Btw, I agree with the President on this.

I just wish he agreed with me on the other.

"Won't tolerate it" tells us lots regarding what the prez figures lies within the purvue of his power.

Or maybe I've misread him, taking his statement out of the context in which he made it. Maybe he means he believes a different version of the trickle down theory, in which goodies come from the hand of the gov't. Maybe he simply wantsm control over who gets fed at the gov't trough.

Of course he does.

Look, I get his reasoning, and it's good. If a business wants taxpayer money, it should submit to some governmental restrictions. If we're gonna give a corporation a billion dollars to "bail it out," they shouldn't spend half of that on bonuses for execs.

Don't want to abide by that? Then don't ask for a government handout.

It's like saying food stamps can't be spent on cigarettes and alcohol.

But his choice of words just struck me. "Bad taste."
Which is exactly what I was saying those millions on parties were. But everybody thought I was just being lame.

I didn't really think you were lame when you pointed that out.
I think cranking the White House temp up to a balmy 73, when he's told us plebes to not "heat our houses as much as we have been" is in "bad taste" too.
Ok, I'll stop now.

I also think that the fact that Congress just got a raise is pretty bad taste too.

On another note: we think we'll solve our problems by giving money to the people who mismanaged our money. Madness.

No to bailouts. No to stimulus (unless it's payroll tax relief). All it does is get Government's hooks deeper in.

We shouldn't have done the 700Bln (seems like chicken feed now, doesn't it?) earlier.

No to all of it. We need to take the pain now, in the long run we'll be better off.

But everybody thought I was just being lame.

I didn't

Yes. We're printing up new money just to give it away.

I'm too irate over this whole thing to add anything intelligent.

Supposedly (as has been pointed out) the cash for the inauguration parties came largely from donations - which would have been a great opportunity for Obama to go to those generous folks and suggest that they give that cash to a stimulus package instead - THAT would reach across party lines.

Bill

Dead on.

As I understand it, there's an honest constitutional problem with the government setting a cap on private business salary. I heartily disagree with the president on his attempts to use these taxes. He and his people are trying to take over everything, it seems. This is the same thing as the faith-based initiatives office forcing non-profits to hire non-Christians or other select people if the organizations want to use federal funds. It's the same as the state prohibiting you from smoking in your own home.

The president didn't say "bad economy"

The president said that execs should not make big bonuses when their company has applied for federal bailout money. Makes sense to me!

Mark did you read the post? The words inside quotation marks are the President's.

You're right, he didn't say "bad economy." He said "economic crisis."

I didn't think you were lame - I just thought the celebration was worth the money. The money raised wasn't intended to stimulate the economy as the money we're now talking about is, it was intended to celebrate our new President. I don't think it was lame of you to feel it was too much, I just disagreed.

I tend to agree with Bill about stimulus. I would extend it to allow the government to force mortgage companies to re-write the bad home loans to offer people a a fixed-rate. I also don't take issue with a temporary raise in unemployment benefits.

Outside of that, I think we can do without a major stimulus. Certainly, the 700 bn seems to have done little. I don't know that this next 900 bn will do much better.

I feel like our economy is in the same situation as Charlie on LOST. We keep trying to avoid mini-depression and the President Desmonds us out of it, for a while. And then when it starts to fall again, another bailout. How long until we just say, "We can't afford to bail you out anymore?" [insert Russian underwater grenade] I'd give it about 15 months.

Not Penny's Boat.