Some public works efforts might be great. The ones that count and merit the most support are those that will lead to permanent improvements. I have stated in particular that repairing deficient bridges and road repairs (which so many governments are neglecting in place of shiny all-new projects, as we've learned) would be a good thing, creating all new freeways where needed (Los Angeles metro should get two 30-plus mile new freeways in the Basin proper), the building and improvement to electrical transmission infrastructure, and so on.

Some are preoccupied if obscessed with short-term view and short-term temporary employment spikes (which are not necessarily coherent, associated with temporary boosts in activity to fight the slump). I'm at least glad in a way that the pork-fest associated with “stimulus work” and the ineptitude we're seeing has precluded other vast wastes from happening. For example, the current crew can't be trusted to do a serious, real effort at high-speed rail, where this transport makes sense. (We'll see an inept effort, as we are already seeing hints of, at what is being sought — this and that, all kinds of trains, anything that manages to get the “high speed” label misattached, rather than truly world-class high speed rail, i.e., electric at 180-220+ mph, where and only where it makes sense in this country.)

There are other things that the feds could do. Zandi's “bang for the buck” list at Moody's is one obvious list and guide to follow (which I have referred to a number of times). One bold thing could be to combine “stimulus” desires (and even “stimulus” money) with health care (but this was too clever for the Dems to do) by incorporating Medicaid into Medicare or otherwise making Medicaid 100% federal.

But overall, we're seeing an inept, piecemeal, clumsy effort that isn't yielding results as desired (not to mention as promised).

More false charges? Defending your bride, still, and ignoring everything that's really happening?

“Exactly how has it 'fizzled'?”

Might I start with the obvious from earlier? “Create four million new jobs” (shhh) changed thereafter to “create or save three and a half million new jobs” that was revealed to have created or saved (let's say “create” only, to be generous) 150,000 jobs? No improvement for real since then, despite a massive amount of spending? (And that has to include all the porky features of the stimulus legislation, after all.)

I am, and was last year, healthily skeptical of any such effort, but was willing to accept the desire (there was no “need” [sic]) to try and have Washington provide spending that the public was reducing, as well as spend money to relieve the states of some burdens, as this is what most people wanted to at least try, and it would be worth watching. I even listed various measures (including a list from a Democratic economist) that the federal government could do, numerous times (which you apparently failed to read). But what we've seen is lack of results and worse, a haphazard (or worse) effort by the Dems and the Obama administration on this and subsequent measures and issues this year, growing increasingly worse. The widespread public, mainstream growing concern and rejection of what Obama and the Dems have been doing began with the original stimulus and bank bailout efforts. Nothing they've done has been better since then, but increasingly worse. But it started with the stimulus details and lack of results for the money spent, and the amount (obviously) of spending and debt.

Claiming all kinds of catastrophe that “could” or “would” have happened if this weren't done, in an attempt to “justify” the misdeeds, of course is untrue as well as revealing about current efforts to defend Obama's current state of affairs, which he chose to place himself in — with overall fiscal policy as well as with things like health care, which is obviously and deservedly in trouble.

At least he hasn't tried monetizing all that vast debt yet, or trying to print money and deliberately inflate the currency (“because we'd be in a Great Depression if we don't do this”) to fuel more spending or buy the votes of those to whom a “properly managed” and inflated currency is the real opiate of the masses.

We've “progressed” from “could have” to “would have” had another Great Depression, don't forget.

I wonder how much worse it would have been (“worse than” the Great Depression) if there is increased concern about fiscal policy (and underlying competence that has always been questioned) or if the health care effort becomes even more [self-]impaired.

We could switch at a moment's notice, I suspect, back to “we inherited disaster from Bush.”

(Pay no attention to current dwarfing of what Bush ever did wrong, or the stimulus that has fizzled.)

(Don't even think about the results to come from the climate legislation nonsense, including cap-and-trade.)

You misoverestimate the people who will believe Obama and the other Dems these days (the dwindling fraction that will no doubt retain the core).

The hardest slogan to sell in politics is: “Things could have been a whole lot worse.”

It didn't work for Bush and it won't work for Obama.

The stimulus has fizzled. The spending always made normal people uneasy, and the latest figures that were released only added to our concerns, as well as additionally troubling the troubled effort (at and of their own hands) the Dem health care effort. Dionne cannot successfully manage to “explain this away.”

Which leads to:

The one thing he fails to grasp and state (with which he has all kinds of company among Democrats and liberal activists seeking federal health care expansion) is that the example of Australia should have been presented to people in addition to those of Canada and the UK (the nations most similar to us), as well as another nation, which I doubt many a lib and Dem has even thought of: New Zealand.

http://www.moh.govt.nz/moh.nsf/indexmh/healthsy…