Criminal Irresponsibility

[prole]

 

This jackass makes me wonder if an old tradition needs to be resurrected. What a douche.

 

[Fairweather]

This jackass makes me wonder if an old tradition needs to be resurrected. What a douche.

 

 

Your post is a pretty clear indication of why people like you can never be allowed to govern. As for Jindal; he's my pick for 2012.

[prole]

Yeah, not extending unemployment benefits during a depression. What's not to like?

[Fairweather]

You mean the "free money"...that isn't really free at all?

[billcoe]

I suspect that Prole thinks there is never a bill that is due as long as the government is giving money away. That money just is created from thin air, I suspect he believes, and has no basis in reality.

 

Full story:

 

"Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal announced Friday that he will decline stimulus money specifically targeted at expanding state unemployment insurance coverage, becoming the first state executive to officially refuse any part of the federal government’s payout to states.

 

In a statement, Jindal, who is slated to give the Republican response to President Barack Obama’s message to Congress on Tuesday, expressed concern that expanding unemployment insurance coverage would lead to increased unemployment insurance taxes later on.

 

“The federal money in this bill will run out in less than three years for this benefit and our businesses would then be stuck paying the bill,” Jindal said. “We must be careful and thoughtful as we examine all the strings attached to the funding in this package. We cannot grow government in an unsustainable way.”

 

Jindal is one of a small group of Republican governors, which includes South Carolina’s Mark Sanford and Mississippi’s Haley Barbour, who have said they might refuse some or all of the stimulus money targeted to their states.

 

In an interview Friday, Barbour said he, too, would likely decline funds for broadening access to unemployment insurance.

 

“Subject to learning more, my position is that Mississippi won’t accept funds that require us to have a tax increase later, because [they would force] us to change our rules for qualifying for unemployment compensation,” he said.

 

It is not clear which, if any, other parts of the stimulus funding Republican governors will decline. But initial suggestions that anti-stimulus governors might decline all the funds targeted for their states have faded.

 

Joel Sawyer, Sanford’s communications director, said the South Carolina governor was still reviewing his options with respect to the stimulus.

 

“We haven’t made any decisions on any part of the stimulus yet,” Sawyer said."

[mattp]

Bill, we spend at least as much as the stiumlus package on military efforts every year and I don't remember very many public debates about any of it except the occasional argument over some new weapons program that even the generals tell is us pork and won't make us safer but we build it anyway. Here are two cites, which you have to read with care to note some of the nuances:

 

Government's Presentation

War Resistors' Presentation

 

(The government one doesn't show the present wars or interest on past wars and the war resisters one doesn't include social security and I'm sure you can find other problems in both presentations)

 

Anyway, I don't know if the stimulus is going to work or not, or whether inflation is a bigger danger than the current economic crisis that it may help alleviate. Those would be good topics for discussion. So is spending, but we spend that much on social security or on military efforts EVERY YEAR. Don't you think much of the Republican granstanding over this aspect of stimulus package is a cloak for we-hate-socialism Republicanism?

[billcoe]

Bill, we spend at least as much as the stiumlus package on military efforts every year and I don't remember very many public debates about any of it except the occasional argument over some new weapons program that even the generals tell is us pork and won't make us safer but we build it anyway. Here are two cites, which you have to read with care to note some of the nuances:

 

Government's Presentation

War Resistors' Presentation

 

(The government one doesn't show the present wars or interest on past wars and the war resisters one doesn't include social security and I'm sure you can find other problems in both presentations)

 

Anyway, I don't know if the stimulus is going to work or not, or whether inflation is a bigger danger than the current economic crisis that it may help alleviate. Those would be good topics for discussion. So is spending, but we spend that much on social security or on military efforts EVERY YEAR. Don't you think much of the Republican granstanding over this aspect of stimulus package is a cloak for we-hate-socialism Republicanism?

 

I don't disagree with what you say Matt: but by totally ignoring what Prole has said you defacto agree with it. The title of the thread is "Criminal Irresponsibility" and he says that because a Governer, who has a fiscal duty to his state, didn't want to not look at the costs of a federal program, that he should be taken out and Tarred and Feathered by a mob??!. Specifically, the article says the governor: "expressed concern that expanding unemployment insurance coverage would lead to increased unemployment insurance taxes later on.

 

“The federal money in this bill will run out in less than three years for this benefit and our businesses would then be stuck paying the bill,” Jindal said. “We must be careful and thoughtful as we examine all the strings attached to the funding in this package. We cannot grow government in an unsustainable way.” "

 

I mean WTF? You think that is "Criminal Irresponsibility" and an elected official should be tarred and feathered?

 

It's bullshit. If you want to now say "well they should have tarred and feathered some of the corporate owned political whores in the last admin", I wouldn't even try to defend some of those shit actions, but why ignore a post like Proles?

 

As far as if I believe or "think much of the Republican grandstanding over this aspect of stimulus package is a cloak for we-hate-socialism Republicanism? " Probably is. That's politics as usual. Not everyone agrees with everything and when they argue it out, they usually get to a better result. In Oregon, our last Governor, a Dem-not that it makes a difference, Kitzhaber, was formerly an emergency room physician. He refused and protested going along with the federal government mandates on spending the way they dictated for health care. The feds almost cut us off of Federal Funds because we were going a different path. There was the usual lobbying and back and forth. So Oregon does health care with federal dollars different, and many would say better and more effectively, than yours and every other state. It's called the Oregon health Plan. The Gov. was looking out for the state and via lots of peoples input, you get "the Oregon Experiment". I know someone who rolled down a cliff and the near $50,000 bill was funded via this experiment, which doesn't spend a dime more than your state per person (they say). Yet they won't pay for high risk/high expense transplants.

 

Is that wrong?

 

As far as what this one said when he "expressed concern that expanding unemployment insurance coverage would lead to increased unemployment insurance taxes later on."

 

“The federal money in this bill will run out in less than three years for this benefit and our businesses would then be stuck paying the bill,” Jindal said. “We must be careful and thoughtful as we examine all the strings attached to the funding in this package. We cannot grow government in an unsustainable way.”

 

"Jindal is one of a small group of Republican governors, which includes South Carolina’s Mark Sanford and Mississippi’s Haley Barbour, who have said they might refuse some or all of the stimulus money targeted to their states.

 

In an interview Friday, Barbour said he, too, would likely decline funds for broadening access to unemployment insurance.

 

“Subject to learning more, my position is that Mississippi won’t accept funds that require us to have a tax increase later, because [they would force] us to change our rules for qualifying for unemployment compensation,” he said."

 

This is "Criminal Irresponsibility" and these other officials should be tarred and feathered for not wanting to increase your tax bill later?

 

PLEASSSEEE! Give me a break. You want to tar and feather someone, go hit the Illinois Governor who was selling favors to line his pocket.

[tvashtarkatena]

Does anyone here really give a flying fuck about those crackers down there?

 

Puh-LEEEEZ.

[billcoe]

States rights revival.

 

 

 

My brother just got back from Memphis. He says the liqueur stores are segregated! Blacks buy out of one and whites out of another and apparently only ignorant tourists like himself accidentally cross over. This led to a rousing debate over race and racism over the family diner. I heard a fact that surprised me. Despite Brown VS Board of education, fully 70% of the schools were still segregated in the South as of 1969 (when I was in High School).

[mattp]

Ah, but Bill. You've asked for sources in the past. Rather than simply accept what Jindal says, you might look it up. Google Search stimulus package unemployment benefits and here are the first 5 results:

 

 

Center for Budget Statistics

Broad range of economists agree the extended UI benefits are more stimulative than tax rebates because the benefits go to people who are struggling to make ends meet and will spend the money. They are timely and temporary.

 

Think Progress

Site points out that even by Jindal's estimate, the stimulus package would have funded 3 years worth of expanded benefits for Louisiana Citizens and that there is nothing in the stimulus package that would stop Louisiana or any other state from phasing out the expanded benefits when they have used up the extra Federal money. TP also notes that Mayor Nagin speculates that this was political posturing on the part of a politician who has presidential ambitions.

 

LA Times

Piece on health insurance.

 

Bloomberg Press

Piece says that stimulus package "fundamentally alters unemployment" but does not define how; complains that lax filing requirements will encourage abuse.

 

FOX News

Editorial says stimulus package will increase unemployment.

 

 

 

My conclusion? This story is all about politics as usual. The governor is grandstanding and he's gambling that he will gain politically by denying unemployed Louisiana residents the proposed increased unemployment benefits -- or maybe by simply making a grand gesture and then accepting the money anyway.

[Mtguide]

I grew up in Fort Worth, Texas. Believe me, they are still fighting the Civil War down there. Things have changed somewhat in the last 40 years, but there are still many,many people who actually think Lincoln should never have freed the slaves, that segregation is god's will, that miscegenation (interracial marriage) is a high crime and mortal,venal sin, and that black people should know and stay in their "place".

 

I was in class in high school the day JFK was assassinated. When it was announced by the principal over the PA that the president has been shot in Dallas, the guy sitting next to me at the table in art class jumped out of his chair,banged his fist on the table, and shouted "They GOT him! They GOT the sonuvabitch!", and you could hear the rebel yell starting to echo down the halls. When it was announced that the president had died, wholesale cheering and the rebel yell thundered throughout the entire school, and the efforts of teachers and the principal to restrain it had little effect. At the lowering of the flag to half-mast in front of the school there were less than 100 of us, out of a school of over 2500 students. And walking home through the parking lot, I was once again reminded of where I was, by seeing that almost every car and pickup, including those of the teachers, had a Confederate flag sticker or decal in the rear window or on the bumper.

 

While you seldom hear of the Ku Klux Klan anymore, it's far from dead. A great many still support the idea of lynching, as evidenced by the incident a year ago in Mississippi where the high school students hung nooses in a tree that was a favorite gathering spot on campus after several black students tried to assert their right to also gather there. After a fistfight, all the black students in the fight were arrested and charged with attempted murder. None of the white students were even detained. The black students were imprisoned for several months until things were finally straightened out at the federal level.

 

I've traveled throughout the Deep South, and in states like Mississippi and Alabama, I've come into towns where the hatred is palpable, a living energy field of malice and the ever-present threat of violence if you say or do the wrong thing. Several years ago when a black man was dragged to death behind a pickup by two white men in south Texas, I was as shocked and disgusted as anyone, but not one bit surprised, because I used to hear talk about such things all the time as a kid, and into high school. Any excuse was enough to set off such an incident.

 

Actually the city people tended to be far more bigoted than the country people, at least in my day. I had a number of summer jobs on farms and ranches out around Fort Worth, and white landowners often worked shoulder to shoulder with their black and Mexican hired help, (the Mexicans, especially in south and southwest Texas, were called braceros, literally "strong arms") and over the generations a genuine respect and mutual regard had developed. I once saw a white rancher, about to go in and sit down for the noon meal with his hired help, tell his white insurance man from Dallas, to get the hell off his property and never come back, when the insurance man said, "You sittin' down with them niggers and wetbacks, are ya? Well, I ain't". The rancher told him, "Mister, these men are out with me every day before sunrise, without fail, and they work hard until we go in at sundown. They're welcome at my door and at my table, anytime of day or night. They're ever' bit as good and worthy as any white man, and a hell of a sight better than you! Now get out!"

 

But that was a rarity. More common was an incident when my father and I were at a Lion's Club meeting one afternoon. Some of the members got into a heated discussion about states' rights and the civil right demonstrations. Finally one man pounded his fist on the table and declared, "By God, ah'm a bigot, an' ah'm PROUD of it!". Stone wall. My Dad and I left when people started to talk about settling the matter with guns. My father never went back.

 

I doubt that much will ever truly, deeply change in the South. There's no question that the so-called "Reconstruction" was vicious and cruel in the extreme; Northern politicians and carpetbaggers saw to that. The war was unspeakably brutal, and the seeds that were sown by the burning of farms and plantations,the looting, the raping, torture, and killing of women and girls, often in front of their families, and the wholesale leveling of cities like Richmond, Atlanta, Montgomery, etc., are still open wounds to many southerners, things that will never, ever, be forgotten or forgiven in the next 1000, 5000, or 10,000 years.

 

While segregation is against the law, and things appear very different on the surface of southern society, segregation continues in any number of insidious, hidden ways such as you describe. The south is still showing the signs of PTSD, and the entire nation as well. We still all have a long, long, ways to go. And we won't ever get there until we learn to have respect and compassion for each other, simply as fellow human beings, regardless of race or creed, each for the other, and that one person's freedom ends where another's begins, that those rights and freedoms must be equal among us all.

[mattp]

Mtnguide, you are absolutely right - except that the issues you describe are not limited to the South. I grew up in the liberal town of Ann Arbor, Michigan, but I can tell you I had friends who celebrated lynching as a noble cause and the town was, when I was a kid, nearly 100% segregated in terms of housing. The Klu Klux Klan remains active in Michigan.

 

Klan appearing in Michigan politics in last few years; marches in 1990's.

 

The neighborhood I live in here in Seattle had a covenant banning sale to blacks, asians, or persons of arabic descent as recently as 1982.

 

 

[Hugh Conway]

Yankees talkin' bout the south are so quaint

[kevbone]

"We cannot grow government in an unsustainable way.”

 

 

You mean like the last eight years?

[tvashtarkatena]

The only thing remotely interesting about the Deep South is the dearth of paternal records regarding mulatto births.

 

Other than that, it is more than adequately represented by its expatriots.

Edited February 22, 2009 by tvashtarkatena

[No. 13 Baby]

As for Jindal; he's my pick for 2012.

 

Yeah, the republican base is gonna just love a brown guy named Piyush.

 

[prole]

 

We'll be able to get ourselves out of the multi-faceted clusterfuck America's in right now without raising taxes.

 

 

 

[mattp]

You Fairweather:

Did you watch Bobby Jindal last night? Your man came off a little lame.

[billcoe]

 

LOL! Thanks #13.

 

ps, I only saw part of the Barak speech last night. The man is a master orator for sure. Usually a good jawing will rev the market up even if only temporary. Yet I see that right now, it looks like the trajectory of a rock rolled off a cliff: down 2.6 percent in a near straight line from the open. Coming off a 12 year low yesterday and still dropping like an airplane without power.

[prole]

You Fairweather:

Did you watch Bobby Jindal last night? Your man came off a little lame.

 

Yeah, apparently he had trouble with "something called volcano monitoring". Living in the Pacific Northwest, I can't imagine why or how such a thing might be important.

[dberdinka]

Regardless of the fact he came off like a dork last night I've never quite understood how a brown catholic would win primarys in a party that is dominated by white Protestants. All the luck to him though!

[akhalteke]

Your right Prole. Who needs fiscal responsibility when you have FREE MONEY!!!!!!!!

[KaskadskyjKozak]

Regardless of the fact he came off like a dork last night I've never quite understood how a brown catholic would win primarys in a party that is dominated by white Protestants. All the luck to him though!

 

This type of rhetoric makes you look like a racist fuck.

 

Just an FYI.

 

[Jim]

I think Obama struck a realistic tone in his speech, I hope he follows up on the spending reductions, or should I say bends Congress that way.

 

Wow! If Jinal is the best the Republicans can come up with right now with that lame speech, they are in more trouble than I first thought. WTF! Lower taxes and less regulation - yea, that will work!! Is there anyone who can get them off the joke treadmill at this point and into a serious discussion of the nation's finances? Seems that their strategy to date has been to try and blow up things - that will not get you too far.

[Off_White]

Tar and feathers was not some sort of hah hah comedic routine, it trumps waterboarding as torture any day, resulting in scarring and disfigurement. It's not like drawing a cock and balls on your drunk buddy's face with a sharpie. Often combined with being ridden on a rail, ie a triangular piece of wood that resulted in genital damage and often an long term inability to walk without pain. Preferable I suppose to being taken out back and shot, but its a vigilante justice sort of thing that has no place in the rule of law. Stupid idea Prole.