Stimulus Bill Will Help Small Business

I keep hearing people complain that the stimulus package approved by Congress won't help small businesses. In fact, some people claim small business owners will be punished by higher taxes.

These critics need to take a deep breath and let their brains catch up to their mouths.

When 70 percent of our economy is consumer spending, we need a stimulus bill that will get money to those hurting the most as quickly as possible. Why? Because these people will spend that money. Small businesses will benefit. And that's what this package does.

It also includes $730 million for the Small Business Administration. This will allow the SBA to guarantee loans up to 90 percent from 75 percent. A new program will provide loans to small businesses owners who need them to cover current loan payments. The funding should help make sure credit is available during the economic crunch.

In addition, it's helpful to note that when the Bush tax cuts expire in 2010 the highest rate will be 39 percent -- far below the maximum rate of 70 percent in the 1960s. Also, there are worse problems than having to pay taxes. You only pay them when you have income. And would you rather pay a slightly higher rate on income that is more robust from a recovering economy or a lower rate on income deflated by the lingering recession?

Another Democratic Friend Passes

A great Democratic friend of ours passed away this morning. Earle Grueskin slipped away in the early hours of the new year, after a long-fought battle with brain cancer. Earle was a businessman who was first elected to the Sioux City council in 1962 and served with distinction on the council and as Mayor of Sioux City, later elected to the Woodbury County Supervisors for several terms. Earle later worked for a wholesale food distributor, and was one of the earliest employees at Gateway 2000.

A staunch liberal with a wicked sense of humor and sharp intellect, he and his wife Joanne moved to Carlsbad, California after his retirement at Gateway.

Family memorial services will be held in California, and a memorial service will be held in Sioux City at a later date.

In defense of U.S. automakers

It’s easy to blame the U.S. automakers for their financial turbulence. Clearly, the leaders of these companies were enthralled with short-term gains and not worried about long-term ramifications.

But other culprits exist too, like all of us, who love our SUVs and trucks, which coincidentally are the vehicles automakers make the most profit from. The federal government made automakers create smaller, more efficient cars and guess what? We didn’t buy them. Even when they closed the gap in quality with Japanese automakers.

You might also be interested to know that Japan purposely keeps its currency, the yen, weak in comparison to the dollar. This gives Japanese automakers a $4,000 advantage over U.S. automakers per vehicle!

Go ahead and whack wages and benefits. But U.S. automakers will still face an enormous competitive disadvantage thanks to the weak yen.

One commentator said he believed the U.S. focused on winning the Cold War and did not pay attention to what Japan was doing, allowing it to win the industrial war. I fear we are about to lose another major battle in that war.

It's government spending, stupid

Conservatives like to deride FDR's New Deal for not bringing the Great Depression to an end. They say most economists believe the economy didn't start growing again until America was drawn into World War II. But even if that's true we need to think for a second about what that means.

Why did the depression finally end with the start of America's role in World War II? Because we massively ramped up production of weapons and war material. And that, my friends, happened only because of a truly staggering boost of government spending.

"And let's remember just how vast that public-works program was. In 1940, the last year before the U.S. entered the war, the federal budget was $9.5 billion. Five years later, it had increased almost tenfold, to $92.7 billion," Paul Waldman writes on the American Prospect Web site. "Over those five years, the country's economy doubled in size. Federal spending in both 1944 and 1945 amounted to 43.6 percent of gross domestic product, a figure seen neither before nor since."

Government is Back

It's a New Day

When it was announced last night that Barack Obama had won the presidency, I thought of the scene at the end of the first Star Wars movie:

The death star explodes, Darth Vader spins off into space, and our heroes have saved the universe.

Last night was the beginning of the end of the long, bitter reign of Bush and Cheney. At long last we can end the torture of prisoners, the dismantling of our constitution, and begin to put right America's place in the world.

Have no illusions: President Obama does not have a magic formula for making everything better, and we will have years of struggle to repair the damages done by republican rule of the Senate, the House, the Supreme Court and the White House. Yet we can be certain that we finally have a good and decent man at the helm who does not make rash judgments or use fear to get his way.

It is a new day for America and our world.

Business sense

We're all drowning in propaganda from the McCain campaign about Joe The Plumber and what Barack Obama's economic plan would mean for job creation. Obama proposes a tax cut for 95 percent of working Americans and an increase for those making $250,000 or more. This is supposedly going to cause great economic chaos.

Well, here are some words of wisdom on the topic from Victor Hammel, a Republican and CEO of a pest-control company based in Reading, Pa. Hammel told USA Today: "I would rather pay a little higher tax on a higher profit than a lower tax rate on lower profits."

Click here for USA Today article on why many Republicans back Obama

Who's worse? Bachmann or King?

Michelle Bachmann exposed herself last Friday on "Hardball." Her inane comments have caused a flood of donations to her Democratic challenger. Isn't it time Steve King's hateful, ignorant, malicious comments cause people to donate in droves to Rob Hubler's campaign?

This online diary on the Daily Kos reviews the lowest of the lows of King's Congressional career. Read it, donate and alert a friend.

Michelle Bachmann and Steve King, Worst Persons

Donate now to Rob Hubler's campaign

We REALLY Can Beat Steve King

This poll really makes me smile. It was taken by SurveyUSA on October 8 & 9 of voters in Iowa. Of course, we know that Obama is projected to beat McCain in Iowa by a large margin, but here's the happy part: the poll breaks out western Iowa.

Northwest Iowa: Obama 49% McCain 45%

Southwest Iowa: Obama 51% McCain 42%

You will remember that the 5th District is the western side of Iowa, and that means a SOLID win for Obama in the 5th District. Now consider the voters who will vote for Barack Obama -- how many of them do you suppose will vote for Steve King? And how many McCain voters in the 5th are disgusted enough by Steve King to vote for our Democrat, Rob Hubler?

Rob Hubler has run an aggressive and smart campaign, raising well over $200,000 - that is light-years better than we have done in the last decade. And he happens to be a great guy who will make us proud.

Here's a link to Hubler's new mailer that is going out this week: http://www.hublercongress.com/images/voters_guide.pdf

And, of course, here's information on our incumbent, the inimitable Steve King: www.kingwatch.org

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None of this matters if WE don't make it happen. We have the power in our hands and feet to knock the doors, walk the neighborhoods, make the calls and do all the things we know how to do to win an election.

If you don't show up THIS WEEK and help Rob Hubler, then just when are you going to? Don't just sit back and feel sorry that we are stuck with Steve King for another term. Make this happen: we can do it.

This is our campaign. This is our election. Now get busy.

Bailing on the bailout

The proposed Bush Administration bailout is insane. Completely, hopelessly insane.

We should save these Wall Street big shots by using government money to buy debt no private investors want? Well, it will help the economy because no one has any money to lend because of the crushing debt. Remove the debt and lending will flourish again.

Okay.

So let’s buy that argument. Literally. Then why don’t we, as the government, get an equity stake in the banks holding the debt we are buying? That’s what Warren Buffett will receive for his $5 billion investment in Goldman Sachs. The government should just step in and borrow hundreds of billions of dollars to buy bad debt. With limited upside. Riiight.

We’re also told that we can’t clutter the legislation with more regulations. Some argue that these derivative products are so complex that regulators couldn’t spot a problem anyway. So we should allow financial products that no one understands to remain legal? Can’t we at least insist that banks boost their reserves so they don’t get so overextended? Can’t we at least increase the budget for regulators to enforce the laws on the books? Can’t we at least insist that executives who ruined these banks not walk away with millions of dollars?

Naturally, the establishment also says we should only worry about Wall Street at this moment. Help for homeowners struggling with mortgages can wait. But most economic experts cite declining housing prices as one of the major factors in the economic meltdown. So why can’t this bill include a provision to help people continue to pay their mortgage. One idea – reduce the mortgage to 80 percent but place a lien on it so if the home owner sells it later and recoups the original price that 20 percent is returned to the government. Keep people in their homes.
Reduce the inventory on the market. Let supply and demand go to work and possibly at least stabilize home values.

These steps seem pretty simple. The Democratic leadership needs to stand up for the people. To steal from the movie "As Good As It Gets," let Bush, Paulson and Bernanke go sell crazy someplace else. We’re all stocked up.

Yet ANOTHER bill to pay!

We're never gonna get ahead...

Now we just got whapped with another bill -- this one nearly $5,000! Where in the world are we gonna get the money to pay THIS? We've had so many medical expenses, lost work, stubborn city workers telling us we need a new $4,000 sewer, now ANOTHER $5,000 bill.

We just ain't got the money. I don't know how we're gonna pay it. That's a tenth of our annual income.

That's what it's gonna cost us to bail out the irresponsible millionaires who caused the bank failures. It's gonna be $2,333 for every man, woman and child in the United States. That's what the Bush administration wants us to pay -- to GIVE -- to greedy millionaires who have a proven track record of failure.

How did this mess come about? Deregulation. The Republicans in power have constantly thumped the "regulations get in the way of a free market" drum for years. The result? The Sago Mine disaster. Bank failures. Record high gas prices and record high profits for the oil industry. One of the leaders of deregulation? Arizona Senator John McCain.

The rules were there for a reason, dammit! Now my wife and I will be $4,666 poorer as a DIRECT consequence of ultra-rich businessmen's greed.