And now it's in the Senate

[Kulindahr]

The economic "stimulus" bill is in the Senate now, and so far its version looks like it's going to cost $900 billion!

There may be some fighting:

...a main goal for the Senate Republicans would be to increase the amount of tax cuts in the package so they amount to 40 percent of the overall measure, with the rest emergency spending.

There's more here.

I'll be interested to see if Obama really is going to reach out to Republicans.

Now, if I could be in on this, I'd suggest revisiting the entire education inclusion: get rid of everything except deferred maintenance for schools, and include upgrading laboratory equipment in that. Such a move ought to cut that by 2/3.

Take the rest of the $150 billion the House has there, and move it to the infrastructure section. Focus it on fixing things that are currently draining the resources of municipal and other local level resources, such as failing dams (for reservoirs), bridges, sewage treatment, and the like.

 

[Glafna]

What exactly do they mean by "increase the amount of tax cuts in the package so they amount to 40 percent of the overall measure" ?

 

[Kulindahr]

What exactly do they mean by "increase the amount of tax cuts in the package so they amount to 40 percent of the overall measure" ?

Since about 33% of the House measure is tax cuts, it means slicing other things from the bill and adding tax cuts until 40% of the stimulus is in the form of tax cuts.

About the only place I can see that coming from is that monstrous and irrelevant $150 billion for education.

 

[justapixel]

The first stimulus package failed miserbly. This one will fail, too.

The US is just pouring $900 billion down the drain. Your grandchildren and great-grandchildren will be paying this back.

My advice: do nothing.

 

[Txgoodoldboy]

The first stimulus package failed miserbly. This one will fail, too.

The US is just pouring $900 billion down the drain. Your grandchildren and great-grandchildren will be paying this back.

My advice: do nothing.

This is the first stimulus package. The House passed its version, this is the Senate's. If it passes, they will go in conference and work out the difference. I say fuck the Republicans. Cut the tax cuts. Do that in a different bill.

You think it is bad now, do nothing, and it is possible the whole world goes down the drain.

 

[justapixel]

You think it is bad now, do nothing, and it is possible the whole world goes down the drain.

I see that you are drinking the kool-aid.

 

[techboywi]

The first stimulus package failed miserbly. This one will fail, too.

The US is just pouring $900 billion down the drain. Your grandchildren and great-grandchildren will be paying this back.

My advice: do nothing.

OK...so do nothing and what? Things will just magically fix themselves?? When? When half the country is out of work? Will this happen before or after the depression we're headed for happens? Please explain your logic behind doing nothing, and how will it fix the problem? Or do you think there is no problem?

 

[justapixel]

OK...so do nothing and what? Things will just magically fix themselves?? When? When half the country is out of work?

Half the country is not out of work. Please stop spreading misinformation.

There is a 92.8% employment rate.

Throwing money at problems never fix problems. They just make things worse in the long run.

Stop the hysteria.

 

[jJoEd77]

What they say the stimulus package will do sounds great but a lot of the money is going to very unrelated things. STD prevention can wait. But I guess if you'd rather file for bankruptcy than put on your own damn condom, go ahead.

 

[Kulindahr]

Tax cuts are a ridiculous idea. I swear, Republicans have absolutely no business in government.

And the 150 billion on spending for education is relevant and worth every penny as long as it goes to providing an education across the board.

How does $150 billion for education help kick the economy back into gear?
The only way it would be relevant if it's for deferred maintenance, which would help cut costs for local districts.

 

[Glafna]

Tax cuts are a ridiculous idea. I swear, Republicans have absolutely no business in government.

And the 150 billion on spending for education is relevant and worth every penny as long as it goes to providing an education across the board.

Errr... when there are still schools falling apart, and kids being forced to wake up at 5 so they can catch the bus the system is a failure. What the money needs to be spent on is something to stop the kids bringing drugs and guns into school.. and I'm not talking those "scare tactics" that involve visits from inmates.

 

[Glafna]

Half the country is not out of work. Please stop spreading misinformation.

There is a 92.8% employment rate.

Throwing money at problems never fix problems. They just make things worse in the long run.

Stop the hysteria.

hey justapixel, mind citing some of these quotes and statistics you keep giving us?

And as long as the money is put in the right places, then it can.

 

[Kulindahr]

Errr... when there are still schools falling apart, and kids being forced to wake up at 5 so they can catch the bus the system is a failure. What the money needs to be spent on is something to stop the kids bringing drugs and guns into school.. and I'm not talking those "scare tactics" that involve visits from inmates.

Send them all to school in lycra tights.

 

[Glafna]

I agree fully on STD prevention, it doesn't need money thrown at it, it needs people to fucking take responsibility for themselves and have safe sex.

 

[Glafna]

Send them all to school in lycra tights.

That could work, but I was thinking more along the lines of showing blown up color photos of what happens to the human organs when drugs are abused, and the photos taken for evidence(or so I believe) in the cases of brutal rapes and murders in prisons, and possibly having tapes shown of the people who end up becoming mental patients due to the things they done in their life. Would probably have to be the more pathetic or psychotic patients however, otherwise they might just blow it off. Also, send in some of the hardcore inmates, not just the "recovering" ones, the more prison scars the better.

 

[Kulindahr]

I'd drag in some meth users, too. There's a guy I used to know who just isn't there any more 00 that's why I say "used to know" because the guy I knew is gone; all that's left is a deteriorating shell on a constant hunt for drugs.

 

[Kulindahr]

There are lots of ways, beyond your excellent suggestion, on how spending on education can be beneficial to an economy, some long-term, some short-term, from pre-schoolers to post-grads with student loan burdens.

That's true, but we need to be focusing on the short term. Something that's not going to yield results for five or ten years shouldn't be in such a bill now.

 

[Kulindahr]

What I'm saying is that this bill should have spending only for now, because now is when the economy needs the kick.

As for long-term education, we need to abandon the age-locked scheme, which was originally invented by less than imaginative people, some of whom liked it because it was very orderly, almost militaristic. I favor modular or even more free-form systems where students are able to proceed at their own pace. One of the koolest things I've ever seen in education was at a Christian school where a kid who normally would have been in third grade was tutoring some high-school age kids in algebra, which they needed to study something technical that they were interested in.

Before you object to the "Christian school" aspect, the packets for learning had no mention of the Bible or theology whatsoever, except to illustrate things -- or one example I saw for math, that went something like this:

We know that the formula for the circumference of a circle is c = 2πr. In the book of I Kings , the writer describes a "bronze sea" that is put in the temple, and says it was "ten cubits from brim to brim, circular in form, and its height was five cubits, and thirty cubits in circumference."
Explain what the problem is here.
Why would the writer describe the size that way?

 

[Kulindahr]

I don't have a problem with that, if it works (and can work in a secular setting, of course). What school is that?

I've been wracking my brains for about two years trying to find out; I must have recorded it in my journal, but can't find it. It was in Indiana, somewhere within an hour or so of Fort Wayne.

It was weird to talk to kids who were twelve and doing college electrical physics stuff, but whose geography knowledge was about third grade, or who were so into Roman history they could recite the names and reigns of every emperor and describe their policies, but who couldn't define a line. But they were all enthused about learning, and age didn't matter to them at all. One group ranging in age from eleven to seventeen had gotten together because they loved chemistry; they wrote a proposal, went to the local school district, and worked out an agreement for using the middle school science labs so they could do some real work.

More than a few had come as rejects from the local government schools, but the atmosphere of wanting to learn, and being free to pursue their own avenues, turned them around. Many took packets home on holidays, and in the summer, so they could keep learning on topics that they loved -- or to struggle through ones they hated, because they were required to go through a certain number of packets in every subject at a certain rate. But even those they tackled with determination if not enthusiasm, because it meant getting back to what they loved.

I was offered a position organizing such a school here, conditional on the legislature passing a certain bill that would have eliminated the ban on outside instructors for home schoolers, and allowed "non-certified" persons to teach so long as the parents approved and certain standards were met. It was an instance in which the Republicans championed freedom, but the Democrats went for conformity and carried the day -- so, no job.

 

[techboywi]

Half the country is not out of work. Please stop spreading misinformation.

There is a 92.8% employment rate.

Throwing money at problems never fix problems. They just make things worse in the long run.

Stop the hysteria.

Re-read my post. I did not say, nor infer that. My comment was used to make a point that something needs to be done before things get that bad.

Its not hysteria... Maybe you need to take off the rose-colored glasses