I just saw something counter to it that gives me pause.

Stop Trashing Pelosi, Unless You Want SocSec GUTTED
http://alegrescorner.soapblox.net/showDiary.do?diaryId=2231

Well worth considering.

I certainly don’t want Social Security trashed.
I’m going to give this subject some thought.

I know nothing of “Voldemort’s tactics.” I don’t follow popular culture and am not aware of any poster using that handle.
Your interp. of what I “desperately want to agree with” isn’t accurate. I was agreeing per my interpretation of what Tek had said.

I thought Tek was blaming hoodwinkability as present on both sides / in both boxes.

It may be that I desperately wanted to agree with that. My interp of what Tek said could be wrong.

Apologies for slow reply. Just got back to internet.

Respectfully,
Gary

The House bill has an amazing $5B that ACORN is eligible to apply for. (They are not a gov’t agency, so they don’t just get an automatic check, but you can bet they’ll get a large chunk of the $5B) Even if what the senate passes is devoid of this kind of ‘pork’, we’ll have to see how the House bill is reconciled.

Incidentally, this $5B is not included in the “1% pork” numbers UK likes to toss around, but I think most people would define this as a sop to certain ‘constituents’, i.e. ‘pork’.

Finally, to what degree do we actually just need to take our lumps. We certainly don’t want the economy to outright tank, but everything from stock prices to house values were overvalued. I think the goal should be to stabilize the patient and shoot for a normal recovery, not inject it full of adrenaline and push it out the door just for the sake of a quick result.

Of course, if you consider that Pelosi and gang have rewarded the groups they consider to be their TRUE constituencies, the various unions, ACORN, gov’t employees, etc. at the expense of the next three generations of American taxpayers, then maybe my list of Pork is somewhat different than yours.

And nothing has been ‘cut’ yet. We have to see what the Senate passes out, and then that has to get reconciled with the House version. THEN we see what’s really in the final bill.

Again, you totally ignore the point that has been made repeatedly that appropriations for gov’t agencies are supposed to go through a budget process that is quite a bit more stringent than just handing out blank checks, and that spending money on gov’t ISN’T actually, by definition, economic stimulus. Buying new furniture, computers, etc. only makes us poorer by the 100s of millions spent, and increases GDP by naught when the stuff is made in China. Handing out blank checks to govt entities is just begging for it to be misspent and wasted. Rewarding states which overspent or have become bloated with a bailout at the expense of the states that were frugal is just plain wrong.

I haven’t read the original post, so I have no idea how the term was used, or the context, but the only meaning I know of for ‘ground pounder’ or any word like it, is ‘infantry’. Somehow, I think the UK dude saw it as vaguely derogatory, and has decided to throw it around as a general insult.

Thank you for your service.

OR by UK’s other piece of brilliant reasoning, we can just have the DMV in each state hire everyone that is unemployed, and then have the Federal gov’t bail out all the state DMV agencies. PROBLEM SOLVED. No more unemployement. End of the recession, right?

He is also extremely disingenuous. Despite his nick, he refuses to acknowledge that he isn’t even an American citizen, despite the fact that his UK-ness oozes out of every post.

The money to supplement State programmes, immediately saves jobs as those jobs would be redundant by the end of the financial year.

‘programmes’? ‘redundant’? (Isn’t it just the smart thing to do to eliminate redundant jobs?)

Not an insult: you demonstrate a fundamental ignorance of capitalism. Building a bridge may pay the wage of some construction workers and a civil engineer for a matter of months, but then what? Does the bridge magically generate jobs? Does it somehow stimulate industry and commerce by its very existence? Does America have a bridge-deficit problem that no one has detected before? You have to ask yourself, ‘what else could have been done with that money if it had been left in the hands of those who originally earned it?’

Best case with a bridge, it likely only facilitates a slightly cheaper transport of goods or people than was the case before. Best case, this benefit will provide full return on investment of $100 to $400 million in a decade or three. This is not a stimulus most people imagine when they hear Pelosi talk about ’500 milion’ jobs lost a month. Of course, worst case, it’s a literal bridge to nowhere. Then it’s just a waste. If you’re going to ‘invest’ in something, a bridge, even BEST case, is about the worst investment you can make. If they were a ‘good’ investment, people like Warren Buffet would be building bridges like crazy. And even a ‘good investment’ doesn’t necessarly equate to economic stimulus.

Another way to think about this: the gov’t comes to you and says, “We’re taking your first four paychecks this year to pay for building a bridge (that you don’t need). That’s four paychecks you could have spent on groceries, goods, or services provided by local people. You know you would have been better off spending the money on yourself with the locals than sinking it into a bridge that no one needs. Furthermore, even if you just put the money in a savings account at the bank, IT STILL DOES MORE GOOD THAN WASTING IT ON A BRIDGE! It increases the available credit, and allows some local guy to start a new business that hires someone and improves the economy.

You seem to be under the mistaken impression that the simple-minded ‘spending’ of money ‘stimulates’ the economy. Well, not if you spend it on gov’t buildings, bridges to nowhere, frisbee golf courses in Austin (for real, guys), etc. But don’t worry, the money was going to be ‘spent’ one way or the other. Either the gov’t spends it for you on a wasteful project (or for building a new gov’t building, or buying new furniture for the gov’t building to replace last-year’s hideously out-dated furniture, etc.), OR you could spend it on local people, OR, you could save it in the bank and earn a bit of interest. Even in the latter case, it STILL gets spent by the guy who borrows it to start a new business or buy a new truck, etc. Even if all you do is pay your mortgage and credit cards, THAT helps stabilizes the credit sector, which a million bridges will never do.

BUT, I’m misspeaking here. I’m referring to this money as if it is actually coming from our current taxes. Instead, what we are about to get is a massive amount of debt and out-right printing of money. Whatever benefit we might get out of a truly useful infrastructure project, say the building of a coal or nuclear power plant, refinery, etc. (Oops, none of those are in the ‘stimulus’ package!), is going to be weighed against the damage caused by just printing a trillion dollars. How much economic stimulus will we need to provide to overcome the devaluation of the dollar caused by that idiocy? Or how bad will it be in the year when our debt-service portion of the Federal budget has grown to well over half of the entire multi-trillion dollar budget? (You do realize that Obama has already warned us he expects multiple trillion-dollar budget-deficits over the coming years? So our total deficit spending for the first year Obama is in office is shaping up to be in excess of 2 TRILLION $$$, since this stimulus package is entirely separate from the actual budget.)

Ultimately, a tax-cut says YOU know the best use for your money, and those who support this sporkilus package believe GOV’T knows the best use for your money (or your great-treat-grandchildren’s money as the case may be). If the latter is true, then why don’t we just raise the tax rate to 100% across the board? If the latter is true, why don’t we have a stimulus package with some actual ‘stimulus’ in it???! With Pelosi and Reid as leaders in Congress, how can the latter possibly ever be true??

Just bundling the money into money-cannons and shooting wads of cash up into the air for anyone to grab would be a better stimulus than this de-stimulus package. (Or a Stimulus Lottery for which any citizen is elibible!) At least then there would be an actual moderate chance that large portions of the cash would be used by (or loaned to) someone in a capitalistic way to start a enterprise that actually does something needful and hires people. Because THAT is what our economy is!

Please accept my apologies to you for having to endure this experience at our blog. And be sure to let us know if it happens again.

My impression is that Graham gets things down to $400 and some billion by paring it all down to tax cuts.

Maybe compromise will require equal attention to a reduction of both tax cuts and spending. Maybe pushing the urgency will force the needed compromise.

One of the continuing issues, besides all the pork, is the lack of oversight. It seems the Senate has learned nothing after forking over $350 Bil for which they cannot account. That’s a pretty good chunk of change. If they can’t keep up with that amt., what assurances do we have that they can provide adequate oversight for the current package?