Values

“And this government of the people by the people, for the people will not perish from this earth” -- Abraham Lincoln

About $36 billion was proposed and rejected by the congress for extending unemployment insurance. The reason it was rejected is because it adds to the deficit. That's a good argument, at least on the surface, but there is another factor at work here. "Unemployment insurance leads to continued unemployment." In other words, bad behavior is created by the legislation. I wonder if the same applies to bailing out the financial institutions, maybe. We did bail out the banks and that bill came close to being a $trillion

Should we have done that bail-out? Probably, and we should also bail-out the individuals too. At least unemployment insurance goes almost 100% back into the economy. The same cannot be said for bank bail-outs. Have we become "government of the corporations, by the corporations, for the corporations"? Somehow that does not have the same inspiring effect as the original phrasing.

Ernie Fazio