http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...502766_pf.html

The Fierce Urgency of Pork

(...)

And yet more damaging to Obama's image than all the hypocrisies in the
appointment process is his signature bill: the stimulus package. He
inexplicably delegated the writing to Nancy Pelosi and the barons of
the House. The product, which inevitably carries Obama's name, was not
just bad, not just flawed, but a legislative abomination.

It's not just pages and pages of special-interest tax breaks,
giveaways and protections, one of which would set off a ruinous
Smoot-Hawley trade war. It's not just the waste, such as the $88.6
million for new construction for Milwaukee Public Schools, which,
reports the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, have shrinking enrollment, 15
vacant schools and, quite logically, no plans for new construction.

It's the essential fraud of rushing through a bill in which the normal
rules (committee hearings, finding revenue to pay for the programs)
are suspended on the grounds that a national emergency requires an
immediate job-creating stimulus -- and then throwing into it hundreds
of billions that have nothing to do with stimulus, that Congress's own
budget office says won't be spent until 2011 and beyond, and that are
little more than the back-scratching, special-interest, lobby-driven
parochialism that Obama came to Washington to abolish. He said.

Not just to abolish but to create something new -- a new politics
where the moneyed pork-barreling and corrupt logrolling of the past
would give way to a bottom-up, grass-roots participatory democracy.
That is what made Obama so dazzling and new. Turns out the "fierce
urgency of now" includes $150 million for livestock (and honeybee and
farm-raised fish) insurance.

The Age of Obama begins with perhaps the greatest frenzy of
old-politics influence peddling ever seen in Washington. By the time
the stimulus bill reached the Senate, reports the Wall Street Journal,
pharmaceutical and high-tech companies were lobbying furiously for a
new plan to repatriate overseas profits that would yield major tax
savings. California wine growers and Florida citrus producers were
fighting to change a single phrase in one provision. Substituting
"planted" for "ready to market" would mean a windfall garnered from a
new "bonus depreciation" incentive.

After Obama's miraculous 2008 presidential campaign, it was clear that
at some point the magical mystery tour would have to end. The nation
would rub its eyes and begin to emerge from its reverie. The
hallucinatory Obama would give way to the mere mortal. The great
ethical transformations promised would be seen as a fairy tale that
all presidents tell -- and that this president told better than
anyone.

I thought the awakening would take six months. It took two and a half
weeks.










On Sat, 7 Feb 2009 12:48:47 -0500, Kali wrote:

In article , -
says...
Way Back Jack wrote:

The shrewd ******* is hedging. If it fails, he can say that both sides
were for it. If it fails without support from the other side, his side
can kiss the 2010 and 2012 elections goodbye.

I predict another Dem sweep in 2010, as more and more middle class
people wake up and see the GOP for what it is, not what it says it
is. Stonewalling and whining about tax cuts is about all they're
good for right now, with a few exceptions: vulnerable Rethugs up for
reelection in 2010.

Are you trying to master stating the obvious?

Tax cuts != stimulus spending. Yet that's all the Repubs can come up
with. The Bush tax cuts were an Epic Fail, and they keep banging
that same drum. And they are opposed to productive spending that
will get the biggest return in terms of change in one year real GDP.

Compare these from Moody's Economy.com:

Lump sum tax rebate: 1.02
Temp across the board tax cut: 1.03
Temp payroll tax holiday: 1.29

Perm/extend AMT patch: .48
Bush tax cuts permanent: .29
Cap gains/div tax permanent: .37
Perm cut corporate tax rate: .30

Extend unemployment benefits: 1.64
Temp increase in food stamps: 1.73
General aid to state govt: 1.36
Increased infrastructure spending: 1.59

http://www.economy.com/mark-zandi/do...the-impact-of-
the-fiscal-stimulus.pdf

Get the money out to the people who will spend it now. Corporate tax
cuts? Epic Fail in terms of stimulus.
--
Kali