The Stimulus Seems to have failed

[ideogram]

I don't think BeAChooser is lying by omission, as you suggest by presenting the facts that he has.

He's just making his case. If you disagree that the stimulus was a bust, then present some evidence to the contrary.

It appears that the evidence is overwhelmingly pointing toward the stimulus failing to achieve its stated goals.

The stimulus has not achieved the stated goals. This is due to unrealistic goals. Whether the stimulus has helped is another question, probably unanswerable.

 

[ideogram]

Seriously, I'm not interested in becoming an expert. If that means I lose an internet forum argument, so be it.

Since this has become an anything-goes thread, let me say it is obvious you will say anything that helps the Republicans, and nothing that harms them. You mix facts and opinion, data and speculation. Your goal here is to advance the Republican party by any means necessary. That is not what I am here for. I like to learn things, but wading through your BS to find the real information is exhausting.

I am not a Democrat because of a list of facts. And that is not why you are a Republican, either.

 

[Cavemonster]

And the free house. And free cars. And free planes. And all the other perks that come with being His Majesty. You just don't get it, do you?

I just want to clarify this.
You're sincerely criticizing the President for drawing a salary and living in the Whitehouse. And I don't get it?

I suppose I don't. I cannot think of a single rational reason this is a cause for contempt. It absolutely boggles my mind.

 

[BeAChooser]

The stimulus has not achieved the stated goals. This is due to unrealistic goals.

But Obama claimed those goals were based on analysis and his judgement.

Are you saying that the analyses were wrong?

Are you saying his judgement isn't any good?

Can we believe any analysis that Obama's adminstration cites to justify all the bills democrats have pushed into law since the Stimulus?

Has Obama and his adminstration spent trillions of additional dollars and obligated us to spend trillions and trillions more based on unrealistic goals, models that don't work, and bad judgement?

Don't you think maybe we should get the answer to that question before we let him and his party do more damage?

Whether the stimulus has helped is another question, probably unanswerable.

I think it's been more than adequately answered on this thread.

 

[BeAChooser]

Seriously, I'm not interested in becoming an expert.

The problem is you vote. Maybe you should become one before you vote again. And you seem willing to make false claims that might influence how others vote. That's a problem that needs to be addressed. And I'm trying.

Since this has become an anything-goes thread, let me say it is obvious you will say anything that helps the Republicans, and nothing that harms them.

LOL! With 177 posts to your name, you know nothing about my posting history. If you did, you'd know that I've said plenty of things that might hurt republicans in my time here and even when I was a member of Free Republic. Infact, I just got done agreeing on another thread to something that might potentially hurt republicans (see posts http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=6131081&postcount=304 and http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=6131256&postcount=309 ).

Your goal here is to advance the Republican party by any means necessary. That is not what I am here for. I like to learn things, but wading through your BS to find the real information is exhausting.

Was that really your purpose? Because you don't seem willing to absorb any facts that might hurt democrats. Can you point to any instances when you've posted something that might hurt democrats, like I just did with respect to republicans? In fact, can you point to a post where you are just critical of democrats? I can point to many posts where I've been critical of republicans.

I am not a Democrat because of a list of facts.

Yes, I suspect it's all about feelings of compassion, misplaced guilt and other such emotions, and an impaired judgement due to an inattention to facts and history. But that doesn't have to be a terminal condition. I've tried to point you to some facts, history and sound logic on this thread, but you seem unwilling to even listen. That's unfortunate, because otherwise you seem like a nice person (and by the way, I have quite a few democrat friends so I'm not unwilling to be friendly with democrats). I actually admire many past (and few current) democrats. I've even voted for a democrat a time or two or three in my years on earth. But I wouldn't vote for any of the current democrat leaders. Not on your life. They are corrupt liars and they are NOT in the mold of past democrat giants like JFK when it comes to understanding economics, national defense and the greatness of America. Now we have a democrat leader who apologizes for America at every turn, and who has demonstrated a complete lack of understanding where economics and national defense are concerned.

 

[BeAChooser]

I cannot think of a single rational reason this is a cause for contempt.

It's the context. It's the fact that this man attacks *rich* people when he is one ... courtesy of a glib tongue and a political system which allows lawyers to get rich simply by running for office, win or lose. It's the fact that this man attacks business and rich people who worked very hard and took many risks to become rich, but he never spent one day in his life holding an honest job. It's the fact that he's *used* (through lies, misinformation and by playing off their emotions) a highly gullible and relatively poor segment of society to make himself rich and to put himself in the Whitehouse where at taxpayer expense he can eat Kobe beef and hit the golf course a half dozen times during a national crisis when those same poor are hurting. It's the fact that his agenda and policies will in the end only make the poor of this nation poorer, along with everyone else. I'm sorry, but I do see plenty of reason for contempt.

 

[Cavemonster]

but he never spent one day in his life holding an honest job.

So community organizer, lawyer, professor, those aren't real jobs?

How about when he worked at Baskin Robbins in High school? Does that not count for some reason?

What about his job at the Business International Corporation, or the New York Public Interest Research Group.

It's almost like you're saying the sky is polka-dotted green. The tiniest bit of research into the small part of your rant that is an actual claim (and not just an emotional barrage) shows you to be amazingly clearly mistaken.

And again, I guess you could cariacature him as "attacking the rich" if you were deaf to any nuance more subtle than a dropped anvil. I see him criticizing congressional moves that favor the rich over the unemployed, largely because he, based on the evidence doesn't believe in trickle down economics and does believe that a smaller gap between rich and poor, a healthy middle class, is key for the long term prosperity of this country.

If you want to recast that view as "I hate the rich" I suppose you're welcome too, but it says far more about you than about him.

 

[Malerin]

The stimulus has not achieved the stated goals. This is due to unrealistic goals. Whether the stimulus has helped is another question, probably unanswerable.

Not unanswerable. We have the data: two million jobs lost since the stimulus was passed. Record long-term unemployment, collapse of the housing market, depressed consumer sentiment, etc. Objectively, it's failed.

Proponents can only make the counterfactual argument that there would have been four million jobs lost without it. Of course opponents can also make counterfactual claims: the economy would have gained a million jobs without so much government interference. That's the beauty of counterfactuals.

But on the objective evidence, the stimulus has failed spectacularly.

 

[BobTheDonkey]

Not unanswerable. We have the data: two million jobs lost since the stimulus was passed. Record long-term unemployment, collapse of the housing market, depressed consumer sentiment, etc. Objectively, it's failed.

Proponents can only make the counterfactual argument that there would have been four million jobs lost without it. Of course opponents can also make counterfactual claims: the economy would have gained a million jobs without so much government interference. That's the beauty of counterfactuals.

But on the objective evidence, the stimulus has failed spectacularly.

Speculative, not objective.

The stimulus failed to achieve stated goals, but that does not mean it has had a negative or neutral effect. The truth is, we can never know what would have happened without it.

There have, without a doubt, been jobs created and/or saved through the stimulus package. There have also been further unforeseen economic problems - notably the meltdown of the Greek economy and the oil spill - that have hindered job creation and market growth.


Personally, I would like to have seen the stimulus targeted differently. Interestingly, this article in The Washington Post in Feb 2009 had this to say:

[C]ongressional negotiators have since trimmed billions of dollars from the package to satisfy Senate Republicans, diminishing its potential for job creation along with its overall cost.
...
Many analysts had been more optimistic about the House version of the stimulus bill. At $820 billion, it was not much bigger than the final package agreed to Wednesday by a House-Senate conference committee. But the House version contained about $50 billion more in direct government spending -- such as payments to state governments and cash for school construction -- which economists say is spent quickly and ripples broadly through the economy. The final package, by contrast, is weighted more heavily toward tax cuts, which have a less powerful effect, according to many economists, because taxpayers tend to save a portion of the money.

Most of those changes originated in the Senate, where Democrats needed the votes of three moderate Republicans to clear a procedural hurdle. Among the biggest changes: the addition of a $70 billion provision to protect millions of taxpayers from the alternative minimum tax, a measure Congress was universally expected to approve anyway.

my bold

So, not only was the bill watered down due to Republican opposition, the bill wound up cutting taxes more than direct spending - so the claim by BaC that tax cuts would have been more effective is belied by the fact that the stimulus was mostly tax cuts.

It would appear, therefore, that BaC has been caught arguing against the stimulus simply because it was a Democratic led/passed bill, not because of what was actually contained within the bill.

And, yes, I know. I'm sure there will be a "Hung by your own petard" post against myself (and most of those who have claimed the stimulus was not a failure) claiming that we are supporting a stimulus that relied on tax breaks while showing that tax breaks are ineffective. Surprisingly, these are not contrary positions. I, at least, have not claimed that the stimulus was a smashing success. Rather, my claim is that we cannot know whether it had any overall effect. We only can be sure that jobs have been saved/created and money has continued to flow, even if only in some small part.

 

[BeAChooser]

So community organizer, lawyer, professor, those aren't real jobs?

I said "honest" jobs, and no, the way Obama performed those jobs is not entirely honest, in my opinion. That dishonesty is illustrated in his denials about what he even did back then.

For example, he claims he never organized with ACORN. That's a lie. He's wanted the public all along to think he had very minimal connections to ACORN. That's a clear lie. He had a very "intimate and long-term association" with that group, as Stanley Kurtz points out in this: http://article.nationalreview.com/358910/inside-obamas-acorn/stanley-kurtz and many others have noted. It was an association that went far beyond merely helping force the Illinois implement the federal motor-voter bill provisions in 1995. There would be no need to hide the extent of that relationship, if it were indeed honest work. Indeed that's true of almost all the jobs he's had.

When the name William Ayers surfaced in connection with Obama, his first response was to claim "he's just some guy in the neighborhood". In fact, he had a close 10 year relationship with the man (numerous associates called them "friends") and had co-chaired a multimillion dollar education project with him (which, by the way, gave bulk of the money to a communist who promotes "social justice" in education).

Or look at his community organizing in Harlem. What can you tell us about that, Cavemonster? Very little, because Obama's been reticent to discuss that period of his life, as well. Even the people he knew then are mostly a mystery. That wouldn't be the case if that work had been *honest*.

Even his record as a politician is lacking in much detail. How he got into politics, for example. He's tried to hide his association with The New Party, Progressive Chicago and the Chicago DSA. He's tried to hide the details of his associations with Alice Palmer and other far left radicals that aided his political ambitions. And as to what he actully did and accomplished in those years in the Illinois Senate, even those records are missing, and he refuses to provide any details. That wouldn't be the case if his work in that regard were completely honest and above board.

How about when he worked at Baskin Robbins in High school? Does that not count for some reason?

LOL! I imagine that was honest work but one summer's worth?

What about his job at the Business International Corporation, or the New York Public Interest Research Group.

How long did either of these last … a year at BIC and 3 months with the NYPIRG? The year at BIC may have been honest work, but then why hasn't he been honest about it? Even the NY Times has observed

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/30/us/politics/30obama.html

Obama’s Account of New York Years Often Differs From What Others Say

… snip …

Dan Armstrong, who worked with Mr. Obama at Business International Corporation in New York in 1984 and has deconstructed Mr. Obama’s account of the job on his blog, analyzethis.net, wrote: “All of Barack’s embellishment serves a larger narrative purpose: to retell the story of the Christ’s temptation. The young, idealistic, would-be community organizer gets a nice suit, joins a consulting house, starts hanging out with investment bankers, and barely escapes moving into the big mansion with the white folks.”
In an interview, Mr. Armstrong added: “There may be some truth to that. But in order to make it a good story, it required a bit of exaggeration.”

As for the New York Public Interest Research Group, the NY Times article said this:

After about a year, he was hired by the New York Public Interest Research Group, a nonprofit organization that promotes consumer, environmental and government reform. He became a full-time organizer at City College in Harlem, paid slightly less than $10,000 a year to mobilize student volunteers.

Mr. Obama says he spent three months (BAC - during the summer) “trying to convince minority students at City College about the importance of recycling” — a description that surprised some former colleagues. They said that more “bread-and-butter issues” like mass transit, higher education, tuition and financial aid were more likely the emphasis at City College.

… snip … The job required winning over students on the political left, who would normally disdain a group inspired by Ralph Nader as insufficiently radical, as well as students on the right and those who were not active at all.

That just sounds like he might as well have been working for the government or was getting training for organizing with ACORN.

I guess you could cariacature him as "attacking the rich" if you were deaf to any nuance more subtle than a dropped anvil.

Well am I alone in that?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/24/business/24leonhardt.html

In Health Bill, Obama Attacks Wealth Inequality

Of course, note that the rest of that article is worth the paper it was printed on.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0-YJ1zCJAU&feature=player_embedded

Obama: “I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money”

You want to claim that's not an attack on the rich?

http://sayanythingblog.com/entry/ob...lets_tax_the_rich_because_they_make_too_much/

Obama On Capital Gains Tax: Let’s Tax The Rich Because They Make Too Much

An absolutely amazing answer from Obama to a question about his proposal to nearly double the capital gains tax. Here’s the question from Charlie Gibson and Obama’s answer: (BAC - see video at link)

Obama concedes that cutting the capital gains tax actually increased revenues, but says that he’d raise it anyway for the sake of “fairness.” Because hedge fund mangers make too much money.

You really want to claim that's not an attack on the rich? Or blataant hypocrisy, coming from a man and wife who *reported* earning $5.5 MILLION dollars last year? Who hasn't said one word about the earnings of some of his rich backers, like Oprah ($275 MILLION last year in salary alone) and George Soros ($3.3 BILLION last year)?

I see him criticizing congressional moves that favor the rich over the unemployed, largely because he, based on the evidence doesn't believe in trickle down economics

Like I said, you just don't get it, do you? The GOP only opposed the extension because it's not Pay As You Go … an approach that Obama had previously praised as the right way to fund government programs. And Obama and you are simply wrong about the economics. Not one country in history has made it's people wealthy or raised the standard of living of the poor by punishing the rich and instituting socialism. NOT ONE.

Every time it's been tried, the end result has been to make the society poorer than it could have been, and the poor even poorer than they were. It's about to happen in Europe again. Just watch. Your socialist notions have been tried and have failed over and over. When will you learn anything from history?

And by the way, Obama isn't basing this on evidence that supply side economics doesn't work. I doubt he even comprehends the Laffer curve. He couldn't even read and understand the first page of a CBO report last May that he dishonestly used to justify his Health Care monstrosity. It was in plain english and he grossly misstated what it said (and that's assuming he wasn't just lying about the report's conclusions in order to push his socialist agenda).

and does believe that a smaller gap between rich and poor, a healthy middle class, is key for the long term prosperity of this country.

Whether that assertion is true or not, you are not going to close that income/wealth gap through socialist economics. And again, one can point to historical example after historical example to prove that. I can even use modern day European economies, and the words of a rich democrat, to prove it. Here:

http://politics.usnews.com/opinion/...siness-policies-are-our-economic-katrina.html

This is what businessmen do when they are free to conduct business. For example, in the two decades of the 1980s and 1990s, the United States created 73 million new private sector jobs—while simultaneously losing some 44 million jobs in the process of adjusting its economy to international competition. That was a net gain of some 29 million jobs. A stunning 55 percent of the total workforce at the end of these two decades was in a new job, some two-thirds of them in industries that paid more than the average wage. By contrast, continental Europe, with a larger economy and workforce, created an estimated 4 million jobs in the same period, most of which were in the public sector (and the cost of which they are beginning to regret).

The only difference between America and Europe in that time period was the degree of socialism. Europe's was increasing, while ours was not (at least not significantly). And the results were that socialism cost Europe millions of jobs. It cost growth and wealth (Europe's per capita GDP was and still is far below ours). And the net result was to make everyone in Europe poorer today, including the lower income groups, than they might otherwise have been.

Contrary to all the rhethoric, socialist policies certainly don't eliminate poverty. Prior to the the current recession, the poverty line in the Netherlands (one of the more successful European countries, btw) was at 10.5% of the population, compared with 12% in the US population. And that's with the US having to deal with HUGE illegal immigration problems involving lots of REALLY poor people making up 3-6% of it's population.

And what is defined as poor in each country? In the US, 72% of homes have 5 or more rooms. Only 43% of Dutch houses do. In the US, houses are on average almost twice the size in terms of square footage as those in the netherlands. And a larger percentage of Americans own homes than people in the Netherlands. Our government's own data shows that the typical poor American (using the traditional, pre-Obama poverty measure) has (http://article.nationalreview.com/427180/obamas-new-poverty-measurement/robert-rector) "two color televisions, cable or satellite service, a VCR or DVD player, and a stereo", "a car, air conditioning, a refrigerator, a stove, a clothes washer and dryer, a microwave", "is able to obtain medical care", has a "home is in good repair" that "is not overcrowded", and "by his own report, his family is not hungry, and he had sufficient funds in the past year to meet his family’s essential needs.". America's poor are better off than Europe's poor in most of these things. And this description is not what poor meant back in the 1930s when this *transformation* of America began under democrats and the more socially liberal republicans.

Do you want to hear a portent of the future? Twice as many Germans as Americans think you should not start a business if you think it might fail. Just two in five Germans and French would like to be their own boss compared to three in five Americans. Eight percent of Americans say they are currently starting a business, but only 2 percent of Germans and 1 percent of French say that. This attitude will cost Europeans dearly over the long term. And these attitudes are driven by the school systems of those countries which have been waging an overt war on capitalism. And now our school system and mainstream media, under Obama and the democrats, are doing the same thing. And the net result of all that will be to reduce growth and make us poorer than we otherwise could have been. All democrats are offering is smoke and mirrors, and empty promises.

The truth that democrat's will not admit is that US spent over 10 TRILLION dollars in the last 50 years on social programs designed to eliminate poverty, in particular in one group ... blacks. And it didn't work. In fact, the number of people at the poverty level in the US is just as high as it was 50 years ago. A good case can be made that the program actually hurt economic progress in the black community ... that blacks are worse off today than they would have been had the US government not interfered. This should tell you that no matter how much you tax the rich and transfer money to the poor or unemployed, you are not going to solve the problem of the poor. Because you have not really identified the problem. You need to open your eyes, Cavemonster, and *try* to understand this fact, for the good of us all.

 

[ideogram]

But Obama claimed those goals were based on analysis and his judgement.

Are you saying that the analyses were wrong?

Are you saying his judgement isn't any good?

But that doesn't make the analysis incorrect or worthless. Everything in life is probabilitistic. You learn to deal with it instead of insist on certainty before you do anything.

LOL! With 177 posts to your name, you know nothing about my posting history. If you did, you'd know that I've said plenty of things that might hurt republicans in my time here and even when I was a member of Free Republic.

You are deliberately confusing being critical of individual republicans with being critical of the Republican Party.

Admitting that Obama is not perfect could, in fact, hurt Democrats. And let's be clear: you have hammered me over that endlessly.

That's an interesting tactic you have there, spewing so much text that the casual reader can't figure out which questions you refused to answer.

 

[ideogram]

BAC, I have read your posts to this thread very carefully. At the slightest hint of a tangent you emit a wall of obfuscation. Often you make points barely related to anything anyone has posted. In fact, the length of your distraction is a good marker of a question you don't want to answer. Clarity is not your friend.

I keep asking you to focus, to summarize. You can't. Because there is no one argument you are pursuing here, you are simply saying anything you can think of.

This is not the kind of discussion I enjoy. If there is some specific question you want to pursue, let me know.

 

[Cavemonster]

Or look at his community organizing in Harlem. What can you tell us about that, Cavemonster? Very little, because Obama's been reticent to discuss that period of his life, as well. Even the people he knew then are mostly a mystery. That wouldn't be the case if that work had been *honest*.

You're a bit like a hydra. i chop down one delusional assertion and you replace it with a dozen more. Let me just concentrate on this one.

This is ******* insane.
What precisely are you accusing him of doing in New York?
He's gone on the record that during that time he was fairly anti-social, spending a lot of time in the library.

Your argument seems to be that since you don't know much about what he was doing, he must be hiding something evil.

This is ******* insane.

It is exactly the same as every theist argument "We don't know... so we know"

To try to spin that into a condemnation of dishonesty is a masterwork of BS.

Bravo.

But your whole wall of text is meant to hide the fact that you were lying in your characterization that Obama had "never spent one day in his life holding an honest job. " In all your text you had nothing reputable or substantive to refute the many jobs I listed.

 

[thaiboxerken]

It wasn't too long ago that many of the Republicans were touting how great the stimulus was, and how they helped pass it, to their own constituents.

 

[lomiller]

Proponents can only make the counterfactual argument that there would have been four million jobs lost without it. Of course opponents can also make counterfactual claims: the economy would have gained a million jobs without so much government interference. That's the beauty of counterfactuals.

There are good numbers of how many jobs were directly created by the stimulus, economists are pretty good at that sort of thing. We also have solid numbers on the total job losses despite those gained by the stimulus, these are done by the same economists so you really can’t doubt one but accept the other. From that point it’s math.

You are correct anyone could claim any number they liked but there is no evidence to support any other conclusion then job losses would have been even higher without the stimulus. There are always going to be some who will chose to believe the political dogma however. IOW just saying something is counter-factual over an over doesn't make it so.

 

[BeAChooser]

The stimulus failed to achieve stated goals, but that does not mean it has had a negative or neutral effect. The truth is, we can never know what would have happened without it.

With absolute certainty? Of course not. Nothing is certain. But in probablistic terms we can most definitely say that history strongly shows that stimulus-type anti-recession/depression efforts tend not to work. Tend to make matters worse. Your position is as if you've watched a non-independent probabilistic event happen 1 time out of 9 times, yet you are still willing to bet your future prosperity that the 10th time it will happen. If you ask me, that is down right crazy.

There have, without a doubt, been jobs created and/or saved through the stimulus package.

No one here has claimed there have been no jobs created or saved as a result of stimulus money. So why do you keep repeating this strawman? What we are claiming is that the number of saved/new jobs has come nowhere near what was predicted by those who promoted it as a recovery method, and furthermore, the jobs that have been created/saved are mostly NOT of the type it was claimed they would be by stimulus proponents (to make them seem more palatable to the public).

Worse, we contend that the stimulus has actually hindered the recovery. And we can base that assertion on what has happened in past recession/depressions. As I pointed out to ideogram earlier, that data falls into one of four cases.

- Cases where recessions/depressions were ended in a relatively short time through cuts (or at least no or very minor increases) in government spending, taxes and regulations. I listed lots of these in this thread.

- Cases where recessions/depressions did not end in a relatively short time after cuts (or at least no or very minor increases) in government spending, taxes and regulations. And as far as I can tell there are hardly any of these.

- Cases where recessions/depressions ended in a relatively short time after massive government intervention of the sort pushed by Obama and the democrats (and admittedly, Bush). And as far as I can tell, there are none of these.

- And, finally, cases where recessions/depressions ended after a long period of time following massive government intervention. And there are several of these.

You don't have to be an economist or an expert to draw a rational conclusion from that data set. And that conclusion is this: it is foolish to bet that massive stimulus spending will bring the next recession/depression to an end more quickly. In fact, that data suggests that massive government intervention will likely lengthen and deepen the recession/depression, instead.

There have also been further unforeseen economic problems - notably the meltdown of the Greek economy and the oil spill - that have hindered job creation and market growth.

Do you think there weren't international economic crises during previous recessions and recoveries ala Greece? No meltdowns of economies? Think again. And again I point you to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_American_debt_crisis ). It states that between 1975 and 1982, Latin America quadrupled its external debt to 50% of the region's GDP. 50%! As pointed out, "When the world economy went into recession in the 1970s and 80s, and oil prices skyrocketed, it created a breaking point for most countries in the region." Those countries weren't able to repay their massive debt to the developed countries. On top of that, "the contraction of world trade in 1981 caused the prices of primary resources (Latin America's largest export) to fall." As a result, in August of 1982 (smack dab in the middle of that recession), Mexico declared that "Mexico would no longer be able to service its debt. Mexico declared that it couldn't meet its payment due-dates, and announced unilaterally, a moratorium of 90 days; it also requested a renegotiation of payment periods and new loans in order to fulfill its prior obligations." And that of course affected the US recession. Afterall, Mexico was our 3rd largest trading partner at the time and the US was holding much of that debt. So this latest excuse (and note that Mexico wasn't the only Latin and South American country with ties to the US that was in economic trouble at the time) is just another fail, since even that meltdown didn't prevent the US from recovering far faster from a deeper recession than we are in the current one.

As far as the oil spill argument is concerned, I think you are now grasping for straws. Sure, this is making the current crisis worse, but it was already getting worse long before the oil spill. And how much affect has the oil spill actually had on the US economy so far? Has it increased gas prices? No. It's biggest impact is to affect the tourist economy of a few coastal states. I'm not making light of their plight, just pointing out those states comprise only a small fraction of the total US economy. Here:

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Issues/The-Economy/2010/07/12/Oil-Spills-Economic-Impact.aspx "July 12, 2010 … Prime Numbers: Oil Spill Has Little Effect on U.S. Economy".

That article notes that only 1.5% of the US GDP comes from Gulf states. And only a fraction of that has been affected. Furthermore, $3.1 billion has been spent in the region by BP (using their money) to cover cleanup and costs, which should help mitigate any effects on the recovery

Personally, I would like to have seen the stimulus targeted differently. Interestingly, this article in The Washington Post in Feb 2009 had this to say:

Quote:
[C]ongressional negotiators have since trimmed billions of dollars from the package to satisfy Senate Republicans, diminishing its potential for job creation along with its overall cost. … snip … The final package, by contrast, is weighted more heavily toward tax cuts, which have a less powerful effect, according to many economists, because taxpayers tend to save a portion of the money.

So by targeting you mean there should have been less tax cuts and more new debt spent? Well all I can say is that some folks just seem incapable of learning from history. They are destined to repeat the same mistakes over and over.

It would appear, therefore, that BaC has been caught arguing against the stimulus simply because it was a Democratic led/passed bill, not because of what was actually contained within the bill.

So now you are going to try red herrings and lies? I've told you why I'm against the stimulus in very clear terms that have nothing to do with democratic or republican administrations. You refuse to discuss those reasons and have decided to try dishonesty, instead. And as further proof you are mischaracterizing my motives, I argued against what Bush was doing to stimulate the economy and end the bank crisis (essentially, more stimulus) back when he was still President. This is not about politics, Bob, although politics can't help but rear it's ugly head since you choose to defend Obama and his policy without looking at the actual facts.

 

[BeAChooser]

You are deliberately confusing being critical of individual republicans with being critical of the Republican Party.

Like I said, with 179 posts, you haven't a clue what I've posted at this forum about republicans ... party or individuals.

Admitting that Obama is not perfect could, in fact, hurt Democrats.

And where did you admit Obama is not perfect in this thread, or any thread you've posted on? All you've done is offer excuses that no bill is perfect, no politician is perfect. I fail to see how that could hurt democrats in any way.

That's an interesting tactic you have there, spewing so much text that the casual reader can't figure out which questions you refused to answer.

LOL! Nice try. I suggest a speed reading class then.

 

[Chris L]

Success or failure is usually judged on the basis of how close the project got to the stated goals and is measured in accordance to metrics previously agreed upon by those involved. In this case, the administration made some very specific claims about the effect of the stimulus. Objective analysis would suggest those claims have not been reflected in reality. By that measure, yes the stimulus has failed. Using any other measure is simply redefining success and makes the claim unfalsifiable.

 

[BeAChooser]

This is not the kind of discussion I enjoy. If there is some specific question you want to pursue, let me know.

You walked into this thread pretending like you were non-partisan and just wanted to know the facts. But you aren't non-partisan and that I think you thought you could disprove my position if I responded to you. Problem is, as those facts were offered, you found you couldn't. So you began the usual prevarications and tactics that I find democrats tend to employ when confronted with actual facts and sound logic. Not sure what kind of discussion you enjoy except perhaps an exchange of one liners. Have a nice stay at JREF.

 

[BeAChooser]

It wasn't too long ago that many of the Republicans were touting how great the stimulus was, and how they helped pass it, to their own constituents.

Yeah, foolish republicans. They may find themselves in trouble in their primaries. But will any democrats?