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Tue 14 Jan, 2003 07:16 pm
As Reagan would say here we go again. K-Mart is closing 326 stores and laying off approximately 35,000 people. It is almost a daily ritual with the announcement of massive layoffs. President Bush on the other hand continues to claim the economy is strong, not as strong as it could be but strong nonetheless. He has however presented a package which he contends will stimulate the economy and create jobs. Over half of the package $367 billion will come by removing the tax on dividends. What do you think of the package will it stimulate the economy ? In addition if the economy remains sluggish what are Bush's chances for re-election?
Stimulus for Lawyers
By PAUL KRUGMAN
My colleagues on the editorial page dubbed the Bush administration's proposal to eliminate taxes on corporate dividends "The Charles Schwab Tax Cut." Indeed, the idea seems to have originated in remarks Mr. Schwab made last summer in Waco. But a closer look suggests that it should actually be called the "Tax Complication Act of 2003": it will do little if anything to create jobs in the economy as a whole, but will be a bonanza for tax lawyers and accountants.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/14/opinion/14KRUG.html
Yeah, it'll stimulate the top ten percent of the wealthy in this country, but will do nothing for our economy. Money must be put into the hands of the middle class and the poor for our economy to be stimulated. The best way to accomplish that is to cut everybody's taxes by ten percent effective January 1, 2003. That'll pump about a half trillion dollars into our economy. c.i.
Jan 14, 2003 6:16 pm Post: 70976
Not yet.
People are sittng to enliven the economy.
Let us strive hard to get our soup.
Losing Our Will
By BOB HERBERT
Published: April 12, 2008
I wonder what the answers would be if each American asked himself or herself the question: "How is the war in Iraq helping me?"
While the U.S. government continues to pour precious human treasure and vast financial resources into this ugly war without end, it is all but ignoring deeply entrenched problems that are weakening the country here at home.
On the same day that President Bush was announcing an indefinite suspension of troop withdrawals from Iraq, the New York Times columnist David Leonhardt was telling us a sad story about how the middle class has fared during the Bush years.
The economic boom so highly touted by the president and his supporters "was, for most Americans," said Mr. Leonhardt, "nothing of the sort." Despite the sustained expansion of the past few years, the middle class ?- for the first time on record ?- failed to grow with the economy.
And now, of course, we're sinking into a nasty recession.
The U.S., once the greatest can-do country on the planet, now can't seem to do anything right. The great middle class has maxed out its credit cards and drained dangerous amounts of equity from family homes. No one can seem to figure out how to generate the growth in good-paying jobs that is the only legitimate way of putting strapped families back on their feet.
The nation's infrastructure is aging and in many places decrepit. Rebuilding it would be an important source of job creation, but nothing on the scale that is needed is in sight. To get a sense of how important an issue this is, consider New Orleans.
The historian Douglas Brinkley, who lives in New Orleans, has written: "What people didn't yet fully comprehend was that the overall disaster, the sinking of New Orleans, was a man-made debacle, resulting from poorly designed levees and floodwalls."
We could have saved the victims of the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe, but we didn't. And now, more than 2 ½ years after the tragedy, we are still unable to lift the stricken city off its knees.
Other nations can provide health care for everyone. The United States cannot. In an era in which a college degree is becoming a prerequisite for a middle-class quality of life, we are having big trouble getting our kids through high school. And despite being the wealthiest of all nations, nearly 10 percent of Americans are resorting to food stamps to maintain an adequate diet, and 4 in every 10 American children are growing up in families that are poor or near-poor.
The U.S. seems almost paralyzed, mesmerized by Iraq and unable to generate the energy or the will to handle the myriad problems festering at home. The war will eventually cost a staggering $3 trillion or more, according to the Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz. When he was asked on "Democracy Now!" about who is profiting from the war, he said the two big gainers were the oil companies and the defense contractors.
This is the pathetic state of affairs in the U.S. as we approach the end of the first decade of the 21st century. Whatever happened to the dynamic country that flexed its muscles after World War II and gave us the G.I. Bill, the Marshall Plan, the United Nations (in a quest for peace, not war), the interstate highway system, the civil rights movement, the women's movement, the finest higher education system the world has known, and a standard of living that was the envy of all?
America's commanding general in Iraq, David Petraeus, and our ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, went up to Capitol Hill this week but were unable to give any real answers as to when the U.S. might be able to disengage, or when a corner might be turned, or when a faint, flickering hopeful light might be glimpsed at the end of the long, horrific Iraqi tunnel.
A country that used to act like Babe Ruth now swings like a minor-leaguer. The all-American can-do philosophy has been smothered by the hapless can't-do performances of the people who have been in charge for the past several years. It's both tragic and embarrassing.
The war in Iraq stands like a boulder in the road, blocking progress on so many other important issues that are crucial to our viability as a society. We've seen this before. Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, which included the war on poverty, was crippled by the war in Vietnam.
On the evening of April 4, 1967, one year to the day before he was assassinated, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. went into Riverside Church in Manhattan and said of the war in Vietnam: "This madness must cease."
Forty-one years later, we can still hear the echo of Dr. King's call. The only sane response is: "Amen."
Blueflame
We all are in a pathetic state..
But we should expose the hypocracy.
Rama
Ramafuchs wrote:Let us strive hard to get our soup.
We can't find the "line".
American line is out of International line Miller.
blueflame, On Katrina, Bush made a speech on Jackson Square, at night, to announce he was setting up the biggest reconstruction project the US has ever seen to rebuild New Orleans, and after 2.5 years, many have not moved back. Promises by Bush usually ends up empty; but the biggest lie is his "support our troops" rhetoric that upsets me to no end; he cut veteran's benefits and services while he announced not long ago that if he were young enough, he'd serve in Iraq. The guy is sick in the head.
After this stimulation
do infants enjoy infancy as much as adult enjoy adultery?
How to simulate the life without regret?
I wish to have a Dream and wish to change without corporate support..
i consume a little No bread, no lunch not even a nice dinner)
and smoke DUNHILL