I’ve been ill so I haven’t read everyones posts or diaries but David, has anyone pointed out that the spending freeze of $15B is just 2 per cent of the defense departments budget? They can’t find 2 per cent to cut from the defense department so cuts to ‘main street’ don’t occur?

Well, the tax cuts are understandable now that the Republcians control the Senate 41 to 59.

I wonder if they will renew Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthly now that they control the Senate?

I don’t think the House will stand for this.

The devil is in the details. The Schumer-Hatch proposal is NOT the same as the “Job Creation Tax Credit” proposal that I wrote up with John Bishop. The Schumer-Hatch proposal is for a hiring credit. The JCTC only goes to employers that expand overall payroll. As there is a lot of churning of hires and separations in the labor market, the Schumer-Hatch proposal, at least as described in the New York Times, would be subsidizing many hires even if it had no effect in job creation. A “job creation tax credit” also would subsidize some job creation that would occur anyway, but the scale of this problem is significantly less. As a result, the cost per job of a Job Creation Tax Credit is likely to be significantly less than for a hiring credit.

Extending the break, which expired Dec. 31, would save companies that make purchases of equipment such as tractors, wind turbines, solar panels and computers a total of $38 billion over this year and next by allowing a 50 percent write- off of the cost in the first year, the official said.

It would help if the equipment was made in the U.S. and not bought overseas like the stimulus funds were used for wind turbines.

grrrrr

last night, oldnslow and I were just having a general conversation about friends and family – and it dawned on us, we know 4 families facing foreclosure . . . because their fu**** unemployment has or is about to run out. none of these good people are holding a sub prime or a $100 move in type mortgage either –

don’t think these bastards could move any slower to help strugglig american families

“I suppose there’s some rationale for this for certain manufacturers…”

Are there any manufacturers left in the US?

Michael Whitney posted a link to Union Made Valentine’s Day Candy :)

Hey firepups.

I just gotta get this off my chest before the SOTU.

I didn’t know Obama was so fricking stupid.

There, I said it. thanks.

OT, Howard Zinn has died.

Do you know if any of the proposals stipulate jobs IN AMERICA and the persons hired being Americans?? It’s too easy to see the corporates creating jobs in China or Afghanistan, or hiring foreign nationals with work visas…

The words “tax break” read/sound just like fingernails on a chalkboard to me.

How about “tax the hell out of the rich!”

Too bad that most small businesses are struggling to just stay alive and don’t have any profits, and thus don’t have any use for tax credits(no profits=no taxes). What this looks like to me is a subsidy to big corporations who want to bring in cheap foreign H1-B workers to replace American workers. And get a tax credit for doing so.

This is a big business scam that Dems have bought into because it has plausible optics. The end result will be more unemployment for Americans. Somebody better check the fine print in this bill regarding H1-B visa workers.

NAFTAshocks

Spot on comment.

Gaming this kind of bill is too easy – indeed it rewards unstable work force because of low wage companies who must hire new faces -and those faces are the folks that are usually the one that have not worked for 90 days.

Better is an average workforce size increase bill – calc the size of workforce average count over 90 days last year and compare to this year and collect tax benefit if larger.

Zinn’s death is America’s loss. His passing comes at a time when his wisdom and passion and guidance are sorely needed.

Here is Paul Craig Roberts today at counterpunch:

The Democrats were destroyed as an independent party by jobs offshoring and so-called free trade agreements such as NAFTA. The effect of “globalism” has been to destroy the industrial and manufacturing unions, thus leaving the Democrats without a power base and source of funding.

Jobs offshoring is too profitable for U.S. corporations for Obama to be able to save American jobs and restart the broken economy.

george:

Nothing Obama says about jobs tonight is going to change this, right?

The ruling class has [loosely] come to acknowledge this. What they must pursue then is a new economy of vastly lower expectations. An economy where 8 to 10 percent unemployment is the new norm. An economy where more and more jobs will pay less and less money with fewer and fewer benefits. An economy far less dependent on the government to grow.

That is what the spending freeze mentality is a part of. And though the Senate just voted down the imposition of a “commission” [of "experts"] to pare back entitlement programs, it is only a temporary set back for the Bilderberg agenda. Sooner or later a way has to be found to put a clamp on social spending so that increasing spending on the war economy can be achieved.

Unless, of course, progressives can succeed in organizing a mass movement against it.

You think it will?

will probably be censored again, but let me put it to this site from my perspective as a small, specialty manufacturer.

i export product all over this planet. economic activity all over the planet is in a very depressed condition. my revenues are off 30% from 2008 levels. though i hated to do it, i riffed 50% of my hourly employees in january 2009. i should have done it in november 2008, but it is my policy to never energize a lay-off going into the holiday season.

and the global economy is not recovering. no matter what the pundits tell you. no matter how much many may want companies such as mine to add to the employment rolls, what would my company have those supernumeraries do? pay them to stand around? doing nothing?

let us consider some financial realities that impact an employer with more employees than are required. first, there is the employer’s share of FICA taxes. that the employer must pay. otherwise, the IRS will shut you down. so, there is an incentive to eliminate the expense of that tax burden.

i provide 95% of the cost of a very fine health care benefit for all my employees. this is a benefit that has seen a 30% increase in premiums since 2007. why would i want to pay this premium for a workforce level for which there is no need now?

similarly, i pick up 100% of the premiums for damn fine long-term disability insurance. why would i want to absorb this expense for employees that global business conditions have rendered supernumeraries?

my company has no debt. i saw the light at the end of the tunnel and recognized it as a freight train coming at me in 1998, so i have guided my company in response to that. i have made capital improvements with cash flow. in the good years. i have no need to make any capital expenditures at the moment. and as long as the global depression persists, that lack of need will not be ending[i.e., i have excess manufacturing capacity].

many in my local business community consider me a radical. and perhaps real “conservatism” is a radical concept these days. i loathe and despise demtillians, reptillians. cynthia mckinney was my candidate.

the dems and the reps have all hollowed out the strengths of the usa. all either for the pac dollar or for the israeli bribes[think jack abramoff, the rabbi].

and then there is china, which has copied so many usa-manufactured products. and then manufactured them with slave labor. it is infrequently discussed in the usa, but china is a totalitarian country. which gets away with its “slaving” because of its relationship with that very adroit fascist company, walmart[a company that once "owned" a first family].

walmart was the trojan horse. selling slave labor-produced merchandise at low prices. creating the illusion that the middle class[and lower] was escaping the death rattle of imminent enserfment[sic].

the final nails in the coffin of the usa citizenry are the unending invasions of other sovereign nations. nations who have never constituted any threat to the usa. will never constitute any threat to the usa.

h l mencken labeled the usa electorate as the booboisie. boy did he get it accurately.

and the most interesting “boobs” are all those who still think that the usa’s two party system is some kind of legitimate brand of oppositional politicking. they are both entities within the national nazi party.

Tax cut strategy is as tired as McChrystal’s strategy for Afghanistan: it moves us backward, while empowering corporations to treat their employees with the same lack of respect they do now. It gives them one more reason, when “stimulus” funds dry out, to let people go without claiming responsibility for the management decisions involved in doing so.

People need the stimulus. Unless it goes to the top 5%, those who get stimulus created income, directly or indirectly, will spend it immediately – on job costs, transportation, housing, food, medical care. That recirculates money considerably faster than giving it to large or small companies via tax credits or cash rebates. Inevitable gaming of the system will siphon off yet more funds and blunt the intended improvement in overall economic conditions – and improvement in those most affected by this recession/depression.

The latter should be the focus of a responsible government, something we haven’t seen much of late, nor for years before.

Tax cuts to spur businesses. Its like the refuse to work at all. Wont even spend a second to consider anything else. Lazy. Profoundly lazy.

Instead of creating theoretical jobs, they could directly fund actual projects that created actual jobs, though I guess that would be harder to scam…a real person in a real job might notice you stealing from their check. Tax cuts that can be worked by a select few….tried and true baby, tried and true.

great man
terrible loss for his family and all who love justice

Surprise, surprise. More ‘shoot ourselves in the foot electorally’ policy.

Democrats will continue to pander to the people that donor to them and will lose en masse in the next elections.

Same old story, different way of telling it.

Not to mention that those temporary construction jobs, more often than not, create lots of permanent jobs once the projects are completed. Any light rail or rail projects typically create thousands of jobs around the rails themselves — I can’t think of anything more helpful to struggling, urban communities than a huge influx of cash to create sweeping public transportation projects. It could literally resurrect huge swaths of struggling cities – and perhaps entire cities themselves. Transportation infrastructure is one of the most important thing in attracting new businesses, whether small start-ups or larger, well-established companies.