Few articles on the porkulus package

We HAVE to do everything we can to stop this thing. I'm sending messages saying fight with everything you have in your power to cut as much pork from the bill, then when it's pared down as much as possible, vote against it anyway.

Here are a few article links to give you an overview of the variety of views on this thing. On the last story re: Democrat poll finds voters like the stimulus... that flies in the face of every poll I've seen or heard about. I haven't read the article, but I have a feeling they asked a question that led to the answer they wanted.

Wash. Times: Obama: Nation can't afford bickering over stimulus

NYT: Stimulus Plan Encounters Stiff Resistance in Senate

Politico: Schumer: We'll get to 60

LAT: Obama turns to e-mail network to push stimulus plan

The Hill: Democratic poll finds voters like stimulus

Stimulus Round Up

If you think your voice doesn't count think again. If enough of us call, write, fax, email it's possible we might, just might be able to impact this so-called stimulus package. Go to www.readthestimulus.org and click on the spread sheet they've provided and / or read the text of the actual bill if you can handle government double-speak in print!

Here are some interesting articles and commentary re: stimulus package.

States to win big in stimulus sweepstakes
The House bill allots almost one-quarter of the $825 billion recovery package to states and localities.
http://www.elabs5.com/ct.html?rtr=on&s=o1l,44m9,er,a7nj,g6m3,mbr4,k497

--

Fed May Gain More Financial Oversight
(By Neil Irwin and Binyamin Appelbaum)

--

Republican Leaders Don’t Like Stimulus Plan, but No Filibuster Expected
(CNSNews.com) – Three top Republicans agree that they cannot support the Democrats’ economic stimulus package as written. But aside from expressing the hope that Republicans’ suggestions will be incorporated, none of them said they would work to block the plan beyond voting “no.”

--

Nationalization of banks around the corner?
Yesterday Nancy Pelosi publicly indicated nationalization was on the table (Nancy Pelosi - Nationalization of Banks a Good Idea? Yep.).

Nancy Pelosi - Nationalization of Banks a Good Idea? Yep.
Nancy Pelosi was on ABC this morning with George Stephanopoulos. The entire interview was a dance and dodge performance, but even with all the flowery non-answers there were some whoppers that should have fiscally conservative, anti-socialistic, freedom loving Americans up in arms.

--

Nationalization Gets a New, Serious Look
Only five days into the Obama presidency, members of the new administration and Democratic leaders in Congress are already dancing around one of the most politically delicate questions about the financial bailout: Is the president prepared to nationalize a huge swath of the nation’s banking system? Privately, most members of the Obama economic team concede that the rapid deterioration of the country’s biggest banks, notably Bank of America and Citigroup, is bound to require far larger investments of taxpayer money, atop the more than $300 billion of taxpayer money already poured into those two financial institutions and hundreds of others, The New York Times’s David E. Sanger reports.
http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/26/nationalization-gets-a-new-serious-look/

--

Treasury's demands on banks seen as nationalization
WASHINGTON — The U.S. government's decision to pledge billions of additional dollars with strings attached to Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America Corp. may be nationalization by another name, according to former bankers and regulators. Faced with pressure from lawmakers, banks have shaken up management, eliminated executive bonuses and staff and canceled conventions. They'll be forced to do monthly reports on how they've boosted lending while slashing quarterly dividends to 1 cent a share for three years.

--

Pelosi Advocates Greater Government Investment in Banks: ‘Some People Call That Nationalization’
(CNSNews.com) - House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, describing the U.S. economy as “dark, darker, darkest,” indicated that further nationalization of American banks may be necessary, although she shied away from using the word “nationalization.” Pelosi also told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that investing in food stamps and unemployment insurance would be more effective in stimulating the economy than any tax cut would be.

--

Editorial: Congress Must Stop the Stimulus
The $825 billion economic “stimulus” plan now being proposed by President Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats could well result in a federal deficit in excess of $2 trillion for 2009. Which means that it is now up to Senate and House Republicans to make certain that the American people are not consigned to a future of permanent serfdom to foreign creditors.
That is, if those creditors will continue to even service the national debt, now totaling nearly $10.7 trillion. http://alg31blog.timberlakepublishing.com/default.asp?Display=905

--

The Heritage Foundation's Morning Bell:
A Conservative Alternative to Obama's Permanent Spending Plan

Last Friday we told you that even by the left's own ideological criteria, President Barack Obama's trillion dollar spending plan would fail to stimulate the economy because nothing about the massive spending increases in the bill was temporary. This Sunday, the Washington Post wrote an editorial essentially agreeing with us:

[S]ome in Congress and the new administration apparently see the country's
present recession as an opportunity to change the federal government's spending
priorities more generally or simply to reward loyal political constituencies.
... [I]t's risky to make new, multiyear commitments in the middle of a crisis
without debate over competing priorities -- and without paying for them through
some means other than borrowing.

Helping hire, equip and pay police, a $4 billion item under the bill, might
be a good idea, but writing checks to individual households for the same amount
would do more to stimulate the economy. Ditto for $16 billion in Pell Grants for
college students, $2.1 billion for Head Start and $50 million for the National
Endowment for the Arts. All of those ideas may have merit, but why do they
belong in an emergency measure aimed to kick-start the economy?...Fiscal
stimulus can be a part of the solution, but only if it is "targeted, timely and
temporary." The efforts so far don't quite match that description.

Our only quibble with the Post's assessment of Obama's trillion dollar spending plan is that it is not quite stern enough. There is nothing "targeted, timely and temporary" about the massive and permanent spending increases in this bill. And the Post left out some of the most flagrant examples. Among the hundreds of billions of dollars in new spending is hundreds of millions of dollars for contraceptives. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) unrepentantly defended this money as stimulus on ABC's This Week:

Well, the family planning services reduce cost. They reduce cost. ... One of
those - one of the initiatives you mentioned, the contraception, will reduce
costs to the states and to the federal government.

Got that? If you want to help stimulate the economy, then Nancy Pelosi believes you should not have any more children. Apparently having less children "will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government."

National Economic Council director Lawrence Summers turned in a similar performance on Meet the Press, defending the above mentioned Pell Grants and police hiring as "good investments."

Neither of these stimulus defenders even bothered to claim that these spending increases would be temporary in any way. The deficit for 2009 is already projected to exceed $1 trillion. If deficit-fueled government spending was effective, then our economy ought to be in recovery already. Obviously that is not the case. An alternative is needed.

The American economy does not rise and fall with the level of aggregate demand or deficit spending. There are normal processes that launch a recovery and drive an economy. These processes involve individuals and businesses responding to opportunities and incentives. Lower marginal tax rates stimulate the economy because they improve the incentives facing individuals and businesses to work, invest, take risks, and seize opportunities. The centerpiece of an effective stimulus policy should involve two elements

- Make the 2001 and 2003 Tax Cuts Permanent: The American public faces a massive tax hike in 2011 when all of the tax relief enacted in 2001 and 2003 expires. It is difficult for the economy to gain its footing when facing the threat of a punitive tax hike.

- Reduce Marginal Tax Rates for Individuals and Businesses: Cutting tax rates by 10% for individuals, small businesses and corporations will reduce the cost of doing business in America and make it easier for Americans to create new private sector jobs.

According to an analysis performed at the Center for Data Analysis at The Heritage Foundation, using the widely respected Global Insight U.S. Macroeconomic Model, these policy changes would strengthen the economy significantly this year. Adopting the Heritage tax proposal would mean that 500,000 more Americans have jobs by the end of 2009, and, by the end of 2010, employment would increase by a million jobs. This two-step tax policy would reduce tax receipts relative to current policy by about $670 billion over five years, a number significantly smaller than Obama's $850 billion and growing spending plan.

Just how many people are going to get an Obama tax cut?

First it was anyone making under $250,000. Then it was $200,000. The last time they let Joe Biden talk without a script it dropped to $150,000. Today according to Bill Richardson, we're down to $120,000. So, if you're making $120,000 or more you are rich. According to Martha Stewart you just need to suck it up and you'll just "have to budget" to pay your tax burden. It's a long way from $120,000 to $120,000 million or whatever amount Martha takes home.

And, let's see, 95% of the population will get a check from the government, courtesy of the "rich".

Business owners across the country are studying Obama's plan and they're planning their employee cuts, benefit cuts and more.

Today my son told me that his bosses sat down and talked about how they manage the company profits. They have it fine tuned to ensure they make a certain profit to avoid falling into a tax bracket that eats into their profits. If they make too much in a given year, they give the excess money back to the workers in the form of a bonus. They said that Obama's plan would have them immediately in a tax bracket that would cost them more than they could pay, thus to stay in business, they will have to raise the cost of goods my son buys to do his job. Effectively, he'd be getting a pay cut. Don't ask me to explain the details, I'm just repeating the general gist of what my son told me.

Guess who the company owners are voting for? It's not Obama! Guess who my son is voting for? It's not Obama. Hopefully there are a lot of people looking at Obama's spread the wealth, tax the rich, socialistic style government and they're going to punch the McCain-Palin button.

Here's Richardson talking about Barack Obama's ever moving tax target:

Couple of stories of interest

Checks on 'Joe' more extensive than first acknowledged
Tax, welfare info also sought on McCain ally
Wednesday, October 29, 2008 8:05 PM
By Randy Ludlow
Document
Read the letter from Helen Jones-Kelley, director of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, about background checks made on Joe the Plumber [pdf]
A state agency has revealed that its checks of computer systems for potential information on "Joe the Plumber" were more extensive than it first acknowledged.
Helen Jones-Kelley, director of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, disclosed today that computer inquiries on Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher were not restricted to a child-support system.... http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2008/10/29/joe30.html?sid=101

(My comment to Barack Obama on this story: Share the wealth)
Found in a rundown Boston estate: Barack Obama’s aunt Zeituni Onyango
'Auntie Zeituni', who, with Uncle Omar, dropped out of sight after moving to the US, is backing the presidential candidate from her modest flat
Barack Obama has lived one version of the American Dream that has taken him to the steps of the White House. But a few miles from where the Democratic presidential candidate studied at Harvard, his Kenyan aunt and uncle, immigrants living in modest circumstances in Boston, have a contrasting American story.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/us_elections/article5042571.ece

Homeless voters

I'm sure most of you have heard that a judge in Ohio has said that the homeless can vote by listing a parch bench or similar as their place of residence.

For those who are strong believers that anyone can vote and should vote, I'm sure this is a much celebrated ruling. I would imagine that many homeless advocates are also happy about this ruling.

It won't come as a surprise to my readers that I am strongly opposed to this ruling.

Why?

What's to stop busloads of partisan voters from New York claiming residence on a bench in downtown Dayton, Ohio so they can vote? Then they can travel home and vote again. How do you stop voter fraud?

We've been inundated with stories about the fraud that is occurring across the country in this election. ACORN, Project Vote, convicted felons, and other stories make any results in this election suspect.

For many years I regularly traveled downtown to help feed the homeless. After we made breakfast each week, we dolled out the food, then made our own plates and sat with those eating. Sometimes I couldn't bring a fork to my mouth because of the odors that surrounded me. However, I had some very interesting conversations and learned some valuable lessons.

We didn't talk politics. I seriously doubt most of the people I met knew who their congressman was or when the next election would happen. Many of the conversations were one-sided, me talking with someone staring at me, or someone talking non-stop at me!

Much as I wanted to help I felt helpless. Not one of the people I ever talked to was the least bit interested in moving into a home or being a part of "our" society again. I know there are many levels of homeless and many reasons for homelessness. I dealt with those who'd been there for so long it was a way of life. Many were mentally hurting and would probably have been better served in a psychiatric ward where maybe they would have gotten some help. Of course, who knows which is better? Institutionalization or free to roam?

Homelessness is a huge issue, bigger than a year of blogging. I don't have the answers to homelessness, and I can't begin to claim I'm wise enough to decide who should and who shouldn't vote. However, I do know the Ohio ruling opens the door to rampant voter fraud. It's wrong.

Our vote is precious. Our democracy is precious. Our freedom is precious.

We should protect all and be wise in how we protect these privileges.

The future of our country?

Joe the Plumber asks a simple question and his background is investigated, he is attacked, maligned and trashed. His records are hacked into and everything about him is parsed and twisted into a negative.

Barbara West, the Orlando reporter who recently interviewed Joe Biden, asks a question and is trashed, hacked and maligned. Lies are told regarding her husbands background and the station she works for is banned from future interviews.

I could continue the list of people who have had their character assassinated, but these two are current and in the news. Rather than answer questions the messenger is attacked.

What will an Obama presidency be like if this is how things are done on the campaign trail?

To my way of thinking, a Presidential candidate should open all reasonable records and be open about every aspect of their public life. Instead we have a candidate who won't share his thesis from college and, from what I've read, his college records.

There are questions about his birth records and background that could be cleared up by producing a document or records that any of us could easily produce with minimal effort. Why not just show the records and be done with it? Why fight the lawsuit that would be shut down by simply producing a birth certificate? What's the big deal? (One lawsuit by Berg was dismissed because the court said Berg lacked standing, only the government could bring suit to prove citizenship... which seems rather strange to me since the government has access to the documents needed so why would they ever sue?). I've read both sides of this one and it's bigger than just a birth certificate, also brings into question the time Obama spent in Indonesia and more. You'll have to do your own Google search to find out more, it's interesting and who knows way down the pipeline where I sit whether there's merit.

If he's hiding things now and the press is letting him get away with it, what will the future with a President Obama be like?

There are changing answers to the questions about Obama's associations with domestic terrorists, Israel hating groups, reverse racists and others. There's the question of his twenty years sitting in the pew of a church that spewed vitriol and views that are definitely not mainstream.

If we can't get a straight answer from him now, can we expect better if he's elected?

There's the question about his experience.

How will he handle the promised international threat his running mate Joe Biden has promised? Why should we elect someone who will bring about an incident?

There's his statement that one of the first things he'd do is sign the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA). H.R. 1964 and S.1173. This would basically strike down any limits by any state on abortion. It's a broad bill that does a lot to promote abortion. Again, I'll let you do the research and come to your own conclusions.

What will our future look like?

We'll have a Democratic President, a Democratic House and Senate, the Supreme Court and many lesser courts will become more liberal as appointments are made and there won't be any stopping the rolling tide.

Barney Franks said cut military spending 25% and yes, there would be tax increases.

Barack Obama has confirmed that he believes in spreading the wealth.

Small business would be a thing of the past in no time.

The "Fairness" Doctrine would be enacted.

We as Americans need to stop our hero worship, wash away the glitter and look at the bare facts. Go read Obama's books and read his words. We're teetering on the brink of losing America as we know it and Obama isn't glossing over the facts. He's promising Change and I guarantee you it's not the change we're going to want when the dust clears and we see the results.

Some of my friends believe that if he wins there will be a very good chance in 2 years that America will see the results and vote in a Republican Congress to counter his actions. I don't believe that will happen. I'll save my thoughts on the next election for another day.

On a side note, I'm not sure if I've mentioned this in a blog yet: Go check out http://www.wam08.org/. Democrats, Independents and Republicans working together for a common goal. I hope you'll check it out, sign up and get involved.

Argentina Nationalizes Pensions

Argentina's pension takeover plan scares global markets
By Fiona Ortiz
BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Argentina's surprise plan to
nationalize its private pension system caused chaos in local markets and spread
gloom to other emerging markets on Wednesday as investors read it as a desperate
government move to stave off default...
http://www.reuters.com/article/reutersEdge/idUSTRE49L5ZX20081022

My husband is retired military. We've discussed the future on many occasions but have felt fairly secure given the decisions he's made regarding the future. We've felt somewhat "safe" in this volatile market knowing at a minimum we had his pension.

The news this morning that Argentina was planning to grab $30 billion in pension funds sent chills down my spine. When times get tough, our governments "use" the situation to justify actions and the people are helpless to stop it in most cases.

I don't think at this point that our pensions are truly at risk, at least those of the military and of companies who've made wise decisions and funded those plans. However, it's not an impossible scenario, and it's not one I'd have ever considered until now when we're going through this economic crisis.

I am concerned about what will happen if Barack Obama is elected. We will have a majority Democratic House and Senate, a Democrat in the White House who has already told us what his criteria is for Supreme Court picks. It's not only the Supreme Court that is affected by this clean sweep at the top of our government, it's the lesser courts also.

While I consider myself a conservative and will be voting for McCain-Palin, I will admit I would be just as concerned if we were getting ready to put in a Republican President with a full Republican House and Senate.

Our country is one that works because of the checks and balances we set in place many long years ago. Having one Party in complete control is a recipe for disaster.

If you think what is happening in the third world countries and elsewhere around the world can't happen here in our wonderful country, think again. It's a slippery slope and many are making their choice for President based on the sense of false security that our country will remain a free democracy. Many are basing their vote on who is going to give them the most.

Your vote is a very precious gift and I hope that things like race, rhetoric and the current temporary economic situation doesn't cause you to punch a button that leads our country in the wrong direction.