Greenspan to U.S. middle class: "First, we will give away your jobs. Then, we will give away your houses."

Time for everyone to visit the NumbersUSA website and petition your elected representatives for lower immigration levels and enforcement of our existing immigration and employment laws.

The Instapopulist is the latest quick moving, short posts in the forums.

We know have a new RSS feed so you can quickly scan all of the new ones in a reader without any additional clicks.

You see on the left, in the fly out menu (if your site look is not the blue one) at the end you will see the feed.

On the main menu, you now see blog RSS and Forum RSS.

the lesson here is that offshoring jobs doesn't neccesarily reduce prices, but they do take control over the macro economic fundamentals that drive the economy out of the hand of our elected government and turn it over to the multinational corporations.

Since inflation on imports is 21.6% this year the myth that just died is:

If we offshore outsource your jobs it's good, it results in lower prices.

Man, when (if ever) is our government going to get a clue. I might be too late before they do.

NDD do you have any more details on that? I missed it.

I think that can be good....if jobs return which surely would strongly lag.

Now Germany too.

Germany I can understand, they have been outsourcing jobs, all sorts of problems. They are blaming a construction slump.

....I remember it from the 60s, 70s and whoa them St. Ronnie 80s those were the days.

I just wonder....

Did you know that when St. Ronnie of Obama ascended to Governor of CA where I was a DFH, bigtime dudes, attending UCB corporations paid 80% of all the revenue collected by the state in the form of income taxes?

The citizenry payed up the rest.

Did you good people further know that when St. R of O left office the ratio had reversed? Presto chango....

Citizens paid 80% and corps paid 20%.

Is this maybe why we can't rebuild our schools, roads, dams, waterworks, bridges, tunnels, Universities, and all the rest of the infrastructure which the two Browns, Edmund G. and his son Jerry, lavished tax money on in the 50s and 60s?

Anyone care to guess what the growth rate of the CA economy was after the two Bs spent all that tax cash on infrastructure?

Check it out. Yer eyes will bug out of yer skull!

See...I am of the opinion that most everything the citizenry 'knows' about the economy is just plain wrong. Decades of the corporatist press filling the airwaves and papers with outright lies have really dumbed the citizeny down.

Last six times this story ran it just sort of 'went away...' after a while.

Maybe not this time.

I intend to blog about it that's for sure.

To date, renters rights, except in a few cities, is pretty much non-existent.

That said, a tax rebate for energy improvements in secondary property, does that exist currently or not?

I like the idea about cash for clunkers too and then seriously pressuring the big 3 to make fuel efficient cars, even if they have to license the technology from Japan.

The problem is DC is the place where great ideas go to die.

What can we do to get some of these very practical, based in deep research, policy recommendations actually adopted, turned into legislation and passed on Congress?

I know on the H-1B front, just getting a bill introduced is pulling teeth and then of course it gets 2 or 3 co-sponsors where it is sent to committee to die.

In the meantime, corporate lobbyists have no problem getting their bills passed and even onto GOP and Democratic platforms.

Seriously, the US is going down the tubes and still, while there are some brilliant thinkers out there, experts, truly good ideas...it's like Congress, Politicians seem to think it's all an exercise for the reader. The public at large knows something is wrong but I doubt has the time to really understand all of these details to demand it from Congress.

What's the answer? Ban lobbyists? Ban the money? They have been trying there for years and we are nowhere.

has had some very good policy suggestions.

Like a national cash for clunkers program that would both cut gas consumption and provide an economic stimulus.

I've got this idea for a piece on what a national program aimed to create an economic stimulus through capital investment in energy conservation would look like.

You know like getting the government in to buy up 1985 Cadillacs that get 10 miles per gallon and create horrible amounts of pollution and offering a combination of a high buying price and zero interest financing with limited amounts being made in grants to replace wasteful vehicles with more fuel efficient vehicles, and contracting with Detroit to do it. WTO rules exclude government spending, so no one can bitch when the newest generation of American's fuel efficient cars comes out of American factories.

Secondly, I think that the time has long past to have a real push to do something about getting older buildings, particularly rented buildings properly insulated.

In my piece of shit apartment in downtown Lafayette, my rent was only $400 a month, but my heating was over $200 a month in the winter. And I had an electric furnace.

The windows were like sieves though, and once I weatherized them, I could literally see the wind blowing the plastic sheet up and down. The windows just didn't stop the wind at all.

Now a replacing all 5 windows would probably have only cost $1,000, and that would have paid for itself in heating cost savings in a little more than a year. But there was moral hazard, because the tenant paid for utilities, and the landlord had to install new windows.

Imagine the energy that could be saved if landlords were required to meet certain energy efficiency standards in order to rent. I mean get HUD on the case and require federal registration of rented properties. Germany apparently already requires this.

$1000 in savings over the course of a year would have a huge impact for people getting by on 14K or 15K a year. And they'd actually spend the money, which is the point of a stimulus package. Even matching landlord spending on a 1-1 basis would still be effective. Even better require them to report the results of testing with estimated utilities to all potential tenants. That alone would create a huge incentive for landlords to spend on energy conservation measures.