Bipartisanship works to better America? My asterisk!

by: Foiled Goil

Plunder and Blunder; How the 'Financial Experts' Keep Screwing You

Anyone with common sense, a grasp of simple arithmetic and a desire to go against the consensus should have seen the financial crisis coming.

Merrill Lynch Economist: Real Unemployment Rate is 13.9%

As Mr. Rosenberg explained, what the official unemployment rate misses is the vast degree of ‘underemployment’ as companies cut back on the hours that people who are still employed are working. Those hours have declined 1.2% in the past twelve months.

The BLS still counts people as employed if they are working part-time, but the number who have been forced into that status because of slack economic conditions has ballooned nearly 70% in the past year, according to the study. Mr. Rosenberg said was that was a record growth rate for the 15-year period he has studied.

When that amount of slack in employment is taken into account, Mr. Rosenberg found that the ‘real’ unemployment rate has actually climbed to 13.9%, an all-time high for the period he studied, and up from 13.5% in December and 11.2% a year ago.

Unspinning the Right: the Rich Don't Really Bear Most of the Tax Burden

Based on the cold facts of statistics and percentages, the poor are paying a greater share of their incomes.

Supporters Of $1.3 Trillion Bush Tax Cuts In 2001 Now Call $900 Billion Recovery Plan Billion ‘Too Much’

Such objections are indeed ironic coming from some of the greatest advocates for President Bush’s $1.35 trillion tax cut package in 2001.

The Nelson-Collins War On Green Jobs

Senate centrists’ plan = 600,000 fewer jobs.

The Senate “centrists,” led by Ben Nelson (D-NE) and Susan Collins (R-NE), are cheering the fact that they’ve cut $86 billion in spending from the economy recovery package. “Spending for the states and education took the biggest hit, compared with the House bill. State fiscal stabilization funding was cut back $40 billion, school construction dropped $16 billion, and a proposed $3.5 billion line for higher education construction was zeroed out.”

Senate Dems Compromise Away Best Parts of Recovery Plan

In order to get the votes of two Republican (Maine's Susan Collins and Pennsylvania's Arlen Specter) and perhaps another (Mainer Olympia Snowe) that were needed to undermine the threat of a GOP filibuster, Reid surrendered $86 billion in proposed stimulus spending. In doing so, the Democrats agreed to cut not just fat but bone, and to warp the focus and intent of the legislation. [...]

The Senate's increased emphasis on tax cuts comes at the expense of the aggressive spending in key areas that might actually get a stalled economy moving.

Spending for school construction that would actually have put people to work -- while at the same time investing in the future -- has been slashed. (Almost $20 billion slated for school construction is gone.)

Money for Superfund cleanup, Head Start and Early Start child care, energy efficiency initiatives and historic preservation projects -- all of which create or maintain existing jobs -- has been cut.

Supplemental transportation funding has been hacked.

The House's proposal to help unemployed Americans maintain their health benefits has been chopped down.

Axed, as well, has been $90 million that was to have been allocated to plan for and manage a potential flu pandemic that economists and public health experts worry could shutter remaining businesses, bring the economy to a complete standstill and throw the country into a deep depression.

The bottom line is that, under the Senate plan:

* States will get less aid.

* Schools will get less help.

* Job creation programs will be less well funded.

* Preparations to combat potential public health disasters -- which could put the final nail in the economy's coffin -- will not be made.

In every sense, the Senate plan moves in the wrong direction.

At a time when smart economists are saying that a bigger, bolder stimulus plan is needed, Senate Democrats and a few moderate Republicans have agreed to a smaller, weaker initiative.

And Republicans are still delaying passage. [snip]

These are the fruits of bipartisan fantasies and the compromises that follow upon them.

So, here we are, two and a half weeks into Barack Obama's first term as President and already it's a post-post-partisan world. [snip]

Some left-progressives have been suspicious of the bipartisan, post-partisan theme all along. We didn't buy it. But it wasn't our call. Now, it is to be hoped, more folks see it for the fantasy it is.

Republicans are trying to draw Democrats into a screaming match because they know they’re better at it. They are the masters of shrill — masters of stoking ignorance and rousing rabble.

I really don’t understand how bipartisanship is ever going to work when one of the parties is insane.

It just hit me. Republicans are screwed.

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Bipartisan · Stimulus