Despite a bipartisan effort...

@nimh,

nimh wrote:

Aren't those, like, contradictory complaints? I dunno. I'd almost think you're just looking for reasons to oppose the plan now.

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To those zeroing in on the marsh mouse as a 'lie', you are right that there is no wording directly referencing the marsh mouse. However. . .in my opinion. . .

1) Nancy Pelosi has been a long time advocate of allocating funds for a wetlands area in her district and has used the endangered salt marsh harvest mouse as the justification for protecting it.

2) If the amount allocated for wetlands in the budget just happens to go to Nancy Pelosi's district, then all the protests by those who say there is 'no money for marsh mouses in the stimulus package' can just go fly a kite.

3) I'm guessing that the the odds are pretty darn good that if she wants that money for her district, that is where that money will go.

And look for that kind of scenario to be repeated again and again and again as the members of Congress decide how to spend the money in the package they just passed. Pork is pork whether or not it is wrapped with ribbons and bows to disguise it so that it can be called something else.

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@Foxfyre,

Quote:

2) If the amount allocated for wetlands in the budget just happens to go to Nancy Pelosi's district, then all the protests by those who say there is 'no money for marsh mouses in the stimulus package' can just go fly a kite.

Since there is no evidence to show that your "if" is even close to true, I wonder how you can make any kind of an argument? IF you could provide us with the part of the legislation you think specifically directs money to marshes in the SF area, I would love to see it. My reading of the bill lists no such direction of funds. It only designates the funds should go toward projects that can be implemented quickly. There may be some nefarious planning by Pelosi but it isn't evident in the bill itself.

1 Reply

@parados,

The bill doesn't specify Parados. But those with an interest in where the money goes have all the license in the world to put it exactly where they want it. You can try to divert and deny and ignore that truth til the cows come home but history is hugely on my side in that argument. Within the broad and very vague categories of this turkey, there is huge ability to make much mischief.

1 Reply

@Foxfyre,

Quote:

And look for that kind of scenario to be repeated again and again and again as the members of Congress decide how to spend the money in the package they just passed. Pork is pork whether or not it is wrapped with ribbons and bows to disguise it so that it can be called something else.

The only scenario I see being repeated is your claiming things are in the bill that aren't there.

Where do you think the bill allows members of Congress to decide on individual projects?

Your false claims are false claims Fox no matter how you try to disguise them.

1 Reply

@Foxfyre,

We are trying to herd the cows home now after the last administration left the barn doors open and then proceeded to burn down the barn after the cows left.

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@parados,

Who else decides on individual projects and authorizes the money for them if it is not members of Congress? And do you honestly think the members of the House would seriously object to anything Speaker Pelosi wants given that she has the power to grant lucrative committee assignments and the power to say what bills will be debated and when? Even you can't be that naive, Parados.

(And I am taking bets now on how many more times you will try to justify current insanity and idiocy by pointing to the previous administration.)

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@Foxfyre,

Geez. Fox.. the bill states who decides. In just about every case it is the government department that is part of the Executive Branch that oversees that part of the government.

Members of Congress do not decide.

You just make stuff up right and left about what is in the bill.

1 Reply

@mysteryman,

mysteryman wrote:

How is it a stimulus plan, or a plan to create jobs, if it is only creating temporary jobs?

The New Deal created lots of temporary jobs, building all those infrastructural works through the WPA etc. Subsequently, the mass mobilisation of WW2 did the same, putting every American who was not abroad fighting to work building planes and tanks and bombs. All temporary jobs.

But they did two things :

provide millions of people with jobs (both paid directly by the state, at the WPA construction sites, and created indirectly, in the factories where the building materials were made, the transport companies transporting them, the shops where the workers did their shopping, etc), who otherwise would have fallen into the pit of mass unemployment and destitution that had opened up as a result of the crisis.
pump millions of dollars into a frozen economy, kickstarting new consumption and trade that would itself contribute to the recovery from the crisis.

So it helped create jobs for people to survive the crisis, yes, and it helped to kickstart the economy back into a functioning mode so it would be able to come to the point again where the government no longer needed to help people survive.

This stimulus bill is intended to do the same thing. Personally I think it falls short for the purpose - it should have been much bigger. But that's the idea: it will create millions of jobs in the short term, helping Americans survive a brutal crisis; and it will also buffer up GDP by several percentage points for a few years, to prevent the economy from falling into the kind of downward spiral that would make it unable to recover within a few years.

1 Reply

@parados,

For instance Fox. You asked about the neighborhood development.

If you are referring to Community development the bill states it is to be distributed under the 1974 Act.

Quote:

$1,000,000,000, to carry out the community
11 development block grant program under title I of the
12 Housing and Community Development Act of 1974

Here is that law
http://www.hud.gov/offices/cpd/communitydevelopment/rulesandregs/#laws

And how those grants are decided
http://www.hud.gov/offices/cpd/communitydevelopment/rulesandregs/laws/sec5318.cfm#sec5318(a)

I challenge you to find out where it says that members of Congress get to decide.

1 Reply

@parados,

Here is the part of the bill on watersheds that you claim Pelosi will use to save mice.

Quote:

14 For an additional amount for "Watershed and Flood
15 Prevention Operations", $290,000,000, of which
16 $145,000,000 is for necessary expenses to purchase and
17 restore floodplain easements as authorized by section 403
18 of the Agricultural Credit Act of 1978 (16 U.S.C. 2203)
19 (except that no more than $30,000,000 of the amount pro-
20 vided for the purchase of floodplain easements may be ob-
21 ligated for projects in anyone State): Provided, That such
22 funds shall be allocated to projects that can be fully fund-
23 ed and completed with the funds appropriated in this Act,
24 and to activities that can commence promptly following
25 enactment of this Act.

It seems that in order for $30,000,000 to go to what you claim Pelosi wants it has to be the ONLY project done in California.

16 USSC 2203

Quote:

The Secretary of Agriculture is authorized to undertake emergency measures, including the purchase of floodplain easements, for runoff retardation and soil-erosion prevention, in cooperation with landowners and land users, as the Secretary deems necessary to safeguard lives and property from floods, drought, and the products of erosion on any watershed whenever fire, flood, or any other natural occurrence is causing or has caused a sudden impairment of that watershed.

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@parados,

I see. So GDP growth, even adjusted for inflation, was 9.8% higher than population growth in the Carter years. So Georgeob1's assertion was wrong - and not by a little either.

There's a general point that bothers me here, and I don't really know how to express it without resentment or condescension (apologies in advance). It's like conservatives have a broader narrative they believe in, and extrapolate the data points they expect to be true from it - often expressing some disdain for the tendency of anal people like me to run the numbers and check the details on any random thing, saying we don't see the broader story, miss the forest for the trees, etc.

But if any random number of those presumed data points turns out to fall apart upon closer examination, shouldn't that at some point lead one to doubt the reliability of the whole narrative?

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@nimh,

Mysteryman-- You must not forget thatg Nimh has read nothing except Marxist and Socialist Literature for years. I am sure that he thinks that he is a better scholar than Amity Shlaes who wrote the highly touted "The Forgotten Man' about the Great Depression. He is either completely ignorant as to what happened during the Great Depression or he is lying.

Note:

After four years of FDR'S Policies, joblessness decline from 23.4 percent to 14.3 percent-still very high but headed in he right direction. Then things turned for the worse again,. By the fall of 1937, the US entered a secondary depresion and began to rise, reaching 19% in 1938.

Roosevelt's own Treasury Secretary realized that the NEW DEAL ECONOMIC POLICIES HAD FAILED. Morganthau wrote in his diary--"We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work...After eight years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started..AND AN ENORMOUS DEBT TO BOOT.

It would appear that Obamna's policies.like FDR,will only lengthen the pain.

If you would like to have more date from "The Forgotten Man', Mysteryman, I have it at hand. I am sure that Nimh will not try to rebut her comments as I replicated them because he is afraid of me.

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@genoves,

genoves wrote:

After four years of FDR'S Policies, joblessness decline from 23.4 percent to 14.3 percent-still very high but headed in he right direction. Then things turned for the worse again,. By the fall of 1937, the US entered a secondary depresion and began to rise

Uhm - the reason for that secondary depression was that FDR temporarily cut back on the New Deal policies and tried to curtail spending and narrow the deficit. It resulted in an immediate new economic plunge, as the economy wasn't recovered enough yet to withstand such a slash in government spending.

So FDR reversed once again, continued with the old New Deal policies, and the economy continued its recovery again. Then came WW2, which had much the same effect (government pumping shitloads of money into the economy for the armaments industry etc), and finally put the economy over the hill again.

Amity Shlaes, who appears to have become your new Posner, doesn't agree of course, but she isn't exactly taken seriously by mainstream historians - she's little more than a hack with an ideological hobbyhorse.

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@genoves,

possum, you've just about worn out the name "genoves" I suggest you withdraw long enough to establish a new user name that might keep people off guard for a day or two. Or you could always try suicide.

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@dyslexia,

Normally, I d o not respond to posts like yours, but since I feel so sorry for your dyslexia, which, of course, means you cannot communicate like a normal human being, I will take your suggestion under advisement. If the word is not too difficult for you to understand, it means I will consider your suggestion but don't hold your breath....On the other hand, please do!

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@nimh,

I always find it a little hard to swallow the argument that it was WW2 that saved the US economy and not government policies by FDR when it is made by people arguing against government involvement in the economy.

During WW2
Rationing was ordered by the government.
Production was pretty much controlled by the government.
Deficit spending was off the charts.
Taxes were raised.

Anytime a country's government borrows and spends over 20% of GDP you can expect great economic growth. The problem is sustainability.

Prior to WW2, the deficits FDR was running were similar to the ones Reagan ran as % of GDP. Yet somehow we are supposed to believe that 4-5% of GDP deficits are horrible unless it is a conservative doing it.

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@dyslexia,

Are you trying to give suicide a bad name dys?

1 Reply

@parados,

parados wrote:

Are you trying to give suicide a bad name dys?

consider it a momentary lapse of reason.

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@nimh,

You are full of beans, Nimh. If you knew anything about the Great Depression you would know that the primary reason was NOT that FDR curtailed spending and narrowed the deficit.

Apparently, you are not familiar with Henry Morgenthau's Diary in which he THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY wEIrote: WE HAVE TRIED SPENDING MONEY...WE ARE SPENDING MORE THAN WE HAVE EVER SPENT BEFORE AND IT DOES NOT WORK..AFTER EIGHT YEARS OF THIS ADMINISTRATIONWE HAVE JUST AS MUCH UNEMPLOYMENT AS WHEN WE STARTED ...AND AN ENORMOUS DEBT TO BOOT"

Pickone of the following :

Morgenthau was senile when he wrote his diary.

Morgenthau was a covert conservative

Morgenthau , the Secretary of the Treasury during Roosevelt's terms of office from 1932 to 1940 knew exactly what he was talking about.

You, of course, give no evidence for your --Reason for the secondary depression was that DFR tgemporarily cut back on the new deal policides and tried to curtail spending--And of course, without evidence I would never believe a European Socialist like you.

Your gibe, Amity Shlaes , who appears to have become my new Posner--what ever that means --who you characterize as a hack who isn't exactly taken seriously by mainstream historians is another unsourced and undocumented piece of garbage which is not evidenced by anything but your unsourced opinion. I never beleive what Hungarian Socialists have to say until theygive good evidence.

Now,let's see what has been said about Shlaes--

quote-

"SHLAES IS INDEED, OF COURSE, CORRECT THAT THE NEW DEAL FAILED TO RESTORE ECONOMIC HEALTH"

Who wrote that, Nimh? Rush Limbaugh? Bill Buckley? Newt Gingrich?

NO- Nimh, that comment was made by your favorite American Magazine- THE NATION- which, of course, was known as Pravda West in the fifties and sixties.

I am happy that you had the nerve to take me on, congratualitions, You are not a pussy like, Cyclops, who is afraid of me/. IK have, of course, a great deal of documentation and evidence to show that, as the Nation wrote-THE NEW DEAL FAILED TO RESTORE ECONOMIC HEALTH.

Try a cup of tea with some paprika in it, Nimh. I have heard it works wonders to clear the mind.

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Despite a bipartisan effort...

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