feh...
Posted on 09/10/2012 2:22:08 PM PDT by presidio9
Ezra Klein: Let’s begin with the obvious question. Did the stimulus work?
Michael Grunwald: Everything people think they know about the stimulus is wrong. It was called the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and it did produce a short-term recovery. We dropped 8.9 percent of GDP in Q4 2008. We lost 800,000 jobs in January 2009. We passed the stimulus. And then the next quarter we saw the biggest jobs improvement in 30 years.
The long-term reinvestment part is working. It spent $90 billion for clean energy when we were spending just a few billion a year. It’s doubled renewable energy. It’s started an electric battery industry from scratch. It jump-started the smart grid. It’s bringing our pen-and-paper medical system into the digital age. It’s got Race to the Top which is the biggest education program in decades. It’s got the biggest middle-class tax cuts since the Reagan era. It prevented seven million people from falling behind the poverty line.
EK: That gets to one of the central political problems the stimulus had, I think. It was called the Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The Reinvestment side was composed of long-term investments to jump-start tomorrow’s economy. But since it’s thought of entirely as a stimulus bill, those investments, which in another context would be huge accomplishments, are seen as a distraction from the central work of the law.
MG: Politically, one of the difficulties was the two-part messaging. You’re doing short-term recovery and transforming the economy in the long term. You’re doing tax cuts and spending. You’re doing stimulus now, and you’ll pivot to fiscal responsibility. You’re doing shovel ready and also looking for shovel worthy.
But after the financial crisis, everyone knew it wasn’t going to turn around quickly. That changes the rules on timely,
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Which is a complete fable. You can stop reading at that point. It is so far divorced from fact, you have to be functionally insane to believe it.
Ezra Klein and Dana Milbank have catfights to see who will be 0bama’s Monica.
Oh he's doing plenty of "shoveling" alright.
If everything we have read about the (so-called) stimulus is wrong, then what is right with it?
Clearly, we get no enlightment from this article.
We would have been vastly better off by now without all the “help” we have gotten so far.
What’s right with it, according to Michael Grunwald is that we need more of it. Not losing weight on the Atkin’s Diet? You’re not eating enough meat.
Is the thread Title missing a “Barf Alert” or would putting that next to “Michael Grunwald” be redundant?
For fun I underlined the lies to see what boiled out. Not even the words "and" and "the" were spared from the onslaught.
So it worked so quickly and so well ... and then it didn't ... and left few traces behind.
Maybe it didn't actually work very well after all.
Grunwald is repeating these claims over and over again, but this idea of "hidden success" looks pretty dubious.
The "green energy" claims are questionable as well. Maybe in 20 years somebody will look back and praise the stimulus for its energy effects, but so much can happen over 20 years that it would be hard to say that what was done in 2008 or 2009 was critical.
"You have to re-elect 0bama to find out what happens in Summer of Recovery Four!"
According to the CEO of gm in a speech in china 4 weeks ago... EIGHT OUT OF TEN cars bult by gm are built in china... gm has moved all of their transmission plants and rear end plants to china... or are in the process of moving them... he promises to close the R&D facility in Flint and move it to china and he stated, “gm is proud to be partnered with china... we are proud to work with... in and FOR china”. Every single auto outside of the communist party headquarters... were CTS Cadillacs.
LLS
He's shoving something there and it isn't pretty.
Ha! I meant “shoveling” but I suppose shoving works too in this case.
5.56mm
Bad example, since the Atkins Diet is awesome and if you are not eating enough healthy meat and fat then you are probably eating too many carbs, and that is why you are not losing weight.
I love these satire pieces.
feh...
I know it was a hideous waste of money so not everything people know is wrong
My gut feeling is that in 20 years, people will look back and say WTF were they thinking when it comes to the wind mill farms. I suspect that none of the farms will be operational unless they continue to get huge subsidies..
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