Stimulus:
Along with the requests on jobs, I’m being queried about my thoughts on the stimulus; my position is that all parties are involved in varieties of Jedi Mind Trick. The most angrifying (sic) ones are the Republicans, frankly, and I thought I’d seen stupid mixed with power-hungry mendacity before, but this just takes the cake, It’s hard to watch the news without wanting to throw something at some Senator who comes up with yet another variant on the let-them-eat-cake Lucky-Ducky stuff and describes all of the recession’s problems are really Obama’s fault and the only thing that will save us are tax cuts and handouts to the right people.
Dude. A $400 tax cut will not help you much or for long if you do not have a job. Or an income for next year’s bills. Stopping your mortage payments from going up is good, but will not help if you do not have a job to pay those lowered mortgage bills.
And I dunno about your state, but mine is hurting. And the cuts in the stimulus for state bailout funds are just criminal; if you were a state worker in California and the Governor either lays you off of hands over State IOU ‘checks’ that are worthless at the bank, how are you going to pay your bills?
And boy, do I ever want to kill off the damn filibuster for good and all time. The real problem with the stimulus stuff is that it violates the Budget Act, and *that* requires a 60-vote margin to get through the Senate. Besides that, I’m pretty sure that an actual and successful filibuster to stop the stimulus would raise hell in Wall Street and the financial markets; political leaders in the states would be devastated, and the financial sorts would want to strangle the GOP.
The real problem is that only the GOP has been out there with the TV cameras and whatnot explaining the situation - and Obama’s efforts to go out there are raise hell and the public awareness is the best thing he can do. I understand there are some Christmas Tree things on this turkey. Fine, yank them. Don’t take the whole ’shovel-ready’ nonsense for granted, because I know how long it takes for government project to get going from my own office and other government types who are buddies and I talk to about this stuff.
But replacing state stimulus stuff with odd tax cuts is crazed. That will not make up for jobs lost.