Crafting More Effective Stimulus Legislation, Part 5: What can we do to encourage a recovery?

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Tuesday, August 14, 2012

The nerve of me. I’m nobody, and yet here I am telling you that monetary and fiscal policies, the traditional versions of them, don’t work. I might as well be telling you that prayer may make you feel like you’re doing something, but it doesn’t really accomplish anything, that any sense that it does is just wishful thinking and, in any case, impossible to prove. It is, of course, a flawed analogy, used only to make a point. The difference is that prayer is a matter of belief, while the efficacy of monetary and fiscal policy is science, social science, but science nonetheless. We don’t want elected officials who believe in the power of government. We want a President and legislators who understand the science of using government resources for the common good.

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Crafting More Effective Stimulus Legislation, Part 4: What’s wrong with tax-related fiscal policies?

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Sunday, August 13, 2012

Hi. You don’t dare start “Part 4” of anything without a summary. Like they say at the beginning of new episodes when the show’s storyline is complicated, “Previously on Next Contestant, …”

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Crafting More Effective Stimulus Legislation, Part 3: Why don’t President Obama’s fiscal policies work?

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Saturday, August 11, 2012

Fiscal policy is the use of government spending and taxation to influence the economy. Increases in government spending can create jobs that are needed to produce the goods and services the government buys, and then some through what are called “multiplier effects.” Reducing tax rates, to businesses and people, gives them more disposable income to spend. The more goods and services they buy, the more people that will be needed to make those things. That’s it in a nutshell.

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Crafting More Effective Stimulus Legislation, Part 2: The Impotence of Monetary Policy

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Ben Bernanke, 14th Chairman of the Federal Reserve

Ben Bernanke, 14th Chairman of the Federal Reserve

Thursday, August 9, 2012

The really great thing about writing your own blog is the boldness of it, the way you can say things – talk about big, important ideas that other people, professional politicians in this case, and their advisors, have spent all matter of time thinking about – as if you really know what you’re talking about. I love it, and I do. …Actually, I’m nowhere nearly as confident as what I write sometimes sounds. My primary objective is to get our elected representatives and their challengers thinking, to open up their minds and focus on solving problems rather than just bickering about them. If I make some headway toward that end, then I did good and “The Next Contestant” wasn’t a waste of time.

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“Unnamed sources have told me that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is an idiot.”

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Friday, August 3, 2012

As you may have already heard, Senator Harry Reid told the Huffington Post the other day that an unnamed Bain Capital investor told him that Mitt Romney has not paid taxes for 10 years. That, according to Senator Reid, is why Mr. Romney doesn’t want to release his tax returns prior to 2010. Mr. Romney has vehemently denied the story and has challenged Senator Reid today, in no uncertain terms, to “put up,” the name of the informant, “or shut up.”

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So just who, exactly, do our 9 incumbents represent?

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Thomas Jefferson

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

In three months, we Maryland voters have the option of re-electing or replacing all 8 of our Representatives and one of our Senators. Elections being a really big deal, I thought it appropriate to ask myself, “To what extent is it necessary for someone to be representative of the people who elected him or her in order to represent them?”

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Crafting More Effective Stimulus Legislation, Part 1: The Magnificent Seven

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Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Candidates for Congress and the Presidency, both incumbents and challengers, tend to talk in generalities. “We need more jobs!!” Really? “If only we could ask the rich to pay a little more,” or from the other side of the aisle, “A recession is no time to increase anyone’s taxes!” Unbelievable, isn’t it. Even when they elaborate in their position statements, the points they make are more likely to be superficial than identify the specific economic tools they recommend and explain precisely how those tools should be applied.

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“Consumer sentiment falls to 2012 low.” So what?

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And so the headline from Reuters read.

It may not have made as much news, what with the Olympics starting up, and the media making way to much of Mitt Romney’s technical, honest answer to a question about those games, but it is big news, as important, maybe more so, than jobs and unemployment data.

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Democrats versus Republicans: A Subtle, But No Less Profound Distinction

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Friday, July 26, 2012

I’m a registered Independent, an equal opportunity critic of both parties. When I was growing up, I was taught that the distinction between Republicans and Democrats was that the Republicans were pro-business, while the Democrats were pro-labor.

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Dubious Distinction: Maryland is #1 in jobs lost.

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Thursday, July 26, 2012

The table on the left appeared in Monday’s Washington Times.

As my title indicates, it is a dubious distinction, to say the least, that Maryland, a relatively small, generally successful state, would have lost any jobs at all during the first 6 months of this year, let alone lead the nation in that negative statistic.

In fact, as the table indicates, only 12 states of the 50 have net job losses over the first half of this year.

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