want to do it. As for the stimulus, we have had big tax breaks and we are in this mess. We have had much higher marginal tax rates in the past and have been in much better economic shape. The tax break argument simply doesn't hold water. People and corporations are hoarding money so the spender of last resort, the federal government, has to SPEND. We can argue about what to spend it on but time is really short. The economy has been deteriorating for over a year but it fell off a cliff about 3 months ago. We need to do something really big really soon and I don't think (a guess based on what China is doing) the plan as it is is enough especially with tax breaks sucking up much of the spending.

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