White House considering stimulus package

[Moby]

Tax cuts are great but they mean borrowing more money. We've lower interest rates, we've cut taxes twice, we've over printed money, we've lowered the value of the dollar, we've done away with lending laws and this is all we have to show for it.

The $3 Trillion economic plan gets us this!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080105/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_economy_27
By MARTIN CRUTSINGER, AP Economics Writer
Sat Jan 5, 7:25 AM ET

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration, faced with a deteriorating economy and a big jump in unemployment, said Friday it was considering an economic stimulus package that might include tax cuts to ward off a recession.

Officials stressed that President Bush has not decided yet to offer a proposal but was looking at a variety of options with a plan possibly being unveiled around the time of his Jan. 28 State of the Union address.

"The president is always looking at options ... always talking to people and looking at data," Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Bush met Friday with top economic officials including Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, who are part of the president's working group on financial markets, a group formed after the 1987 stock market crash to monitor markets.

The president was given an assessment of how the economy is behaving and how financial markets are performing after the severe credit squeeze that hit in August. A number of big financial institutions have declared multibillon-dollar losses because of rising defaults in the subprime mortgage market.

White House spokesman Tony Fratto said tax cuts were an option being considered.

Bush in his first term included a tax refund of up to $300 per person to combat the impact of the 2001 recession. Private economists said another round of tax cuts would be the best approach to get money to people who would spend it.

Some suggested a one-year tax rebate of $500 might provide a sufficient shot-in-the-arm for the economy. But they stressed that the proposal would have to be passed quickly.

"The critical time is the first part of this year. If it doesn't get passed until just before the November election, it will be totally useless," said David Wyss, chief economist at Standard & Poor's in New York.

Dan Danner, executive vice president for public policy for the National Federation of Independent Business, said his group and other business organizations will be lobbying for tax incentives to be included in any stimulus package.

"We are very hopeful that as the administration looks at economic stimulus, they will look at the sector that has helped keep the economy afloat and that is small business," Danner said.

Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, who served in the Clinton administration, said in a speech last month that a stimulus package of $50 billion to $75 billion of temporary tax cuts and emergency spending would be needed to avoid what he said could be the worst recession since the steep 1981-82 downturn.

It was expected that Bush would combine any new tax cuts with a renewed call to make permanent his first term tax cuts, which are now scheduled to expire at the end of 2010.

He warned Congress against taking steps that would increase taxes. "The worst thing that Congress can do is raise taxes on the American people and on American businesses," he said.

Analysts said any stimulus package should provide only temporary tax relief to avoid making budget deficits worse in future years.

The quickest help probably will come from the Federal Reserve, in the form of another interest rate cut later this month. That was considered more likely given the jump in unemployment in December, to a two-year high of 5 percent.

Bush urged Congress to quickly pass legislation left over from last year to offer assistance to people trying to obtain mortgages or refinance to more affordable mortgages. "For those of you who are paying more and are worried about the value of your home, I understand that," he said.

[LadyMod at scam.com]

Tax cuts are great but they mean borrowing more money. We've lower interest rates, we've cut taxes twice, we've over printed money, we've lowered the value of the dollar, we've done away with lending laws and this is all we have to show for it.

The $3 Trillion economic plan gets us this!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080105/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_economy_27


Those $300 tax rebates in 2001 didn't help hardly anyone at all and didn't do much to give the economy back then a "shot in the arm".

So, how is a $500 rebate supposed to do something that a $300 rebate didn't?


It seems that Bush keeps trying to do bad ideas over and over in hopes that he will get different results.


Lady Mod

[Moby]

So, how is a $500 rebate supposed to do something that a $300 rebate didn't?
It's very simple.

The current economic woes have been created by our economic policies (borrowing, trade, the weak dollar...). Most of the economic plan was short term just to keep things looking good until Bush gets out of office.

Now he says he wants to further tax cuts and borrow even more money from China, which will throw us deeper in debt and weaken our economy more but the weakness won't show up for a good 12 months. Then when the recession hits it will hit harder.

1. He postpones the coming recession until he's out of office.
2. He makes the recession worse for the next President which won't be a neocon.
3. If congress doesn't pass additional tax cuts he blames the dems for the recession that he created.

There's no way for Bush to lose unless the American people educate themselves which we know that ain't going to happen.

[Cat slave]

I have a suggestion....stop the flow of manufacturing to near slave labor countries
and put America back to work. Either impose tariffs comparable to tariffs
on our exports....that would be fair! Fair trade! Thats a concept!

I heard that a large portion of the new jobs created were in government.
Doesnt anyone else find that scary?

I find it obscene that corporations are allowed to shut down plants in our
country, produce products then import them to sell to the people that they
put out of work!

I think we have enough "stimulus"......it has become inflation.

[Bill]

1. He postpones the coming recession until he's out of office.
2. He makes the recession worse for the next President which won't be a neocon.
3. If congress doesn't pass additional tax cuts he blames the dems for the recession that he created.

There's no way for Bush to lose unless the American people educate themselves which we know that ain't going to happen.

That pretty much nutshells it.

It will work, too.

The republicans are masters of evil tactics.

I've been saying this for a while - we have to be willing to be just as evil.

The dirty fighter usually wins, despite the garbage they put in the lame morality plays we get as movies and tv shows.

We have to start going for the balls, no apologies, no hesitation, and willing to kill.

They've made it clear they intend to kill us.

[Cat slave]

Thats probably the name of the game...leave a mess for the next fearless
leader. Much like the one Klinton left Bush with, busted tech bubble, falling
stocks etc. It must part of the game.

[Bill]

True enough - Clinton allowed the stock dotcom bubble.

It's always been my position that Clinton was really a southern republican masquerading as a democrat to get elected, and I always despised him for that. Thankfully, I never voted for him.

---

Nice to see you understand the need for evil tactics catslave.

You've made my point for me better than I ever could, with your classic and perfect example.

This, people of the blue, is what we have to learn to fight, what we have to master, this kind of political black magic.

See how effortlessly and automatically the attack drips from catslaves claws - see how perfectly framed and targeted the rhetoric is?

She doesn't even have to think about it, it's conditioned into the brainstem, like a jawbreaking elbow strike in the middle of a death fight.

That's the skill we need. We have to stop this girlish flailing and train ourselves to kill with rhetoric.

[Moby]

Thats probably the name of the game...leave a mess for the next fearless
leader. Much like the one Klinton left Bush with, busted tech bubble, falling
stocks etc. It must part of the game.
I've stated since Dubya was elected and probably even before he took office that this would happen.

What policies did Clinton push through that lead to the tech bubble bust?

I just want to see if you guys know what you're talking about or just repeating things :)

[Moby]

BTW - The reason why Dubya wants to leave is a mess and blame the next President is because the ultimate goal is to get Jeb Bush elected in 2012 or 2016. Then implement the true strategy of The PNAC. The best way to do that is have the country crash really hard around 2009 to 2010.

Look at the names on The PNAC web site and tell me I'm wrong.

[Bill]

SM, you're letting her rhetoric pull you into her frame.

You already know she doesn't have the facts, it's useless to try to counterstrike with facts that aren't part of the frame. The frame isn't about facts.

All that does is affirm the frame.

Attack the frame.

[disrupter]

If corporations want to operate in a law & order realm, they must bear some of the overhead of it.

Right now you have an outlaw corporate hegemony. Corrupt, lawless, & controlling the government you live under.
Turn off the damn boob tube, do whatever you have to, but think clearly, independently & rationally, but not stupidly cynically, selfishly.

Right now corporations break all the rules or even pretzel write them around their crimes & yet they skim all the benefits of human efforts.

Enough is enough.
If you must take the law into your own hands, so be it.
the system helps the system,
you have to help you.

[Bill]

Talk like that, disrupter, makes it trivially easy for your enemy to place you in a frame that marginalizes you entirely.

Oddly enough, if the reds place themselves in a frame in which they serve their masters by taking direct action against you, they will be cheered by their peers and the authorities.

That's the power of the frame, and of rhetoric.

[disrupter]

The frame is the launching platform for rhetoric.
[wow, we are getting into pretty intellectual stuff, don't know if that is practically useful or drifting into esoterica.]

By 'reds' you mean the GOP reds & not the old communist 'reds', yes?

Essentially aren't we all individually, collectively & by any other grouping marginal of not down right silly in how we take ourselves seriously?

We almost to absolute certainty don't matter, but still we try.
perhaps the trying matters.
perhaps that is the aesthetic of the Universe,
the struggle that is inevitably futile that is beauty.

We reach for that which we are incapable of comprehending.

ok, exiting lofty stabs at inspiration,
a frame, could be either a lattice frame or a containment boundary.
i will venture that it more strongly implies lattice.
A lattice frame holds by the integrity of its self-connected elements.
Open 'breathable', minimal interface/friction with its existence domain.
A [continuous] containment is used to bifurcate some n-dimensional space into 3 elements, 2 interior-exterior [topologically indistinguishable] domains & the boundary construct itself.

Skyhooking [hmmm, certainly has dubious openings for derogatory humor jabs]
means reaching to some ethereal realm of more rarified form of matter & using it as ballast or stabilization or flow, via a [sinuous?] containment field, often in the manner of a converse [gravity] plumb bob.
Alternately one can create a [exo-]ridgid frame structure that contains, creates, holds voids with some similar or at least not unrelated effects.
I think the/an identifying difference is the torque distribution that distinguishes them. Also their continuity characteristics/relationships differentiate them.
both perhaps culminating/converging to similar effects.

If a frame work can be distributed in modular units to individual automata then options open to multivariate construction form possibilities.
Ant, bee, termite colonies come to mind.
Perhaps some form of society, clan, tribe, pack &/or familial units, &/or their relationships also might apply.
This requires some internalization of some structure.
The flesh contains bones.
bone articulate our actions beyond the amoeba.
although the amoeba represents a step above the purely flagella driven bacteria, & that is a step above the immobile organism.
We must internalize very subtle, [tested for toxicity?], hard inert [fibrous?] things that can be used as tools, constructed as tools or honed into tools.

We have to reach out into the quasi-unreality of the imagination for things that have no apparent embodiment in our Universe yet.

Weirdly we may literally have to mine the imagination itself for ideas.
But implementation may require work or even pain to implement them, i do not know.

Maybe we have to be esoteric without being irrelevant.
Maybe the hardest job of all is proving the relevance of the esoteric.
Proving the imagination is real.

Proving that 'life' which is arguably purely subjective, matters & is real.

Can the power of life, imaginary life, rotate the Universe, even the smallest amount?
Or does it simply get lost in the quantum uncertain noise?

Maybe that is unknowable.
And we insulate our internal fantasies.

Perhaps the only evidence of life is its evasion of the death all around it.
Maybe what we call life is just a bifurcated isolation from an eternal if very different form of life.

I guess i am [we?] are talking about Universe isolated, quasi-independent [whatever that means] automata that give the impression of being self directed.
Can something constructed of the elements of the universe access something otherwise unavailable to or inaccessible to the Universe in its raw, inititial form?
Or are we complete fabrications of our own imaginations, creating a drama where none [did] exist? Is a TV drama a 'real' drama? Obviously it is not a Universe type reality that we can literally step into, but it occupies [seduces] our minds.

How many of histories scenarios do we see & how do we evaluate them? Do we really sense how it must have felt for those people? Do we trivialize it through psychological rejection? Do we simply set it aside because we are so caught up in our immediate & consuming occupying existences?

what the hell am i talking about?

where is waldo?
can you find waldo?

help! waldo, waldo where the heck did you slip away to?

[disrupter]

I think what people need is self-authorship,
rather than borrowed/loaned authorship.

[Bill]

Yes, of course, reds means red voters, typically republican, blues means blue voters, typically democrat.

Because it's a less charged language, we can talk about the two enemies without triggering the older associated frames.

As an example, reds have poisoned the frame of the old school term 'liberal' very effectively, because the reds were very well financed, and had 40 years to build the think tanks and schools and PR businesses to perfect their rhetoric and rhetorical weapons.

That's a classic rhetorical tactic, called "poisoning the well".

Old school blue leadership allowed that to happen. We blues have been massively less skilled at rhetoric for years now. I'm going to be trying to do what I can to reverse that pattern.

---

>Weirdly we may literally have to mine the imagination itself for ideas.
>But implementation may require work or even pain to implement them, i do not know.

Yes. Altho there are plenty of tools laying around that we don't have to "mine" - we just have to train ourselves how to use them.

I understood the rest of your rant - but I don't think many people would.

Wether or not one takes oneself seriously, the planet continues to get more crowded, more polluted, and more competitive.

Self-author away. Self-author away.

[disrupter]

Liberal is not a very great word because it kind of implies sloppiness [reckless?].
Inaccuracy, imprecision.

Progressive is better, because it sounds more measured, self-contained.
I would argue in the center of infinite(?) chaos, the only containment within it is self-containment. Positive, contained perhaps implying increments.

Conservative is a good choice, but the people using it rob it of all its actual meanings. They are reckless, spendthrifts, who refuse to put any kind of containment, measure or brakes on their actions. Pigs on ice. Nothing can stop them, but disaster.

Is there anything LESS conservative than many of the people who use the term?

A real conservative is not that far from progressive.

NeoWhacks are not conservative, just complete loony tunes. Very certain in all their stupidity, but absolute certainty that is not earned is ALWAYS stupid. It may occasionally by accident be right, but it is ALWAYS stupid.

People are probably somewhat insecure.
They flock to sensations of certainty.
Moths to a flame.

I was thinking just today that evolution filters out [most?] creatures without fear doesn't it? Especially higher organisms. But we are kind of an odd mix of fears & synthesized security [certainty]. Our complete occupation in our imagination has us doing all sorts of things, the consequences of which could be argued any number of ways.
Fear is sort of an agent of motivation as well as a blocker of action.
So like a pressurized thing, it doesn't seem to be doing anything, but when it actually does explode, act or move it does so with unforeseeable intensity [unpredictability?].

Is fear intensified anxiety?

We do seem to successfully fabricate certainty, confidence, comfort despite a pretty prevalent preponderance for fears.

Our minds operate in this whole realm of imaginary constructs which seems weird, but arguably those without imagination or access to it have been filtered out, or at least in our species.

I guess i am not arguing a particular point but exploring the subject.

As to individual self authorship i think that would be more original, Ron Paul represents that.
Borrowed or loaned authorship is when we take it from some external source.

I think there may be a third thing with is collective self-authorship that is original to us collectively. We create our ethics, our standards of behavior, what we do or perhaps 'should' respond to.

some of that arises very naturally, but we do actually synthesize arguments that actually result in taking some actions. A rationally constructed intellectual structure can be the basis of action.

I guess my question is do we need some subjective notion of divinity or moral absolutism to accept rational, measured self constructed & modeled ethics?

Is it not enough that we live lost in space & time & if we don't want to tyrannize ourselves into complete aloneness we have to cooperate with other people [things]?
Does anyone [anything?] want to be completely reductionistic so that the entire universe revolves around them? Create a prison of without any unknowns?

Maybe we are the bits & pieces of a god that exploded with loneliness. It destroyed itself rather than be alone? Just an odd thought.

You suggest we need bitier sound bites.

I was also thinking about how most of the planet seems accessible. It gets much harder to 'get away' from things.
Imagine being a telepathic species. They must almost of necessity have to create mind domains that are not immediately accessible to one another. Otherwise you might be operable by other minds, as well as never have any rest from all those other minds. But for collective warfare it would be an amazing coordinating facility.

I wonder if the internet serves anything similarly?
Where due to anonymity we express interior thoughts [emotions?] that we would otherwise not? I know i have certainly done that. I don't know if that is wise, so i don't want to overindulge, but it does certainly put things out there.

What is nice about the internet is that it is two way communication, instead of broadcast that is inherently one way.
Democracy has the characteristic of being two way communication or at least some kind of crude consequential feedback.

[disrupter]

Isn't recklessness a liberal trait?

Aren't many zealots liberal in that regard, including the right wingers who hide behind a phony mask of 'conservative'?

Isn't a zealot inherently non-conservative?

[Libraltarian]

And now, from those wonderful folks who rescued the South after Rita & Katrina, The Economic Stimulus Package.

[disrupter]

They have been 'stimulating' Halliburton & Bechtel both in Iraq & Katrina for almost 6 years now.

Maybe it is time for something else?

Maybe by 'stimulating' Bush means jawboning the American people while he funnels more Billions to corrupt Corporate Defense contractors?

You do the work, they get the money.

Ain't stimulation just great?

[Moby]

And now, from those wonderful folks who rescued the South after Rita & Katrina, The Economic Stimulus Package.
I think they should call it "The Political Propaganda Package".