Next year's elections should be pretty simple. Republicans will commandedly regain control of Congress and the California legislature.
This year's most important issues have been jobs and healthcare. Democrats in Washington and Sacramento could not deliver on either one.
First, the stimulus passed which was going to save the economy from collapsing. And even though Ben Bernanke declared that the recession was over last month, the truth is it is far from over. The recession won't be over until people start going back to work. Early predictions are hoping the job market comes back by 2011. Currently unemployment is at 9.8%. That's 1 in every 10 people that do not have a job across America. California is even worse at 12%.
Second, the idea of healthcare reform has been floating around all summer. I still don't have insurance. We had the townhalls which got out of control, Congressmen and Senators were shouted down, people had guns at presidential events, and the nation was put on edge. Here in the county alone, we had two incidents. There was a fight at the Conejo Valley Democrats meeting and a finger was bitten off at a Thousand Oaks rally. If healthcare reform finally passes, it will be a watered down version of anything we really need.
Both issues are affecting every single American. President Barack Obama and his party have failed to deliver. American's want to see action, not just hear empty talk. Next year the voters will show Democrats the door and I forsee a revival of the Republican party.
Will the people really be stupid enough to put the Republicans back in? The same right wingers who CREATED the worst economic mess since the Depression.
RE:First, the stimulus passed which was going to save the economy from collapsing
It hasn't created one private sector job.....the stimulus was used to buy off local and state politicians across the usa....and they bought off a few in ventura county...i.e. DA Totten was drooling over some stimulus money...as well as the other usual suspects in local politics
by by to the dollar,print more money?the stimulus puts more stress on the dollar!!!!
Bailout or Sellout?
A critique by the Author
More than 8 months have passed since I wrote my plan for economic recovery and mailed a copy to the White House. About the same time, the Congress passed the $787 Billion Stimulus Bill that has been an utter failure at holding the unemployment rate at less than 8 %. In fact, most economists are now predicting that the rate will go well over 10 % and the total number of unemployed will continue to increase until late spring or summer of next year.
If you happen to be one of those who have lost your job because of the recession, you probably could care less when or whether we have hit the bottom of the recession. If you are like most people, you won’t consider the recession over until you have returned to work at a reasonably good paying job AND you didn’t lose your home or file bankruptcy.
The reason the Stimulus Bill hasn’t done much stimulating is that less than 15 % of the money has even been spent. Most of the money is scheduled to be spent, in 2010 and 2012; (just in time to help the Democrats stay in power). The plan I proposed to Mr. Geithner in February 2009 (Bailout or Sellout?) has been ignored by the White House so it has done even less.
In ‘Bailout’, the government would buy the ‘toxic’ portion of the bad loans and would then be a temporary partner on the mortgage. The banks would get the money so they could continue to be solvent. The money was not a gift to the bank. It was the proceeds of the government’s loan to the homebuyer, so his monthly cost of staying in the home was about the same as affordable rent. Not all of the Toxic loans would have been salvageable under my plan, because some of the original deals were so ridiculously unbalanced that the homebuyer couldn’t justify the new partnership. The government would soon own almost all of the equity and the owner could never catch up. However, the value of most of the properties would have risen greatly in the next 20 years so the homeowner still had a good chance to truly share in the American Dream of ownership.
My plan would cost the government less than $100,000 x 10 million homes or one trillion dollars. Instead of the money vanishing into thin air, the money would have been secured by real estate equity returned to the government with up to 1.2 trillion in interest income! In other words, roughly the equivalent of the 2 trillion dollars that has been illegally siphoned out of the Social Security Trust Funds by the “pork barrel” spending habits of the US Congress.
One of the sadist parts of this story is the damage done to millions of American home buying families and the collateral damage done to the millions of families who are now in the unemployment lines.
If no laws were broken by the bankers and Wall Street brokers who perpetrated this fraud on the American people, then the laws must be changed to prevent this from ever happening again. As part of a general reform of the Housing Market, adjustable rate mortgages should be severely restricted or banned out right.
Attorney General Eric Holder would do well to spend more of his time on this problem rather than rehashing the already investigated and settled inquiry into the anti-terrorist efforts that happened immediately after September 11th, 2001.
Bruce C. Davison
Ventura, CA
So what exactly do you foresee the Republication party to be doing about healthcare reform? Enforce legislation so that employers will be required to give their employees like yourself healthcare or enforce legislation to have the government give you healthcare? Please advise.
I am always amazed at Republicans who classify anything that President Obama does as a "failure".
Eight years of a spending spree, using surplus money, cutting taxes, deregulating for the corporate friends, until the deficit is doubled by the Republicans, eight years!
And they get all huffy and puffy when their created problems aren't solved in eight months! One can only surmise that on November 4, 2008, all the Republicans had their memories wiped clean just like in the "Men In Black" movie.
I have a question and a comment about healthcare. My question is one I have asked before and not had a response. Why are the first TEN amendments to the constitution (Bill of Rights) written on less pages and with less legal mumbo jumbo that just one healthcare proposal? Could it be that the political body we have today in both parties do not want us to read or understand what they are proposing? When I hear a congressman tell the American people that he couldn't read the bill unless he hired a team of lawyers, shouldn't that alone put up a red flag? The larger government gets the more complicated they make everything. They have a large portion of the American people believing that the average citizen is to stupid to understand what is going on, so why bother. I was told a truth by my parents that still sticks with me today. If someone says "trust me", DON'T! I actually cannot see one reason to trust any of them. We have Tax Czars that don't pay their taxes. We have banking Czars that are against free enterprise. And we have a Congress that wants to pass government controlled health care that they themselves are not subject to. "TRUST ME", yea right.