The spending portion of the stimulus, in short, isn’t really about the economy. It’s about promoting long-time Democratic policy goals, such as subsidizing health care for the middle class and promoting alternative energy. The "stimulus" is merely the mother of all political excuses to pack as much of this spending agenda as possible into a single bill when Mr. Obama is at his political zenith.
Here are several quotes from Instapundit that reinforce my skepticism and frustration with the stimulus package. When you look at the failure of last year’s stimulus check to stimulate and the TARP bailout to revive the credit market, it looks like Congress is following California’s foot steps on how to mismanage a fiscal crisis. Do we really want to be like California right now? Read them and weep!
STEVE CHAPMAN: “We all know how we got into this economic mess. We spent too much, borrowed with abandon, and acted like the bills would never come due. So what’s the prescription for getting out? Spending more, borrowing more, and acting like the bills will never come due.”
DAN RIEHL: If there’s an emergency, why isn’t Congress acting like it’s an emergency?
THE EXAMINER: When state taxes rise, businesses and residents flee.
INSTAPUNDIT: My take remains this one: “This is not so much a stimulus, as a massive transfer of wealth from the politically unconnected to the politically connected.”
Obama’s stimulus plan reminds me of a teenager planning their first party. He desperately wants to be liked so he invites everyone. Inevitably the people who show up are not the “cool people” he wanted to impress but the trouble makers. Eventually the party gets out of hand and is broken up by the police. Some kids get hauled off to jail.
For the teenager we write off this unfortunate episode as a learning experience on the way to maturity. If an adult tries to throw a party like this, we openly question their wisdom. Most of America has already cut back on their spending habits. The Obama plan is to throw a party with free money to a country who has become very risk adverse. The free money plan did not work on the banks so you have to wonder why Obama thinks it will work with the American people. It sure looks like the American people and businesses are very unlikely to change their austerity plans for 2009 and 2010. If the good folks in America are unwilling to go to Obama’s spending party who do you expect will go to his party? Didn’t we learn anything when Roosevelt tried this type of stimulus plan in the 1930’s ? Didn’t we learn anything when Harding and Reagan used the opposite approach to recessions in the 1920’s and the 1980’s ?
My son received a nomination to West Point from our Congress woman, Jean Schmidt, this month. She was gracious and had a little party to celebrate all of the nominations. After she handed out the certificates she was peppered with questions about the recent bailouts. The questions were friendly but pointed. It has been a tough year to serve in Congress. Now that’s a group of people in need of prayer for wisdom!
My son enjoys what he thinks is military life so he applied to Purdue, West Point, Virginia Tech, and Cincinnati based in part on their military programs. If military life does not work out for him I think the five year exit option will leave him with a great resume. It is probably easier for him to consider military life since we have several military connections. His grandfather graduated from West Point and served for twenty years. Several of our relatives served in the military. I lived at West Point for three years when I was very young. In an amazing coincidence both my godfather and his godfather achieved the rank of general. He still is very nervous about going to West Point since a ROTC recruiter called it a prison. Based on the recruiter’s remarks ROTC recruiting looks like a contact sport. I think we need to make a campus visit to West Point. It will definitely be weird for me to return to West Point after all of these years but it will probably help my son figure out if West Point is right place to go to college.
"Before a war military science seems a real science, like astronomy; but after a war it seems more like astrology."
Rebecca West
[email protected] (Quotes of the Day)
Fri, 26 Dec 2008 00:00:00 GMT
"The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget."
I do not know why I have been thinking of Rep. Barney Frank the last couple of days. I think he honestly cares about low income families trying to put a decent, affordable roof over their heads. It is good to have a legislator in a powerful position who cares about low income families but that concerns me, too. I do not believe the subprime extravaganza helped out low income families achieve the long term increase in home ownership we sought. In hindsight it will probably be viewed as a wasted effort that primarily benefited “other” people. My gut feeling is that he will forgive and forget and we will be facing another subprime sequel in the nearby future.
For those interested in e-commerce statistics, the folks at Chase Paymentech provides us with the Pulse Index. They say that the average dollar value for an order is a little smaller than last year but there are more orders. When you look at total sales, the Internet retailers should be seeing slightly better than last year.
The Pulse Index is an annual tracking of online shopping activity during the holiday season. From November through January, Chase Paymentech monitors the daily activity of 25 of the largest 150 Internet retailers.
I was browsing the feed for Instapundit when I saw this link, Stop Covering Up and Kill the Community Reinvestment Act. Since I view my experience with Habitat for Humanity to be relevant to a discussion about the Community Reinvestment Act, I followed the link. The Investor’s Business Daily article argues for the elimination of the the Community Reinvestment Act because it led to lower mortgage standards and subsequently higher number of mortgage defaults. Here is my argument for modification of the Community Reinvestment Act rather than elimination.
Here is a pragmatic alternative to “universal” health care. Everyone seems to have a different idea of what a “universal” health care plan will entail. The Tennessee plan does not address many of the critical issues with managing health cost growth but it does have with a viable plan for cost sharing and it looks affordable for individuals, small businesses, and governments. Since I believe that a “universal” health care plan with nationwide coverage will probably come out of these experiments at the state level, it is definitely worth watching.
Coverage with limits is better than no coverage at all.
What Tennessee Is Doing About Health Insurance
Sat, 22 Nov 2008 01:37:23 GMT
