The stimulus could have been better, but…

Posted on September 4, 2011 by Michael

…it most certainly was not the failure Republicans wish to paint it as:

The notion that the stimulus failed has hardened into Republican orthodoxy, but it doesn’t hold up. A study released last week by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office confirmed that as of June, between 1 million and 2.9 million people are working who wouldn’t otherwise have been, thanks to the stimulus. That study wasn’t an outlier. Several others came to similar conclusions, including one by the economists Alan Blinder and Mark Zandi. As Jared Bernstein notes, the analysis by Blinder and Zandi found that the stimulus was responsible for roughly 2.7 million jobs and increased the GDP in 2010 by a healthy 3.4 percent.

I recall everyone praising Senator Snowe for pushing so hard to keep the stimulus below $800 billion. She was wrong. She was certainly better than the traditional Republican, yes, but being wrong by a lesser degree is still being wrong. (Her next re-election campaign will be yet another which does not feature a vote from me.)

I hate to take the tactic in saying that Republicans want to see bad things happen to the economy, but I’m hard pressed to say otherwise. What we obviously need right now is for the government to keep up its spending – even in the recent debt reduction deal the government will hardly cut spending over the next several years; everyone knows that would hurt growth even further. I just wish President Obama would stop listening to the other side and start pushing through what is right.

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Two lessons to be learned

Posted on October 8, 2010 by Michael

David Gardner and Michael Ecker thought that it would be better to recycle and donate the proceeds from some scrap metal than to watch a government entity let it all go to waste. But both that entity and the police disagree.

For years, David Gardner and Michael Ecker had watched scrap metal from the Veterans Administration facility at Togus get carried off in exchange for what they believed to be a token fee.

Then, in May, they saw that the medical center was scrapping about 1,000 pounds of copper and brass.

Instead of taking it to a storage area, they took it in their personal vehicles to One Steel Recycling Inc., in Augusta, and sent $2,487 in proceeds from the sale to the Gulf oil cleanup operation via the office of U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe.

That plan cost them their jobs and a pending theft conviction.

The two men who worked at Togus from 1981 as waste-water treatment plant operators said they had planned to tell their supervisors at Togus after they got an acknowledgment of the donation from Snowe’s office.

“Basically, it was to show them it could be used for a good purpose,” Gardner said.

But before that happened, Togus authorities learned the metal had disappeared.

On May 7, a Friday, Togus police questioned Gardner, 61, of Auburn, and Ecker, 55, of Vassalboro, about the missing metal. They denied knowing anything about it.

…

On May 10, the following Monday, Gardner and Ecker came clean about the scheme to the police, and each was charged with one misdemeanor count of theft by unauthorized taking.

So here are the two things that ought to be taken from this story. First, don’t talk to the cops. If they suspect you of anything, they are not there to help you. That is not part of their job. Had Gardner and Ecker not talked to the police in the first place or if they did, had they not later fessed up to what they had done (ya know, the whole recycling for charity thing…the horror!), they would still have their jobs. Giving statements to the police means giving power to the police. It isn’t in the interest of the police to use that power for the good of those they suspect of anything.

Second, this is a case of rule internalization. It’s clear what Gardner and Ecker were doing, everyone knows that. Well, everyone except Brian Stiller.

Brian G. Stiller, director of the Togus VA Medical Center, wrote, “I have concluded that the sustained charges against you are of such seriousness that mitigation of the proposed penalty is not warranted and that the penalty of removal is appropriate and within the range of reasonableness.”

The reasons for dismissal cited in an earlier letter to Gardner were “unauthorized sale of government property,” “concealment of material facts in connection with an investigation” and “absence without leave.”

This jamoke is just internalizing rules – and in melodramatic fashion. Drama Queen Stiller is enforcing rules that are in place for the sake of preventing actions with a negative effect on the Togus VA Medical Center from happening. Since no such actions actually did happen at any point – these guys took trash and made use of it – he’s just following rules for the sake of following rules. He isn’t enforcing the reason for the rules. It would seem he ought to retract his statement then that he has acted “within the range of reasonableness”, perhaps replacing it with “within the range of truthiness”.

But maybe I’m just being silly. Afterall, who wouldn’t find it reasonable to shitcan two guys for doing something with the right intentions? I mean, it’s not like they had each been there for nearly 30 years.

Oh, wait.

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