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devoish (98.76)

I'd Like to Introduce Margaret and Helen.

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July 12, 2009 – Comments (12)

http://margaretandhelen.wordpress.com/2009/07/07/sarah-palin-called-a-family-meeting-and-the-rabbit-lived/ 

For several weeks now, we have watched as one idiot Republican spokesman after another has stepped up to the microphone and whined endlessly about how much they don’t like anything or anyone.  It’s been embarrassing to say the least.  I guess when you’ve been kicked in the ass, it’s difficult to lick your wounds.   And honestly, watching Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh lick their wounds is more than my stomach can handle.

But now we have a small group of Democrats who have decided to kiss those same kicked asses.  They want to stop the President’s  agenda. Really?  We barely survived 8 years of the Bush/Cheney administration and now we have the opportunity to correct those mistakes and take the country in a new direction.  So what could these Don’t-0-crats be thinking?

From what I can tell, the Obama agenda emphasizes healthcare, education and energy.  I just don’t understand how anyone can argue those priorities.  Let’s take them one at a time.

Healthcare.  The argument for fixing healthcare is that it is too expensive and too many people don’t have insurance.  Seems pretty clear to me.  The argument against it would be that it is too expensive to fix so poor families including children should just suffer and die needlessly.  Hmmm. If anyone knows Senator Evan Bayh, can you ask him if he enjoys the government sponsored health insurance plan he gets as a Senator?

Education.  The argument for spending money on education is that the United States has fallen from the best in the world to middle of the pack.  In fact students in the United States now rank behind students in 28 other countries in problem solving,  27 other countries in Math and 21 other countries in Science.  The argument for not prioritizing education is… uhh… hnmm…. I don’t know.  Maybe Senator Bayh can hire someone from Korea (1), China (2), Japan (4) or even Poland (25) to solve that problem for us.

Energy.  The argument for prioritizing energy issues and in particular green energy efforts would be our dependency on foriegn oil and climate issues.  The argument against it would be that ExxonMoblile profits in 2008 were $45.2 billion.   That is almost enough money to cover the cost of 5 months of the war in Iraq.

12 Comments – Post Your Own

#1) On July 12, 2009 at 11:22 AM, devoish (98.76) wrote:

Margaret and Helen

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#2) On July 12, 2009 at 11:48 AM, Dividends4ever (< 20) wrote:

We are in scary and very taxing times right now in the USA.

How the heck do we stay ahead of it all?

Patience and discipline will win.

Just my opinion of course.

 

www.compdivplan.com 

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#3) On July 12, 2009 at 2:23 PM, RonChapmanJr (98.51) wrote:

-1 rec

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#4) On July 12, 2009 at 2:26 PM, abitare (99.42) wrote:

There is no difference between the two parties, the same money controls both. They are just puppets for show. The power is in whoever is typing into their telepromters.

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#5) On July 12, 2009 at 2:43 PM, portefeuille (99.75) wrote:

one of the best "political" posts in a while!

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#6) On July 12, 2009 at 2:46 PM, portefeuille (99.75) wrote:

(the best may have been saunafool's "Socialist Babies")

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#7) On July 12, 2009 at 3:24 PM, usmilitiadude (33.47) wrote:

http://caps.fool.com/Blogs/ViewPost.aspx?bpid=226639&t=01007820309211448063

Ever drive down the road, see a 8 to 10 year old car with some sweet rims and tires that would cost $1500 with someone in their late teens to early twenties driving? First thing I think is how much did I pay for their "needs".

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#8) On July 12, 2009 at 4:05 PM, devoish (98.76) wrote:

usmilitiadude,

Do you think welfare paid for the rims? Why do you think that?

Port,

Thanks.

Ab, I don't believe it. Gore vs. Bush? There are good people in Gov. America depends upon us to find and support them.

Ron,

ok.

Dividends,

I am less scared now than with Bush.

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#9) On July 12, 2009 at 7:00 PM, StockSpreadsheet (74.45) wrote:

Devoish,

The goals may be good ones, but the plans to reach those goals may not be good ones.  Just because the goals are good doesn't mean that the plan to reach those goals should be embraced if it is a bad plan.

The U.S. spends more on education than most countries, from what I read a while back, and California spending on education is higher than most states in America.  However, has that high level of spending given us first-rate schools and students?  If not, then maybe the amount of money spent on education is not the problem.  And it is then almost certainly true that spending more on education, (which Obama wants to do), is not the best solution to the problem.  Therefore, maybe we should be looking less at spending more on education and looking more into what works in those 25 or so countries that are better educated than ours and see if we can't adopt some of their good practices that don't seem to require a lot of additional funding.  Sounds good to me anyway.

If we want universal healthcare, one way to get there is to just give every citizen $100k in government subsidies to buy themselves private medical insurance.  It would only cost us about $30 trillion a year, but isn't that a small price to pay to make sure that every man, woman and child in America has medical coverage?  On the other hand, wouldn't just printing $30 trillion extra a year to give away so that everyone can buy medical insurance lead to a collapse of the dollar, runaway inflation/hyperinflation and a destruction of the economy?  But maybe that is worth it to you to insure that every person in America has good medical coverage, (at least for the year or two until our economy collapses).  Obama and the Democrats seem to want to throw a ton of money at the problem and adopt a whole slew of policies in a bill that has hardly been discussed and very little effort seems to have been spent to even think whether or not any of the policies will actually work and at what cost.  Also, some of the policies seem to be counterproductive.  I have read on a link from one of the blogs here that if a company doesn't cover medical expenses that they will be charged something like $750 per employee and their employees will then be covered by the government funded plan.  Since the $750 is much lower than most employers pay for coverage for their employees, there would be a massive incentive for all employers to simply cancel all of their coverage and let all their employees move to the government funded plan.   Since the $750 will not cover the government's cost of supplying coverage for all the people it would then need to cover, this will become a huge drain on government spending that is already running record budget deficits, (much higher than the ridiculous deficits run by Bush).  There has to be a better way, and with some thought, (which is not possible with a rush to an August deadline), then maybe they can come up with a good plan.  From what I have read, the current proposals are a disaster waiting to happen.  Again, maybe we should be looking at some of the plans that other nations have, (such as Canada and Western Europe), and see if we can't take their best practices and implement them here.  That seems like a much better idea than throwing together a bunch of little-thought-out and little-debated policies into a massive bill, cram it through Congress and hope it doesn't turn out to be a total nightmare as it seems to me that the current bills will likely become if they are passed.  I like the idea of universal coverage, but not the current plans being discussed.

As for an energy policy, I think one is long overdue.  That doesn't mean that I think that the Obama administration's plans for energy independence are good ones.  I haven't read too many of their policies on this matter, so don't have much to say on them.  I think that the corn-to-ethanol plan is a complete joke and should be ended.  (I do know this was started under Bush, but it is still up to Obama to end it so that it doesn't last into another administration.)   If we can do cellulose-to-ethanol, then that should be helped along, through limited subsidies if necessary, but those subsidies should have a limiting timeframe, (like 5 - 10 years), after which the companies should have to stand on their own two feet.  I also think that we could have temporary subsidies on things like coal-to-oil or coal-to-gas plants.  The U.S. has, last I checked, the world's largest reserves of coal.  If we want energy independence, then coal has to be part of our plan to get there.  I also think that natural gas production could be encouraged and increased.  You can get natural gas from many renewable sources, (as WMI is doing from its landfills and some feedlots are doing with their cow manure), so natural gas could be considered a renewable resource that should be encouraged.  Subsidizing wind and solar could also be good deals.  But again, the subsidies should have a fixed, firm timeframe, (no more than 10 years), and then they should be told to run on their own.  No new government department should be created to oversee these items, as once a government department is set up, it almost never goes away.  (Last I read, we still have a Helium Strategic Reserve Oversite Board that was set up during WWI to oversee what happens to our Helium production, (a strategic resource during WWI with blimps/dirigibles being a prime bombing/reconnaissance platform).  They haven't had anything important to do since the early 1940's, but as of the late 1990's at least, they still met every year and were still getting paid, even though helium has not been a strategic asset for decades.  Because of this, I am also opposed to the Cap-and-Trade system.  I think it would be a huge tax and a huge bureaucracy that is unnecessary and probably not a good system.  It would be better to just institute a Cap system, (each plant could not pollute more than a certain amount), and be done with it.  It could be overseen by the EPA so now new agency needs to be formed and no new bureaucracy needs to be initiated, which can then grow like a cancer and devour resources while doing very little good.

So just because the Obama administration and the Democrats have these nice goals doesn't mean that the policies that they are proposing to solve them should be automatically adopted and encouraged.  I think that many of them should be rigorously opposed as being more harmful to the country than the problem they are trying to solve.  And maybe, with some opposition now to some of these rushed-together proposals, they will come back with better proposals that are more thought-out and studied and less damaging to the country than the current policies they seem intent on enacting. 


Craig

 

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#10) On July 12, 2009 at 8:21 PM, usmilitiadude (33.47) wrote:

Education: We don't need more money, just learn from this teacher.

 

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#11) On July 12, 2009 at 9:33 PM, devoish (98.76) wrote:

Craig,

And it is then almost certainly true that spending more on education, (which Obama wants to do), is not the best solution to the problem.  Therefore, maybe we should be looking less at spending more on education and looking more into what works in those 25 or so countries that are better educated than ours and see if we can't adopt some of their good practices that don't seem to require a lot of additional funding.

I certainly agree with the sentiment of adopting good practices, and have said so very many times concerning healthcare. It could clearly save money not cost it. At best President Obama's plan is a baby step in the right direction, at worst it will let the insurers right legislation that sets us back.

As to the education issue, I also agree with your and President Obama's principle of expanding what is working, which is not necessarily throwing more money at it. In some districts more money is certainly needed. In others spending control.

Energy to me is easy. No CO2 or as close as I can get. Every penny spent/invested into new energy needs to got to renewables and converting coal to nat gas. We can make more immediate gains with renewable investments than we can with nuclear, so for that reason alone it is renewables. Conservation is easy and huge, and can go a long way before it means giving up "wants". My choice is for a carbon tax and refund with caps. I have no interest whatsoever in giving "industry" credits or any other manipulative crap. Unfortunately global warming is real.

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#12) On July 13, 2009 at 10:08 AM, 4everlost (30.49) wrote:

I find it odd that some folks have "democrats are right and republicans are wrong" perspective.  IMO both parties have acted stupidly for quite some time now.  I think the Bush policies were counterproductive and Obama's are a magnification of those policies.

I agree with  StockSpreadsheet, can we support some common sense-based remedies here?

 

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