Friday, January 30, 2009

Stimulus Loonies

One wonders sometimes if the people in Washington have any idea as to the mentality of the citizenry. The solons and the Anointed One have cobbled together a stimulus plan that will cost (as if anyone actually knows) a cool trillion and counting...all that interest, doncha know. Item: Obama and his democrat Congress consider 45 or 50 billion bucks to the auto industry perfectly in order. For a trillion dollars, 40 million cars at $25,000 per car could be bought by the government or the same number effected as down payments on houses. If the money were handed out that way, every auto-worker in the country would go back to work immediately, or every carpenter and illegal immigrant could have a job. Cut each allocation in half and the whole works could be done virtually immediately, the recipients of the largesse required to make payments in line with what they can afford.

Or, a cool trillion big ones could be allocated on a per capita basis for people to buy food. This would amount to a payment of $3,333.33, or some $13,333.33 per household of four or $555.55 per month for two years. With that kind of food-break, folks would be free to go on spending sprees or slap money into savings, thus recapitalizing the banks, especially considering the $350 billion already given them (with nothing to show for it) and another $350 billion in the pipeline. With people working again and paying taxes, the treasury collections would soar even if there were some cheaters such as the current Treasury secretary, a two-bit tax thief, but the Anointed One’s choice.

This is from Fox News, 27 January: “Obama wants ‘an economy-wide cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050,’ according to the White House Web site. That plan would cost at least another $56 billion per year added to an already overwhelmed budget.” The kicker: Mortal man couldn’t change the climate if he tried from now until that well-known place freezes over, to make it either warmer, colder, lukewarm, or raining violets, as the old song goes. The top scientists are trying to tell everyone that climate functions cyclically just like the stock market and that there’s little if anything anyone can do about it. But the Anointed One and others, such as UN members, for some reason insist on penalizing this country over...well, nothing.

The proposed budget currently includes $400 million for global-warming research and another $2.4 billion for carbon-capture demonstration projects, whatever in the world they are. This is foolishness carried to the highest exponential power possible. Even if man could actually change anything, now is not the time to be obsessed with “going green,” that is, if, as Obamessiah would have it, the nation is rapidly skidding to oblivion just because it’s broke.

To get an idea about what to expect by 2012, one can take a look at January 1980, the last month of the Carter presidency coupled with an overwhelmingly democrat Congress (tax-and-spend, anyone?) The unemployment rate stood at 6.3% and the prime interest was what is now an unbelievable 15.75%. There was no war on. The rate leveled off at about 20% four months later and started down (Reagan had a republican Senate but never a majority in the House) and didn’t get down to just single digits until June of 1985. Obama has a democrat Congress, is determined to print money, eventually making it useless, and apparently hasn’t realized that George Bush was warning about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as far back as 2004 and 2005. His own republicans didn’t pay attention but the problem was reparable in January 2007, when the democrats took over and Grandma Pelosi gathered her grandchildren around her and...well, there you have it.

So...what do we have now? Obama has created the Middle Class Task Force, headed by Vice President Biden...the Middle Class Czar. The great healer, he who would bring everyone together, has decided that a select group is so important that it must have its very own task force (where the most votes are). How much more divisive can he become? What about a Lower Class Czar or (gasp) an Upper Middle Class Czar? One dares not mention a Higher Class Czar, except to tax its members up to their neck-bones. Then, there’s the Homeless Class Czar. Egad!

There’s not much Middle Class left anyway (though no one actually knows what the Middle Class is), since practically all industrial endeavor has been outsourced to places where children work for pennies and older people just grin and bear their barely life-sustainable jobs. The Middle Class workers here once made things that could be eaten, worn, driven, etc. Take a look at the Rust Belt and see what the Middle Class is now. Or try to find some sox or shoes made in this country. The Middle Class left us when management and big-labor decided to take it all, the devil take the hindmost. If Biden wants to help the Middle Class, perhaps he will get money to entrepreneurs who will build facilities to actually make things again and need a Middle Class. Unfortunately, the watchword of the new czar will likely be ENTITLEMENTS, case closed. After all, this is the administration of the Great Giveaways!

And so it goes.

Jim Clark

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