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Not my cup of tea
It's not surprising that they [economically hard-pressed workers] get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
I'm not sure why else you'd join a "grassroots" protest against rising taxes after you just got a tax cut. Or hold up a sign decrying the government bailout of General Motors given the impact the company's failure would likely have on the U.S. auto industry and its 2.9 million jobs - jobs just like yours.
I can't figure another good reason why, as a bluecollar worker in a blizzard of pinkslips, you'd rail against the government serving as spender of last resort in a recessionary cycle, and why you wouldn't complain instead that the direct economic stimulus provided by ARRA was too small by half. Or why the back of your "Maobama Tse Tung" t-shirt wouldn't say "China Leads While We Teabag." Or why you'd show up at an anti-tax rally to protest gun laws, or abortion, or anything else that happened to be on your mind at the time.
Obama nailed it in Pennsylvania last year. None of this teabagging makes any sense otherwise. And the Republican establishment, long on paranoia and short on policy alternatives, are working it for all they can get.
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So if I am sick of all the bailouts that haven't benefitted me, I can't demonstrate? As far as I know I have not received any tax cut yet, despite your first sentence. Are you talking about the whopping $65 or so per month that I read about in the press? It's one thing to be "spender of last resort" and I'm all for that in this period of the economic cycle, but the size of this spending is unprecedented and worthy of additional scrutiny
April 15, 2009 10:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
TARP may not be popular, but if it ultimately works, our economy will be able to come out ahead much sooner than it would otherwise.
As for scrutiny, that's always a great idea. However, "scrutiny" is not the word I would use to describe these yelling guys saying things like "Hitler gave great speeches too" and "Obama's a fascist." You've given many of these protesters far too much credit.
April 16, 2009 8:22 AM | Reply | Permalink
Agree. "Scrutiny" involves comprehension of the underlying issue. Just a hunch, but there's a good chance someone who rents a tricorner hat at the costume store, slaps $Trillion$ of DEBT on a piece of posterboard and calls himself a patriot hasn't really thought it through.
Not that he's getting a lot of help from Rush or Cavuto or the other chuckleheads he turns to for leadership.
Funny -- "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it any more" is another slogan that has popped up. Pulling a Howard Beale -- the irony is delicious.
April 16, 2009 9:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
TARP is just once piece of the pie. Obama's budget deficit is projected by the CBO to go north of 10% of GDP in 2009 and 9.6% in 2010. Looking back at history, we've never seen the deficit get close to 10%. The highest it's ever been is at around 6% in the 1983-84 period. We've run up deficits to get out of recessions before, but never to the size of what Obama is doing.
April 16, 2009 7:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
No argument there. What's your alternative?
April 16, 2009 10:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Less spending in 2009 and 2010. Slow down the mass exodus of dollars. You're open to much more fraud when the money gets spent so quickly. Computerizing health records, for example, is a noble cause but it doesn't sound like a cost-effective way to create jobs. And the hundreds of billions being transferred to the states - will that money lead to additional spending and job creation? Or will it merely finance state transfer payments and temporarily relieve state governments from raising taxes?
April 16, 2009 11:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
Of course it will finance transfer payments. But money spent on safety net programs like unemployment compensation and disability benefits gets pumped back into the economy almost immediately.
States are already looking at raising taxes. But isn't there some merit in mitigating the amount of the increase, and saving jobs that might otherwise be lost?
Either way, it looks like us South Carolinians will be lab rats for your theory. I'm not exactly sanguine about the prospects. Our per capita income and GDP have been falling since Sanford took office. Statewide unemployment is past 11 percent. We've already got four toes in hell, and Sanford's austerity plan will likely accelerate the descent. Factor in the explosion in gun and ammo sales, and Sunday preachers telling their flocks that Obama is the spawn of Satan ... well, you get the picture. Idle hands do the devil's work.
April 17, 2009 1:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
Pumped back into the economy? I hope so but don't think you can bank on it. The "rebate" checks that people got in the middle of 2008 didn't seem to do much.
People aren't going to be pumping anything back into the economy until they get a job. And despite the banks having improved profits and mortgage applications on the rise, we still have a big unemployment problem that's not showing any signs of slowing down
April 17, 2009 7:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
Agree that you can't count on much of anything, but I'm pretty sure unemployment benefits don't get stuffed under the mattress.
April 17, 2009 8:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well if there is no food on the table, then that money will go to buy food. But if that person did have some savings (like I did when I got laid off last year), then this "extra cash" from additional unemployment benefits will go to pay off credit cards or build a cash reserve. Until you get a job you're not going to buy any discretionary items.
April 17, 2009 9:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
You can protest that the Obamas got a foreign breed of dog if you want. You'd fit right in with that crowd.
If you have taxes withheld, you probably got a tax cut. If you didn't, I'd ask your payroll department why not. They were supposed to start using adjusted withholding tables effective April 1, retroactive to Feb. 17.
No, it isn't much. Mine's about $66 a month. Frankly, I would rather it had gone to stimulus spending, where it would have done more good.
My point is, if you stood on the lawn of your state capital today in your sunhat festooned with teabags complaining your taxes got raised, you went for some other reason -- or worse, because Fox News told you to go.
April 15, 2009 11:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
N point in trying to respond to Bill the No-Classhole. Reality doesn't interest him - after all, it has a well-known liberal bias.
April 16, 2009 1:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
You bagged it! Nice job...
April 16, 2009 12:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
Good job Meanie.
April 16, 2009 1:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
DD - good to see you back!
April 16, 2009 6:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, indeed.
April 16, 2009 6:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
Even more to the point, they are mad at the black man, didn't want him to win in the first place and howling about taxes or socialism or anything else helps put a more acceptable face on their fundamentally racist paranoia. I genuinely think that is the motivating force behind all this vitriol and foaming at the mouth coming from the right wing trailer park set.
April 16, 2009 9:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ah, the emperor has no clothes. Thanks, oleeb. It had to be said.
April 16, 2009 9:56 PM | Reply | Permalink