Why The Republican Party is Toast
I watched President Obama's address to a joint session of Congress. I thought the speech, while light on substance and filled with factual errors, was a consequential speech, promising bold action and a clear vision while trying to articulate the anxieties of the times. His best line: "Education is not a pathway to success - it is a prerequisite."
Governor Bobby Jindel Strikes a Pose
Despite Jindal's Rhodes Scholar-tempered mind, I heard only shallowness, refined by the echo chamber that is Rush Limbaugh and Fox News. Here are a few examples.
During Katrina, I visited Sheriff Harry Lee, a Democrat and a good friend of mine. When I walked into his makeshift office, I'd never seen him so angry. He was yelling into the phone: "Well, I'm the Sheriff and if you don't like it you can come and arrest me!" I asked him: "Sheriff, what's got you so mad?" He told me that he had put out a call for volunteers to come with their boats to rescue people who were trapped on their rooftops by the floodwaters. The boats were all lined up ready to go, when some bureaucrat showed up and told them they couldn't go out on the water unless they had proof of insurance and registration. I told him, "Sheriff, that's ridiculous." And before I knew it, he was yelling into the phone: "Congressman Jindal is here, and he says you can come and arrest him too!" Harry just told the boaters to ignore the bureaucrats and go start rescuing people.
But Democratic leaders in Congress -- they rejected this approach. Instead of trusting us to make wise decisions with our own money, they passed the largest government spending bill in history, with a price tag of more than $1 trillion with interest. While some of the projects in the bill make sense, their legislation is larded with wasteful spending. It includes $300 million to buy new cars for the government, $8 billion for high-speed rail projects, such as a "magnetic levitation" line from Las Vegas to Disneyland, and $140 million for something called "volcano monitoring." Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington, D.C.
And here is the truth. And here is more wingnut silliness galore.
Especially rich is the comment about volcano monitoring-- and this from someone from a state that suffered from Katrina. Why not go one step further and get rid of the entire National Weather Service?
Slash taxes? Let's see how towns and cities pay for their policemen, schools, and hospitals. Actually, raising corporate taxes will have the effect of forcing firms to retain earnings for re-investment in their companies, thus expanding employment and prosperity.
Welfare reform? I'm all for it, so long as we start first with the sprawling red-state agribusinesses that have suckled on the teat of farming price supports for the last half century as well as those firms that have sent tens of thousands of jobs overseas.
The intellectual bankruptcy of this speech is to be expected, for it is the natural consequence of the Republican's mantra that goverment is the problem, not the solution. And, if the government is the problem, why should the Republicans want to be part of the problem, unless their goal is to spear the beast from inside-- bring our government to its knees by their naysaying incompetence?
It is perhaps fitting that Jindal is the hope du jour for conservatives. After all, what can be more conservative than a man who changed his country, changed his name, and changed his religion? All that remains for him to change now is his speech writer.
I've never read anything more clueless about economics and investing. Nobody will want to buy the stock of those companies if that occurs, causing them to have trouble finding investors. A freshman college accounting student would know better than what you said there in that part I quoted above.
No one wants to buy the stock of companies that are re-investing their profits and are expanding? I think it was you who was asleep in freshman economics. There are Japanese and Scandinanivan corporation have have thriving investors bases despite high corporate tax rates because of this. Growth stocks by definition have little or no earnings or dividends. Their stocks grow because investors make the distinction between the potential for earnings with present earnings, which is powered by retained earnings and increasing market share. The only question is to what extent will the government be a partner in facilitating the retention of those earnings through tax and fiscal policy. Your implied theory beloved by conservative ideologues-- that reducing corporate rates will increase tax revenues-- has been throughly debunked by your econ 101 professors.
Governor Bobby Jindal's banal, childish speech was another matter. At first, I thought it was a SNL skit-- Daddy Oliver Warbucks fetches the bus-boy to step-and-fetch his thoughts. It was the difference between Will Smith and Steve Urkel, Mozart and Salieri. Jindal is supposed to be a rising star of the Republican Party. But, like another governor from the Great State of Alaska, he offers nothing new or good. If that is the best that the Republican Party can offer, then they will be with good reason in the wilderness for years to come.
Governor Bobby Jindel Strikes a Pose
Despite Jindal's Rhodes Scholar-tempered mind, I heard only shallowness, refined by the echo chamber that is Rush Limbaugh and Fox News. Here are a few examples.
During Katrina, I visited Sheriff Harry Lee, a Democrat and a good friend of mine. When I walked into his makeshift office, I'd never seen him so angry. He was yelling into the phone: "Well, I'm the Sheriff and if you don't like it you can come and arrest me!" I asked him: "Sheriff, what's got you so mad?" He told me that he had put out a call for volunteers to come with their boats to rescue people who were trapped on their rooftops by the floodwaters. The boats were all lined up ready to go, when some bureaucrat showed up and told them they couldn't go out on the water unless they had proof of insurance and registration. I told him, "Sheriff, that's ridiculous." And before I knew it, he was yelling into the phone: "Congressman Jindal is here, and he says you can come and arrest him too!" Harry just told the boaters to ignore the bureaucrats and go start rescuing people.
But Democratic leaders in Congress -- they rejected this approach. Instead of trusting us to make wise decisions with our own money, they passed the largest government spending bill in history, with a price tag of more than $1 trillion with interest. While some of the projects in the bill make sense, their legislation is larded with wasteful spending. It includes $300 million to buy new cars for the government, $8 billion for high-speed rail projects, such as a "magnetic levitation" line from Las Vegas to Disneyland, and $140 million for something called "volcano monitoring." Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington, D.C.
And here is the truth. And here is more wingnut silliness galore.
Especially rich is the comment about volcano monitoring-- and this from someone from a state that suffered from Katrina. Why not go one step further and get rid of the entire National Weather Service?
Slash taxes? Let's see how towns and cities pay for their policemen, schools, and hospitals. Actually, raising corporate taxes will have the effect of forcing firms to retain earnings for re-investment in their companies, thus expanding employment and prosperity.
Welfare reform? I'm all for it, so long as we start first with the sprawling red-state agribusinesses that have suckled on the teat of farming price supports for the last half century as well as those firms that have sent tens of thousands of jobs overseas.
The intellectual bankruptcy of this speech is to be expected, for it is the natural consequence of the Republican's mantra that goverment is the problem, not the solution. And, if the government is the problem, why should the Republicans want to be part of the problem, unless their goal is to spear the beast from inside-- bring our government to its knees by their naysaying incompetence?
It is perhaps fitting that Jindal is the hope du jour for conservatives. After all, what can be more conservative than a man who changed his country, changed his name, and changed his religion? All that remains for him to change now is his speech writer.
I've never read anything more clueless about economics and investing. Nobody will want to buy the stock of those companies if that occurs, causing them to have trouble finding investors. A freshman college accounting student would know better than what you said there in that part I quoted above.
No one wants to buy the stock of companies that are re-investing their profits and are expanding? I think it was you who was asleep in freshman economics. There are Japanese and Scandinanivan corporation have have thriving investors bases despite high corporate tax rates because of this. Growth stocks by definition have little or no earnings or dividends. Their stocks grow because investors make the distinction between the potential for earnings with present earnings, which is powered by retained earnings and increasing market share. The only question is to what extent will the government be a partner in facilitating the retention of those earnings through tax and fiscal policy. Your implied theory beloved by conservative ideologues-- that reducing corporate rates will increase tax revenues-- has been throughly debunked by your econ 101 professors.
posted by My Mall and News at
3:55 PM
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