My Martian Visitor
by Tom Neven on 12/30/2009 at 8:57 AM
It happened again last night. Periodically I receive a visit from a being who claims he’s from Mars, sent here to grok human behavior. His name is unpronounceable. (Let’s just say it would give you an astronomic triple-word score in Scrabble.) But he’s a nice enough guy and sincere in his questioning, so I try to be helpful.
“I need help with something,” he said.
“Shoot,” I said.
“Counting,” he said. “When you start counting something, do you start at zero?”
“No, of course not.”
“I didn’t think so. So why are we seeing so many end-of-the-decade stories? By basic math, this ‘decade’ is actually only nine years old. Don’t these people know how to count?”
“You’d think,” I said.
“Next,” he said. “Cats and dogs. You’re their masters, right?”
“Well, some people prefer the term animal companions.”
“But you own them, no?”
“In theory.”
“Well,” he said, “it seems the other way around to me. Take dogs, for example. You get up in the middle of the night to let them out, or you follow them around and pick up their, um ... digestive byproducts. So who’s the master of whom?”
“Good point.”
“And cats! They usually ignore you until they want food. Then they feel free to puke up partially digested balls of hair onto the bed covers. Again, who’s in charge here?”
“Us ...?”
"... in theory," he added helpfully.
I shrugged.
“Next question,” he said. "What's up with Pluto?"
"Pluto? The dog?"
"No, Pluto the planet. You demoted it to an 'extra-planetary object.' How do you think the Plutonoids feel?"
"Well, I wasn't personally involved in that decision."
"What do you think the Jupiterians think of Earth?"
"I shudder to think."
“We intercept your television signals" he continued, "and for the last few years we’ve seen advertisements for medicines that promise to cure all sorts of ailments.”
“Yeah, isn’t modern medicine great?”
“But then some guy comes on talking really fast about how this medicine might also cause your hair and teeth to fall out, lead you to break out in boils, bring about intense wobbling, and maybe even kill you. So what’s the point?”
“Well, at least you’ll be over the heartbreak of psoriasis.”
“Since we last met it seems some very silly people acted really foolishly with larges sums of money.”
“That would be a lot of us,” I said.
“So your leaders created this program to try to help everyone out. They called it ‘Cash for Clinkers.’ ”
“Cash for Clunkers,” I corrected. “The idea was to give cash incentives for people to get rid of their old cars and buy news ones.”
“The old ones would be the clunkers, right?”
“Yeah.”
“What happened to the clunkers after the people traded them in?”
“By law they had to be destroyed.”
“Destroyed!?” he asked, dismayed. “They still worked, right?”
“Sure, I suppose.”
“But didn’t you tell me before that your first car was a clunker?”
“Indeed. A ’67 VW Bug.”
“And you said used cars were an ideal way to help people save money on transportation and for young people to afford their first car.”
“Yeah.”
“So by destroying these clunkers, you’ve just taken away a source of inexpensive cars for these people.”
“I see your point.”
“And don’t the people who started this program claim to want to help poor people and the young? Or maybe it was to help only certain, politically connected people, like auto unions? You don’t think your leaders would do that, do you?”
“I can't even imagine it,” I said.
“Next question,” he said.
“Are you sure you want to go on?” I asked.
“I have a long list here.”
“Well, okay. But I haven’t been much help so far.”
“Oh, you’ve been immensely helpful,” he said. “Anyway, this Cash for Clunkers program was part of a larger effort to spend money to try to help a hurting economy. I believe they called it the stimulus.”
“Yeah, somewhere north of $800 billion.”
“Yes, that’s the one. On your Internet, it shows that hundreds of thousands of those dollars were given to schools to teach massage. Is that the best use of the taxpayers’ money?”
“You get the Internet? On Mars?”
“Yeah, Mars Online. You didn’t answer the question.”
“I can’t,” I confessed.
“It also shows that the number of jobs ‘saved or created’ divided by the money spent works out to something like $250,000 per job. (I’ll forget for the moment that it’s impossible to calculate a ‘saved’ job since you’re asked to prove something that didn’t happen.) Why didn’t they just write a check for, say, $50,000 for five unemployed people? It would have helped more people, and their spending would have pumped even more money into the economy.”
“Not as much opportunity for graft and political payoffs if they did it your way,” I said.
“Your leaders would do such things?” he asked, incredulous.
“Go figure.”
“I’ve also been following this whole discussion over ‘health-care reform’ or whatever they’re calling it this week,” he said.
“My head hurts already.”
“The people who are really eager to enact this reform—aren’t they the same ones who say the government should not come between a woman and her doctor over the decision to kill her unborn child?”
“For the most part, yes.”
“But you already have the government trying to come between a woman and her doctor when it comes to medical care that could possibly save her life. It seems that if their plan goes into effect, you’ll have even more of this kind of thing. I’m just not seeing the consistency here.”
“Now my brain hurts.”
“Okay, I’ll try not to cause you too much more pain. But you really must help me with this terrorist thing.”
“Thanks. Now I hurt all over.”
“You recently had a man smuggle a bomb onto a plane despite all the security precautions you’ve put into place.”
“Yeah, pretty scary. He failed only because of sheer incompetence on his part and some alert plane passengers.”
“But immediately afterward your authorities implemented a lot of rules to try to prevent another attack. Like you cannot use the plane’s restroom facilities during the last hour of flight.”
“Yeah.”
“So why wouldn’t the terrorist just detonate his bomb one hour and five minutes before landing? And no blankets on your lap during the last hour? And no personal items on your lap? No books? No computers?”
“Pretty drastic, huh?”
“So what are the passengers supposed to do during that last hour?”
“Sit there and appreciate how safe they feel?”
“I suspect that’s not what they’ll be feeling. Why do they punish you when it was someone else who tried to kill everyone?”
“Because they can.”
“I’ll have to be going soon,” he said. “But this latest session confirms our research, so I wanted to give you some good news and bad news before I leave. Which do you want first?”
“Let’s try the good news. I need it.”
“Okay, we’re going to vaporize Earth in 24 hours. Such an idiotic planet has no place in our solar system, soaking up perfectly good solar energy that would be put to better use warming our planet.”
“That’s the good news!? What’s the bad news?”
“I meant to call on you yesterday.”
1. Carrie D said the following at 10:16 AM on Dec 30:
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Ah, who doesn't enjoy a fresh twist on an old favorite? Good strong delivery, Tom.
2. Irene M said the following at 11:23 AM on Dec 30:
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Nice Heinlein reference.
3. Andrea-Elena said the following at 12:41 PM on Dec 30:
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SOCALWAW (standing on chair applauding loudly waving arms wildly)
I too grok the fullness, Tom. Right on, man. Right on.
4. JB said the following at 12:46 PM on Dec 30:
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It really bothers me that there's so much misinformation floating around about the new breast cancer screening recommendations. In the first place, there is no government interference in medical decisions because the recommendations of the US Preventative Services Task Force are not binding on any doctor or patient. A physician can perform a mammogram on any patient at all, regardless of the recommendations, though in some cases it might constitute malpractice.
Second, the justification for the new recommendations is that in most cases the harm *to patients* arising from mammograms performed between ages 40 and 49 probably outweighs the benefits *to patients.* The point is that doctors and patients need to be aware of both the benefits and risks of breast cancer screening and make informed decisions. For most women aged 40-49, mammography is not a net good.
Women should discuss mammography with their doctors, and physicians should educate themselves about the US Preventative Services Task Force recommendations and the supporting data.
5. Jonathon said the following at 1:56 PM on Dec 30:
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HAHA!
6. Kathleen said the following at 2:45 PM on Dec 30:
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“It also shows that the number of jobs ‘saved or created’ divided by the money spent works out to something like $250,000 per job."
---------------------------------
Since your alter ego neglected to ask for a link supporting this claim, I'll oblige. Got a link?
7. Julianne said the following at 3:03 PM on Dec 30:
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I'd be interested to hear what your martian friend had to say about the church...
8. Tom Neven said the following at 3:58 PM on Dec 30:
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Kathleen #6
Here is one source, and here's another. Oh, and no one has pointed it out yet, but I had the equation backwards. (That'll happen when you write under threat of vaporization.) It's the total stimulus dollars divided by the number of jobs "saved or created."
Julianne #7
If the Martians deign to spare us, I'll ask him. Should make for an ... um, interesting conversation.
9. Lauren T. said the following at 5:23 PM on Dec 30:
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The Martian forgot to ask what we were doing bombing our own moon in search of water...
*chuckle*
10. Jethro said the following at 5:33 PM on Dec 30:
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It's strange that Grok found such hypocrisy in the government but not the Church...
I wonder why old Grok didn't ask something like "Don't conservatives believe the government shouldn't intervene in peoples lives? Why then do conservatives insist on having the government tell two consenting adults of the same gender that they can't marry? I’m just not seeing the consistency here.”
Poor Grok, he sounds more like a Boundless editor than an enlightened Martian.
11. Mike Toreno said the following at 6:07 PM on Dec 30:
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JB, Tom's promulgation of the misinformation you refer to is easy to understand if you take his dishonesty into account. He doesn't want to examine the facts as they are, he wants to promote the idea that everything President Obama does is wrong. The analysis you present doesn't support his viewpoint, and supporting his viewpoint is more important to him than is telling the truth.
12. Ted Slater said the following at 6:25 PM on Dec 30:
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And I'd be interested in hearing what the Martian would say about those who frequent Boundless who have such distain for everything we publish.
13. Befuddled said the following at 7:11 PM on Dec 30:
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Ted, I can only speak for myself, but I put great value in diversity of discussion and so I do read much of what is published on this website whether I'm gung-ho about the ideology or not, just as I read, say, The Progressive. I would hope you do the same.
14. Tom Neven said the following at 7:12 PM on Dec 30:
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Jethro #10
You didn't read very carefully and therefore failed to grok what I wrote. It's a verb, not a name.
But to your point, I don't know any conservative who says "government shouldn't intervene in peoples lives." They say the government should stick to its sphere and allow individuals and families to stick to theirs. It is a perfectly appropriate role of the governmental sphere to regulate marriage.
Mike Toreno #11
If you'd care to be more specific about my "dishonesty," I'd be glad to correct the record if you can show me where I'm wrong.
The problem with a lot of people is they equate "different perspective" with "dishonest" instead of seeing it as, well, a different perspective. Remember, there were doctors' groups who disagreed with the panel's findings and said so quite vehemently. Some are quoted in the story I link to. Does that mean JB #4 is "dishonest"?
15. Andrea-Elena said the following at 7:31 PM on Dec 30:
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*high-fives Ted*
SRSLY!!!!!!
16. Jethro said the following at 8:56 PM on Dec 30:
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I guess, Ted, that Tom's Martian visitor would grok that such people are trying to shine a light into the darkness of ignorance. Or maybe he'd grok that sometimes people find it hard to let disinformation be peddled as fact without challenge.
Or maybe, just maybe, he wouldn't care at all. After all, he's mastered interstellar space travel and found an alien civilization. Something tells me he's not a believer in your God.
17. Larissa said the following at 9:27 PM on Dec 30:
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Hehehe! This is brilliant!
18. JB said the following at 9:31 PM on Dec 30:
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Tom #14,
What's useful to note, though, is that the medical organizations which disagree with the US Preventative Services Task Force do so because they place a different value on the benefits and harms of mammography. Reasonable people can and do differ on how bad it is to have an unnecessary breast biopsy versus how good early detection of breast cancer is. Ultimately, it's a value judgment and not a scientific assessment, though the position of the USPSTF is, I think, a very solid one which ought to be respected by physicians as they discuss this issue with their patients. What those medical organizations don't worry about, though, is the "government" getting between doctors and their patients by issuing a nonbinding recommendation.
19. farmer Tom said the following at 9:47 PM on Dec 30:
19
Well done Tom.
I wonder is we could get your alien friend to fix the anthropomorphic global warming thing. Just think if we could live on a nice cold place like Mars. Then we would never have to worry about global warming again.
Could you ask him if he has any suggestions to fix that problem??
20. BDB said the following at 10:21 PM on Dec 30:
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It's really interesting trying to read this post while watching Monsters vs. Aliens.
21. Texas Craig said the following at 11:37 PM on Dec 30:
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In a sad (because it's so true) way, this is very funny. I agree with virtually all of your Martian friend's criticisms. ;-)
But, since I just got done listening to a Francis Chan sermon asking why we Christians are so critical of the failings of the world (which is blinded by sin) and yet excuse our own sins and the sins of other believers (who have been given eyes to see truth and the power to overcome sin), I must agree that we need a list like this for the church as well.
In that vein, let me throw out a few possible conversations:
"Don't you Christians like to say 'all I have is God's, and I am just a steward of it? So, does that mean God really does care more about you remodeling your bathroom than using that same money to provide a needed surgery for a Chinese orphan? Or, that He cares more about you having fun and taking cool vacations rather than you going on mission trips?" Hmmmm......
"Doesn't your Bible say that "God hates divorce? But, don't so many of your Christians get divorced? Does that mean that you Christians really don't mind doing things that God hates?" Hmmmm......
"Don't you Christians talk about how you believe God answers prayer? Then, why do you pray so little, and why do you pray mostly just for yourself? I thought your Bible says that you are to consider others above yourself?" Hmmm.....
Just a few thoughts off the top of my head....
As always, peace and grace as we enter a new year.
22. Mike Toreno said the following at 7:27 AM on Dec 31:
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Tom, your lack of integrity is demonstrated by your false claim that the guidelines represent "the government trying to come between a woman and her doctor". The fact that the article discusses various points of view doesn't ameliorate the dishonesty exhibited by your mischaracterization of it.
An honest person would have examined the true implications of the guidelines.
23. BI said the following at 9:10 AM on Dec 31:
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Texas Craig, 22
Great comment!
24. BI said the following at 9:11 AM on Dec 31:
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I meant Texas Craig, 21
25. JVR from Denver said the following at 10:35 AM on Dec 31:
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Give it a rest, Jethro... you're not trying to "shine light"... all you're trying to do is antagonize the people you hate.
26. Tom Neven said the following at 10:44 AM on Dec 31:
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Mike Toreno #22
No only am I not "dishonest" on that matter, I'm correct in my assertion.
Medicare bases its coverage of different medical procedures based on recommendations of government panels such as this, and private insurance companies often follow suit. So if a government panel says women shouldn't get mammograms except under this or that condition, Medicare will then not cover them; ditto for a lot of private insurance.
And while women and doctors will still be free to prescribe and receive mammograms, if they're not covered by insurance or Medicare, that means effectively that most won't get them.
That's precisely why Sen. Barbara Boxer introduced legislation that would prevent this government-panel recommendation from becoming policy. In other words, she is trying to short-circuit what would normally become medical policy without her intervention.
You're wrong Mike, plain and simple. But I'll just chalk it up to your being ill-informed and not dishonesty.
27. JVR from Denver said the following at 11:06 AM on Dec 31:
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And another thing, Jethro.
No one's trying to have the government dictate what happens in the bedroom.
But seeing as the government is the party that actually grants marriage certificates in the first place, it stands to reason that the government then has control over who they grant those to.
In fact, gay marriage is already "against the books" in most states. It's those who are trying to *change* marriage, and the law, that are trying to involve government.
...And they're doing it by subverting the will of the people by trying to find individual judges sympathetic to their cause. Why? Because they know full well that any vote actually put in front of the public will be handily defeated. Because every single one has.
28. Kathleen said the following at 11:51 AM on Dec 31:
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Tom (#8) -- that's some really poor math there. It makes basic mistakes like assuming that the cost of a project is entirely applied to salaries, as if construction projects don't spend any money on materials or equipment.
We can see just how bad by applying your own formula to the Iraq war. We take the cost of the war (about $900 billion so far), divided by the 6 years since Bush started the war, and divide it by the number of troops in Iraq (about 140,000). And we end up with an annual salary of $1,071,428.00 for each service member.
With that kind of math, no wonder the Martians think we're 'an idiotic planet'.
29. BDB said the following at 12:19 PM on Dec 31:
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Kathleen (#28) - part of the reason for the money-for-jobs approach is that the legislation was justified as "creating jobs." Now, those who were against it at the time pointed out that the way the "stimulus package" was written, it wouldn't create jobs, it was basically just a pork-barrel give away to government employee unions at the expense of the rest of us. They're using the faulty math that unfortunately matches the false promises that attended the passage of the legislation.
Over the next three years, I suspect that there will be plenty of opportunities to expose how this administration's rhetoric is designed to distract from the mathematical truth so they can advance a policy agenda that will greviously hurt most Americans. Math doesn't lie, the Administration does.
Or, like most lawyers, the President is just bad at math.
30. Befuddled said the following at 12:26 PM on Dec 31:
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Tom: "But to your point, I don't know any conservative who says "government shouldn't intervene in peoples lives." They say the government should stick to its sphere and allow individuals and families to stick to theirs. It is a perfectly appropriate role of the governmental sphere to regulate marriage."
The last two sentences contradict one another and don't hold up rationally. If the government should stay out of the sphere of families and individuals, it should not be infringing on the rights of these individuals and families to marry as they please.
I don't know if this is your viewpoint. Perhaps you think that the government should intervene in the lives of personal individuals. If this is so, they should continue to "regulate" marriage, as you suggest is a worthy aim, and not allow anyone who has been divorced to remarry. If we're toting the perceived biblical line, why isn't Boundless advocating for this? Because it doesn't evade on the private lives of people in the church?
Americans, no matter what their partisan creed, are always interested in regulating the lives of others while keeping their own nice and free and out of the public spotlight.
Cheers.
31. Jo said the following at 12:33 PM on Dec 31:
31
The Martians are only interested in America then? :P How odd that his views line up so exactly with those of Boundless. I would have thought an alien being would see bigger issues with our planet as a whole, than the US healthcare reforms...
I jest, 'tis clever writing, but I second Texas Craig, it'd be interesting to see what the Martians would consider to be the major problems with the church today.
32. Tom Neven said the following at 1:27 PM on Dec 31:
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Kathleen #28
But it was the advocates of the stimulus who boasted that it would create and "save" jobs. (Ignore for the moment the rhetorical snow job inherent in that formulation.) If they said something along the line that "it'll pump X amount of dollars into the economy," your point would be valid. But they said, explicitly, that it was to create jobs, and based on the cost-benefit ratio of their own premise, it has failed miserably.
33. Elizabeth said the following at 2:29 PM on Dec 31:
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Texas Craig (21): Yes, indeed!
34. Tom Neven said the following at 4:18 PM on Dec 31:
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Befuddled #30
No, no contradiction. Two homosexuals are free to live together and call themselves married, or they're free to get a church or synagogue to marry them in a religious ceremony. In fact, many have done this for years, and no government entity that I know of interferes.
But the government, in its role in determining which relationships are protected with the name "marriage" granted by the state, determines who is legally married.
Let me give a similar situation. I was married in Switzerland. My then fiancee and I could have had all the church weddings we wanted or lived together and called ourselves married all we wanted, but until we were married by the maire (mayor) of the groom's town, our marriage would not be recognized as legal by the Swiss government. (In our case we were married by the maire of Grand Saconnex on a Friday and had our church wedding the next day, which we consider our marriage day.)
35. Alexis said the following at 5:56 PM on Dec 31:
35
Ahhahaha! Great post Tom. It reminded me of The Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy. Thanks for that little giggle before I headed out to celebrate the incoming of a New Year. Blessings to you and the Boundless Team!
36. Thor said the following at 9:54 PM on Dec 31:
36
Tom, #34, paragraph 2.
Exactly the point I was thinking about. Marriage has huge legal consequences. To name a few: children, who raises and how are they raised, who inherits what part of an estate, life/death/health decisions, household finances, etc and et al.
Insofar as the family unit is a key building block of society, it is critical for there to be clear legal definition of marriage. And leaving aside for a moment the moral/religious components of the debate, where DO we draw the line on what is and is not a marriage?
In short, what is it about marriage that makes it uniquely important? Why not marry your pet or your business or your golf course? Why not marry multiple persons, or even yourself?
The creation of a family - the establishment of a household that births, nurtures, raises, educates, and launches the next generation - is historically the particular task of a married couple. Business, voluntary associations (i.e. society in the form of churches, clubs, charities, communities, etc), and politics are all important, but marriage isn't necessary for any of them.
In that marriage is about the creation of a family, and the family is responsible for the next generation, and given that homosexuality is of necessity always barren, I don't see the pressing NEED for gay marriage. It seems meet that the privileges of marriage should be reserved to those who fulfill the hard work of its primary responsibility.
Insofar as proponents of gay marriage are about feelings and acceptance and two people loving each other and recognition, etc ... I like Tom's answer in the first paragraph of 34. This is America, pursuit of happiness and all that, but try not to trash the legal system. Particularly when it's one judge making the decision vs the people of the state (ex. recent votes in CA 2008 and ME 2009).
37. Kathleen said the following at 11:45 AM on Jan 1:
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Tom writes: "But it was the advocates of the stimulus who boasted that it would create and "save" jobs."
My math example addresses only the poor reasoning you used to concoct a fanciful salary per created job; it doesn't address how many jobs have actually been created or saved.
I'd have to research how many jobs have been created/saved, but I don't see that you've provided anything to support your vague claim that jobs haven't been created. Money spent on a stimulus program would obviously be applied to salaries, materials, equipment, services, etc. i.e. everything necessary to, say, reinforce a bridge or (to use an actual example in my own neighborhood) repave a major thoroughfare.
38. Justin B. said the following at 12:42 PM on Jan 1:
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Well done Tom! Always appreciate reading your posts. Blessings on this new year.
39. Gerv said the following at 1:40 PM on Jan 1:
39
Among computer programmers, where the verb "grok" has been used for many years (well before it became mainstream), we do start counting at 0. If you have an array of objects in almost any computer language, the first one is numbered 0, the second one is numbered 1 and so on. (There are very good reasons for this, which is why almost all computer languages are designed that way.)
So I have no problem with saying that a decade has just ended. :-)
40. Tom Neven said the following at 3:56 PM on Jan 1:
40
Kathleen #37
I said nothing about "salary" per job. I said the number of jobs created vs. the money spent. It doesn't matter what the money was spent on: salary, equipment, training, whatever. Because the stimulus was explicitly sold as a jobs-creation stimulus, it is perfectly appropriate to judge how well it performed on a simple jobs-created vs. money-spent ratio.
And it's not just my math. There more here and here.
It turns out, also, that a lot of the allegedly created jobs were bogus, as the reported jobs created were in non-existent congressional districts.
More to the point, a study by George Mason University shows that where the money was spent had no statistical relationship to job loss in an area, with nearly twice as much going to Democratic districts than Republican ones, showing that the plan was nothing more than a political boondoggle to pay off political allies, which many warned about from the start.
More egregious is the fact that these billions are borrowed dollars, which our children and grandchildren will be paying off for decades, all to enable political cronyism of criminal scale today.
The final rebuke to the entire program is that the unemployment rate is higher now than what they promised it would be if we enacted the program. They promised it wouldn't rise above 8 percent, and it's presently at 10 percent. So, billions of borrowed dollars later, we're worse off than when we started, but a lot of political allies of the Obama administration are certainly happy spending other people's money.
41. Josh M said the following at 3:39 PM on Jan 2:
41
Really, every year we could say a decade has just ended if we make the starting point arbitrary. It's when you start naming time periods based on a count that you get into trouble. For instance, 1999 was not the last year of the 2nd millennium, it was the penultimate, since there was no 0th year. But it could still have been called the end of A Millennium, that being the one which started with 1000, or the end of the century which started with 1900 (easily called the 1900's, but NOT called the 20th century).
42. Chris said the following at 9:23 PM on Jan 2:
42
I always find it interesting that raising children is put forth as a defense of traditional marriage and why the government has an interest in preserving said arrangement....yet no one puts forth the argument that government should have an interest in who reproduces and how they raise their children.
Surely, if one of the purposes of marriage is to raise the next generation, then government has a role to play in determining who is allowed to marry and raise children. After all, we don't let just anybody get a driver's license, practice law/medicine, and so forth.
43. Kathleen said the following at 12:14 PM on Jan 3:
43
Tom (40), it's unclear what your complaint is. If you're complaining that the stimulus program hasn't produced enough jobs, then tell us what number "enough jobs" would be. And then maybe tell us your plan for creating those jobs, instead of sitting on the sidelines and throwing stones without offering anything in return. Is there a Republican plan you'd like to defend?
And you still seem to be missing the point about cost-per-job. For illustration, the works programs during the Depression were about putting Americans to work; the jobs largely consisted of building bridges, dams, roads, canals and other infrastructure, all of which require materials and equipment. So complaining that the stimulus money doesn't go to salaries alone makes no sense. Tar and steel isn't free, and there's no point in hiring people to twiddle their thumbs. The point is to put them to work *doing something constructive*.
44. Tom Neven said the following at 6:39 PM on Jan 3:
44
Kathleen #43
How much more clearly can I state it: the bill was passed with the promise to create millions of jobs, and it hasn't. (Again, set aside for the moment that a lot of the jobs supposedly created are phantom, supposedly happening in non-existent congressional districts.) A lot of it went to things that don't create jobs at all, in fact, as my link to stimulus money that went to massage schools shows. Note also the link in my last posting showing how the money was spent without regard to actual unemployment figures in a given area but show a surprising correlation between the way that district voted in 2008. Democratic districts got twice the money as Republican ones.
Based on a simple cost-benefit ration, the bill is a spectacular failure. It's ironic that you cite FDR, too, since recent economic analysis shows that FDR's policies actually prolonged the Great Depression. The only thing that ended it was World War II.
You want an alternative policy? How about encouraging the growth of small businesses, which have long been the engine of job growth in our country. Right now many businesses are not hiring because they're afraid of all the new regulations and mandates coming out of Washington, from health-care taxes to cap-and-trade legislation to punishing regulations on bank financing that will dry up capital businesses need to expand.
In such an environment of uncertainty, they're sitting on their hands, waiting to see what happens. Meanwhile, millions lose their jobs.
We were promised that if we spend hundreds of billions of borrowed dollars the unemployment rate would not top 8 percent. It presently stands at 10.2 percent--a failure by any standard.
45. Kathleen said the following at 7:27 PM on Jan 3:
45
Tom, your comments are at war with each other. First you complain that the stimulus program hasn't put everybody back to work, then you complain that Republican districts aren't getting enough of the very stimulus program you're opposed to. Reminds me of that old Woody Allen joke. Woman says: "That restaurant is no good. The food is terrible!" Man replies "Yeah, and the portions are so small!"
And if you're going to claim that the works program of the Depression was a failure, you'll need more than one 5-year-old article to make your case.
A last note: given the role of the banks in making the irresponsible loans that created the entire economic meltdown in the first place, now is probably not the best time to be raising the "Less Regulation for Big Banks!" banner. You might want to wait until people are no longer eager to throttle Wall Street over lost jobs and depleted retirement accounts.
46. Ted Slater said the following at 8:15 PM on Jan 3:
46
No, Kathleen, Tom is saying that not only has this job stimulus program failed -- worse than the projections if no program had been enacted -- but it failed doubly for those who don't share the ideology of the reigning political party.
And the problem with the banks arose because of legislation requiring them to extend dangerous loans. Less of that kind of bad regulation (i.e., "de-regulation") ... is a good thing.
Let me ask you directly, Kathleen: Which party was in power when the economic downturn began? Which party was in control of the House and Senate -- the bodies that create law?
Just have to point out the obvious.
47. BDB said the following at 8:19 PM on Jan 3:
47
Kathleen (#45) - while it's true that big banks were a part of the mortgage meltdown, the main blame belongs to the Federal Government and their backing of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Those government-sponsored entities created all the rules for buying mortgages, they were warned by the Wall Street Journal years in advance that they were taking too much risk. But after those editorial-page warnings the CEO of Fannie Mae and Democrat Barney Frank wrote letters to the editor, which were published, saying how DARE they question the wisdom of their risk management!
And shame on John McCain for not understanding domestic economics well enough to realize that the government created this mess, it wasn't just greedy wall street bankers.
And the Obama administration demonstrates that they still haven't learned the proper lessons, and are attempting to re-inflate the bubble.
48. Tom Neven said the following at 8:36 PM on Jan 3:
48
Kathleen #45
Let me be more explicit: I cite the spending pattern of the stimulus money, not to complain that Republican districts didn't get as much, but as evidence that the program had nothing to do with creating jobs and everything to do with paying off political cronies.
Second, it doesn't matter how long ago a peer-reviewed academic study (not an "article") was written; what matters is are the data still accurate. But if you want something more recent, how's this or this?
Finally, the bank regulation is a classic case of overkill; rather than crack down only on the risky loan-making (risk encouraged by overly aggressive enforcement of the Community Redevelopment Act beginning under the Clinton administration and by lawsuits from ACORN) but also on all credit. The uncertainty of what exactly is involved in the pending legislation has effectively frozen the credit market as a whole, not just on risky mortgages.
Finally, as an aside, that wasn't a Woody Allen joke; it was Shecky Greene.
49. BDB said the following at 9:03 PM on Jan 3:
49
On Christmas Eve, the Obama Administration snuck in a change that will force taxpayers to take on unlimited liability as they continue to lose vast sums of money. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should be shut down, not turned into a black hole for more taxpayer dollars.
50. JB said the following at 9:39 PM on Jan 3:
50
BDB #47,
Can you explain further this argument that the federal government's housing policy was to blame for the subprime lending meltdown? My understanding is that private firms were granting irresponsible loans in order to supply the growing demand for mortgage-backed securities and that this bubble was further inflated by the issuance of more complex financial instruments, like credit default swaps, based on these securities. It looks to me like good old avarice was to blame coupled with weak regulation of financial markets (due to, I should mention, both Republican and Democratic administrations).
51. JB said the following at 9:43 PM on Jan 3:
51
By the way, the NPR program This American Life has done a series of hour-long radio programs on the economy which are absolutely fantastic. They give a really fascinating explanation of how we got here as well as a brief introduction to the debate over the stimulus versus other measures to alleviate the problem. You can stream them live here: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Economy.aspx
52. BDB said the following at 10:57 PM on Jan 3:
52
JB (#50) wrote:
>>My understanding is that private firms were granting irresponsible loans in order to supply the growing demand for mortgage-backed securities and that this bubble was further inflated by the issuance of more complex financial instruments, like credit default swaps, based on these securities<<
See the article linked to in #49.
The "private firms" were Fannie and Freddie, which were technically private firms, but heavily influenced by Congress, and they in turn heavily lobbied Congress to get their implicit taxpayer guarantee. They engaged in a pattern and practice of encouraging fraudulent mortgages by buying them, they created the mortgage securities, and those securitized mortgages received a AAA rating (the ratings were mandatory government policy) because the ratings agencies believed that the Federal Government would bail out the mortages - not because the underlying securities were really investment grade.
About the time of the WSJ editorials screaming about the unreasonable risks being taken on by Fannie and Freddie, a "government" bond mutual fund I owned changed its prospectus to specify that no more than 25% of the portfolio would be made up of mortgage-backed securities, despite their investment grade rating. At the time I thought, "They see the same risk the WSJ is seeing."
The WSJ was right, Sen. Dodd, Rep. Frank and Fannie CEO Franklin Raines lied to everyone, or failed to understand the risks they were taking. And they were very loud and public about ridiculing the WSJ for pointing out the risks.
53. Texas Craig said the following at 12:07 AM on Jan 4:
53
BDB:
There is plenty of blame to go around for the economic meltdown in regard to mortgage-backed securities. But, I would not say the majority of it belongs to the government. First, that misrepresents what Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac actually were - which were not true governmental entities (I say "were" because the federal bailout and conservatorship issues have now muddied the waters). Moreover, those entities are not wholly to blame for the problem. Greed, avarice and the creation of credit default swaps and mortgage-backed securities that were sliced and diced into smaller investments led to the huge problem. Pointing the finger at government is like blaming the police who are at the doughnut shop when your house gets robbed. Sure, their actions contributed to the problem, but the real cause of your loss was the robber.
54. Leah said the following at 5:16 AM on Jan 5:
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One of my favourite Boundless blogs ever. Thankyou.
1) It was funny
2) It gave me even more proof that the US is messed up :-\ (no books or computers on your lap in the last hour of a flight? Seriously?)
3) You bag out everything and everyone.
4) You made a point in support of a commenter on another article... who Ted criticised for making that very point. Just found that funny :P
Kathleen (45) - funny. Joke. Ha-ha. Don't take it so seriously. The criticisms were independent of each other.
Example: Yes, you might have baked a bad cake, but it was still rude of you not to offer any to me.
Gerv - calendar decades are determined differently to programming languages :P
Mike Toreno - oh, grow up. Tom hardly criticised "everything" Obama does. You called him dishonest, your hyperbole puts you in the same category.
Jethro - since when do conservatives believe the government should never intervene in a person's life??
I could poke holes in some of these things, say "but..." or give arguments as to why some of Earth's leaders might have gotten point X right, but I can see the funnies and why they might look stupid to an alien... so let's just appreciate that and leave it there.
55. Thor said the following at 9:00 PM on Jan 11:
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Chris #42 (The Answer to Life, The Universe, and Everything)
Inner City Schools.
That is my short and semi-sweet answer to why I DO NOT want the government raising kids. Other examples would be any state run orphanage (particularly in nations outside the US). They're horrific from what I understand.
Brave New World.
That's my non-answer to why the government shouldn't determine who gets to reproduce. Part of me says that we *should* have some sort of planned breeding/reproducing plan. Surely something could be done to better identify and train/license people to be parents. On the other hand, that's a HUGE invasion of people's liberty. Not to mention privacy.
Actually, come to think of it, Germany embarked on exactly that (more or less). They encouraged Aryan breeding, discouraged Aryans from marrying outside their race, etc. And they did the whole Hitler Youth thing.
That kinda ruins the whole government involvement or regulation of procreating and raising offspring for me.
History - what has worked and what's gone down in flaming disaster - doesn't seem to be on that side of the issue.