patrick.net

msilenus says

You've alleged widespread corruption, but you've come nowhere near showing that there was any corruption at all. Instead, you've backpeddled to pointing at some undetermined fraction of 3% of the stimulus funding that you think was simply waste.

Which stimulus? Are we discussing the Recovery Act of 2009 or some other bill? Only a couple of hundred bucks of the Recovery Act was real new spending. The rest mostly went to Tax Cuts and some aid to states to keep people employed. Very little was "New Spending".
msilenus says

Ask a goddamned macroeconomist if you want to understand what went on:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/17/business/economy/17leonhardt.html

Ask Goddamned Paul Krugman if you want to know why the Stimulus failed:

Those of us who say that the stimulus was too small are often accused of after-the-fact rationalization: you said this would work, but now that it hasn’t, you’re just saying it wasn’t big enough. The quick answer to that accusation is that people like me said that the stimulus was too small in advance. But the longer answer is that it’s all in the math: Keynesian analysis provides numbers as well as qualitative predictions, and given reasonable projections of the economy’s path in January 2009, the proposed stimulus just wasn’t big enough. Let’s go back to the tape, January 9, 2009:

Even the C.B.O. says, however, that “economic output over the next two years will average 6.8 percent below its potential.” This translates into $2.1 trillion of lost production. “Our economy could fall $1 trillion short of its full capacity,” declared Mr. Obama on Thursday. Well, he was actually understating things.

To close a gap of more than $2 trillion — possibly a lot more, if the budget office projections turn out to be too optimistic — Mr. Obama offers a $775 billion plan. And that’s not enough.

Now, fiscal stimulus can sometimes have a “multiplier” effect: In addition to the direct effects of, say, investment in infrastructure on demand, there can be a further indirect effect as higher incomes lead to higher consumer spending. Standard estimates suggest that a dollar of public spending raises G.D.P. by around $1.50.

But only about 60 percent of the Obama plan consists of public spending. The rest consists of tax cuts — and many economists are skeptical about how much these tax cuts, especially the tax breaks for business, will actually do to boost spending. (A number of Senate Democrats apparently share these doubts.) Howard Gleckman of the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center summed it up in the title of a recent blog posting: “lots of buck, not much bang.”

The bottom line is that the Obama plan is unlikely to close more than half of the looming output gap, and could easily end up doing less than a third of the job.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/28/how-did-we-know-the-stimulus-was-too-small/

msilenus says

You've alleged widespread corruption, but you've come nowhere near showing that there was any corruption at all.

http://influenceexplorer.com/industry/securities-investment/0af3f418f426497e8bbf916bfc074ebc?cycle=2008

Powerful people who work in certain industries don't contribute money to political campaigns in return for nothing.

One in five dollars Obama raised in his 2008 campaign came from Wall Street:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/22/usa-campaign-obama-idUSN1E76L0PJ20110722

That's why there's been no re-regulation.

thunderlips11 says

One in five dollars Obama raised in his 2008 campaign came from Wall Street:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/22/usa-campaign-obama-idUSN1E76L0PJ20110722
That's why there's been no re-regulation.

Now you're looking at 2008 donations to infer that Obama's been in their pocket over the last four years. Fallacy left as an exercise for the reader, but here's a hint:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/16/us/romney-perry-and-cain-open-wide-financial-lead-over-field.html?pagewanted=all

Employees of Goldman Sachs, who in the 2008 campaign gave Mr. Obama over $1 million — more than donors from any other private employer in the country — have given him about $45,000 this year. Mr. Romney has raised about $350,000 from the firm’s employees.

Since you've chosen to use Wall Street's donation behavior as a key heuristic for assessing the President (I wouldn't, but to each his own...) I'm sure you'll come around on this one.

Their response is rational, and a testament to the toothlessness of Dodd-Frank. ("no re-regulation"?)

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There's no contradiction between what Krugman is saying and what other economists are saying. Krugman's thesis is that the stimulus was insufficient to spur a vigorous recovery. Granted, and obviously the case. Others say that it was sufficient to blunt the worst impact of the recession. Also true. You (and he) are again exhibiting Chaitian liberal defeatism. Nothing short of perfect will ever be better than failure to you people. ("and their presidents fail in essentially the same ways: He is too accommodating, too timid, too unwilling or unable to inspire the populace")

The stimulus is what it is, and the quantitative estimates are reasonably consistent. We'd be much worse off without it. It is what it is. It ain't "Handouts for Democratic Party contributors."

- -

That's probably about all I have to say about this. I'm sure you have more Chaitian liberal doom-cant for me, and I've enjoyed wading through it to this point (thank you.) This is about all I have the energy for.

msilenus says

Nothing short of perfect will ever be better than failure to you people.

As I said earlier, all I care about is the earnest attempts to do this, even if it fails. I can get behind a try. I'll take a Truman, I don't need an FDR. But not a Clinton.

msilenus says

This is about all I have the energy for.

I agree, this argument is getting grindy.