Well, Arnold Kling certainly isn’t mincing any words:
“I think about the stimulus as an economist but I feel it as a father. Barack Obama is destroying my daughters future. It is like sitting there watching my house ransacked by a gang of thugs. That’s how I feel, now back to how I think.”
As noted if you read the whole thing, this isn’t a “stimulus” plan. It’s a grow-government-and-make-us-all-increasingly-dependent-on-it plan. The welfare provision alone is proof of that.
Charlie Crist disagrees with you.
Hey Bill, you got $10,000 I can borrow?
Why would I care what that idiot Charlie Crist thinks?
Geez, could he be more hysterical? This “gang of thugs” was elected. If Kling wants legislation designed by economists, he needs to convince his fellow citizens to elect a bunch of economists. Of course even if every member of Congress was an economist they still wouldn’t all agree, so you’d still get policies that are a mish-mash of ideas, some of them contradictory. It’s called democracy — the very worst system, aside from the others.
Are you saying that thugs can’t get elected? Or that their thuggery is all right as long as they were? Or what?
Leland, got collateral?
Forgiving debt that cannot be repaid makes terrific macro-economic sense and nations that allow bankruptcy produce more business start-ups.
Making foolish loans in the first place?
Not so smart and thus we need to impose moral hazards on foolish lenders (such as credit card companies) who expect the government to impose a life time of servitude on the truly insolvent.
Of course, since the total of credit default swap liabilities appear to exceed total global economic production (a Ponzi scheme of paper) those debts aren’t going to be re-paid no matter what we do.
Solon did not focus on forgiving debts owed by those capable of repayment, he outlawed debtor’s prison and forbade servitude for debt.
= = =
Leland, I can’t risk the moral hazards of making you a loan, right now. 😉
Sorry.
Rand, Charlie Crist represents a crack in the monolith.
As I see it, Obama is playing to isolate the Republicans in Congress, push them towards Rush Limbaugh and then woo Republican Governors and Mayors.
Get McConnell and Boehner out on a limb, then saw it off.
If Obama is successful, the Republican Party will be even weaker six months from now than it is today.
Then the bad bits in the stimulus can be repaired at Obama’s leisure.
I think that Kling is being a drama queen. Did he throw an equivalent fit when Bush spent a trillion on the Iraq war? Or does blowing stuff up in the desert not threaten his daughters the way that building schools and roads, paying for foodstamps and Medicaid, extending unemployment benefits, etc. all do?
These “thugs” aren’t criminals out breaking the law, they are the people’s legitimately elected representatives making the law. The system has flaws, but Kling doesn’t propose an alternative.
They are elected thugs and thieves, elected by a rigged system, making immoral and unjust laws, from which they exempt themselves.
As I see it, Obama is playing to isolate the Republicans in Congress, push them towards Rush Limbaugh and then woo Republican Governors and Mayors.
Not all Republican governors and mayors are soft-headed squishes like Charlie Crist.
I don’t recall your complaining about these thugs and thieves when the GOP ran things. Was the system only rigged recently? What system would you have replace it?
I don’t recall your complaining about these thugs and thieves when the GOP ran things.
You probably weren’t paying attention. If you were reading me at all, you were too deranged with Bush hatred to notice.
I asked Google to search transterrestrial.com for “thugs”. It found lots of hits: for union thugs, ACORN thugs, Democratic thugs, socialist thugs, Hamas thugs, Al Quaeda thugs, Taliban thugs, Saddam Hussein’s thugs and Venezuelan thugs. But the only references I saw to GOP thugs were written by people you were criticizing.
So again, what great system do you propose to replace representative democracy, with all its warts?
I didn’t say I called them thugs. You asked whether I complained about them. I did, and do.
So again, what great system do you propose to replace representative democracy, with all its warts?
I have no plan to do that. That seems to be your folks’ plan, with millions more to ACORN for more voter fraud.
Obama won by millions of votes. Do you honestly believe they were all fraudulent? How gullible can you be?
I didn’t say that President Obama won fraudulently, you moron. Though I do think that he is a fraud.
On Governor Crist, I get the impression that he is the kind of politician who needs to keep moving on so that the consequences of his actions don’t catch up with him. Obama’s stimulus package provides an escape route. I think it is worth remembering this when considering Crist’s activities. It definitely is a weakness in the Republican side and I wouldn’t be surprised to find there are more like him.
There are no doubt more like him, Karl, but they’re not all like him.
Leland, I can’t risk the moral hazards of making you a loan, right now.
Gee Bill, I wouldn’t want you to think one thing is good for all of us to do, but not good for you to do. Can’t have moral hazards like that!
Fortunately for you, I don’t like debt, so I wouldn’t really want a loan, which is why I asked you.
Tell me, Jim, why do you think the White House doesn’t trust its own Commerce Department to do the census?
> Then the bad bits in the stimulus can be repaired at Obama’s leisure.
(1) How did anything that Obama doesn’t like make it into the stimulus?
(2) Want to bet good money on this? (Past performance is no guarantee, but “bad bits” haven’t ever been “repaired” by the Congress and President that passed and signed them.)
I have no idea. So who’s going to do the census?
I think it’s all about controlling the message, at which Obama’s team has been very good, at least during the election.
They’ve been forced to take on Cabinet-level people with whom they have serious philosophical differences. (This will be corrected after the midterm elections, or at the latest after the first Re-election, the one before the 22nd Amendment is suspended for the duration of the emergency.)
It’s not that the President can’t direct the Census Dept to do whatever he wants, whether or not he has to sent the order through the Commerce Secretary or not.
But if the Commerce Secretary is one of those damned Neanderthal party o’ privilege slave-owning pederast Republicans, you never know what kind of damaging statemens he might make to Drudge when this or that order “adjusting” the Census crosses his desk. This take The Team off message, provokes flamefests in the ankle-biting blogs, yuck. Much better if the conduit for The One’s will is a member of the Inner Circle, well trained in discretion.
I have a feeling he would have if that amount and more had been spent within the space of a single year.
I love how “compassionate” liberals care not a whit about the plight of the Iraqi people under a monster like Saddam Hussein. They never even asked themselves why Al Qaeda declared jihad against us, even though bin Laden explicitly linked it to our policies vis a vis Iraq.