Left In Lowell

I Rest My *Bleep!*ing Case!

13 Responses to “I Rest My *Bleep!*ing Case!”

1. Shawn Says:
   February 5th, 2009 at 2:43 pm

   I notice that you (and your fellow lefties) take this completely out of context, and leave out the rest of the discussion.

   What was proposed was to substitute tax cuts for the spending in the package. The alternative program includes:
   http://demint.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=JimsJournal.Detail&Blog_ID=24188981-bb47-776d-5cd2-e4420988022a

   1) Defuse the 2011 tax bomb: Stop tax increases set to hit the economy in 2011.

   o Permanently repeal the alternative minimum tax once and for all;

   o Permanently keep the capital gains and dividends taxes at 15 percent;

   o Permanently kill the Death Tax for estates under $5 million, and cut the tax rate to 15 percent for those above;

   o Permanently extend the $1,000-per-child tax credit;

   o Permanently repeal the marriage tax penalty;

   o Permanently simplify itemized deductions to include only home mortgage interest and charitable contributions.

   2) Long term, broad based tax cuts for American families and businesses.

   o Lower top marginal income rates – the one paid by most of the small businesses that create new jobs – from 35 percent to 25 percent.

   o Simplify the tax code to include only two other brackets, 15 and 10 percent.

   o Lower corporate tax rate as well, from 35 percent to 25 percent. The U.S. corporate tax rate is second highest among all industrialized nations, driving investment and jobs overseas. Lowering this key rate will unlock trillions of dollars to be invested in America instead of abroad.

   o This is not only good economic policy, but a matter of fairness. No American family should be forced to pay the federal government more than 25 percent of the fruits of their hard labor.

   Those polls that I quoted earlier, also show that most Americans admit that tax cuts work (history has proven it) to improve the economy.

   When less than 20% of the current spending plan includes actual stimulus spending, and the rest is pet projects.. I would vote for this as well.

   “Conventional macroeconomics” calls for real stimulus spending, along with tax cuts.

   When you have a tax system based on most of the tax revenue coming from capital gains taxes, when your financial market collapses you need to get more money into the rest of the people’s hands to prop up the other tax revenue streams.

2. Lynne Says:
   February 5th, 2009 at 3:18 pm

   Yup, that’s the dumbest f-ing thing I’ve ever heard of, I still rest my case.

3. Lynne Says:
   February 5th, 2009 at 3:20 pm

   By which I mean, your first sentence: “What was proposed was to substitute tax cuts for the spending in the package.”

   Dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb. And suicidal. Sorry.

   “Pet projects” - ie, spending on stuff, that hires people and builds things. YOU define that as unnecessary. The rest of the world, and most economists that aren’t in the tank for the right wing, do not.

4. Shawn Says:
   February 5th, 2009 at 3:25 pm

   Democratic pet projects that do nothing but buy votes and increase the dependency and entitlement society are exactly what need to go.

   They are unnecessary.

   For service jobs that are the role of government, add them to your operational budget, not an emergency stimulus package.

   Infrastructure, capital improvements, new r&d.. thats where you create and enhance an economy. The rest of it is just political pork and you must be the only one who doesn’t see that.. honey.

5. Lynne Says:
   February 5th, 2009 at 3:33 pm

   Shawn, whatever. You are not going to convince me on your philosophy, and I am not going to convince you.

   But they are not unnecessary. Tell the parents of special ed needs kids that the spending on special needs in the bill wasn’t necessary. Tell the voters that their public transit stimulus will get cut under the Nelson-Collins plan. Tell them that the state budget part of the plan might get cut, so that when the states have to cut education and services funding, there’s no recourse to restore them. And so on. And so forth.

   No, go ahead and tell them. I dare you.

   When you poll on the individual spending needs THAT ARE IN THIS BILL and that are threatened, people OVERWHELMINGLY want it, and will even - gasp! - forgo a tax cut for it. That is why Republican’ts frame it as “pork” - because if they said, we want to cut your school funding, your higher ed, your health care, your unemployment and your social security and medicare benefits, you. Would. Lose. Every. Time.

6. waittilnextyr Says:
   February 5th, 2009 at 6:39 pm

   Tax cuts end up predominantly in the hands of those that don’t need them, and what little the working class received in the past ended up in China or the MidEast. It would be foolhardy to put all our eggs in that basket again.

   With the rampant borrowing to fund the wars, lower taxes, bailout failed financial institutions and now pump the economy, everyone should realize taxes will be increased to settle the accounts sooner or later. Not only will the high-end tax breaks sunset in a couple of years, it is likely the marginal rates will increase at the top, Capital Gains may be modified to discount from one’s marginal tax bracket and the Social Security tax income ceiling will be removed. It’s either that or the dollar’s decline will effectively apply an inflation tax to everyone.

7. Christopher Says:
   February 5th, 2009 at 6:53 pm

   Have to take issue with this line from comment #4: “Infrastructure, capital improvements, new r&d.. thats where you create and enhance an economy. The rest of it is just political pork and you must be the only one who doesn’t see that.. honey.” I’ll start by doing my best to ignore the very patronizing last phrase of that quote.

   As to the merits, you’ve created a contradictory loop. Those ARE the things to spend money on, but are at the same time easy to label “pork”, so which is it? I’m baffled by the conplaints about all the spending in this bill. It is after all a stimulus package and last I checked the way to stimulate the economy was to spend money!

8. Shawn Says:
   February 5th, 2009 at 8:18 pm

   The very obvious patronizing statement was a direct response to the same tone I got on an earlier comment.. I assume that’s why Lynne ignored it.

   I agree.. we have no chance of convincing each other of anything, I just wanted readers out there to know that there is considerable discussion going on regarding this stimulus package.

   Christopher, spending money randomly, or only on left-wing programs is not stimulus.. its pandering.

   Don’t think that anybody notices that the greatest amount of the pork spending starts after the 2010 election.

9. Lynne Says:
   February 6th, 2009 at 11:33 am

   “Christopher, spending money randomly, or only on left-wing programs is not stimulus.. its pandering.”

   No, it’s what YOU label it. Most other people call it “spending money to help the greater good.”

10. joe from Lowell Says:
    February 6th, 2009 at 11:55 am

    Nothing like a capital gains tax cut to inject money into the economy during a period of collapsing stock and home values. Huhwuzzah?

    They just took every tax cut they ever heard of and pretended it was stimulus.

11. joe from Lowell Says:
    February 6th, 2009 at 12:08 pm

    Shawn, you don’t have the foggiest idea what you’re talking about. I don’t think you could even provide a working definition of “stimulus.”

    In a period of severe economic contraction, demand plummets. That means that suppliers - which are also employers - lose customers and sales. This forces them to scale back on their own purchases and payrolls.

    With me so far, honey?

    A stimulus program is one that replaces that demand. This means spending, either by the government itself directly buying things (bridges, a new auto fleet for the GSA, the services of a whole bunch of teachers, policemen, and DPW workers) or by transfering money to people who will spend - not save, not invest, spend - it. In this way, demand that used to be provided by people and companies spending the money they earned, which has been restricted to do job losses and a lack of business, is now provided for public projects.

    But you act as if putting the phrase “left-wing” in a sentence about a project means that the money being spent on it doesn’t actually enter the economy. I don’t care if the line item is for a meditation/peace studies/sex ed/community organizing center to replace its roof with with solar panels and hire 20 Code Pink members to teach school children to put condoms on bananas; it’s still the government pushing money out into the economy, which the recipients will then spend, which the contractors and Code Pink members will then spend on construction materials and soy bars, which the providers of those products will then spend…and on and on and on.

    By not knowing how this works, you prove your ignorance of basic economics. By arguing about line items being politically incorrect, you demonstrate the fundamentally non-economic, partisan, political concerns you’re putting above sound economics.

12. tim Says:
    February 6th, 2009 at 12:37 pm

    Talk about spending with a libertarian/republican/conservative long enough, and it suddenly becomes “spending money randomly”. Talk about regulations, and it becomes “arbitrary regulations”. I think I’ll try this next time I’m discussing the death penalty - randomly executing people is so totally wrong!

13. Shawn Says:
    February 8th, 2009 at 11:21 am

    Joe,
    We tried all that crap before and it failed miserably. Prior to WW-II all those government programs were pumping money out into the economy, and collapsing in on themselves.

    When the grants and government money dried up, so did the economy. All you did was buy a couple years, while making generations later pay for it.

    It was only WW-II, which forced us to retool production lines, improve transportation, communications, and electronics infrastructures where whole new economic markets blossomed into being in the generations following the war.

    The war forced us to do real economic stimulus.

    You guys are calling just to pump money in, hoping it will create something that will continue on its own.

    Priming a pump only works if there’s water in the well, otherwise all you’re getting back is the primer.

    In the long run, its better to first drill a little more and improve the well itself.

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