Tag: Stimulus

Obama’s Stimulus and Job Losses

On By Norbert HauptIn Business, PoliticalLeave a comment

Obama makes headlines today about more job gaps and how it’s his fear that they won’t close.

Duh!

Our company is in the business of supplying services to government agencies that are in part stimulus funded. Little of those funds has been spent yet, and certainly not a penny has come to our company, despite our very best efforts to chase after some of those projects, all year long.

I don’t care about new stimulus money. The old dollars have not been spent yet so they have stimulated nothing. Agencies appear to be sitting on them, trying to figure out what to do, and keeping themselves busy in the bureaucratic machinations of writing requirement documents, while the private sector is waiting, and waiting, and waiting, and eventually running out of resources to wait any longer.

Worse, some stimulus money, for instance in California, appears to be used to backfill funding of programs that were cut and lost. Such expenditures stimulate nothing, but rather only extend the deadline for doom of those programs.

More unemployment will follow. We have not hit bottom yet.

Mr. Obama, the stimulus, albeit an interesting idea in 2008, is not doing any stimulating. We need to think of other approaches.

Generational Theft – Or Instant Meltdown?

On By Norbert HauptIn PoliticalLeave a comment

Congress passed  the stimulus bill, and no Republicans voted for it.

Here is a quote from John McCain:

“This measure is not bipartisan. It contains much that is not stimulative,” said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., Obama’s rival for the White House. “And is nothing short – nothing short – of generational theft” since it burdens future generations with so much debt, he added.

This is dumbfounding. Republicans are willing to not have the bill, because there are items in it that they don’t believe will work as a stimulus. Meanwhile, the stock market continues to slide, layoffs continue to pile on, banks continue to teeter on the edge and foreclosures continue to escalate.

And who was the party in power when we drove the country into the ground by rampant deregulation, lacking oversight, illegal wars and stripping of constitutional rights? It was not generational theft, but it sure could be called legitimatized rape.

May the voters speak in 2010 and make sure these guys don’t get another chance to sit around and make decisions based on denial of reality,  medieval ideology and mysticism.