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I Want an iPod
The Democrats in Michigan seem to have lost, well, their sanity. Their latest plan? An iPod for every kid.
We have come to the conclusion that the crisis Michigan faces is not a shortage of revenue, but an excess of idiocy. Facing a budget deficit that has passed the $1 billion mark, House Democrats Thursday offered a spending plan that would buy a MP3 player or iPod for every school child in Michigan.
No cost estimate was attached to their hare-brained idea to “invest” in education. Details, we are promised, will follow.
The Democrats, led by their increasingly erratic speaker Andy Dillon of Redford Township, also pledge $100 million to make better downtowns.
Their plan goes beyond cluelessness. Democrats are either entirely indifferent to the idea that extreme hard times demand extreme belt tightening, or they are bone stupid. We lean toward the latter.
Let me get this right: the Democrats in Michigan want to improve education by… buying every kid an iPod?
As Betsy comments: “I’m sure that all the kids in Michigan getting the iPod will be sure to spend all their time listening to educational lectures. They’d never think of using for music, would they?”
Of course not.
Utter idiocy. How can responsible citizens actually vote for these people? I am not opposed to the Democratic Party in general, but if I were living in Michigan I would do everything in my power to make sure that these Democrats would never return to a position of power.
Unless, of course, they would promise to buy me an iPod, in which case I would be willing to change my opinion and publish a couple of posts endorsing the Dems’ latest scheme.
To Michigan’s Democrats: send me an e-mail, promise to buy me an iPod and I will sell outunderstand the wisdom of your plan.
61 Responses to “I Want an iPod”
This is the end result of letting children have calculators in math classes, rather than learning long division. Utterly silly.
the Republican Party made the War on Terror and the Iraq the central issue
I think 911 had quite a bit to do with that.
In 2002 and 2004, they campaigned on the issue of war, invoking 9/11 in all their attack ads and at the 2004 Republican Convention.
And of course we all know the Democrats were totally silent on the War. I remember that most campaigns have two sides. John Kerry showing up at the Convention Saluting and saying “Reporting for duty” was an opening salvo by the Democrats telling the world that they were going to take the war head on and make it the key issue.
But of course NIC we know that it was the Republicans being forced to respond to this that therefore by default made it our issue and our central focus.
It wasn’t until the Iraq War turned a serious turn for the worse in 2006 that suddenly Republicans didn’t campaign on war anymore. And now you wonder why the Democrats are trying to use the debacle in Iraq to their advantage.
No Im not wondering at all. I only said everyones obsessed with Iraq here at TMV. I made a point you are supporting. We try to talk about something such as this Ipod debate and it turns right back to but Bush Lied.
You made your bed. Now you can sleep in it.
Your right of course NIC. Its Revenge!! Duh what was I thinking. Of course the Left does not care about the poor and the hard up. They only care about the War and revenge now.
Too bad for those in poverty and with serious social issues. They have been abandoned to the War on Terror as well.
superdestroyer,
My point was that you can’t just look at the percentage cited as the “unemployment rate”. You have to combine it with the workforce participation rate. Only looking at the two of them tells you anything.
For an example that doesn’t match the current numbers but should be fairly straightforward you just need to realize that a 5% unemployment rate with a 60% participation rate is not the same thing as a 5% unemployment rate with a 70% participation rate.
For an example that doesn’t match the current numbers but should be fairly straightforward you just need to realize that a 5% unemployment rate with a 60% participation rate is not the same thing as a 5% unemployment rate with a 70% participation rate.
proof please. because you seem to be saying that 120 million Americans are jobless and that is absolute Idiocy.
[...] Original post by Live Search News: ipod [...]
Nobody says
I’m not saying any such thing and nowhere is there anything that could be interpreted as such. Here is a definition of labor force that includes labor force participation rate on Wikipedia. Current civilian labor force participation rate is 66.2%. This is determined by the ratio between those who are working or actively looking for work and the total estimated population 16 and over. It’s that simple in terms of how the official number is determined. The problem of course is that it doesn’t count illegal immigrants, “discouraged” workers or those who make their livings through the underground economy.
superdestroyer had chimed in with
But of course in the time frame we are discussing there had been no increase in social security taxes, taxes to cover Medicaid (In fact benefits have gone down in most places.) in most places or unemployment insurance. Workers comp, local taxes and state taxes have varied. They’ve been cut around here and state services have suffered as a result. Where they’ve increased it’s largely been because of states trying to make up for cuts the feds made so they could cover Bush’s tax cuts. I hear the complaints. My bosses agree with everything you say. While they’re good people they also believe whatever Fox News and Rush Limbaugh say. Color me skeptical.
This week Circuit City announced that they were firing huge numbers of their employees. Management had made enough questionable strategic decisions so that the company is in trouble. What is their solution? Fire thousands of people and offer them their jobs back if they’ll take big cuts in pay and benefits. If the job market was as wonderful as conservatives are claiming why would Circuit City think they could get away with this?
Its what I suspected.
Both total employment, at 146.3 million, and the employment-population ratio,
at 63.3 percent, were essentially unchanged in March. Over the month, the labor
force participation rate held steady at 66.2 percent, about the same as a year
earlier. (See table A-1.)
Those Americans without jobs is closer to 152 million, not 120 million.
However you jumped up and down not even understanding my question. Which means you don’t even understand the participation rates either.
Because 120 million Unemployed Americans would mean we emptied all the prisons, took all the welfare moms and put most of those kids around age 10 to 16 to work. We might actually have to recall some senior citizens too. Oh and Unemployment would be Zero.
Get out your economics books and quit Wiki’ing your facts.
Population: 298,444,215 (July 2006 est.)therefore
298,444,215-146,300,000=152,144,215 unemployed Americans. Not 120 million.
Now lets throw in those Illegal aliens many of whom get counted in the census and you will find that the participation rate is well above 70 percent in this country which is at a Historical high.
In fact if you dont count them its still at an historical high and yet according to you Bush is doing a terrible job.
[...] I Want an iPodThe Moderate Voice – We thought this odd so we contacted Microsoft who assured us that they had not offered any Zune products to the DNC but was in The unemployment rate is only meaningful after you take into account that the percentage does not reflect the actual adult [...]
The Democrats get ever increasingly ridiculous.
Nobody,
The figure you cited of 298,444,215 is the estimated total population of the United States, not the number of Americans considered to be “working age”. From the article you dispaged so much:
In other words the number you use has nothing to do with calculating the number of Americans considered to be participating in the work force and therefore how the unemployment rate actually relates to facts on the ground. It’s blindingly obvious that in fact you either did not read or did not comprehend my post or the link I provided.
As far as Bush doing a terrible job I simply believe that neither he nor anyone who thinks just having a job, irregardless of its pay or benefits grasps anything about the social or psychological dynamics of how people feel about the economy, which was after all the jumping off point of this discussion.
[...] Where do politicians come up with these idiotic ideas? I read over on Moderate Voice that Democrats in Michigan want to give every child an iPod. They call it an investment in education. [...]