Do you support the bailout plan?

Why or why not?

Re: Do you support the bailout plan?

I read in the news today that the majority of Americans do not support the bailout plan.

Personally, I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, something needs to be done. On the other hand, I am sick of paying off bad decisions on the part of poor executives. And I am really, really sick of seeing these same executives who ran their businesses into the dirt getting huge bonuses and all sorts of pay off when their workers who did nothing to contribute to the company's downfall all loose their jobs and get nothing. Sorry, but if an executive runs the business into the dirt, he or she should be on the unemployment line like everyone else. Not getting an enormous severance package. It should be welcome to having the morgage called in and boloni and ramen like everyone else.

Re: Do you support the bailout plan?

I don't disagree with you, Liz. I wish they would take the money and use it to create jobs and job training programs with no income qualifications or education restrictions. Just because a person has a college degree doesn't mean the doors to the top swing open and Hallaluha! wonder job is there. It can be very hard to get any kind of job at all if you degree is not in demand. I know tons of music majors who found there were no jobs even in teaching and went back for computer science degrees. I'm not saying send everyone to college. Maybe votech or jobs that a person can learn on the job.

What will not happen is a return to the ABC agencies of the 1930s, because that is too close to socialism which scares the crap out of people even if it would do nothing but good for most people. But that is exactly what I would like to see happen. I can think of tons of things the government could have done that don't require tons of training. For example, I would like to see all books which are out of copyright, OCR scanned and put online for everyone to use for free. Many colleges and universities are already working on this project, but I would like to see a coordinated program so there is no duplication of efforts.

I spent a summer OCR scanning a very dull book on John Brown. It is not hard work, but it can definitely be boring. Every city, county and state in the country has tons of old records, I would love to see online. So there is a lot of this sort of work to be done all over the country.

Here in WV, we have all this moonscape left over from mountain top removal mining, that is just erroding, looking terrible and generally being an environmental nusance. Coal companies have been forgiven all responsibility to restore this land. When they don't want it anymore, ownership often goes back to the state. It will take years to reclaim this land. People could be employed by the government to restore these destroyed lands all over the country. And that is an unending job which few states can afford.

There is somewhat of a falsehood out there that Americans are lazy. Americans are not lazy. When I talk to people from other countries, they always mention how hard working Americans are. People with jobs or better jobs means people spending money and paying taxes. People with jobs don't need massive amounts of social services.

I don't see why creating government jobs should be an ugly word, but it is to many people. Most of my whole family (including me) have worked for the city, state, county or federal government. There's nothing wrong with working for the government. It pays decently and there are usually good benefits.

Re: Do you support the bailout plan?

Too true, Brenda!

IMO, people don't need charity, they need better jobs and just jobs period.