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DEL.ICIO.USHow to create jobs (in China)
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Obama Administration’s dangling the goodies in the Democrats’ $900 billion spending proposal, hoping that mayors and state legislators will push their Congressional delegations to quickly pass it into law. Otherwise, says President Obama, an economic “catastrophe” looms.
Administration officials say that for Georgia the legislation would mean a $2,500 tax credit for college for 120,000 families, an extra $100 per month in unemployment benefit for 500,000 jobless and an extra $1,000 for 3.3 million workers. The Administration argues, too, that 113,000 new jobs would be created.
The spending in the proposed stimulus bill amounts to $10,500 per family in America, according to the Heritage Foundation and would be enough to give every high school junior and senior in the country a private-college education, with $150 billion left over.
By any measure, the numbers are staggering. Beyond the question of whether it provides any meaningful stimulus to the larger issue of whether real jobs will be created in the private sector, it’s necessary to look elsewhere.
Big Labor, pushing its top legislative priority — the misnamed Employee Free Choice Act — took hundreds of unionists and petitions they said contained 1.5 million signatures to Capitol Hill Wednesday. United Steelworkers president Leo Gerard told a rally across from the Capitol that the legislation is needed “to put an end to the illegal firing of workers, to the harassment of workers, to the intimidation of workers” who attempt to unionize companies.
The bill will be a jobs killer — in this country, at least — because it will permit Big Labor to unionize companies without the inconvenience of secret ballots. The alleged “intimidation of workers” will, therefore, shift from the board room to the labor hall. Workers can be coerced into signing union cards, if it passes, because their names and their “votes” are clearly known to union organizers.
Employers obviously object to the proposed legislation. In addition to eliminating the requirement that elections be by secret ballot, it will also force the company and its new union into binding arbitration if they don’t agree on a new contract in 120 days. “I want $70 an hour. You’re offering $10. Let’s go to binding arbitration and split the difference.” (Binding arbitration is a major reason MARTA’s labor costs are uncontrollable.)
During the campaign, President Obama supported the legislation.
An enormous tax burden and a whole set of new business regulations — to combat “global warming,” for example — are on the way that will push up business operating costs. Add the workplace organizations that have been major contributors to the demise of American auto industry, and the future of jobs creation in this country becomes pretty clear:
Build a store-front here, hire private contractors to market and sell a product, but manufacture it overseas. Public policies here create jobs in China.
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Comments
By Ragnar Danneskjöld
February 5, 2009 8:43 AM | Link to this
Good morning all. Yesterday, the Empty Suit revealed his lack of economic competence, reaffirming his beliefs that expropriation of private capital and elimination of freedom to make market decisions are the surest course to job formation in the United States. Obviously he did not phrase it that way – that would revealed his markets ignorance to all – but his affirmation of support for the “stimulus” wending its way through Congress is just as telling.
Unless or until Congress offers something that would encourage all businessmen to expand their individual businesses, all Congressional efforts are doomed to failure. The current bill provides massive operating funds:
(a) to the Federal government – which serves only to constrict business
(b) to the states – which serves only state agencies
(c) to community action groups – which mostly operate to shake down businesses.
Seemingly the only businesses that the administration wishes to expand are those that provide goods and services to government. The perversion of the market – skewing away from goods and services provided to consumers – inherently diminishes quality of life for normal taxpayers.
It is difficult to conceive a circumstance where a businessman would wish to expand where it is easier for unions to “influence” operating decisions.
The largest tax increase in the history of the world continues to loom over the American economy.
The international markets, already spooked by the pending constrictions on the American economy, are hypersensitive to a potential shutdown of international trade, thus the kafuffle over the president’s “Buy American” bully pulpit.
As a reminder to our economics-challenged friends, the four elements that converted the 1929 stock market hiccough into the Great Depression were (1) the Hoover administration’s Smoot-Hawley antitrade legislation, that provoked retaliation all over the world; (2) the Hoover administration’s substantially higher income taxes on businesses and “wealthy” individuals; (3) the Roosevelt administration’s substantial expansion of government regulation over business; and (4) the Roosevelt administration’s substantial increase in the size of the Federal government. President Obama seeks to combine the most striking elements of both contributors to those good times we called the 1930s. Bro, can you spare a dime?
By Mid-South Philosopher
February 5, 2009 8:45 AM | Link to this
Good morning, Jim.
Sorry to hi-jack the blog first thing this morning, but I am fired-up!
Shyster lawyer Jim Bob (what a hll-of-a-redneck name)* Darnell, former Lubbock, Texas district attorney, now a family court judge, should have a hard time looking into the mirror this morning. Likely, this excuse for a human being will be proven to be, at best, incompetent and, at worst, a cold and cruel criminal.
I refer to the case of Timothy Cole, who was tried and convicted of being the Texas Tech rapist after a series of attacks against female coeds in 1985.
Now, I don’t blame “Jim Bob” for convicting Cole at the time (although his handling of the case was junior highish), however, in later years, the actual rapist wrote to “Jim Bob” confessing his crime. “Jim Bob” did nothing, even though the shyster knew (or should have known, provided he is not as stupid as he looks) that DNA evidence could have settled the issue.
Ultimately, the current Lubbock D.A.’s office had the evidence tested and it was proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that the real rapist was Jerry Wayne Johnson, the criminal who confessed to “Jim Bob”.
Meanwhile, after serving 14 years in prison for a crime he did not commit, died in prison in 1999. Today, his family will be in a Texas court room making the necessary petition to get Timothy Cole’s name cleared. Along with them will be the victim of the rape, who is assisting in helping the family clear this young man’s name. The coward, “Jim Bob” will not be present! \ This goes to a fundamental truth…the American Court System is NOT set-up to do justice! Its total function is to *administer the law.” If justice is accomplished, it is just a positive fringe benefit.
As for “Jim Bob”, if there is a special corner of Hades reserved for shyster lawyers, go there!
By Churchill's MOM
February 5, 2009 9:00 AM | Link to this
Jim the NYT has posted this again, what are we going to do about these LIBERALS that hate our next president..
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — An animal rights group is getting help from actress Ashley Judd in its campaign to try to stop Alaska’s practice of killing wolves and bears from airplanes.
Judd appears in a new Internet video for Defenders of Wildlife, and targets not only the state’s predator control program but also one of the program’s chief supporters, Gov. Sarah Palin.
”It’s time to stop Sarah Palin and stop this senseless savagery,” Judd says in the video posted on a Web site operated by the political arm of the group, Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund.
Palin, the former Republican vice presidential candidate, countered that the program is scientifically based and an important tool to sustain moose and caribou populations for Alaska subsistence hunters.
In Alaska, private citizens are permitted to shoot wolves from the air or conduct land-and-shoot hunting of wolves in rural areas. Defenders of Wildlife says more than 800 wolves have been killed since the program began almost five years ago.
Along with Judd’s videotaped segment, the animal rights group asks for donations to help end the predator control program, possibly through federal legislation.
Palin said it was ”reprehensible and hypocritical” that the group would use the state and her administration as a fundraising tool.
It’s not the first time Defenders of Wildlife has targeted Palin. Last fall, when Palin was John McCain’s running mate, it ran ads in several states denouncing Palin and the predator control program, and raised more than $1 million. Judd had campaigned for President Barack Obama during the campaign.
By Davo
February 5, 2009 9:11 AM | Link to this
How very precient of JW to worry about US jobs going to China because of the stimulus bill. While this legislation is abhorant and against the principles of the free market, you seem oblivious to the fact that China already has the jobs. There is nothing else left to send their way…they got it all right now. Don’t believe me? Look at the label on your clothing.
How is it that your crystal ball is so clear JW that you can see the affects of this bailout, but you can’t see that those same affects have been with us for a long, long time? Where have you been? Where has that ‘buy American’ ideology that the republicans are now so fearful of been hiding?
Your no more of a conservative than Obama and the liberals…get used to it or go back to the wilderness for some more reflection.
By Analchord
February 5, 2009 9:14 AM | Link to this
That picture in Newsweek, a couple of weeks after Palin was introduced as mccain’s veep, which showed her in full annie oakley, front and center, with a open breeched shotgun bent over her shoulder, nearly won the election for the GOP.
So lets remind everyone, mz Judd, of Palin’s only political bulletpoint..
moron.
By Redneck Convert
February 5, 2009 9:16 AM | Link to this
Well, they won’t never stop till we’re all forced to join a union. I like the way things are handled now. When old Buck Hanshew went around the warehouse trying to talk people into joining a union the mgt. called the police and hustled him right out of his job. That’s Free Innerprize.
We need to make it harder, not easier, for people to join a union at work. Cos. need to do like WalMart. Make workers attend meetings where mgt. tells them how much worse off they will be if they join a union and how evil unions are. Fire anybody that even says the word union. The cos. that got the money need to be able to call the shots.
I figure I ought to have some say in the matter. If a union sets up in WalMart the price of white socks will be going up every time I need to buy a pair for my monthly bath. Same thing with cos. that make other things I buy. After a while we’ll be living in a commie country where everybody rats on everybody else and cos. have no say in what goes on and the prices on stuff from China just take off like a rocket.
I reckon we might of knowed this country was going to heck in a handbasket. Now this Obama wants to cut the pay of the big bosses of cos. that take bailout money. Says they can’t get paid more than $500,000. Well, half a million bucks don’t buy anywhere near what it bought a few years ago. And if you’re a big boss that just got his pay cut from $11 million, you just might up and go to another co. and help run it into the ground too. But you can’t talk sense into a librul.
That’s just my opinion but it’s very true. Have a good day everybody. And don’t buy anything that says it’s union-made.
By Recreational flatulence
February 5, 2009 9:25 AM | Link to this
The only way to stimulate the economy is to give the economy (business and consumers) tools to succeed, which consists of letting them keep more of their own money to exchange with one another for goods and services. The gist of this “stimulus,” seems to be a handout for some that will do absolutely nothing to goose the faltering economy at large.
By ron
February 5, 2009 9:27 AM | Link to this
When making a business decision that is going to affect your bottom line,the option of doing nothing is a real and valid option that is often chosen as the best way forward for the moment.We are at a moment of time in the U.S. where this do nothing option may be our best choice. Borrowing a trillion dollars from the country’s future is not the best way forward for anyone.
A trillion dolars is a lot of money per individual as noted above,but realize that not everyone is going to be requested to pay it back.Young people,just starting,are going to bear the brunt of this tax increase.They will be overtaxed for most of their adult lives just to keep the status quo.Any money they make,whether as employer or employee will have the stigma of this “stimulus” attached to it.
We are hardly at a point where we can “buy American”.Nationalism is a disease that no country can afford.Obama has toned back his rhetoric on this issue,but it needs to be stopped completely.
We are in trouble as a nation,We have spent too much money having a good time and now the bill is due.Let’s pay the bill and then move forward.Let’s not add to our woes by making government bigger,by trying to become a self sustaining economy by keeping others away,and by adding burdens to business at a time when we need them to provide jobs for the future.Let’s sit and do nothing for a while until this mess sorts itself out.And it will.It always has.Let’s not delay the recovery by getting in the way.
By Th
February 5, 2009 9:36 AM | Link to this
I love that $15,000 tax credit for buying a house. My neighbor and I have already figured out how to pretend to buy each others house for two years to get the credit. Thanks, Johnny.
By Recreational flatulence
February 5, 2009 9:43 AM | Link to this
I’ll nominate ron for a Cabinet post, but we’ll need to do a background check to make sure he owes back taxes.
By Curious Observer
February 5, 2009 9:51 AM | Link to this
No cabinet post for ron. A background check will reveal he’s been hanging out at a certain blogger’s trailer park while wooing that blogger’s plus-size wife.
By Davo
February 5, 2009 9:58 AM | Link to this
I nominate Th for the cabinet post. I like the way he thinks.
By Get Real
February 5, 2009 10:03 AM | Link to this
Get this guy Wooten off the stage, take his mic. He’s either delusional or crazy. Where have you been the last 8 years? That ‘fuzzy math’ that Bush talked about back in 2000 came in handy for him with those 5 years of constant job growth. Too bad it all came crumbling down in one year. Wooten wants to believe that democrats are the problem, granted some are. But you republicans amuse me when you say more tax cuts are the answer to “let people keep more of their own money, and for small businesses to hire more workers.” You act as if Bush’s tax cuts have been eliminated or something. Their still in effect now, and where are we? Individuals and Businesses are going bankrupts. Companies are laying off workers en masse. So how would even MORE tax cuts solve this huge problem that snowballed during the tenure of a republican administration? I would respect conservatives more and lend a willing ear to their proposals if they could explain this to me. Where are all the jobs that should’ve been created with Bush’s tax cuts? Namecalling and childish banter aside, the problems we face now are too serious keep up with the ideological blame game Wooten is playing. People are losing their jobs, and the only thing he can do is blame a guy thats been president less than 3 weeks. If Bush had been the leader he was supposed to be, we wouldn’t need any type of stimulus; action that even Republicans deem is necessary to keep our country from going under. Wooten is committing journalistic malpractice by playing the same us v. them parlor game. Has he offered any other solutions besides more tax cuts? And while I’m thinking about it, how can lowering taxes once this crisis subsides actually help pay off the enormous deficit that the Bush administration rang up? I’m a democrat, but partisanship aside, those of you who want this president to fail will suffer greatly if he does. The country united around Bush after 9/11, why can’t republicans do the same now in this economic crisis? Instead of just complaining like old man Wooten, offer solutions that have an actual history of working.
By Recreational flatulence
February 5, 2009 10:09 AM | Link to this
Get Real @10:03. The people who need to get to keep more of their money are the consumers, small business owners and manufacturers. The economic collapse was not caused by them. Hyperactive housing and energy markets (and the financial industry that fed and fed off the hyperactivity) brought about this disaster. And, the hyperactive housing market was helped along, if not initially spurred by government actions that both parties played a hand in.
By Recreational flatulence
February 5, 2009 10:10 AM | Link to this
Get Real @10:03. The people who need to get to keep more of their money are the consumers, small business owners, manufacturers and some others. The economic collapse was not caused by them. Hyperactive housing and energy markets (and the financial industry that fed and fed off the hyperactivity) brought about this disaster. And, the hyperactive housing market was helped along, if not initially spurred by government actions that both parties played a hand in.
By Lobbyist for Saxby
February 5, 2009 10:27 AM | Link to this
What’s up with Saxby Chambliss and Peanut corporation of America? I smell a rat.
By getalife
February 5, 2009 10:29 AM | Link to this
“Frustrated by a lack of bipartisan outreach from House Democratic leaders, Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said House Republicans — who voted unanimously last week against the economic plan pushed by President Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — will pitch a “positive, loyal opposition” to the proposal. The group, he added, should also “understand insurgency” in implementing efforts to offer alternatives.
“Insurgency, we understand perhaps a little bit more because of the Taliban,” Sessions said during a meeting yesterday with Hotline editors. “And that is that they went about systematically understanding how to disrupt and change a person’s entire processes. And these Taliban — I’m not trying to say the Republican Party is the Taliban. No, that’s not what we’re saying. I’m saying an example of how you go about [sic] is to change a person from their messaging to their operations to their frontline message. And we need to understand that insurgency may be required when the other side, the House leadership, does not follow the same commands, which we entered the game with.”
The gop are America’s taliban.
By Recreational flatulence
February 5, 2009 10:33 AM | Link to this
I don’t agree with all of it. But, here’s some change we can live with, from a Harvard economist no less. Obama’s a Harvard man, right?
When libertarians question the merit of President Obama’s stimulus package, a frequent rejoinder is, “Well, we have to do something.” This is hardly a persuasive response. If the cure is worse than the disease, it is better to live with the disease.
By Analchord
February 5, 2009 10:37 AM | Link to this
Wooten, what has creating jobs in China to do with the price of tea in China? Oh yeah…nevermind. Wooten’s 1000% correct this time, and as usual, his piece went over the (dittoheads) of his trolls.
The irony of the last fifty years is that everything has to do with the price of tea in china. The irony of the last seven score and four years, is that our founding fathers started by dressing up like chinese coolies and throwing chinese tea into Boston Harbor. Now the Chinese are mocking us by dressing up like metrosexuals and throwing Boston Baked Beans into Hong Kong’s Harbor.
Maybe you dont feel the humiliation, but I sure do.
BTW: The chinese called. they want taiwan back. and they’re building this really big new navy…….
By Hillbilly Deluxe
February 5, 2009 10:37 AM | Link to this
I want $70 an hour. You’re offering $10
Your premise here is an absurd exaggeration. The argument might be more persuasive if it were kept realistic.
By Churchill's MOM
February 5, 2009 10:45 AM | Link to this
Jim, the link on the AJC’s home page is to your yesterday’s writting. Are they trying to push you out or like yesterday better?
By Copyleft
February 5, 2009 10:46 AM | Link to this
Every time something that might benefit workers and consumers comes up, the right-wing economic scarecrows come out of the cornfield, howling about how “This will destroy American jobs!”
Too late, Freidman Freaks. Nobody’s listening to your laissez-faire, supply-side garbage any more.
By Ga Values
February 5, 2009 10:49 AM | Link to this
Our 2 Senators want to give home buyers $15,000 and 4% direct Federal home financing. Talk about SOCIALISM, these 2 make Pelosi look like a CONSERVATIVE.
By Steven Daedalus
February 5, 2009 11:01 AM | Link to this
Rags, Are you Andi or Buy Danish? I’m just curious.
By Analchord
February 5, 2009 11:03 AM | Link to this
Wooten employs a very clever ageless tactic of admitting the faults of one’s party during the opposition’s tenure, thus implying that the one that smelt it wasn’t the one that dealt it.
With American’s 4 second attention span, and love of dutch ovens, the GOP is sure to win in ‘12.
You’re a bad man, Wooten. You’re a VERY bad man.
By Ragnar Danneskjöld
February 5, 2009 11:06 AM | Link to this
Good morning GA Values @ 10:49, you are correct to charge our wishy-washy GA US senators with leftism, although it would be hyperbole to suggest they are equal to, or worse than, the Pelosicrats. I fear our senators suffer from insufficient economics training, much as the other leftists.
By g#
February 5, 2009 11:11 AM | Link to this
obama should retire.
there’s no way to recover from the global bush induced catastrophe we are witnessing this morning.
depression, tsunami, volcanoes and earthquakes, oh my!
next it will be tornadoes and hurricanes.
obama has no chance and everyone knows it.
he knows it.
obama is ready to throw in the towel.
oh those terrible towels!!!
you wait and see.
By Analchord
February 5, 2009 11:15 AM | Link to this
fear not, brave ragmop, for your knowledge of the economic vicissitudes and the extra-curricular cycle of baby boom and bunny’s bust have elevated us all to astronomical heights, if we may be so pedantic.
For it is how we deal with our fears that allow people such as us to tolerate a person such as yourself.
By AmVet
February 5, 2009 11:18 AM | Link to this
This blog is hopeless, Jimbo. I demand your resignation effective noon tomorrow.
We have a few titans of lexophilology, sharing their estimable and vast wisdom and wit as though these semi-educated faux patriots, flat-earthers, trickle-down-their-thigh, uncommonly senseless simpletons enjoy listening to Mozart or viewing the paintings of Manet.
Then we occasionally get someone whose nom de guerre is so ridiculous it begs a verbal slap down. AssRand was who?
And the there’s Raggie.
The man who whould be the Master of Ceremonies at the annual Sancho Panza parade.
The bloodied neoliths are reeling. Their Sam the Sham “ideology’ is melba toast. And they just keep trying to dig themselves out of the hole they’re in.
Say hi to the Red Chinamen for us.
Off to pay for the occupation. And the bailouts.
Pray for rain…
By KevinA
February 5, 2009 11:18 AM | Link to this
Maybe the economy wouldn’t have bubbled to the popped stage it is in now if the US hadn’t spent 5 trillion over the last 7 years propping up the last recession. The Fed lowered interests rates and we were all encouraged to spend. I say spend as much money as possible on infrastructure, education and energy efficiency, what ever it takes. This would be the foundation for a future recovery. All social programs and tax breaks should be cut severly. We should provide the cheapest energy in the world. The best education in the world. The best infrastructure in the world. Our Safety net including health care should be for basic health. A minumal approach. Once you graduate or not thats it. No Social Security, no Medicare, no Medicaid. Our tax system should be on consumption with no tax breaks for business, or children. An age of personal responsibility.
By KevinA
February 5, 2009 11:20 AM | Link to this
Maybe the economy wouldn’t have bubbled to the popped stage it is in now if the US hadn’t spent 5 trillion over the last 7 years propping up the last recession. The Fed lowered interests rates and we were all encouraged to spend. I say spend as much money as possible on infrastructure, education and energy efficiency, what ever it takes. This would be the foundation for a future recovery. All social programs and tax breaks should be cut severly. We should provide the cheapest energy in the world. The best education in the world. The best infrastructure in the world. Our Safety net including health care should be for basic health. A minumal approach. Once you graduate or not thats it. No Social Security, no Medicare, no Medicaid. Our tax system should be on consumption with no tax breaks for business, or children. An age of personal responsibility.
By Dazed and confused
February 5, 2009 11:22 AM | Link to this
Just going back to read some of yesterday’s bilge juice. So, Analchord and Algonquin J. Calhoun are not the same person, i.e. Political Foreskin? Or is it all just part of his scheme to dazzle and befuddle?
By ron
February 5, 2009 11:22 AM | Link to this
Dear Copyleft, ——Friedman is gone as is Keynes.Gone also are the less luminary Greenspan and an even lesser Jack Benny.This leaves us with Obama’s current economist,Daffy Duck.
By Marti Hernandez Rojas
February 5, 2009 11:24 AM | Link to this
Dazed, you have to have two or more a-holes for an analchord.
By BS Aplenty
February 5, 2009 11:27 AM | Link to this
There appears to be little political profit in promoting spending restraint for any of our 535 federal legislators. Their own political markets demand they bring home the bacon of any government largesse. Nevertheless, before they, and we, open the spending floodgates we might well consider what we are giving up in the future.
The reason for concern in this world of pending trillion dollar deficits can be summarized in two programs: Medicare and Social Security. The short term stimulus that’s promoted by the Obama Administration will add significantly to the public debt of the U.S. government and will make it all the more difficult to manage the looming liability for these two programs. Based on current projections, the fiscal deficit for Medicare will grow steadily to $1 trillion dollars per year by 2050 while the Social Security deficit will grow to a mere $500 billion per year. Again, those deficit projections are per year.
One of the very real questions to consider is where do we get the funds for such fundamental programs when we’ve spent ourselves silly in this current year. The total public U.S. debt to GDP ratio is approaching 42.9% by my calculations (excludes Intragovernmental Holdings, i.e., the IOU’s of the federal gov’t. to Social Security). Including those Intragovernmental debts would make the ratio 72.9% and growing fast.
What do these fractions mean in real terms. Here’s what - the capital markets for government debt will eventually punish the U.S. with higher interest rates, not yet, but eventually. That means rising interest costs to the U.S. (about 10% of the expenditures currently). The pressing question is when the inevitable Medicare and Social Security deficits grow, will the Congress and Administration have critically damaged our ability to solve the growing crisis in these fundamental programs.
I hope our legislators will consider this before they sign off their trillion dollar spending spree.
By The Conservative
February 5, 2009 11:31 AM | Link to this
Wooten is….RIGHT! The chinese aren’t gonna let us enjoy an economic recovery. They’ll ruin it with knock offs and stolen Kuppenheimer suits!
Why cant anyone do something to stop them? What are you all, Tin Patriots? We’ll all be in soup lines. Ruined. Homeless. and the chinese will roll their tanks down wall street, and all we’ll have for an answer is a good song and dance routine we all learned watching american idol and so you think you can dance, not to mention all the dance studios our children have attended now for twenty years.
Can you see the chorus line in front of the tank? And the tanks stop and try to go around them, but they paso doble over and cut them off, then the tank tries to go another way and the dancers fiendisly switch styles and arabesque over to cut them off there too.
Then the tanks simply roll over the dancers on live Utube and we all go, “cool”.
It’s so over.
By Citizens Against Government Waste
February 5, 2009 11:33 AM | Link to this
Tell Your Senators: Vote NO on the So-called “Economic Stimulus” Bill!
Democratic congressional leaders and the Obama Administration have hyped the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 as an urgent and essential “economic stimulus” package. This bill would be more aptly titled, the Pelosi-Reid Borrow-and-Spend Act!
Under the guise of stimulating the economy, the $819 billion government spending spree approved by the House of Representatives and nearly $900 billion package now under consideration in the Senate would add to a federal deficit already projected to reach $1.2 trillion this year, while doing very little to jump-start economic growth. In fact, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has concluded that more than half of the hundreds of billions of dollars in infrastructure spending contained in the bill will not take place for more than two years — long after economists predict the current recession will have ended.
What’s more, the tax cuts in the package are narrowly targeted, with the largest portion going to more rebate checks, a strategy that failed to reverse our economy’s slide last year.
Congress should instead create more incentives and opportunities for private-sector jobs and growth by cutting government spending and enacting across-the-board tax cuts for individuals and businesses, like those that helped reverse economic slumps in the 1960s, 1980s, and earlier this decade.
The Senate is expected to vote on S.1, its version of the bill, the first week of February. If the Senate follows the House’s lead and passes this borrow-and-spend “stimulus” bill, it will waste record amounts of tax dollars, provide virtually no benefit to the economy, and only add to our nation’s soaring liabilities.
By Saxby Chambliss, LOBBYIST best Friend
February 5, 2009 11:41 AM | Link to this
CHAMBLISS, ISAKSON ANNOUNCE USDA APPROVAL OF $80 MILLION LOAN FOR GEORGIA’S FIRST CELLULOSIC ETHANOL PLANT
January 19, 2009
WASHINGTON - U.S. Senators Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), Ranking Republican Member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, and Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), today announced the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has approved an $80 million loan to Range Fuels Inc., located in Soperton, Ga. The loan, administered by USDA Rural Development, comes from the Section 9003 Biorefinery Assistance Program authorized by the 2008 farm bill.
“I am pleased to announce this funding for Georgia’s first cellulosic ethanol plant,” said Sen. Chambliss. “With projects like this one in Treutlen County we are getting one step closer to gaining energy independence from foreign sources of fuel. Today’s announcement is also a great boost for economic growth and job creation in our state. I thank Secretary Schafer for recognizing Georgia as a leader in the development of clean and efficient alternative fuel.”
“This is exactly the kind of project this country needs to move us toward energy independence, and I am very proud it’s happening in our great state. Georgia is once again a leader on the cutting edge,” Isakson said. “This significant investment from the administration to our state will also create jobs at a time when we really need them.”
The Biorefinery Assistance Program provides loan guarantees to develop, construct and retrofit viable commercial-scale biorefineries producing advanced biofuels. The program is designed to create energy-related jobs and economic development in rural America. According to USDA Rural Development the loan to Range Fuels is approved subject to conditions.
The plant is expected to produce an estimated 63 jobs. When fully operational in 2010, the plant is expected to produce approximately 20 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol per year.
By Ragnar Danneskjöld
February 5, 2009 11:43 AM | Link to this
Dear Steven @ 11:01, no. I am jbmlaw and bfkaj.
By Ga Values
February 5, 2009 11:48 AM | Link to this
BS Aplenty 11:27 AM
Included in our 2 RINO Senators recovery plan is to not collect “Payroll Taxes” for 1 year which will only make the Social Security problems worse. I think Both Parties are in a contest to see who can come up with the worse plan, As someone posted last week.. if you think tax cuts are the solution, look at how we got in this mess, if you think printing money is the solution look at Africa,
By The Conservative
February 5, 2009 11:53 AM | Link to this
I am your best friend, Dazed, and all the rest of you horrid trolls. In spite of the fact that you dont deserve it, I use so many ID’s because then the lurkers have to at least start to read your comments as they are forced to skim through and filter to find me. I do that out of love of writing. I share a bond with anyone brave enough to put a comment out there, no matter how crippled in logic it is. At least you care enough to try.
I am the ubertroll, know as analchord. Analchord is the name of a 13th century demon responsible for the fishy smell after sex. I googled it and found this out. Analchord also was the one who painted the shroud of turin and fooled everybody. Now, i coulda chose “analyst” as my ID, and gotten just as much hate mail for the similarity to “anal” that is common to both words, but I like analchord. The more someone tries to riff on it, the more ignorant I know that troll is. It’s a very accurate barometer of stupidity.
I could easily just stay analchord or political foreskin, or blogfather or the forgotten messiah, and then none of you would ever get read.
Is that what you want? I’ll do it. I care about you, but I wont go against your wishes.
Lets have a show of helmets on this one. Wooten, you do the counting. I’ll respect the majority.
By The Conservative
February 5, 2009 11:56 AM | Link to this
Wrong again, King. Cocain use is an explosion in your heart. Even one use can trigger a fatal heart attack.
The long term use of cocaine leads to premature (45-65) death by heart attack in a good 15 to 25 percent of those who snort.
DOnt use cocaine. Dont smoke pot, another carcinagen sans pier.
When we were born, our life expectancy was 70 years, and the insurance companies set our life insurance premiums based on 70 years, back in the fifites. However, we are living longer. If you want to know how long you will live, then look up your premium schedule. Notice where the payments explode from 40 a month to 1000 a month? That’s when you’ll croak.
The insurance companies are never wrong, if they were, they’d need a bailout…..d’oh!
By BS Aplenty
February 5, 2009 12:18 PM | Link to this
Ga Values
You raise an interesting point about “printing money.” Unlike our friends in south Africa, I believe, though I’m not certain, that the Federal Reserve Banks must secure all new currency issued (Federal Reserve Notes) with U.S. government obligations (notes, bills, bonds). It is the balance mechanism of their balance sheets. This would correspond to how the Fed regulates the money supply by buying/selling government securities in the open market.
The short story (I knew that’s what you wanted!) is that, I believe, the U.S. government cannot just print currency without the constraint of issuing more U.S. debt thereby providing a check on inflation management.
I may be off here and I would cede to those of greater experience, Ragnar, Mid-South, Jim, et.al, but it seems that our regulations prevent the wholesale printing of currency for issue without the constraint of debt issuance. Hopefully, we avoid the runaway inflation of Zimbabwe.
By Geezer
February 5, 2009 12:21 PM | Link to this
They should give that $10,500 per family directly to each family. Now that would stimulate the economy!
By The Conservative
February 5, 2009 12:25 PM | Link to this
I wonder if Wooten is included in the 600,000 that lose their jobs every month now.
By getalife
February 5, 2009 12:27 PM | Link to this
We lost 500 thousand jobs a month.
It’s financial terrorism and we have been hit hard. Bankers are obl and government is the taliban.
Still no accountability and our obl still walk free and still making millions.
We are screwed.
By fionna
February 5, 2009 12:46 PM | Link to this
retardo-rama
By Goober
February 5, 2009 12:51 PM | Link to this
Mid South Phil @8:45a—Scope out The Innocent Man by John Grisham while you are fired up.
By ron
February 5, 2009 1:06 PM | Link to this
The dollars for the various bailout schemes are coming from the sale of government securities.It’s borrowed money.Paid back with interest.A lot of it is short term ecurities as people and countries have to have some place to park their money where it’s safe.The U.S.government is about the only place right now where you can even get back what you put in.A lot of this short term lending is at no interest at the moment.It’s merely a place where large sums of money can be kept in safety.We just have to evetually give it all back.Almost a Ponzi scheme ,ain’t it?
By Ga Values
February 5, 2009 1:15 PM | Link to this
BS Aplenty 12:18 PM
The only non market driven constraint on the supply of money is Congress’s vote on increasing the National Deficite, don’t think they have ever refused. The fed can mostly print until the suppliers can’t ship ink & paper.
By david wayne osedach, san diego/ U.S.A.
February 5, 2009 1:24 PM | Link to this
Instead of a “buy American” campaign how about “buy anything but American?”
By Pansie Scheming Lib
February 5, 2009 1:32 PM | Link to this
Let the scaremongering begin! The Algorebot says we must act now or global warming - err I mean climate change - will destroy all of mankind and we will all be extinct and killed dead good. The Obamabots say we must spend a trillion to save our economy or we are all killed dead good permanently. Just think, the same people that support this hysteria reactionary spending are the same ones who slammed spending by Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II Republicans. The libs were all worried about our children and grandchildren paying for it. Amazing what happens and the silence when it does happen when Democrats grab the spending helm, huh?
But deep down everyone with a brain should know this increased federalization of our companies is just what Democrats want: control over a company and how much profit they are allowed to keep and pay to their evil CEO and executives. Anyone who actually believes Obama when he says that it is okay to earn a profit, “just not now” needs to go buy some waterfront property in Harry Reid’s Las Vegas area.
By Dazed and confused
February 5, 2009 1:55 PM | Link to this
Please continue to do what you do blogfather. You are indeed the king of schtick.
By DebbieDoRight
February 5, 2009 1:57 PM | Link to this
My God when is Wooten gonna retire?!! I mean isn’t his dementia bad enough without him having to flaunt it on a daily basis via his “opinion column”? Give the old coot the boot already!!!
By Recreational flatulence
February 5, 2009 2:00 PM | Link to this
I can’t wait to see UF do a Cumberland on UT next season. Fun.
Knoxville, Tenn. — Tennessee coach Lane Kiffin accused Florida coach Urban Meyer of violating recruiting rules in pursuing wide receiver prospect Nu’Keese Richardson.
WVLT-TV reported that Kiffin told a group of fans at a signing day breakfast celebration Thursday morning that Meyer phoned Richardson while the recruit was making his official visit to Tennessee recently.
Richardson, a Pahokee, Fla, native, signed with the Volunteers on Tuesday, despite having indicated he would sign with the Gators.
Kiffin told the crowd, “I love the fact that Urban had to cheat and still didn’t get him.”
Tennessee spokeswoman Tiffany Carpenter told The Associated Press the school would not file an official complaint to the NCAA.
A Florida team spokesman did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
By Dusty
February 5, 2009 2:06 PM | Link to this
Well, what’s to say here today?
No, I do not wish to send jobs to China. Let them get their own. After seeing their Olympic entertainment achievements I don’t think we have to worry about them. I’m worried about us.
NO STIMULUS PACKAGE OF PRETTIES FOR PATHETIC PROGRAMS. I am all for a cutback program. If you want socialized medicine, move to Canada. If you want to change the weather and the environment, move to Mexico. If you want HIV education, move to San Francisco. If you want to support ACORN, move to the slums. If you want a small mortgage, move to RedNeck’s trailer park. If you want transportation that depends on grass and corn, buy a horse. If you want a new stadium, sell the unused school and county library.
If Congress needs any more suggestions, I’ll be glad to help. Now to quote one of those scholarly sayings to finish here: A fool and his money are soon parted.
Let us not endure fools, fatalists and greedy government.
By Recreational flatulence
February 5, 2009 2:10 PM | Link to this
I can’t wait to see UF do a Cumberland on UT next season. Fun.
Knoxville, Tenn. — Tennessee coach Lane Kiffin accused Florida coach Urban Meyer of violating recruiting rules in pursuing wide receiver prospect Nu’Keese Richardson.
WVLT-TV reported that Kiffin told a group of fans at a signing day breakfast celebration Thursday morning that Meyer phoned Richardson while the recruit was making his official visit to Tennessee recently.
Richardson, a Pahokee, Fla, native, signed with the Volunteers on Tuesday, despite having indicated he would sign with the Gators.
Kiffin told the crowd, “I love the fact that Urban had to cheat and still didn’t get him.”
Tennessee spokeswoman Tiffany Carpenter told The Associated Press the school would not file an official complaint to the NCAA.
A Florida team spokesman did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
By The Conservative
February 5, 2009 2:10 PM | Link to this
As the conservative on this blog, I must protest every word written since 10:45 this morning on this blog!
gentlemen. we’re not going to solve Obama’s dilemma today. Lets try to remember our chinese founding geisha girls who said, “All I wanna do is *%&#! and take your money”.
The Yankee dollah still supreme! Isn’t that enough for tonight?
By Floyd Norris
February 5, 2009 2:12 PM | Link to this
The durable goods orders for December, released today, provide more evidence that the economy fell off sharply late last year. There is a little bit of evidence that things stabilized a bit in January, but it is too early to say.
As it is, using a three-month moving average to smooth out somewhat volatile numbers, durable goods orders from October to December were down 16.8 percent compared with the same period of 2007. That is the sharpest year-over-year fall since they started collecting data in 1958.
But the real news is in the breakdown. Durable goods orders other than the military were down 18.6 percent, also a record. Within that group, car industry orders were off 25.9 percent, and nonmilitary aircraft and parts orders — hello, Boeing — were down 66.9 percent.
But military orders were up 18.4 percent.
Pentagon orders are notoriously volatile, so that might be a fluke if it was not continuing a trend. For the whole year, such orders were up 26.8 percent, while orders for nonmilitary goods were down 7.3 percent.
Perhaps that was economic stimulus. Perhaps it was an effort to spend the money before the Democrats took over. In either case, the Pentagon seems to be one of the few willing buyers these days.
By BS Aplenty
February 5, 2009 2:14 PM | Link to this
GaValues
I think I agree although the issue I’m addressing may be different or so it seems to me. When it comes to Congressional appropriations bills, the Treasury issues debt to cover revenue/tax shortfalls. If that’s what you mean by Congress “printing money” then I would agree. The only limit would be the country’s ability to service the resulting debt.
My question goes to the daily operations of the Federal Reserve Banks. I’m interested in how Federal Reserve Notes are issued and managed. Seems like just another (non-interest bearing) obligation of the U.S. government - in paper form. I have some reading to do.
Thanks for the comments.
By The Emperor
February 5, 2009 2:26 PM | Link to this
Geishas are Japanese.
By Jason
February 5, 2009 2:39 PM | Link to this
At the moment, it’s easy to condemn Big Labor for demanding unrealistically high wages for blue-collar workers, and ultimately driving U.S. jobs overseas. Keep in mind, though, that outsourcing is in its early stages, with manufacturing being the first of a potential litany of victims. India and China are increasingly producing well-qualified bankers, lawyers, management consultants, programmers, etc. who will work for a fraction of their American counterparts’ salaries. I wonder: Will professionals stateside remain as hostile toward unions and complimentary of globalization when they’re forced to perform their engineering and accounting jobs for $20K a year, when they too are proven to be expendable commodities?
By Todd Weiner
February 5, 2009 3:38 PM | Link to this
After officially announcing my retirement from the Falcons, I’d just like to let you guys know I look forward to kibitzing with you as the AJC’s new conservative columnist. The blog will be called Weiner’s advice for pinko weenies.
By MrLiberty
February 5, 2009 3:56 PM | Link to this
The only thing that needs to be added to Ragnar Danneskjöld’s first comment is that the ultimate root cause of this and the 30’s depression is the presence and activity of the Federal Reserve in the market.
A gold or silver standard based on free market principles would have prevented all of this.
Ron Paul has introduced legislation “The Federal Reserve Board Abolition Act, H.R. 833”. Wtite to your congressman and senators and demand that they co-sponsor, support and vote for this much needed measure.
By The Conservative
February 5, 2009 4:11 PM | Link to this
Emporer: cant you get your own girls?
Liberty: Ragmop’s comments need no revision, indeed, his exposition stands brightly in the annals of spin, lighting the way forward, and they resonate to all who deliberate over this economic proposal from our dear president.
By non-blogger
February 5, 2009 4:12 PM | Link to this
Having just read the “comments” to Wooten’s column I now know where the village idiots from a thousand villages gather to argue their ridiculous points and counter points…God help American, I won’t make this mistake again.
By ButtHead
February 5, 2009 4:16 PM | Link to this
Maybe we should have a law that a bill should have a name that reflects what the bill is. Stimulus Bill = Pay off my Cronies and Wasteful Spending Bill, Fairness Doctrine = Let the Liberals Silence any Opposition
By The Conservative
February 5, 2009 4:19 PM | Link to this
Well.
By Disgusted
February 5, 2009 4:19 PM | Link to this
When, O when, will Raggedisnott Dangimapompoustuurdhole post. I’ve been waiting all day. Is he finished with his shift at Pizza Hut?
By Jason
February 5, 2009 4:23 PM | Link to this
“A gold or silver standard based on free market principles would have prevented all of this.”
Please explain how your suggestion “would have prevented all of this.” Or are you just regurgitating what you remember hearing a supposedly smart person say?
By The Emperor
February 5, 2009 4:25 PM | Link to this
Your mother, wife and daughter were most satisfied.
By Ragnar Danneskjöld
February 5, 2009 4:29 PM | Link to this
President Empty Suit reaffirmed his support for the “stimulus” bill this afternoon: “No, I think we have to go all out. I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody’s part.”
By The Conservative
February 5, 2009 4:33 PM | Link to this
That’s what she said last night.
By The Conservative
February 5, 2009 4:40 PM | Link to this
I mean, that’s what your goat said last night.
bwa haw.
gotcha
By Hillbilly Deluxe
February 5, 2009 4:42 PM | Link to this
To Jason @ 2:39
Excellent point. It’s all about whose ox is getting gored. They don’t care until it’s theirs.
By ron
February 5, 2009 4:58 PM | Link to this
Sen Phil Graham thinks that Obama’a a little light on leadership abilities.Seems that Obama is fighting a hands off approach battle for his stimulus bill.Someone should tell him that op-ed pieces are for State representatives etc.Maybe he’s going to send in the second team,Michelle.
By @@
February 5, 2009 5:04 PM | Link to this
The thing I find most interesting about this struggle between government, their union backers and business is that government and unions think that business will be left powerless.
They’re foolin’ themselves in their little world of make believe.
They (businesses) have rights and options too.
Hold on to your a*-ets.
By The Conservative
February 5, 2009 5:08 PM | Link to this
Rutherford B Hayes was shocked at you people. He waded into the presidency not realizing the pettiness of average common folk that comprised the constituency he faced in the white house. they wanted favors, jobs, grants, etc. And the backstabbing! Rutherford was so dismayed he declined a sure second term.
That’s how I feel about you horrid trolls. You write stuff that sorta makes sense to me, but overall, it has all the value of skidmarks on three day old underwear.
In fact, I’ve gleaned more relevance about this stimulus package by deciphering skidmarks on three day old underwear.
Fact.
By Glenn
February 5, 2009 5:10 PM | Link to this
Maybe I’m the only one who appreciates this column as a helpful guidepost. We ought to wish for the passage of these Democratic initiatives Mr. Wooten describes, the better to prosper China and its pilot fish all of whom we’ll need desperately to loan us the trillions we’ll need to borrow from them to pay for the Democratic program of shifting wealth to them. Barack Obama has been a redistributionist all his life. Why not, then, redistribute our patrimony to Beijing, Happy Glorious Host of Historic Summer Games?
By The Conservative
February 5, 2009 5:24 PM | Link to this
yes, U R the only 1, glenn.
our deficit has never stopped our growth. Our deficit has been in the state of the union address for seven score and four years now. hasn’t been a problem.
Your problem cant be dealt with here. Meet me upstairs and I’ll link you to the salve you need to rub on your groin that may cure you.
bwa haw.
moron.
By Glenn
February 5, 2009 5:25 PM | Link to this
I just thank God that I’m so highly educated — a word that, by the way, means breast-fed. And that I learned the sophisticated Fisher-Price Thesis on the very barf-quilt strewn on the floor of my Tennessee grandmother. The little fish swallow the littler fish, if the first are to grow big enough to get gulped by the big fish. And what a great day that must be.
Do we think we’re Jonah, that we can be digested whole by an extremely hostile nation, China, and be spat out the better for it? We’ll come out colorless and unknowing, disoriented and weak.
By GaNative
February 5, 2009 5:42 PM | Link to this
Most of you people are nuts. Obama is no more a redistributionist than any of the other white boys that have occupied the white house. Every since I was able to work and draw a paycheck they’ve always taken from my azz and given it to others. It didn’t matter who da Phuck was in office either.
By Glenn
February 5, 2009 5:46 PM | Link to this
That with which you salve your jewels, you dirty turncoat, already is in hock to China. And you know it, because I learned it from you.
The bailout and stimulus together are going to amount to about 2 trillion, as you know. That’s the same amount we’re now seeking to borrow from the Butchers of Beijing University.
Bunch of superstitious thugs, the generalissimos who still run that impossibly great land, just might get all woo-woo over the fact that this year marks the 20th anniversary of the near-coup that took down the warlords not from Hunan beginning a generation before the fact, but on Beijing’s main Square beginning spontaneously, right in their brutal faces.
I hate ANY policy of my nation that benefits present-day China.
By The Blogfather
February 5, 2009 6:01 PM | Link to this
Without China, we’re finished, fool.
I love the way you came off it when the AJC put out that call for a conservative writer.
I am amused. But………
By The Blogfather
February 5, 2009 6:14 PM | Link to this
Fact!
Okay, you want more? lets turn to allah. Did you know that most people think you just die? You croak and then, because you’re no longer productive, you don’t even deserve a burial, so they say, to make themselves feel better, “vultures gotta eat same as worms”.
Some folks think that dead people only need cremation and a flush, so that the remains enter the water supply and one becomes all and all becomes one and so on and so on and so on…..
But I can tell you with direct authority from the man upstairs that you live for eternity.
be glad.
By Georgia
February 5, 2009 6:16 PM | Link to this
IBM to laid-off: Want a job in India? Employees who would otherwise face layoffs from their North American jobs at IBM are being given the chance to work abroad through ‘Project Match.’ NEW YORK (CNN) — IBM employees being laid off in North America now have an alternative to joining the growing ranks of the unemployed - work for the company abroad.
Big Blue is offering its outgoing workers in the United States and Canada a chance to take an IBM job in India, Nigeria, Russia or other countries.
Through a program dubbed Project Match, IBM will help interested workers whose jobs are on the chopping block to “identify potential opportunities in growth markets and facilitate consideration by hiring managers in those markets,” according to an internal company document obtained by CNN.
The company also will help with moving costs and provide visa assistance, it says.
Other countries with IBM opportunities include Argentina, Brazil, China, Czech Republic, Hungary, Mexico, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Turkey, and United Arab Emirates, according to the document.
Only “satisfactory performers” who are “willing to work on local terms and conditions” should pursue the jobs, the document says. IBM would not immediately confirm if it means that the workers would be paid local wages and would be subject to local labor laws.
A spokesman for Alliance@IBM, a workers’ group that is affiliated with the Communications Workers of America but does not have official union status at IBM, slammed the initiative.
“IBM not only is offshoring its work to low-cost countries, now IBM wants employees to offshore themselves,” spokesman Lee Conrad told CNN. “At a time of rising unemployment IBM should be looking to keep both the work and the workers in the United States.”
The Armonk, N.Y.-based company has confirmed recent layoffs but has not provided any specifics on the number of people affected.
Conrad said IBM (IBM, Fortune 500) has laid off more than 4,000 workers in the United States since the beginning of the year, but called that “a conservative number.”
“This is unacceptable to the Alliance and we are pursuing this by asking our members and all IBM employees to contact their political representatives to demand an accounting and transparency in job cuts and offshoring from IBM,” Conrad said
By Bo Chambliss LOBBYIST
February 6, 2009 8:22 AM | Link to this
Just remember that Dad voted to give subsidies to companies that moved jobs out of the USA. Let’s hear it for the LOBBYIST.
By Texas Pete
February 6, 2009 8:41 AM | Link to this
Guys…Girls… roll with the times. I’ve made a nice living offshoring work to India, China and Mexico. To keep things going for my US employees - I have a company that gets foreclosed houses ready for auction and another company that ships the equipment from US factories to China and Brazil. It is all an opportunity if you look at it the rught way.
By Ragnar Danneskjöld
February 6, 2009 8:56 AM | Link to this
Good morning all. It’s time to put childish beliefs behind us, such as the notion that bureaucrats can manage our lives more intelligently than we do.
“Moderates” – people who willingly trade freedom for a mess of pottage - are pushing a plan to reduce the “stimulus” to about $800 billion and to put more emphasis on tax cuts. How about killing the monstrosity entirely and simply renewing the Bush tax cuts? Kill cap and trade. Kill socializing medicine. Kill the Orwellian-named “Employee Free Choice” bill that eliminates the “need” for elections. Put all new environmental and economic regulations on hold for two years. Thus, even with no new outlays, the economy would recover in six months, and the stock market would rise 30% in 90 days. The Pelosi-Reid agenda destroys jobs and wealth throughout the economy. Pelosi-Reid – crafting our domestic economy since 2006.
Ominous headline on the front page of the WSJ: “Nations Rush to Establish New Barriers to Trade.” A Brazilian bureaucrat called his nation’s initiative “Buy American, Brazilian style.” The collapse of free trade, and the rise of its first cousin, xenophobia, were essential causative elements to the elimination of freedom throughout most of the world in the 1930s. Economics-illiteracy has consequences far greater than the cost of gasoline. The National Socialists everywhere are on the march again. Be alert for efforts to silence opposing voices, e.g., “The time for talk is over, the time for action is now.” Where is our Hayek, our von Mises?
President Obama faces his first real diplomacy crisis today, the Kyrgyz decision to shut down the US air base outside Bishkek. The Tajiks offer use of their airspace for “non-military NATO supplies,” whatever that means. Implication: could make it nearly impossible to fight the terrorists hiding in Afghanistan and Western Pakistan, short of employing nukes and leaving a massive trail of devastation. We may have to unilaterally surrender, withdraw our noble military from the theatre. I perceive at least one country is under-whelmed by our Change. Friend @@ is our military/strategy expert here, I await her analysis. No, I did not make up “Kyrgyz,” “Bishkek,” or “Tajik” while in a drunken stupor.
We pray for the health of Justice Ginsburg. While we believe she is on the wrong side of almost every issue, she is an intelligent and decent person, and consistent in her ideology. Pancreatic cancer is a tough one. Did I once read a bizarre story citing a strong correlation between gum disease and pancreatic cancer?
By Peter
February 6, 2009 9:06 AM | Link to this
OK Jim……..Your SOLUTION to the Problem ?
Republican’s don’t want to work with or FOR American’s…….. They like to get for themselves….GREED………thus they offer little to help, yet want to stop any progress Obama wants to make……..thus the sending of Jobs over seas….. I guess so the Executives can collect their HUGE BONUS Money !
Yes Jim, Greedy owners and managers have been out sourcing American Jobs for quite some time now……. It has been Happening for 8 years during the Bush Administration……Why didn’t you mention anything about it then ?
Hey Jim…… Say you never noticed………….. but the problem of DEFICIT…………. (2) Wars…………….. and Job Losses existed before Obama took office……Your Republican Leadership in the White House Created the Problem !
Let’s here solutions JIM……… not your “Crying” for a CHANGE !
By Ragnar Danneskjöld
February 6, 2009 9:15 AM | Link to this
It’s time to put childish beliefs behind us, such as the notion that WRITING IN CAPS MAKES AN IDEA INTELLIGENT OR FORCEFUL.
By Peter
February 6, 2009 9:22 AM | Link to this
Yes let’s stop the CHILDISH Beliefs that Republican’s have a clue !
By The GodBlogger
February 6, 2009 9:29 AM | Link to this
and just WHAT is wrong with CAPS?
Without caps little children couldn’t have pistols. Without caps, menopausal metrosexual men wouldn’t have any place to turn.
Without caps, How could we observe the holy name of Jesus Christ?
No, ragmop, it is caps which has allowed mankind access to the stairway. Now, off topic, I’d like to express my feelings about my mouse in a song; “My mouse, is a very very very fine mouse. With two cats in the yard. Hey, what happened to my mouse?”
By Churchill's MOM
February 6, 2009 9:33 AM | Link to this
Did Jim retire or is he taking the day off? the AJC’s new web page is so messed up you really have to look hard to find a CONSERVATIVE
By Peter
February 6, 2009 9:33 AM | Link to this
Please Disgusted…….
By Disgusted
February 5, 2009 4:19 PM | Link to this
When, O when, will Raggedisnott Dangimapompoustuurdhole post. I’ve been waiting all day. Is he finished with his shift at Pizza Hut?
He is not a Pizza Hut worker……….. he is a Lawyer trying to rip off as many American’s he can……..in the True REPUBLICAN Spirit of “Family Values ” !
By Bo Chambliss LOBBYIST
February 6, 2009 9:35 AM | Link to this
Look at what Dad voted for, that money from the bank LOBBYIST sure spent well..
WASHINGTON (Reuters) — Watchdogs monitoring the government’s bank bailout called for an overhaul Thursday, with one accusing those running it of misleading the public, while senators slammed the program as chaotic and poorly managed.
Under the $700 billion program meant to stabilize the financial system, the Treasury Department has so far spent nearly $300 billion to bolster financial institutions and automakers in exchange for preferred shares and warrants.
But in buying those securities, Henry M. Paulson Jr., then the Treasury secretary, misled the public about how it was going to price them, said Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard law professor and head of an oversight panel for the bailout, known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP.
“Treasury simply did not do what it said it was doing,” Ms. Warren said at a hearing before the Senate banking committee. Many members of the panel condemned management of the program, which is barely four months old.
The program proceeded “in a chaotic, unorganized and ad hoc manner,” said Daniel K. Akaka, Democrat of Hawaii.
Neil M. Barofsky, another watchdog for the program, told the Senate committee his office was turning to criminal investigations. “That’s going to be a large focus of my office,” he said.
By Ragnar Danneskjöld
February 6, 2009 9:40 AM | Link to this
Dear PoFo @ 9:29, I think your mouse, originated by CSNY, was kidnapped by Madness. Funny post.
By The GodBlogger
February 6, 2009 9:49 AM | Link to this
Thank you, Ragmop. I try. I know we all try, and we keep on trying because if we dont try, then we dont do, and if we dont do, then what are we here on this earth for? I hope that clears up all questions about my very fine mouse.
By Bob in Winder
February 6, 2009 9:49 AM | Link to this
Must read for the RAGHEAD
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/06/nyregion/06pay.html?dlbk
By Churchill's MOM
February 6, 2009 9:55 AM | Link to this
I don’t know who this Judd woman is but she is in big THROUBLE. My husband thinks it is a set up for the WWFL what ever that is.
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) defended herself Wednesday against an ad featuring actress Ashley Judd that accuses her of “championing the slaughter of wildlife.”
In a statement released through the governor’s office, Palin called the ad, paid for by Defenders of Wildlife, “reprehensible and hypocritical.”
“The ad campaign by this extreme fringe group, as Alaskans have witnessed over the last several years, distorts the facts about Alaska’s wildlife management programs,” Palin said. “These audacious fundraising attempts misrepresent what goes on in Alaska, and I encourage people to learn the facts about Alaska’s positive record of managing wildlife for abundance.”
“Shame on the Defenders of Wildlife for twisting the truth in an effort to raise funds from innocent and hard-pressed Americans struggling with these rough economic times,” she continued.
Defenders of Wildlife launched similar attacks against Palin soon after she was selected as former GOP presidential nominee John McCain’s running mate, but until Judd’s appearance the spots garnered little attention. Palin did not respond to previous criticism from the nonprofit membership organization.
In the ad, Judd condemns Palin for a state policy encouraging the aerial hunting of wolves.
“Palin even proposed a $150 bounty for the severed foreleg of each killed wolf,” Judd says. “And now she is encouraging even more aerial killing. It is time to stop Sarah Palin and stop this senseless savagery.”
By The GodBlogger
February 6, 2009 10:00 AM | Link to this
Blessed are the bailout challenged, for they shall inherit the death tax.
By Ragnar Danneskjöld
February 6, 2009 10:10 AM | Link to this
Dear Bob @ 9:49, interesting story. My sense is that government constriction is generally a bad idea. I think the idea ought to be tested first in some areas that would not matter, to be sure there are no gravely adverse unforeseen consequences (as there always are in leftist schemes.) I suggest we try this first in Hollywood and in professional sports, and if it does not cause any adverse effects, spread it to the productive economy.
By Ragnar Danneskjöld
February 6, 2009 10:12 AM | Link to this
Dear Bob @ 9:49, oh yes, and in law also.
By The GodBlogger
February 6, 2009 10:42 AM | Link to this
I may as well do pick a topic friday for wooten, since I’m going to be doing it anyway soon for real….
Pelosi’s facelift has given her an perpetual open mouthed grin that has this crazed aspect to it…..and she was such a pretty woman.
Obama need not panic. He’s simply has to weather this storm without using the W word.
Cheney’s man sized safe is still in the Vice President’s office. Biden’s using it to store all the prototype torture devices Cheney was testing up to the last day.
We are at the bottom. Buy. Why? Because if this is not the bottom, then your investment will be worthless anyway. Socio-economic revolution does that to 401K plans.
By Algonquin J. Calhoun
February 6, 2009 10:48 AM | Link to this
Winnie’s mammy,so you think hunting from a helicopter is sporting, do you? As we already know, Palin is a nut and is fascipublican in designer clothes(recently repossessed by the fascipublican party) and glasses. In Alaska she is known as the ‘twit of the tundra’ and her sponsorship of wholesale wolf killing is ample evidence of her unworthiness to serve the people in any capacity!
By Jason
February 6, 2009 10:49 AM | Link to this
“I suggest we try this first in Hollywood and in professional sports, and if it does not cause any adverse effects, spread it to the productive economy.”
Curious words coming from such an ardent proponent of free markets. Productive economy? Are you suggesting the laws of supply and demand shouldn’t apply to sports and movies—presumably because you don’t care for them? I hope you don’t think athletes and actors get paid too much, since that would belie everything you’ve ever written here.
By Glenn
February 6, 2009 10:53 AM | Link to this
Blogfather,
You done me wrong. I began by acknowledging that it was you who convinced me — partly with your teeny little prediction, a year before, of this massive economic crisis — that we were going to need China in the worst way. All’s I wussayin’ wuz, I hate that you’re right not because I begrudge you but because I hate the military junta that gets so rich profiteering off the way China presently is run that it need not and will not permit a full fourth of humanity to, say, choose to sample Jim Wooten’s blog.
As for the columnist spot, first of all I’m half-Georgian at best, which is not good enough. Second, as you know I require a copy editor — precisely the sort of employee upon which the AJC so conspicuously has been compromising desperately. Finally, you yourself are funnier, are a far superior stylist, and are almost as perceptive as I.
By Soothsayer
February 6, 2009 10:59 AM | Link to this
The United States is currently borrowing $665 billion annually from foreign lenders to finance the gap between payments to and receipts from the rest of the world, an amount equivalent to $5,500 per American household. This borrowing entails serious costs for the U.S. economy. However, these costs have been hidden for the past few years, predominantly by the historically low interest rates, which resulted from the Federal Reserve’s attempts to spur economic recovery after the 2001 recession and from a downturn in domestic investment. This happy scenario will not persist indefinitely, and when interest rates rise, the costs of U.S. borrowing will have serious economic consequences
By Ragnar Danneskjöld
February 6, 2009 11:02 AM | Link to this
Dear Jason @ 10:49, I have misjudged you. You prove your capacity to learn by accurately citing my ideas. Your analysis of My Modest Proposal is spot on; you are Swift indeed.
By The GodBlogger
February 6, 2009 11:06 AM | Link to this
Entertainers are not included in the cap, another reason why CAPS are so important. I hope ragmop understands what it is that i say to him this day about caps. he seemed confused about how caps make content sound more authoritative…….
Midsouth, anyone can write a confession………it’s not evidence. I’m going to write homeland security and tell them it was I, ensign analchord who threw the captain’s palm tree overboard….and threw the firecrackers underneath the captain’s bunk, and put the marbles in the overhead……
Now, I’d like to sing a song that best expressed the topic here about reliable evidence: ” somebody snitched on me…..I hid a frog in sister’s bed…somebody snitched on me……I put a tack in teacher’s chair….somebody snitched on me……i did a dance on mommie’s plants, climed a tree and tore my pants, filled the sugar bowl with ants, somebody snitched on me…..
By Soothsayer
February 6, 2009 11:24 AM | Link to this
Since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was signed in 1993, the rise in the U.S. trade deficit with Canada and Mexico through 2002 has caused the displacement of production that supported 879,280 U.S. jobs. Most of those lost jobs were high-wage positions in manufacturing industries. The loss of these jobs is just the most visible tip of NAFTA’s impact on the U.S. economy. In fact, NAFTA has also contributed to rising income inequality, suppressed real wages for production workers, weakened workers’ collective bargaining powers and ability to organize unions, and reduced fringe benefits.
By Jackie
February 6, 2009 12:30 PM | Link to this
Each and every time someone looks behind the scenes at Bush policies and practices, they find a ticking time-bomb.
The $350 Billion dollars given to the financial institutions and others has found that there were only 60% of asset value backing up those “gifts.”
Typical policy of the conservatives, do as I say, not as you should relative to the good of the country.
By Glenn
February 6, 2009 1:12 PM | Link to this
Ragnar,
You persist in scaring poeple with facts. You don’t want to be scaring poeple with facts. Poeple don’t want to be scared with facts…
…lest they’re scared by that man Irvin…
By The GodBlogger
February 6, 2009 2:55 PM | Link to this
The Republicans are piling on here. Obama woulda been fine if the Peanut Butter Scare hadn’t been thrown into the mix. If we cant trust our inner peter pan, then how can we trust our institutions? Especially with Obama’s smooth now spreading so thin across the white bread upper crust which elected him.
Obama needs to throw up a game plan and hope it sticks to the roof….
…got milk?