On Jan 23, 2009, at 6:13 AM, Charles Bennett wrote: > In so much as Obama wants to effectively nationalize the banks and the > health care system and take an ownership stake in the car industry I > hope his attempts fail too.
In so much as we're in a complete state of desperation economically, and we have a new President who has inherited one of the worst first- day scenarios of an recent transition, and "Conservatives" are completely without ideas about solving this problem and appear to now be simply relishing Obama presiding over an even bigger failure if they can stonewall, if the shoe was on the other foot you and your party would be screaming "un-American, traitorous, partisan" etc etc. Obama did not intend to come in to office and nationalize banks, health care, and the auto industry, and in fact no one is talking about that now - just like phony Republican use of the phrase "redistribution of wealth", there is *no* nationalization in the works, precisely because it would be political suicide for any bill up for a vote, even if it were the better course (I'm not saying it would be, but it will never happen whether or not it is appropriate in desperate times). Instead, we'll likely hand over billions or trillions to private business with little oversight in hopes they do the right thing, because Republicans will object to any further regulation and control over the businesses which receive financial assistance as nationalization. We need massive economic stimulus - even I can see that... the economy works only when it's in motion - wealth is a by-product of commerce, it is not intrinsic, and right now everything is slowing down and seizing up, which creates a death spiral of lack of confidence, lower spending, lower production, and so on. The auto industry may deserve to fail in some perfect world, but in the here and now we cannot afford to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Let their failure happen another day, when the credit markets aren't dried up, when we aren't facing a wipeout of mortgages. In fact, if the bailout ultimately reforms the auto industry into a leaner, better business, then hell - bonus! Same for infrastructure spending - it's not a panacaea, but the worst that happens is we spend a bunch of money of projects we should have been doing all along (if you haven't noticed, we've not exactly been investing in infrastructure these past few decades), put a bunch of people to work, inject a bunch of cash into the economy, and in the end have some tangible benefits - we'll probably overpay, but at this point... that's a lot better than another Great Depression. No, Limbaugh and the rest can do what they do best and pretend they have principles, but in the end he and many are simply afraid that Obama will actually do more good than harm, and be the final nail in the coffin of misguided economic ideology. And if you don't believe Obama when he has said repeatedly that he is interested in ideas from all corners, then you're just bitter and unwilling to pitch in. So what's Rush's plan? Btw, I fully understood Rush's quote was taken out of context, yet the spirit was clearly intact. _______________________________________________ OSX-Nutters mailing list | [email protected] http://lists.tit-wank.com/mailman/listinfo/osx-nutters List hosted at http://cat5.org/
