“Shovel Ready”…. Excuuuse Me?
Here we are, in the throes of a recession … which the Obama-ites called a Depression … but now they say, “We underestimated how severe it was, the mess Bush left us”, to excuse their so-far failure to turn it around. Like, they said a trillion dollar program had to be passed by Congress in 12 hours or DOOM! … but now, 6 months later they say “We underestimated how severe it was, the Bush mess…..” How much more severe was it, than DOOM?
Give me a break! EVERYTHING in their “STIMULUS” was supposed to gush out money on “Shovel-Ready infrastructure projects … read “roads, potholes, bridges …. WPA-like stuff”. But from day one, I wondered, “Just where are these idjuts coming from?” The people who are unemployed are sales clerks, loan officers, teachers, IT people, dress designers, office clerks, warehousemen, musicians, nurses, opticians, house builders…. so what the hell are “shovel jobs” supposed to do for them? I don’t think we live in a society, or time, when “shoveling” rock or asphalt, or building bridges or new playgrounds is exactly what OUR 21st century unemployed are going to be able to do. That mighta worked for FDR in the 1940’s, but now? Maybe Obama, who has tried so hard to be a modern FDR (Franklin Delano Roosevelt) should forget that, and the WPA (a failure, ultimately, in economic “stimulus … it took a war to end the Depression), and rethink his economic recovery in modern terms!
Get my point? I don’t see how all these road construction jobs were ever going to help the folks suddenly losing their jobs in 2008 & 9, get back to work. Even if the money we all have now been taxed did get put into play this year. I, for one, am not exactly a hardhat shovel-ready kinda guy!
PS: Maybe, just maybe, the Republican (no, I’m not one myself) idea of tax cuts woulda been a lot better! Just think: Even a trillion dollars of tax cuts - no income or FICA taxes, for instance - (same cost to the government) would have meant a lot of mortgage foreclosures never would have happened and banks would have stayed solvent; thousands of restaurants would have stayed open; lots of TVs and computers and school clothes would have been sold - to exactly the folks who really wanted them; a lot of doctors (dentists too) would have seen patients and been paid; cars would have been bought and GM and Chrysler stayed in business; airlines and hotels stayed in business as folks went on their vacations; state and local governments would have collected their sales and property and income taxes and not gone broke….
I don’t get it … just how did the Obama program do us better?????
