http://msunderestimated.com/SNLBailoutSkit.wmv

SNL did a "Bailout" skit, which has created some rather awkward problems for NBC. They spiked the video and tried to shut it down on the Internet. But aha, there's still some sites that have it.

LMAO......

ON another topic..... THe government passed the SCHIP bill.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/children_s_health

Next stop socialized medicine..... We are doing great in what is already government controlled (medicare, medicade and social security) Those systems are flush with monies and cause no drain on the private sector that lags so far behind.

I mean Canada and the UK have great systems.
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.a...299282509335931


On the Positive side we are closer to a 900 Billion government pork / re-election / power grab bill.

Yes...Yes.... It's all about jobs.... Even though the CBO indicates that only little monies will be spent within the first year to help the unemployeed.

Supposedly it will create 4 million jobs. (on the high estimate) 1.5 million on the low estimate....

Lets have some math fun shall we.... (we will use 3 million jobs for this excercise)

900,000,000,000 / 3,000,000 = $300,000 spent per job
$300,000 / 6 years = $60,000 ( you could pay 3.5 million people 60,000 per year for 6 years...WOW)

900,000,000,000 / 140,000,000 (total taxpyers) = $6,428.57 is you total liability in the 900 billion (why not send the money to you to stimulate the economy.

900,000,000,000 / 95,000,000 (people who actually pay federal taxes ) = $9,473.68 (your real debt because 45 million people already pay no federal taxes.)

900,000,000,000 / $100,000 = 9,000,000 ( number of people who could recieve a check of $100,000 with the "stimulus" monies)

140,000,000 (people) / 9,000,000 ( # of $100,000 check recieptients) = 6.4% of all taxpayers would recieve a $100,000 check, tax free no less!

Math sure is fun..... Stimulating Even....

Have some fun with this and play at home!

The gov't is a monoply, and they are illegal because they have no incentives to get better and only demand higher pay for poorer service. The Gov't should have no buisness in the private sector.

Please... Anyone... Name (1) government run program / service that provides higher quality at a lower cost than the private sector?

Lower cost would = efficient use of monies not 10% growth in cost for 2% growth in services.
Are any budgets in decline?.... Well the military will most likely be... besides that?

Nice clips.
I especially like the 1st one because I can imagine all the Dem's getting a big laugh out of the 1st Bush part, then suddenly getting pissed as they continue to watch the clip.

Something important to point out which goes along with what Blitz said.
This new bill which is supposedly about Job. Does almost zero to create jobs. All it does is create temporary, short term, make work. This is very similar to the work programs form the New Deal era. One small problem, history shows the only reason all the New Deal didn't cripple the US is because WWII happened.
Like it or not, WWII was a huge boon for America.

$83,000,000,000 in "tax cuts" for people who do not pay taxes. More buying votes, more welfare, more socialism, more debt, another step down for America. The liberal dream coming true.

got a kick out of this-

This year, taxpayers will receive an Economic Stimulus Payment. This is a very exciting new program that I will explain using the Q and A format:

Q. What is an Economic Stimulus Payment?
A. It is money that the federal government will send to taxpayers.

Q. Where will the government get this money?
A. From taxpayers.

Q. So the government is giving me back my own money?
A. Only a smidgen.

Q. What is the purpose of this payment?
A. The plan is that you will use the money to purchase a high-definition TV set, thus stimulating the economy.

Q. But isn't that stimulating the economy of China?
A. Shut up.

Or how about this.
GM is taking $1 billion of their bailout money and using it to build a plant in Brazil.
Latin America Tribune
From the story
"SAO PAULO -- General Motors plans to invest $1 billion in Brazil to avoid the kind of problems the U.S. automaker is facing in its home market, said the beleaguered car maker.

According to the president of GM Brazil-Mercosur, Jaime Ardila, the funding will come from the package of financial aid that the manufacturer will receive from the U.S. government and will be used to "complete the renovation of the line of products up to 2012."

So much for the governments claim about oversight on how this money will be used.
Pumping $1billion of US tax payers money into Brazil is really going to help stimulate the US economy.

Ford's most advanced assembly plant is in Brazil... and running as we speak.... type

Watch the video
http://info.detnews.com/video/index.cfm?id=1189

What is amazing is that they cannot build that plant in the US because of the unions.
No sense in being competative and earning a profit at home... It's all about keeping jobs no matter the cost to the company.....

I guess GM is just trying to catch up with Ford in South America.... At least Ford has not taken any bailout monies.

I've seen that video posted in several discussions about the auto industry. Every time it's brought up, it always pointed out that can't do that here because of the "Unions".
I'll agree the unions share some blame in the current mess the Big 3 find themselves in but only partly and some of it is beyond their control.
Here is another way to look at it.
1) Unions didn't prevent similar Honda and Toyota plants being built here in the US.
2) Something most people are completely unaware of. The Ford plant in Brazil which people claim couldn't be done here because of unions, is actually a unionized plant. You see all those yellow lines painted on the floor in the video? The union made Ford paint those lines as a way to separate the low paid union workers from the even lower paid contract suppliers who work inside the plant.
3) Ford and union bashers spin this Brazilian plant as some type of answer to problems created by the unions. Bullshit, the unionized workers in Brazil aren't much happier with Ford then they are here. Which is why those same Brazilian workers went on strike and shut down the whole plant in 2003
http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-27...settled-at.html
4) Of course Ford loved the idea of building a plant in an area which suffered from 25% unemployment.
When people are that desperate, you can get them to line up for jobs that pay less than average an below the poverty line. Which is why those same workers decided to strike when they had the option. They returned to to work after getting an 8% raise which may sound like a lot but it only brought them up to a median wage for the area and type of work. So the real question is who's really greedy, the Unions or the company?
5) Do I even need to bring up the near zero tax rate and lax or nonexistent environmental regulations.
6) Unions have little to do with why this plant was built in Brazil, it was done to protect and supply their Brazilian and South American market. The same way Ford has plants in Europe to supply their Euro markets.
7) Most importantly, the union cost which has devastated the industry has almost zero to do with union wages. The real problem is legacy cost which the companies can no longer afford after continuing to build their business over the last decade+ on a razor thin profit margin. The single biggest reason this plant will be more profitable compared to a US plant is the lack of legacy cost. A tiny fraction of the health care expense when compared to US employees past and present. Then there is difference in cost associated with retirement, which has become a financial black hole for the auto industry.

For the record, I'm a strong union supporter in theory but am the 1st to admit they have done less than good job in the practical application when it comes to collective bargaining.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/02/10/caf...ouse/index.html

Damnit you beat me to it. I was just about to post the same link.
Pretty powerful critique coming from a democrat an a huge Obama supporter.

People should be freaking out about this so called "Stimulus" plan passing. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office recently predicted, in the long run this plan would be worse than doing nothing at all.
The CBO predicts the actual average growth from this plan would only be 2.75% in 2009 and 2.5% in 2010 with very little job growth.

its really scary when your starting to see bread lines in Florida. big companies like DHL just packed up and left. The fact im going through some legal woes i thought of going and getting a 3rd job and every rest or bar i went to had 30-60 people waiting to interview.Scary.

And it gets better.
Even as they work to cram this piece of shit down the throats of America's tax payers via scare tactics.
They are already working on a new $1.5 Trillion bailout package for the banks. I guess that 700 billion 2 months ago wasn't enough.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7880969.stm

BTW Obama supporters were quick to point out to a small boost in the markets when Obama appointed Timothy Geithner as Treasury Secretary. Any small initial gain in the markets when Geither was named as Secretary was completely lost today when market analysts voiced their concerns over his proposal, sending the markets down 4%. It was almost painful to watch his press conference where he was unable to answer questions about how his proposed changes would benefit the financial industry.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090210/ap_on_..._wh/economy_rdp

A little reality check for the recession...
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/01/its...ion_really.html

Does everyone forget the higher unemployment, huge interest rates, overbearing taxes, and the energy crisis in the late 70's and early eighties?

The real crisis is the % of gov't spending in relation to GDP.
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/us_20t...tury_chart.html
This is what is putting the government debt, and the interest on the debt will be crushing in the future.

Bush 2. started at 1.7 trillion and the last budget was 3.0 trillion.
Any guess on Obama's budget? 4.0 trillion? More ? Less?

We cannot spend our way out of this, they need to repeal sorbanes oxley, and restructure the accounting laws that the banks were forced to do from the whole Enron mess. We should at least try suspending the laws, and determine if this helps at all rather than printing money.

As far as the Brazil plant.
Yes it is used as a strawman against the unions.
However , I believe none of the Foreign automakers plants are unionized.

The Legacy costs are killing the big 3.
The Jobs bank is as well. http://www.detnews.com/2005/autosinsider/0.../A01-351179.htm

I'm sorry, but any industry should be pushed (by the consumer) to build new technology and innovation to deliver a better product with better cost, and with greater speed to the consumer.
If you have an anchor like the union demanding exactly what a person can and cannot do you cannot deliver and be competative.

Just try and go to a trade show and move a wall in a booth, hang a light, carpet, anything, and see what fine the union hits you with for taking away a job. because you wanted to get it done before the show was over.

The unions were a great thing when people were getting crushed in machines on a daily basis, we now have OSHA monitoring all of these things.

As much as I hate Obama, I want him to succeed because his failure would be America's failure.
With that in mind I have a little bit of advice for him.

If you go around telling everyone the sky is falling, then don't hold a press conference to explain your plan to prevent the disaster, it's bad.
If you then hold a press conference but only refer questions about your plan to the next press conference, it's worse.
If you then have your Treasury Secretary hold the press conference where the questions you've put off are are suppose to be finally answered, but all he does is lay blame and offer empty answers to basic questions, it's beyond stupid.
Then all you've accomplished is told people they should be scared and then proved to them that they should be because it's obvious no one has a real plan.



For Blitz,
You're correct, those more modernized plants in the US ran by Honda an Toyota are not unionized.
My point was these foreign companies have no problems coming into the US offering good pay an benefits
without constant crying about environmental standards and union wages.
I completely agree with you about the job banks being stupid but the fact remains the companies entered into a contract with the unions to do this. It was the company who continued to offload work knowing full well this would be the result. The unions put this clause in the contract to prevent job losses from automation and outsourcing but it was the company that made it happen.
BTW that article you linked to is old, job banks were almost completely done away with during the last major round of contracts.

There's a reason those new Honda and Toyota plants are in the South. It's no accident that they ended up in non union areas. It's a shame we'd rather lose jobs than to work for a wage that we can live on... says a lot about where we are now.

Since you mentioned union people would rather lose jobs than work for a living wage. Then I bet you would be surprised to find the Non-union auto works actually make more money than UAW workers at the big 3.
Average UAW laborer makes $29.78
While Toyota just topped $30.00
It's only when you include benefits into the mix does the union wage skyrocket.
Union is about $70
Non-Union is about $48
The reason for the big difference is legacy retirement cost
Source
BTW all the Toyota and Honda plants in Japan are 100% unionized.

It's worth mentioning UAW has complained several times that Toyota and Honda were breaking unionizing efforts at their plants by "paying to much money and giving big bonuses"
How freaking stupid is that?
The union workers aren't the problem, it's a failed mentality with union leadership and dirty business practices which put the unions in place.

Most of the south has been booming, one of the reasons is they are right to work states

http://www.edpa.org/docs/right-to-work-map.pdf

Right to work definition,
http://www.nrtw.org/d/rtwempl.htm

i don't want to hear about one bonus or pay raise.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090211/ap_on_...o/bailout_banks

I live in Kansas, a right to work state. I also work in a heavily unionized industry.
Where I work there are 5 different Unions covering different employee groups. I'm glad that I work in a "right to work state" because even though I strongly believe in the base fundamentals behind organized labor, I no longer support my union due to some dirty dealings over something that happened two years ago.
Each time I'm approached by a union member trying to get me to sign back up I reply with
"Why should I join and pay to have the union lie to me when the company is willing to do it for free"
The issue concerned an upper level union rep lying to me and about 500 other people about how a situation was going to be handled. When the problem came to it's final conclusion and didn't turn out the way we were told. I went back an asked the union rep about it. He looked me straight in the eyes and lied through his teeth, saying he never said or implied what I though he said, I must have misunderstood him. Of course if I misunderstood him so did about 500 other people as they were just as pissed.
I would have accepted it if he would have told me he was wrong an apologized for misleading me, I wouldn't have like it but I would have accepted it.
Just my personal experience and take on things.

Someone that gets it
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEZB4taSEoA

As pro Obama as most of CNBC is, I'll be curious to see if Santelli 's face time is reduced.

The one thing that this shows me is the lack of confidence between Wall st and the current administration,this may be why were tumbling down daily.

I smell a RAT in the stimulus bill.

http://www.dcexaminer.com/politics/The-RAT...l-39805642.html

How this is supposed to stimulate the economy I will never know. It will be handy however to eliminate political opponents, get cabinet appointee's to pass muster, and to keep members in your own party from being investigated.

It's all about power, never people.

When it's all said and done, so much of this so called Stimulus bill is actually done to balloon the size of the Federal government. Which they will then use to increase or even create whatever social programs they want to over the next few years. Look at how much of B.S. was said during the election concerning
"it's time the rich pay their share". If anyone looked at the numbers they would understand that's complete crap. But this will give the left all the justification they need to push even more of the tax burden onto the wealthiest 5%.
Not because the Libs care about the little people. It's done to increase the control of the left and prevent the Right from ever being able to run again on the platform of cutting taxes or for smaller government because an ever increasing majority will be receiving some type of government support.

We are witnessing a permanent power grab by the left. They don't care if it moves us closer to being a socialist country, which history has proven will fail. They don't care because they are politicians 1st and Americans 2nd. I'm not saying Republican politicians are any better, all they care about is to keep their party in power too. The difference is the direction the country is going to go.

That's what the left said after Bush was elected about the Republicans. I know you are saying that Republicans are no better, and I agree, politicians are in it to get re-elected, not to help the country, but to say the difference is the direction the country is going to go makes no sense to your argument. For it to be different than the Republican held government the direction the country is going to go is up.

I'm not saying the stimulus package is the best idea. I just don't think the Republicans were doing any better. Like you said earlier, it better work or we are all screwed. However I have yet to hear a single Republican with a plan that is any better at all. The truth of the matter is that Republicans have grown the government out of control and spent while preaching budget discipline. They preach tax cuts, but their own tax cuts, not tax cuts for the middle class. It's all crap, just like the Dems. It's politics all around and I just don't like it when I see the accusation made against one side or the other.

Until I find a party that actually represents my welfare and my views I'll go with the guy I think will fuck up the least. In this instance it was Obama. I hope he doesn't make me regret it.

Here is a republican plan that was presented, it was tabled and never brought up for vote.
It is HR 7909

http://gohmert.house.gov/Article.aspx?NewsID=1357

What is amazing is it is a 2 month tax holiday on the 350 billion left in tarp funds.
If you used the 800 billion in stimulus money as well it could have been almost a full year tax holiday.

If you are going to "borrow" the 800 billion to fund the stimulus, and use taxpayer dollars to fund the running of the government, why not borrow the 800 billion instead to run the government and leave the 800 billion in the pocket of every taxpayer for a year?

It would seem to me that if every taxpayer wereto keep their entire paycheck, they could pay down debts and save money, thus bailing out banks as well as have capitol to do home improvements, save towards buying a house, car, tv, etc...

Sounds like that is more of an instant stimulus, rather than pet projects and pork along with "shovel ready" BS that will not get moving this year and next, hell the CBO even said only 7% will be spent this year.
We could have spent 100% this year and returned the monies to the taxpayer!

Oh that's right the gov't cares about the people that get up work every day and pay taxes....BS

I like John Stewarts idea of giving the money to the people to pay off their debt, thus flooding money back into the banking system where they can begin giving out loans again. Instead of bailing out the banks you are bailing out the people.
Of course people who used poor judgment to get so far into debt don't deserve to be helped, just the banks that used poor judgment giving risky loans...

this is true.one of my listings that is doing a short sale,the guy refied 4 times and cashed out all that equity, 250k and im pretty shore hes sitting pretty with a 100k tucked somewhere and were bailing him out. i think if you refied you shouldn't be able to short sale,you should have to foreclose.