nonsense Archives - Where Is The Outrage?

Nanny State Nonsense

One of my life long friends, a card carrying conservative, stated during one of his rants that Obama wants Americans to live in a Nanny State. This is a Fox News induced fantasy. We know that this Nanny State is nothing but nonsense.

Here’s what I know. I need a federal government that is strong enough to protect every American’s right to vote. I know that there are powerful forces (Texas, Mississippi, North Carolina) who would rather that I shut up and sit down. As an American, it is my right to vote and it needs to be protected. We have seen elaborate plans to make me vote on the wrong day, to induce me to vote at the wrong location, to make voting very uncomfortable as I wait in long lines and, finally, really, to make my vote meaningless. These injustices need to stop. If protecting my right to vote makes America a Nanny State, so be it.

We have all read about the South Korean Airliner which crashed in San Francisco. Every time there is a near miss or a crash there is a huge federal investigation. Through rules and regulations we have made air travel safe. Planes crashes are now rare. This is a good thing. Is every rule and regulation perfect? No. These are man-made things. Nothing that we do is perfect, nor should we expected them to be. (more…)

By ecthompsonmd|2013-07-10T07:47:09-04:00July 9th, 2013|Party Politics|5 Comments

Myth – Government can’t create jobs

I think it is funny and sad that conservatives will continue to believe nonsense even when they know it is … well, nonsense. One of their favorite pieces of circular logic is that the government simply can’t create jobs. All jobs (real jobs) are created by the private sector. Government jobs aren’t real because the money comes from taxes, which comes from us, the taxpayer. See? Yeah, I don’t understand it either.

It seems to me that if you are working for the IRS or the State Department, you have a job. You are spending your salary and you are contributing to our GDP by buying things. If you work for Blackwater, a private company which depends on government contracts, you are adding to our economy. If you are an employee of a company that supplies stuff to Blackwater, aren’t you still contributing to the GDP? It is crazy to think that somehow this job is different that a “regular” private sector job. The whole idea is that government jobs are somehow completely different from private sector is beyond me.

By ecthompsonmd|2012-05-09T23:19:10-04:00May 9th, 2012|Economy|7 Comments

Congress, we need more

Over the last several months, there’s been some question about the direction of the economy. Was the economy going up, down or nowhere? The economic numbers were grim.

From Robert Reich:

It’s nonsense to think of the economy heading downward again into a double dip when most Americans never emerged from the first dip. We’re still in one long Big Dipper.

More people are out of work today than they were last year, counting everyone too discouraged even to look for work. The number of workers filing new claims for jobless benefits rose last week to highest level since February. Not counting temporary census workers, a total of only 12,000 net new private and public jobs were created in July — when 125,000 are needed each month just to keep up with growth in the population of people who want and need to work.

Not since the government began to measure the ups and downs of the busines cycle has such a deep recession been followed by such anemic job growth. Jobs came back at a faster pace even in March 1933 after the economy started to “recover” from the depths of the Great Depression. Of course, that job growth didn’t last long. That recovery wasn’t really a recovery at all. The Great Depression continued. And that’s exactly my point. The Great Recession continues.

Even investors are beginning to see reality. Starting in February the stock market rallied because corporate profits were rising briskly. Investors didn’t mind that profits were coming from payroll cuts, foreign sales, and gimmicks like share buy-backs — none of which could be sustained over the long term. But the rally died in April when investors began to see how paper-thin these profits actually were. And now the stock market is back to where it was at the start of the year.

Yet, in spite of all this evidence, there are no major initiatives coming out of Congress. Every time you turn on the TV, the talking heads are telling you that they don’t want to spend any more money. They’re talking to you about cutting the deficit. It is as if cutting the deficit somehow magically creates jobs. It doesn’t. Cutting the deficit will not spur economic growth in the short term. What we need is jobs, now. We need elected officials to stop working on getting reelected and start working on fixing the economy.

By ecthompsonmd|2010-08-15T11:05:14-04:00August 15th, 2010|Congress, Economy, Obama administration|Comments Off