Stimulus Package - Debate & Discussion

[ivantheterrible]

why would anyone agree to give money from taxpayers to wallstreet , corporations, banks, and finanacial institutions who fucked up and lost peoples retirement funds, savings, etc. and give their CEO's billions in raises and bonuses?
and the taxpayer will pay for it, and then pay even more for good and services later.
scam, ripoff, bullshit.

 

[Sharon_]

-Provisions to improve equipment and refurbish buildings for the USGS.

I want to see the fine print on all that. I dun want no tropical plants in the lobby that require a nursery service to come in once a month to tend to.

-Construction (and improvement of exsisting) infrastructure in Indian territories.

No. They're their own sovereign nations, let them use their gambling profits.

-Funds to keep states solvent during the economic downturn.

oh HEYULL no.

-Funds to improve wildfire fighting.

No. Let them burn like nature intended. It's a natural (and beneficial) course of events.

-Funds to refurbish and revitalize the smithsonian institutes various facilities.

This is a joke, right?

-$50,000,000 to support NON PROFIT arts groups that will lose philanthropic funding during the economic downturn.

um...lemme think about this...........NO

-Funds for employee retraining programs (vital to retraining the laid off workforce)

Definitely YES

-Special funds alotted for employees retraining into booming and emerging business sectors.

No, duplicates the above. Combine them.

-Funds to support community service jobs for the elderly.

They're kidding, right?

They want us to pay money to some agency to support elderly folks who work for free?

-Extension of unemployment insurance during the economic downturn.

Definitely YES

-$1BIL for renovation of exsisting health facilites within the US.

So every place has an MRI instead of just every other one, two miles apart? Lemme think on this......NO

-$642Mil for renovation of exsisting facilities for the CDC.

I want to see the fine print....but I'm quite certain they don't need 642M

-$1.5Bil for renovation of exsisting private health facilites that qualify.

Oh HEYULL no

-$700Mil for medicare procedural effectivness research. (a case study designed to improve upon the effectiveness of funds spent on medicare in the future).

Um. NO.

*and*

HEYULL no.

-A program that will help pay for child care for workers in retraining.

Definitely YES

-A program that will help improve low income housing through energy efficiency upgrades.

I want to see the fine print.

-A very specifically outlined plan to promote and improve health awareness among american citizens. Assigned a director who can appropriate funds to groups who will do this (very tight restrictions on transferability of funds).

That seems awfully vague for something "very specific" and I smell the poo so I say, NO

 

[Ham Murabi]

After further review, it's clear the stimulus bill is the mother of all porkfests.
If infrastructure is so in need of repairs, pass a highway bill. Junk the rest of this shit.

 

[Slowlane]

No one dares criticize the stimulus package for fear of being called liberal-bashers. Obama won, after all, so he gets to do whatever he wants without question. Got it?

Actually it was Pelosi who said "We won the election and we wrote the bill."

 

[Slowlane]

I'm in favor of the 12% or so that actually might stimulate the economy. The rest of it needs shoved up the democrat's asses.

 

[raiderx27]

well thank you

Your math is bad.

If even 5% of americans were the only ones paying taxes, thats 15,000,000 people.

It would take $46.5 trillion to give 3.1m to 5% of the population.

well thank you for showing me the error of my math but the fact that the senate won't be taking up this all important bill untill the middle of febuary, and the demacrats are removeing alot of the spending in their bill. If this piece of legislation is so fucking important then why are the waiting to take it up for a vote in 2 weeks and why is 2/3rds of the money being spent in 2010 and 2011?

 

[off2bed]

why are the waiting to take it up for a vote in 2 weeks and why is 2/3rds of the money being spent in 2010 and 2011

To make sure the recovery doesn't happen too quickly.

 

[amy_li]

I think the distribution of the funds will become a form of political graft, and that the states receiving the funds will use them to fund projects already underway, not towards new projects.

Tax breaks to the lower middle class would have had a much more fair and broader impact. Just my opinion.

 

[ivantheterrible]

No. They're their own sovereign nations, let them use their gambling profits.

i'm sorry to say sharon but most of those so called "profits" never makes it to the real people.

www.indianz.com

 

[RightField]

There's $200 BILLION in government growth in the "Stimulus Bill"...liabilities that will be $200B + 5% annual growth EVERY year. I don't recall seeing that in the plan on Obama's election web page or on the Presidential web page said much of anything about a HUGE and permanent growth of Government. What kind of fast one are they trying to pull on us? Is it Nancy Pelosi putting all this "hidden" pork and growth into the bill against Obama's interests or did he change his platform without telling anyone? (or is Nancy trying to pull a "fast one" on him?)

 

[Slowlane]

"If there is not a bipartisan vote, "it's not our fault," Harry Reid

Every time I think this dude can't say anything any stupider he does.

 

[Medikated]

Nuff said....

• $20 million “for the removal of small- to medium-sized fish passage barriers.” (Pg. 45 of Senate Appropriations Committee report: “20,000,000 for the removal of small- to medium-sized fish passage barriers)

• $400 million for STD prevention (Pg. 60 of Senate Appropriations Committee report: “CDC estimates that a proximately 19 million new STD infections occur annually in the United States …The Committee has included $400,000,000 for testing and prevention of these conditions.”)

• $25 million to rehabilitate off-roading (ATV) trails (Pg. 45 of Senate Appropriations Committee report: “$25,000,000 is for recreation maintenance, especially for rehabilitation of off-road vehicle routes, and $20,000,000 is for trail maintenance and restoration”)

• $34 million to remodel the Department of Commerce HQ (Pg. 15 of Senate Appropriations Committee report: $34,000,000 for the Department of Commerce renovation and modernization”)

• $70 million to “Support Supercomputing Activities” for climate research (Pgs. 14-15 of Senate Appropriations Committee Report: $70,000,000 is directed to specifically support supercomputing activities, especially as they relate to climate research)

• $150 million for honey bee insurance (Pg. 102 of Senate Appropriations Committee report: “The Secretary shall use up to $ 50,000,000 per year, and $150,000,000 in the case of 2009, from the Trust Fund to provide emergency relief to eligible producers of livestock, honey bees, and farm-raised fish to aid in the reduction of losses due to disease, adverse weather, or other conditions, such as blizzards and wildfires, as determined by the Secretary”)

Is this job creation?

 

[RightField]

Don't forget the money for ACORN.

How about the $400 Million for new programs to support the theory of Global Warming. That won't influence people at all, will it? I wonder how much of that Al Gore is going to get? Maybe he needs some more money for fuel for his private jet (how did a politician earn enough for a private jet?).

 

[off2bed]

Five pages, and the only thing that even remotely resembles an argument in favor of the stimulus plan is

Keynesian economics have never been discredited (even though that seems for some reason to be an article of faith in some circles).

Which isn't even true, as the link so graciously provided shows down toward the bottom.

Then finally on this page, it's argued that all the spending of money we don't have, and micromanagement of private industries is going to cause economic growth. The only thing that will cause is this country to move toward being a 3rd world shithole. But I do realize that's the goal of some folks. It's social justice, after all.

 

[RightField]

This is a very worrisome aspect of the "Stimulus" plan....the protectionist sentiments in it and the potential for massive protectionist sentiment to grow around the world. It had a major play in the depression and will hurtle us quicky towards another. This is a good read.


Mark Steyn: Stimulated right into being another Europe
Plan also could trigger protectionist backlash, just like during the Depression.
Mark Steyn
Syndicated columnist

Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, is on TV explaining the (at this point the congregation shall fall to its knees and prostrate itself) "stimulus." "How," asks the lady from CBS, "does $335 million in STD prevention stimulate the economy?"

"I'll tell you how," says Speaker Pelosi. "I'm a big believer in prevention. And we have, er… there is a part of the bill on the House side that is about prevention. It's about it being less expensive to the states to do these measures."

Makes a lot of sense. If we have more STD prevention, it will be safer for loose women to go into bars and pick up feckless men, thus stimulating the critical beer and nuts and jukebox industries. To do this, we need trillion-dollar deficits, which our children and grandchildren will have to pay off, but, with sufficient investment in prevention measures, there won't be any children or grandchildren, so there's that problem solved.

The more interviews Speaker Pelosi gives explaining how vital the STD industry is to restarting the U.S. economy, the more I find myself hearing "syphilis" every time she says "stimulus." In late September, America was showing the first signs of "primary stimulus" – a few billion lesions popping up on the rarely glimpsed naughty bits of the economy: the subprime mortgage racket, the leverage kings. Now, the condition has metastasized in a mere four months into the advanced stages of "tertiary stimulus," with trillions of hideous, ever more inflamed pustules sprouting in every nook and cranny as the central nervous system of the body politic crumbles into total insanity – until it seems entirely normal for the second in line of presidential succession to be on TV gibbering away about how vital the federalization of condom distribution is to economic recovery.

The rules in this new "post-partisan" era are pretty simple: If the Democratic Party wants it, it's "stimulus." If the Republican Party opposes it, it's "politics" – as in headlines like this: "Obama Urges GOP To Keep Politics To A Minimum On Stimulus." These are serious times: As the president says, it's the worst economic crisis since the Thirties. So politicians need to put politics behind them and immediately lavish $4.19 billion on his community-organizing pals at the highly inventive "voter registration" group ACORN for "neighborhood stabilization activities."

"Neighborhood stabilization activities." That sounds like a line item from the Baath Party budget when Saddam sends the lads in to gas the Kurds. What does it mean in a nontotalitarian sense? Do you need a federally subsidized condom to do it? If so, will a pathetic $4.19 billion be enough?

"Stimulus" comes from the verb "stimulare," which is Latin for "transfer massive sums of money from what remains of the dynamic sector of the economy to the special interests of the Democratic Party." No, hang on, my mistake. "Stimulare" means "to goad." And, on that front, the Democrats are doing an excellent job. They've managed to goad 58 percent of the American people into opposing the "stimulus" package. They've managed to goad all 117 Republicans in the House into unpacking their mothballed cojonesand voting against the bill. And they've managed to goad the rest of the world into ending the Obama honeymoon in nothing flat. Headline from the London Daily Telegraph:

"U.S.-EU Trade War Looms As Barack Obama Bill Urges 'Buy American.'"

That would be the provision in the Senate bill prohibiting any foreign-made goods from being used in "stimulus" projects. So, if you own a rubber plantation in Malaysia, and you're hoping for a piece of Nancy Pelosi's condom action, forget it. The EU Trade Commissioner is outraged at the swaggering cowboy Obama shooting from the hip and unilaterally banning European goods from American soil. But so are American companies such as General Electric. Bill Lane, an executive honcho with Caterpillar (the 10th-biggest U.S. investor in the United Kingdom), says, "We are students of history. A major reason a very deep recession turned into the Great Depression was the fact that countries turned inward." Ah, yes. The Buy American Act of 1933. How'd that work out?

Even without Speaker Pelosi talking STDs on the evening news, there is danger here for the new administration. Setting aside the more messianic effusions ("We needed him. And out of that great need," gushed Maya Angelou, "Barack Obama came") as unbecoming to the freeborn citizens of a constitutional republic, it seems clear that large numbers of people voted for this president because they wanted something different, something other than "politics as usual." Not just something pseudo-different like the dreary maverickiness of John McCain "reaching across the aisle" (one of those dead phrases no one outside the Beltway gives a hoot about), but something really different. But the "stimulus" package is just politics as usual with a few extra zeros on the end. Will you notice anything? No. Don't get your hopes up. If you're broke now, you'll be broke in October. The Congressional Budget Office estimates only 25 percent of it will be spent by early next year. The other 75 percent is as stimulating as the gal in the Nancy Pelosi Pussycat Lounge telling you she had such a good time she's penciled in a second date for spring 2010. A third of all the spending won't come until after 2011.

In a media age, politics is a battle of language, and "stimulus" is too good a word to cede to porked-up statist hacks. "Stimulus" has to stimulate – i.e., it's short-term, like, say, an immediate cut in payroll taxes that will put real actual money in your pocket in next month's paycheck. That way, you don't need to wait for ACORN: You can start "stabilizing" your own "neighborhood" right now.

But, if this fraudulent "stimulus" does pass, it will, in fact, destimulate, and much more than the disastrous protectionist measures of the Thirties did: Back then, America was dealing with a far less globalized economy, and with far fewer competitors. "In the long run, we are all dead," Lord Keynes, the newly fashionable economist, famously said. But, if this bill passes, in the medium term we're all dead. It's a massive expansion of the state in the same direction that has brought sclerosis to Europe. A report issued last week in London found that government spending now accounts for 49 percent of the UK economy – and in the Celtic corners of the kingdom the state's share of the economy is way higher, from 71.6 percent in Wales to 77.6 percent in Northern Ireland. In the Western world, countries that were once the crucible of freedom are slipping remorselessly into a thinly disguised serfdom in which an ever higher proportion of your assets are annexed by the state as superlandlord. Big government is where nations go to die – not in Keynes' "long run," but sooner than you think.

©MARK STEYN

 

[RightField]

This is an interesting obersvation by a Brit...Christopher Caldwell in the UK based Financial Times.

"Bipartisanship offers little shelter over the long run. The stimulus will be expensive, more expensive than the Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined and Nancy Pelosi, Senate majority leader, has called it a mere “down payment”. The stimulus bill, whether it succeeds or fails, could be the Democrats’ Iraq. Like Iraq, it is a long-standing partisan project that is being marketed as an ad hoc response to a national emergency. It reflects the pre-existing wishes of the party’s most powerful interest groups more than the pre-existing wishes of the country. Democrats are now liable to be judged by the standard they created when they abandoned the Bush administration over the Iraq war: you break it, you own it."

 

[unregistered]

 

[RightField]

Yes, that's interesting.

 

[miles]

Once a Liberal has made up his/her mind, there is nothing that will make them change it.

 

[Wok]

This massive spending bill has me worried. Trillions have already been earmarked to be spent, and I have not seen many results. Perhaps the results may come later, but is it because of the spending or the markets?

Loads of pork.

Loads of promises.

Loads of bullshit.

 

[miles]

This massive spending bill has me worried. Trillions have already been earmarked to be spent, and I have not seen many results. Perhaps the results may come later, but is it because of the spending or the markets?

Loads of pork.

Loads of promises.

Loads of bullshit.

It's called "change."

 

[Wok]

It's called "change."

Whatever it is called, I look forward to working in the cooperative.

 

[miles]

Obama is a liar. It's a fact. What's frightening is the people who voted for him aren't saying a damn thing. Fucking pathetic.


"We are going to ban all earmarks, the process by which individual members insert projects without review."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28525113/

 

[unregistered]

 

[miles]

That does seem to make him either a God Damn liar or an stupid fuck...take your pick.

The silence is deafening.