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TechnoratiThe Republican Alternative Stimulus Plan
I'm kinda pissed off at the lousy treatment America is giving to Republicans these days.
First of all, in a general sense, it just seems ungrateful and ungracious. I mean, Republicans worked hard this last decade to make America what it is today. We wouldn't have the foreign relations we do, or the war situations, or the environmental condition, or the fiscal situation or any of that stuff if the GOP hadn't been on the job all these years.
And we wouldn't have this economy, either. Can't Americans show a little respect and gratitude where it is due?
The particular thing that sticks in my craw of late is the reckless allegation that Republicans are just the Party of No, and that they have no plans of their own to help revive the American economy. Nothing could be further from the truth. Or, at least, that's what Rush told me. And I believe it.
In fact, the truth is that the GOP has a very sophisticated, very elaborate, 11-point plan for rescuing the country from the economic abyss. And, while the liberal media may be working overtime to make sure you never hear about it, I'm glad to set you straight.
Here goes:
1. TALK A LOT ABOUT FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY. We all know that marketing perceptions are more important than actual realities, and nowhere more so than in this domain. Forget about what anyone actually does. Just remember that the Democrats are always "tax-and-spend liberals", and the GOP is the "party of fiscal responsibility". Say it over and over. Pretty soon you'll believe it, and others will too.
2. DEIFY RONALD REAGAN, IN ALL WAYS, ALL THE TIME. Never miss a chance to remind people of the wonderful powers and accomplishments of Reagan, from ending the Cold War to curing polio and walking on water. If anyone thinks those are some dubious claims, or mentions the one or two boo-boos of the Reagan years, give them that special Moonie stare of the true believer and walk away to where your consciousness remains safely protected from challenging thoughts.
3. PRACTICE VOODOO ECONOMICS. If you run for president, do what Reagan did. Promise that you'll slash taxes, spend way more on the military, and balance the budget, all at the same time. If you get elected, do what Reagan did again. Triple the national debt. Because your campaign promises are physically impossible.
4. PRACTICE VOODOO ECONOMICS AGAIN. (S)elect George W. Bush as president, and repeat Reagan's amazing accomplishment, this time on steroids. Take the largest surplus in American history and turn it into the largest deficit. Take the federal government's debt, accrued over more than two centuries, and double it from $5 trillion to $11 trillion in just eight years. Spend the money on vital necessities like massive tax cuts for the already fantastically wealthy, and incredibly expensive wars against non-enemies.
5. TALK EVEN MORE ABOUT FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY. Wait until a Democratic president comes to office, inheriting the worst American economy since 1932. All of a sudden, relocate your outrage - previously gone on walkabout - at the horrors of deficit spending. Only days after the Bush administration has ended, start talking incessantly about fiscal responsibility, just as if the last eight years had never happened.
6. HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO PLAN FOR ECONOMIC RECOVERY. Whatsoever. Pledge to do precisely what Hoover did in 1932: Absolutely nothing! Let people crash and burn when they lose their jobs and healthcare and homes. Take away the few shreds of a social safety net they have. Don't even spend stimulus funds for unemployment insurance in your state. Avoid the perils of moral hazard by letting (ordinary) people starve.
7. MAKE A LOT OF NOISE ABOUT EARMARKS. Who cares if they're less than one percent of the budget?? They have lots of marketing value and can help disable the Democratic government while diverting attention from all the great fiscal and economic achievements of the past eight years.
8. REINVENT HISTORY. Franklin Roosevelt didn't solve the problem of the Great Depression, but his New Deal program of massive government spending did in fact achieve two key things. First, it nearly halved unemployment, cutting it from 25 percent to 15 percent. And, second, it literally kept millions of Americans alive who would have otherwise perished when no other safety net remained. All of this is a serious problem in 2009, given the desire of the public for the government to resolve the current problem. Solution? Lie like hell. Tell people that the New Deal had no impact and was a complete waste of money.
9. REINVENT ECONOMICS. Talk about the stimulus package as though it were an ordinary spending bill, loaded with pork barrel waste. Never make the connection between spending, purely for its stimulative effect, and economic recovery. Argue that it was World War II that ended the Depression, not the New Deal, remaining completely oblivious to the fact that both are nothing short of massive government spending, exactly what the Democrats are doing with their stimulus legislation today.
10. BLOCK ACTION TO REVIVE THE ECONOMY. Even though you haven't got one of your own, carp incessantly about everything that is wrong - real or imagined - with the Democrats' recovery plans. Even though the public has repudiated you in two successive elections and you are the minority in both the House and the Senate, use every tool possible to block action of any sort by the government elected by the people to solve the crisis.
11. COMMIT POLITICAL SUICIDE. Yep, that's the ticket. Create an incredible crisis. Deny everything. Reinvent history. Block all solutions except those that would repeat the same disasters of the past. Ask the people to vote for you.
See what I mean?
Who says the Republicans don't have a plan?
58 Comments so far
Show AllRight On DMG. Apples & Oranges.
Gun & Knives. Destroyed or Damaged.
The gop & the dems....
The same or different? Thanks DMG,
it's also clear to me.
All in all, mercifully short for a DMG article.
Blame the subject, not the author on this one.
I just read half the Republican "budget" proposal and skimmed the rest. The only concrete figures I saw were: a 10% marginal tax rate for those making $100,000 or less and 25% for those making more than $100,000.
18 pages and they only have one set of #s.
So much for "new and bold ideas."
Can't imagine planning a household budget without any figures. These republicans must think we are all fools
The D's plan 'aint much better.
This attack is way too partisan and gets nobody no where.
There were sanctions on Iraq for over a decade which was the catalyst for the creation of Al Queda. Come on!
Spending? Congress controls spending and the Democrats have controlled it since they were elected in 2006. Democrats supported those AIG bonuses.
Sorry, but this idea that Democrats have a monopoly on virtues or are immune from corruption is absurd.
AlQaeda was founded in 1988, the first sanctions on Iraq were in 1990...
AlQaeda was established during the USSR occupation of Afghanistan and furthered by the Saudi dependence upon American military .
DMG,
I think that there would only have to be a 1 part stimulus plan for the republicans. Pass a bill that the president will sign, he would be agreeable to it, that would do away with elections and all current members of congress would have life time terms to be filled by there heirs upon their death. And don't fret about edging the democrats out, the vast majority of them are bluedogs, just look at pelosi and reid.
Honor, respect and integrity are the only positions, attitudes and side a person has to defend against blackmail and extortion.
So....you've met both parties?
Damn, Ill make a socialist out of you yet!
Socialist? Never.....but Americans...always. No matter the inclination. And at least most socialist's are honest.
Never say never.....I would offer you a link or three to attempt to alter your negative opinion of that "dread" word, but I will let time take its course...
DMG could destroy Rash Limpdough in a debate but if given the power to set policy would probably order fish dinners for the poor, leaving them helplessly dependent on the benevolence of DMG, then who knows, maybe they will starve while he takes a vacation.
This isn't to say that DMG's talents are useless to the progressive cause. In fact, the whole can be greater than the sum of the parts so let's put DMG to fending off Rash but at the same time require that his rhetoric mesh with the other elements on the people's platform.
This requires DMG's anti-Repuk rhetoric be balanced with an appropriate anti-Demok rhetoric cuz the Demoks sure as hell ain't the answer. The answer is found in the holistic formulae of the far left, on the people's platform.
That includes two elements we may now apply to the media. One is to open the polystyrene curtain surrounding the USA to the flow of information regarding other cultures across space/time. Another is to bring objectivity into the public discussion. So for example, DMG's rhetoric might better serve the people's interests if he were put to a well-moderated debate.
He also needs someone with vision to back up his criticism with an alternate plan. That vision might come out of a panel including Michael Albert, with his parecon alternative to authoritarian capitalism/communism. And Noam Chomsky who is a great champion of universalism. People like these, and many other types who "get" universalism may serve as the walls for ideas to bounce around, for proper shaping.
Let the ideas spill into the arena and get filtered, processed and sculpted. What the hell are lefties waiting for, a meal ticket? Are they waiting for mother nature to evolve a five star chef with four legs?
One more thing, obviously it is true that the Republicans support the rich in the most explicit terms and don't have a plan. That being said, the Democrats have a plan... to serve the rich. When it is impossible to come up with a plan to the right of the Democrat's plan, this is a bad thing, not a good thing.
The logical alternative to this article is that the Democrats have a plan, that the Democrats oppose all the things in this Republican "plan." It's nonsense, the president that exemplified "fiscal responsibility," was Clinton. And this isn't a compliment either, Clinton gutted social welfare programs (including welfare itself) to do it. In other words, the wealth was supposed to "trickle down" under Clinton.
In the current Obama administration, the stimulus is supposed to be a small measure. The bailouts (both the continuation of TARP and the plan that is about to be implemented) are far larger in size. And Obama was involved in the bonuses scandal, which is minor compared to the trillions of dollars in bailout money, but it puts them in context. Put another way, Obama won't even let the elite lose their bonuses, let alone their original ill-gotten gains. Obama serves the rich and hurts the rest of society every bit as much as Bush did.
Enough with how great FDR was. FDR eventually had to give something back to the working class because of pressure against him. But this president is far more like Hoover than FDR. In fact, because of his unwillingness to help the people who lost their homes, Obamavilles are now springing up across the country.
The real neoCONing "alternate plan" is to hit and run, with everything we have. Their idea of "needed" ( for profiteering ) global stimulus is the :
__ $ i n k i n g __ of _ the _ U $ $__ D O L L A R __
"Our" central banksters, are preparing to move on to greener pastures, now that the U$A is much like a deflated balloon, the rat$ are beginning to leave the $hip of $tate that they purposely $unk and then tied lead balloons and concrete shoes to, see :
US backing for world currency stuns markets
"US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner shocked global markets by revealing that Washington is "quite open" to Chinese proposals for the gradual development of a global reserve currency run by the International Monetary Fund.
The dollar plunged instantly against the euro, yen, and sterling as the comments flashed across trading screens. David Bloom, currency chief at HSBC, said the apparent policy shift amounts to an earthquake in geo-finance. "
http://tinyurl.com/US-OKs-IMF-as-Global-Reserve
The rapacious international corporapists are gearing up for the biggest _ ƒ ⊃ © k o v e r _ ever, and equally clearly neither __ ◎ b y s m a l __ nor Geithner give a shit about America's people ( nor world wide suffering ) -- as they are working for the gobble-ization of the globe's finances ( and China IS the latest "new" boss ).
Give M i M i c C S an award for predicting the upgrade of IMF & World Bank to replace USA dollar
Namaste
From the Wall Street (GOP) Journal, yesterday, March 27, 2009:
"So much for the Republicans coming out with a better budget. The rollout was a disaster... The problem — their budget rollout didn’t contain any hard budget numbers or deficit projections... In fact, after yesterday, the White House and congressional Democrats can agree on one thing: The GOP — at least until next week — is the ‘Party of No.’
Gotta luv dem Rs...
Excellent points, except this pesky continued inaccuracy about Hoover: "6. HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO PLAN FOR ECONOMIC RECOVERY. Whatsoever. Pledge to do precisely what Hoover did in 1932: Absolutely nothing!"
Under Hoover, several government programs were started that under FDR were expanded and repackaged into the New Deal, including:
Hoover's and then FDR's Reconstruction Finance Corporation
Hoover's Home Loan Bank became FDR's Home Owners Loan Corporation
Hoover's goals with the Smoot-Hawley Tariff and Emergency Relief and Construction Act were similar to FDR's Agricultural Adjustment Act and National Recovery Administration
But the Hoover/Bush and FDR/Obama comparisons are still accurate:
Bush's TARP I is Obama's TARP II
Bush's $7,500 first time home buyer interest free loan is Obama's $8,000 first time home buyer free money
Bush's surge in Iraq is Obama's surge in Afghanistan (there's no money to keep up this insane foreign policy so it is very much an economic welfare program for the warfare industry)
I'm kinda pissed off at the way politicians in DC treat Americans these days, particularly through their enablers like the author DMG.
...several government programs were started that under FDR were expanded and repackaged into the New Deal...
Does this mean Hoover's stimulus was not big enough to tackle the economic woes?
That question assumes the New Deal eventually got the US out of the Great Depression and ignores the price and wage controls implemented to even greater extent during World War II. I think the economy didn't pick up until after the war, when the government was done stimulating and blowing stuff up.
What the author fails to mention is that the policies of the past 8 years were bipartisan. The democratic wing of the one party system were just as complicit as the republican wing. The reasons why there is very little change now is that Obama and his cohorts are mostly from the democratic wing of the one party who represent the same class interests with only marginal differences.
Sad but true. Congress, with very few exceptions, is nothing but crooked attorneys that are called Republicans and Democrats. Like my very wealthy Uncle, that gives to both parties, as he knows they are both corrupt.
Bingo!
Lobby for Instant Runoff Voting or similar schemes, otherwise we'll keep getting the 2 faced Janus party who agree 80% of the time.
I think instant runoff voting would have a better chance if we called it "American Idol Style Voting", no kidding.
Hmmm, not a bad idea :-)
12. Do the world a favor and off yourselves. Political suicide is not enough.
There was a joke book put out on another Republican, Spiro Agnew, that said something like: The intelligent and cogent thoughts of Spiro Agnew, and when one opened it----it was all blank pages! Maybe that is where the Repugs got the idea!
The Refuglican Alternative "Stimulus" Plan
It used to be called electro-shock therapy. We (The Refuglicans) hook you up to powerful electrodes which shock your brain and make you forget about George Wanker Bush and Cheesedick Cheney. You elect us again (Limbaugh-Palin . . . Hannity-Malkin . . . Jindal-Bachmann . . . the combinations at this point are fundamentally one and the same) and we finish looting the nation and take off for warmer, sunnier, more corrupt climes while you suckers are left holding the famous bag.
Considering what Obama and the Democrats are doing, Mr. Green needs to take his tongue out of his cheek.
A budget with no numbers beats a budget with numbers in it that indicate the Mad Doctor is not dead,
Another article insisting that the Democratic Legislators were all absent or otherwise occupied while those dastardly Republicans were looting our treasury and using our constitution as so much toilet paper.
Yeah, blame it all on the GOP, that's the ticket. A ticket to bitter disappointment that is.
Now RR, you know that its all them thar DemoCrats that are trying to defend your country, save your money, bake Mom in an Apple Pie and cure everything under the sun. Its those rotted Republicans that are the problem. Didn't you get the memo?
Did you ever play a shell game? Look over here but the pea is over there....Three card monte applies as well....
When everyone betrays the American worker and people its time to clean the temple. Get rid of anti-American elements in every facet of our lives.
A budget with no numbers beats a budget with numbers in it that indicate the Mad Doctor is not dead,
A budget with no numbers is a blank check to deficit spending.
ThoughtShaman
Just for my edification, what exactly do you think these folks are suggesting with this budget, let alone whats been done so far?
The Obama budget makes deficit spending look like a pittance. I'm laughing so hard at the projections of growth used in this farce of a budget I've hurt a rib.
This budget will give you deficits on your deficit spending.
What do you offer as an alternative?
Almost anything frankly. But most of all......a budget that takes care of our immediate need and not one that satisfies someones political and social agenda.
The stimulus and bailouts were for our immediate need. The budget is more long-term...and we need to get the hell out of only short-term thinking, quickly.
"The stimulus and bailouts were for our immediate need"
Then they were complete failures.
"and we need to get the hell out of only short-term thinking, quickly."
Agreed. But trying to push things through without full discussion and full opportunity of comment by the country at large smells of something wrong.
The stimulus is designed to work over the next couple years, not the day it was passed, so passing judgment on its success or failure is premature. And yes the bailouts have been complete failures, thanks in part to Treasury under Bush's initial misuse of TARP funds, but they're still ongoing and not complete yet. And the budget is simply to fund government agencies, it's not pushing anything through quickly. Once the departments have the money, they then decide how to use it and that's when special projects will come up...what kind of discussion could the country have on the budget? Cut it? How? Where? Congress debated that already...for better or worse, we elect people to represent us. We don't directly run the government, we can only hope to influence our Congressional representatives.
"The stimulus is designed to work over the next couple years"
Consider the stimulas was pushed thru on the basis that it was so urgent we couldn't take any time to look it over. Next, anything over the next few years won't matter. The need was now....thats stimulas, noit over time....aside from which I'll assure you it will have little or no effect on a defaltionary economy.
"what kind of discussion could the country have on the budget? Cut it? How? Where? Congress debated that already...for better or worse, we elect people to represent us."
The kind of discussion that we had on amnesty. It was rejected soundly when enough time was taken to allow discussion and communication with our representatives.
They are to represent the views of their citizens, not themselves or their party. Use their judgement....surely, but ride roughshod over their constituents...NO! And Congress has not debated this much to speak of in my opinion.
Well the budget hasn't passed yet, they're still debating it.
Good point!! DUH!!!
In any case if they fund the "revolution" contained in the proposed budget, it will defeat any hope of real change. Obama has no mandate for societal change.
Timothy Geithner unveiled his Public-Private Investment Program (PPIP) on March 23, the latest in a growing alphabet soup of handouts topping $12.5 trillion and counting - so much in so many forms, in "gov-speak" language, with so many changing and moving parts, it's hard for experts to keep up let alone the public, except to sense something is very wrong. They're being fleeced by a finance Ponzi scheme, sheer flimflam, and here's how from what we know:
-- $400 billion in taking over Fannie and Freddie;
-- $42 billion for the auto giants; billions more coming for their suppliers;
-- approaching $200 billion for AIG with more coming on request;
-- $350 billion to Citigroup in handouts and loan guarantees;
-- tens of billions to other banks, including $87 billion to JP Morgan Chase for bad Lehman Brothers trades;
-- $700 billion for TARP I; half the money released under TARP II;
-- over $200 billion and counting for the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF) to extend government-guaranteed loans for investors to buy "certain AAA-rated asset-backed securities (as a) component" of the Consumer and Business Lending Initiative (CBLI), established under the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act (EESA) of 2008;
-- the $787 billion stimulus under the American Recovery and Relief Act of 2009 (ARRA);
-- around $300 billion under the Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan (HASP) - the so-called mortgage bailout plan;
-- $50 billion backing for short-term corporate IOUs held by money market funds - from the Exchange Stabilization Fund (ESF), a vehicle established by a provision in the 1934 Gold Reserve Act for foreign exchange intervention to stabilize the value of the dollar;
-- $500 billion for various credit market rescues;
-- $620 billion for industrial nations' currency swaps;
-- $120 billion for emerging economies' currency swaps;
-- $1.25 trillion for Fannie and Freddie mortgage backed securities;
-- $200 billion for Fannie, Freddie, and Federal Home Loan Bank bonds;
-- way more than the announced $300 billion for longer-term Treasuries (mostly with 7 - 10 year maturities); the Fed's been buying billions of them since last year;
-- Fed-expanded overnight lending to $2.4 trillion - free money at 0% interest;
-- a reported $750 billion for banks in the FY 2010 budget - yet to be voted on and appropriated;
-- a proposed $470 billion increase for the FDIC to borrow from the Treasury;
-- perhaps hundreds of billions more in unannounced or hidden handouts in amounts and to whom the Fed and Treasury won't say; on March 14, AIG named its big counterparties for the first time with firms like Goldman Sachs, Societe Generale, Deutsche Bank, and Barclays showing up prominently; and now
-- PPIP - the latest gift to Wall Street courtesy of taxpayers getting none of the gain and all the pain.
weyrich's conservative manifesto...
steal car... steal brick wall... drive car 90 mph into brick wall... blame bricks... blame the wallbuilder... blame the car... blame liberals...
unfazed... always... we were right when we broke it... and we're right telling you how to fix it...
"always right... ALWAYS"...
nevermind we're not.
we are. rinse. REPEAT.
You forgot to add trotting out a budget a few days ago with NO NUMBERS in it!! The party of NO is the party of NOTHING.
It's those two elections where the American people repudiated the Republicants. Of all the ungrateful...! They're pissed and they want revenge. They might not be able to make government work or get elected (or even raise much money) but boy they can tie up the senate.
You forgot some other items:
-- Give massive tax cuts to the rich. It will trickle down.
-- Give corporations lots of loopholes to avoid taxes.
-- Make it clear that poverty is the fault of the poor.
-- Keep telling poor people choose to be lazy and keep talking of lazy people whenever you are able.
--No government regulation---ever.
So, I take it you wouldn't mind if I came over, tied you up, raped your family, and took anything I wanted? Or would you care if I manufactured fireworks on the third floor of your fifty story apartment block, and you lived on floor 30? If you really want NO government regulation, you want anarchy. This is a very satisfying form of government on many levels, but is the least sustainable. What you probably don't want is an authoritarian government. The more wealth and greed driven a government gets, generally the more authoritarian it gets, simply because the majority is poorer than the ruling class, and its wealth-enforced policies would not prevail if the poor majority could understand what was happening and actually choose not to adopt or obey them. Sadly, wealth has to resort to propaganda and coercion to keep itself in power. The trick is to create a government with humane laws and a compassionate ethos. So far, extremist governments of both the right (fascism) and left (communism) have not accomplished this. The correct mix of democratic socialism is the obvious answer. This would allow the incentive of money to work for the majority of people, without abusing the incentive leading to hoarding and suffering, and making authoritarian control necessary. This correct mix needs time to evolve, lest it become authoritarian. Too bad it is not permitted to write a sentence in the MSM with the word “socialism” in it without the term being a pejorative. The same gut reaction fears as these yellow media have instilled in many of us about drugs and child porno have also been programmed into the more gullible folks about socialism. This is sad. The only effective ideology has not been tried. The terrorists have won, and are firmly in control.
On second thought, I'll take anarchy thanks. Your straw man arguments that you could only rape, steal and manufacture dangerous substances within an anarchist society presumes that these things cannot happen under whatever flavor of 'archy' you choose. There is no government that has been able to stop people from doing what they want, for good or ill. As a matter of fact, governments aggregate wealth and greed due to one basic reason...they have a monopoly on violence. I'd rather diffuse the ability for violence amongst everyone. So, in an anarchy, if you came to rape, rob or hurt me, at least I could defend myself without a bunch of drama and hoop-jumping.
acemoab, both good and bad can come from both powerless individuals and powerful institutions. The purpose of government is to cultivate the good and suppress the bad.
So a balance is required in the government's regulating individuals, so the institutional and individual bad are both minimized. It's crucially important that the government cultivates the good too.
Institutions must be treated differently than individuals because they are far more dangerous. This means a different balance is appropriate, i.e. more regulation produces the minimum bad and the maximum good.
So, regulate in proportion to power concentration, and especially regulate the government in proportion to the people's dependence on it.
As for the elite establishment, that institution has to be smashed up and replaced with locally owned/operated production, asset ownership and enterprise size limited to ten man-powers, full costs in retail prices, closed production cycles, etc.
We can put together an algebraic formula and tweak the parameters to minimize bad, maximize good. Get to work, people!
It's going to take a lot of human sacrifices to rid the world of this catastrophy.
Perhaps all the Republicans and their offspring for starters.
And disenfranchisement the corporations of course.
Disenfranchisement of the corporations would be like cutting off an anvil from around our necks. You would be surprised at how fast things would get better if this happened, I bet.