John Harvey asks a darn good one, too.
Why on earth, in a period of chronic unemployment, would we purposely set out to lower the spending of a major sector in the macroeconomy? Where do President Obama and Congressman Ryan think the businesses where government money was spent will make up those sales? They won’t. In fact, we should be not only raising the deficit, but it is high time to do what Pavlina Tcherneva and other economists in her school of thought have been arguing for some time: directly employ the unemployed instead of hoping for roundabout effects and multipliers to do the job.
Shocking! Employ the unemployed? Like a WPA-style program? But that’s communism! Communism!!!
Perhaps. But at least we’d get some shit built…
Isn’t this what Obozo’s $800 billion stimulus was supposed to do? He wasted most of the money giving it to his union masters.
BTW, the liberals would go apeshit is we tried to build something useful like a dam.
Tom Harlen muh darlin’
You lost me at “Obozo”, douchebag.
In any event, “doooo-sheee”, get used to saying President Obama through 2016, huh?
Furthermore, and to quote eminent sage, Phil Scarr:
“BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA[HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA]!
That is all.
I wouldn’t bet the house on Obozo being reelected. He lost West Virginia delegates to a prison inmate.
http://www.businessinsider.com/keith-judd-obamas-major-challenger-in-west-virginia-2012-5
Shocking! Racist voters in West Virginia didn’t vote for Obama! Of course, Obama won handily…
And let’s not forget that West Virginia is an Open Primary state for the Democrats.
So I expect there was some measure of mischief voting going on there as well. But it’s certainly amusing, I’ll grant you that.
You are right, West Virginia IS racist. They voted in Robert Byrd who was a member of the Ku Klux Klan! Oh, by the way, he was a Democrat.
You are correct. Senator Byrd was a Klansman early in his career. A member of the Dixiecrats, he was a hard-core racist. But we know that this group shifted parties after the Civil Rights act was signed and Nixon pursued the so-called Southern Strategy.
Side Note: If you’re a believer in so-called States Rights, you’re an active participant in the Southern Stragety… Just so you know.
Byrd later recanted his Klan activities and long regretted his decision to join.
He was certainly not my favorited Senator (that would be Bernie Sanders) but he was far from the worst.
Of course, we know the spirit of the clan lives on, it’s just not in the Democratic Party anymore, is it? Not so much…
I can do this all day, Tom… You clearly need an education in American 20th century history.
Are you really bringing up some rock at a hunting lodge where Rick Perry hunts? Really? No one gives a shit about Ron Paul, he’s wacko.
The bottom line is that Obozo lost delegates to a prison inmate, that does not bode well for the general election.
@ Harlen
Screw it! Just take the “Obozo” crap, and stick it up your ass, d*ckhead.
Better yet, cracker, just take your sorry disrespectful, racist white ass back to Patriot Action Network or Free Republic or whatever racist, fringe, neo-Nazi/Bircher/wingnut cesspool you crawled out of.
Oooooooooh…you don’t like it when someone points out that your messiah almost lost to a prison inmate, do you?
Are you really THAT obtuse, you f*cking, racist d*ckhead?!
It’s President Obama.
If you feel the need to use the terms which you use in referring to the President, take them elsewhere.
@ Harlen
My bad. . .I left out http://www.stormfront.org
My apologies, d*ckhead.
And that means nothing….absolutely nothing…..in the grand scheme of things.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Carry on…
So, are you one of the liberal idiots that would go apeshit if a new dam were built?
Depends where they decide to build it. I can’t answer that question without more data…
@ Tom Harlen, muh darlin
Does disrespect have to infuse EVERY single thing you say, Tom, whether it is about President Obama or just about people with whom you disagree politically?
By the way, your fixation with the Klan, as well as with the truly ancient and currently irrelevant fact that racism was endemic in the Democratic Party a very long time ago, is telling. I think that you’d probably fit right in, Massa Harlen, muh darlin. Maybe it’s time for y’all to get fitted for a “sheet”.
Why not try being a little more respectful? And, while you’re at it, stop trotting out that ridiculous, old Republican canard about the Democratic Party. Ancient history, and no longer true. BUT, you knew that, right, you disingenuous old codger, you.
A couple of final points:
(1) The REPUBLICAN PARTY called it “The Southern Strategy” for a reason. As Phil correctly notes, at or about the time that the Civil Rights Act was being debated, the racists started flocking to the Republican Party. Spoiler alert! [Soto voce] There still there.
(2) Instead of posting here, Thomas, and as long as you’ve got your bathrobe on, maybe you should just get back out there on the porch, furiously shake that rolled up copy of the John Birch Society Newsletter you have at those DAMN kids on your lawn, and screech at them to “Get the f*ck off” of it.
The stimulus was proven to have a positive effect on the econonmy. Problem was it needed another injection but the republicans obstructions did not allow it to happen. When this occured the economy stalled and dipped. It is pulling itself back up but no as well as it could have.
Liberals trid to build a high speed train link between Milwaukee and Madison connecting Chicago to Minneapolis. The 800 million would have also provide additional infrastructre support, train builder Talgo would have stayed in WI and built the trains for this line and others. However our republican governor turned the money down (as did Rick Scott in FL). So dont give me the B.S. about liberals not wanting to build out infrastructure.
OF the $800 billion, 150-200 billion was used to build infrastructure. The rest of the money was wasted paying off the unions. If Obozo didn’t waste most of the stimulus paying off unions, we wouldn’t need more stimulus.
I didn’t say liberals don’t want to build infrastructure, there is no way in hell the liberal idiots would allow something useful like a dam to be built.
Tom, if you’re going to make assertions, please try to have some facts to back up those assertions. Show me something to prove your assertion that hundreds of billions of dollars of the stimulus were used “paying off the unions.”
Or not…
In my brief search of “AFL CIO” “AFSCME” and “SEIU” as samples, with one exception (the AFSCME one), the money went to unions for training programs as the program was designed. The AFSCME grant was for lead paint abatement in low-income homes.
Here’s one example:
Or this one:
I don’t know what the total of all the grants and awards were to unions, but they’re vastly overshadowed by the transfers to state governments to keep teachers, nurses, firefighters and police officers employed.
For instance, take the State of Wisconsin:
This grant saved 7,391 jobs in Wisconsin over two years.
Facts are such a bitch, aren’t they?
Go do your own research and prove me wrong.
Good luck with that. You know where to find me.
Like I said, the money went to pay off his union masters. Thanks for the proof.
Ahhh, so “job training” is a “payoff.” By that reckoning, voucher schools are “payoffs” to Walker’s private corporate masters. Got it.
That is exactly what it is. Giving money to a union for “job training” is a complete waste of money.
School vouchers are used to allow kids to escape the union leeches of the teachers union. They don’t give a shit about the kids, all they care about is their pay and pensions.
Your analytical sophistication is inspiring, tom harlen. You just keep whacking your head against that ignoramus wall and something other than nasty drivel is bound to leak out.
“The Red Menace” is a grabber — and red not being a scary hue to us Badgers who wear it proudly, I think we ought to adopt the term to describe us for the next 27 days as we take back Wisconsin! I feel like being a bit menacing to some of the rightie commenters here. But yeh, seems like nothin’ is as scary to them as facts and facing realities.
Well, the Red Menace is all the rage since Allen West had his very public stroke (The Man Who Mistook His Colleagues for Communists?).
So what the hell, we might as well play to it… 🙂
From reading these comments I’ve seen nothing substantive from Mr. Harlen. Just innuendo and name-calling. Do you really have no thoughts of your own?
Usually I say thanks for your comments. Not this time.
Hey tom, Drudge Report is down the hall and to the right. Why don’t you take your rants down there. And I do mean “down there”.
Tom’s earned a place on my semi-permanent moderation list.