Quickie: That stimulus plan sure is working…

Or not. Take a look at how much each job is costing us taxpayers.

And the government wants to control healthcare huh?

Quickie: 10.2

It sure would be nice if some of the stimulus effects we were promised would kick in one of these days.

Quickie: What? Stimulus Job Results Have Been Exaggerated? No, I don’t Believe That!

Yep, it’s true.

I know all of you are floored right now.

“Stimulus” Bill update.

Remember back in February when the “Stimulus” Bill was about to be voted on and logical, principled arguments like, “how can anyone vote on it, as no one has had time to read it” were shrugged off due to the “emergency” situation we were in?

Remember the hysterical cries to push the bill through because every day that passed by without it meant thousands upon thousands of jobs were lost?

Remember the promises of quickly getting this money into the economy and therefore creating hundreds of thousands of jobs?

Remember how vital President Obama thought it was to pass the bill that he waited three full days to sign it (two of which were spent with Michelle on a Valentine’s Day getaway, less than a month into his term)?

So how’s that “stimulus” plan working out?

Well, let’s see…

1. Despite the absolutely ridiculous claims by the White House of 150,000 jobs being saved as a result of the “stimulus” plan (a claim that is totally unsubstantiated), the unemployment rate has gone from 7.6% to 9.4%...not good. What about those 600,000 jobs you keep promising Mr. President, where are they?

2. Only 6% of the “emergency” funds have been spent, showing that this “emergency” was nothing but a farce.

3. The Recovery Act Accountability and Transparency Board estimates $55 billion of the $787 billion will be lost to waste, fraud and abuse. This prompted Vice President Biden to opine, "We know some of this money is going to be wasted. There are going to be mistakes made. Some people are being scammed already." Lovely.

I know it’s early and I know that the president’s supporters will say, “How can you pass judgment on this plan this already?”, but the writing is on the wall, the “stimulus” plan hasn’t worked.

Yes, it is early; however, we are supposed to be reaping the rewards from this plan by now. It has been over four months since it’s been passed, when is it going to start working? I would love to know the date when it is ok to panic over the $1.1 trillion wasted on this “stimulus” plan (Don’t forget the $348 billion to finance this behemoth).

You see, this is why I rallied so hard about the bailout bill back in September. Besides wasting $750 billion on the initial financial bailout, it made us, the American public, desensitized to these astronomical dollar figures. Now, when we hear something will cost hundreds of billions of dollars, we don’t bat an eye. The outrage is gone. And now, what are we left with? Well, in this case a “stimulus” plan that has done anything but.

But don’t worry everyone, I’m sure President Obama has a well-thought out plan for all…Ha, ha, ha, ha!!! Oh man, I thought I could say that with a straight face.

Yeah, it’s not going to work, as you can’t spend your way out of an economic crisis.

But hey, all those million dollar guardrails and turtle highways are going to make great photo ops, won’t they? They will enable all of the politicians that supported this “stimulus” package to say, “See, look at what we did…you know, besides cripple the economy with unsustainable debt.”

That’s all for now folks. Until next time, take care and be well.

-John

Quickie: I thought the Stimulus was going to fix everything.

Isn’t that why we had to pass that stimulus bill, no questions asked?

I mean, the stimulus bill was supposed to be the magic bullet, that’s why there was no time to actually, you know, read the entire bill to see what we were signing up for. We needed to get this bill passed in order to stop the hemorrhaging of jobs from the market.

But, according to economists, there’s “no relief in sight”.

All I can do is shake my head and pray that the Conservatives get their collective acts straight, find a clear message that resonates with the American people and designate a leader to articulate it…and fast as mid-term elections are just over a year and a half away.

Quickie: We’ve just been taken for a ride folks…

So…things aren’t so bad after all, huh Mr. President?

Well then, that’s great, I’m sure you’ll have no problem canceling all of your spending plans that were franticly passed due to the assumption that the economy was in such bad shape and we needed this “historic” government intervention or else...

Yeah…that wasn’t included in the story.

I guess they were right…never let a serious crisis go to waste.

Wall Street Welcomes the “Stimulus” Package!

How many jobs did this weekend cost?

Remember the hysterical pleas by the Democrats to pass the stimulus bill? Remember how many jobs would be lost if we waited to you know, actually read what was in the “stimulus” package?

Well, how many hard-working Americans won’t be working at all after this little weekend getaway?

It’s so nice to see the President has such perspective.

Let me take a guess; Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid won’t be invited.

Now he wants to focus on the deficit? He should have had this conference a few weeks ago. Maybe the “stimulus” package (that will do nothing to stimulate) would not have been passed.

Good for him!

Well done Judd Gregg! I really give him a ton of credit for sticking to his principles.

Phew! Looks like I was worried over nothing!

From Drudge:

GEITHNER: 'WE ARE NOT GOING TO PUT OUT DETAILS, UNTIL WE GET IT RIGHT'...

Under President Bush, this would’ve been absolutely slammed as another example of the president hiding his tracks to help out his fat cat, CEO buddies.

Again, just another example of how the rules don’t apply to liberals.

It is nice to see how this plan is “stimulating” the economy.

Where’s the hope?

It’s funny, under President Bush; this type of talk would have been classified as “scare tactics”.

Yet another example of how certain rules simply don’t apply to liberals.

What a joke!

Way to go Senate Republicans, you really blew it. And yes, I blame all of them.

I know a number of them did not and will not support the plan, however, this shows that there’s a complete lack of leadership at the top of the party.

This was a total failure by Mitch McConnell and, if you ask me, he should be completely embarrassed by his inability to get all of his fellow republicans on the same page.

I hope I’m wrong about this plan. I hope that somehow it actually does turn around the economy and if it does that, I will be the first to congratulate the democrats and admit I was wrong.

However, I find this incredibly unlikely to happen and now, the republicans won’t be able to run for cover when the fallout from this enormous pork monstrosity starts to rain down.

Well done republicans, way to completely sell out.

Will the Republicans squander this opportunity?

Well, it appears that my prediction that the stimulus bill would quickly go through the Senate after the little resistance it met in the House last week was woefully incorrect.

Note to self, stop making predictions.

So we seem to have a bit of a standoff on our hands here, don’t we?

I really think that this is an extremely important moment for the Republican Party. If the Senate Republicans follow the lead of their House brethren, I think they have a real chance at making some significant gains in 2010…maybe even regaining control of Congress.

You see, I have no doubt that the stimulus bill will fail. I know that this is simply speculation and not a veritude, but I really fail to see how it will work. You have heard all of the arguments against it from me and other commentators, but, in short, there are so few sections of this bill that will do anything to actually stimulate the economy, that the rest of this pork-filled nightmare will more than eliminate the little good the actual stimulus sections would do.

If the Senate Republicans refuse to support this bill, then they will be completely absolved of any blame when it fails. This will allow them to give voters a clear choice when voting in 2010…those who supported a plan that contributed to sinking our economy deeper into debt while alienating our global trading partners and those that did not.

This really is the only choice the Republicans have or else they run the risk of going the way of the dodo.

The party has been watered down by a bunch of lazy hacks that have far more interest in getting elected than upholding the conservative values they supposedly stand for.

It has gotten to the point that it is nearly impossible to tell the two parties apart.

This action, this willingness to say “no”, would draw a direct line in the sand. It would be a major difference that voters could look to when deciding who should run the country in a couple of years.

If the Senate Republicans say “no” to this plan, they will breathe some much-needed life into the Republican Party and show the Obama administration that he will not be able to woo them with mere uplifting rhetoric …this type of opportunity does not come around too often.

Hopefully, the Republicans will sense this and continue to stand firm against this bill that will do a lot of things…except stimulate the economy.

I suspect that they will as the national tide is really beginning to turn against this plan as Congress continues to heap more and more spending onto this already gargantuan bill.

There I go with my predictions again.

Ok, no more predictions starting…now!

That’s all for now folks. Until next time, take care and be well.

-John

Did he even think this through?

It is nice to see that President Obama is being flexible and pragmatic about his policies, but we have already seen an awful lot of backtracking from him and we are not even into February yet.

The questions this raises for me are the following:

Did Obama fail to recognize the ramifications of using highly protectionist rhetoric during a time of a global economic downturn?

Does he understand that if we enact protectionist economic policies that our trade partners would retaliate?

Was he hoping to just slide this measure through, hoping no one would notice it was in there?

After his inability to express the content of his first two Presidential orders to the media, did he even know that this measure was part of the bill?

Again, it is nice to see some flexibility from President Obama. However, I am beginning to wonder how much of this backtracking is flexibility and how much is ineptitude.

More depression-era ideas from the Left.

Is this today’s version of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act? Good God, I certainly hope not.

Yeah, let’s hinder international trade during a global economic downturn; that makes a lot of sense.

Again, the Left is doing it’s best to not, in the words of Rahm Emanuel, “let a serious crisis go to waste” by masking their intentions of punishing corporations as “patriotism”.

And it begins...

The Obama administration’s “stimulus package” was just passed by the House of Representatives and now heads to the Senate where it will meet little to no resistance before it is passed onto the President for his final approval.

My guess is that Obama will sign it by noon on Friday.

What are we paying for in this bill? Well, here’s a brief outline of some of the programs that are needed to “stimulate jobs” (thank you Wall Street Journal):

· $1 billion for Amtrak, the federal railroad that has not turned a profit in 40 years

· $2 billion for child-care subsidies

· $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts

· $400 million for global-warming research

· $2.4 billion for carbon-capture demonstration projects

· $650 million on top of the billions already doled out to pay for digital TV conversion coupons

· $30 billion, or less than 5% of the spending in the bill, is for fixing bridges or other highway projects

· $600 million more for the federal government to buy new cars

· $7 billion for modernizing federal buildings and facilities

· $150 million for the Smithsonian

· $81 billion for Medicaid

· $36 billion for expanded unemployment benefits

· $20 billion for food stamps

· $83 billion for the earned income credit for people who don't pay income tax

· $54 billion will go to federal programs that the Office of Management and Budget or the Government Accountability Office have already criticized as "ineffective" or unable to pass basic financial audits

· $66 billion more for education. That's more than the entire Education Department spent a mere 10 years ago and is on top of the doubling under President Bush.

· $335 million for sexually transmitted disease education and prevention programs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

It’s not that all of these programs are without merit; it’s just that so few of them offer the opportunity to stimulate the economy or create jobs…the supposed very point of this bill.

This is nothing more than the Obama Administration using the “economic crisis” to get his pet projects through without any questions.

Simply maddening!

If you read the linked AP story, the level of delusion of some Congressmen, notably David Obey of Wisconsin, is really quite striking.

Here are a couple of his quotes:

"Another week that we delay is another 100,000 or more people unemployed. I don't think we want that on our consciences."

React: First, does he have any factual evidence to back up this number or is this just him spit balling? You know when President Bush was in office, a statement like that would have been categorized as a “scare tactic”. Not now though. These irresponsible figures are the “cold-hard facts”.

"They don't look like Herbert Hoover, I guess, but there are an awful lot of people in this chamber who think like Herbert Hoover."

React: Perhaps Obey would like to read some recent economic studies on the Great Depression and how it was FDR and his spending programs, programs that eerily resemble this spending plan, that turned a garden variety recession into a nearly decade and a half depression that was only rescued by World War II.

I’m sure he didn’t have time to read any of those studies, as he was hard at work getting this bill passed. After all, I’m sure he wouldn’t want any more lost jobs on his conscience.

That’s all for now folks. Until next time, take care and be well.

-John

Here's a real stimulus plan.

Take a look at what Brazil is doing to stimulate their economy.

I guess we’ll have to make due with $200 million for the National Mall, $150 million for Coast Guard work on navigation hazards and $360 million for child care at military bases.

Sigh.