Hopey McChange isn’t different, isn’t full of hope and change, but he is full of something. Consequently, on the 8th Day a Crap Sandwich came forth. This is Bush spending on steroids and heroin. Don;t take ti from me; take it from the WSJ. Oh, and this can pass even is every Repub votes against it, but let’s make sure the liberals get full credit for what will end up being the worst economic decision in our nation’s history. This is your Must Read for the day.
A 40-Year Wish List
You won’t believe what’s in that stimulus bill.
“Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is it’s an opportunity to do things you couldn’t do before.”
So said White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel in November, and Democrats in Congress are certainly taking his advice to heart. The 647-page, $825 billion House legislation is being sold as an economic “stimulus,” but now that Democrats have finally released the details we understand Rahm’s point much better. This is a political wonder that manages to spend money on just about every pent-up Democratic proposal of the last 40 years.
We’ve looked it over, and even we can’t quite believe it. There’s $1 billion for Amtrak, the federal railroad that hasn’t turned a profit in 40 years; $2 billion for child-care subsidies; $50 million for that great engine of job creation, the National Endowment for the Arts; $400 million for global-warming research and another $2.4 billion for carbon-capture demonstration projects. There’s even $650 million on top of the billions already doled out to pay for digital TV conversion coupons…Add the roughly $20 billion for business tax cuts, and by our estimate only $90 billion out of $825 billion, or about 12 cents of every $1, is for something that can plausibly be considered a growth stimulus…
Another “stimulus” secret is that some $252 billion is for income-transfer payments — that is, not investments that arguably help everyone, but cash or benefits to individuals for doing nothing at all. There’s $81 billion for Medicaid, $36 billion for expanded unemployment benefits, $20 billion for food stamps, and $83 billion for the earned income credit for people who don’t pay income tax.
I don’t have the resources to do this, but I wish someone would do an analysis of how much of the “stimulus” crap sandwich will be spent on alcohol, illegal drugs, illegal weapons, sneakers, flat screen tvs, shiny rims, big speakers, etc. It would help point out another huge flaw in this rape of our children’s futures. This isn’t a racist comment, since more of that money will be wasted by whites than any other group.
This bill will contribute much to massive inflation that will start to take hold 9 months down the line. It will begin the ’70′s style stagflation period that will morph into hyperinflation. The spending frenzy is convienently skewed to peak in 2010, just in time for the elections.
Asking real Republicans to vote for this will be like asking Catholic priests and nuns to perform abortions, and pass out birth control to teenagers in our highschools.
The dems are ramming this through, knowing that it is not going to do any more than consolidate and subsidize their constituency for the 2010 elections. They are calculating that this bill will go through, and in 3-6 months they can force a bigger crisis (one is already coming- wave two of the mortgage mess — a boat load of alt-A mortgages and option arms reset this year.) As the next crisis unfolds, they may throw another trillion into an actual stimulus, having this pork-barrel wish list in the bag. Nobody but a few Republicans will suggest that this bill be repealed or money allocated to help illegal alien house cleaners be redirected. No, this bill will fade into memory, and do it’s job in 2010, which is to get more dems elected, get the 60 seat majority, and let the tyranny begin in earnest.
You mean they forgot to allocate funds to save the sea kittens?
This is an outrage!
I’m shocked and heartbroken!
Of course while still engaged in hostilities and with enemies metastasizing like cancers;
“The spigot of defense funding opened by 9/11 is closing,” Gates told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday.
Now the next comment is like the remark the other day about ‘non-essential personnel”, “unneeded programs”(in a time of conflict?).
“The demands of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, along with the nation’s economic crisis, require military planners to separate “those things that are desirable from those things that are truly needed” in the way of new weapons, Gates added.
He suggested that the new administration will avoid across-the-board spending reductions, “which inefficiently extend all programs,” and will try to save money by eliminating unneeded programs.”
Now, pay attention.
This is in the time of war. Have we been employing “desirable†things not necessary things all this time?
Not only currently produced and developing military gear such as the F35 fighter and the ships specifically developed for this 21st Century warfare go on hold, but maintenance, replacements and improvements, and especially training. We develop new means of warfare for the sake of our troops lives.
(By the way, we each know at least one of those in harms way.)
Did you pay attention.
The defense of your country, securing your way(s) of life will be reduced.
An ACCORN salary will be guaranteed for another four years, the National Endowment for the Arts will prepare the next inaugural, that massive civilian security force will start training and condoms will be a major part of foreign policy.
“$2 billion for child-care subsidies”. None of which will go to parents who choose to stay at home.
“$400 million for global-warming research and another $2.4 billion for carbon-capture demonstration projects”. Looks like AlGore got a raise.
I’m absolutely stunned beyond words…
Looks like we’re going back to the feudal system.
That’s right kiddos. Daddy Government is going to spend your future today and leave the bill for you.
What do you do? The Republicans set us up and the Democrats knock us down. There are no champions of sanity in Washington; just greater and lesser degrees of mental illness. Now a few Republicans are talking sense, but where were they when their words carried weight? (For the record, John McCain was very outspoken about Republican fiscal irresponsibility. But, as we all know, he didn’t carry the day.)
I just heard that ACORN is receiving 5.2 BILLION of the bailout monies. Unbelievable.
http://www.newsmax.com/headlines/obama_bailout_bill/2009/01/27/175729.html?s=al&promo_code=78E4-1
While still under investigation for massive voter fraud. Tell me this isn’t happening to my country.
“The Republicans set us up and the Democrats knock us down. There are no champions of sanity in Washington”
Ladies and gents, we have a winner!
BOTH parties have pushed us to this brink of total financial disaster. The gall of our “representatives” staggering, mind blowing…..I am near speechlessness.
Nothing short of civil uprising to toss out ALL the bums can save America as we once knew her.
Crap sandwich indeed….can I get that to go with extra cheese and…super size it for a buck?
“This is Bush spending on steroids and heroin.”
I’d say crack and meth rather than heroin (stimulants, not depressants). But maybe that’s what comes from working in the criminal justice system. ;-)
The amazingly unstimulating stimulus bill passed the House with not ONE Republican vote. I honestly didn’t think they’d pull it off. So now all the credit or blame will land squarely on the Democrats. I’m betting on blame!
“I didn’t think it was 1933. I thought it was 2009, or something close to it…. They don’t look like Herbert Hoover, but there are an awful lot of people in this chamber who sound like Herbert Hoover…”
One, Hoover was already out in 1933. Two, “hope and change” equates with resurrecting the Democratic party’s cartoon boogie-man villain from the THIRTIES? Three, Hoover was an interventionist himself: FDR just increased the scale of things Hoover had already put in motion. And four, of course this “new New Deal” will be just as bad or worse than the original New Deal, which is what MADE the Crash of ’29 into the Great Depression.
“The time for action is now.”
Far be it from me to be accused of invoking Godwin’s Law, but wasn’t there someone else in 1933 saying “the time for action is now”?
Obey is exactly what is wrong with current economic policy: No understanding of history. Hoover worsened the economy by implementing liberal policy in the form of the Smoot-Hawley Act; FDR was just Hoover but worse.
Just the first in a long line of this kind of voting results to come. Note that this obamination of a stimulus bill passed with ALL the Republicans in the House voting against it. They may as well have not been there. The Dems are already in lockstep with Dear Leader with Queen Pelosi thumbing her nose at the GOP and saying “we can pass any bill we want and you can’t do anything about it! So there, nyah!”
Did anybody really expect anything remotely sensible from Pelosi and Company?
Hey Tammy! I have been reading The New Thought Police and it’s great. I cant put it down. Can I say that? lol.
it’s up to the Senate. I hope one of them brings an economics book and starts reading from chapter one.
next, the phone book to verbalize how many americans will be hurt by this so-called “stimulus” package.
filibuster until the cows come home. don’t let this go to a vote until the Senate Democrats realize how much pork is in this bill. cut out the NEA, cut out the carbon stuff, the global warming studies, the child care subsidies.
cut out the digital conversion coupons. you snooze, you lose. imagine if 6 million new hi-def TELEVISIONS were purchased in the next 6 months. wouldn’t that be a boost to electronic retailers?!?!?
or better yet, go without television altogether. it’s a luxury item, not an essential. other alternatives to TV include the internet and Tammy Radio, AM talk radio and your local library!!!
Hoover was a technocrat. Hell, I would have thought that his failures would have discredited technocracy in this country for good. I guess all the Left has to do is look at the “R” after his name and claim that he was a free marketeer.
Am I the only one who senses the dark shadows of the coming times?
In reading this “stimulus” bill (which will stimulating nothing) I went back to an old Churchill quote regarding the Munich agreement and think it is apropos to this day of Obamanation
“and do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of the bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year, unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigor, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in olden time”
Yes this bitter cup of Socialism will be proffered to us again and again.
I’m buying metals…gold coins and copper-jacketed lead. When Zanzibarkie does for our currency what homeboy Robert Mugabe did for Zimbabwe’s, you may be able to pay off your house with a Krugerrand.
Well, yesterday was indeed hump-day, and boy, did we get screwed!
I am proud of all the Reps & 12 Dems who did the right thing in standing up to this mess. Be sure to call/email them. God knows the media & administration are going to use every means possible to isolate & cut them down. I’m ashamed of congressthug Gabrielle Giffords for lying to business owners in Tucson about this package and being on the side of big government. She needs to go.
This onslaught just a little over a week into the new error is a calculated move to take us quickly before Obama supporters sober up and before the rest of us can organize a significant battle against the socialist agenda. Many people are expecting life as usual under this guy – they just do not have the psychological construct to deal with the magnitude of what he wants to do. For those of us who do get it, we HAVE to be forceful. NOW!
There is no reason for conservatives to play nice or work on a bipartisan level AT ALL! I’m not just talking about representatives, but people in general. I want to see us mobilize and fight back before gas prices sky-rocket and we are unable to travel en masse, and before free speech is suppressed – or completely silenced.
I personally have no respect at all for the great phalanx of Republicans who voted “NAY”….how cheap and easy…where have they been for the past 8 years,wallowing in pork.I respect those 11 Democrats who voted “NAY”,who stood up against Nancy Pelosi
If you want a snapshot of the next decade, please read “America’s Great Depression” by Murry Rothbard. It’s available as a free pdf download from Von Mises.org. The run up to the ’29 crash was a great leveraging up on a paper “asset” called “assurances”, which were basically a short term loan for the time that it took for a seller to deliver goods over seas. From that sprang a market to trade the assurances, and insurance on assurances (similar to credit default swaps on mortgage backed bonds) and then puts, calls, and options on assurances. It created a massive balloon on highly leveraged “assets” that found their way into the stock market. Then as now, as the leverage ratio approached 50:1, a small downturn, caused some defaults, which started a massive unwinding of the whole system. The money men started to liquidate their stock “assets” to cover their bets in the assurace markets and started the avalanche of stock sales and crashed the market. Panic set in and the next step was people shedding (over- printed) paper currency and demanding gold. The rest, as they say is history, which is on track to be repeated.