Unclogging the Liberal $ Pipeline (Guest Voice)
Is President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus package really a stimulus package or is it a sign of how Democrats who now hold power are like kids unleashed in a candy shop with power to take what they want? In this Guest Voice post, conservative talk show host Michael Reagan argues that it’s the latter. Guest Voice posts do not necessarily reflect the opinion of TMV or its writers.
Unclogging the Liberal $ Pipeline
by Michael Reagan
After decades of watching their extravagant, wooly-headed, far-left programs languish in never-never land, Democrats are now realizing their once-forlorn hopes for a return to the good old days. Massive giveaways for their pet socialist schemes — and payoffs to labor unions and other financial supporters — will now be the order of the day.
This time they are outdoing their New Deal, Fair Deal, Great Society overspending extravaganzas, cobbling together an $825 billion package they laughingly call a stimulus program, allegedly designed to put unemployed Americans back to work and get the economy back on track.
The Wall Street Journal calls the gift package “A 40-Year Wish List” — a gravy train the paper called “a political wonder that manages to spend money on just about every pent-up Democratic proposal of the last 40 years.”
And what a wonder!
It spreads money around — which our bankrupt government doesn’t have — with reckless abandon, gratifying the wishes of their party’s constituency while doing practically nothing to create jobs or give the ailing economy a shot in the arm.
Among the giveaways being financed with our grandchildren’s money, as cited by the Journal, is a cool $50 billion for the National Endowment for the Arts, hardly an engine for creating employment for the unemployed. About the only jobs it might create would be for the bureaucrats who would oversee the grant or an artist or two who specialize in exhibiting jars of urine containing a crucifix as their contributions to the nation’s culture.
Then there is $1 billion for the notorious Amtrak system, which can’t even run its trains on time, a trick even the late Benito Mussolini managed to pull off during his notoriously inept regime. Amtrak hasn’t made a dime in profit over the last 40 years. How many unemployed bank tellers, secretaries, reporters or computer technicians will get work at Amtrak?
Most shocking is a $400 million giveaway to study what a growing number of scientist regard as a hoax — the great global warming scam — at the very time the nation is chilled to the bone and probably verging on a new ice age, little or big. To make matters worse there is $2.4 billion for another scam for demonstration projects called “carbon capture,” a process that has yet to be invented.
Among the other goodies the Journal discovered buried in this massive bill:
• $30 billion, or less than 5 percent of the spending in the bill, to fix bridges or other highway projects in a bill that touts rebuilding of the nation’s crumbling infrastructure as a job-creating engine.
• $600 million + to buy new cars when the Feds already spend $3 billion a year on its fleet of 600,000 vehicles.
• $7 billion for modernizing federal buildings and facilities.
This is the result of turning the Democrats loose after years of frustration during the years of my dad’s presidency, George W. Bush’s four years in the White House, Republican control of Congress from 1992 to 2006, and George Bush 43’s presidency, when they couldn’t fund their wildest dreams.
All of the crazy stuff they once couldn’t get passed is now in the pipeline, starting with the stimulus package. What’s interesting here is the question of exactly where Barack Obama stands on all of this Democratic squandermania.
When he spoke with the Republican leadership on Tuesday, it was obvious he hadn’t the vaguest idea of what’s included in that $825 billion stimulus package. Yet he’s the one who is going to have to scramble to find ways to borrow all that money to pay for the items in the bill.
According to House Minority Leader John Boehner, the president was learning some of what is in the package at the same time Republicans are learning about its provisions.
My question is if when Obama sees all of the gaudy stuff in the bill, will he rear up on his hind legs and veto the thing?
If he doesn’t, he will be acknowledging that the real power lies in the hands of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, a couple of whackos, and for the next four years he’ll be doing their bidding.
Mike Reagan, the elder son of the late President Ronald Reagan, is heard on radio stations nationally as part of American Family Radio. ©2009 Mike Reagan. Mike’s column is distributed exclusively by: Cagle Cartoons, Inc. and is licensed to appear on this site.
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8 Responses to “Unclogging the Liberal $ Pipeline (Guest Voice)”
I like the buckshot analogy someone gave yesterday. It's like attacking a grizzly with buckshot. All your going to do is feel safe for an instant and then quickly realize you've made a bad situation so very very much worse. We need just a couple of really daring, high caliber bullets and a dead-on eye to kill this monster.
That's why I proposed the from-the-bottom up disburtion of funds in this way:
Since the taxpayers of the future are going to get reamed anyway, no matter where the money is spent, we might as well give them a break at the get go.. and allow them to not have to pay the interest-only on their mortgages for one year. We put the bailout money into banks to cover their losses in interest-not-received…and we don't cover the losses completely, as a punishment to the banks for their bad-lending practices. After all, it was their sharkish get-rich-quick short-sided scheming which lured people in over their heads. The banks, like any business, will have to suffer the hardships of poor business practices, scale back corporate salaries and perks, tighten the collective belts of all who work there, cut the fat, and so on..
And anyway, people want to live in their own homes. Most people I know who are losing their homes are losing them to job losses and illnesses.. things beyond their control. Why punish people for this? The simple fact is that if John and Jane Doe mortgage payer have a year off from the burden of huge interest payments on their loan, then they have more money to spend on goods and services. Last time I checked, goods and services create jobs. You create more of a demand for them, you create more jobs. More jobs mean more people able to afford to buy back more land, buying back (or staying in) more land stablizes housing values and, therefore, the banks' net worth. Their net worth gets better, more loans are made. More people are able to access money to start new business, more business creates more jobs, and voila! The economy gets the zap to the heart that starts its automatic beat again.
People might even have enough money to buy new cars…and the auto industry gets a boost…and so on…
Shoot the bear right in the heart. Right where it will kill his momentum. This “Kid in the candy store” sydrome is as damaging as as the neocon “give the rich more money”. Forget about the environmental causes for just right now. We'll get to that. We will. Scale back on the money for those causes, keep them simmering, but put the money where it'll do the most benefit. If you think you've got environmental problems now, just wait until the poor are burning tires to stay warm around the trash pit at night, scavenging and taking what they can from the public lands. THEN you'll really have to throw money at the problem. This is the balancing act going on in Africa every day: the destitute vs. the environment… and the environment will always lose. Solution: stave off destitution.
Oopsies! Nope, the National Endowment for the Arts doesn't get 50 Billion, it gets along the lines of $400 Million.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/01/28/spec…
Note that my source is Fox News, so it MUST be accurate!
And as for the GOP, why not do what you've always done…FOLLOW THE MONEY! The money isn't in BigOil anymore…it's in alternatives..
We'll always need fossil fuels for industries like plastics and to keep big diesel transportation churning along. But the new, the cutting edge is alternatives.
In a nutshell the world is growing (thanks in part to the GOP policies of reducing aid for contraception) and we are too many using too much. We are, in essence, living in our own filth…our own fossil-fuel pigsty. Soon it won't even be fun for the rich anymore.. It's like the GOP has this myopic cut-our-noses-off-to-spite-our-faces religion of bad investments. No wonder Wallstreet crashed. Like donkeys they just follow the carrot, the quick, short-term easy goodies. And now we're all paying the piper for that immature way of thinking.
Invest in the future. Put your money in technologies that are here to stay and to grow (and to PROSPER from). Follow the money. Follow the money…buy low, sell high…fer crying out loud.. Alternatives are in their toddlerhood, soon to be big $trapping adults!
Never mind what you libs think of Reagan and his attacks (worse than anything Limbaugh does, incidentally). The bill is full of gimmicks and sops and vote-paybacks to all kinds of lib-Dem special interests, and these things have no place in a legitimate “stimulus” bill.
Not even the ethereal, religious “global warming” silliness should be in there, either. In addition to getting the most bang for the buck of spending increases and tax reductions (for everyone, not for only some, not primarily for some), what kinds of infrastructure projects in addition to roads could be tried right away? That's simple. What about upgrading, and pursuing further research, on transmission lines?
We need extra-high voltage and ultra-high voltage (1100 and yes, 1500 KV — damn the worse-than-worthless NIMBYs; full speed ahead) and of course we need to connect regional networks to get power to where the people are, even before we expand our wind capacity.
Page 37 here shows a map of future EHV lines superimposed on our wind resources,
http://www.sbse2008.org.br/textos/SBSE2008_Albe…
and again, we should be boosting voltages in existing rights-of-way in addition to building new transmission lines and getting new rights-of-way. We need to upgrade our extra-high-voltage (EHV) lines to 765 KV, build new ultra-high voltage (UHV) lines and new high-voltage direct current (HVDC) lines, replace EHV eventually with UHV to raise capacity still more, and I would also like to see us investigate what tickles me when it comes to moving more power through existing or smaller (and new) spaces, higher-phase-order research and later, implementation. (We currently have triphase AC; hexaphase AC and dodecaphase AC are the upgrades of choice we should pursue.)
http://www.pti-us.com/pti/consulting/transmissi…
http://www.hubbellpowersystems.com/powertest/li…
EHV & UHV, etc. (Siemens)
http://www.ptd.siemens.de/Bulk_Power_GRIDTECH_0…
HVDC (for long distances, such as wind farms on the Great Plains to where the people are)
http://www.owen.eru.rl.ac.uk/workshop_4/pdfs/ow…
The future, more summarily, which we should pursue now
http://www.ece.cmu.edu/~electriconf/2004/Bartho…
I realize I can only dream of the dream I've had for decades, of an ultra-utilitarian “utility corridor” concept with high-power transmission lines, high-speed rail lines, access and service roads doubling as recreational (bicycle) trails, and such, between metro areas, but we can still go for the realistic things immediately and work on the feasible future things now. I disagree that everything should be a rush-to-assist-ASAP action, even though the patient Sil refers to is quite ill currently. And with the short-term as well as long-term objectives, let us choose rational, sane, logical, high-yielding objectives.
That reminds me, in passing. There's nothing silly about redesigning and rebuilding older roads outside modern places like California so that they are pedestrian- and especially bicycle-friendly. Especially in the rest of the Sunbelt (with a longer season for bicycling, often all year), there's no excuse not to have acceptably wide right-hand lanes to permit bicycles to be ridden without conflicting with any motor vehicles in the right lane, or with parked cars or other objects at the roadside, including parked vehicles _with_open_doors_. The right-hand lanes should be wide enough to permit a bike lane to be constructed that permits bike travel free from any obstructions. Rebuilding roads to modern standards would eventually occupy a lot of people, given how much of the country has antiquated roads in this regard.
We now return y'all to Michael Reagan. And someone else can make the first remark about the kind of power production to add (we need to increase our electricity production in the decades to come — conservation can only slow, not stop or reverse, the growth; were energy to become much cheaper, we'd have even more ways that we'd use it in huge additional amounts, such as to light all our roadways fully and to generate heat to melt ice and snow from roadways and other rights of way).
Good thing the last 8 years in the Bush II administration was nothing but fiscal conservatism at it's best… oh wait.
The hypocrisy of the GOP is funny.
-Respect the office of President (as long as it's a Republican)
-$800billion for banks is A-OK. Maybe if you're selling corporate jets or antique commodes it's really helped your business but has done little for the economy as a whole.
I'm not saying this bill doesn't have it's faults, but for the GOP to be crying about wasteful spending now is just hypocritical.
“The new 'green' GOP…still making money, hand over fist with a PR-image that's clean, warm and friendly?”
Cheney with a smile (Asplund) — HVDC (and especially HVDC Light) — this should be pushed by Obama as soon as possible.
http://www.trec-uk.org.uk/reports/HVDC_Gunnar_A…
http://www.samorka.is/Apps/WebObjects/Samorka.w…
http://library.abb.com/global/scot/scot221.nsf/…
http://www.ermine.cesiricerca.it/content/files/…
http://library.abb.com/global/scot/scot221.nsf/…
I'm a big fan of EHV and UHV (especially UHV) and HVDC. But I'm really tickled by that higher-phase-order stuff. (6-phase and 12-phase) And of course that ought to be pushed in the R&D area. Dust off that older research and go forward!
[page 11]
http://www.osti.gov/bridge/servlets/purl/14759-…
http://www.pti-us.com/pti/consulting/transmissi…
[pages 3-4]
http://www.hubbellpowersystems.com/powertest/li…
[Another wind-resource-and-grid overlay map, projects that could be pushed now]
http://www.uwig.org/transtech08/Smith_paper.pdf
Well its what I hoped for when I voted. Ease some suffering for the workers, beefing up important social supports and unemployment, health care needs and start some rebuilding and infrastructure projects ala DLS' predictions.
Best thing is that this is only the first of many bills, loads more to come. Unfortunately I don't think either house of congress has shown the kinds of real political courage that it will take to fundamentally change how we manage our economy for the better. I'm talking Fed Reserve sort of changes.
The money should go to the working poor. They are notorious for consuming en masse. That's what we need right now…not fat bastards hoarding.. we need skinny guys spending… a lot..
The NEA is not what I'd call an industry with a lot to sell in these troubled times. We need food, forged products…basic staples of life. The glitz and fun of art and entertainment will be the last thing on most people's tightened “must-do” budgets to afford. The NEA gets money in the good times. Times aren't good. Back on the backburner you go..