What we have been seeing in the US economy has been a growing trend for quite a long time. People remarked how long it took for us to recover from the Bush 41 recession of 1990 - 1992. It took nearly two years from "the bottom" in January of 1991 to recover so that people felt it. The first Bush 43 recession was a minor blip aledgedly caused by the business slow-down of the Twin Towers attacks. And yet it took till about July of 2004 for the thing to really get going. We are now entering the sixth, and I repeat - - sixth year is this current recession. It you look at indicators this recession actually began in the late summer of 2007. As I previously said- - this recovery is about as bogus as my "weight gain" that I've supposedly had in the past couple months. It seems the harder you try to search out a positive trend, the more convinced there is nothing there. All forms of government are continuing to retract. Both Dr. Levy and Judy agree that there just plain IS no recovery, and if anything it's getting worse and WILL proceed to get much worse. There is that "debt bomb". Even Real Estate prices we are told that they have only "rebounded" to levels of 2010, when things were really bad. Judy is saying there is a massive increase in energy prices in California due to a change in our laws. We have "tax-mageddon" out there, because the Republicans and Democrats alike declined to vote on extending the "Bush" tax cuts, which I don't think should be extended to begin with. It's funny how 'high" everybody says these rates will return to, but we had absolutely no problem with them under Clinton. We had absolutely no problem with a seventy percent top income top tax bracket during the Johnson administration. Now it seems "everybody" is being strangled alive by high taxes. Judy even takes exception to people being helped out with real estate refinancing because "If they pay a lower rate, it means that money is being TAKEN from SOMEBODY who no longer has that money". Judy says "You can't finance a debt by cutting interest rates". I told her that if people stayed in their homes that the neighborhood value as a whole would stay high and not collapse. Judy was unmoved by that argument. The one time when OC real estate prices rose, Judy only says "That only means more multi rent partiers and dope dealers will be moving into a neighborhood". Judy can find negative in even good news. The debt will be high and whoever is president in January will have to take steps that will CUT economic growth just to bring down the debt. For President Romney not only will spending have to be slashed, but also Romney has to figure in the cost of military spending for World War III with Iran as well as dramatically cutting taxes for his rich friends. Judy said liberals were unpatriotic because they only think of themselves and not their Country. And yet Romney will sell anybody out to China at the drop of a hat. People like Judy think all of this economic pain and ramping up the Real Estate crisis and slashing programs for the poor is "The cure that is needed for this economy". I think it's a foregone conclusion that if Mitt Romney is President when this Recession escalates into a full blown Depression, which Mitt Romney plans to do at the drop of a hat, that President Romney will end up being the most Despised man in History ever to occupy the office of President of the United States. He is unquestionably the Worse nominee of any Party since Warren G Harding, who only got the job because he "looked Presidential" and as a man who "looks like he should be President". Or as Anne Romney has often said "It's our turn now".
We are told that four times the number of people Left the work force in the last reporting period, as actually found jobs. It was some network which claimed that "This unemployment rate will be manipulated down to 7.9% by the time of the election, by such means. People like Gringrich say that millions upon millions have left the work force in the past four years and that "If as many people were in the job market now as five years ago, our unemployment rate would be more like eleven percent". I guess we have to take him at his word even though that figure of a "reduced work force" makes absolutely no sense. So where are all those people going? Those on the right tell you "to government programs, as the safety net turns into a hammoc for them". We are told that "fewer and fewer Americans are supporting more and more freeloaders and non producers", though I'm as a loss to come up ANYTHING that Mitt Romney has Produced in his life because a lot of heartache for newly laid off unemployed. There is something fundamentally WRONG with this economy or it WOULD have recovered years ago. Mom was optimistic in December of 2001 the economy would recover soon and back then in late 2011 and early 2012 I had high hopes that the ongoing "recovery" would continue right up through the election. But it hasn't. Nobody has any inclination to want to spend money on anything. According to Judy it't just this 'tight with a buck" attitude that will be an essential ingrediant in reducing the debt and as a "consequence" of lower debt, the economy will recover. This is what Mitt Romney believes that lower debt Per Se - - will itself be the instrument of this economy's recovery. Personally - - I don't see how. Mitt Romney is even more clueless than the President or Ben Vernanke as to how to spur an economic recovery. If it's not occurring, it's not occuring. It doesn't matter how long the Fed Chairman keeps the printing presses on - - . Because according to Judy "The rich, the job creators, are afraid of all the new Obama taxes and regulations and it doesn't make a bit of sense for them to risk their money". I can't follow that logic either. People still think Mitt Romney is Thee Man with sufficient Experiance to cure this economy of its ails. Now I learn Dr. Levy is doing a college level course on comparitive economics between the writings of Adam Smith and Karl Marx. It takes little extrapelation ability to envision that class as turning into a highly political diatribe and how one's grade could be determined by how strongly you agree with Dr. Levy politically, in the multiple written treaties students will be required to write for that class.
Two ideas are long overdue. One is the elimination of the electoral college, as a means of selecting US Presidents. This is because the entire "Battleground" is confined to about ten states, which the candidates visit over and over again to the utter neglect of the other forty. This isn't right. It isn't right that their votes should determine the race and our votes for all practical purposes count for nothing. By the way may I suggest it's Ben Vernanke's perogative to slant his Fed Stimulus in favor of Obama since Mitt Romney has openly stated that he intends to fire him. I pointed out to the group last night that Health Care cannot be repealed unless the Republicans take sixty US Senate seats, and this they are highly unlikely to do. The other thing that is long Overdue is - - that it's time to repeal the Death Penalty in California because it clearly isn't being enforced. Now there are seven hundred people on Death Row and only a couple dozen people have been executed in thirty years. It makes absolutely no sense to spend those millions with separate housing, and knowing that more men die in Death Row from Old Ages than going to the gas chamber. Polly Klaus's father may say that "The murder wins" in such a case. But he's still in jail and will rot there till he's pushing up daiseys. It's no victory for him. Of course now they have this DNA technology and Richard Perry has clearly executed innocent men in Texas and has absolutely no second thoughts about it. Mitt Romney's perception of this last week in his campaign is "There IS no problem". Romney intends to change NOTHING about the way he is campaigning because Romney insists he has not fallen at all in the polls this past month, and that he's still on track to win in 44 days.
MORE WORD OUT-TAKES: David Gragory said that he’s invited President Obama to appear on Meet the Press but Obama hasn’t accepted yet. I said that it could well be that even in the Presidential Debates themselves they will do much as Judy intoned. They will be a “big club” with a common pool of questions and topics that they seldom vary from, so that the Debate itself could be more pablum than real substance. I hope not. I would like a wing nut like Judy making a fool of herself asking the President one of her lame-ass questions. Judy keeps talking about government jobs “stealing from the economic pie” because Judy believes rigidly in a finite amount of wealth. I tried to point out to her at Mom’s the good Franklin Roosevelt did with the TV A and all but she wouldn’t hear it. It’s ironic however that also discussed was the fact that Paul and Judy had just paid off their mortgage because Mom refinanced the thing at a lower rate. I would not care to venture how many thousands that saved them on a - - two hundred thousand dollar house, or whatever. But I’m the freeloader. Judy maintains that the only “way” out of a recession and to insure proper economic stimulation is to be tight with a buck and never spend anything on anybody. It doesn’t matter to her that many of her ideas are contrary to Jesus’ teaching. She’s way past that. I told her about Paul Ryan speaking at an Ayan Rand meeting in 2005. At first she thought I said “only read her books” but then I made myself clear. She said, “It’s still nothing like President Obama being brainwashed with communism and anti colonialism by her mother. And then she divorced her second husband because he loved America too much”. I can think of other reasons why he might divorce her. Would - - race - - and economic status perhaps figure into it. How do we know the husband was not the instigator? Judy says she knew that Mom was becoming “distressed” living in the Laguna Hills house in early 2009. I was thinking like Paul that having a “Dad photo memorial room” was not a bad thing at all, since you already own the house anyhow. Why would Mom be “distressed” at reminders of Dad’s presence? We children take comfort from it.
No comments:
Post a Comment