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All of you have good ideas - Obama has a Web site and his staff has asked for ideas, concerns, etc... Why not present your ideas - nothing to lose.
Change.gov
All of you have good ideas - Obama has a Web site and his staff has asked for ideas, concerns, etc... Why not present your ideas - nothing to lose.
Change.gov
None of these good ideas has meaning until and unless we get the debt problem under control. Absent that, we're just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
Absolutely so. For years I've been hopeful that someone wakes up and starts a national railroad building program similar in style to the interstate highway system, like the 90/10 Federal match for funds. I'll spare you the train-hugger details on its features, but the point it we'd be spending money on OURSELVES, building something that lasts for centuries, puts TONS of people to work doing something constructive (instead of sending everyone a check to go buy more Chinese schlock), and support our industrial base (millions of tons of steel, concrete, and all the trades work that goes with it). It would also make a big dent in imported oil, replace air travel for many trips, get trucks off the highway, would be powered by OUR electricity that we make HERE with our own nuke plants, gas, wind or solar (a parallel set of infrastructure programs all its own).
One thing that most people fail to recognize is that energy policy and transport policy are joined at the hip. Worse, this nation has NEVER had a defined policy for either topic; is it any wonder that we're in such a fix now.
I disagree with some of Mike's politics, but he is right on with this post--especially the last paragraph. I would add to transport and energy policy our lack of coherent "housing" policy--specifically how we continue to subsidize and promote the very way occupy the landscape in a way that only entrenches and aggravates our energy and transportation problems. Sprawl, which was never benign, has turned now into a malignancy that threatens the whole economy. It has also been the main contributor to the mountain of private debt that now threatens to swamp us--and is a substantial contributor the public debt, as well. It is a damnable fact that we have massively depleted domestic oil resources, created a debt almost beyond comprehension, and debased our currency--all in a spectacle of consumption and waste of which the major visible result is the rape of a good chunk of the American landscape by a sprawling mass of auto-dependent crap. It is nothing of which to be proud--it is a national disgrace.
Living proof that the inside dealing and corruption on the Bush mis-administration continues unabated. Excerpts:
- ... $700 billion to rescue the nation’s financial industry seemed an ocean of money. But after one of the biggest lobbying free-for-alls in memory, it suddenly looks like a dwindling pool.
- ... Jeb Mason, the Treasury’s liaison to the business community, is the first port-of-call for lobbyists. ... Mason, 32, a lanky Texan in black cowboy boots once worked in the White House for Karl Rove...
There you have it, Rove continues to run the nation from a side door at the white house .... bring money .... get your deal ...
I note with livid chagrin, the image of Sec Treasury Henry Paulson telling the world today that he has a better way to spend the $700 Bn in TARP proceeds than what Congress authorized. To date, not a penny of that money has been spent buying troubled mortgage assets, despite him and the President telling us the financial markets would self destruct in days if they didn't do that.
Now, after spending almost $300 Bn on the "No Banker Left Behind Program," they want to use more of the money to help loan broke people money to buy new cars and plasma TVs.
The good news is that the British pound is below $1.50 now, so there's a place to run to with good beer and English speakers.
I think I'll start on my depression garden planters in the morning. I wonder if the Colo Springs PD will take notice when I go asking to buy a couple dozen grow lights at Lowes...
Last edited by Bob from down south; 11-12-2008 at 09:02 PM..
Are the banks going to create new preferred stock, or is Paulson planning to buy the existing shares?
In the first case, the bankers holding voting shares would have their risk diluted. In the second case, the bankers would have their risk completely ablated with an option to buy back the voting shares if the pyramid doesn't implode.
Thanks, Bob from Down South, for that link -- here's a quote from the Whitehead interview I found particularly succinct and compelling:
"There are at least ten "trillion dollar problems," facing the United States, he said, including social security, expanding health insurance, rebuilding infrastructure and increased spending on green energy. At the same time, the public does not want to pay for it.
"The public is not prepared to increase taxes. Both parties were for reducing taxes, reducing income to government, and both parties favored a number of new programs -- all very costly and all done by the government," he said.
The good news is that the British pound is below $1.50 now, so there's a place to run to with good beer and English speakers.
...
Austin Powers turned me against all things British...
But on a more serious note, I see Britain today as where we are headed: low wages, high cost of living, i.e. lower standard of living, socialism, more crime and increasing immigrant influence on the nation's character.
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