Joe Klein at Swampland at Time:
Absolutely amazing poll results from CNN today about the $787 stimulus package: nearly three out of four Americans think the money has been wasted. On second thought, they may be right: it’s been wasted on them. Indeed, the largest single item in the package–$288 billion–is tax relief for 95% of the American public. This money is that magical $60 to $80 per month you’ve been finding in your paycheck since last spring. Not a life changing amount, but helpful in paying the bills.
The next highest amount was $275 billion in grants and loans to states. This is why your child’s teacher wasn’t laid off…and why the fire station has remained open, and why you’re not paying even higher state and local taxes to close the local budget hole.
It turns out that what people are really upset about is all that wasteful money that has gone to political public works projects…except that the overwhelming portion of that money hasn’t been spent yet. Remember all those “shovel-ready” projects? Well, they didn’t exist. The big jobs-creating projects like the rebuilt “smart” electric grid, major highways and fast trains will come on line during the next year. (Although these projects might have gotten greater public support if they’d been chosen by a National Infrastructure Bank–a panel of experts, like the fed–that would have picked them according to their value added, rather than by the bozo appropriators in the Congress.)
So, two thoughts:
1. The Obama Administration has done a terrible job explaining the stimulus package to the American people…especially since there have been very few documented cases of waste so far.
2. This is yet further evidence that Americans are flagrantly ill-informed…and, for those watching Fox News, misinformed.
It is very difficult to have a democracy without citizens. It is impossible to be a citizen if you don’t make an effort to understand the most basic activities of your government. It is very difficult to thrive in an increasingly competitive world if you’re a nation of dodos.
No sense in arguing about what was in the stim bill, although I think Klein hugely exaggerates the effects of the bill at the state level for most people who don’t live in California, New York, Illinois, and a few other states where budgets nearly doubled over the last decade. And, of course, no mention of the money the federal government won’t be sending to pay for increased mandates in unemployment insurance and health care.
But is one of the problems that the Obama administration hasn’t explained the package properly? I seem to recall that the impetus to pass this bill in the first place was to avoid unemployment rising above 8% and that it was desperately needed to create and “save” jobs. In fact, this bill was so desperately needed that Members of Congress were told to forget about reading the bill and just pass it already. It was a national emergency and that unless the bill was passed, we would be doomed – doomed I tell you!
Perhaps what Klein really means is that the American people paid too much attention to what the administration was saying and should have had the cynical sophistication to realize they were lying through their teeth spreading around that kind of bullsh*t. How stupid can we be to have taken Obama and the Democrats at their word?
And Klein’s childlike contention that “there have been very few documented cases of waste so far…” is so precious, don’t you just want to give the fellow a great big hug for being so cute? Kids and liberals say the darndest things, don’t they?
Joe, let me put this in terms that someone like you, a sheltered ultra-liberal media parasite, can understand. The stimulus package operates on the economy in a zero-sum manner. If the government, which produces nothing, decides to spend however many tens of billions of dollars on “shovel-ready” boondoggles and buy-the-vote projects, that money comes from taxpayers, the people who are actually producing things.So the wealth gets spread around the way the politicians see fit, with a big healthy dollop off the top to support the grotesquely inefficient government bureaucracies administering the socialist money grab redistribution of resources. Instead of letting market forces steer the money to where it will do the most good for the economy, the stimulus funds are steered by bureaucrats to where they’ll give the best spin for the political party in power.
In other words, it’s rearranging the deck furniture instead of manning the lifeboats or trying to fix the big, gaping hole in the hull.
Can you grok that, Joey, you stupid sack of shit?
Matthew Continetti at TWS:
I would say this is exactly the wrong response liberal Democrats should have to public disapproval of the Obama agenda.
To date, the Obama White House has been careful not to blame the American people for the Democrats’ failures. Obama campaigned on a promise to redeem America from Bush, to make the government live up to its citizenry. But his agenda has polarized the electorate and soured the public on the president and his party.
Why shouldn’t the American people believe the stimulus failed? The administration backed the stimulus with the explicit promise that unemployment would be held to 8 percent if the bill passed. Didn’t happen. It is no doubt true that unemployment would have been worse without the stimulus–state and local governments would have had to lay off many people without federal aid to the states, for example–but parties do not win elections with the slogan, “Hey, it could’ve been worse!” The stimulus was sold to the public under the banner of economic recovery. And while stimulus measures help boost short-term economic growth by bringing demand forward, the recovery is neither strong nor durable. A jobs plan that does not produce jobs growth is not a success.
Klein is a leading indicator: he harkens back to the tradition of liberals blaming others for their own failures. What was significant about President Carter’s malaise speech was its implication that there was something wrong with America which prevented him from having a successful presidency. Obama knows better. But, if he follows Klein’s lead, it will be only a few years before he gives a malaise speech of his own. And if that happens, the clock will begin to count down the remaining seconds of his one–and only–term.
Heather Horn at The Atlantic with a round-up
Glynnis MacNicol at Mediaite
Joe Klein posts again:
To clarify my post below a little bit: I don’t think Americans are stupider than other people…though we may be stupider than we used to be. Indeed, I think the U.S. has been, historically, the repository for the smarter and more ambitious people from other countries–risk-takers, adventurers, those who felt suffocated by the absence of freedom or opportunity. That remains true today, especially among our hard-working recent immigrants.
But, I also suspect we’re suffering the long-term aftereffects of a prolonged period of affluenza–the period of peace (for the most part) and prosperity that lasted from the end of WWII to the beginning of the 21st century. During that time, we got lazy, lost the habits of citizenship…and began to fall behind educationally, in part because our primary and secondary schools remained mired in the industrial age…and also because our public schools never really were very good at educating those who weren’t hungry for knowledge (in the past, the mass of average students could find good-paying industrial jobs, which are no longer plentiful).
Clearly, education reform is absolutely essential–and the Obama Administration has, quietly, ramped up efforts to make the system more creative and responsive (despite resistance from teachers’ unions and other educational reactionaries). But the bottom line still stands: it is impossible to run a democracy without active, interested citizens. We have too few of those right now. The gap between the numbers who watch American Idol and those who watch the Lehrer News Hour will always be massive–but the number of people who don’t pay any attention to the news at all continues to grow….and all too many of those who do try to follow the news get their information from sources that feed their prejudices. I don’t think you can run a democracy or remain prosperous in a situation like that forever.
They’re not misinformed, they’re waking up …
What’s wrong with Economics?