Populist Party Blog » Stimulus

On Money We Should Be Spending for Our Future

Cliff Carson — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 03:07:59 +0000

Watching C-Span this week, I happened to take in what money Obama was proposing to spend as part of the Stimulus. One of those items was money to improve the availability of education for all who desire a better education, but can’t afford it. It reminded me of the rapid growth in cost to obtain a good education. And coupled with this proposal were two stories in the local paper the past few days concerning contributions of some college students.

It seems that the communications satellite to be put into polar orbit by India in April was designed by college students and their instructors at Madras University in India. Another newspaper story carried the information that a new method for detecting breast cancer had been developed by students and instructors at the University of Arkansas. The detection method analyzes the chemical composition of tears collected from the eyes to detect telltale indications of the breast cancer. Now that’s money well spent and knowledge and experience almost impossible for young minds to get in any other scenario.

That the instructors and students collaborated to provide something useful to society is proof that this method can be replicated at every classroom in every school in America. And the cost benefit ratio could be beyond the breadth of imagination. Maybe a cure for cancer could someday come from just such an activity. What we can imagine is the only limit to our achievements as a specie.

Concerning the affordability of education, I began to consider that with high cost comes a paring of the intelligence pool from which innovations arise in the world. Intelligence is not a product of wealth, but wealth is a limiter on those able to enhance their education, and by inference, the ability to use the intelligence structure that was given at birth. Speaking to a couple of college students recently and talking about the cost of education, one of the students told me that he had already spent in excess of $100,000 seeking a degree for his future. Not many young people have access to that amount of money to spend on education. And those who can borrow that amount would face a formidable obstacle to solvency when they graduate.

Obama wants to make higher education more affordable by changing the ratio of grants to loans, from 70% loans to 70 % grants. I think this is a good idea, and would be money well spent, but I also would like to see more emphasis on providing “projects” for the students in collaboration with instructors. Obviously this would require better instructors and more cooperation with all segments of society to identify needs and prioritize them. This need would also indicate that teacher pay should be tied to performance. However that idea is a hot potato with teachers unions and tenure at Colleges and Universities. There is a wealth of opportunity for improvement in our educational system. We need to direct money there before we bailout another “To Big to Fail Private Enterprise”. Because if anything on our planet is “To big to fail” it should be the vast untapped potential of our educational system.

Bankruptcy is Economic Stimulus

Populist Party Daily Updates — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 11:33:21 +0000

We ought to be spending our time and effort doing something more worthwhile, like figuring out how the Federal Reserve is handling the trillions of dollars they are creating and pumping into the economy, and how that is affecting the purchasing power of dollars in your pocket. FULL ARTICLE

Bailouts and Stimuli: A Repackaging

Ben Tanosborn — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 10:42:35 +0000

Just as my disappointment grew at the prospect of an unchanging foreign policy toward the Middle East, and a current absurd position escalating a no-win war in Afghanistan – or his unwillingness to help prosecute criminals in the past administration, starting with George W. Bush – this president’s economic prescription for the ongoing crisis is nothing short of an unfair repackaging of an infected, tired corporatism for a brainwashed people that to date have not been told the truth: that they have been living beyond their productive means for way too long. FULL ARTICLE

The Best and Worst of Times for the Dollar

John Browne — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 15:13:48 +0000

For the foreseeable future, deficits will be measured in trillions, not billions. To put these vast sums into perspective, consider just one billion, or one thousandth of a trillion. A billion minutes ago, Jesus was alive. A billion hours ago, humankind was in the Stone Age. But in just the past eight hours and twenty minutes, even before Obama’s budget clicks in, the Government has spent $1 billion! FULL ARTICLE

Stimulation by Government

Populist Party Daily Updates — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 16:30:03 +0000

The great failing of the Obama administration is that it is packed with people who show no apparent knowledge of the essential truths of liberal theory. That theory — which is the core of the American political contribution to, and the driving force of, modernity itself — is that freedom is the foundation of and the reason for social and economic flourishing. All evidence suggests they know nothing of this. FULL ARTICLE

Putting the Economic Cart Before the Horse

Peter Schiff — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 08:17:08 +0000

The central tenets of Obamanomics appear to be that access to credit will enable people to borrow money to buy stuff, the spending will spur production and employment, and thus the economy will grow. It’s a neat and simple picture, but it has nothing whatsoever to do with how an economy works. The President does not understand that consumption is made possible by production and that credit is made possible by savings. The size and complexity of modern economies has obscured these simple concepts, but reducing the picture to a small scale can help clear away the fog. FULL ARTICLE

Economic Catastrophe Looms

John Browne — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 12:21:54 +0000

Make no mistake, the economy will not turn around soon. When the recovery fails to materialize, look for governments around the world, and especially in the U.S., to send another massive wave of liquidity downriver. When it does, the value of nearly everything, except for gold , will diminish. Don’t be intimidated by the recent spike in gold. Buy now while you still can. FULL ARTICLE

A Shadow over Obama, America, World

John Browne — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 15:34:07 +0000

Washington is choosing to pursue the policy of continued and ever-increasing false prosperity, financed eventually by hyper-taxation, hyper-debt and hyper-inflation accompanied by a gradually eroded standard of living. The jobs created by the Bill are by and large non-productive, and will divert resources from the private sector and rob consumers of their power to make free choices in the marketplace. FULL ARTICLE

Obama's Wealth Destruction

Populist Party Daily Updates — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 09:31:59 +0000

President Obama is under the impression that history owes him $1 trillion right now to spend on whatever he wants. His language is strident and full of irritation that anyone would question his right to live out his personal dream of being Franklin Roosevelt to George Bush’s Hoover. This, he says, is what the election was all about. The arrogance reminds me of George Bush after 9-11, who similarly believed that history owed him a gargantuan war in the tradition of FDR. And look how that arrogance led to disgrace and loss, as he unwittingly presided over the destruction of American prosperity while searching for bugbears abroad. FULL ARTICLE

This is Just the Beginning

Peter Schiff — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 13:56:00 +0000

This week President Obama claimed that failure to pass his economic stimulus bill will have catastrophic consequences for the U.S economy. The reality is the catastrophe will be far greater with his plan then without it. If the trends of January and early February of 2009 continue, the rug will be completely pulled out from beneath the U.S. economy, and the full cost of the President’s “economic depressant package” will be apparent to all. FULL ARTICLE