Without the passing of the president’s economic stimulus bill, we could see unemployment rates as high as they were during the Great Depression.
I haven’t worked since July. I can’t tell you how frightening that is. With my life savings draining down to nothing, and with no income in sight, where will I go with what I can get on welfare? You can’t even find housing here for what I would [be able] to pay in rent. And that’s assuming there’s any welfare available, as I’m not the only one in this situation.
I’ve been working since I was 16; I’ve never seen anything like this. Please cover the progress of this bill in your paper regularly. It would create 3 million to 4 million jobs in the next two years, avert thousands of teacher layoffs, create hundreds of thousands of green jobs while doubling the production of green energy, and give those of us without work a better shot at having any kind of health-care coverage.
The bickering over details needs to stop now. Let’s pass this bill so we can all sleep at night.
— Jillian Wolf
Leicester
I see the operatives are out in full force.
These jobs you speak of are going to be for the “green” buraeucracy…stealing property, putting good people in prison and enforcing eugenics as well as a tax on the air we breathe.
For God’s sake, wake up!
This atrocity being played out on the American people by the Democrats and their One is not going to produce a job for you unless you are looking for a temporary make-work job. It is not going to provide an affordable rent for you in Asheville unless it provides more public housing and section 8 funding (have fun in those places). What it will do for you if and when you become employed again is set you up for massive taxation to pay for this socialist rape of our economy.
Yes, time to wake up and stop eating that Democrat cake.
Sooo, the great debacle of Bush-Paulson and Frank of bailing out the fat shits that created this mess worked well for the folks in A-ville????I say lets just try the trickle UP plan for a change
Where the *&#$% is the money from the first bailout??? look up -you may see a Lear jet on the way to Bermuda, hauling the $$$ with them.
Yes- its time to stop eating cake alright
The great Pelosi-Reid-Obama debacle aided by Bush, Paulson, Frank and Shumer did absolutely nothing to free up credit markets and the #$@%^& money is going to the same place the “spendulus” bailout is going, a big black hole.
The money did not head to Bermuda on any jet. It ended up boosting the liquidity of the recipients allowing them to stave off the storm of a deepening recession driven by an abject failure to open credit.
Whether you wish to believe it or not, this notion of spending $Trillions to implement a socialist nirvana is going to destroy any hope you have of economic prosperity unless wiser minds prevail. We are a nation led by fools.
If only the economy had just held on a few more months, then the trav’s of the world would be able to blame Obama for everything. Unfortunately for them, most of us remember the handouts to the banks happened during Bush’s watch.
How quickly they have thrown Bush under the bus!
“We are a nation led by fools.”
What’s stopping you from running for office, then?
So where was your criticism of Bush, Paulson say, 4 months ago, lil t?
Is “cake” now the new “Kool-Aid” meme? I didn’t get the new glossary with my talking points update.
The economy is already showing signs of finding the bottom without this economic rape of the taxpayers. This is a recession and not a depression and it is certainly nowhere near as bad as the 1930s that so many of our foolish minded souls keep alluding to. In fact, it is nowhere near as bad as the tanked economies of Jimmy Carter or Gerald Ford.
The solutions that need to be put in place include rejecting the failed social manipulating of credit markets returning home ownership to something earned rather than entitled to. We need to recognize that both Ford and Toyota among others have better, more desired products than GM and Chrysler meaning we have no business propping up one or two over the rest. Banks that have bet their house on poor mortgage practices need to fall by the wayside so that wiser and more business sound banks and investment houses can focus on the good business (most)that remains. We do not need to pay many millions for a new city hall in Timbuktu, Utah or any other locality looking to rake the taxpayers over the coals. In the midst of a deep recession, Asheville doesn’t need a dime of somebody else’s money. We need to cut our expenses and ride it out like everybody else.
I liken this economic rape to having some fool direct a few people from a neighborhood a few streets over to come into your house and your neighbors to strip your appliances, auction your car and steal your seat right out from under you so that they might have a few things at your expense. “Money for nothing” and “them not us” will pay later.
Nobody has stolen my appliances or seat yet. Of course, there isnt much to steal, ironically enough.
and I already donated the car to a charity.
That is because you are one of those from a few streets over.
It appears the “conservatives” only want to be fiscally responsible when the money is not advancing their agenda. I didn’t hear Repubs objecting to deficit spending for the last eight years, so why now? The only difference is that when we’re done spending money on schools and roads, we’ll actually have something to show for it (unlike the Iraq debacle).
The conservatives got to try their agenda for the better part of the last quarter century. And the de-regulation of the markets championed by Phil Graham drove our economy in the toilet. That’s why you guys lost the election, and congress. The obstructionist, whiny rhetoric is laughable. The Dems won, it’s their turn to screw up.
You morons — on both sides of the political spectrum — have no idea what you’re talking about. Seriously, you don’t. It’s just another excuse to wear your politics on your sleeve — and frankly it’s tiring.
You’re both so fundamentally wrong on so many levels (and right on so very little) that it’s mind-boggling and more than a tad frustrating, since the same cast of characters with too much time on their hands get to frame the debate (such as it is) on this site.
Get over Bush versus Obama; get over Con versus Lib. This really is one of those epochal moments where political identity is useless and futile, and ultimately ruinous. Comparing the current situation to the Great Depression, or Carter-era stagflation, or the Reagan, Clinton and Bush I & II recessions is utterly ridiculous for reasons that would take too much space to explain.
You have no idea of the shitstorm to come, unless sane and educated men and women who actually know what the hell is going on are allowed to transcend the political BS and chart the right course to fix the problems. If any of you would bother to wrest yourselves away from parroting what your particular ideology’s pundits have to say on the matter, you’d realize what fools you are.
Meantime, for Godsakes, is there a learned (independent/politically unbiased)economist out there who can testify and better explain what my fuss is about without me having to hog precious bandwidth?
I hope so…. But right now, I am going to pick up my child from school and be thankful I have a home to go to.
So I guess I should come steal your blender and FloBee then, travelah. Since I’m from the wrong side of thew tracks and all.
Well said Hal.
penKap, since I’m not a sheeple, you might encounter a rough go of it.
The great big world according to Millard … er … ok.
I’ll take your Flobee from your cold dead hands?
Hal said it all. I hope intelligence reigns…
penkap, no, you would just be out in the cold.
I wonder if H. Millard could elaborate on the “shit storm to come”. I’d like to hear this. What is the basis of this belief? Am I to assume that this is a reasoned conclusion or is it a run of the mill (the whole world is going to hell in a handbasket)statement. I’m just personally curious of people’s mind-set when it comes to future forcaste.
“Who”
Perhaps you are unaware of Current economic events due to a cave-dwelling situation, or a head/sand fetish?
Trav-Your mad-max fantasy of having to defend your household appliances from the unwashed masses is humorous. My guess is you’ll be at my farm asking for food much sooner than I find a need to steal your FloBee and Blender. Do you own a man-sized safe, too, just in case?
who, ther eisn’t any basis for his commentary. It is simply musings at the bottom of an empty beer mug.
Well, aside from calling all of you a bunch of morons, Millard has a point when looking at this unprecedented time through the lense hole of history. History doesn’t really repeat itself, it just resembles itself,so Ive heard an historian say . A lot of people talk about these times as if it is pre-ordained or written that humanity is going to have a heavy hammer down upon it. Jesus will be coming with the rapture, or 2012 is going to be cataclysmic, “Oh, things are going to get bad” I hear so many people say – “get your guns” – the world is going to burn. I can think of all the bleak future-istic sci-fi movies from where some get their doomsday images. Even some environmentalist wouldn’t mind if us rat-like infesting humans got what we deserve. Mother earth is going to take strike back, or a vengefull god is going to punish us, in any case, we all are going to get our come-uppance, So, I just wanted to know if Millard had a belief, of some kind, that, along with a struggling economy, makes him say that we are heading for a shit storm. How these challenging times get mixed in with other notions I find interesting, and a mere curiosity.
I dont think “who” is defending your “perspective” there, lil t.
And if calling me a drunkard isnt the kind of “Ad Hom” attack you decry, then call me wonderboy.
Who-I cant speak for Hal, but I also see less than calm waters in the near future. I base that on common sense, not biblical or new-age prophecy. The economy depends on constant expansion, despite finite resources. That must end at some point, and the current trajectory is not anything resembling a smooth transition–it is right off the edge of a cliff. The current implosion is merely the fore-warning of the crumbling of an infrastructure that is completely corrupted. We cannot spend our way out of this.
Do you have any more hopeful insight to offer to help me see things in your more positive light?
Pfkjyz, who referred to you as a drunkard?
People have been calling for the end times, since the beginning times. Hal is hypocritical in that he decries everyone “parroting” their perspective ideologies. Then, he goes on to say libs and conservatives are the same, and that we’re all heading for a shitstorm. Sounds like a doomsday libertarian to me.
I believe we’ll all be ok, the world wants us to be fat, happy consumers, and that’s not changing anytime soon. Even if we need WWIII to “save” the economy. China will have their debt paid in full. Viva Costco!!