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ORIGINAL: celticlord2112

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PE Obama wants to create at least 2.5 million jobs, rebuild roads and crumbling
bridges, modernize schools, and assist doctors and hospitals in computerizing
records, energy and weatherizing projects, and also expand unemployemnt and food stamp
benefits.

• Road/Bridge repair--Good idea.  President Pothole gets this one right.
• Modernize schools--whatever the fuck that means, which makes this a money pit (from President Pothole to President Sinkhole).  Either that or it's doublespeak for pork.
  
• Assist Doctors and Hospitals in computerizing records--slight problem here: doctors don't WANT computerized records (have had a number of them as clients over the years....they love the whizbang diagnostic stuff, but electronic medical records actually offend a great majority of them).  Every state has had projects to do this, federal laws have been revised to allow hospitals to buy the expensive software and GIVE it to the docs, and EMR implementations still move slower than Congress.
• "Energy projects" -- aka, "pork".  Bad idea.
• "Weatherizing projects" -- aka "more pork."
• Expand unemployment and food stamp programs -- adding to the welfare state, but this is ultimately a small potatoes next to the rest of the money-burning, so sure, why not?

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I suspect that if we'd use the same metrics to measure unemployment nowadays, we're probably at the 15% level now. 

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Seems to me that many of the posters here have some very selective memories when it comes to history.  The idea of tax cuts, belt tightening etc. was tried by Herbert Hoover (a Republican president)

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Seems to me that people here have gotten used to incompetent government projects, and have conveniently forgotten the successful ones.

1. Our Dams, Levees, Bridges and Roads need to be rebuilt, repaired, and or replaced. They are deteriorating and collapsing. Our housing market is tanked and a great number of people drawing unemployment right now are refugees from that market and it's support markets. These include, wire, heavy machinery, concrete, steel, roofing, HVAC and other manufacturers all of whom have had to lay people off. It will put back to work, architects, drafters, construction workers, clerical people and common laborer's not to mention truckers, caterers (food wagons), restaurant workers (salaries mean occasionally eating out) and perhaps if all goes well, paying off debts by those people now facing potential bankruptcy in the future.  (So far not a bad deal in my eyes)
2. Modernizing our schools. Many of them are aging out, inadequate to serve the number of children we have these days. Our schools are over crowded, under funded, ill equipt to prepare young people who bear the burden of Bushes spending in their future to do so. The first budgets to be slashed when states have to shave budgets are our schools. Teachers are out of pocket on basic school supplies each year because they can't get the supplies they need. They struggle to teach with outdated books in classrooms that hold 40 kids instead of 25 without aides to help them. If you want your kids to get a good education and can't afford a charter or private school..you are better off home schooling them. Athletic programs are now being cut because they have already shaved the Band, Art and computer classes to the bone. Teachers salaries in many parts of the country are frozen and if they are good, and have skills they are looking to other markets that pay a salary and leaving teaching. If we DON'T invest in our childrens' future, WE won't have one. As it is our Ums attend school half the time that the rest of the world does and after school programs are barely holding on leaving our Um's little supervision as parents work. Do we really need to ask why more and more of them are getting in trouble and entering the juvenile justice system?
3. Medical records. A tricky one as you balance privacy against healthcare and perhaps fewer mistakes lowering malpractice insurance. Many drugstores are now offering electronic prescription services to Dr.'s. A wonderful idea if they work, since it can help to lower the risk of misinterpretation of a Dr.'s scrawled script, and harmful drug interactions. Will they use it? I hope so. The same could be said for computerizing medical records. I have mine available through medic alert as I have several ailments that those in the field have to be alert to, this includes my medications, who to contact for permissions, who my Dr.'s are, everything. If I am unconscious it could save my life. A simple phone call or login gets them all of this when I am unable to give them the information. I hope Doctors begin to take advantage of such programs, but I doubt they will until they can see the advantage to them or their patients. 
4. Energy Projects. We HAVE to get off the oil standard. Even if we cannot get our automobiles off it, we need more sustainable renewable sources for the generation of electricity and heat. Wind and water turbines, solar, methane, garbage. Each of us generates approximately 4.5 lbs of waste a day, garbage included. That is a lot of waste to just leave laying around if it can be turned into heat and electricity instead of land fill and water contaminants. Not all of it can be recycled into usable consumer products, but it can fuel turbines and supplement oil. http://www.sltrib.com/ci_11053078 , http://inventorspot.com/articles/microwave_turns_plastic_oil_5383 and http://discoverymagazine.com/2006/apr/anything-oil, With the credit crunch I somehow don't see the banks funding these projects, maybe we should as a country.
5. Weatherization. I am not sure how this would work, but I do know I have heard more than enough complaining about how FEMA doesn't and people should move away from weather dangerous areas. Unfortunately there's aren't any. Las Vegas got snow this year and I suspect things are not going to get better weather wise for a LONG time. Through a program here in Florida, Master and I were able to afford replacement windows for our house that are High Impact low E. Without the program we would not have been able to afford it for a long time, BUT, by replacing them we are able to lower our heating/cooling bills lessening our drawn on resources, lower our home insurance and the risk of actually having to use it to replace our home, raising rates in the state as they point to our claims and others as a reason for it..and put a crew of window makers, and installers to work for a short period and keep a small company going another month. To qualify your income had to be under a certain level so it was not available to the rich but to the middle and lower class and the house had to need the improvement. A good program and one that has helped a lot of people fortify their homes against inclement weather including the elderly. In a country that still has people freezing to death in city apartments or displaced by floods, tornadoes, etc. strengthing structures and weatherproofing them is still cheaper than replacing them.
6. Expanding unemployment and food stamps. If the jobs aren't there, they aren't there, but people need to eat, pay rent etc. We have a large homeless population as it is.. Psychiatric patients "turfed", those who were one paycheck away from disaster, those who have exhausted unemployment while trying to find work. Not everyone is sitting on unemployment, welfare or food stamps willingly. Sometimes to work, you have to take drastic cuts in pay and food stamps can help make up that shortfall as well. A family of four cannot survive on a 6.25 an hour job, even if both mom and dad are working 2 jobs.
   
7. Tax Moratorium. Wonderful on paper, how practical in practice? Those taxes also do more than fund the government and line the pockets of the rich. They pay government workers ( one of the largest sectors of the employment market), fund the CDC, FDA, ATF, Homeland Security, CIA, FBI, Police, Firefighters, Teachers, Nursing Homes, Road Repair, Rescue Workers, Corrections, the Judiciary, Transportation and  the Military. We complain companies are not paying their fair share of taxes, are moving jobs off shore because taxes are too high, but without a tax base, this country would come to a halt. Goldman Sachs is paying taxes on only 1% of it's earnings, while benefiting from the bailout. If the Companies were paying their fair share perhaps our burden would be less and a personal tax moratorium could be held without fireing Firefighters, Police and Teachers to name a few.

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Seems to me that many of the posters here have some very selective memories when it comes to history. The idea of tax cuts, belt tightening etc. was tried by Herbert Hoover (a Republican president) for several years and failed miserably. Unemployment reached its highest values in 1933, the year FDR took office, of approximately 25%. By 1940, unemployment had fallen to about 15%.

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Tax Moratorium. Wonderful on paper, how practical in practice?

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What's total idiocy is trying to climb out of a financial hole that's just getting deeper by the minute by cutting taxes.

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ORIGINAL: celticlord2112

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Seems to me that many of the posters here have some very selective memories when it comes to history. The idea of tax cuts, belt tightening etc. was tried by Herbert Hoover (a Republican president) for several years and failed miserably. Unemployment reached its highest values in 1933, the year FDR took office, of approximately 25%. By 1940, unemployment had fallen to about 15%.

Hoover's great error was to sign Smoot-Hawley, a protectionist tariff that sparked retaliatory measures around the world.  Smoot-Hawley turned the 1929 contraction into the deflationary Great Depression.  (Over 1,000 economists petitioned Hoover to veto the tariff, and Henry Ford termed the tariff "economic stupidity")

Yet FDR's aura obscures the fact that the economy was already turning around by the time he took office.  Unemployment peaked in the first quarter of 1933, and began edging down even as FDR took office (inaugurated 4 March 1933).  FDR's aura also obscures the fact that his first piece of legislation, the Emergency Banking Act, was largely a left-over from the Hoover Administration.

One has to keep in mind that unemployment is a lagging economic indicator, not a leading one (i.e., the economy tanks and then the unemployment numbers rise; the economy recovers and then the unemployment numbers decline).  When unemployment declines in a given year/quarter, it is generally due to the actions taken in the previous year/quarter.  Thus the significant decline in unemployment in the last three quarters of 1933 has more to do with actions taken during the Hoover Administration and less to do with actions taken during the Roosevelet Administration, just as the spikes in unemployment during 1931 and 1932 are largely attributable to the 1930 signing of the Smoot-Hawley tariffs.

Had FDR done nothing but stay the course, permanent economic recovery would have occurred throughout his first term of office; had FDR acted more aggressively to undo Smoot-Hawley (while the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act was passed in 1934--liberalizing tariffs with specific nations, particularly Latin America--the broader tariff regime wasn't undone until after WWII), permanent recovery would have accelerated.  Instead, his big-government haphazard spending spree cratered the economy during his second term, and WWII was required to pull things out of that second tailspin.

Hoover's prescription but for Smoot-Hawley was the right one.

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We need to start manufacturing things in this country again.

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ORIGINAL: Crush

I'll be happy about the bailout when I'm bailed out....

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ORIGINAL: celticlord2112

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We need to start manufacturing things in this country again.

Sounds like a great idea.

What will we manufacture?  And will consumers pay more if domestically produced goods are more expensive than imported goods of comparable quality?

(The last bit is bolded because, as is turning out to be quite often the case, goods imported from Asia are frequently not of comparable quality, and in fact are at times lethally defective.)

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ORIGINAL: popeye1250

I remembered why I was so pissed off at that lady.
I told her something to the effect that if I'd dodged the draft and went to college on a deferrment instead of serving in the military she'd hire me but not then because I served instead of been a draft dodger.
They wearn't very nice to veterans in those days.
If you wore the uniform they'd basically tell you to go fuck yourself if you needed a job but if you were a draft dodger with a "degree" they'd hire you!

Scooter, if people in this country aren't working at good paying jobs they can't buy that companie's products can they?
All we are to people like that is a "market."

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ORIGINAL: celticlord2112

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ORIGINAL: Crush

I'll be happy about the bailout when I'm bailed out....

Personally, I like to avoid being bailed out....that whole business about having to converse with the local constabulary is just so not my thing.  Those times I can't stay out of trouble I go for the next best option of staying out of custody!