Stimulus:

[jrittenhouse]

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

Comments

[sraun]

I'm of the opinion that this is a member of the class of problem where a decision or action now is more important than the perfect decision or action later. As such, I'm not getting terribly worked up about the particulars. I'm too cynical to expect that there will be no pork in the package - but I don't care. The pork will still do some good.

[docstrange]

I'm of the opinion that one group is grabbing for pork and the other is grabbing for quote-worthy quips for the next election. Neither is doing the right thing.

You want to stick it to my employer by enforcing union-only rules for access to stimulus-funded projects and also by raising our health insurance costs? That's gonna hurt me, us, and get people to worry (and lose jobs). Oh, we'll try to join unions, but today we do better than with a union. Thanks for changing that. That, by the way, was one of the big mistakes of the early New Deal.

You want to give me (and all the final recipients of earnings) an income tax break and pull back on that "stimulus" money, well, that's money in the pocket but hardly going to make me feel safe enough about my employment future to spend it.

Be smart. Give my EMPLOYER every tax break specific to retaining and hiring workers - breaks of OF ANY KIND that do that and only that - and make the stimulus projects available to all competent comers in a proper bid process. No-bid "emergency" money is

[jrittenhouse]

I don't like this no-bid stuff either.