Featured Quote

In 1913, Henry Ford wrote the following as the directors had been reaping the rewards of profits - "The wages we pay are too small in comparison with our profits. I think we should raise our minimum pay rate".

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Conservatives are Shocked

An NPR article with Conservative Steve Bell hi-lights just how irresponsible the GOP congress critters are being.
Bell: I'm a conservative. I'm a fiscal and defense conservative. I am astonished that federal politicians who must know what this will mean to their districts are still saying that if they don't get exactly what they want, it's OK what happens to their districts. They are not being conservative. They are almost being theological...
Earlier in the article he said,
"By not doing a debt increase, or doing it badly, it looks like we won't be as reliable in the future. There will be higher interest rates; it will cost the country jobs and prolong the recession."
This is why I question things like liar Roger Wicker's "Wicker Report" that has so many already proven falsehoods.  He claims "Obama's Stimulus" failed - which is false.  It did what was claimed it would do.  Yes, it was expensive - because the GOP pushed so many tax breaks, tax cuts and tax credits into it.  By saying the stimulus failed, he is by default acknowledging that the tax cuts they are pushing for have failed.  But they want more cuts for themselves and their outrageously wealthy friends.  The worst part is, they want us, the middle class and the poor, to take up the slack.

Their approach has failed us in the recent past and will fail us again if they succeed in pushing their disastrous plans.  Their one goal is to destroy President Obama - and they will take the country down with him to do it. It has been their plan all along.  But why destroy the economy to achieve petty results?

Another nice Opinion Piece to read:

The 10 biggest banks now control more than three-quarters of the country’s banking assets. Profits have bounced back, while compensation at publicly traded Wall Street firms hit a record $135 billion in 2010. Meanwhile, more than 24 million Americans are out of work or can’t find full-time work, and nearly $9 trillion in household wealth has vanished. There seems to be no correlation between who drove the crisis and who is paying the price.
 And to keep up with my comments reposting, here is a comment on a comment on that article (yes, meant it twice.)
bydabayou
So interesting to read the details of economic policy and action. But I think that greed is really in the driver's seat. Take one realistic situation. As a youngster in 1981, I bought the American dream, 10 acres and a ramshackle house in the country for $60K. No one was lending and I paid exorbitant commercial interest rates of one over prime, at one point 20% which basically increased the price to $70K in the first year. When prime dropped, my note didn't and I lived a starvation existence to make the note, working all overtime, etc. As a skilled hand (petrochemical, oilfield) I made $14.00/hour. That continued to rise, especially after Exxon Baton Rouge fired me and I went to Alaska and made lotsa money for some years. Never-the-less, I will never forget how immense it was to pay off that $60K. 7 years of Hard Work, and I made good money. My point is this. Now, thirty years later, my land and improvements are worth probably $300- 500K. Yet those oilfield jobs still pay $14.00/ hour. I have often thought of how young people don't stand a chance of doing what I did (nor would most be capable of working as hard as I did, both on and off the job, but that's another sad tale). It is a bad situation, and unsustainable, where people strap regularly strap on a ball and chain of upwards of $150-650K with a lifetime spent paying it and the real possibility of losing it all with a career or life upheaval. I think that "speculators" and real estate mogul are just plain greedy. Yes, let the market settle. Those who got sucked into such inflated prices are going to lose.