Back in April, Florida's legislative Republicans refused to accept nearly $444 million in federal funding for the state's unemployment system - money that would have shored up the unemployment trust fund at a crucial time and helped prevent a business tax hike in the middle of the recession.

This week, the Republicans' stubbornness came home to roost as Florida's unemployment trust fund officially went broke. For now, the state will be forced to borrow hundreds of millions of dollars from the federal government to keep the system running, but just as we warned in April, paying back that money will cause heavy tax hikes on Florida businesses: DLCC

1. This stimulus plan wasn't a stimulus plan in that most of them money hasn't been spent.

2.  Contrary to BTD, the European stimuli were much smaller and seem to be more effective right now (see France and UK). Blaming 80 billion out of 800 billion for the problems isn't correct.

3. This is a credit and confidence problem and nothing is being done right now for businesses (other than banks) to give them the confidence to boost spending and open up lines of credit - thus they will either shed jobs or stop hiring.

4. Cash for Clunkers is typical of governments response to problems - ineffective (car dealerships haven't even been close to being repaid money owed them), poorly targeted (rich people being able to used the program - Sen. Frist and Gov. Dean) and not working on the root problem (housing and credit).

Lots of campuses like mine are overwhelmed with all of the work to cope, after low enrollments only a couple of weeks ago, with a late surge of last-minute students now.  A lot of the ones whom I know just had to give up hoping to get back to work, and they are borrowing to get back to school now to retrain for new careers -- because there are delays in financial aid funding for those students, too.  So of course, they cannot actually borrow from the banks that got their funding already; instead, these students are borrowing from us, their families, to help them get back into a better economy, when it comes.

But it also is helping them get their confidence back, and that's a good thing.  Even though they are a bit frustrated with some teachers hired only the day before for classes added fast, even though they are not finding enough books ordered for them when orders went in months ago based on low enrollment projections then, etc. -- this is nada compared to the frustrations they have felt through their own furloughs, layoffs, and fears.

The government single-handedly funded the development of the first integrated circuits in order to make possible the Minuteman missile, whose unprecedented accuracy allowed them to use much lighter throw weight. That accuracy only became possible because the Minuteman missile used digital guidance system made from integrated circuits. The entire computer industry comes from massive government investment in integrated circuits in the late 50s and early 60s.

The internet arose from DARPA research to find a secure communication system in the event of nuclear war. Google, Cisco Systems, Yahoo, and countless other internet business would not exist without the original DARPA funding.

Industry after industry has been created by massive government funding of basic R&D which private companies are completely unequipped to fund. Yet you sit there on your computer with a CPU that's the direct outcome of government investment and post on the internet that's a direct outcome of massive government investment, that "government can't create wealth."

Stop playing word games. You're making yourself look ridiculous.

There are some things private enterprise can do well and some things it can't do at all -- for example, long-time-horizon investments like K-12 education, public libraries, and public health measures like vaccination. Basic science and engineering and biomed R&D is one of those things that the government can do and private industry simly won't do at all, ever, period, because the instant some guy in a boardroom asks "Where's the payoff?" the project would die.