Poor Corey. I almost feel sorry for him. He is blustering over something he had to take anyway. Then the poor guy gets accused of taking saltpetre and a cold shower.
It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy because he was doing a little too much crowing. Do we really have all those accolades? I don’t think so. Additionally, the AAA bond rating has been around for quite a while.
Interesting video. It sheds a lot of light on how badly Stewart can prevaricate.
Too bad Camp Candland had to dredge all of this up. I hope Corey is embarrassed.
I watched this with an open mind. I understand and accept his arguement.
People always say they want responsible government, leadership that plans for the future, not just for the immediate future. I don’t understand how creating jobs for a single year, that create higher expectations of the school system, is or would be responsible.
The idea of our government throwing around “stimulus money” is something I never liked. Apparently it’s becoming an American institution.
Bush lowered taxes to unsustainable levels. Obama spends money that’s not there. The two parties have given us this type of through-the-looking-glass non-leadership for over a decade now. The end result will be gradually printing trillions more dollars, and the devaluation of every single thing we each currently own, and the end of the retirement system.
I’m just hungry for a government leader that actually shares the values I grew up with. I can’t pretend that either party represents those values, at any point, in any way.
I can see both sides of the arguement, as far as whether we and our local officials should take and spend this money. On the whole I lean towards no. I lean towards the kind of common sense values we grew up with, about creating and sustaining reasonable budgets.
I’m not happy with the idea of Stewart refusing the money, and our schools having less, so that he can go on Fox News and play partisan games and tilt and windmills. But I wouldn’t be happy either with taking the money, helping the Obama Adminsitartion in their “big push’ to stimulate the economy before the 2012 election (which is a matter they seem increasingly worried about), and us all tilting at windmills (trying to maintain a standard of living beyond our means).
Rick, these are probably 2 of the most intellectually honest statements I have ever read here, regarding the subject of government spending. If this blog had a “like” button, I’d be mashing the heck out of it. With regards to the Bush era tax cuts, I think initially, they were sound, as they were passed prior to the war in Iraq. The argument that they were no longer sustainable post-invasion is a valid one. Still, passing a huge entitlement program (perscription drug benefit) without an offsetting cut in spending or a tax increase wasn’t fiscally sound either.
Agreed. Even worse, Bush (and subsequently Obama) colluded with drug companies to preclude drug reimportation, to keep Americans paying more for drugs, to expedite their political concerns.
But I don’t agree about Bush’s tax cuts … it would have been prudent not to stretch so thinly, so quickly.
We got the same “compromise” between the two parties on that issue back circa 2001 that we have ever since. The GOP wants to lower taxes or keep them relatively low on the wealthy and on business owners; the Democrats want to ease the burden on the poor or on working poor, even to the point of actually handling roughly half of America money at tax time just for existing. They get together and decide to do BOTH things, to put chickens in all pots, at the expense of the deficit and the country’s future. It’s the absence of leadership, a complete void where statesmanship is supposed to be residing. It’s the utter intellectual bankruptcy of both parties.
Rick,
If you will recall, the Bush-era tax cuts were post-911 stimulis. I agreed with the tax cuts, and they did have the intended effect. But, to run a deficit to fund a war AND roll out new entitlements, AND maintain spending for everything else at the same level was unsustainable. The GOP paid a price for that in 2006. Many GOP’ers and right-leaning independents stayed home on election day. I know this because I ran the local GOP election HQ and I got an earful from many Republicans who were pissed about the spending.
I disagree with the whole “earned income credit” scheme. If someone is that poor that the politicos can’t find the will to make them pay something for the services they receive, ok. But to actually give them a “tax refund” on taxes they did not pay to begin with is true redistribution of wealth.
@Rick, you don’t get people just employed for a year as a general rule. Teachers retire, move, etc. and those new-hires remain on. In a system the size of PWC, it generally works out.
Even uif it doesn,t, the new hireds are hired for a year. In June, their term is up. They aren’t on continuing contract yet so they aren’t laid off. They just aren’t re-hired.
I still want to know why I can access this material if what was said on the other thread is true. Where is Corey’s intellectual honesty? He could just take it down and no one would be the wiser.
Please note, I didn’t go hunting for all this to stir stuff up with Corey. It was all made very relevant because of the Gainesville Supervisor race.
I agree that it’s inappropriate – I think crazy – for the government to actually pay money out to people at tax time. The term redistribution of wealth doesn’t bother me so much – I think that to a large extent that’s what every government does. But to increasingly culture our population to expect the government to take care of them, with no expectation of having to pay in … it’s beyond anything that I can accept as reasonable government.
Moon, I hear you. There’s an arguement to be made.
Amen Rick!
Steve,
I love it where somewhere we can find some common ground.
PWCS budget pages :
The federal Education Jobs Act fund is mentioned on pages 1 and 8 of the Executive Summary of the Superintendent’s 2012 budget (which was passed by the BOCS in April 2011):
from page 8 talking about sources of Federal funds: “In FY 2011, PWCS recognized $17.1 million in Federal Education Jobs Fund Act revenues. ”
It then goes on to say that the money was part of the beginning balance. I am guessing that means they physically got the money during the last fiscal year but they rolled it over as a beginning balance into this fiscal year. In any event, it confirms that they did get the Education Jobs Act money.
I am not surprised no one noticed it. The budget documents are not very stimulating reading.
Budget documents make paint drying look like excitement. Thanks for providing that info, WSC.
So I suppose my next question is, why is Corey on Fox News saying that PWC did not take the stimulus money when they clearly did?
Also, do you have any idea when those teachers were hired or, were they put on hold until this year? I am very confused.
I suppose to cut to the chase, I just need to ask …were the 180 teachers hired during the 2010-2011 school year or our current school year?
Why does Rick Perry feel it is appropriate to use non-standard grammar? That is simply unacceptable. He said “I am proud of what we done in Texas.” Oh Please!! How embarrassing.
@Rick,
The country was perfectly happy cutting taxes, fighting 2 wars, creating a huge new senior program that was unfunded and didn’t require drug companies to give up any profits, and to prop up the economy of a faulty real market that was built like a house of cards. Additionally a huge new education program, NCLB, was ushered in that severely impacted state and local govt.
Tell me why again we are in the shape we are in? Got it, Obama’s fault. Oh yea, he is just such a big spender.
I am careful to blame Bush as well, Moon. At this date and time I think Obama gets some of the “credit” too. And Clinton, Bush 41, and Reagan.
To me Bush and Obama are the same guy. They are both guys whose life experience is limited, whose main asset is personal charm. The one is more articulate than the other, and the one has more family connections than the other. But I am struck, comparing their biographies as well as their job performance, at how similar they are. IMO they have each done a terrible job as President, both exhibiting a complete inability to lead, because they are too lost and bewildered to even know where to lead us to.
The one generalizes his experience leading failed oil startups, and a brief Governorship, into a bad Presdiency. The other generalizes his experience as a “community activist” and a brief term as Senator, into a bad Presidency. In each case they were woefully unprepared to be President and naive. The main difference between the guys IMO is that one plays golf and one plays basketball. Each of them is just a glad-hander who sells a load of bad cabbage to their party faithful to get the vote out. Selling one thing (bipartisan global capitalism and deficit spending) as another (“conservatism” or “liberalism”).
I live in fear that Palin would become President next, because it would almost certainly be more of the same.
I am not in to blaming anyone as much as I am not hanging the abuses of a decade on one person. I don’t think anyone could have been elected and fixed what ails a country after 2 unfunded wars, tax cuts, and 2 major unfunded programs started up. Throw in a mortgage crisis……
Why are we surprised? It surely was more than any one person would want to inherit. I felt the same way after 9/11–that I bet Al Gore was glad he lost.
As long as we all remain rational. reasonable, and respectful, there will always be an opportunity to find common ground. As I often say, “take any issue and dissect it. Move the “For/Against” line based on the constituant parts. Sooner or later we’ll both end up on the same side of the line, be it taxes, spending, foreign policy, or social policy.”
@Rick Bentley
“I am careful to blame Bush as well, Moon. At this date and time I think Obama gets some of the “credit” too. And Clinton, Bush 41, and Reagan.”
As a student of history, I’d have to go all the way back to Lincoln to find a President with whom I completely agreed with the actions that they took in response to to the challenges facing the nation at that point-in-time. Since then, some did more good than harm, and others more harm than good. I try to look at whether or not the individual was facing something competely extraordinary, or something we have faced before. Did the individual try something that has worked before, or something that has been tried and failed? The problem is, our system is imperfect, because the people who we elect to run it are imperfect, and we who elect them are imperfect.
Steve said:
I have a problem with that also. I expect that abuse is even more prevalent than we know about.
“The problem is, our system is imperfect, because the people who we elect to run it are imperfect, and we who elect them are imperfect.”
I know that that’s true … but I think that the parties used to have a modicum of intellectual integrity that they lack now.
Republicans used to stand for smaller government and free markets, not scams like Bush’s prescription drug boondoggle (letting the drug companies continue to gouge the rest of us with unnatural prices so long as so many billions of dollars’ worth are given away to the elderly). Democrats used to stand for keeping wages higher, not sitting and watching labor rates be systematically undercut by 20 million illegal immigrants.
I think that the influence of big money has wormed its way into every nook and cranny of our government during the last 10 years or so, to a greater degree than before. I think that a climate has gradually been created where an honest man or woman cannot function within the party system. Winning (the election) is now an end unto itself, which feeds whole cottage industries of partisand and lobbyists that didn’t exist at quite this level in past eras.
@Rick, further proof of decline should be the cost of getting elected. The presidency costs upwards of a billion. A senator? A congressman? It truly is obscene. Where does this money come from? Not out of normal people’s pockets. All of the politicians are whores if you ask me. Someone owns each and every one of them.
Indeed.
Why is Rick Perry any more embarrassing than the rest of us grammar slugs? I mean, a lot of water has gone under this old bridge; but it wasn’t until just a few years ago that I began to hear such ludicrous expressions as “growing the economy” — and in some of the very best circles yet. Well, as long as you can get the gist…….That’s just Texas talk, little darlin’. Imagine what it was like in the 1860’s when those Texans came north to join the Army of Northern Virginia.
“I declare, Colonel. What is wrong with those Texas boys? You can hardly understand a word they’re saying!”
“Yes, Ma’am, that is surely the truth. But Marse Robert says that they sure can fight!”