1. Cash for clunkers. This is a brilliant government move to stimulate industrial and retail economy and to lift spirits.
There's no way the auto industry lobbyists would have allowed cars getting so many more miles per gallon more, as there weren't enough cars being made. The purpose of this program is:
a. Move cash.
b. Create retail optimism
c. Improve emissions, greenhouse gases, by getting these gas guzzlers off the road (can you imagine the nightmare of administrating giving them away to other poor needy people, when the goal is get these cars off the road)
2. Health Care. A high school kid taking economics could figure out that the health insurance companies are raking in millions in profits, CEO's even more, and that they are lobbying the RNC. Many of the anti health care ads running on TV are sponsored by Universal Healthcare.
Find what the Cleveland, Mayo, et al clinics do and model programs after these that work. Offer different choices, but make sure that those that have pre existing conditions are not fucked by the insurance boys, and make sure that the insurance boys don't fuck the small business, while lobbying the 540 in Congress that decide our future.
Just because you might have insurance don't be stupid enough to think that everyone can get it, or afford it. It's a basic in most countries. We do NOT have model health insurance.
3. The economy is vastly improving already. High unemployment and lack of consumer spending are huge concerns, and Obama and group inherited a "clusterfuck" in which they are now only beginning to find how deep the slime ran.
In fact, we have new Wall Street games being played (high frequency computer trading) while we are figuring out the rest of the mess.
4. Yes, America, we are going to have to pay for this. Much as you want "less taxes, but more benefits" (like bridges that don't fall down), we have created such a house of cards, and it has fallen and blown in the wind, that the entire global economy does hinge on the U.S. economy.
5. We will pay for this in many ways, as will our Grandkids. But, under Bush we were already going to pay, and we had "no problems and a healthy economy" and my favorite from Shooter Cheney just months before leaving office "deficits don't matter" and the RNC agreed.
Dumb people listen to dumb statements that are half truths, and wishful (we should give the clunkers to other poor people) and don't think of WHY we are spending billions, which is to stimulate the economy and improve the environment.
Dumb people worry about where Obama was born. I worry that our country doesn't sink into a vast depression, which we were on the brink off in early January after the "house of cards" began imploding.
Dumb people worry about where the money is going to come from. That's easy. The government will:
-raise taxes
-sell lots of Treasuries to other countries,and to us
-find cost cuttings
And, sure, in the end it will cost way more than we can imagine. More than we can afford.
Dumb people listen to Limbaugh or Fox News tell us how this cannot happen, we cannot afford the debt, but no one can find any RNC or other "solutions" that actually address the issues.
Dumb people do not get that it is 540 people that make our decisions, and that each of them are influenced by lobbyists and corruption, when they are not too busy having affairs.
As someone that feels they have fully read and understood the Obama economic plan I have studied at length Nobel Prize Winner Paul Krugman, and New York University Economic Laureate Roubini. I listen to what these studied men say on the deficit, around what Bernanke tells us (rightly) about averting the second great depression in January.
Of course we will all pay for it. We paid already when the market went from 14,100 to 6,100 and our home values plummeted. We may have been part of what "it was" that made it all go up, but we are already paying for this situation, and will continue to.
A small dog on a leash in Central Park could figure this out, but we spend hours of our news every day debating the obvious.
