Please allow me to revise and extend.
Obama claims to be a different kind of leader. I would like to consider a scenario in which he becomes a one term leader. This particular patter of events has less than a 50% chance of occurring. Think of it as a risk assessment more than perdition.
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Are we different yet? Are we different yet?
I don?t feel different.
What we see is Pelosi tapping years of pent up liberal demand and the Republicans doing what they can to keep it pent. They protest. Now that cons have regained the power to protest government action the Dems might wish they had left a few pet RINOs standing in the House.
Lets make a deal you can?t refuse is still the game in the Peoples House. It?s too urgent, big, complicated to read let alone understand. If there were one evil habit I could remove from U.S. government it would be, ?Don?t worry they?ll never read all this.? They write bills in style and organization that prevents people from having strong feelings about it or even bothering to read beyond the bumper sticker title. Then they hate talk radio for translating bills in human language.
The de-stimulious bill is old time politics. I won?t look at what your take and you won?t look at mine. Look for ?log rolling? where people vote for the whole monstrosity because a few of the earmarks are theirs. No one will ever find all the Christmas presents House Dems wrapped for them selves under this big stinky tree. Some speculate that they put extravagances in so Obama could look like an in control powerful moderate when he takes them out. I think that they followed the good old, ?if one is good four are better? rule. Each member has redundancy so that if bits get broken off wile the kids (press) are playing each member still get theirs.
At the Macro economic level the biggest gift might be the cash that will disappear into unions due to the building projects. Like bread cast on waterit comes back minions a large handing feel into campaign coffers. Some members spouse might even get a gratuity.
The real problems happen at the micro level where details of the bill, administrative language outside the bill and ?oversight? leave members controlling very narrow operations. Dose the road expansion stop at john?s property or dose it continue on to Betty?s property. John and Betty care about that. Members know how to take advantage of that kind of caring. Some times they write the roads up to their own personal property. They care about that as well.
How dare those evil executives from highly regulated industries pay money to politicians who demand it? Politicians should regulate them even more.
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Insert Blogo joke here.
He mentioned that he thought Obama had promised Hillary 10 million dollars in fundraising (to pay back loans she personally made to her campaign) to get her out of the race. Blogo implied that it was the same kind of money for political favor the he was being (now has been) impeached for. Obama wasn't sticking up children?s hospitals as far as we know. Obama might have benefited from party money that was raised by others sticking up children?s hospitals but that's different.
This is more of, "You can step on me but you can't scrape me off your shoe." Blogo is threatening to keep this up unless he gets some favorable deals for him self and his family.
Violence threatened is violence achieved.
I have a problem with elected officials who complain about people giving them money. It?s like a girl in a bikini with an educated wiggle complaining when the boys notice. She?s not making a stand for modesty or equality just trolling for a better class of gigolos. The congress demands the money for protection from government or favors from government. Then, it blames the victims for paying what they demanded. Some call that criminalizing the symptoms and spreading the disease.
This bad bank idea is bad indeed. It has bribe mill written all over it. The government would buy assets many of which are exotic and impossible to price (determine value) from banks at inflated prices designed to subsidies the banks. The banks are still giving campaign donations to the congress that is oversetting the deals. Boy do members get angry if they don't get oversight. So I'm not even going to think about congress members asking banks to hire their friends and wives and girlfriends as a way to get more of their poison assets bought at higher prices.
You can run a pump and dump on the shares of the banks or on the underling assets. A member could threaten to not work with a bank because their airplanes are French, deflate the banks share price long enough to buy in with his own money and then changes his public opinion concerning the bank creating the opportunity to cash out with profits. For this to really work you need to launder the transactions so you can conceal your involvement. If you do oversight of Treasury, Justice Commerce labor or any intelligence agency you get a masters class on moony laundering. There are thousands of ways to play.
If Obama cuts in and designs a program with out lots of opportunities for congress to pick winners and losers congress may delay the deal. A cut in all corporate income taxes helps the economy but makes it much harder to game for personal profit. If the president lets the degenerate gamblers in congress chase their losses with more of the peoples (Republics) money he could look like a big fool in 12. If their gutsy enough to give ACORN money in the emergency bill then there might be a ?house post office scandal? lurking in the fine print that we won?t find until it?s hot and ready to pop.
One of the biggest problems with the resent economic practices was that people got to play with out putting their own skin in the game. They got paid for selling the lone but didn't lose any money if it didn't get played back. So they started lending 110% of the value of the house to people who didn't have proof of employment. Then they sold the loans to in the form of bonds. It was counterfeiting of bonds.
As others have said, "I thought Obama ran on a rather different agenda."
After putting consequence amounts of money into bank stocks to protect them from insolvency the government announced a desire for a public private partnership to invest more money into markets. The private sector saw the none-plan and pulled large amounts of money out of the relevant stocks in a sell off.
Dems hit W fairly hard about his "extortion note" of a none-plan for the first trunk of TARP money. Now, team Obama, drop a new plan. Step one is do more of what W did but let congress intervene more. Step two is keep thinking for a wile and get back to us with better ideas.
Private sector money wants back in at the right time. They know that big fortunes are made at times like these. What are they waiting for? Largely they are waiting for government to work out all it's spastic convolutions. Government is so big and unpredictable and hostel to "profiteers" that it could wreck any investment with the stroke of a executive branch pen. So private money tends to wait government can go to weeks with out changing directions.
The best government act is to write a public plan that clearly describes what the government will do. The difference between a so-so plan and a perfect plan is smaller than the difference between a stable plan yesterday and a hope for a plan tomorrow.
Smart people prefer to make their bets after they have learned the rules of the game. The government wants to make the rules up as it goes along. Fiddle music by fire light.
Imagine the seen. As your, women and children first, life boat moves slowly away from the sounds of survivors in the cold Atlantic, you notice the captains shoes under the woman?s coat he used to sneak into the first boat.
As the TARP and Stimulus projects lumber forward in profound complexity one wonders what they will look like in hind site after the urgency subsides.
link You read it and give me a summary.
What self serving laws got slipped in all the excitement?
Remember Freddy and Fanny looked good until they didn?t. Subprime used to mean progress not boondoggle. If it looks this bad now how can we predict it?s after taste. Remember the rush to get debit cards to Katrina victims. ?That looked good in the cold dawn light of a strip club parking lot,? he said sarcasticly.
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Credit If banks won?t lean let other people do it like credit unions. Rather than give banks money for nothing tell them government will match 1 for 1 interest received on loans they make in the next six weeks. They would find money and people to borrow it.
Housing Wave cap gains tax on homes bought in next six weeks.
Jobs Wave two years of the employers side of payroll tax on new hires in the next six weeks provided that the total number of employees for that employer is higher than it has been in the last year.
Consumer Spending Wave employee side of payroll tax up to the median individual income for 25 weeks.
That all might cost a trillion dollars.
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Timely Couldn?t they call the Friday vacation a district work session?
Temporarily Resetting marks on programs-New entitlements including healthcare spending which prepares the way for Daschle care.
Targeted ACORN got money for community stabilization. Dems say that only a small percentage of the bill has been held up by GOP as miss-targeted. But that?s like saying that only a small percentage of you house is roach infested. If you see one that means that all the good hiding places are full of roaches.
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Placebo Effect. It?s not what you do it?s how calm and controlled you look doing it. This won?t be the last attempt to stimulate. Remember Japan. I don?t think we will be as stuck as Japan but I do think that once we get one train like this out of the station congress will absolutely find any excuse to send another one next year.
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Tax A contracting tax base w/ expanding entitlement spending could be killer.
Interest If interest paid on T Bill2 went from 2 % up to 4 % it wipes out the budgets whole cabinet departments in a blink.
Inflation Money hot off the presses.
Don?t give me any more of this save or create x number of jobs. There is constant churn in jobs with new one created to replace old ones destroyed. Claiming that all created jobs are gifts from the government is weak. Calling a job that doesn?t end a saved job is even weaker. If Obama wants to be accountable he needs to pick a number of total American payroll by a fixed date. Anything else is a shell game.
link style="mso-spacerun: yes"> The Online NewsHour 2/12/09
News Hour had a good discussion. Check out the whole thing at the link.
?Dismal prospects for special envoy?
AARON MILLER: Exactly. You now have to add to that, although the crisis isn't the same order of magnitude, an Israeli divided or broken house. And broken houses in the Middle East don't lead to bold and historic decisions.
When peace has come, very rarely, it's because bold Israeli prime ministers -- Menachem Begin, for example, Yitzhak Rabin -- and bold Arabs -- Anwar Sadat, King Hussein, even Yasser Arafat in his first incarnation -- had the power to make these decisions.
We're out of the age, frankly, of heroic politics when it comes to the Arab-Israeli conflict. And that is going to present the Obama administration with a huge challenge. George Mitchell is an extraordinary negotiator, talented man. I have profound respect for him. But the Obama administration is all dressed up, but there's nowhere right now for them to go.And the more George Mitchell goes there without producing something, the more he becomes part of the political furniture. That's what happened in the Clinton administration, and that's something that an American president must prevent happening again, not being taken seriously by tiny powers who are all too interested in promoting their own political agendas at the expense of ours.??..?
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Highlights in above quote are mine. Obama moved into the White House claiming that W had failed to make peace because he failed to talk to enemies. That argument now pressures Obama to talk up some results. Where can he look for reachable fruit? Neither, the Arab-Israeli nor a plan B Pakistan ?India deal will be spectacular game changing events. Israeli and India don?t feel sorry for defeating terrorists. They could join new agreements of a practical type. ?We are happy to let people who are not of our race or religions help us kill terrorist? is a very possible position. ?We renounce the use of force and embrace peace through vulnerability? is not an option. They won?t be tearing down defenses and turning control of land and weapons over to the U.N.
So Obama?s possible deals will look like continuations of present trends rather than a new style. Anbar provience is the future. Camp David is so last century. Obama will slowly let the pressure of reality push him back into the W world view.
Obama maybe a rock star but national leaders are rarely groupies.
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A nuke agreement with the Russians is much more doable. Obama can be a Putin groupie.
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