Obama Stimulus Package: Anti-Business, Pro-Welfare

[darrels joy]

It is becoming ever more clear that the Obama stimulus package is anything but. A quick review reveals an anti-business, pro-welfare abomination designed to reward special interest groups and promote welfare. The ultimate result will be to prop up uncompetitive businesses and siphon huge sums into State bureaucracies, health care paperwork, environmentalist and academia coffers. Services that are already among the most ill-run in America, with virtually no accountability. The disbursements look like this:
Spending
· $32 billion to transform the nation’s energy transmission, distribution, and production systems by allowing for a smarter and better grid and focusing investment in renewable technology.
Expect to see no practical application of this money. Most will stay in Washington, some will drift into wind farm and solar projects that will be shot down by environmentalist NIMBY.
Grade: FAIL
· $16 billion to repair public housing and make key energy efficiency retrofits.
Because government housing has proven to be such a bargain.
Grade: FAIL
· $6 billion to weatherize modest-income homes.
Expect fraud on a Katrina level.
Grade: FAIL
· $10 billion for science facilities, research, and instrumentation.
Academic welfare. Global Warming redux.
Grade: FAIL
· $6 billion to expand broadband internet access so businesses in rural and other under served areas can link up to the global economy.
This hoax has already cost well over a billion dollars. In one instance, $100 million was paid to bring broadband to 44 homes that already had private service.
Grade: FAIL
· $30 billion for highway construction.
Bridges to nowhere. We need bridge and highway repair.
Grade: FAIL
· $31 billion to modernize federal and other public infrastructure with investments that lead to long term energy cost savings.
When a budget item is so meaninglessly described, you know that it is BS. This is bureaucracy and a slush fund for Obama. This is where he will be the Chicago Pol. Look at this budget for sign of corruption and payoffs.
Grade: FAIL
· $19 billion for clean water, flood control, and environmental restoration investments.
First, when an expense does not earn money, it is not an investment. It is an expense. These are expenses. Flood control is corporate welfare to the max. Environmental restoration is a worthwhile goal. To bad no one in Washington realizes that often the best method is to clear, plant, fence, and come back in 20 years. Putting dirt in drums merely preserves the toxins and can use up of this money in a single year. If the government were to restock fisheries and forests, that would be one thing. We could even accept sewer repair, maintenance, and secondary treatment. But this item smells.
Grade: FAIL
· $10 billion for transit and rail to reduce traffic congestion and gas consumption.
We suspect this meant ‘gasoline’ consumption. Welfare to the states to prop up a service that cost a lot of money to go where you do not want to be. Nevertheless, if spent properly on hard assets, DBKP gives it a passing grade.
Grade: PASS
· $41 billion to local school districts through Title I ($13 billion), IDEA ($13 billion), a new School Modernization and Repair Program ($14 billion), and the Education Technology program ($1 billion).
Right down the rat hole. Need we say more? Reward the teachers and the nut cases that run modern education.
Grade: FAIL
· $79 billion in state fiscal relief to prevent cutbacks to key services, including $39 billion to local school districts, public colleges, and universities distributed through existing state and federal formulas. Fifteen billion to states as bonus grants as a reward for meeting key performance measures, and $25 billion to states for other high priority needs such as public safety and other critical services, which may include education.
Same old crap. Since when is it our responsibility to fund school districts in other states plus hand out bonus rewards for actually doing your job. This does nothing for the economy, the stated purpose of this travesty.
Grade: Massive Failure
· $15.6 billion to increase the Pell grant by $500.
My favorite. Bloated institutions will merely raise their tuition. Simple solution, end tenure. This would lower the cost of education by billions.
Grade: FAIL
· $6 billion for higher education modernization.
More climbing towers, Muslim only gyms, anti- American/Jews/Capitalism/Free Speech Rallies? Bigger Bongs? Massage Chairs in the Entertainment Lounge? Caviar?
Grade: FAIL
· $20 billion for health information technology to prevent medical mistakes, provide better care to patients, and introduce cost-saving efficiencies.
Because government paperwork has proven to be such a cost saver to date?
Grade: FAIL
· $4.1 billion to provide for preventative care and to evaluate the most effective health care treatments.
First, understand what is being called for: A REDUCTION IN MEDICAL SERVICES DESCRIBED AS A POSITIVE. Once that is understood, understand that they are trying to screw you–but want you to pay for a study on how best to kill you off.
Grade: FAIL
· $43 billion for increased unemployment benefits and job training.
Increased welfare.
Grade: FAIL
· $39 billion to support those who lose their jobs by helping them to pay the cost of keeping their employer provided healthcare under COBRA and providing short-term options to be covered by Medicaid.
Another form of welfare.
Grade: FAIL
· $20 billion to increase the food stamp benefit by over 13% in order to help defray rising food costs.
Food stamp use has been going down for years. Rather than be happy, Liberals want to crow that it is going up. So they increase it 13% over the inflationary index. Wonderful.
Grade: FAIL
-Save Public Sector Jobs and Protect Vital Services: We will provide relief to states, so they can continue to employ teachers, firefighters, and police officers and provide vital services without having to unnecessarily raise middle class taxes.
Frankly, we need the States to dramatically reduce public sector jobs, particularly social workers, home heating specialists, and the myriad other jobs, including many teachers, that are simply redundant such as six men watching one fix a pipe, or two police officers paid overtime to direct traffic.
· $87 billion for a temporary increase in the Medicaid matching rate.
Another form of welfare.
Grade: FAIL
· $4 billion for state and local law enforcement funding.
State Welfare.
Grade: FAIL

Only one item “passed” on the criteria set forth in the Stimulus package bill. Otherwise, it is a bizarre and unnecessary spending package that will create a minuscule number of jobs and actually decrease productivity.
IT IS A FRICKIN DISASTER.
By pat

http://deathby1000papercuts.com/2009...s-pro-welfare/

[39mto39g]

Here's a shock. A black guy for Black people, OMG. He said he wants to end poverty, and free health care, Just who is he talking about? At who's expence?

Ron

[OleTom]

He sure didn't waste any time with the hand outs ACORN is in for a big chunk very soon .Watch the News and See

[phuloi]

And Now, Back To Our Regularly Scheduled Spending Orgy
By Michelle Malkin
Wednesday, 21 January 2009 "The time has come," President Barack Obama told us in his inaugural address, "to set aside childish things." He borrowed the line from Corinthians. With the Beltway bread-and-circus show over, President Obama will now get to work on borrowing hundreds of billions of dollars from you, your children and your grandchildren for a doomed fiscal stimulus.

As President Obama basked in the inaugural glow, a dark cloud of reality moved in over the Democrats' $825 billion plan to rescue the economy. The Congressional Budget Office crunched the numbers and concluded that a huge bulk of the federal spending orgy wouldn't actually kick in until the recession is waning -- if not already over.

The CBO analysis showed that "less than half of the $30 billion in highway construction funds detailed by House Democrats would be released into the economy over the next four years" and "less than $4 billion in highway construction money would reach the economy by September 2010," according to the Associated Press. And those are generous time estimates given the reality of molasses-slow bidding and contracting processes -- bogged down by the usual weight of political wrangling, racial bean-counting and assorted union grievance-mongering.

Just $26 billion out of the $274 billion set aside in the package would reach the economy by the end of the year, the CBO found. That's a mere 7 percent. Moreover, the AP summed up: "Just one in seven dollars of a huge $18.5 billion investment in energy efficiency and renewable energy programs would be spent within a year and a half."

Like I said two weeks ago ("The Generational Theft Act of 2009, Jan. 7, 2009): It's the timing, stupid.

The other incontrovertible truth about this massive wealth transfer is that Washington cannot stop the inevitable lard-up. The original concept of spending on "roads and bridges" has morphed into spending on anything and everything that moves or can be moved. Every moocher in the marketplace wants his grubby paws on the money. And if his or her provision isn't already written into the Democrats' legislation, it will get slipped in under the cover of night.

To wit: Public radio and public television -- already funded with your money to the tune of some $400 million in direct federal handouts and tax deductions for contributions made by individual viewers, not to mention untold state grants and subsidies -- are demanding a hugetastic chunk of the stimulus pie. That's right: Government-supported NPR and PBS want even more of a bailout than they've lived off of for the last 40 years. According to Current.org, which covers public TV and radio, the two entities along with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting have petitioned Obama for $550 million in funding to help create more workers suckling on the public teat.

Watching TV is apparently critical to rescuing the American economy. Already stuffed into the Democrats' package is a $650 million bailout -- call it the Boob Tube boondoggle -- to pay for $650 million worth of digital TV upgrade coupons in the wake of the official, government-mandated transition to digital television next month. Not to be left out, the National Endowment for the Arts is on the Santa stimulus list for an additional $50 million cash injection. Oh, and there's another $50 million earmarked "to make up for a lack of philanthropic support for the arts." A breakdown of the spending by House Minority Leader John Boehner's office found an additional $6 billion in buried stimulus treasure for colleges and $166 billion in direct aid to states looking for taxpayers to save them from their profligate spending.

A few conservative Democrats have started murmuring about this looming fiscal nightmare. North Carolina Rep. Heath Shuler expressed concern about the porkification of the bill: "This can't be a Christmas tree." Sen. Kent Conrad told Bloomberg News that "his committee projects the plan will reduce the unemployment rate by 'maybe' 1 percent, or about half of the 3 million jobs Obama has said the plan would generate."

Wake up, taxpayers: This nearly $1 trillion plan is nothing but future-mortgaging ornaments and tinsel boxed in self-delusion. It is time, as President Obama lectured us, to put away childish things -- starting with this epic fail.

COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.