" Today, thee was a very interesting analysis of the US debt problem on CNN. A program worth watching. It is hard to get out of the current debt crisis. Hardly the kind of problem that can be addressed by "stimulus packages"
On a funnier note, Andy Borowitz has his take on Obama's Package...: www. andyborowitz.com "

" Carrottop60: Please get your year straight!! NAFTA was passed in 1993!!! The Dems controlled Congress then.The Reps took over in Jan 1995(thank you very much). Also the Chinese trade treaty was passed by the Dems with a few liberal Rep and the vote tied at 50-50 and Al Gore broke the tie. "

" Don't just blame President Clinton for NAFTA. Remember the Republicans were in control of Congress in 1996. It seems obvious to me that both republicans and democrats have created this mess. "

" Has anyone here read "The Ten Trillion Dollar Hangover" that was published in Harper's magazine this month? A quote:

"The worst legacy of the past eight years is that despite colossal government spending, most Americans are worse off than they were in 2001. This is because money was squandered in Iraq and given as a tax windfall to America’s richest individuals and corporations, rather than spent on such projects as education, infrastructure, and energy independence, which would have made all of us better off in the long term.

President Bush did manage, by way of deficit spending, to grow the economy by 20 percent during his tenure. But who benefited from that growth? Between 2002 and 2006, the wealthiest 10 percent of households saw more than 95 percent of the gains in income. And even within those rarefied strata, the gains tended to be concentrated at the very top. According to one study, the nation’s 15,000 richest families doubled their annual income, from $15 million to $30 million. And in that same period, corporate profits shot up by 68percent—more than five times the growth seen in the overall economy.
Even as the wealthiest families have increased their holdings, the families at the center of the income spectrum saw their incomes shrink by 1 percent. In 2000, the average weekly earnings of production and nonsupervisory workers (70 percent of the workforce) amounted to $527 (in current dollars). Six years later, their wages had risen a mere $11, and those same workers have meanwhile seen their net worth (assets minus liabilities) wither as a result of falling home values, higher personal debt, and shrinking savings—factors now being exacerbated by the collapsing stock markets.
The extraordinary transfer of wealth that has taken place from ordinary households to the super-rich has been made possible by another transfer: borrowing money from future prosperity to pay for current consumption. For example, President Bush provided a much heralded $600 tax rebate to most families in 2001. But once interest rates return to more normal levels, simply servicing the new debt from the Bush years will require those same families to spend more than $2,000 a year, year after year, forever."

No link as you have to subscribe or get it at the news stand before this month's edition is gone.

Or more importantly, Naomi Klein's best seller and one of the few books in recent years that I consider to be indispendable reading, "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism", by Naomi Klein. The book is a best seller in six countries, including the United States. Klein has her own website and her slogan is "Information is Shock Resistance, Arm Yourself." Or you could go out and fill up your pantry with guns and ammo. Vote for the Republicans again and you might need it, at least before they modify their ideology and turn away from the extreme right wing of the party. An extreme modification of the Republican ideology is going to happen: all responsible Republicans recognize that it must be done as their policies have resulted such an extremely bad situation that they painfully recognized that socialism for the rich was necessary (but not for the rest of us, at lest under the Republicans). Irresponsible True Believers of the Extreme Right Wing and those whose thoughts are planted in their heads by corporate owned television and radio stations, not so much.

In the previous comment I misspelled Thurman Armold's name. "Thurmond" was an incorrect spelling.

Finally, does anyone remember when most of the radio stations that you can listen to here in Orangeburg County were owned by Mom and Pop owners? Not the bland corporate owned stations that feed you propaganda and music from a music server all day, with no deejay except a recording that's played over and over and an endless procession of right wing talking heads. Those old Mom and Pop stations truly served the community. I know a few are left, but at least 95% of them are gone.

Does anyone know whose policies, including tax policies, caused that to happen?

And finally, why are so many people making comments as if Obama created this mess? He hasn't even taken office yet "

" Ha! Unrestrained free market capitalism has failed us miserably and the true market believers come out of the woodwork like flies.
I suggest you read "The Folklore of Capitalism" by Thurmond Arnold. It was written in 1937. Another fine book is "True Believer", by Eric Hoffer (1951). Not that is will do many of these poor folks any good.

Turn off your TV and radios and start reading. I'd lay 100 to 1 odds that most of what most of the folks are spouting is based on what they heard on a television or radio.

Joe Bageant, who predicted all this years ago would be another antidote. He's much more liberal than I am, but you can find him on the internet. Everything he predicted 5 to 6 years ago came true. "

" I had to come back and read superflos comments again..... I needed another cynical laugh at how some people are so close to falling off the ledge....WOW "

" Superfluosm , How much does your fuel cost you on those round trip outer space jaunts that you take so often. I am simply amazed at your logic but I guess it doesn't matter when you receive a mental disability check. The US gov't wastes tons of cash and that certainly doesn't help matters but you can't expect the richest of all to pay all of the taxes. You nor I deserve to leave them with the total bill. Quit spouting nonsense you saw on a campaign ad designed to deceive. Your info is completely false and really just hard to digest. By the way, watch out for those astroids on your next space ride... "

" Anybody,with common sense will remember that Bush's tax cut brnrfited the Middle Class and Small Business. Also, remember the economy ran smoothly until 2007. Guess who took over Congress in 2007? The 2007/08 House oversight committee provided no control over the SEC and the oil speculators.Also, who was President when NAFTA and the Chinese Trade Treaty of 1996 was enacted(causing millions of jobs to be lost.) "

" The economic stimulus plans unveiled by President-elect Obama, won’t do much to help the economy. But they will vindicate all the dreams of liberal Democrats for higher government spending. Of course, the basic choice facing any politician seeking to stimulate a moribund economy is whether to catalyze the supply side with tax cuts on business or the demand side by way of spending increases. Obama obviously made that choice years ago: He will work the demand side. But once a leader makes that decision, he faces another: Will he emphasize important and valuable public works projects or will he just try to pass out the largest amount of money possible? The problem is that such projects take a long time to plan and longer to build. Their immediate economic impact is highly attenuated. In all federal capital projects, only about one-quarter of the funds appropriated are actually spent in the fiscal year. It just takes that long to plan, engineer and begin construction. And for every $6 spent in the last stimulus package, only $1 actually got spent on goods or services. Five dollars out of every six in the Bush stimulus package of 2008 went to pay down debt, mortgage or credit card or student loan or home equity, and not into the acquisition of new products or services. So, do the math. If only 25 cents out of every dollar actually is spent in the fiscal year, and only one-sixth of that sum actually gets spent by the workers who get paid on new goods and services, only about 4 cents from every dollar actually stimulates the economy. And who says those 4 cents will be spent on domestically produced products? A lot of the stimulus will just feed Chinese imports, particularly with their low prices. FDR faced just this problem in combating the Great Depression. In the National Recovery Act (NRA), Roosevelt set up the Public Works Administration (PWA) headed by Interior Secretary Harold Ickes (the original one). Ickes was a stickler for making sure nothing was wasted and in keeping the costs down. He managed a spectacularly successful public works program and built, without scandal or corruption, some of our most important national infrastructure. But he took his sweet time doing so. The economic stimulation was slow in coming. Exasperated, FDR did an end-run around Ickes and set up the Works Progress Administration (WPA) under Harry Hopkins. WPA spent its money quickly and on projects involving little overhead or preparation. Virtually all the WPA funds were spent in the fiscal year and the stimulative effect was immediate. But in opting to go the Ickes route, Obama will find that he leaves a legacy of important contributions to our national infrastructure, but little in the way of real economic stimulation. While a WPA-type approach might hasten the ameliorative impact of the stimulus package, Obama still faces the conundrum that most of those who get extra paychecks as a result of his spending will use the money to climb out of debt. In the ’30s, credit cards didn’t exist and consumer debt was very limited. Most people lived paycheck to paycheck. Extra money equaled extra spending. But now that most consumers will use money to pay down their debts, not to spend it, demand-side stimulation has its limitations. But Obama’s ideology won’t allow him to indulge in tax cuts “for the rich,” which might work to get us out of the depression faster. "

" Great post, superfluousm! Glad to see someone is using common sense and facts instead of anger and bitterness to state their opinion. The man is not even in the White House yet and all the soothsayers are already writing his obituary. "

" Bill Clinton was paying down the deficit. George Bush and all the people who supported the war he started because Saddam had threatened his Daddy and who supported Bush's tax cuts for the rich are the primary ones at fault here. The Republicans have left Obama with a royal mess, but anyone who understands even a smattering of college level economics knows that cutting spending is not going to revive the economy. The only possible option to prevent us from falling into a deep, long, lasting depression is to stimulate the economy. Eventually we will have to go back to Eisenhower tax rates. Assuming we reinstated those rates, adjusted for today's dollars, anybody who has an income of over about $250,000 dollars will have that income taxed at 92%, maybe more. Eisenhower didn't have any problem with those rates so even Republicans understand the need for taxes.

Obama is sensible enough to know he has to cut taxes right now to keep dollars flowing into the economy. Raising taxes should be done when the economy is on the mend. George Bush broke all the rules of basic economics by not taxing the billionaires when the economy was strong and a war had been started. Richard Mellon Scaife, the guy who funded all those attacks on Clinton, has an income of over 45 million dollars a year from a trust he inherited from his parents and grandparents. This income comes from a trust with over a billion dollars in it that his grandparents left him. He doesn't do a lick of work to get it and probably pays no more than 15% taxes on that income, thanks to George Bush. George Bush cut his taxes so much, particularly on the types of income that his trust earns, that most people in Orangeburg County pay a larger percentage of their income in taxes than Scaife. That's the legacy of George Bush and the other reason, besides the war, that the deficit has quadrupled during the last eight years.

I'm amazed at the people who think cutting spending will get us out of this mess. An article in the most Harper's magazine persuasively makes the point that the six hundred dollar tax refund you got the last few years is going to cost your children and grandchildren two thousand dollars a year in interest. I urge everyone, including the writer of this article, to read it. The article is entitled "The Ten Trillion Dollar Hangover".

Anyone who remembers FDR knows that Hoover cut spending for years, thinking that would get us out of the depression. The only way it ended was when Roosevelt put people to work by opening up government coffers. Ask anyone over 85 years old or who studied history and economics, and they will tell you the same thing. My biggest worry as thing Bush and the "privatization" gang have run off with so much money (Halliburton moved to Dubai) that no recovery is possible. Obama is playing a very poor hand left to him by George Bush. It's time we all supported him and did our part to get this economy going. We still have nothing to fear but fear itself, except for another Republican administration, which is my worst nightmare. "

" giving breaks to those that dont pay any taxes in the frist place now how is that supposed to help the economy. And doesnt the gov't already give money to those that dont anything = welfare. Giving more money to those that don't pay tax is a BAD PLAN. Lets just dig a large hole in ground fill it up full with that money and burn it thats about the same thing thats going to happen. Hey Barry why dont you give bigger breaks to those that actually help the economy like small business and folks that are working and paying taxes, not those that dont pay a dime into the system yet want to reep the rewards for doing nothing. "

" IDIOT! I wonder where did you go to college? People like you weaken the country! "

" I think he is #&*$&%! idiot who is poised to throw crumbs at his constituency while enacting programs that will weaken the country. I'm sure his inauguration will make a wonderful spectacle, indeed. Thanks to all who voted for him. "