For DUers in "We Don't Want The Money" states ..... what's the mood there?

[Stinky The Clown]

Is anyone threatening to throw the bastids out? To place them under citizen's arrest?

[Ernesto]

1. It's pure repuke political theater.........

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5111959

[napi21]

2. Our stupid Gov. Sonny Perdue said he was going to pick and choose!

He's take some of the $$ but he doesn't want any of the $$ for medicaid...it will cost the state too much later!

I don't know what the strings are, that he doesn't like, but I'd like to smack him.....

[Buck Laser]

3. Goodhair Perry says it's out there so he might as well take it.

Damn, it's embarrassing to be stuck with a guv even dumber than Dubya was!

[No.23]

4. What's all the hoopla about?

Americans who couldn't afford a mortgage were given one, and here we are today.

Had they carefully examined the strings that were attached to those loans, it might've been a different story for many.

What's so god-awful about saying "no thanks' to mulah because of the strings that are attached?

[Doremus]

5. By all means, let the governors decline the $$$.

Send it to states like Ohio where we get back 65 cents or some measly amount for every $1 we contribute to the national treasury.

In fact, ALL states who suck at the federal teat by contributing less than they get back should send their portion of the stimulus to more deserving states.

Whatcha think?

[Stinky The Clown]

6. I'm sure you mean that in the nicest way

[MUAD_DIB]

7. Tell me what the strings are.

Should there be no strings so that the GOP spends the money poorly, like the banks did, and award it to those who need it the least?

[No.23]

8. Not knowing what the strings may be...

concerning the monies involved...

I'd rather reserve judgement...

instead of belittling those folks who have a much better idea of what the strings are than I do.

[pnwmom]

11. You'd rather accept the claims of these Rethug governors

about "strings" that you know nothing about, than support Obama and the Democrats (and three Republicans) who voted for the bill.

I'm not sure you're posting on the correct political board, No.23.

[No.23]

15. Huh?

I am not accepting anyone's claims.

Show me where I have.

I simply stated that I am not personally aware of the strings that are attached to the monies.

Which doesn't give me any foundation, therefore, to make a judgement re. what I would do if I were in their shoes.

As for posting on a "correct board", are you saying that posters should post in virtual choir lofts (where everyone sings by the same song sheet) instead of the congregation (where they don't necessarily)?

I don't like choir lofts.

They're too elevated and devoid of diversity for my taste.

Congregations, on the other hand, are much more stimulating and thought-provoking.

[pnwmom]

28. This is a board for Democrats and progressives.

You appear to be accepting the claims of some right-wing Rethug governors that there are unacceptable "strings" to the stimulus monies that they know about but that you don't know about yourself. That seems to be a very strange position for a Democrat to take.

Even moderate Republicans like Crist and Schwarzennegger support the stimulus package.

If you're going to make specific criticisms of the package based on what you know, fine. But it's not fine to base your criticism merely on the fact that some of the most right-wing Rethug Governors are refusing the monies. That's the kind of argument I'd expect from freepers, not progressives.

[tkmorris]

12. So, you don't know of any strings

Yet you think it's no big deal for them to refuse bailout funds, due to those same strings you don't even know exist.

Umm, ok.
:eyes:

[No.23]

14. News flash!

Reserving an opinion or judgement ... is not the same as thinking that it's no big deal.

Thinking that it's no big deal... is actually an opinion or judgement.

Getting it now?

[tom_paine]

18. Ah, the old "trust the experts", bit That ALWAYS works when dealing with Bushies

:rofl:

Irony is your poster depicted, when of course you are advocating that we don;t think, just trust the Bushies.

If I didn't know better, I would say that such mind-blowingly, mind-numbingly insensible-to-hypocrisy use of irony that backfires against one's self could ONLY be a sign of an ignorant Freeper Troll trying to camoflauge himself, and doing the usual poor job of a barbarian trying to pretend to be a civilized person.

But, of course I do know better.

:rofl:

[RoyGBiv]

26. A succinct explanation ...

The "conditions" these governors are wailing about is most simply stated as a requirement that the money be spent in the manner Congress intends it to be spent.

[alfredo]

9. Obama read them the riot act. If they misuse the money, he's going to

take it back. This money is to put people to work. It's not to send the gov and his wife to Belize, or to pay off political friends.

[BalancedGoat]

20. There seem to be two distinct complaints about the "strings".

The first, and weakest complaint is that they are being directed on how to spend much of the money. If you're being given so much money to spend on highway projects don't complain that you have to spend it on highway projects. Only a fool looks a gift horse in the mouth.

The second and more valid complaint is that states will be prevented from cutting funding for certain programs if they accept federal funding for said programs. In order to receive funding for unemployment benefits the states will not be able to cut them from their current benefit amounts (this clause ignores the additional funds from the federal government). Jindal is saying this would require a permanent change in state law that would outlive the federal funding. A cursory glance through the legislation leads me to believe that he is either wrong or lying (or I could be wrong, I'm not a lawyer and I might have missed it). Medicaid funding would require that states maintain or loosen current eligibility requirements.

At first glance it would seem there's nothing wrong with that. If we give states money for unemployment benefits what could does it do if they can just shift state funding away into other areas? But keep in mind that most states are constitutionally required to maintain balanced budgets and that such programs often represent a significant portion of their budgets. It's common here to always assume the worst when it comes to the intentions of GOP politicians and think that they are just using their states' budget crisis as an excuse to cut funding for programs that they disagree with, but it's certainly possible that these "strings" could make it more difficult for them to balance their budgets.

Another worry is that the legislation may contain underfunded mandates (no child left behind anyone?) that will require state funding long after the federal money has dried up. So far there doesn't seem to be any specific examples of such but I don't fault any Governor who wish to go through this bill with a "fine-toothed comb" just to be sure.

I'll say this, any Governor who rejects any part of this funding better have a damned good reason for doing so and they better be able to sell their justification to their constituents. Not that I would mind seeing a few GOP govs getting voted out of office as a result, but the cost to the people of the state would likely be too high for me to be happy about it.

[pnwmom]

10. What's so awful? The unemployed people and others suffering now

won't get the benefits they'd otherwise get.

The Rethug governors who are doing this don't care who suffers though, they just are hoping to drive the unemployed out of their states.

[Political Heretic]

16. You're premise is flawed. Your blame-the-consumer first mindset is old, tired and discredited.

Frankly I'm getting tired of presenting the same facts to people who I believe won't listen and aren't interested in truth, only regurgitated the same tired old philosophy that everything that happens is the poor person's fault. It's always the fault of the person with the least resources, the least means, and the last ability. If they would have just been a little more "deserving" then things would have been different.

The facts are President Bush stood in the White House Garden in 2005 (I think it was 2005) and announced that the government would be working with Fanny and Freddy and other institutions to push low-income families into home purchases as part of his "ownership society" The government signaled that as far as regulation was concerned they would be looking the other way.

These companies then offered ridiculous, unbelievably responsible high-risk loans to consumers, but they packaged them in such a way the the risks were masked. It wasn't about not reading the fine print. It was about reading the fine print, and then having the expert that is supposed to truthfully help you understand eligibility and feasibility lie to you and manipulate you.

The people in the best position to know whether or not someone was qualified to take a loan were the ones pushing bad sub-prime loans onto high risk buyers and pressuring them to believe that they would absolutely be able to pay in the future.

You're argument makes more sense if you're talking about loans that a person could never afford to pay from day one. But when you're looking at sub-prime loans that start at rates you totally can afford and then grow over time, its difficult to forcast. It's not about failing to read the fine print. It's about mortgage brokers choosing not to do their jobs and pushing, proding and manipulating people into mortgage deals.

All of this was done in the name of outright greed. Mortgage firms were getting rich on the packaging and reselling of debt, everyone wanted in on the action and no one wanted to ask any questions.

That absolute irresponsibility on the part of the very professionals with the most means and ability to know the risks and understand how to responsibly manage their accounts is primary reason for the financial meltdown.

But as always, there are some people like you who's answer to everything is to immediately blame the individual - usually because the are poor and "other" from you - regardless of whether or not they are the party most responsible.

[No.23]

17. Check your premises before cocking and loading.

Firstly, you need to make sure that you understand someone's else's premise before you zealously attack it. It will help your attack if you got his or her premise accurately.

"everything that happens is the poor person's fault. It's always the fault of the person with the least resources, the least means, and the last ability. If they would have just been a little more 'deserving' then things would have been different.

Poor people are not significant consumers. They don't have the means to significantly consume. That's part and parcel of being poor. You don't have the mean to significantly consume.

So my criticism of the great bulk of consumers today does not and cannot include the poor. In fact, the poor, IMO, are poor because of the great bulk of consumers today... and their particularly materialistic bent towards impulsive and excessive consumption.

Just look at the commercials on the boob tune today. Advertisers are fully aware of how uniquely materialistic our consumers are today. And they take full advantage of it, much to their personal profit.

So if you're going to attack a premise of mine, the least that you can do is get it accurately first. And, if you can't, questions can be a big help to you.

The poor, today, are as much victims of the materialistic middle class as they are victims of the elite.

Now there's a premise for you to sharpen your verbal daggers for. Go for it.

As for...

"All of this was done in the name of outright greed. Mortgage firms were getting rich on the packaging and reselling of debt, everyone wanted in on the action and no one wanted to ask any questions."

It takes two to do the greed tango, my friend. Care to hazard a guess if greed may have also played a part in the buyers' choice to not carefully scrutinize the strings that came with the easily available loans?

The bad guys aren't necessarily only them. They may also be us.

[RandomThoughts]

22. Interesting

It takes two to do the greed tango, my friend. Care to hazard a guess if greed may have also played a part in the buyers' choice to not carefully scrutinize the strings that came with the easily available loans?

The bad guys aren't necessarily only them. They may also be us.

I have water front property in the desert to sell, now if I wrap it with lots of complex lingo, and you don't realize it is not meant to ever be a real deal for both parties, you are equally at fault, you are at fault for being fooled, I would be at fault for tricking you.

See the difference.

If a predatory loan went after peoples with hopes of getting a house, and the lender knew the real intent was just to roll over new loans and at any time foreclose and get back full value, but the buyer was not knowledgeable enough to know it was a bad deal, yes both are at fault.

The lender for being a snake oil salesmen, the buyer for being gullible, or not an expert at a specialized field. That is why government has regulations, so that when a lender offers a loan, a buyer can assume that the regulatory systems in place will keep it in some way fair. If these loans are allowed, then all confidence in the integrity or honesty of the entire sector gets sunk by a few hucksters. This is why fraud is illegal also.

And if it is the greed or dumbness of the borrower that is the problem, then maybe you need a visit from a really good Republican backed, government sanctioned grifter, and after you been ripped off, we can all say you should not have been so stupid.

Edit: oh one more thing,
That Republican backed grifter... That is the Bush administration that has taken more then just you, but also millions of other people, thanks in part to your greed and lack of expertise in certain fields, which allowed him to be in office for eight years. That sharp enough for you?

[Political Heretic]

23. No I don't think I will

Poor people are not significant consumers. They don't have the means to significantly consume. That's part and parcel of being poor. You don't have the mean to significantly consume.

So my criticism of the great bulk of consumers today does not and cannot include the poor. In fact, the poor, IMO, are poor because of the great bulk of consumers today... and their particularly materialistic bent towards impulsive and excessive consumption.

Sub-prime mortgages were targeted at low-income families. Bush stated this himself in his kick-off announcement. If you see some qualitative difference between "low-income" and "poor" fine. But otherwise, your entire response is invalidated.

The wealthy weren't the ones getting targeted by mortgage brokers for ridiculous, irresponsible high-risk loans for which the Bush government promised to look the other way.

It takes two to do the greed tango, my friend. Care to hazard a guess if greed may have also played a part in the buyers' choice to not carefully scrutinize the strings that came with the easily available loans?

The bad guys aren't necessarily only them. They may also be us

No it doesn't, "friend." Not when the deck is completely stacked against one party. As I said before, your blame the consumer first motto is old, tired and discredited. When the government is pushing sub-prime loans, and green-lighting mortgage brokers to go after them by promising little to no oversight, and then lenders are ignoring every possible responsible check and manipulating consumers deceptively into loans - they are to blame.

This wasn't about reading the fine print. People who got these loans were in a position to pay them, then they got them. And they were convinced upon consulting those presenting themselves as experts that the would be in positions to afford scaling terms. Let me say that again. People getting sub-prime loans were in positions to pay them. If they took the loan and immediately defaulted, I might agree with you. But that's not what happened.

Congressional testimony - on the record - shows that mortgage brokers were in many cases manipulating consumers deceptively into taking these loans. Do you get what that means? It means that the fine print doesn't help. The fine print only helps when the terms and conditions of that fine print are being described to you in an honest fashion.

Am I saying there's no one out there who got in over their head? Of course I'm not saying that. But we have more than enough factual information, on the record, to know that those individuals were not the primary cause of a financial meltdown. There are always a percentage of foreclosures in our society - meaning there's always a percentage of people who miscalculated their ability to pay. When those rates skyrocket exponentially, something else is going on. And pretty much everyone agrees something else is going on - by everyone I mean congress, mortgage firms themselves who testified to congress, Nobel prize winning economists, and the administration of the President of the United States.

On the other side there's people such as yourself - armchair commandos always first on the scene to blame the victim

[RoyGBiv]

25. Let me put this very simply ...

You have no idea what you're talking about.

The notion that loans to poor people to buy a house is what got us into this mess is a rationale that was debunked months ago. Poor people getting loans with really bad terms they could not afford if the market fell catastrophically has caused a great number of those people to be suffering more than they might have been otherwise, thus necessitating expenditures to help them that might not otherwise need to be spent.

However, the *mess* itself is all about greed.

There are many articles on this all over the place.

[RoyGBiv]

21. Trying looking past the rhetoric ...

You note elsewhere that you yourself don't know what those conditions are, so why are you even commenting?

The word "condition" is one used by the very Republican governors who are making noises about refusing the money. They injected that word into the news stream, and the good lackeys in the press have eaten it up. Figuring out what these so-called conditions are is not all that hard. I mean, you're already on a computer of some sort and are presumably connected to the Internet unless you've managed to find a way to directly transmit thought from your brain straight to DU's servers. There are many search engines that will allow a person to look for information, and if you don't like using those, one could possibly go to one of the several thousand newspaper sources online and look there or even to the Library of Congress and read the text.

Of course the latter is unnecessarily complicated. Certainly the governors of these states seem to think so. They appear to prefer to make ideologically based dismissals out of hand, using carefully crafted rhetoric.

So, as suggested, let's look past that.

The most common complaint of these governors involves unemployment benefits. People like Governor Perry were initially loud and obnoxious about this, claiming he was simply going to refuse any of it, but of course he didn't mean that. No one means that. Clearly he will accept money that can be funneled to those businesses that have paid to have him elected. Clearly he *better* accept that part of the money. Haley Barbour was a bit clearer, stating directly that it was the unemployment funds he would refuse because of a so-called condition that Mississippi would have to change its unemployment laws and expand benefits to receive more than $4 million, and that would only cover administrative costs. This is similar in form to the complaint of Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Mark Sanford of South Carolina. Both are happy to accept certain "infrastructure" money but want to refuse anything that would be directed toward unemployment benefits, supposedly because they'd have to re-write the laws and/or incur costs that could not be sustained beyond 24 months, thus putting them into a hole down the road. No one is quite sure what Sarah Palin's complaint is. She's holed up somewhere up north plotting her next PR move, but whatever this stimulus thingy is, she's ag'in' it, you betcha.

Some of that might even seem reasonable to the more cautious among us, if taken at face value, but consider also that these same governors will be refusing a subset of this stimulus money that would, without the need to change a single law or regulation or qualifying standard in any of these states for unemployment benefits, give each recipient an extra $25 a week. It's not much, of course, but it's not intended to be since it is only part of a larger package, but it could still be had without any alterations in the way these states work. Shockingly, they still want to refuse that part of the money too. The only reasoning being given so far is either that the extra $25 isn't enough to do anything or, at the same time and in the same breath, that it sets expectations too high later on.

If I have to explain what utter nonsense that is, I fear you may have stumbled into the wrong forum.

While we're here, let's consider a few other things. Whether any laws need to be changed in any of these states is, it turns out, somewhat a matter of opinion. The issue is an expansion and extension of coverage. They can get a certain amount of dollars by keeping their coverage rules just the way it is and expanding the length of benefits temporarily. They can get a bit more if they expand coverage to part-time workers. In Mississippi for example, Barbour could get around $42 million for doing nothing but accepting the check. He could get $56 million if his state extended benefits to part-time workers. Similar things are true pretty much everywhere.

Beyond all those messy little details we don't want anyone to see, the governors are claiming that even though they might have to admit someday that the stimulus money would be there to pay for all this now, it wouldn't be there a few years from now. This raises an interesting question. Precisely what are these governors planning for a "few years from now"? Are they expecting or, perhaps, actually planning, perhaps even hoping that the economy will be so bad that they would need to maintain these higher levels? Further, what part of the concept of a "stimulus" is so foreign to them? They all were hearty supporters of that $600 check Bush sent out. (Break that down by week while you're at it and then go back to the higher expectations/not enough to do any good argument.) That was a one time, lump sum deal that was supposed to jump start our economy and fix everything. People would just spend, spend, spend with that money. Hurray for Bush. Now, here, they've forgotten what stimulus means, forgotten that it is designed to be temporary, a "jump start" that allows the economy to begin moving again so that none of these is actually necessary later?

What on earth are they planning here?

Ohhhhh ... that's right. All these governors are on the A list for a Presidential run in 2012. Silly me.

This means a couple things that should be rather obvious. First, they need to go on record, complete with the requisite array of soundbites that have them talking about protecting businesses from higher taxes in a few years, so they can use that at the beginning of their campaign run to, well, talk those businesses into giving them money. It's okay to ask for millions from these businesses so they can run for President. It's not okay to tax them, maybe, in the future, maybe if none of this works at all and things get worse and the businesses are even around anymore, so that some poor people can eat for awhile. Secondly, it means they have a vested interest in this plan failing ... miserably.

Why on earth would they do anything that might possibly help actual people. That's no way to run for President as a Republican.

[Political Heretic]

13. Butch Otter threatens to pick and choose, and our legislature basically sucks him off daily so....

[MadBadger]

19. Whats your response to DUers who think then you should get nothing?

[Political Heretic]

24. I don't know I haven't seen that yet. I'd need some context

[MadBadger]

29. There are some who think that we should pull money from states with Governors who turn down $

For example, Bobby Jindal wants to turn down money? Well then he doesnt have to have any money at all! Send it somewhere else, or it just makes the bill a little smaller.

Why do they believe this? Because the people voted him in, and they got what they deserve. They dont care that they are screwing over every person who didnt vote for that person.

Like this thread

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=5111505&mesg_id=5111505

[Political Heretic]

30. That seems to be vindictive and nothing more. How does that help real people?

So I would say that suggestion seems to be based on the wrong motives. Punishing governors isn't part of my agenda. Getting aid to those who need it, even if its not as much as it should be - is my priority

[radfringe]

27. suggest reading the plan....

Financial Stability

American Recovery and Reinvestment

as far as the NOPers go - it's pure politics over people. They are attempting to rebrand themselves - the reality is it's just a new sticker on the box, same product is inside