One of the things we could do with a little money is start painting flat tar roofs white in every city in the U.S. It wouldn't take training and could start almost immediately. It would also have the benefit of lowering energy usage.

I'd be all for dropping unemployment and putting these people to work on the infrastructure improvements so we get something back for the money.

Exactly....stop paying people to sit at home and pay them to do something. It defies logic to do otherwise.

I was watching one of the morning cable news networks the other morning (MSNBC or CNN...I forget but thinking it was Scarborough/MSNBC) and it was suggested that Obama hold another business summit of sorts to get business leaders' ideas and thoughts on how to get the economy moving. I found it interesting when the (liberal) pundit suggested that even liberal-leaning business leaders think its a waste of time to go to these since Obama doesn't seem to grasp how and why jobs would be created by these same business leaders. More to the effect of...Obama comes in and starts lecturing everybody to "Start hiring people" rather than actually trying to understand why any of them would take on additional overhead costs.

Could have been a self-important pundit trying to appear to have some great insight...but it doesn't seem unlikely given the results he's had so far. While I was not convinced Obama would be capable of doing great things, I did think he was a very intelligent man that could grasp the intricacies of the economy when focusing on it (and of course, having legitimate experts at his disposal). I also thought he would see the economy as his mission to "fix"...and even if that led to some things I wouldn't normally support...thought that he would get it back on the right track.

But I'm not so sure he is humble enough to engage at the necessary levels for some reason. Maybe that's what the disconnect from reality is...and why he hasn't made the right choices & priorities.

You are right about that but I was thinking in terms of real prices of necessities like grain foods. Its a sweeping generalization and hard to apply across the board. But I agree, the relative prices would go down for most items, but probably go up for others for the same reason you noted on the number of people consuming the item or service. Basically...the industries the government keeps alive through subsidies will likely go up relative to incomes while the things the government is transparent to will likely go down or remain flat.


I couldn't agree more on college costs being in a bubble. I don't have the time to write the manifesto I have in my head on this subject but to summarize...I think the way we educate our workforce has to change. I think we really need to begin identifying skills that can be more OJT and what truly requires dedicated classroom sessions. Certainly both of those have some overlap into the other but I think there are a lot of skills and education that we simply don't need to learn away from the workplace.

The most obvious question that comes to mind here is "under what authority would they paint a privately owned roof?"

A few others, seemingly obvious as well
-- How much do you figure it'll cost to settle the litigation from "workers" who are injured on the job, traumatized by various aspects of the job, etc?
-- Why are you rewarding property owners who didn't paint their own roof with a free paint job? Once again, the gov't screws someone who did it right.
-- Where are you going to find a paint company that doesn't have some connection to an elected official, since we know there'll be a hue & cry raised about whoever ends up with the contract to provide the paint (no matter which side ends up doing the howling)
-- Does the gov't then get to claim the revenue tied to the energy savings, at least until they recover the cost of the paint job?

And that's just for starters without even trying.

The building where my winery is now located is a former orphan home and communal poor home. The poor people who stayed in the building had to work 8-10 hour days to assure themselves of room and board. There were some volunteers, but the vast majority of the work was done by those in need. I think anything that moves us back towards that line of thinking would be a good thing.

Yep..."work" doesn't always have to mean "digging holes". It can take a lot of forms and still provide more value than merely sitting at home for 10 extra weeks because nobody will hire you.

He's definitely further to the left than he was in 1988. Back then, he was certainly not the same guy that ended up endorsing Howard Dean in 2004.

And in what ways was he more conservative than Bush? He engaged in the same kind of class warfare that every Democrat does. I remember the constant refrain of how the top 1% has half the money. He wanted to eliminate DADT. Opposed Bush's desire to privatize social security. Promised to appoint pro-choice judges.

There's a huge workforce sitting in our prisons doing nothing. Cheap labor right there and hey, they might even learn a new skill besides crime.

Not only do you run into the NIMBYs (They might escape!) There are other costs in transporting and guarding them, etcetera.

There are always going to be reasons not to do something and I wouldn't suggest a program like this with unemployment at 5 or 6%. At some point you need to decide if you would rather hire people even with difficulties or wait a decade for things to pick up on their own. I'd rather do something that puts people to work and lowers our energy usage over doing nothing because it's easier.

But (in all seriousness) how do you propose to get around lacking the authority to climb up on anybody's roof & paint it? Seems like there's an almost guaranteed constitutional challenge to something like that in simplest form.

The closest to straightforward thing I can think of would be a grant program (I've seen similar efforts at state/local levels, a facade grant to pay part of the cost for repairing aging buildings comes to mind).

He didn't say every roof in every city, just roofs in every city. Even at just a 20% participation rate, I'm sure that would be enough to keep workers hopping for quite a while.

Just make it voluntary. It's not that hard.

So, locally our good-ol' governor, who has a budget crisis and has had to lay off teachers, has decided to mandate that HHS offer pre-K to all 4 year olds. First, she's handing it to HHS instead of the department of education, which I find interesting, although maybe her primary goal is to make sure kids are potty-trained by the time they hit Kindergarten (I've heard anecdotally this can actually be an issue in some areas). Second, by gosh we'll make sure the 4-year-olds are ready, but there won't be any teachers waiting for them when they hit elementary school, since we don't have the funds for that right now.

Mind you, instituting programs like this is a big reason our state budget balooned over the last decade or so...

That's not what you said originally (translation: that's definitely not how I interpreted what you said).

That addresses the question I asked so I'll save the rant about what a gross misuse of taxpayer dollars that would be, rewarding people for not doing something that is entirely their personal responsibility ... at least until anyone in DC proposes such a thing ;)

If you're more worried about fair than getting the economy back on its feet, we'll be stuck for years. Any measure that's going to help is going to be somewhat unfair. I'll reward building owners that should have painted their own roof if it helps fill the 500 billion dollar gap in taxes missing from the recession.

We can't get to a balanced budget without fixing the economy.

Here is Mark Cuban's plan:

An Idea for the Economy that will Freak Out a lot of People but could be Fun to Discuss. « blog maverick

We already play that game. Dell had to pay back tax breaks they got in coming to North Carolina because they pulled out never having met their job creation goals.

He wanted to pay down the debt with the surplus we had. Bush wanted to lower taxes and run up debt. This was their biggest difference financially, although there were many others. Gore was much more fiscally conservative than Bush.

On social issues, he was moderate at worst. Pro death penalty, decent on gun rights, pro prayer in school, against gay marriage, pro-abstinence education, and held a lot of the same religuous views of Bush.

Outside of a couple social issues, he was more of a Republican (well what they like to think they are) than Bush was.

He also had an interesting post a week ago on fixing Patent law. Mainly getting rid of patent trolls that really hurt companies. And how the new Obama law doesn't address the biggest issues and is essentially a waste of time. One problem I see with this is that cash isn't that scarce. Interest rates are low and banks have a lot in reserves. People and businesses are just scared to borrow. And also, many large companies have the cash to hire, they just don't want to till demand picks up.

I don't know how practical any of the ideas are, but I think it's a good time to be throwing ideas out there. We should be trying to figure out ways we can make things better.

His analysis of the problem is so spot on I get goosebumps.

Not so sure about the solution. I could be wrong, but I don't think the criteria of company he suggests is having as many issues borrowing money to create jobs. In other words...its the <100 person startups that need the money to create more jobs. The big corporations have plenty of cash on hand to do whatever...they just don't see opportunity. And I realize he's speaking in terms of negative yields...but I think thats more chicken & egg...the negative yields are there because nobody wants to use their cash OR borrow.

I'm coming to the conclusion that the only way to turn the economy around inside of 10-15 years is to legislate it into recovery. and by that, I don't mean to have the government actually spend us into recovery...I mean to force us (collectively including corporations) to spend ourselves into recovery.

I agree that he has a very good read of the situation. I also agree that it is not the large businesses that need the help, it is the small businesses.

Anyone else getting whiplash from the massive stock market swings the past week? It's like a Rocky fight.

There would definitely be some of the NIMBY stuff, but, you're paying these guys 25 cents an hour compared to whatever the going rate is in the private sector, I think you would actually save money. My only concern would be the quality of the workmanship and some subterfuge like in Bridge Over the River Kwai. It's not perfect, but, what is? :)

Now there's an idea: use the point of a gun to mandate bad business decisions

I think it also has a ripple effect. You get new people, new ideas into industries. This forces larger companies to adapt and potentially hire to keep up.

The biggest problem for me is how to determine who deserves it. There are some really bad business ideas out there. And I'm sure there are some really good ones. Are we funding a guy's horrible idea just for the hell of it? I've heard some other ideas about giving credits toward new hires. If an employee is hired and is there for a year, you get a $10,000 tax credit or something.

Hehe...well, more about legislating standards which drive us to produce new goods & services type stuff. Such as requiring energy providers to be X% (pick the sensible number there) supplying sustainable energy sources (note I didn't necessarily state green).

IDK really...damned if we do, damned if we don't.

My recovery recipe:

1. Stop all the other current tax gimmicks and give businesses a tax credit incentive where they get a pro-rated annual credit for every employee (not just new ones, all of them) up to a cap set somewhere around 80-100,000. For best results make it a progressive scale with a higher relative credit for below 50,000, another tier to about 70,000, and then the top tier with the lowest ratio.

Make this credit significant and take all others off of the table (kill the loopholes to massively increase revenue, then revert it back to neutral in a way that directly subsidizes employment).

This provides a simple and direct correlation between tax cuts and jobs, without encouraging waste assuming the credit is not set to something absurd (employees also deduct as an expense off the top to begin with of course, the credit is to reduce the relative cost of labor to capital or work supplies).

Useless workers will not be hired, but if the credit is set to the appropriate level any business that can increase its marginal returns from more workers will be pushed into the green. Companies that are cash rich and worker poor will have to pay taxes, so revenues will be boosted. And it is very easy to set this up so it is too transparent to be gamed (of course our government loves secrecy so they can screw us).

2. Technology, its the only way to get growth of the form we really want, and its our best strength anyhow. This isn't just throw a bunch of money at research projects, this means aggressively pushing quality standards to get businesses to innovate and economize and compete with foreign outfits that will not or can't. Any factory in latest third world slave state can put out standard quality junk, high tech stuff still can be created in the states at a profitable margin.

3. Infrastructure, don't just go 'shovel-ready', build something that is state of the art. Roads out of materials that won't fall apart for years and can handle traffic loads without warping and needing to be replaced every five years with the 'cheap' material (labor costs outstrip anything anyone ever thought of saving from using the cheap stuff they slap on roads these days or the quick fixes that bust every year into new potholes). Critical roads, rail transport (for cargo, not people, most cost efficient), energy grid, waterway quality, chemical pipelines (i.e. force them to be up to code and not cause massive oil spills), and computers computers computers... get the software so we can make those federal and state workers more obsolete (sorry, but I'm sick of paying the checks for the incompetent and rude DMV worker or city clerk lackey that can't process a form a computer can do at 10,000 per minute...). A significant investment now not only creates jobs, it gives cost savings and increased commerce that can increase revenues for decades (all those highways no doubt played a role in anyone and everyone clamoring for an automobile and all the money that generated in the economy).

4. Make health care competitive. Again, computers and paperwork reduction (it still is at 30% of all costs going to overhead, although some segments show these numbers dropping dramatically). Reign in the imaginary numbers of costs, doctors charging $10 per ibuprofen pill so they can balance out their books... align prices to the true cost of providing the service and make it transparent as all hell and you start to control that spiral where it can be controlled. Find ways to cut medical spending at the supply side so the cuts on the demand side that we all know are coming do not get sucked up by out of control medical inflation resulting more from bad policy than the cost of labor or supplies increasing.


I think all four of those together could move a whole lot of sectors in the right direction and make the debt picture look better in the long term by attacking debt that is generated by increasing costs. Enforcing technology standards for instance is cheap (in government dollars, yes businesses will have to spend, but it will be the price of access to the all powerful American consumer market, we better use that advantage while we still have it).

Ron Paul is dominating this debate, imo. Too bad for that gold thingy.

He's really good in debates. Just comes across well-spoken and intelligent.

He makes too much sense for people. They don't know what to do with someone who has beliefs and follows through on them every time.

That said he doesn't have a chance.

I'm fine with that part ... having so many beliefs that are either utterly insane (non intervention, anti-security) morally/ethically unacceptable (drugs) or both are what kill this nutjob.

And that ain't exactly an easy thing to do with me, considering how many things he's on the right side of.

I heard Rick Santorum was awesome again. No Abortions, ever. And we need to keep sucking Israel's dick. Plus something about the pending threat of Polygamy.

Heh, good line from the AJC's token conservative blogger

I thought the Bachmann-Pawlenty exchange was a mixed bag. Got Pawlenty on the national map a bit and I think Bachmann came across strong in her initial response. But having two candidates point out the flaws in each other likely doesn't bode well long term for them.

Cain seemed woefully out of his league. Bombed hard on the tax holiday question and for whatever reason Fox went after him real hard.

Thought Gingrich got the shaft a bit by the campaign question and thought he was right to hit back at it.

Yep. I don't understand why all the candidates don't want to spend more on the war on drugs. A) It's been a colossal success. B) We have so much money to spend that it couldn't hurt to throw more money at it. C) Social engineering always works. D) Jesus said so somewhere in the Bible.

I guess he could lie like the other candidates and say something along the lines of "Yes, I experiemented with drugs like a lot of people do but now to appeal to the nutcases on the far right I will act like I am against it and pledge to put more brown people in jail" Then we can all pay to house them in jail and when they get out can pay their welfare. Glad people like the nutjob Ron Paul have no chance in such a progressive, enlightened party. Good luck for Bachmann or Romney. Paul said he is going to retire from the house after this term so I can't wait for him to run as an independent and annihilate those faux conservatives. At least this thread will last another 4 years.

Nobody wants to vote for Ron Paul. He can't break 10% in primaries and he won't do better as an independent. Whether you like him or not, you need to realize his vote totals aren't the result of a conspiracy. Most people don't like what he's selling.

Just like my debt ceiling wager. If Paul runs as Libertarian I predict 5% or higher. Friendly wager? I never said he was going to win I said he will fuck over the faux conservative candidate. And with how close the elections seem to be lately no doubt that 5% would.

(And I think I am entitled to argue points that the Democrats used to care about. Don't you wish Obama actually cared about cutting the wars down or not putting 25% of the minorities in prison to appease the rednecks?)

And I honestly don't think its a conspiracy. I think the American public has a lot of really fucking stupid people...

Most Americans take Bible stories literally - Washington Times

Straw poll

msnbc.com politics - Who do you think won the GOP presidential candidates' debate?

http://swampland.time.com/2011/08/12...#ixzz1UozJ3UNT

I realize that Paul has a very dedicated following and will not equal those numbers at all in the general election. That said I find it funny that when I went to read coverage of the debate there was the obvious Bachman/Romney stuff but also Santorum ripping on Paul. Because that is who people are behind!

I don't know much about her but it'll be interesting to learn more about her this year.

Republican Presidential Hopefuls Await Results of Iowa Straw Poll - FoxNews.com

I read that since 1979 the Iowa winner has finished first or second in the straw poll.

But only one that actually went on to become the nominee, I think.

I can't believe Bachmann won the straw poll. I do wonder if Rick Perry takes the top mantle thought now he's in.

We were talking about this at work last week - suspecting someone from S&P organization had profited and wanting to see record of their investments ... glad to see the SEC investigating this.

Who started the S&P downgrade rumor? - Aug. 12, 2011

Hey, definitely a tangent but sorry couldn't resist. Catching up on news and saw this ... have to play the video ... pretty cool.

http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/08/.../?iid=HP_River

Yes, I believe so.

#5 = Jesse Stone will kick some ass.

I think it's really bad for Romney and Pawlenty. Pawlenty put everything into Iowa and he can't outcrazy Bachmann. Romney has given up on Iowa in the hope of building off of a strong NH win. The problem for Romney is the third primary is SC and I don't think he can win there against Bachmann and Perry.

The real loser in Iowa seems to be Cain, who campaigned there and still couldn't finish better than, what, 7th? Even Perry as a write-in beat him. At least Newt can (try to) explain away his poor showing because he didn't campaign at all, Cain on the other hand has no excuse to offer.

Meanwhile I'd think Romney would have a shot of doing okay in SC if Bachmann & Perry were to split close. I could see him finishing 3rd in something like a 30-30-20 deal (or less for the first two). I think it looks worse for him if either of the other two post a big number & there's a bigger gap between 1st and 3rd.

SC primary results from 2008
John McCain 143,224 33.2% 19
Mike Huckabee 128,908 29.9 5
Fred D. Thompson67,897 15.7 0
Mitt Romney 64,970 15.1 0
Ron Paul 15,773 3.7 0

I never thought Cain was a serious candidate.

He hasn't been for at least a couple of weeks, but I was talking more along the lines of it being time to officially end his bid.

I can see it going Bachman (Iowa), Romney (NH), and Perry (SC). Would setup an interesting race moving forward.

Apparently there's a plan to cut military pensions to save 250 billion over twenty years. That's an average of 12.5 billion a year. The reason of course is that we can't afford it. We can afford 700 billion for the DoD, but we need to gut military pensions.

That is truly disgusting.

And at least potentially that's retroactive, i.e. what you've been expecting to get during your 19 years of service could suddenly change dramatically literally months or even weeks before your retirement date arrives.

I've been following this one for a couple of weeks after learning about it from both active & retired military folks.

That's an utter disgrace.

I for one think we should stick to our promises through thick and thin. :)

But the military is going to have massive spending cuts, they are coming, and the govt's best bet is to leave this alone and work on redefining military pensions FOR FUTURE SERVICE MEMBERS...and that's in the works too.

Right now, the military doesn't give you shit if you leave the service after 10 or 12 years, that's way behind what the private sector will do for employees...and on the contrary, the military will pay you a pension of at least 50% upon retiring at 20 years, effective immediately, which is way beyond much of the private sector.

In the end, they need to work out a happy medium that's fair to the service member and to the national coffers...I supsect the days of "Retire at 20" are coming to a close.

I am about as skpetical as they come on military spending and I agree it is a complete crock of shit. I take it this is from that super Congress group of ten that the debt ceiling debate created?

No, this is a Pentagon board of military and civilians.

I can buy reforming military pensions, but claiming we can't pay for them just pisses me off. How about we leave Afghanistan and then we could pay out pensions in platinum.

I agree completely.

"Retire at 20" definitely needs to change as it's no more practical than any other pension plan.

That said, there seems to be more outcry on this than ripping up any other pensioned contract like teachers that we seem to keep doing over and over right now?

SI

I don't know what others think, but it sort of bothers me that we look at cutting pensions now and in the future for people who risk their lives to defend the country. Seems that should be the last thing on the chopping block. Is there really no other way to cut defense spending?

Of course there is (theres no sane reason why America's military spending should amount for 40% of global (ie. entire world) arms spending) - however talking about sensible cuts in armament etc. might encourage something to actually be done ... whereas talking about cutting pensions for loyal service men is an emotive topic which can be used to distract people into doing nothing.

Actually, the sane reason is that we can invade countries like Iraq and Afghanistan on the other side of the world and only suffer 5,000 casualties. If we only had an armed forces similiar to that of say....Iran, it would have cost of so much in lives that we would never have even ventured over there. Unless we had some bat-shit crazy President that insisted upon it. Crazier things have happened!

In any event, yes, I think it's time to really look at our defense spending, it's the big white elephant in the room (at least, the only big white elephant that doesn't have the backing of 100 million people expecting it not to be cut).

I've often joked at work that maybe we should pretend Japan and Germany won the War and have them pay for OUR national defense for a change. :)

LOL.....we need to stop allowing sensible Brits into these conversations about how America spends its money. :D

I bet this will become a trend, further distancing our representatives from the people.

Heh. I've also heard the related joke that the easiest solution to the EU debt crisis is to convince Germany to invade all of Europe again and this time don't do anything to stop them.

I love that technology improves and everyone wants everyone to work more and reap less of the benefits. That's the America I know and love.

Bleh.

This is pretty astounding.



These are the top ten in Gallup's economic confidence rating. Notice DC is the only one with a positive rating. That explains a lo about our current economic policies.

North Dakota: Not Quite As Bad As The Rest!

Isn't there something that says this is illegal? In all my cynicism about politicians this might be the worst thing I've seen yet. You can really get away with charging people to ask you questions and deal with their concerns, as an elected, paid member of the US government?

Nothing illegal about it. Ryan is just refusing to hold public meetings and having paid events instead. It's cynical, but well within the bounds of the law. That's why I expect to see more of this.

Hopefully politicians that try this get tossed out on their asses by their constituents.

It probably *should* be illegal - stupid that there's not some sort of regulation against it.

Too much influence of money in politics already if you ask me.

The US government as their employers should be the ones tossing them out on their asses. If I decide that I'm going to charge my clients extra to answer their questions and do my job, and that extra is going straight into my pocket, you think I'm still going to be employed on Monday morning?

I seem to get outraged a lot by politicians right now, but this is absolutely outrageous.

Yeah, agreed. Its on page 10 of "How to build a better Banana Republic".

While they're at it (whoever the hell "they" are), they need to stop the $10k dinner fundraisers as well as I don't see it being overly different 9though I realize the proceeds are going to 2 different entities in theory).

Exactly. I don't like teachers & others having their benefits cut (and I'm in agreement that promises should be kept but changed to being more sustainable moving forward)...but there is a real big problem when we send people to go fight and risk their lives and then cut their retirement benefits that they were promised should they happen to live.

Ryan's not taking the money. He's hiding behind outside groups like the Rotary Club. If they charge for their events and what's a poor guy like Ryan supposed to do about it? And he'd be happy to have public events, there just isn't any time left on his calendar.

Common sense political thought....

If you're running for office such as President, Senator, or Governor, you have to resign your current office. If these guys seriously want to become President, no more job hedging. The way the situation is now, any zany Rep can run for Pres and raise his/her profile. And benefit from free media coverage that will likely boost any minor office campaign they are in

Like when Kerry lost and just went back to the Senate as if nothing happened.

Wanting to take back the initiative ... but talk is cheap.

Obama to Lay Out Plan to Cut Spending and Boost Jobs - CNBC

Yeah, he should have been putting the construction sector back to work in 2009 so that by 2011 we wouldnt have a scared consumer base & corporate investment mentality. It wasn't a secret that new housing would do a serious pullback for a few years, so he should have been focused on getting that sector to work on things that would keep them in the economy.

On the other hand, which method allows a Rep/Sen/Whatever to speak to more people in the same amount of time, larger organized speaking appearances or (often clusterfucked) "public meetings"?

Moreover, do we really want elected officials telling civic groups "sorry, I don't have time to talk to you, I have to go do my own thing"?

There's more of a catch-22 here than meets the eye, whether it's an (R), a (D), a cabinet official or whatever.

Over a month long recess I think there's time to squeeze in a public, free event if desired.

How much could we save if we stopped paying people to take recess for a month?

Not much really, and probably nothing.

Quick math says 535 members x $174,000 annual = $7,575,500 / month

The problem with claiming that $7.5m in salary as "savings" (plus about $300k more in higher salaries for top 6/leadership) is that they're paid annually on the basis of a schedule that anticipates recess ... meaning that if the recess went away the pay really wouldn't/shouldn't change, unless you completely revamp the pay structure.

Interesting little table on the history of Congressional pay
http://www.thecapitol.net/FAQ/payandperqs.htm

Several things notable in there, including
1) 1955 Congress $22,500 vs 1955 median income men $3,400
That's 561% higher

1990 Congress $97,500 (avg) vs 1990 per capita median income $18,667
That's 422% higher

2010 Congress $174k vs 2009 per capita median income $39,138
That's 344% higher

The gap between "them" and "us" is actually a lot smaller than it used to be.

2) Speaking of recess, federal judges make the same amount as Congressmen
SCOTUS associate justices make $40k a year more

3)Note the last big dollar/percentage jump in Congressional pay came in 1991, when honoraria was forbidden. Until 1975 there was no limit, then about two decades of 40% or 27% limits until it was zeroed out.

4) Another interesting table shows the number of hours in session by chamber/year back to 1996. In 2010, Senators made about $162/hr on that basis.

Well, I think there are a lot of factors to consider by the Congressional pay comparisons from 1955 until today. The first of which is the 50%+ effective tax rate of those $22k Congressmen vs the ~15% rate of the $3400 median men.

I think you're right that the general trend has gone closer to the median overall, but I don't think its quite as dramatic when you consider the vast difference in tax rates.

As for the recess pay, I probably should have put a smiley on that as I really only meant it sarcastically. Wouldn't hurt my feelings to see them voluntarily give it up, though. :)

How? There is a glut of foreclosed homes that can be bought at a fraction of what they were worth before this, on top of the higher credit criteria for anyone to buy them. The only way I can possible think of to spur the construction sector is for the government to have purchased foreclosures, raze them to the ground, and then hire companies to build new homes. You have to be pretty slow right now (or even in the last two years) to buy a newly constructed home versus purchasing a pre-existing home at pennies on the dollar (many of which were new homes that were foreclosed on before they sold).

Housing is not the only sector construction workers build things for. There are infrastructures such as energy grids & facilities, transportation, ancillary utilities, etc. that should have been a much larger portion of the stimulus.

*Yawn*

I'm tired of his fucking speeches. Wake me up when there's actual policies that he actually gets implemented. :rant:

That's gotta be worth at least an Operation Shutdown :D

SI

"And the state of Massachusetts goes to Mitt Romney."

:D

FWIW.....Obama is far from the only politician doing a whole lot of talking without much action. He's also not the only one running around campaigning while saying he's not campaigning.

"As the S&P Turns"

Report: Government probe of Standard and Poor's - Yahoo! Finance

Soap operas aren't this good.

Heh. That's not retaliatory at alllll. If S&P didn't see this one coming, I'd be shocked.

Actually, you could claim just the opposite. The federal investigation has been going on for quite awhile. You could easily argue that S&P was the retaliatory one since they knew they were being investigated long before the downgrade took place.

Interesting that Yahoo's feedback section is having technical errors on this article. Never seen that happen on any of their other articles. Looks like one of the government's mouthpieces wants to avoid a retaliatory investigation of themselves.

Easier said than done. He's supposed to ram this through a Republican House how?

Didn't realize Obama was elected in 2010. I thought he had two years to pass his agenda.