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U.S. threatens to rescind stimulus money over wage cuts

Renae

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The Obama administration threatens to rescind billions in stimulus money if Gov. Schwarzenegger and lawmakers do not restore wage cuts to unionized home healthcare workers.
U.S. threatens to rescind stimulus money over wage cuts - Los Angeles Times

Any of you still believe Obama gives a **** about the Economy? That he's out to help bring the country back stronger then ever?

You've got blinders on. This entire fiasco has been, as we've been saying over and over and over, power. And gee, a Chicago politician strong arming in favor of a union?

It's here, for everyone to see... what Obama really is, who he is, and what he really wants.
 
U.S. threatens to rescind stimulus money over wage cuts - Los Angeles Times

Any of you still believe Obama gives a **** about the Economy? That he's out to help bring the country back stronger then ever?

You've got blinders on. This entire fiasco has been, as we've been saying over and over and over, power. And gee, a Chicago politician strong arming in favor of a union?

It's here, for everyone to see... what Obama really is, who he is, and what he really wants.

I heard this one today; being from the great Liberal State of California, it is just laughable watching Liberals fight Liberals over trying to cut spending to avoid bankrupting the State.

You just can't fabricate a comedy better than this. BUT, what the SEIU is really saying is this; you cannot CUT the pay of any union member, but if you lay them off, that is okay.

The State was trying to SAVE jobs by having them agree to pay cuts; now their only recourse will be to let people go. We call this Liberal irony.

Meanwhile, where are those 5,000,000 NEW jobs Obama promised? And if we do the math, the economy has shed about 6,000,000 since he took office, so in order to create 5,000,000 NEW jobs, 11,000,000 will need to be created now.

I can't wait till the stimulus bills start to work; any day now right? ::wink wink::

Yes folks, the denial, naiveté and ignorance it takes to believe in the "Community Organizer" is self evident to all but those desperately trying to deny reality.
 
People like Obama give Unions a bad name. What a ****ing idiot.
Obama is just the logical step for a Union.

But is no one seeing the real danger here? Obama is out to over ride the states powers.
 
Obama is just the logical step for a Union.

But is no one seeing the real danger here? Obama is out to over ride the states powers.

Here's a radical idea:

Kill all federal income taxes, and replace it with a levy against the state governments instead. Let the states work out for themselves how best to apportion the taxation among the taxpayers.

Basically, instead of having the states as clients of the federal government, return the federal government to its proper position as the client of the states.
 
It's exactly this kind of idiocy which prompts Atlas to shrug.
 
Sorry man, Unions give unions a bad name.

They are supposed to be temporary entities and not persistent leaches.

Obama is just the logical step for a Union.

But is no one seeing the real danger here? Obama is out to over ride the states powers.

Considering my father a Vietnam Vet is a union worker Im going to say no. Obama panders to the scumbag leadership of unions not the actual workers themselves.
 
Whatever happened to just good-ole collective bargaining of the early 1920's?
 
Considering my father a Vietnam Vet is a union worker Im going to say no. Obama panders to the scumbag leadership of unions not the actual workers themselves.

I'll agree, in many places where the cancer of Unions is embedded, you are either part of the Union, or you don't work.
 
U.S. threatens to rescind stimulus money over wage cuts - Los Angeles Times

Any of you still believe Obama gives a **** about the Economy? That he's out to help bring the country back stronger then ever?

You've got blinders on. This entire fiasco has been, as we've been saying over and over and over, power. And gee, a Chicago politician strong arming in favor of a union?

It's here, for everyone to see... what Obama really is, who he is, and what he really wants.

From your post it's not even clear what your problem is with the story. Honestly, I'm not even sure you read the story.

How exactly does this show the President doesn't care about the economy?
 
I'll agree, in many places where the cancer of Unions is embedded, you are either part of the Union, or you don't work.
I've heard of this, mostly in massachusets and the New England.

Can anyone tell WTFing logic is behind that? If I don't want to be in a union, why do I have to be in a union to work?
 
Whatever happened to just good-ole collective bargaining of the early 1920's?

Sadly it's dying because the leadership rather get into partisan politics than actually helping out its members. You should've seen the crap my dad got during the election from his union. It was nothing but pro-Obama bull****, nothing on McCain (except the bs attacks) or any of the other candidates. My dad was originally going to vote McCain so many of the stuff was a moot point anyway but after seeing how he voted for the bailout as well he voted for Barr.
 
From your post it's not even clear what your problem is with the story. Honestly, I'm not even sure you read the story.

How exactly does this show the President doesn't care about the economy?

As a liberal, you probably don't see the problem with Washington directing how a state handles itself, and to do so in favor a union... well that's just icing on the cake as it were.

To be competitive, and cost effective, wages had to drop... oh but Obama won't have none of that... and he used the club of the Government to make it so.
 
I think it depends on what you think is the solution is to the economic problem.

Obama has been pushing the idea of money coming from the bottom up, and it shouldn't surprise anyone that this decision is to give money to the workers. For this stimulus plan to follow his logic, it must be the way it is.

I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but at least it's consistent with Keynesian Economics. Raising aggregate demand, while we're in a recession/depression is what it calls for (if we're going to go with a Stimulus Package, which is already underway).
 
I think it depends on what you think is the solution is to the economic problem.

Obama has been pushing the idea of money coming from the bottom up, and it shouldn't surprise anyone that this decision is to give money to the workers. For this stimulus plan to follow his logic, it must be the way it is.

I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but at least it's consistent with Keynesian Economics. Raising aggregate demand, while we're in a recession/depression is what it calls for (if we're going to go with a Stimulus Package, which is already underway).

How can Dear Leader be pushing the idea of money "coming from the bottom up" when a government stimulus plan is by definition coming from the top down?


  • Dear Leader is not hiring hordes of unemployed after the fashion of Roosevelt's Civilian Conservation Corps.
  • Dear Leader is not handing out government checks to individuals as President Bush mistakenly did last year.
  • Dear Leader's "stimulus" (if it can be called that) is quintessential trickle-down economic theory: billions upon billions of government programs and "infrastructure" projects, which are transformed into billions of government contracts handed out to government contractors, which in turn hire and staff for the projects so obtained.
  • Dear Leader's bailouts of Wall Street funnel money to banks and to AIG in the hopes that the extra capital will inspire them to be a little less harsh or hasty in foreclosing on defaulted mortgages.

Nothing about Dear Leader's efforts involve anything coming "the bottom up." Every aspect of Dear Leader's efforts to date involve taking the tax revenue of future years and shoveling it out the door today towards big companies and big contractors, in the hopes that those big companies and big contractors will hire the little guy and cut down on unemployment.

$2 an hour is not a small wage cut, especially when going from $12.10 per hour to $10.10 per hour--a $4,000 wage cut over a working (2000 hour) year. But if trimming wages in that fashion preserves a few more jobs (the unemployment benefits of which would amount to far more than $4,000 per person per year), is that not the sort of "hard choice" that Dear Leader himself proclaimed to be necessary? Given California's budget woes, is that not superior to trimming jobs--and then trimming additional jobs to pay for the unemployment benefits of the workers so displaced? Is this not in keeping with Dear Leader's own stated priority of "spreading the wealth"?

The truth is SEIU barked, and Dear Leader servilely complied with their request. He has sold himself at auction to so many masters he'd need the personalities of Sybil to adequately service them all.
 
The economic mess in California is the precursor for the entire country.
 
You know, I suspect that most unions are good things. They help their employees and work with management to make for better work places. I have no real evidence to back this up, except that you don't hear about most unions, and sometimes you got to respect organizations that quietly get things done. I suspect that the biggest problems unions have is the bad publicity inherent in the UAW, which is well deserved. When the auto industry booms, the UAW holds up the big three for everything they can get, and have zero interest in making a healthy auto industry. The UAW actually plans things out come contract negotiation time, which of the big three is going to give in easiest, negotiate with those first and threaten a lengthy strike. When they fold, the other two will follow suit. I remember 20 years ago or so, when GM was doing a round of layoffs...seemingly daily on the news, there would be some one who was being layed off, standing in front of their 3 story house, with the boat and RV out front, complaining they did not know how they where ever going to get by....

Any limitations or requirements put on a state for any political reason to get stimulus money is a really bad idea. This just is not the time to play politics, paying off political patrons. It's just a horrible thing. It is not the federal governments place to tell states how to run things, and using needed money to blackmail a state into doing what you want is simply wrong.
 
How can Dear Leader be pushing the idea of money "coming from the bottom up" when a government stimulus plan is by definition coming from the top down?

  • Dear Leader is not hiring hordes of unemployed after the fashion of Roosevelt's Civilian Conservation Corps.
  • Dear Leader is not handing out government checks to individuals as President Bush mistakenly did last year.
  • Dear Leader's "stimulus" (if it can be called that) is quintessential trickle-down economic theory: billions upon billions of government programs and "infrastructure" projects, which are transformed into billions of government contracts handed out to government contractors, which in turn hire and staff for the projects so obtained.
  • Dear Leader's bailouts of Wall Street funnel money to banks and to AIG in the hopes that the extra capital will inspire them to be a little less harsh or hasty in foreclosing on defaulted mortgages.

Well, I suppose I should give you an intro to Demand-side economics then.

It is bottom up because aggregate demand has shifted because the consumers have more spending power. While you may think that the government is part of the "top" it is actually neutral. The "top", by in all conventional use, is referred to employers and shop owners. Therefore the "bottom" are the workers and wage-earners. The closest the government will be to the "top" is that they are in charge of improving infrastructure and construction, but unlike the "top" they are not there to make a profit, they are there to provide jobs, and therefore they benefit the "bottom", not the "top". This would be the 3rd point you were trying to make (above).

If the bottom receives paychecks, that's more money they can spend/save. The more money in their pockets, or in their banks, the more products they can spend on. This essentially raises aggregate demand, and increases in production and sales in the long run (this is the part where it benefits the "top"; after the "bottom" has gotten their benefit). Therefore it's bottom-to-top.

But like I said, it depends on what you think is the solution to the economic problem. If you don't think Keynesian economics is the answer, obviously you wont agree with the stimulus package.
 
If the bottom receives paychecks, that's more money they can spend/save. The more money in their pockets, or in their banks, the more products they can spend on. This essentially raises aggregate demand, and increases in production and sales in the long run (this is the part where it benefits the "top"; after the "bottom" has gotten their benefit). Therefore it's bottom-to-top.

Dear Leader is telling California, in effect, to leave wages intact and shed jobs, which takes more paychecks away from more people, requiring more unemployment benefits be paid by California. Even by your reasoning, as the spending-as-stimulus plan is failing to preserve paychecks, it cannot qualify as "bottom up".

Further, unless and until the spending-as-stimulus plan has specific employment targets (which it does not), there is no guarantee that companies will hire in proportion to the monies spent on "stimulus". There is not one single job or paycheck explicitly guaranteed anywhere in the text of the porkulus bill.

FDR's New Deal programs (WPA and CCC) were authentic "bottom up" stimulus efforts because they put people to work directly, put money in their pockets directly, and let their spending inject demand back into the economy. Dear Leader has proposed nothing of the kind.

President Bush's stimulus checks last year were authentic "bottom up" because they put money directly in the hands of taxpayers. Dear Leader has proposed nothing of the kind.

In fact, one of the biggest criticisms of the porkulus bill was and remains that Republicans, using Dear Leader's own pie-in-the-sky assumptions, showed that more jobs could be saved/created through a series of tax cuts with no additional spending. As job creation/salvation efforts go, Dear Leader's non-stimulus bill is a farce.

Also, as monstrous as the spending-as-stimulus obscenity is, it is the smallest part of the stimulative flailings Dear Leader has pursued. The greatest portion of his stimulative efforts are in the financial sector with the bailing out of AIG and Wall Street--yes, the programs were started in the Bush Administration, but Dear Leader is expanding upon and endorsing those efforts, and has co-opted them as his own. Efforts to stimulate lending and credit are not "bottom up" either, unless you're proposing Dear Leader give every American a government-backed Visa Card and encourage shopping sprees.

But like I said, it depends on what you think is the solution to the economic problem. If you don't think Keynesian economics is the answer, obviously you wont agree with the stimulus package.

Keynes' approach has failed miserably everywhere it's been tried. Historical fact, Democrat delusions to the contrary notwithstanding. Government spending is not a substitute for private sector spending--and by the very nature of its sources of cash to spend, can never be a substitute for private sector spending.
 
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Keynes' approach has failed miserably everywhere it's been tried. Historical fact, Democrat delusions to the contrary notwithstanding. Government spending is not a substitute for private sector spending--and by the very nature of its sources of cash to spend, can never be a substitute for private sector spending.

Historical fact: The government increasing aggregate demand in WWII by buying military equipment and creating jobs in the Defense Industry is what pulled us out of the Great Depression.

Historical fact: NASA one of the most expensive projects that they government has spent on, also, increased aggregate demand because it put money out into the economy.


The thing that you have left out is the money multiplier effect. For every dollar that the government spends on, the return of that dollar is not the same. The impact of government spending is more than what is spent on the budget.

[ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiplier_effect]Spending multiplier - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]
 
Historical fact: The government increasing aggregate demand in WWII by buying military equipment and creating jobs in the Defense Industry is what pulled us out of the Great Depression.

Historical fact: NASA one of the most expensive projects that they government has spent on, also, increased aggregate demand because it put money out into the economy.

Historical fact: Keynes never argued war as a way to repair an economy. Further, government purchasing tanks, planes, ships, and bombs from existing companies is not "bottom up" but "top down" stimulus. Follow the money--government to Ford/GM/Boeing/etc. to worker. That's top down. Ok, taking 16 million Americans, stuffing them into uniforms, and putting rifles in their hands IS a "bottom up" sort of stimulus....but, again, neither Keynes nor FDR argued war as economic stimulus.

Historical fact: NASA was more than just money rolled off the government printing press. It was also the largest research and development project in history, with transformational impacts on a par with those of Prince Henry the Navigator. It was also not a "bottom up" stimulus project.

Current event fact: Dear Leader is not big on funding NASA. The 5% increase in the NASA budget for 2010 is contingent upon a review of NASA's human spaceflight plans post-2010. Senator Bill Nelson (D-Florida), chairman of the subcommittee overseeing the NASA budget, has publicly stated that Dear Leader's NASA budget proposals do not match the promises made on the campaign trail.
 
The thing that you have left out is the money multiplier effect. For every dollar that the government spends on, the return of that dollar is not the same. The impact of government spending is more than what is spent on the budget.
The thing you have left out is that the multiplier effect goes in both directions. As 1937 shows, an economy propped up by stimulus craters when stimulus is withdrawn.

Smoot-Hawley is another good example of the multiplier going in reverse. Even though exports were 4% of the American economy at the time, the virtual shutting down of that 4% in 1930 was sufficient to put the economy into a deflationary spiral.
 
Historical fact: Keynes never argued war as a way to repair an economy. Further, government purchasing tanks, planes, ships, and bombs from existing companies is not "bottom up" but "top down" stimulus. Follow the money--government to Ford/GM/Boeing/etc. to worker. That's top down. Ok, taking 16 million Americans, stuffing them into uniforms, and putting rifles in their hands IS a "bottom up" sort of stimulus....but, again, neither Keynes nor FDR argued war as economic stimulus.

Whether or not they argued it, doesn't mean it didn't increase aggregate demand.

The whole point of Keynesian economics at the time was to create incentive to produce. The war was that incentive. No one had to argue it, it happened regardless.

Historical fact: NASA was more than just money rolled off the government printing press. It was also the largest research and development project in history, with transformational impacts on a par with those of Prince Henry the Navigator. It was also not a "bottom up" stimulus project.

And the construction of highways, improvement of infrastructure, ALSO have auxiliary benefits as well. And because of these improvements, the costs of products reduce, and again consumer spending power increases. Using NASA as an example again, increase in technology makes for more efficient ways of producing, therefore cost of products go down, which in turn increasing spending power of consumers. Benefiting the bottom.

The thing you have left out is that the multiplier effect goes in both directions. As 1937 shows, an economy propped up by stimulus craters when stimulus is withdrawn.

Smoot-Hawley is another good example of the multiplier going in reverse. Even though exports were 4% of the American economy at the time, the virtual shutting down of that 4% in 1930 was sufficient to put the economy into a deflationary spiral.

I'm not going to disagree here.

As soon as the stimulus money is taken away, or not renewed in next years budget, the companies that depend on this income will shut down. If the government decides to keep renewing this stimulus, then it'll become too alike with socialism. Which I do not wish my country to become. However, in the circumstance we are in, it is vital that companies where millions of Americans are employed be kept up. At least for the time being.

But to say that Keynesian economics has had no success in history is just false. Whether Keynesian theory will be the solution for our economic problem is debatable, but you cannot claim that Keynesian economics has never been successful.
 
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