Ariana Huffington Shoots the Messenger

In her article,"Obama Insists He Made 'The Right Decisions' on the Economy -- The Struggling Middle Class Begs to Differ," Ariana Huffington argues that President Obama "still doesn't get it," and hasn't done enough to stimulate the economy. OK, lots of economists said the stimulus should have been bigger...here's my comment on the article:

So, a $1.2 trillion stimulus might have smoothed this crash a bit more. And, maybe unemployment would be 7% now? Or, 8%?

I think it is more constructive if we advocate policies to fix this mess we've been three decades getting ourselves into, instead of slapping Mr. Obama around.

#1: Let the Bush tax cuts expire. A report on NPR indicated that doing so would rein in the deficit in five years. Enough of Republican "Starve the Beast" tactics. We can't run the world's greatest democracy without $$$. I think we've proven that. (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129698198)

#2: Impose a Value Added Tax to discourage imports, encourage exports, and force corporations to pay their fair share of income tax instead of the measly 3% they average now. Imports cost more, we import less. (http://completelybaked.blogspot.com/search/label/VAT)

#3: Rebuild our energy infrastructure to exploit renewable energy. Let's not send hundreds of billions of dollars to foreign governments for oil we don't need. We have better alternatives. We also shouldn't spend billions of dollars of public money cleaning up the mess created by the coal industry. We have cheap, clean alternatives. (http://completelybaked.blogspot.com/search/label/Energy)

#4: Nationalize health care and stop enriching a few execs at the expense of millions of sick and dying citizens. Health care should NOT be a for-profit business.(http://completelybaked.blogspot.com/search/label/health%20care)

#5: Educate our children. All of them.