perfidy

I could list out the specific policy tests I'm referencing and not go down the "incompetent" route. I guess I should do that; it's only fair that I do that. Conclusions need to be held.

But:

1. You are giving the politicians credit for winning a war. The military did that; the politicians don't do anything more than point the direction. This is a wash. We don't judge on the success of the war. We judge on the underlying reasoning.

2. You characterize the economy as "improving". Well, for who?

http://www.epinet.org/content.cfm/webfeatures_snapshots

Apparently not for anybody who isn't a major-league investor. The scariest thing about the chart is that is does NOT reflect the jobs that were lost DURING the recession...so we are way behind where we were.

Why is this recession not generating any jobs or increases in wages for average americans? That is the big question.

The GOP answer is: Just wait -- you'll see. It'll work.

I think we just handed a huge chunk of social security money to the investment class in this country so we could create jobs for regular people. They took the money, and there's nothing to show for it. What is the time frame on tax stimulus, anyway? We certainly can't go by the estimates given by the GOP on when we'd see jobs created. _Every_ one of those estimates has turned out to be pie in the sky. Every Bush budget, for that matter, has been pie in the sky.

Given the failure (or at a minimum, dramatic underperformance) of the supply-side tax approach, what is an appropriate response?

I read somewhere today that the very richest amongst us have more or less convinced themselves that tax cuts for the wealthy really are the best way to gernerate growth.

How should we test whether or not this is true?

I'll write a little more in the next day or two, describing specific points of evaluation. I find this process interesting; I wrote a while back on the "Concerned Citizens Primer". It's time for Buckethead to make his case, and me to make mine.

I must confess that I don't like 9/11 being used as a catch-all excuse for every mis-step.