Hey, glad to hear from you DTOM.
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$4 billion is quite a lot of money. that will get a lot of construction workers and materials and hardware companies back to work, won't it?
The problem I have with the stimulus, um, spending bill is this: It was sold to the American public as a jobs bill. In fact, it is still being referred to as the stimulus bill that will spur employment.
It isn't, and won't. I wish the left would just be honest, and quit playing the people for fools. Call it what it is, simply a spending, entitlement bill.
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kids need to be taught, so that we can compete with people from other countries that have a much higher opinion of an educated mind. education requires teachers and administrators. i don't work for free. i doubt that you do, either. why should they ? health care is a growing industry, and will probably only get bigger, now that scientists have had the blinders and shackles taken off.
what's wrong with unemployment funding? part of the money comes out your check when you do work, right ?
In CA, we have a local school dist, with a school board, admin, all the bells and whistles to teach that one student sitting in a desk. Then, we have a county office of education in every county, that is a huge bureaucracy that 'oversees' each local school district. (Still for that one kid in a desk.) Then, we have a state dept. of education, an immense bureaucracy of state workers, that, as you can guess, is still there for that one kid in that one seat.
The amount of gov workers in CA is killing us, especially at the state level. Their pay and benefits, as well as retirement, is pretty excessive, but with the dems controlling the legislature, public employee unions rule.
This is why we are facing the budget deficits we're facing.
Unemployment? Nothing wrong with it. But wouldn't you agree it needs to be fixed with jobs?
Gov provides work. Private business provides jobs. Think about it.
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has occured to you guys that it may be possible to thin out the roles of these social services a bit, or even a lot, by better educating people. by making sure that a woman delivers a healthy baby by making sure that decent pre-natal care is available and that the child can get proper care in the important growing years; ya know, in the event that the parents aren't one of the self made millionaires that republicans seem to believe roam the nation like the ginormous bison herds of 200 years ago.
it's kind of an important question since the republican party is the party that has decided that small government is better; except when it comes to telling a woman that she will have that unwanted baby, whether or not she wants it, or can even afford it.
I agree with you here. Prenatal care, good education, every person should have the right to reach their full potential.
But with our education system bogged down by bureaucratic costs as it currently is, with teacher's unions putting their interests in front of children’s, the system is broken.
What do you think of vouchers, DTOM?
And, you know where I stand on abortion, so we agree here.
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and btw, another way to reduce social services costs would be to put an end to the wholesale export of jobs to other countries because it makes a better bottom line for the effin' multinational corporations that have had the american worker's balls in a vice for over 20 years.
so i reckon there's a bit of blame that goes to the freemarket happy, regulatory hating, tax stingy right wingers in business, don't ya think ?
More than just about anything, I think Bush will go to hell for NAFTA and other trade agreements that dismantled our ability to clothe, feed, and make goods for ourselves. We agree here.
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apparently, the majority of californians like the democratic led legislatures. they just increased their seats last fall. jerry brown was the governor when i moved here in the '70s. since then it's been deukmejian (r), wilson (r), gray davis (d) and ahnoldt (r). in fact, except for davis, brown, brown's dad and olson, nearly every other cali guber has been a republican.
but it seems to me that the down turn in cali's fortunes has more to do with the end of the cold war, underfunding of aerospace, production high taling it to canada and it's film tax credits.
The legislature has been in dem hands for decades. Willie Brown, as the speaker, was more powerful in Sac than any governor, wouldn't you agree?
Base closings, aerospace, all have had their effects. But state, county, and local governments have grown outrageously in the past decade. CALPERS, the state retirement system, has allowed earlier and larger retirements. Most cities pay their employees high five figure to mid six figure salaries. State pay has gone off the charts.
And government has grown.
Now, with businesses cutting back, pay being cut, layoffs happening all over, the state is going to raise taxes, yet not cut its workforce?
And you didn't address the environmental issues that have caused business to flee the state. Or not open to begin with. It's happening, DTOM. All the time.
Businesses, high earners, and the educated middle class are leaving CA. Yet the state is growing, mostly with those who will require gov assistance in one form or another. Which means the state will raise taxes on remaining business and taxpayers, which will cause more productive people to leave...
Sucks, doesn't it?
I don't see the dems with any long term solutions. You can print all the money you want to address today's problems. But eventually, someone is going to have to pay the bill.
Unfortunately, I believe that bill is coming in the form of massive inflation. Or worse.
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