Obama is kind of a dick...

[ds673488]

isnt there a political pissing thread somewhere?

[skalnbyc]

Obama has a lot on his plate. there is a lot that has been royally fucked by the failed policies of the rethugs for the past 8 years. Our economy is in the shitter, something needs to be done, and that something is not more tax cuts.

Calling this a "stimulus" is a joke, it is an excuse to spend in a time of economic gloom.  Much of it is stocked with waste that is intended to pay back the special interests who put Obama and the Dems into the majority position; very little of it will provide a meaningful stimulus.  And as for the current situation, you have to blame both parties as well as the businesses that brought upon the dilemma with absolute recklessness.  The Dems were big time FNMA/FMAC cheerleaders (and beneficiaries) who aided the enormous expansion of lending to the poor and minorites who could never afford the homes they were buying.

isnt there a political pissing thread somewhere?

Yeah, Jking started a lighthearted thread and I turned it into one, though I am certainly "living with no regret".

Might want to merge the discussion from my participation onwards into an existing discussion.

the declining s&p .

S&P bottomed out in November and has held steady/hasn\'t tested new lows since.  

To tell you the truth, I would support a reasonable level of spending if I didn\'t think it was rife with wasteful pet projects that will not help.

[Rickey Roux]

Porker in chief is playing the same big gov\'t game of waste and ineffectual leadership

:lol: :lol:


how would you suggest getting the economy stimulated?? more tax breaks that haven\'t worked in the past 8 years?? yes, there is about 2% of the current bill that should be in a normal budget and not a stimulus bill. fair enough. otherwise, most leading economists seem to think this plan is fairly well constructed and offers the best long term solutions (see bloomberg).

a fraud??? ineffectual leadership? ok, its been 16 days, what exactly would you like to have seen him do thus far to show more effective leadership?

ricky, you seem more pissed at the general state of politics in this country than at anything he\'s actually done so far. which is certainly fair and understandable. but you\'re lumping in the blame for the two party system, the electoral college, the declining s&p and your stock losses as stuff that obama should have what? fixed already? it seems to me more like you\'re worried that the same level of bs is gonna happen with this president as with the last. no president has ever been as atrocious as bush was (in a myriad of ways), so even if obama is as bad as, say, nixon, he will still necessarily have to be better than dubya...

and i say this as no obama fanboy. i just believe in giving a guy more than two weeks before making a judgment on what kind of leader he is.

Jason, yes, I\'m voicing my displeasure with the system and I\'m scared and unsure of what will happen in the near future.  As a fifty something, this crisis affects me much more than you and most others here (sure hope social security is still around).  The financial data seems to get worse each week.  Congress was alerted to the possibility of this financial collapse almost two years ago and did nothing. I\'m certainly not placing blame on Obama for our current financial turmoil.  He has a daunting task ahead of him and I will definitely give him time (and lots of it, he\'ll need it) to right the ship from it\'s wayward course, especially after what his predecessor and Congress has allowed to happen.

I\'m sure at this point this should be in another thread as DS#\'s has suggested, but.....

A few more things.  Global economy, what a fucking joke.  Let\'s face it, some of this started when it became more important for corporations to show profits to their shareholders than do the right thing and keep their businesses here.  They took away millions of jobs, built plants and set up operations in third world countries and paid workers much less money with little or no benefits.  Skyrocketing profits for a decade.  That lack of jobs is taking a toll on our country in a big way.  Not to mention the deregulation of the entire financial industry.  Damn lobbyists!  This country has gone to hell in the last 8 years.  Jason, thanks for starting this thread and Al for helping to proliferate my anger and frustration.  Enough of my rant.  I\'m outta here and off to the bar.  :wave::chug::vomit:

[KEN RAFLOWITZ]

Obama Is A Fine Gentleman Of Honor & Dignity.
He Will Work For Us The Best Way He Possibly Can.
Will He Make Mistakes? You Bet!
Does He Admit His Errors? You Bet!
Is He Faced With Great Challenges To Lift Up America?
Does Anyone Really Know How To Do That?
He Will Learn Along THe Way & Adjust Accordingly.
Did Obama Create All The Mess We\'re In?
We Have A Two Party System.That Won\'t Change.
Obama Isn\'t Responsible For All The Corruption Around.
The Corrupt Should Be Held Responsible & Punished.
Atleast He\'s Able To Speak Intelligently! I\'m Happy With That Much!

[Gfunk]

[KEN RAFLOWITZ]

Good Timing Gfunk!

[Gfunk]

[FrankZappa]

I don\'t agree with a lot of what I see in that stimulous package either... looks like it\'s just a bunch of stuff they wanted to do for years but couldn\'t figure out how to get the government funding for. Now all you need to do is say any hair-brained scheme is going to pump money into the economy and declare anyone who doesn\'t agree with you is being unpatriotic and vola, free ride for dumb crap.

Also, I really hate seeing the government tightening it\'s hands around everything, putting caps on how much people can make just because they\'re the president of a company, etc. Everyone agrees because it\'s for a corrupt company right now, but the next step is to go after other job levels in other companies. Once the rules are on the book it\'s hard to get them off. Just try and buy beer on a sunday in ct if you don\'t believe me.

I wish him all the success and think it\'s too early to decide anything yet on what he\'s done but I\'m not impressed with much yet.

[skalnbyc]

Definitely.

Addressing a debt crisis with much more debt only makes sense if every penny is going to worthy stimuli.  Congress allowing themselves to prudently allocate money to a "stimulus" is akin to a bunch of alcoholics responsible managing an open bar.

[Wolfman]

JEB \'12!!!

[FrankZappa]

:wah: :lol:

I love how this all started with a snowball and a cat.

[jking]

just a clarification, the only executives whose salaries are being capped are the ones who performed their jobs so poorly that they need my (and your) money to bail them out of their failure. if you have no problem allowing someone with a proven record of failure to pay themselves millions of your dollars, that\'s fine, ante up some extra tax dollars for them. me, i don\'t generally like rewarding massive incompetency, especially not with my own money....

[SlimPickens]

February 8, 2009
You Try to Live on 500K in This Town
By ALLEN SALKIN
PRIVATE school: $32,000 a year per student.

Mortgage: $96,000 a year.

Co-op maintenance fee: $96,000 a year.

Nanny: $45,000 a year.

We are already at $269,000, and we haven’t even gotten to taxes yet.

Five hundred thousand dollars — the amount President Obama wants to set as the top pay for banking executives whose firms accept government bailout money — seems like a lot, and it is a lot. To many people in many places, it is a princely sum to live on. But in the neighborhoods of New York City and its suburban enclaves where successful bankers live, half a million a year can go very fast.

“As hard as it is to believe, bankers who are living on the Upper East Side making $2 or $3 million a year have set up a life for themselves in which they are also at zero at the end of the year with credit cards and mortgage bills that are inescapable,” said Holly Peterson, the author of an Upper East Side novel of manners, “The Manny,” and the daughter of Peter G. Peterson, a founder of the equity firm the Blackstone Group. “Five hundred thousand dollars means taking their kids out of private school and selling their home in a fire sale.”

Sure, the solution may seem simple: move to Brooklyn or Hoboken, put the children in public schools and buy a MetroCard. But more than a few of the New York-based financial executives who would have their pay limited are men (and they are almost invariably men) whose identities are entwined with living a certain way in a certain neighborhood west of Third Avenue: a life of private schools, summer houses and charity galas that only a seven-figure income can stretch to cover.

Few are playing sad cellos over the fate of such folk, especially since the collapse of the institutions they run has yielded untold financial pain. But in New York, where a new study from the Center for an Urban Future, a nonprofit research group in Manhattan, estimates it takes $123,322 to enjoy the same middle-class life as someone earning $50,000 in Houston, extricating oneself from steep bills can be difficult.

Therefore, even if it is not for sympathy but for sport, consider the numbers.

The cold hard math can be cruel.

Like those taxes. If a person is married with two children, the weekly deductions on a $500,000 salary are: federal taxes, $2,645; Social Security, $596; Medicare, $139; state taxes, $682; and city, $372, bringing the weekly take-home to $5,180, or about $269,000 a year, said Martin Cohen, a Manhattan accountant.

Now move to living expenses.

Barbara Corcoran, a real estate executive, said that most well-to-do families take at least two vacations a year, a winter trip to the sun and a spring trip to the ski slopes.

Total minimum cost: $16,000.

A modest three-bedroom apartment, she said, which was purchased for $1.5 million, not the top of the market at all, carries a monthly mortgage of about $8,000 and a co-op maintenance fee of $8,000 a month. Total cost: $192,000. A summer house in Southampton that cost $4 million, again not the top of the market, carries annual mortgage payments of $240,000.

Many top executives have cars and drivers. A chauffeur’s pay is between $75,000 and $125,000 a year, the higher end for former police officers who can double as bodyguards, said a limousine driver who spoke anonymously because he does not want to alienate his society customers.

“Some of them want their drivers to have guns,” the driver said. “You get a cop and you have a driver.” To garage that car is about $700 a month.

A personal trainer at $80 an hour three times a week comes to about $12,000 a year.

The work in the gym pays off when one must don a formal gown for a charity gala. “Going to those parties,” said David Patrick Columbia, who is the editor of the New York Social Diary (newyorksocialdiary.com), “a woman can spend $10,000 or $15,000 on a dress. If she goes to three or four of those a year, she’s not going to wear the same dress.”

Total cost for three gowns: about $35,000.

Not every bank executive has school-age children, but for those who do, offspring can be expensive. In addition to paying tuition, “You’re not going to get through private school without tutoring a kid,” said Sandy Bass, the editor of Private School Insider, a newsletter that covers private schools in the New York City area. One hour of tutoring once a week is $125. “That’s the low end,” she said. “The higher end is 150, 175.” SAT tutors are about $250 an hour. Total cost for 30 weeks of regular tutoring: $3,750.

Two children in private school: $64,000.

Nanny: $45,000.

Ms. Bass, whose husband is an accountant with many high-end clients, said she spends about $425 every 10 days on groceries for her family. Annual cost: about $15,000.

More? Restaurants. Dry cleaning. Each Brooks Brothers suit costs about $1,000. If you run a bank, you can’t look like a slob.

The total costs here, which do not include a lot of things, like kennels for the dog when the family is away, summer camp, spas and other grooming for the human members of the family, donations to charity, and frozen hot chocolates at Serendipity, are $790,750, which would require about a $1.6-million salary to compensate for taxes. Give or take a few score thousand of dollars.

Does this money buy a chief executive stockholders might prize, a well-to-do man with a certain sureness of stride, something that might be lost if the executive were crowding onto the PATH train every morning at Journal Square, his newspaper splayed against the back of a stranger’s head?

The man would certainly not feel like himself on that train, said Candace Bushnell, the author of “Sex and the City” and other books chronicling New York social mores.

“People inherently understand that if they are going to get ahead in whatever corporate culture they are involved in, they need to take on the appurtenances of what defines that culture,” she said. “So if you are in a culture where spending a lot of money is a sign of success, it’s like the same thing that goes back to high school peer pressure. It’s about fitting in.”

By the way, the frozen hot chocolate costs $8.50.

you guessed it:  http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/08/fashion/08halfmill.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print

[FrankZappa]

I\'m not saying they shouldn\'t be punnished for it, but I don\'t like the way they\'re being punnished.

In my opinon, they\'re just companies like any other. THey failed, they failed. Let them close. THere\'s no reason any private company should be baled out like this, and there\'s no reason the government should be nationalizing a private firm (with the exception of overtaking the jeep blueprints during world war 2 and moving it from the company that developed it to one that would be able to produce it in the volume needed).

Maybe it\'s just my anarchist side speaking, but let them fail imo. Keep your government out of my private life.

Also, CT Govenor is pushing again for cameras to be put in on highways that will be hooked up to radar guns which will photograph your liscense and mail you a ticket. Another step twoards big brother. YOu should all write your state reps in the house and senate and tell them you don\'t want this!!!

um, unless you do, in which case you still should write your state rep and let your voice be heard.

[SlimPickens]

FZ are you talking about the financial firms that hold the retirement funds for millions of americans?

Yeah, we should probably let them fail.