If you were President Obama

What would you do right now?

Stimulus package 2.0 all spending initiatives, none of the tax cuts that proved useless I'm the first round.  We need jobs and austerity measures are killing the recovery.  Either we need another stim. or something more drastic like a tax on earnings that aren't invested after a period of time to force big business to stop hoarding cash.  Neither will happen and we' ll have a shitty recovery that'll get blamed on Obama  even though the spending cuts that sapped demand were made by the influx of republican governors and teabaggers

I'd close guantanimo and restore habeas corpus ending all secret prisons, torture programs, and so on. I'd try all those held without trial, and tell the DOJ to prosecute those who had authorized torture. The sentence if guilty would be death. History would remember what we did to those who betrayed American principles.

I'd release Assange and expose what was done to Wikileaks, IE the pressure on Paypal and Mastercard, etc. I'd pardon hacktivists and anyone on trial for 'copyright infringement' that didn't make a profit in the process of their supposed infringment.

Then, during the height of the campaign season I would bring all the troops home from Iraq, and then Afghanistan.

As commander in chief I would set the mission, and that mission would be a desperate investment in solar thermal energy to get us off of Foreign oil and keep us from needing to continue our aggressive interventionism abroad.

Obviously I would be re-elected, and then I'd kick it into maximum overtroll mode.

I would militarize the general population with volunteer militias subsidized with food. They'd be trained in weapons and they'd be partisan loyalists, although I'd very much change the Democratic platform in the process.

Meanwhile, as commander in chief, I'd rely on the Airforce and a highly mobile military based in Denver that could respond anywhere in the world by airlift on a day's notice. The navy would be reduced to a mosquito fleet of guided missiles launched from small boats and air carriers to act as the last stepping stone in an invasion. The biggest reform, though, would be to the military. All tanks would be sold off to other nations, and almost all soldiers would be retrained and made to build the energy infrastructure necessary to truly keep our nation safe. If I didn't have enough, I'd build the start of the infrastructure to make the US be in for a dime and in for a dollar and force congress to support the rest. My state of the union addresses would also focus obsessively on our vulnerability to a lack of renewable energy not as a green issue but as what it really is: a national security issue.

When my four years was up I'd use my militias to take over congress and the military (which I retooled and downsized), and suspend the constitution. I'd rewrite the constitution since it has "either authorized the government we have had, or been powerless to prevent it; and in either case is unfit to exist."

Prohibitions, digital rights, torture, and a reformed democracy less prone to two party politics and corporatism (IE, an instant run-off ballot) and the ability to choose what your taxes are spent on as a means of giving the people the power to vote with their wallets and peacefully resist the government if it does things which it does not approve of).

I'd have most of the supreme court and banker-types hanged, along with a good deal of CEOS and other supposed John Galts who the DOJ found guilty of treason, and I'd adopt universal healthcare, the metric system, and annex Canada bloodlessly.

Then I'd resign and let the people fight it out or destroy the system created if they want, while I went to another country to live out my days on my embezzlement fund fucking my wives and having babbies. The end.

Prohibitions and 'digital rights' and torture would be made overtly unconstitutional, that is.

>>4-kun, so what you are saying is, after increasing the decades of federal debt by about fifty percent in only three years, that the U.S. government is not actually spending enough?

At this point we must seriously ask you if you are of adult age or not, since it seems doubtful.

>>7
Yes, and most economists agree the stimulus was a success as do I.   It created roughly 3.2 million jobs, had it been bigger and wasn't one third tax cuts which proved as ineffective as the bush tax cuts towards stimulation we would be a lot better off.  Austerity measures should be undertaken after economic recovery not before.  Republicans know this, but they also oops thatbthe president always gets blamed, that's why they are pushing heavily for spending cuts.

Damn phone changing my words.  They know that the people mostly blame the president even though republicans voted to end the stimulus cash on 2011 and take local level austerity measures which has shrunk the size of government dramatically (almost all job losses continue to be shed from the public sector month by month)

These actions are what has caused the current slow down in the recovery, we definitely don't need more tax cuts as we've had plenty and they didn't really prove to do anything.  We also have stocks near record levels and corporate profits are through the roof.  There is plenty of cash saved up for onbestment but we need to generate demand for them to actually take risks.  A second stimulus would generate the demand that our economy needs to gey jump started.

>>8
Without the stimulus 5 million jobs would have been created, inefficient businesses would have been shut down only for their market share to be snapped up by more efficient businesses who would grow to meet the demand and do a better job creating more jobs overall.

>>10
To claim that a demand weak economy would recover quickly by ignoring the problem is just retarded.  How would the economy add 5 million jobs? Where would they come from? Why would companies start hiring if the main reason they're not hiring right now is the risk that demand won't support expansion?

>>11
ignoring the problem
The problem isn't being ignored, it is only being ignored by the state, which is a good thing. You see if the state intervenes it will need to tax the people who are solving the problem, the unemployed trying to retrain so they can start a new career, the students trying to complete their education, the businesses trying to restructure and the entrepeneurs looking for capital.

The state is already bloated stuffed full of cash, it already has all the money it needs and it doesn't matter if it borrows this money from China because this only lowers everyone else's credit rating and depletes a significant proportion of global capital, meaning it's more expensive for everyone else, essentially a stealth tax.

>>12
>tax people who are solving the problem

Those very people are the problem.  Corporate profits have soared despite the government spending money, yet they are not hiring.  The reason is because they returned to previous productivity levels with reduced employment.  Companies see no need to expand hiring when they're currently very profitable.  Also don't worry about China, theyre not as big of a threat as people think, they're facing their own debt crisis and now that Japan made a huge find in rare earthen they stand to have some tough competition in manufacturing.

Also tell me how its a good thing for the state to ignore the problem when that's what's happened this year and the result was that the economic recovery came to a screeching halt.

Anti-spam bump

The state is already bloated stuffed full of cash, it already has all the money it needs

Hmm.. and I thought we had a huge budget deficit and were about to default on our loans in the next two weeks. Silly me.

I will launch all ICBM and conquer the world

stop pretending that any society is even sort of ok - it isn't. Resign from presidency and try to be an unassuming good person.

>>13
They are hiring, just not as much because most people aren't needed so it's not the corporation's fault, this time, we could pay people to dig holes and fill them in but then they'd lose all incentive to become useful, the only solution is to release as many restrictions on employment and economic growth as possible. Also you say "the state" as though that's what constitutes command and control over the economy, the people control the economy and they would be making sure power is transfered from the administratively inefficient state to individuals and private businesses that can make better use of resources.

>>18
Companies can expand business.  That's what investment is and that's what creates jobs.  We'be cut taxes left and right and reduced 'restrictions' yet companies refuse to hire.  This is because the reason. They're hiring has notbibg to do with regulation and everything to do with fear of weak demand.  Your statement that the state cannot allocate incestments better than private individuals is unfounded as well.  Who invested into internet? The highway system? Our education? Etc..

>>13
The reason is because
stopped reading

>>20

Cool, you're more interested in grammar than debate.

>>20
>>21
There is nothing wrong with the grammar, the subject was "the reason is", he could have also said "this reason is justified because..".

in b4 I get ripped on for my double full stops

Tax masturbation.

tuen usa into selfsufficient country, give the roodypoos and mexicans their own country: the southeast, with barbedwire around it. import poles and willing eurobro's to deal with manual labor

be the biggest american hero since lincoln

Executive Order to raise the debt ceiling to $100tr so we don't have to worry about it for the near future, telegram to the Republicans saying "COME AT ME BROS".  While they're busy trying to get the courts to declare that actually I didn't have the power to do that, I'll be telling Reid and Pelosi to get the fuck on with sorting their shit out.