The case for a police surge. by William J. Stuntz
We live in strange times. The federal budget deficit is higher than at any time since World War II as a percentage of GDP, yet the president and Congress are not in budget-cutting mode. Rather, they are seeking to make that deficit even larger by spending sums that, before now, seemed beyond the realm of possibility. The more obscene the amounts, the better. John Maynard Keynes's famous suggestion--pay some workers to dig ditches and others to fill them up--hasn't made it into any stimulus package, yet. But the night is still young, and politicians are still exercising their imaginations.
Sadly, in the face of record-breaking federal spending, one uncommonly good spending idea has gotten short shrift: Use federal budget dollars to pay for more cops on high-crime city streets. A modest version of that idea--$8.8 billion in federal money over six years--was enacted as part of the 1994 crime bill, and it contributed to the second-biggest crime drop of the last century.
Read on...
Just thought you might be interested what the wingnuts are reading these days. This piece from the Weekly Standard give us an idea. Tom
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Showing posts with label stimulus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label stimulus. Show all posts
Executive pay limits don't make it into stimulus legislation
By SilentPatriot Friday Feb 13, 2009 5:14am
I really have no problem with executives getting bonuses when they do a good job. But when they apply for government assistance, by definition they aren't perfoming up to standards that merit extra pay. It's really not a tough concept to understand, but apparently it's over the heads of our elected representatives.
Washington Post:
Congressional efforts to impose stringent restrictions on executive compensation appeared to be evaporating yesterday as House and Senate negotiators worked to fine-tune the compromise stimulus bill.
Read on...
I really have no problem with executives getting bonuses when they do a good job. But when they apply for government assistance, by definition they aren't perfoming up to standards that merit extra pay. It's really not a tough concept to understand, but apparently it's over the heads of our elected representatives.
Washington Post:
Congressional efforts to impose stringent restrictions on executive compensation appeared to be evaporating yesterday as House and Senate negotiators worked to fine-tune the compromise stimulus bill.
Read on...
Naomi Klein: Public Revolt Builds Against Rip-off Rescue Plans for the Economy
By Naomi Klein, The Nation. Posted February 6, 2009.
Governments that respond to a crisis created by free-market ideology with the same bad ideas will not survive to tell the tale.
Watching the crowds in Iceland banging pots and pans until their government fell reminded me of a chant popular in anti-capitalist circles in 2002: "You are Enron. We are Argentina."
Its message was simple enough. You--politicians and CEOs huddled at some trade summit--are like the reckless scamming execs at Enron (of course, we didn't know the half of it). We--the rabble outside--are like the people of Argentina, who, in the midst of an economic crisis eerily similar to our own, took to the street banging pots and pans. They shouted, "¡Que se vayan todos!" ("All of them must go!") and forced out a procession of four presidents in less than three weeks. What made Argentina's 2001-02 uprising unique was that it wasn't directed at a particular political party or even at corruption in the abstract. The target was the dominant economic model--this was the first national revolt against contemporary deregulated capitalism.
It's taken a while, but from Iceland to Latvia, South Korea to Greece, the rest of the world is finally having its ¡Que se vayan todos! moment.
Read on...
It would be nice to think that relatively non-violent protest can affect governments in these days of taser and laser crowd control. But I'm not convinced that Harper's or Obama's stimulus bailouts aren't mired in free-market ideology. The banks are bankrupt. Bank of America and Citibank market caps are miniscule but they are being given bailout money manytimes their market cap. Why? Governments just aren't ready to admit that the banks need to be nationalized. And many bankers need to be charged with fraud. Tom
Governments that respond to a crisis created by free-market ideology with the same bad ideas will not survive to tell the tale.
Watching the crowds in Iceland banging pots and pans until their government fell reminded me of a chant popular in anti-capitalist circles in 2002: "You are Enron. We are Argentina."
Its message was simple enough. You--politicians and CEOs huddled at some trade summit--are like the reckless scamming execs at Enron (of course, we didn't know the half of it). We--the rabble outside--are like the people of Argentina, who, in the midst of an economic crisis eerily similar to our own, took to the street banging pots and pans. They shouted, "¡Que se vayan todos!" ("All of them must go!") and forced out a procession of four presidents in less than three weeks. What made Argentina's 2001-02 uprising unique was that it wasn't directed at a particular political party or even at corruption in the abstract. The target was the dominant economic model--this was the first national revolt against contemporary deregulated capitalism.
It's taken a while, but from Iceland to Latvia, South Korea to Greece, the rest of the world is finally having its ¡Que se vayan todos! moment.
Read on...
It would be nice to think that relatively non-violent protest can affect governments in these days of taser and laser crowd control. But I'm not convinced that Harper's or Obama's stimulus bailouts aren't mired in free-market ideology. The banks are bankrupt. Bank of America and Citibank market caps are miniscule but they are being given bailout money manytimes their market cap. Why? Governments just aren't ready to admit that the banks need to be nationalized. And many bankers need to be charged with fraud. Tom
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