He’s violated his executive order on lobbyists three times (in two weeks).
He’s keeping extraordinary rendition.
He’s making census-taking blatently political by putting Emanuel in charge of it.
He’s given up on bipartisanship.
He had barely any input into the stimulus plan (he’s not a detail guy).
He can’t be bothered to do enough due diligence on his appointees to know (or care) if they pay their taxes (there’s his ethics, then everyone else’s).
He’s all show, but there’s no there there. We waited through the transition and since the inauguration for the Treasury’s non-plan plan. They must have been busy preparing their tax returns from three years ago.

Your idea is refreshing and interesting, and should be considered.

Lots unemployed people out there, they have no significant savings, their last resort is 401K, but afraid of taking them out with penalty.

I’m not seeing this, like I said your only facts are based on one poll. You don’t like Obama that’s pretty plain to see. I hated Bush and Cheney and I put up with them for eight years. They destroyed this countries credibility in the international arena. They a took us down the current path of ruin, everything that is happening now is from happened on the Bush’s tenure as president. 9/11 happened on his watch. You can sit there and foam at the mouth all you want, Obama won and he won by a large margin.

Next thing you’s be blame George Soros for the economic downturn, the he and a cadre liberal billionaires conspired this finical crisis to help get Obama elected. This is the kind of nonsense that is being put out there by the right wing nut jobs these days. It’s amazing to me how much the right seems to hate this country.

The sates need money almost all of them in fact are in a fiscal nightmare. Something has to give, a lot of services are going to disappear in the next year in a lot of towns and cities. I have a friend who lives in a small town in Vermont and the state has cut the money for the up keep of the fire department, which is mostly volunteers. It seems there might not be a fire department this time next year as no one can afford it. That means if your house has a fire it burns down. Not a good situation if you ask me.

The same is happening Massachusetts, police and firemen are being laid off.

Underhanded motivations? A democratic president, elected by a massive majority partners with a democratic congress to push a democratic agenda – doesn’t seem so underhanded to me. Seems like an out-in-the-open, natural course of events. After seeing hard-right policies fail miserably, we get to see the flip side of the coin.

Personally, I HOPE this is the New Deal 2.0, with lots of spending on assets this nation can leverage far into the future. Invest in infrastructure, invest in the arts, invest in the green economy, invest in the environment – these things inject money into the economy AND help build a better America. I would MUCH rather see the government build more schools and hire more firefighters than chuck me an extra couple hundred more dollars that I can use to buy another LCD made in a Korean factory.

But seriously, what did you expect? I mean, are you looking for some quick patch job that would put us back to where we were a few years ago? The average working man has been in the soup for over a decade – it requires comprehensive structural changes to fix, something a few tax cuts aren’t going to do. If the democrats want to go after a few birds with the same stone – fine by me.

Obama was elected preaching a new direction – now, he and Congress start driving in a new direction and whining Republicans and Wall St. apologists start seething out of the wood works crying about being bullied. Well, I certainly didn’t see that much movement towards the middle from their side of the isle during the last 8 years so if it sticks in their craw a little, they deserve it.

And it’s not as if they’re offering ANYTHING new! Their alternative plan?! That wasn’t middle ground – that was textbook GOP legislation! Tax cut, tax cut, tax cut! The same sad bleating noises I’ve had to listen to for nearly 3 decades! No, you can have it. Viva the new Dem era.

I’ve never said do nothing. If you can find a quote, show it. Or are you just trying to set up some false debate between do somethings and do nothings like Obama tried to do. I understand his underhanded motivations, what are yours?

What’s the difference to the Treasury between cutting the government’s budget while letting people keep more of what they earn to spend as they know best or having the government spend it on worthless projects after it goes through eight levels of administration, each taking a cut, plus we have to borrow the money to do it which means raising taxes on all of us for generations to pay the interest and principal?

You’ve got to be kidding; there’s no middle ground between a government that coddles us and one that provides a public fire department. You’re great at creating false debates.

You can spin this anyway you want.
Majawill lets do nothing like your suggesting. Or better yet give everyone $1000 or maybe more in tax cuts. Which will do nothing for the economy and only hurt the treausary.

If we do nothing then the chances are pretty good this country will fall into a huge economic slump that will take years to crawl out of. Is this what you want?
If your a flag waving republican and you called anyone who was against the war in Iraq a traitor or unpatriotic is it not a little hypocritical to not want the country to avoid such a crisis as we are in now? Who is this not worthy of tax spending? You supported a false war which wasted billions but to have a program to help your fellow Americans in need your going to say no. Is this your position Majawill?

We have a problem in this country about taxes and what the function of government should be in relation to this problem.

For the people who advocate small government, the next time you have an emergency, like your house is on fire, call your neighbors and see if you can get a bucket brigade to put out the fire. Or better yet form a militia to patrol your streets when your idea of small government layoff all the cops. As for rubbish removal, well your on your own and you’ll have too go to the dump once a week.

One of the things I have read recently, is that if the banks are allowed to just go belly up (primarily the big investment banks), that many of the investors/bond holders are going to be left holding an empty bag – and that many of those investors/bond holders are you and me, through our 401K’s, etc. So in allowing bankruptcy to occur, we would be voiding any still solvent 401K the public might be holding, in addition to all the other type of investors.

What if the Fed were to cover all 401K plans for their loses (either as an stock or bond holder), and the other investors (such as speculators, CDS, CDO, etc) will lose all their investment. This seems to me a fair and ethical way to use the “taxpayers” money to help out the “taxpayer”. It would satisfy the publics’ urge to get much needed relief; it would clear up the “unknown” factor of the financial institutions and allow for the establishment of a restructured banking sector.

Lastly, the fed could allow for the withdrawal of up to 50K from a person’s 401K without penalty. This would provide an instant infusion of spending money for the public from effectively the public’s own private saving accts, bring in taxes for the government (state and federal) and cost the less than if they were to buy back “bad assets”, etc which gives little if any return to the public sector. And my bet is most of that money will be spent to either buy or pay off debt, both of which would benefit the economic picture. And lastly, if done right now, there would be less loss in the value of those 401K which effectively is money destroyed for no good reason through the fall in the stock market.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/114184/Public-Support-Stimulus-Package-Unchanged.aspx

It was a good speech and he’s an awfully bright guy. But so far, all he’s shown besides running a great campaign and giving inspiring speeches is he’s a little sloppy with his cabinet picks and is capable of spending a massive amount of money in a hurry. Ironically, spending massively might be just what is needed right now, so he doesn’t have much choice, but it still doesn’t give us much reason to think he’s all that capable. Wait til we see if the bill is filled with all the usual pork for influential politicians before we say he’s really shown he can do more than spend lots and lots of other people’s money.

Personally, I think he’ll get chewed up by our political system – he seems too interested in getting along. I think the only one who could change Washington is someone who doesn’t care what politicians of either party, or reporter’s think and is willing to sacrifice personal popularity to change things. Sadly, that person will be demonized by every group that is currently in power and will likely be a one term president.

Guess we just want to use polls that support our own agenda, is that not true Majawill.

Loay I have to say there is a huge difference between 25% unemployment and 13%, while war did accelerate the employment of man and women power it does not mean that the New Deal was not working, quite the contrary, it was. The stat you left out about 38 was that FDR listened to the republicans and tried to lower balance the budget and reduced spending which is why there was a spike.

If you count the 25% unemployed as well as the underemployed which was about the same percentage almost half the country was in pretty bad shape finacially.
The New Deal, while perfect, did put a huge amount of people back to work which revived towns and cites.

A GOVERNMENT BANK

The time has come for the government to start its own bank. Not the Treasury or the federal reserve, but a regular bank owned and operated by the government. Put away the bail out, the stimulus, and take the money as a reserve to start the bank, writing loans, mortgages, even issuing credit cards with regular strict lending standards, just cut out the bull crap of the SBA that takes six months and more to issues a small business loan. Since we have seen that the banks taking money from the federal government are only keeping it or paying bonuses to their executives while the average American suffers, and the small business can not get any money, the best option now would be for the government to get in to banking and hire bureaucrats on the cheap as opposed to high dollar bankers.

The current banking system has failed and it has failed the country, we surely don’t need to hand the same more money, I wrote about this before that the government is throwing good money after bad, that the TARP was a farce and a failure, I have been proven right. The government should not be in the business of creating jobs, it should concern itself with collecting taxes on incomes. The jobs will again be created as the small businesses and individuals can borrow money and start new ventures, thus the jobs will be created like they should be.

Handing out money to states and counties and cities does not make much sense either as the money will be lost to corruption and diverted to the friends and families of the politicians. in contracts.

Not quite accurate. The economy did go from 3.1% unemployment in 1929 to 25+% unemployment by 1933. Unemployment fell to 13% in 1937, rose to 17% in the recession of 1938 and fell to 13% by 1940. These are all deflationary figures they do not show an economy that is growing. The economy only really started growing with rearmament starting in 1940. It took the planned war command economy to get us out of the depression and not merely to reduce its effect. We have a choice to either accept these cycles of what Marx termed capital destruction (and the concomitant social instability) or a command economy. What we are getting is the worst of both worlds