Posted on 01/26/2009 10:17:29 AM PST by BGHater
This week the House is expected to pass an $825 billion economic stimulus package. In reality, this bill is just an escalation of a government-created economic mess. As before, a sense of urgency and impending doom is being used to extract mountains of money from Congress with minimal debate. So much for change. This is déjà vu. We are again being promised that its passage will help employment, help homeowners, help the environment, etc. These promises are worthless. This time around especially, Congress should know better than to pass anything of this magnitude without first reading the fine print. There a many red flags that I have found in this bill.
At least $4 billion is allocated to expanding the police state and the war on drugs through Byrne grants, which even the Bush administration opposed, and the COPS program, both of which are corrupt and largely ineffective programs.
To help Big Brother keep a better eye on us and our children, $20 billion would go towards health information technology, which would create a national system of electronic medical records without adequate privacy protection. These records would instead be subject to the misnamed federal “medical privacy” rule, which allows government and state-favored special interests to see medical records at will. An additional $250 million is allocated for states to nationalize individual student data, expanding Federal control of education and eroding privacy.
$79 billion bails out states that haphazardly expanded their budgets during the bubble years, but refuse to retrench and cut back, as their taxpayers have had to, during recession years.
$200 million expands Americorps. $100 million goes to “faith-and-community” based organizations for social services, which will further insinuate the government into charity and community service. Private charities are much more efficient and effective because they are directly accountable to donors, while public programs tend to get rewarded for failure. With its money, the Federal Government brings its incompetence and its whims, while creating foolish dependence. This is sad to see.
Of course the bill is rife with central planning projects. $4 billion for job training, much of which will be used to direct workers into “green jobs”. $200 million to “encourage” electric cars, $2 billion to support US manufacturers of advanced batteries and battery systems, which is yet another function of government I can’t find in the Constitution. Not to mention $500 million for energy efficient manufacturing demonstration projects, $70 million for a Technology Innovation Program for “research in potentially revolutionary technologies” in which government, not supply and demand, will pick winners and losers. $746 million for afterschool snacks, $6.75 billion for the Department of Commerce, including $1 billion for a census.
This bill delivers an additional debt burden of $6,700 to every American man, woman and child.
There is a lot of stimulus and growth in this bill – that is, of government. Nothing in this bill stimulates the freedom and prosperity of the American people. Politician-directed spending is never as successful as market-driven investment. Instead of passing this bill, Congress should get out of the way by cutting taxes, cutting spending, and reining in the reckless monetary policy of the Federal Reserve.
i just think your approach is self defeating. of course things are bad & need to be better. but America is still the freeest country there is & votes do count. What do you want to do, store up dry food & live in a shack?
I won’t drink your soma. Everyone can see things are going from bad to worse. It is because the transnational corporations and foreign government bureaucrats have set themselves a governmental framework in the G8. Everything they do, is designed around destroying the US domestic economy by bleeding it dry to pay for globalism.
That’s what’s happening.
It doesn’t matter to them that globalism cannot exist without the US taxpayer funding it. Once they finish with the US domestic economy the world will descend into chaos because the American taxpayer will be completely tapped out and no more money will be for the taking.
They think that by letting these foreign corporations and governments take over our infrastructure and buy domestic companies, that the global monster can continue to be fed. What they’re seeing is, without jobs Americans won’t buy their stuff anymore.
Rumblings are starting everywhere, with riots in Greece, the overthrow of the Icelandic government. The EU is trying to quell the unrest in the PIIGS and figure out some way to keep the euro from going bust but they won’t succeed. By destroying America’s exceptionalism and Constitutional government they are putting out the light for humanity.
“destroying the US domestic economy by bleeding it dry”
I agree there’s a major problem. But we’d be a lot better off right now without zero in the WH. I don’t think Paul helped any by getting leftists to support his presidency bid.
So what do you think about 9/11: was it (a) a bunch of muzzie terrorists, or (b) a conspiracy?
“They think that by letting these foreign corporations and governments take over our infrastructure and buy domestic companies, that the global monster can continue to be fed.”
See, dude, that sentence doesn’t make sense.
“They think that” implies that you think they (”transnational corporations and foreign government bureaucrats”) are wrong about something. OK, then what are they wrong about? “that the global monster can continue to be fed”, apparently. Leaving aside what we consider “the global monster” to be, this is doubtless a _bad thing_. So they are wrong about the bad thing?
You’ve got a lot of passion dude and that’s great, but I usually see this kind of lack of focus in young liberals. No one’s ever going to take you seriously unless you can identify what you consider the problem to be, and can express it.
Stick around. Try not to get sidelined by crazy websites. A lot of people here want what’s best. You are 17-25, yes?
This tiny little tax rebate kick back is merely a temporary diversion. Like a tsunami, the tide always goes out first, giving the ignorant residents a false sense of security before the wave hits the shore line and destroys everything in it's path.
They will make the claim that Bush messed this up far worse than they had originally thought, with his “irresponsible” tax cuts, which caused this mess today.
They're just going to have to do the “responsible” thing and ask all Americans to “reinvest” in their country again. And, with Robert Reich, etc, they will find a completely new wording to disguise the outright robbery and confiscation of our hard earned wealth. And make it appear to be someone else's fault.
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