Showing posts with label stimulus bill. Show all posts
Showing posts with label stimulus bill. Show all posts

Sunday, February 15, 2009

Obama's Big Rush


"The time for talk is over. The time for action is now." Obama left little room for doubt. If Congress did not pass the spending bill immediately, the country would fall apart, and the damage would be "irreversible."

"Rise to the moment," Obama commanded Congress. "Every day, our economy gets sicker," he warned. Upon learning that the national unemployment rate had jumped to 7.6 percent, the highest since 1992, Congress could no longer question Obama's "fierce urgency of now."

Congress acted in accordance with Obama's instructions and produced a bill posthaste. Public negotiations were deemed to be
impracticaltoo time consuming. So fierce was their urgency, they forgot to read the 1,100 page bill, and they broke their 48-hour public posting promise. 

Immediately after the bill was passed on Saturday, Obama signed the bill into law.

...No, wait, that's not what happened.  After pushing Congress to hurry up and pass the trillion dollar stimulus bill, Obama promptly took off for a three-day holiday getaway.  Eh, what's the rush?


More


Obama delays signing 'urgent' stimulus for Chicago fun
To a critical eye, the hurry to pass the bill appears to have been a con, a legislative stampede.

What's the rush?  Urgent stimulus on hold for Bam's weekend off.
The push to get the bill through before the holiday weekend was so frantic, members of Congress didn't have a chance to read all 1,071 pages of the document before they could vote.  "In a perfect world it would have been nice to have had more time to process it," said Ilan Kayatsky, a spokesman for Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY).

British Women Pay High Price for Multiculturalism
Britain has headed down the same "rape path" as other neighboring  "enhanced" multiculturalized countries, such as Norway, where two out of three rapes are committed by men of "non Western backgrounds". 

Obama levitates, but the train goes off the rails.
One of many highlights of the stimulus bill the Democrats just rammed through Congress is $8 billion for high-speed rail. What makes this appropriation special is that there was no money for high-speed rail in the original House legislation. The Senate bill had $2 billion. The legislation coming out of conference "compromised" on
$8 billion.

Remember when Obama promised to give us
five days to review every bill that ended up on his desk?



"Sunlight is the greatest disinfectant... No more secrecy... And, when there's a bill that ends up on my desk as president,
you the public will have 5 days to look online and find out what's in it before I sign it."


Saturday, February 14, 2009

You've been trumped!

With help from a grand total of three Republicans, Congress has passed Obama's unpopular "economic recovery" plan. No one read the 1,100 page behemoth, and the 48-hour public posting promise was broken. (When Obama says he will trump you, he really means it.)

The spending bill isn't a new New Deal, it's the old New Deal on steroids, and it will be just as worthless as the original. A mere 12% of the stimulus package is stimulative. The rest is expensive partisan pork and political back scratching. But the wasteful spending and the political payoffs aren't the only things about this bill that are worrisome.

The "stimulus package" could just as accurately be described as a social engineering package. Obama's bill has stealth provisions that are designed to undercut parental authority, roll back Clinton's successful welfare reform, and set up a federal infrastructure that could be used as a tool for government rationing of health care.

This thing is ugly.

So it's no surprise that Obama's puppets in congress worked "in the dead of night and behind closed doors." to pass this bill. Of course they had to ram it through. You can't let a crisis go to waste, and this crisis could let up any time now, with or without stimulus. Plus, if they had allowed the public to review the bill for another 48 hours, it might have been just enough time for public support to completely collapse.

This isn't how our democratic republic is supposed to work.


More


Can Israel make it alone?
If the Obama administration walks away from democratic allies, we will see the fastest reshuffling of the alliances we've seen since World War I.

Voting on a Stimulus They Haven't Read

Obama's Approach to Missile Defense Stirs Questions

Homeschooling: America's Hidden Breeding Ground for Conservative Ideology, h/t pen of jen

Stimulus Plan Tightens Reins on Wall St. Pay
A provision buried deep inside the $787 billion economic stimulus bill would impose restrictions on executive bonuses at financial institutions that are much tougher than those proposed 10 days ago by the Treasury Department.

Missing from Congress' stimulus negotiations: transparency
Could Congress have demanded that all negotiations play out in public? Waxman said that would have been impractical. "There are too many moving parts in this bill," Waxman said. "We would be sitting in an open conference committee meeting for weeks, if not a whole month, to process all the amendments that would have been offered."



A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have.

Friday, February 13, 2009

This Stimulus Bill is Even Worse Than You Think

Think the the stimulus bill is bad?  Think again.  The Stimulus Bill is Even Worse Than You Think.  Sobering information from NRO:

The health provisions in the House stimulus bill would expand dependence on the already-unsound Medicaid entitlement program, distort health care choices for unemployed workers, and set up a federal infrastructure that could be used as a tool for government rationing of medical treatments, procedures, and services. [snip]

For the first time, the federal government will give significant cash to able-bodied adults without dependent children.  ...Since most of these individuals have little apparent need for assistance, the new credit represents "spreading the wealth" for its own sake.  [snip]

Buried in the economic stimulus legislation is a provision that undercuts parental authority and expands control of taxpayer dollars by family planning clinics.  Because the income of parents or even a spouse may not be counted in determining eligibility, states would have the option to "consider only the income of the applicant or recipient." In other words, a child in a family at any income level may be eligible for free family-planning services. A child would be able to receive benefits through a "presumptive eligibility period" and beyond without parental knowledge that he or she applied for Medicaid.  [snip]

For the first time since 1996, the federal government would begin paying bonuses to states that increase their welfare caseloads. Under the stimulus bills, the federal government will pay 80 percent of cost for each new family that a state enrolls in welfare; this matching rate is far higher than it was under the old AFDC program

Obama has repeatedly told us in recent days that he is abandoning the old, failed, tired ideas of the past.  He isn't.

More

House passes stimulus bill with no GOP support
It was clear that the measure was the result of old-fashioned sausage-making. Pet provisions were coming to light that had not been included in the original bills that passed the House or Senateor that differed markedly from earlier versions. Some appeared to brush up against claims of the bill's supporters that no pet projects known as "earmarks" were included.

Gregg Withdrawal Embarrasses White House
White House sources tell me that another nominee for commerce secretary could be announced quite soon, maybe in the next few days.  But that candidate will be President Obama's fourth choice for commerce secretary.

Why not make the "stimulus bill" a kazillion dollars?
For half a century, the welfare establishment had the bright idea to pay women to have children out of wedlock. Following the iron laws of economicssubsidize something, you get more of it; tax it, you get less of itthe number of children being born out of wedlock skyrocketed.

Anti-Islam Dutch Lawmaker Sent Back to Netherlands Amid U.K. Ban
The right-wing lawmaker had been invited by a member of Parliament to show his anti-Islam movie "Fitna," which calls the Koran a "fascist" book and accuses Islam of being a violent religion.

Senators Grill Geithner Again on New Financial Plan: Republican Tells Him, 'You Have No Clue'

Jindal to give high-profile GOP response to Obama.

The only thing that can cure poverty is wealth.

U.S. judges admit to jailing children for money.
Two judges pleaded guilty on Thursday to accepting more than $2.6 million from a private youth detention centre in Pennsylvania in return for giving hundreds of youths and teenagers long sentences.

Woman's record-length fingernails broken in crash.
According to the Guinness Web site, her nails measured a total of more than 28 feet long in 2008, with the longest nail on her right thumb at 2 feet, 11 inches.