Don’t Believe The Compulsive Liars – The Stimulus Worked And Continues To Work

Reality, what a concept! Republicans and their complicit media have succeeded in creating an alternate reality that isn’t based on facts, but well tooled opinions that get repeated over and over and over again on right wing radio, right wing television (you know who you are), cable news networks all trying to be as shallow as the ratings leader of cable news and since everyone is doing it, even the broadcast networks. As this alternate reality has been taking form over the last year, I continued to see analysis by countless economists without political agendas and yes, even conservative economists, that say the stimulus has been wildly successful at preventing more job losses and in recent months, increases in jobs. Here is one story from February…

Just look at the outside evaluations of the stimulus. Perhaps the best-known economic research firms are IHS Global Insight, Macroeconomic Advisers and Moody’s Economy.com. They all estimate that the bill has added 1.6 million to 1.8 million jobs so far and that its ultimate impact will be roughly 2.5 million jobs. The Congressional Budget Office, an independent agency, considers these estimates to be conservative.

[...]

For that, the stimulus package, flaws and all, deserves a big heaping of credit. “It prevented things from getting much worse than they otherwise would have been,” Nariman Behravesh, Global Insight’s chief economist, says. “I think everyone would have to acknowledge that’s a good thing.”

Something I’ve heard recently that proves the idiocy of Republicans and the media is the idea that because President Obama “promised” an unemployment rate of 8% and we haven’t reached it yet, that proves that the stimulus didn’t work. Let’s break that down. First, the 8% forecast was made early on in the administration before the dust had settled on the economic meltdown. A reminder for some folks that President Obama was inaugurated on January 20, 2009, please store that in your brains for a minute. Everything that happened prior to that date, was done by the Bush administration. Everything leading up to that day in regards to the economy, happened under Bush. I’m sure the pea brains on the right will jump to the “stop blaming Bush” line that they trot out whenever anyone tries to give perspective to how we got where we are. How can they put everything at the foot of Obama after just 18 months, but can’t wrap their heads around the fact that being president for 8 years kind of lays some of the responsibility for the state of the economy at your feet. It is surreal that the media can now discard 8 years of gutting our economy and because Obama has been president for 18 months now, it’s ALL his fault. “Can’t blame Bush anymore, it’s Obama’s now” has become the new media line.

I just heard David Gregory, who seems to have an agenda when it comes to the Obama administration, present the stimulus as if its sole purpose was to keep unemployment at 8%, nothing else, that was the only reason and measure. The Republicans have succeeded in brainwashing the media and therefore the public of this meme. I live in Michigan where every day I see the stimulus dollars at work and I’ve said it before, those people working on the roads and bridges are collecting checks, paying their bills, paying their taxes, buying stuff that helps business stay afloat…..how can the right wing dismiss these people as non existent. All those teachers, police and firefighters that have kept their jobs because of the stimulus…I hear the right wing refer to them as government jobs as if they are robots, not people. Since when did a teacher, a cop and a firefighter become government workers?

I’m going to continue to push back against the perpetual lies of the Republicans, although it’s hard to keep track of all the lies that spew out of the right of this country. For a party that claims to be rooted in Christianity, there sure is a lot of sinning going on. I guess hypocrisy doesn’t just show up in their politics but in their very being.