Robert Reich doesn’t buy that there will be a quick recovery. In fact, in his view, there is a radically re-shaped economy and talking about a “V” shaped recession or a “U” shaped recession probably isn’t accurate.
Personally, I don’t buy into either camp. In a recession this deep, recovery doesn’t depend on investors. It depends on consumers who, after all, are 70 percent of the U.S. economy. And this time consumers got really whacked. Until consumers start spending again, you can forget any recovery, V or U shaped.
Problem is, consumers won’t start spending until they have money in their pockets and feel reasonably secure. But they don’t have the money, and it’s hard to see where it will come from. They can’t borrow. Their homes are worth a fraction of what they were before, so say goodbye to home equity loans and refinancings. One out of ten home owners is under water — owing more on their homes than their homes are worth. Unemployment continues to rise, and number of hours at work continues to drop. Those who can are saving. Those who can’t are hunkering down, as they must.
Eventually consumers will replace cars and appliances and other stuff that wears out, but a recovery can’t be built on replacements. Don’t expect businesses to invest much more without lots of consumers hankering after lots of new stuff. And don’t rely on exports. The global economy is contracting.
Then one comes across stuff like this from Firedog Lake:
Workers returned Tuesday to the job at Stella D’Oro Biscuit Co. in the Bronx after a judge ordered the company reinstate the 136 employees who had remained strong throughout a brutal 11-month strike. But before they could even walk through the doors, they were greeted with the anti-union response by the company’s private equity firm owners, the 21st century’s mutation of the robber barons: Brynwood Partners announced it would shut down operations in October. (“Private equity firms” is the euphemism those leveraged buyout corporations adopted after leveraged buyout got a bad name in the 1980s.)
Too often in our “national discourse,” such that it is, income inequality is discussed in solely moral terms. There’s also a utilitarian side, in that consumers who are under economic pressure are not going to spend freely. All those traders who cheered Rick Santelli in the spring might want to stick that in their cigar and smoke it.
If a rising tide lifts all boats, as the old aphorism goes, then maybe we really do need a major reform of labor laws, as the author at Firedog Lake suggests, so that the playing field is less slanted towards corporations and ultra-wealthy investors. For some reason trying to destroy unions is considered a good business practice in this country, and it creates an irrational distortion in the labor marketplace.
The right to form unions and bargain collectively is not only the law, it is a birthright to all Americans that was paid for in blood. Somehow many other industrial democracies manage to have large unions and still make great stuff. You kind of wonder if some of the Wall Street types ever stop to consider whether unionized workers built their fancy sports car. Probably not is my guess.
As long as right-to-starve states and anti-union ideologues at major corporations are allowed to relentlessly attack wages and benefits, the nation faces a zero-sum game where producing quality products and services takes a back seat to screwing over regular folks, usually to the sound of cheers from Wall Street. While this system benefits a relative few in the financial sector, it’s been a disaster for wide swaths of the economy.
If Reich is correct that there will be a “new economy,” the shape that it takes is a legitimate topic for debate for all Americans.
HNMT recently posted Reich’s 2001 commentary about the doornail-dead Democrat Party, so maybe Reich (and Krugman) (and Glenn Beck) are wrong or premature about the economic death of Obama’s hope’n’change.
And just because Obama’s supine and slobbering media haven’t totally blinded us to the failure of his “stimulus” doesn’t mean that we’re supinely waiting for a second Obama stimulus to put disposable income in our empty pockets.
A rising tide lifts all yachts.
Even Reich doesn’t take into account that not only do consumers not have any money, but they’re still trying to survive on credit. So we still haven’t seen the results of great masses of credit-card defaults and bankruptcies (even under the new, punitive-to-ordinary-people bankruptcy law), and the cascading collapse of the trade in consumer-credit backed derivatives. Granted, this is only a fraction of the $10 trillion or so in ephemeral “wealth” represented by the mortgage-derivatives market, but the economy’s reeling from the shellacking it’s already had. Combine this with accellerating layoffs of state and local government employees, since the federal “stimulus” funds are going to be too little, too late, and misapplied, and nobody’s going to be buying much of anything but enough food to keep body and soul together. You can just imagine the effect this is going to have on retailing–the only real major “industry” we have left.
Religious unionism is no better than religious marxism or religious creationism.
Unless we have an unforeseen war, that world will be multicentric. Unilateral beliefs in unions will only be viable IF we are able to segregate those parts of our economy from global pressures.
That world is also going to be a lot more resource centric. No nation, including the USA, will dominate raw materials or be able to isolate itself from the need for materials from elsewhere.
So where does that leave our unions?
If we want to preserve the middle class model, the US needs a national industrial policy that is unlikely to work well with existing labor unions. For example, keeping Boeing an AMERICAN resource may require decisions that are not good for this state.
So, the real questions is can the USA, Inc. compete with China, Inc and Brazil, Inc?
We DO have some advantages. One of those is the middle class tradition. Protecting the middle class, however, means making the system reward workers more than it does bosses … ask Karl Marx!
I Am Kiryas (Joel): Taking a time-out from the prayer circle to read Jay Wexler’s book about the lighter side of the Establishment Clause. Wexler, who is sort of an anti-Semitic Jew, asserts that he teaches Con Law and Administrative Law at Boston University, but then he writes this:
So early in the history of the early Republic, in other words, that the hanging happened more than 100 years before we were a Republic.
No wonder normal people despise lawyers, Piper excepted.
The Republican Party has lost its role and lost its way. Every Republican, as they say in Prickly City, has been outed or indicted. But surely we can rally ’round this: We will be the Anti-Lawyer Party, a new improved version of the old Anti-Masonic Party. We’ll take back the Real America from the Wexlers and Rabbits, and maybe we’ll actually win elections again.
Or not. Muezzin’s callin’, so gotta get back there in seminary school and petition the Lord with intercessory prayer for twisted YLB and for twisted YLB’s twisted sister.
A multicentric world? Why can’t the world simply be homocentric like Seattle?
Big Jon, with his atavistic intimations of Homestake and Haymarket, seems inadvertently to channel one of the few books that matters: The Democrats: A Critical History, by Marxist Lance Selfa.
Selfa demonstrates beyond all reasonable doubt that the Democrat Party is a corporate/capitalist tool. Obama’s multi-billion-dollar bail outs and stimuli, borrowed shamelessly from Pauson and Goldman-Sachs, are exceedingly stimulative for a few who are already very fortunate and very rich.
When those stimuli fail to stimulate, as they’re doing now, corporatist Democrats will do a Paulson and will go through the pantomime of putting money in consumers pockets to jump-start demand for what fat-cat Democrat donors are trying to sell, but consumers themselves will then be left with the aftermath: either nosebleed inflation or Weimar-hyperinflation.
As for the Democrat super rich? They’ll be riding in the front of the inflation train, just as they did in the 1970s, and they’ll still be dumping their bundled campaign billions to the Democrats, Party of the … common man.
The high sales tax rates here will mean consumers can’t pull up the local economy. Small businesses and the poorest among us will be hurting for a very long time.
The Democrats who control this state like very high sales taxes, but they hurt disadvantaged people.
If you want specifics about how bad Bush’s economic legacy is, read this: http://www.bloggingstocks.com/.....f-descent/
For the life of me, I don’t understand why Republicans think they can outsource jobs and slash wages — and still expect the economy to grow. Where do they think consumers will get money?
Wingnut Wack-O-Nomics is a formula for permanent recession.
@4 SJ, you make a good point that the availability (or rather the lack thereof) of resources is going to drive what happens. Then, from the point of view of the corporatists, the cost of the “things” that it takes to run a business is going to keep rising, from traditional “raw materials” to pencils and paper clips, transportation and even (or especially) the energy costs and real estate to maintain the infrastructure for IT and software development and distribution. Oh…and there has to be enough to maintain the pampered, protected lifestyles of the brilliant people who are doing such a splendid job of running things…
In that case, the corporatists perceive only one opportunity to cut costs: labor. The PNAC/Club For Growth folks get this, and that’s why they’ve spent the last 30 years preparing to demolish the social contract and return the world to 14th-century feudalism. Ultimately, the only alternative may be the destruction of the ruling class and redefinition of “business” as a means of keeping everyone “busy” rather than concentration of wealth. Such a thing is likely to happen only after some catastrophic disintegration of what’s left of the present order of things.
The “new” economy is actually the “old” economy of the 19th century in which a few people have all the money and most of the people have only long hours and hard work rewarded with poverty and want.
I wonder if Rush Limbaugh smokes embargoed (i.e., illegal) Cuban cigars? I’ll bet he does! What a fucking traitor to his country.
@1 “failure of his “stimulus””
A wingnut lie. Obama’s stimulus saved us from another Great Depression. Things are still bad, but they’d be a lot worse if Bush’s policies were still in effect.
@3 Credit card defaults, while a problem, aren’t the threat to the economy that bad mortgages are, because credit card debt amounts to only about 1/10th as much as mortgage debt.
what are you guys whining about? only a few people are going to have money, right? and you know its going to be the chosen ones, so whats the problem?
@9 In other words, in just eight years we went from a strong economy, government, businesses and individuals living comfortably within their means and peace in most of the world, to a catastrophic attack on our own soil by a fanatic rabble, multiple ongoing wars, two of which we initiated (and at least one more probably on the way), an additional $16 trillion or so in accumulated government, corporate and personal debt, millions out of work and millions more marginalized, the banking system teetering on the edge of collapse and our remaining industries closing up shop or selling themselves off to foreign ownership.
Great job, guys.
@4 “Protecting the middle class, however, means making the system reward workers more than it does bosses … ask Karl Marx!”
What a crock. Never in American history have workers made more than their bosses, yet we had a booming economy and a thriving middle class for a whole generation following World War 2.
SJ seems to be saying either we can’t save America’s middle class, or it’s not worth the effort. I say his middle class, taxpayer-supported, University of Washington salary should be one of the first things to go if that’s what he truly believes. If middle class incomes are a thing of the past, then we could all use a tax cut, starting with our taxes that go to pay the salaries of people who believe we shouldn’t have a middle class anymore.
@5 Throw in a prayer for yourself to the Great Mother Rabbit Spirit while you’re at it, you fucking towel head terrorist.*
* Heh! Just kidding! I’m practicing talking like a Republican in case the CIA asks me to do undercover work against the rightwing subversives who are plotting to overthrow our government.
@16 Bite me, asshole.
@7 “the Democrat Party is a corporate/capitalist tool”
Better watch out or you’ll get in trouble with your masters. You’re supposed to say the Democrat Party is a socialist tool.
@8 “The Democrats who control this state like very high sales taxes … ”
Yeah, but the Republicans who control the Democrats who control this state (read: Boeing execs) like them even more.
@20
well artie, i guess i hit a nerve
@11 “SJ, you make a good point that the availability (or rather the lack thereof) of resources is going to drive what happens.”
It’s not a good point because we’re a service economy now and the availability of (physical) resources has nothing to do with provision of services.
@17 Yep.
@23 He’s calling a turd a turd, that’s all.
@23 You don’t get it, do you? You appeal to nobody here. Piper very eloquently jumped your case a couple days ago, and the other wingnuts just blush and turn the other way, hoping you’ll disappear.
Nobody likes you, and it’s not the fault of Jews or other people for which you so proudly proclaim your hatred. You persist in proving to all that you have nothing worthwhile to contribute, other than making the rest of us glad that we don’t share your sickness.
You should either go off and live the rest of your days far, far from other people, or seek some professional help before your twisted mind motivates you to do something really stupid.
(Cue the closing theme from “Dragnet”…)
Just what you’d expect from the people who put the progressive in the progressive income tax, another tax that WA progressives want to impose on top of and in addition to the job-killing taxes we have now.
Progressives by definition are effete elites who preen as if they’re populists working selflessly for the people. The inconvenient truth is that they’re a Whole Foods Nation of arugula snobs, like Obama, who use America’s forgotten men and women to pad their balance sheets and election returns.
@17: Nope. Unless you’re chronology-impaired about the meltdown (which began in March 2000) and the shakedown (which was a direct consequence of Clinton’s attack on aspirin instead of al Qaeda).
Yes, dammit! Been trying to call you out on the protection racket you’ve been running for ArtFart, but you just keep blushing and turning the other way and acting as if the stinking piece of shit doesn’t stink.
ArtFart is trash. Glad one of you wingnuts finally had the stones to jump his case.
Come on folks, manufacturing jobs are tied to exchange rates. In the past China’s been willing to suck in dollars, no matter what, to build their economy. That will not continue. We not only have the skilled labor, but the natural resources available to us. No one else in the world has that luxury.
—-
“…but a recovery can’t be built on replacements. ”
What the hell do you think drives an economy, more people??
In fact the longer folks and companies put off replacements, the more likely the economy will have a steep V shaped recovery.
Meanwhile I pay taxes to defend my economic overseas competition.
Do you HA Libtardos realize how much more broken you’ll be as consumers with crap and trade? Our electrical bills will go up. “the messiah” admitted crap & trade will force our electrical rates to skyrocket. Butt, that’s okay NutsTooTight will pay all of our elevated rates cuz he’s always right. Or how about the US reducing their emissions while China and India keep theirs? Puddy has no problem reducing emissions as long as it’s world wide. Puddy has always said this butt, the HA Libtardo naysayers have nutin to say. China and India say NOPE!
How about China pollution reaching the west coast? Puddy will place the report on HA Libtardos again. Search it yourselves Libtardos. Did HA Libtardos know 16 of the 20 worst polluted cities are in China?
Then you have Robert 3 Sheets Grand Klagon Byrd and Warren Buffet are against crap and trade. Pelletizer talks about issues with the middle class but crap and trade will destroy the middle class. Puddy told you “the messiah” was for cap and trade last year.
I’m still trying to figure out what the original post is about…
You know, what Butt Putty spews does look like a santorum.
Does Butt Putty pitch or catch? Disturbed minds want to know.
Or is Butt Putty just the mess left behind, as it were…
Ekim, still discussing your frothy olive oil flavored burrito and chimichanga toppings again?
You know who’s not only in favor, but already oozing smegma over Cap & Trade? Yeah, that’s right: the Paulson/Geithner Goldman Sachs crowd who finished raping and pillaging the real estate business by turning the bond market into a giant bookie joint taking bets on peoples’ inability to pay off their mortgages. Now they’re going create and Enron-on-meth under the banner of “environmental responsibility”.
Get out the K-Y folks…it’s gonna be a long night.
@28 So, what the fuck do you have against arugula? Do you even know what it is, or are you just parroting some snippet of Limbaugh bullshit like the lovely comment about latte drinking Volvo drivers?
Revisionist @29: That recession began in March 2001. Here’s a quiz for ya: Who was president then?
@31 Boy, you’re an optimist. Also an ignoramus. The consumer spending spree of the last 25 years mostly went for items people don’t have to buy. Guess what, they’re not buying them anymore. And won’t. Because. They. Don’t. Have. The. Money.
here’a what makes me laugh. you call me racist because i make observations that factually are true (eg, the fed chairman and 6 of the 7 fed gov’s are jewsish). thats a fact but i’m not supposed to say it. then, miraculously, barack obamas spiritual leader, the man obama looked to for guidance for 20 years, turns out to be either an antisemite, or is truthfuly saying the jews around obama are controlling him. so obama is either, one, stupid, two, a liar, or three, antisemetic himself.
@44 You’re neither a man nor truthful. You’re an ignorant lump of wingnut doggy doo.
@35 That’s easy; the topic of this blog is always the same:
REPUBLICANS SUCK
I’ve noticed the more money people have the less they work, or is it that the less people work the more money they have? Not sure which came first. There’s a correlation, though.
Republicans are always bragging about how “hard” they “work.” Click here for photos of Republicans “working hard”:
http://pro.corbis.com/images/4.....E5D35F9%7D
http://s3.images.com/huge.38.192191.JPG
http://s3.images.com/huge.74.374717.JPG
ArtFart, do you remember Puddy telling you last year these fools are all in cahoots? Didn’t Puddy tell you last year about Goldman Sachs friends of Dummocrapts? Remember when Puddy told you all Hank Paulson was a very good friend of Robert Rubin? Do you remember Don Joe and others trying to take Puddy to the woodshed over this telling Puddy he didn’t know what he was talking about? Well where was Puddy getting his info? Democratic Underground among other sources…Puddy posted the other sources so now Puddy will post the latest from DU (normally DUmmys)!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAhahahahahahahaha
Thanks for finally realizing what Puddy was saying all the time about Goldman Sachs friends of Dummocrapts. Ed Liddy of AIG came from Goldman Sachs. Now watch when Robert Rubin show up real soon back in the thick of this. Remember he and Larry Summers are pals too.
Oh yeah before Puddy forgets search HA Libtardos and see what the clueless wonder wrote on this subject too.
P R I C E L E S S!
@45
roger, i notice you just call me names rather than adress the question. did obama not notice that wright was antisemetic for 20 years, or is wright correct that he cant get to obama because he’s being controlled.
Pelletizer in regards to energy cap and trade
Dummocrapts suck worse! Got carbon credits anyone? Sell some stock to pay for those elevated electric billz boyz and goilz! Puddy warned you last summer “the messiah” was gonna screw y’all on this.
Bwaaaaaaa haaaaaa haaaaaaaaaaaa haaaaahaaaaaa haaaaahaaaaa haaaaaa haaaa haaaaaaaaa haaaaaaaa HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HEE HEEEEEE HEE HEE HEEE HO HO HO HO HO HO HO!
“Gone are Hank Paulson and Neel Kashkari; in their place are Treasury chief of staff Mark Patterson and CFTC chief Gary Gensler, both former Goldmanites. (Gensler was the firm’s co-head of finance) And instead of credit derivatives or oil futures or mortgage-backed CDOs, the new game in town, the next bubble, is in carbon credits – a booming trillion-dollar market that barely even exists yet, but will if the Democratic Party that it gave $4,452,585 to in the last election manages to push into existence a groundbreaking new commodities bubble, disguised as an “environmental plan,” called cap-and-trade.” – This is your party boyz and goilz. Goldman Sachs owns your party boyz and goilz!
Do you remember the lobbyist brouhaha over Mark Patterson? No? Libtardo 24 hr disease?
P R I C E L E S S
@11 AF
FWIW, I dio think there IS an alternative to the return of industrial slavery … that alternative is socialism.
Socailist states, e.g. Sweden or Germany, have long ago used taxes to flatten the gap between rich and poor. Put in Reprican terms, these societies limit the growth of wealth by redistributing income in a progressive fashion.
However, bith Germany and Sweden also have very definite industrial poicies that .. as long as tghey work .. try to optimize their country’s ability to compete with other countries.
The stances on health care are a good example of the stupidity of our society. Repricans preach that raising taxes will hurt the economy. That is nonsense IF the result is a more efficient health care system, we will free up dollars for productive use. Unions, for their part, want health care treated as a benefit. That idea is stupid too. If we spend too much on health care, jobs will be lost.
US workers may end up a lot poorer that they are today, but seems to me we need to all agree that “we” are about opportunity. Wealth is OK, but not wealth that meamns other can not get an education or health care.
@18. Roger Rabbit
Roger the middle class made a LOT more than the wealthy, you confuse total income with individual wealth.
I did not say that, what I did say is that the living standard of the average American is likely NOT sustainable in a global economy. FWIW, I believe we need to optimize opportunity .. that means kmore progressive taxation so we can assure that education and health care are free.
As for my income, seems to me that you are living pretty high off of the pension trough. When did you last work for a living?
@24 Rbid Rabbit
24. Roger Rabbit spews:
I think that is claled perpetual motion. Try running a service economy when you can not afford oil to heat your home.
@31, we do have that and it’s two thirds of the equation however a whole lot of businesses have sold their product drawings and manufacturing machinery to China as well.
I heard a story recently from a friend. An integral piece of machinery to their work needs to be repaired. The manufacturer of that machinery is no longer in business. Everything in that company was bought lock, stock and barrel by a foreign company. They went to the foreign company who, of course, have no idea where the manufacturing specifications are for that specific machine.
Well, at least a few web developers are getting some stimulus:
$18,000,000 Being Spent to Re-design recovery.gov website
error
sorry…
@55 David
I have heard a similar story about an entrepreneur sending his business to China because the technology was not available here. A Seattle firm developed and sells a carbon fiber bike. All American tech, high value added. But they off shored the manufacture because China had ready to go factories with equpt not avail here.
An even worse story comes from Affymetrix, the “gene chip” guys. They have recently off shored their entire manufacture to Malaysia. This means a technology that is clearly nuin grwoth phase will now be grown in foreign soil.
Roger and the usual “service economy” bunnies seem to forge6t that very few jobs are generated by services unless there is someone who is able to buy thise services.
If the US is to continue to be competiti9ve we need an industrial policy that is competitive rather than prot4ective. This means we can not simply decide to close our markets the way the Koreans or Japanese have but we do need to to invest in American productivity.
Here are some examples:
1. education. Our current system is only rational by the lights of our healthcare system. No other nation finances mass education through personal debt, no other nation wastes as much as we do on “education” for everybody as opposed to a competitive education for the best students.
2. IP. The USA generates a vast amount of IP but we have only one major agency, DARPA. that attempts to industrialize that IP here and we place no limits on sale of OUR IP to other countries.
3. Infrastructure. A major argument FOR making things here has been our great transportation system. Now we are falling behind the rest of the world while they also pass us in the new infrastructure needed to support computing.
4. Immigration. While we fight over wet back farm workers or Salvadorian laborers lined up at
Home Depot, Canada and Europe are importing the world’s elites to work and produce jobs.
With all that, the hardest nugget may be rethinking what we mean by both “rich” and “middle class.” A system that creates Paul Allen Profligate Plutocrat Plural Palaces is wasteful. However, the suburban mini-mansions that once surrounded Detroit and now infects Bellevue are even more costly to our society. European, Canadian, and Asian developed countries all have successful middle classes with far less expensive life styles than our ours. The average Swede lives better on less money than the average American because their social system deals with issues like education and healthcare.”
@2: Interesting phrase. That’s almost what President Kennedy said when he demanded tax cuts for rich Kennedys. There had been a soft recession in 1960, and Kennedy affirmed that the best stimulus would be boat-lifting yacht-lifting job-making tax cuts.
Too bad that when the cuts were finally enacted, 1964, they amped up the budget chaos of underfunded wars on poverty and peasants. We got two decades of economic meltdown from JFK/LBJ economic insanity (JFK didn’t even know the difference between monetary and fiscal policy). How many decades of destruction have we already got from Obama? Who seems to want even more stimulus blow-out since the first stimulus did not work? C’mon, Krugmancrats … tell us how bad this is going to get.
And Rabbit still needs to tell us which Kennedy Whiz Kid taught his money-&-banking class. Was it Walter Heller, the know-it-all who said he could tune the macroeconomy like a Strad of a Les Paul?
@6: The last thing HA needs, Bru:no, is another closeted homophobe in very bad drag. I’m callin’ you out. I’m not going to blush on the sidelines and quietly hope you’ll just go away.
Don’t you get it? Nobody here likes you. Get lost. Crawl under a rock with mangledtruth, who used to be a great American before he went to the dark side or the far side.
@7: Goldwater Girl Rabbit and Goldwater Girl Hillary will appreciate Selfa’s discussion of 1964. We radical liberal progressives thought a vote for LBJ was a progressive vote for peace. LBJ was a Democrat, and Democrats are always the good guys, at least compared to the other guys. Isn’t the Left always right?
Too bad shit and reality happened. We learned a lesson from Tonkin Lyndon and Dump-the-Hump Humphrey. Good thing we won’t get fooled again.
Landslide Lyndon and Hump disproved the Republican-Nazi canard that the Democrat media are in the Democrat pocket. After 1966 Democrats got some bad press … not as bad as Dan Schorr saying Goldwater had been a tool of the Waffen SS, but so bad that Cronkite almost treated Lyndon like a Republican.
And Carter got some bad press in 1979 and 1980, but only because Ted the media darling was on a roll. So case closed: there is/are no liberal media.
Still, something was a bit weird in 1961 when an immature screw-up president screwed up and screwed up and screwed up and the press never called him on his folly and failure. Mariane Means and Mary McGrory were in Kennedy’s pocket. Maybe literally. Maybe old Arab Helen Thomas was in there too. Ack.
Sort of sounds like the media’s slobbering love affair with Obama in 2009. I predict this won’t end well.
@14: Obama’s stimulus saved us from another Great Depression? You’re a tool of the corporatist/capitalist Media-Democrat Complex. We’d call you a useful idiot if the ‘useful’ part didn’t make us laugh.
@12: Flat fucking lie, as usual.
@13: Wonder if he smokes rabbits?
@22: Which explains why Boeing is ready to bail.
@21: Didn’t you get the memo? We’re all socialists now. Newsweek said so.
Just practicing my post-Marxist Marxism so I’m ready for the next Ben & Jerry’s rad Board meeting.
People like you and me can’t be too vicious about biting the corporatist/capitalist hands that feed us, Roger, because The People are watching. We know we’re hep and down with the struggle, but The People look at old fat supine slackers like us and they see class enemies. They know we’re wringing easy money from Labor’s labor. When the Revolution comes, we’ll be the first ones they put up against the wall, so stay away from walls.
The insane hating name-morphing fiend is on a tear in this thread. Shorter hot-air specialist: Democrats bad, Republicans always good.
Job killing taxes in this state? Like the non-existent income tax? Priceless..
Exchanging the income tax for some middle class and working poor tax relief just doesn’t figure in this fool’s empty head.
@53 “Roger the middle class made a LOT more than the wealthy, you confuse total income with individual wealth.”
What kind of idiotic argument is this, SJ? If a sweatshop employs 1,000 workers making $10 a day and the boss makes only $9,999 a day, the workers make more than the boss? That’s what you’re saying.
Even SJ is looking brilliant by comparison!!!
“Yeah, but the Republicans who control the Democrats who control this state (read: Boeing execs) like them even more.”
WTF are you blabbering about?
The Republicans who control the Democrats?
I mean WTF????
Thanks for the laugh.
Bush CIA Had ‘Very, Very Serious’ Secret Program
No, I don’t know what it was. All the media knows so far is:
1. It started in 2001.
2. The CIA intentionally hid the program from Congress and repeatedly lied to Congress.
3. Even Leon Panetti, President Obama’s CIA director, wasn’t told about it until last month.
4. When Panetti found out, he immediately terminated the program.
5. Congress is preparing to launch an investigation.
Sounds to me like they were killing people. Maybe American citizens. Such as people who knew too much and threatened to blow the whistle on the Bush regime’s crimes. It’ll be interesting to see where this goes.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.c.....fings.html
The stimulus!!! Hilarious. Limited by the girls in Maine and the old man from PA.
Bush’s check writing spree was one percent of GDP and this? 3, 4 percent?
Anyone could see it wasn’t going to fly.
Dave Ross rules. He gave an even break (and conservative suckers never get an even break) to a babe from the Rupert Journal who told the truth about Honduras.
Obama, who was so respectful of Iran’s tyrants that he refused to ‘meddle’ in Iran’s bloodbath by shouting out or speaking up wasted not a minute in meddling in Honduras. Obama immediately got in an obligatory group hug with Castro and Castro and Chavez on behalf of the Chavez mini-me in Honduras.
Mini-me, you’ll recall, had been rebuked by the Honduras Supreme Court for shredding their constitution. For trying to set up a Chavez-lite lifetime appointment to power. The military ‘coup’ was actually an attempt at enforcing the Supreme Court’s mandate for the rule of law.
At least until the Obama-Chavez spin machine got cranked up.
If anybody ever again ponderously pronounces that Obama is a pragmatic centrist, I’m gonna ralf Goldstein’s hoppy beer all over Goldstein, even if the beer was made with Rabbit’s finest hippety hops.
please quote the honduran law you say Zelaya violated.
he was trying to have an advisory referendum. why is that illegal?
if it is illegal, wouldn’t the remedy be for the army to not carry out the referendum? why is trying to have an adviosry referendum such a high crime that they get to remove him from power?
is it the supreme court, by the way, that has the power to remove a president in honduras? or the army? summarily? without a hearing? isn’t there an impeachment process for trial by their senate? isn’t there some process that should take some time rather than happen over one weekend?
btw what’s wrong with changing a constitution to provide for or remove term limits?
we do it here in the USA all the time.
in fact do you know what the fuck you’re talking about, @73?
Jealous? Such a crock from the LHNM clueless wonder who did the same thing last January with three different names.
Of course you want an income tax. You have no income to tax.
Wazzup bro? Prayer circle broken thru your defenses yet? How about your offenses?
Case you didn’t notice, since your presently underemployed, WA presently has a boatload of anti-growth taxes in addition to the sales tax. Maybe explains why we stopped growing.
But look on the bright side: Boeing whines a good game, but everybody knows Bill Boeing’s Boeing will never abandon its true home and move its corp headquarters to Chicago.
The Rightwing Noise Machine has been trying for months to make Democrat Nancy Pelosi look like the torturer-in-chief.
She knew all along, they say. She turned a blind eye, they say. She was complicit, they say.
Bullshit!
What we are learning about Bush’s CIA is they lied to Congress over and over again.
“CIA Director Leon Panetta has terminated a … covert program the spy agency kept secret from Congress for eight years, Rep. Jan Schakowsky, a House Intelligence subcommittee chairwoman, said Friday. …
“‘The program is a very, very serious program and certainly deserved a serious debate at the time and through the years,’ she told The Associated Press ….
“Democrats revealed late Tuesday that the CIA Director Leon Panetta had informed Congress in late June that the spy agency had been withholding important information about a secret program begun after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. … Exactly what the classified program entailed is still unclear.
“Schakowsky … said Friday that the failure to inform Congress about the program was intentional. The CIA and Bush administration consciously decided not to tell Congress, she said. …
“Schakowsky … said … the CIA’s lying was systematic and inexcusable. … [She] described Panetta as ‘stunned’ that he had not been informed of the program for nearly five months into his tenure as director.
“She said this is the fourth time that she knows of that the CIA has misled Congress or not informed it in a timely manner, as required by law, since she began serving on the Intelligence Committee two and half years ago.
“In 2008, the CIA inspector general revealed that the CIA had lied to Congress about the accidental shoot down of American missionaries over Peru in 2001.
“In 2007, news reports disclosed that the CIA had secretly destroyed videotapes of interrogations of a terrorist suspect.”
(From article linked @72; quoted under fair use.)
Roger Rabbit Commentary: This blows the Far Right’s smear campaign against Pelosi clear out of the water. These Republican fuckers lied to Pelosi and the rest of Congress about what they were doing. There’s no longer any doubt whatsoever about that. And I have no doubts about what they were hiding. The question is, who did they murder?
Do I know what the fuck I’m taling about? I’m talking about a primo babe from the Wall Street Journal. So there.
And who the fuck are you, Khan? Some kind of crypto-commie A.Q. Khan Paki nuke terrorist? Go detonate yourself.
You mean the Tenet CIA? George Tenet? Appointed by Bill Clinton who made Iraq regime change the official policy of the United States?
“It started in 2001.” And the Clinton Recession started under Clinton. March 2000. Go back and check your portfoliio spreadsheet. You’ll see that Roger was bailing on tech stocks and Clinton’s irrational exuberance.
LHNM clueless wonder@75, so Bush shouldn’t have passed the prescription drug benefit? Even the libtardo WAPost claimed this Medicare prescription drug benefit would cost more than $1.2 trillion in the coming years. Hey, he ran up the deficit giving help to poor seniors!
Butt, to your simpleton mind that don’t count eh?
Whining hypocrite @57 — How much taxpayer money did the Bush regime spend on partisan propaganda?
And have you even bothered to look at the http://www.recovery.gov/ website? Do you have any fucking idea what’s in it? Don’t answer; you’ll only embarrass yourself more.
@59: … fine-tune the macroeconomy like a Strad OR a Les Paul …
#76: … since you’re presently underemployed …
Sorry about the typos, bruthas. Must be my time of the month.
@62 Back in ’64, we voted for LBJ but got a closet Goldwater. You recognize this was bad — good for you. Your suggestion is what? Vote for a Nixon and get a Nixon? Vote for a Bush and get a Bush? Vote for a Cheney and get a Beria? How is this good, or better? Explain, please.
@63 Yes. If McCain had won, he’d have given more tax cuts to the rich (e.g., his wife), thereby increasing the deficit; blocked expanded funding for unemployment benefits, putting more people into bankruptcy and cutting consumer spending further; stopped the bailout of the financial system, thereby plunging the world financial system into a deflationary death spiral; and cut government spending, thereby putting even more people out of work and more communities over the brink. Result? Great Depression II.
Republicans were stupid about economics in 1929, and they haven’t learned a fucking thing; they’re just as stupid about economics today as they were then.
@65 We can deal with that. We’ll make more rabbits, and we’ll make them faster than you animal-abusers can kill them. Your species is doomed and rabbits will rule!!!
@ 75 zzzzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZzzzz jealous that I addressed the HNMF over this has been…
I prefer some real entertainment..
@78 LOL! Crypto-commie??? Love that paranoid style there..
@79 Yes, the Clinton policy was regime change. Notice that he didn’t commit the country to a cash and death sink in the deserts of the middle east.
@80 finally something halfway interesting to address. Notice that the hapless chimp couldn’t bring himself to negotiate decent drug prices with big Republican campaign contributors. Either way Bush’s ploy to buy the votes of seniors FAILED MISERABLY..
@66 Boeing will bail on Washington to get whatever they can extort from South Carolina; and after they’ve bled those suckers dry, they’ll bail on them, too.
Go ahead moron. Show me my “I am Puddybud, NOT” moment.
Go ahead, make my day, FIEND
@67 “we’ll be the first ones they put up against the wall”
What you mean “we,” Republican? (Quoted from Tonto with permission)
@70 No, just a little slicker. These trolls are so clumsy they trip on their own shoelaces. SJ is full of shit too, but at least he knows how to sit on the escalator and ride it down on his ass.
Back in ’64 you were a Goldwater Girl. That means it’s almost an effing half century since you got something right. Extreme right.
Shit! Where did Stupes and the HNMF go?
@74 True to form, wingnuts never met a rightwing military coup they didn’t love. Why do Republicans hate democracy?
Yeah, the Honduras president is a leftist. Yeah, he likes Castro and Chavez. Yeah, he’s incompetent and unpopular. But he’s also elected. What part of “elected” do you fail to understand? Why not simply wait until the fed-up Hondurans voted him out? Why a military coup? How is a rightwing military dictatorship an improvement over an incompetent and ineffectual leftwing boob for the Honduran people?
Democracy is messy, dude. But juntas are even messier.
Addresses our vigorous SecState from the HA threads – how low can an authoritarian lefty turned insane righty sink?
Honduras is crucial only to the interests of sweatshop operators.
And to the boiling head matter inside the HNMF.
Duncan Renaldo was a friend of mine. He drinking whiskey while you drinking strychnine.
————-
We admire Piper, really we do, for getting a ‘get’ on Goldstein. As if we needed further proof that Goldy’s a rotter.
But now it’s time for Piper (and Puddy) to really get back in the game, to turn their wisdom to something more useful than proving that left-wing slime is left-wing slime.
It’s time to show that the conservative Republican right is right, and that we have a reason to live. Show us the way ahead, Piper & Puddy. The rest of us are too fractured and flaky to make sense of the disaster we’ve caused and endured. It’s up to you to show us the way to hope and change.
Revisionist @80: “And the Clinton Recession started under Clinton. March 2000.”
Wingnut Re-Education 101: Repeating a lie doesn’t make it true.
“The NBER’s Business Cycle Dating Committee has determined that a peak in business activity occurred in the U.S. economy in March 2001. A peak marks the end of an expansion and the beginning of a recession. The determination of a peak date in March is thus a determination that the expansion that began in March 1991 ended in March 2001 and a recession began. The expansion lasted exactly 10 years, the longest in the NBER’s chronology.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_2000s_recession
If you don’t like these facts, go argue with the professional economists at NBER. I’m only a reporter. Executive summary: Clinton presided over the longest business expansion in American history, and the economy plunged into recession less than two months after Bush seized office.
Has anyone else noticed that depressions and recessions almost always start when Republicans are in the White House?
@81 As the Bush prescription drug program was designed to benefit drug companies, not senior citizens, and increased the federal debt by hundreds of billions of dollars — no, Bush and the GOP Congress shouldn’t have passed it. Not as configured by them. He would have done senior citizens far more good by letting Medicare shop around for the best drug prices. He did just the opposite, making taxpayers pay monopoly prices for drugs, and then creating a gigantic program to make taxpayers buy vast amounts of drugs at monopolistic prices. Free market ideology? Bullshit! Bush was scared shitless of a free market in pharmaceuticals and went far out of his way to protect Big Pharma’s price monopoly. Oh, and whoooo was the biggest campaign contributor to the GOP? The drug industry, that’s who.
The Republican donors who gave the GOP and its candidates $4 billion in the 2000 – 2004 election cycle got $400 billion of tax breaks in return. A 100-to-1 return on investment in 4 years. One of the richest-paying “investments” they ever made. Bush and the GOP forced the rest of us to pay for it. Remember that, the next time you vote.
Indeed the HNMF must be on his last legs..
Pleading to Stupes and the Pooper to save the right wing??
It doesn’t get much better does it?
At least the fool has enough of a synapse to acknowledge the right wing fucked it totally for themselves.
HNMF you’ve made the best call – your judgment of people is as spot on as it was back in the day when you were a lefty. Keep up the good work.
You smelled the Rabbit turds. You read the agit-prop. Now here’s what really happened, via the Rupert Journal, propaganda you can believe in:
Fair-use plagiarism approved by Rupert himself, who affirms that the Clinton Recession began with Clinton’s Crash, March 2000.
@92 I was wrong half a century ago and I’ve been right ever since. And you? That dark tunnel you’re in isn’t a coal mine, it’s your own colon.
@96 “Honduras is crucial only to the interests of sweatshop operators.”
Bingo!
And to Republican consumers of Honduran cigars, which doesn’t include Rush, he smokes smuggled Havanas.
Pleading with Piper and Stupes to save the right?
I’ve been pleading with God to save YLB from him/her/itself. Too bad my pleading prayers have gone unheard and unheeded.
clueless wonder@101: Puddy is working on some stuff so Puddy can’t monitor your horsesASSshit 24×7. Butt, Puddy will say no one has ever asked you to participate in anything let alone save something.
Why?
You’re monomaniacal, remember fool?
@105, God don’t save atheists. Why would God save someone who hates Him, doesn’t acknowledge His Son and what He did for mankind, and rejects His power to create the world in seven days?
@103 ha ha ha ha ha — the “truth” according to Rupert Murdoch himself, or his paid lackeys. Priceless.
Rabbit, who was whining about a Bush Recession more than a year before we sustained two or more consecutive quarters of ‘negative growth,’ is suddenly a fanatic for chronological rectitude. Did you gag down a heaping helping of hypocrisy with your Post Toasties this morning? Or are you an oblivious idiot?
HNMT Scoops Cynical! Rasmussen Alert! Obama is … wait for it … MINUS EIGHT!
@108 WTF does this have to do with #105? Let me tell you something, buddy. If God wanted Republicans to have Cuban cigars, She’d lift the embargo Herself. Smoking is bad for you, son. God doesn’t want you to smoke because Hell is filling up with Republicans so fast that Old Beelzebub is trying to send his surplus to Heaven.
Jay Silverheels@102, you mean there are going to be more scummy Dummocrapts like Patrick Classified Secrets Leaky Libtardo Leahy? The fool trying to creat a truth commission and he couldn’t even be truthful about his leakings? That’s a shuddering concept.
@110 Nice rant, but it doesn’t change the fact the recession started in March 2001, and Bush became president in January 2001.
Wingnut SOP: When facts kick you in the ass, make ad hominem attacks, and if that doesn’t work, change the subject.
Cigar Afficionado: Tell us again, Rabbit, what kind of contraband cigar was it that President William Jefferson Horndog Clinton inserted in Kneepads Lewinsky?
105 – LMAO!! “Compassionate” conservatism from the HNMF.. You can see the love in every hateful post…
Pelletizer – March 2001. You mean when GWBush was operating under Clinton’s FY2001 budget?
Way to go, lib-tar-do!
Will do, 113. You Rabbit-punched me again, you naughty little darling.
Now can we change the subject?
@115 HTF would I know? I wasn’t there. You know about it more than I do. You wingnuts seem to obsess over what goes on in other people’s twats. You’re all voyeurs and perverts. Why is that? Because you’ve never been laid?
@114: Smoking tasty one.
Like you lying lawyers say, if you don’t have the facts, argue the law. And if you don’t have facts or the law, baffle them with bullshit and rabbit turds.
@117 Of course he was operating under Clinton’s budget in March 2001, but the federal budget — which was in balance — had nothing to do with the 2001-2002 recession. That recession was caused by market excesses. You really ought to do a little research before you publicly embarrass yourself by looking like an uneducated idiot, puddinghead.
Trying to find which paid lackey from the Rupert Journal spoke truth to Dave Ross. Anybody help me with the citation?
(On a crashing machine, here, and can’t give you the due diligence and carefully honed citations you deserve. But let’s give Rabbit and YLB carefully honed citations for public disorder, anyway.)
106 – I’m working on shit too fool.
I dug up the magic moment on or about 4/27/2005 when you made your first appearance here. What did you do?
You called Goldy a coward. Name-calling right out of the gate.
You say you were here earlier and I have my suspicions who you were calling yourself. It will be revealed in due time.
Over 4 years later and a fool remains a fool.
@121 Once again, nice try, but those aren’t my facts. Those are the NBER’s facts. Let’s recap:
You claimed the recession started when Clinton was president.
That’s bullshit, and I pointed out objective facts to prove it, and cited sources.
You reverted to name calling and ad hominem attacks. Now I’m waiting for you to change the subject, after you finally realize you’re digging a deeper hole for yourself by the minute.
@106 Why do you think God would listen to you? Why should She? You belong to Old Beelzebub. Your t-shirt even says “Property of the Devil.”
The Clinton Crash, aka Bill’s Manic Recession:
… and unleashed Clinton’s depression of March 2000.
(Quoted stuff via Selfa, pages 25 and 26.)
My t-shirt says Property of the Rutgers’ Womens’ B-Ball Team.
I thought the HNMF never met a deregulation he didn’t like.
What if a Bush or Reagan did that?
Nothing to see here, move on…
I don’t know. How much? More directly, how is that relevant to spending $18m on a simple website?
Are you a web developer? Can you assess the time/costs/technologies needed to build a website? I thought your expertise was in public records and investing.
I own a web development company. I wish I could have got that recovery.gov contract. I could have built the site in a 6-8 weeks, put it in maintenance mode with 2 junior developers and then retired my entire immediate family.
I lied. Even as I posted that Clinton’s Recession began with the Clinton Crash of March 2000, I knew the official start date of the recession was March 2001. I, after all, have been a stickler for 2-consecutive-quarters probity. I wantonly violated my own sense of recession rectitude, and I am truly sorry. But I’m YLB”s slutty twisted sister, so what the fuck did you expect?
I remember well that, after GWB’s ‘election’ in November 2000, he was scolded by Democrats for talking down the economy, for correctly stating that Clinton had thrown us into an economic quagmire. Bush didn’t have to talk down the economy because it was already down. We know that now.
It crashed in March 2000. That’s when the Clinton Recession began, but the lagging indicators didn’t catch up until March 2001.
Oops. Lied again. Can’t help it, having been spawned in YLB’s gene pool.
Pelletizer you stupid stupid dumb bunny…
Alan Greenspan tells old peeps not to invest in dot.com firms – March 1999 Fed Reserve chairman
Nasdaq all-time closing high of 5.048.62 – March 10, 2000
NYSE hits closing high of 11,722.98, then it heads south. – January 14, 2000
April 14, 2000 “Dow and the NASDAQ logged their biggest single-day losses ever on Friday. The Dow Jones industrial average declined 617.78 to 10305.77, a loss of 5.66 percent, while the NASDAQ composite index went down 355.49 points, a loss of 9.67 percent.”
Don’t let the revisionist WikiPedia facts slap you side your head dumb bunny!
Pelletizer, these your words dumb bunny…“the recession started in March 2001, and Bush became president in January 2001.” So how could Bush affect something already in place?
BTW see @131. Good timeline!
Pretty sure I haven’t been here four years, wasting time. And pretty sure I never called Goldstein a coward. But I did call him, about 15 minutes ago, a slimy rotter.
Anyway, YLB, the salient point is that you get these things wrong. I’ve called you on your reign of error, but you just keep reigning and drooling anyway. Despite my prayers. Mazel Tov.
@49 MOT
Not mutually exclusive. You propose a false dichotomy.
133 – Unless you revealed yourself again, the owner of the post @ 106 is Puddybud.
Do I get things wrong sometimes? Perhaps. But I think I called the collapse of the right wing pretty well.
The right was so WRONG it had to fail.
Pray for yourself and your beloved adopted ideology.
Wasting time?? As if you haven’t between the massive mood swing between authoritarian leftism and radical conservatism.
Depressions and recession almost always start when Republicans are in the White House? How about Martin van Ruin, Democrat. Or Grover Cleveland, Democrat. Or Woodrow Wilson, Democrat, with the post-war panic of 1919-1920. Or … Bill Clinton, Democrat, with the Great Clinton Depression of March 2000!!!!!!!
I posted a couple of days ago that we need strong federal legislation to protect worker’s rights and worker health, and to discourage and punish unfair labor practices by employers.
136 TYTS
RR already pointed this out, but you appear to be chronically immune to listening. That recession began in March of 2001.
http://www.nber.org/cycles/november2001/
The second recession of Bush’s administration began in December 2007. We’re still in that one.
http://www.nber.org/cycles/dec2008.html
130 TYTS
131 Pud
The stock market, and Dow Jones Industrial average, and the US economy are all very diffferent things. You should learn about what the differences are.
But just to tell ya, recessions do not date from when the stock market or DJIA reach a peak. The US economy can grow all through a bear market.
Actually the March 2001 recession was the Greenspan recession. His interest rate increases in 1999-2000 strangled the economy and shut down credit sources. Just to nudge his buddy Bush into office, you see.
I’m pretty sure that the December 2007 recession was all Bush.
Sorry about the 106 confusion, little brother.
Remember that I also called the Republican meltdown, having waited until it was so blindingly obvious that even I could see it, but still way ahead of the curve.
I told the inconvenient truth years ago that Rush led us to Bush and that Bush was leading us over a cliff. I told the inconvenient truth about Sarah Palin, whom I adore, in August 2008.
Now I’m asking Puddy and Piper to save us before it’s too late. Bad things happen when one party, yours, runs everything. We’ve never needed conservatives more, but conservatives and Republicans have never been more mired in quagmire. Not in 1933. Not in 1965. Not in 1974.
Rasmussen shows that there are still enough independent Independents to understand the perils of Obama, but Rasmussen also shows no alternative. No conservatives to pick up Obama’s pieces. GOP Party identification is 20% and heading south, for the very good reason that we badly betrayed the public’s trust.
Oh, and the “two consecutive quarters of decine,” while a common folk tale, is not how the NBER measures a recession. Read and learn.
@139: When in doubt, blame the Fed. Works for me.
Lib Charles Morris in Tillion Dollar Meltdown and Hayek-libertarian Tom Woods in Meltdown both blame Greenspan for the current meltdown.
Roger
68. Roger Rabbit spews:
07/10/2009 at 9:25 am
YEP .. that is what I am saying. Other than class envy, the only reason to give a flying fuck about pay differential is how it affects your pay or, if you are socially conscious, the pay of the lower (incl middle) classes.
The problem with Clinton/Bush/Reagan capitalism is that it created no incentives to grow or maintian the living standards of the lower classes in America. Why should Paul Allen make investments in Seattle if his return on on investment is higher in Thailand?
@96 “Show us the way ahead, Piper & Puddy.”
Damn! So well said, Tonto!
Which is why industrial policy needs to be national.
Cut us some slack, Dad. We don’t even confuse the Dow with the stock market. Nor did we say two consecutive qtrs of ‘decline.’ ‘Negative growth’ is the awkward formulation, derived from GNP, whatever that is.
I know the blown-out bubble of March 2000 was not the same as a blown-out economy, but the March 2000 tech crash triggered the lag of lagging economic indicators elsewhere. All triggered by Greenspan, of course.
Diddled Luvr:
Yeah, but we all know that the strains were beginning dude. Your ideology won’t allow you to be circumspect.
Fool@135: Yes that was Puddybud’s post cuz Puddy is Puddybud.
What a clueless wonder.
BTW Puddy identified you and your three names back in January. Puddy asked Darryl to flush you out but he wouldn’t. And, you admitted to it, so Puddy moved on. Puddy ain’t gonna do your bidding fool.
143
THen again, I’m not in doubt.
Between 1999 and 2001, the fed raised the federal funds rate six times, raising it to 6.50%.
http://www.federalreserve.gov/fomc/fundsrate.htm
In contrast, they lowered it to 1.00% by 2003 to try to jump-start the Bush economy (which never DID deliver jobs in quantities sufficient to keep up with population increases), and then raised it SEVENTEEN times between 2004 and 2006 to raise it to only 5.25%.
One thing that tells us is that the 2000 fed fuds rate was pretty damn high. And for no reason, during a time when we could already see indicators of economic slack.
You seeing any light at the end of my tunnel, 103? Since your head is so far up my ass?
148 Pud
Oh yes, I’M the delusional one. Uh-huh.
You’re belaboring the obvious, Dad, as if we’re ignorant of the obvious. We aren’t.
But there’s nothing obviously definitive about the economic metrics we use; many or most are as elastic (pun intended) as Silly Putty.
Diddled Lur, where did Puddy claim you were delusional? Puddy said your ideology won’t allow you to be circumspect. Maybe in your dictionary they are synonyms but Puddy thinks cautious is a better synonym. Kind of like your commentary on NutsTooTight and his and your use of anecdotal evidence when the facts were slapping y’all up side yo face.
Butt…
Okay you’re delusional. Hope that helps.
Pud…
@43 Hey rabbit
You going to make me lose respect for your ramblings.
Not everyone is unemployed, and folks in this country are not very good at putting off self-gratification. Of course they don’t need half the crap they buy, never stopped them after other recessions.
I’ve been through a few downturns, and in Seattle I’m not seeing half of the pain that CA went through in the early 90’s. Hell, I was down in big box land, Tukwila, the other day and saw large ‘we are hiring’ signs at many stores.
Now if you want to talk jobless recoveries…
the early 80’s sucked for the last baby boomers. Most of the people I knew went to U, graduated and then took shit jobs unrelated to the degree. Most did not start in their current careers until the late 80’s, early 90’s.
—
And don’t respond that June retail sales were down. The weather sucked in the rest of the country during June.
Idiot @ 148
You keep bringing up those three names. I don’t even remember that and I’m too busy right now to chase yet another one of the dust devils that kick up in your empty skull.
You would try to get me banned or some such. You’re such a ugly fool. Believe me, I’ll look into this latest controversy when I have a moment.
I still challenge to you find my “I am Puddybud, NOT” moment. I’ll save you some trouble: it doesn’t exist.
Without a link you stink and as long as I’m commenting here and you’re still clinging to your rank hypocrisy, you’ll never be free of your ugly legacy.
WE WILL NEVER FORGET WHAT YOUR KIND DID TO THIS COUNTRY!
140 – What is this? The hating, name-morphing, name-calling fiend is actually sounding halfway reasonable???
Your choices as usual are grotesque. That were that way when you were on the left and they’re that way tody.
Sarah? What’s there to adore? Her figure? Her cheekbones? Winsome at one time certainly but now a bit long in the tooth and they hardly compensate for her atrocious, corrupt, polarizing and ultimately incompetent style of govervance. She’s a thorough embarrassment and one the best things ever to happen to progressives for a long time. May she stay on the cover of whatever rag Greta’s Hubbardian Hubbie gets her on for a long, long time.
And O do I so wish that the likes of the Pooper and Stupes rise to prominence as spokespeople for conservatism. Progressivism will never have more effective benefactors..
153
You can claim not to be ignorant of the obvious, but your comments belie it. And your comrades as well.
154 P
Jeez, Pud, I am using sarcasm to assert that you are delusional. Try to keep up.
Reich is correct.
One of the things we are going to HAVE to do going forward from here is to make major commitments to improve and equalize public primary and secondary education and college education. No one should be denied a college education for financial reasons. This generation is NOT better educated than the one that came before.
Also, because of the preceding, in our coming new economy we must spend more on public services that can be supplied by less skilled workers. Examples abound: Picking up trash, cleaning streets, fixing potholes, smaller buses that run more frequently, libraries that stay open longer, playgrounds that are better-maintained, and so on. We could do these things but we don’t, and I think we’ll have to or we’ll have vast numbers of less-skilled workers going unemployed. We are a wealthy country, we can do this.
etc. are the kind of things government should be doing. It’s also clear that if you compare the United States to other countries, it’s possible for a country to have cleaner, better-maintained streets than we have. Doing better on this score wouldn’t be brain surgery and would provide low-skill jobs. And, yes, it would cost money. But the United States of America is the wealthiest society the world has ever known. It’s a bit ridiculous that we can’t repair damaged sidewalks in a timely manner. Or, rather, given that we clearly can repair damaged sidewalks, it’s ridiculous that we don’t.
Interesting that Reich’s implication is that replacement buying isn’t enough, even though from a sustainability POV, that’s exactly enough. So our economy is geared really toward buying lots of stuff, lots more than we need. And that’s a good thing?
@71
Bush CIA Had ‘Very, Very Serious’ Secret Program
No, I don’t know what it was. All the media knows so far is:
1. It started in 2001.
2. The CIA intentionally hid the program from Congress and repeatedly lied to Congress.
3. Even Leon Panetti, President Obama’s CIA director, wasn’t told about it until last month.
4. When Panetti found out, he immediately terminated the program.
5. Congress is preparing to launch an investigation.
Sounds to me like they were killing people. Maybe American citizens. Such as people who knew too much and threatened to blow the whistle on the Bush regime’s crimes. It’ll be interesting to see where this goes
roger, you’re right, i heard the same thing. and the killing was done by the mossad.
Moron@155: Yep, that “dust devil” was an EPIC FAIL.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAhahahahahahahahahahahahahahhaha
Diddled Luvr, sarcasm? You mean like your EPIC FAIL anecdotal definition last week?
Not only has Puddy kept up but Puddy left you in da dust!
clueless wonder calling someone a fiend when he is the dumbest member of the HA libtardos?
Dude, you never sound reasonable, not even half-way!!!
Monomaniacal one!