Is the Obama economic plan working?

[Kulaf]

I lived in CA for a year. I rode the BART quite a few times on the weekends and it was always about 20% full.....if that. The problem is that a ticket on the BART is like $10......one way. If you want mass transit to be utilized it HAS to be cheaper than driving your car or it just doesn't work. Now conversly when I lived in Chicago I could ride from O'Hare to downtown Chicago on the blue line for $1.50. Yup a buck fifty versus 10 dollars.

[Harlowe]

Bailout related......very good summary of how the taxpayers helped Goldman Sachs with their current "blowout profits"

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/ ... index.html

Remember all of this -- the $700 billion bank bailout, the AIG scandal, dark and scary threats of imminent global meltdown if there wasn't full-scale capitulation by the citizenry to the immense transfer of public wealth to the private investment banking sector? Such distant, hazy memories: so many exciting celebrity deaths and riveting celebrity resignations ago. If sequences of events like these don't cause mass citizen outrage, then it's hard to imagine what will:

[Lurker]

This Rolling Stones article is a must read also. Greenwald highlighted it in the piece you linked.

If America is circling the drain, Goldman Sachs has found a way to be that drain -- an extremely unfortunate loophole in the system of Western democratic capitalism, which never foresaw that in a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy.

[Ddrak]

Blah - I started a new thread with the same rolling stone article.

[Fobbon Lazyfoot]

Also... you, I or Fobbon can glance at a bus or train or trolly, see the empty seats, and make a conclusion. Kinda the same way you don't have to fly on a passenger jet that is heading on a vertical trajectory towards the ground to know the jet is in trouble. You can beeleive your eyes, or you can beleive your delusions. I prefer to beleive my eyes

And there, sir, is exactly my point: you're not looking at the whole spectrum. Your eyes and your delusions, in this particular case, can't necessarily be readily seperated.

I lived in CA for a year. I rode the BART quite a few times on the weekends and it was always about 20% full.....if that. The problem is that a ticket on the BART is like $10......one way. If you want mass transit to be utilized it HAS to be cheaper than driving your car or it just doesn't work. Now conversly when I lived in Chicago I could ride from O'Hare to downtown Chicago on the blue line for $1.50. Yup a buck fifty versus 10 dollars.

THAT is a resonable conclusion. Watching the buses roll by and playing the social-benefit-program-analysis-at-60-mph is not. Or, I suppose you're from CA - I guess it would be 120mph, huh?

[Select]

THAT is a resonable conclusion. Watching the buses roll by and playing the social-benefit-program-analysis-at-60-mph is not.

Good job navigating that. I agree.

[Fallakin Kuvari]

Bailout related......very good summary of how the taxpayers helped Goldman Sachs with their current "blowout profits"

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/ ... index.html

Remember all of this -- the $700 billion bank bailout, the AIG scandal, dark and scary threats of imminent global meltdown if there wasn't full-scale capitulation by the citizenry to the immense transfer of public wealth to the private investment banking sector? Such distant, hazy memories: so many exciting celebrity deaths and riveting celebrity resignations ago. If sequences of events like these don't cause mass citizen outrage, then it's hard to imagine what will:

You know, Glenn Beck covered this on his TV show.

[Partha]

Also... you, I or Fobbon can glance at a bus or train or trolly, see the empty seats, and make a conclusion.

Heisenberg?

[Fobbon Lazyfoot]

Heisenberg?

We can conclude we're not certain about the empty seat's velocity?

[Embar Angylwrath]

Heisenberg?

We can conclude we're not certain about the empty seat's velocity?

Sure we can. We just can't conclude where the seat is when we fix the velocity.

[Fobbon Lazyfoot]

Sure we can. We just can't conclude where the seat is when we fix the velocity.

But then we can't know if we're talking about San Diego anymore

Or, for that matter if the seat is really empty.

DAMN YOU HEISENBERG

[Fallakin Kuvari]

Don't worry guys, we just need to spend more money to keep from going bankrupt.

[Lurker]

Yuk yuk.

Do you even know what Biden was referring to when he said that?

[Fallakin Kuvari]

Did you even understand that I was trolling? That is the more pertinent question.

[Lurker]

Consider me trolled.

[Embar Angylwrath]

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20090720/D99I4A0G0.html

Not looking good for Obama. Delaying the report makes it seem like he has something to hide.

@Lurker - see Elmendorf's quote in the middle of the article about significantly expanding the federal financial responsibility for health care. That's what I was referring to when I said Obama's plan would raise costs. Not just any costs, but the costs already anticipated.

[Lurker]

Obama should not delay the report if it's ready for release.

On the Elmendorf quote, it's being taken out of context and made to mean something he did not say. I'll respond more in the other thread.

[Fallakin Kuvari]

And really, California needs to cut from other places than education (and set up something where Teachers evaluations are linked to how their students are doing on standardized testing, but thats another story).