Latest from The Green Box

John Boehner in 2012.  I have been listening to all the Republicans looking for someone with intelligence and common sense.  John Boehner has it all.  If he can keep his personal life clean and I believe he will, he could emerge as the leading Republican candidate for 2012.  He is a nice looking man, this seems to be a qualification for president in the 21st century although I personally don't think the Obamas are attractive to look at, mass hysteria in the form of media brainwashing has led people to believe thy are.  But more than being an attractive man, John Boehner has the ideas that we will need to recover from this administration.  Too bad his name is hard to remember how to spell.

Well, the jury is still out on whether the Democrats have given the economy a "stimulus."  Anyone could easily doubt it and see the bill as just a messy pile of pet programs.  The newest employment figures are worrying, and it seems that the federal and state governments have been slow to get executing. That said, there are some truly remarkable things in the hastily assembled bill that will simply take time to pan out.  Jobs will be generated.  There is no question of that.  No one, not the President nor the Congress, thought or promised that the stimulus would be having much effect by now.  I would look more at the fall for the early signs of rebound, and at next spring/early summer for a securely established recovery curve.  

The real question is not whether the stimulus will ever generate jobs, but whether it will generate the right jobs, and whether those jobs will generate economic activity and therefore other jobs.  That's where the recovery curve get's measured.  Will it be long and flat, sharp and inflationary, or just right? Lot's of big ifs.

But of course finally there is this video.  Could the Republican machinery be more bent out of kilter than this?  Looks like a skit from Hee Haw.  I suppose the Democrats have probably poked fun at their opponents with an SNL-like skit.  I don’t remember it, but probably it’s happened.  But in this case we have to endure “Ah shucks, gee whillikers, dumb as we wanna be” Hee Haw humor in the context of an enormously complex issue.  And to give the ad some spice they’ve peppered it with lies.  Has there ever been a party in modern media times that was more dependent on lies and distortions to make almost any point?  Not in my lifetime.  Let’s see.  “After five months…” what’s the stimulus doing for us?  Well this video was made in June of 2009.  Going back 5 months takes us to the first week of the Obama administration.  I guess seven days into office is long enough to solve the biggest economic disaster since the Great Depression.  But just to be, well, HONEST, the stimulus bill wasn’t passed that week.  And remember?  The Republicans said the bill was passed too quickly!!  This stuff is mind-numbing.  Trillion dollar stimulus?  Which bill was that?  Or how ‘bout the “stimulus” bill that went to AIG executives.  So now the TARP and stimulus bill are conflated and the Republicans have so little respect for their own constituency that they figure no one will notice this slight of hand?  Then they tell us the stimulus paid for a bridge to Rusty’s Backwater Saloon, but it created no new jobs?  So the Republicans are telling you that a bridge was built and nobody worked on it?  Wow!  According to Republicans infrastructure is FREE.  Yippee!!!  If only we could get those Republicans back in office maybe they could give us more FREE stuff. 

This video is sad, but not for the reason that the Republicans thought it would be.

Loved it!  Unfortunately it's too true.  Sure it's too early to tell if the stimulus will do any good.  Too bad people will continue loosing jobs until this money gets spent in the right places.  So far, it's being allocated to some pretty poor choices.  What they should have done is just put it all into unemployment checks because that's where we'll really need the money before year end!  A lot of the money is not even allocated to be spent for several years.  That's a long time for people to go without jobs!  No need to have blood hounds searching for the jobs here because the stink of the whole stimulus deal will cause any bloodhound to loose their sense of smell.  And how do they measure "new jobs" anyway?  The fact that a new bridge is built does not mean that those are new jobs.  It may just mean that those same bridge builders continue working once they finish the prior bridge.  I don't think we should count "keeping my job" as a "new job".  But, if we had a total of 100 workers in the world and now have 101 workers, without anyone being eminent to loose their job, then I'd say we gained one new job.  And if we are all deeper in debt after we have more workers, then what did we gain?  We can't spend our way to profitability.  Another point, a job opening does not mean a "new job".  If no one is qualified to do the job, what good is it?