Well…as you can see, I’m not counting the days of the recommended social distancing anymore because it appears that it is going to last a couple of months and I don’t want to get depressed when I see how many days it’s been…I did text all of the kids yesterday and they are doing fine and are all working from home…my son in NYC is taking a couple of weeks off since it is a hotbed of the virus infection and he is trying hard to avoid it…and I am a little concerned about him but what can I do? Talked to a few friends over the past couple of days and, with them being normal people who go out and do things, it appears that this stay at home thing is much harder for them than it is for me…at least at this point…I really haven’t had any social life for a couple of years now so I’m used to being by myself…and part of that was the need to save cash until I officially retired and got some money coming in…oh, and that reminds me that I need to bitch about something…it appears that the stimulus that is wending it’s way through congress and is supposed to put money in people’s hand to spend to keep the economy going is mostly a bailout of business and individuals have had to file taxes last year to get anything…and that leaves out all of us who are living on Social Security since we don’t pay taxes on it…and we are the ones who can use the money the most and will spend it….so, the repub bullshit that this is going to help people is blown up…and they are giving billions to cruise ship companies that are not even American…but they are well connected in conservative circles….did you expect anything else? Oh, well…I won’t starve but I do worry about the older folks who could really use the cash and I fault Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer for letting this happen…okay, that’s enough for now….more later…
Tag Archives: stimulus package
Okay, I’m six short for the month…
Well…I don’t think I’ve been so far behind in numbers here since I started this thing so I guess I’d better get my butt in gear and get a couple more out today….it was a tiny bunny day out on the trail today and I was really amused how they would never just cross the trail in front of me but would cross then run down the trail for a few yards…they are much faster than they look…I was going 15 and they were keeping up….just a bit of trail weirdness…
I did want to get to the nonsense that Bachmann and her ilk are peddling on the campaign trail about the stimulus package…their contention being that the stimulus did not work at all and it was a waste of 700 billion dollars…well, Michele, the stimulus was almost half tax cuts so what you’re saying is that tax cuts don’t work to stimulate the economy, right? So, why are you and the rest of the nut job right continuing to push more and more tax cuts? It just shows that these guys don’t give a damn about the economy except how it can be used to benefit the rich and connected….geez….
Hypocrisy, thy name is Republican…
Okay…has there ever been a more hypocritical bunch of folks than the current crop of Republicans? If you’ve been watching television at all over the last couple of months, you’ve no doubt seen the political ads that state with ominous certainty that the stimulus package has failed. It is a staple of the ads here in Michigan; second only to the repugs use of Nancy Pelosi as the scariest thing since Dracula, but, there is a little glitch in those attacks…it seems while McConnel, Bachmann, and Sessions hammer on their fake facts that the stimulus didn’t work, they have written letters to the agencies that are administering these funds touting the effectiveness of the spending in creating and preserving jobs in their districts. Now, what is it? Did the stimulus not work or did it add jobs? I am so tired of the American people believing this blatant hypocrisy…and I am just as tired of the “mainstream media” not running these inconvenient facts on the front pages of newspapers across the country. When did lies and hypocrisy become acceptable? Now I know you’re going to say that everyone lies and the Dems are just as culpable…but that in itself is not true…the repugs have raised it to an art form because they know that people just don’t care, that the American public lives in a world of sound bites and superficiality that will allow them to take back control of the country….and finish killing it. Geez…
There really was no stimulus…
Well….don’t you just love the repubs mastery of the non-fact in the political ads they are running here in Michigan? Every one of them repeats their mantra of the “failed stimulus program” and the “Socialist expansion of government” of the Obama administration but they don’t acknowledge the true facts; what Paul Krugman said in the NYT this morning. There was neither a stimulus program or any expansion of government…in fact, there are 350,000 less federal workers now than when Obama took office. If there was a huge increase in government stimulus spending, where are the new roads, bridges, airports, or tunnels? There are none…okay, there have been repairs of some existing roads, etc., but to say there has been a huge increase in the reach of government and it’s spending is just another lie..but the problem is, you people believe the crap the repubs have been spewing…and it is a page out of the playbook they have been running since Clinton…repeat a lie enough times, and in the minds of the public, it becomes the truth…talk about your 1984 comparison.
Most of the money had to be spent on safety net programs that the repubs just hate and never lead to increased spending on the part of the consumer that is out of work…so why haven’t the Dems hammered the repubs on these inconvenient facts…well…they don’t have their own tv network for one, but I think there still is a spark of the old style of politics in the Democratic party…where you expect people to want the facts; but in today’s political environment, facts are just something to be ignored if they don’t fit your narrative…and the lies continue…geez…
I think it’s a long con….
Okay…I’m sure you’ve read about the concerted effort from the right to say that the most important thing for the economy right now is to address the deficits and the fear that inflation may be on the horizon. If you’ve studied economics at all, you know that in a recession, what needs to happen is that the government deficit spends to stimulate portions of the economy that the private sector can’t. This has worked in every recession/depression that the tactic was tried but what I see now is the repubs from David Brooks to Boehner and their ilk are calling for cutting government spending and have categorically rejected the latest call for federal funding to states and cities who are laying off people and cutting back services. Now, they may say that this is perfectly consistent with their conservative views but I see it as a plan for them to ensure that the Obama administration fails so they can go back to the tax-cutting, reward the rich policies that have led to where we are today. And they have done a great job of convincing the man on the street that government intervention for any reason is a bad thing. They use for the underpinnings of their argument that the stimulus package is not adding millions of jobs but only 41K in the last month but what they don’t say is that employment is always a lagging indicator, especially in a recession as severe as this one.
I’ll bet you didn’t believe I could work up any outrage today…I’m glad I could prove you wrong…
One thing I can believe is that these guys are using the misery of the unemployed for their own political gain…geez…