Meat & Bones

More on the Obama stimulus package: Tax cuts. This will be .... "unlike the $600 per worker lump-sum rebates issued last year, taxpayers would have less withheld from their paychecks." --- Truth is, it is just like the lump-sum Bush rebate, you will just get it in a dribble rather than a lump, approximately $10 per week for Joe Blow's paycheck. The idea is that people would spend more on goods and services immediately, rather than saving the tax cut or using it to reduce credit card debt. It is a "temporary" band-aid. And a headache for accounting offices across the country.

Some folks who are promised a benefit:

Low-income workers, the measure would make the child tax credit more generous by making more people eligible for refunds if they earn too little to pay income tax. The earned income tax credit for the working poor would be made more generous for larger families. --- Rewarding the poor for paying no taxes and having a lot of kids (maintaining the future of the plantation with voters). Many of those who become eligible for refunds will not see refunds as it stays with the State for they are deadbeat dads who owe child support, student loan defaulters, folks who owe the IRS $2000 in back taxes with $20,000 interest and penalties. Predatory payday loan lenders, title leasing, or cash leasing lenders will thank Obama because EIC is all that stands between them and the repo man or the D.A. with a bad check in his hand.

The package would extend unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless through the end of 2009, increase the weekly benefit by $25 and provide unemployment benefits to more part-time workers. --- Part-time is the new full-time, and you have $25 more to hang on by the skin of your teeth, at least until the end of 2009.

Food stamp benefits will go up ... states would get $77 billion in aid for education and $25 billion as a block grant with no strings attached. --- State agencies and their pockets thank you Mr. President. Lenders of student loans thank you. Private school vouchers thank you. And our local high school will thank you b/c now, maybe, they will get funds to remove the asbestos.

Senior citizens receiving Social Security would get a bonus payment of $300 under the Senate version of President Barack Obama's economic recovery plan. Many nursing homes administrators thank you, and my elderly neighbor thanks you because with $300 she can finish paying off her rent-to-own electric stove, and rent-to-own thanks you.

Other programs, such as $1 billion to combat bird flu, are said to likely attract ridicule from Republicans and budget hawks for doing little if anything to create jobs. --- I doubt this program will irk republicans. When Bush did the same thing the democrats called it "a thinly disguised gift for pharmaceutical giants." Democrats will now call it an investment that will lead to medical breakthroughs.

Republicans are pleased with provisions extending tax cuts for the purchase of new plants and equipment and allowing money-losing businesses to claim refunds on taxes paid up to five years ago. --- Ah ha, the meat on the bones. Plants/equipment tax cuts to bring manufacturing to America. But you'll have to explain to me how this will cure unfair trade practices, currency manipulation, and large-scale import dumping in the US market. But, a lot of recent "money-losing businesses" thank you!

These measures are not going to "stimulate" the economy or cure our economic ills or create sustainable living-wage jobs or end a recession. It will increase US debt and guarantee continued poverty for many. And we have yet to factor in the continued cost of 2 wars and Obama's planned "surge" into Afghanistan. (God why does this feel like business as usual.)

In the words of an old Bolshevik, and the apparent meme for the Obama administration, "These are Extraordinary Times" (or the collapse and takedown of the USA).