A Second Look...

By definition our economy is NOT in a depression cycle. So let me ask you this, why is our national government sending out a “stimulus rebate”? Early this year President Bush asked Congress to pass a 145 billion dollar package with would enable the government to send out tax incentive checks to taxpayers. These incentive checks can be used any way the taxpayers see fit. The idea being that it will stimulate our declining economy and save us from the dreaded “D” word. This is an unprecedented idea to help stimulate the economy. Particularly since once again, we are not in a depression. In my opinion our government needs to maybe take a second look at its ideas on how to help, as Bush puts it “give the economy a shot in the arm.”We need to take a look at how to create more US based jobs and ways to help out small business. Granted, Bush said he would give aide to small business in the form of tax relief, but we need to focus on growing our economy from within. Some would argue that is exactly what the tax invectives will do, but many will also tell you that they are going to put their money right in a savings account, and this will not help our economy. We do need to find a way to provide temporary relief for families in need, and perhaps this stimulus check will do just that, but it could backfire completely. Let me ask you this: who do you think will be paying for these checks down the road? Our kids, or their kids, or theirs?

In 1933, President Roosevelt passed a series of efforts to help stimulate and eliminated the economic despair faced by millions of Americans, this was called the New Deal. Many people opposed these initiatives because they believed that it gave the federal government too much power, and it was growing far too large. The New Deal created the Social Security Administration and Welfare. Did Roosevelt know how social security would be doing in 2008, of course not, but I would bet you that it is much worse that he would have expected. My point is, is that our government should take a second look at how it plans to stem our economic crisis. Otherwise future generations will have some new government subsidized time bomb to deal with.

He Said, She Said...

Okay, so in my last post I stated that I noticed a trend appearing: the candidates seemed to be taking shots much more frequently at each other. It would most certainly appear that this is in fact the case, and the candidates are just getting more critical of each other. I saw this article on Fox News.com and it really just seemed highlight this point. The title says it all: Obama Tries to Shake Off Questions About His Foreign policy. As I read the article I noticed several things that just seemed a little strange and led me to believe that perhaps the article could have been a bit more throughout in their reporting.

One thing that was prevalent throughout the entire article was an endless amount of quotes from Obama. Most of the quotes included in the article seemed to be framed in a sense that makes them seem like they were cropped and cut to be used specifically for this article’s context. I understand that this can have a greater impact to the readers, but in this case a story that should have COMPLETE the coverage, it seemed to have a negative impact on Obama, and Clinton as well. Another thing that hurt the ethos of the article and the author were some of the comments that were made after the quotes. One that stands out in particular is; “whether he was a closet Muslim.” This comment just seemed to be unnecessary and the article could have gone without it.
“Democrat Barack Obama” these are the first words of the article, right off the bat, for some reason, this just seemed funny to me. It just seemed as if they wanted to push the point that Obama is a democrat. In my personal opinion I think they could have had a bit more tact with their introduction, and that is my personal opinion.
It really seems that it will ultimately come down to a giant session of He said, She said. For the first part of this article much of it is quotes that just go back and forth from what Clinton said then to what Obama said in his defense, and vice versa. It is unfortunate when the Associated Press manipulates statements and quotes to further various agenda’s. This just goes to show that you shouldn’t always necessarily believe what you read.