AP:
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton said Friday that every child born in the United States should get a $5,000 "baby bond" from the government to help pay for future costs of college or buying a home.
Clinton, her party's front-runner in the 2008 race, made the suggestion during a forum hosted by the Congressional Black Caucus.
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Channeling McGovern, but I thought vote buying was illegal. Of course this benefits the illegal aliens the most.
A bond. - $5,000
A $5,000 mixed investment in private funds, plus a weekend class for the parents to teach them how to capitalize on it. - priceless
In evaluating such gestures they should have some broad positive ripple effect throughout society. For example national health insurance improves productivity, removes perverse incentives for working people and business owners alike.
This suggestion however will add another bureaucracy and is a pittance against what will be the cost of higher education in the future. If she supported access to college for anyone who has the qualifications and desire, this would be a different story. If she supported wages that would allow families to send their children to college, this would be more meaningful.
This is just another "chicken in every pot" promise by a politician. With closer scrutiny the shine is going off her front runner status. Is she getting desperate?
I swear, these politicians have no shame. Their pandering knows no limit. I can't believe we have to endure more than another year of this bullshit.
I agree, this does seem like an empty gesture, but it's the most interesting thing Hilary has emptily gestured so far. Obviously, it hasn't been thought out in great detail, but this actually seems like a good idea-not good enough for my vote-but a good idea nonetheless.
I also like how they cut her down at the end of this article:
"Britain launched a similar program in January 2005, handing out vouchers worth hundreds of dollars each to parents with children born after Sept. 1, 2002.
Earlier this month, Time magazine proposed a $5,000 baby bond program."
Rupert Murdoch's early support for Hillary is neither an accident nor should it be a secret.
Big Money/MSM (two heads of the same monster) are confident that Hillary and/or Obama would be the easiest to trash and defeat in the presidential sweepstakes, and if either were to miraculously become president, both have already sold their souls to the large megacorporations. Either way, the super rich win and anyone who is not fortunate enough to fall within the top 1% income-wise will be the loser.
Let's see...
Have any large financial firms contributed generously to Hillary's campaign (BTW, this is a rhetorical question)? If the $5,000 per child plan were to ever get off the ground, wanna bet that Hillary might have a few suggestions as to which corporations could handle these accounts (for a generous fee/profit, of course)? Can private accounts in lieu of social security be far behind?
One of Hillary's key campaign advisors is Mark Penn, a well-connected pollster and union buster. This should give Hillary's megacorporate campaign crowd much comfort, but if labor ever figures this out, her support from that corner will all but disappear. She will clearly be beholden to large corporations, and do nothing to slow down the assault on working families in this country. For more details, see http://www.hillaryproject.com/index.php?/en/story-details/is_hillarys_top_advisor_a_union_buster
Oh, yes, and as reported in "Sicko", Hillary was second only to Rick Santorum as a recipient of monies from health care companies. Some free investment advice -- if Hillary becomes president, purchase call options for every large healthcare company and insurer you can. Once you've made your millions, you will never need to worry about healthcare again.
Anyone expecting significant improvements under a second President Clinton will be extremely disappointed.
Hillary's best chance of winning would be to adopt the campaign slogan, "She wouldn't be nearly near as bad for our country as her opponent."
This doesn't even rise to the shoddy standards of pandering. Still, $5000 per child easy since our money is worthless paper backed by "trust" and printed by the shipload.
If America wants to be competitive with the rest of the world, we must pay for university education for all who wish to get it and are academically qualified. Period.
If we don't do it, we should accept becoming a thirld word country in not too distant a future.
If we don't move away from the trade agreements that Bill Clinton and Republicans have pushed on us, I think that it is pretty much a given that the U.S. will continue its downward economic slide.
I don't buy into the education myth: that U.S. workers can be competitive in a global economy if only they were better educated. I know any number of people with good university educations and years of experience who have had their jobs moved overseas or given to H1-B holders.
Hillary on outsourcing:
When Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton flew to New Delhi to meet with Indian business leaders in 2005, she offered a blunt assessment of the loss of American jobs across the Pacific. "There is no way to legislate against reality," she declared. "Outsourcing will continue. . . . We are not against all outsourcing; we are not in favor of putting up fences."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/07/AR2007090702780.html
When IT workers, engineers, accountants, radiologists, etc. can be had for cheaper salaries overseas, what good is a college education?
"we must pay for public university education"
Who is we?
Because we pay for public university education through our property taxes now. The students are the required to pay tuition when attending college. But public Universities are funded mostly by the state and property taxes that all of us pay. And now Hillary wants us to pony up another 5k for each kid? Gimme a break. She is talking about raising our taxes.
This is a non-starter and another very bad idea from Hillary.
Teen pregnancy is the most devastating economic mistake that can be made. Why don't we offer $5,000 in cash to everyone reaching the age of 20 without having a child or fathering a child? Free birth control and condoms for all teenagers. Void where prohibited by religious stupidity.
How about better sex education in our public schools.
Get them on the government teat as soon as possible.
Maybe enlargment of the WIC and S-CHIP programs would provide more help to those who need it than just tossing more money about?
Why is good to give incentives to corporations (that are individuals legally) to do the "right thing" and it is no good to do the same with the people? the rich consumes 5% of the products and own 95%% of the companies the poor consumes 95% and owns 5%. Capital investment in the hand of the masses is the way for capitalism to move from consumerism to ownership society a republican idea that they did not deliver.
Ideas like this could and will be abused as tax break are abused but it is worth trying the survival of the free society is a stakes.
The "why not do this instead" people should add their name to the candidates list of either party.
Which Republic will be the first to counter offer $2500 for each snowflake baby?
Wow, and this is the brightest the left has to offer. Believe it, or not, this will resonate with the morons.
I am a mathematician with a PhD in computer science and of course a moron since this idea resonates with me.
Educated but not very smart. Also very naive.
This is a payoff from Hillary to the large investment firms in NYC. They will be the ones managing these huge education funds. And making millions per day off of these funds. This is Hillary throwing a bone at those Republican financial types on Wall Street. And you thought this was a serious proposal, what a joke.
Got that Max?? LOL!
Kudos to you dcaza. At some point SOMEBODY'S got to think outside the envelope. The present s**t sure ain't working!
Like I said on the following page, this idea will likely fade into history very quickly.
It was meant to establish Hillary's Socialist bona fides but not to be taken seriously.
If she's asked about it she'll say "Well, TimGeorgeBob, I just think we need to do more for the future of our kids. That's more important than the details of this particular plan."
Such a flawed idea.
This and other mechanism in which capital is used to diminish the Rich-Poor gap are very interesting and worth considering.
We as a society are the parents of all the babies and we could mimic the actions that responsible parents have been taking from years BUT we should be very cautious not to diminish the importance of parenthood.
Capitalism for the Masses is an interesting concept using the tremendous forces of capital investment in a free society to promote education, health, retirement in a simple individualistic form is the AMERICAN WAY.
Clever innovation, kiddos to Hillary, this woman is so smart that give me the chills
And to think that just the Iraq war could have payed for 50 years of such a program the money going to Harvard instead of Halliburton.
"kiddos"[sic], perhaps....? KUDOS, no! In no way, will this improve parenting! In fact it would merely encourage more irresponsible births. Please recall that the U.S. had only about 130,000,000 at the beginning of World War II with considerable UNDEREMPLOYMENT. Nonetheless, it was able to wage a two-front war and win(?) rather handily.
A handout like this is a pathetic SOP for several decades of poor econ. adm., little advanced planning, and social policies so self-indulgent that "test" scores have never returned to levels of forty years earlier!
"This and other mechanism in which capital is used to diminish the Rich-Poor gap are very interesting and worth considering."
How about raising taxes on the rich and on corporations? How about a consumption tax?
"Capitalism for the masses", what a joke. Just another way of saying privatize social security.
"using the tremendous forces of capital investment" like the investment firms that bought into the sub-prime market and got killed. Bear Sterns ring a bell, they are so hurt they are looking for someone to bail them out.
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First Posted: 09-28-07 10:30 PM | Updated: 03-28-08 02:45 AM