Oct 01 2008
How Can There Be A Crisis With All The Pork In The Bill?
Want to know why Americans don’t believe there is a real crisis, a real emergency? How could we if there are tens of millions of dollars set aside for a corrupt liberal organization like ACORN (who Obama used to work with)? And how could we take this seriously when we see crap like this included:
And tucked away in the tax provisions is a landmark health care provision demanding that insurance companies provide coverage for mental health treatment—such as hospitalization—on parity with physical illnesses.
Really a bill onto itself, the mental health parity measure has been a bipartisan priority for top lawmakers in both chambers but has stalled because of disagreements again over how to pay for its estimated $3.8 billion five-year cost.Â
Maybe if the bill included a provision to have all the nutters in Congress heads examined (and determined to be unfit for office) we could get behind this. But how is this an emergency? Bribes and pork?
AJ,
Increasing federal deposit insurance limits is a good thing, because it protects small community banks.
Cutting away at the AMT is a good thing because it was just a “get even” Democratic tax anyway and is a burden on many.
Finally, some government money expenditure can be justified as “restitution” for the criminal liability of the corrupt congress.
It makes me so angry. Are these guys drunk on unearned money? I say STOP SPENDING MY MONEY. Is there nothing that congress is unwilling to buy, bail out, or appease. STOP IT! JUST STOP IT!
We are working on bribing individual congressmen into supporting the bill. Disgusting.
But don’t think that this doesn’t mean there’s no emergency – the emergency is worse than ever.
A little noticed news item this morning that ordinarily would have been a huge headline:
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/081001/economy.html
“The Institute for Supply Management on Wednesday released a September reading of 43.5, the lowest level since October 2001. The reading dropped from 49.9 in August, the largest one-month decline since January, 1984, when it fell to 60.5 from 69.9.”
Read the rest of the article to understand just how bad this reading is for the economy. We aren’t sliding into recession, we are nose diving into one at max acceleration.
This, combined with the collapse in auto sales is unbelievably bad news. It means that if anything more goes wrong we really, honestly, no doubt about it are going into a second Great Depression within weeks. I repeat what I’ve been saying – with no government action we will have 20% unemployment within 6 months as large parts of the economy simply and suddenly collapse. Who knows after that.
The auto numbers and the manufacturing index show that this dive into oblivion has already begun.
Does this bailout bill stink? Of course it does. But without it, you had better start stockpiling canned goods, bottled water, and ammunition.
Try to get about 2 or 3 years worth.
The side effects of the “financial meltdown” are really amazing.
Obviously, the Russian stock market has lost half of it’s value. Who knew.
I bet they will be looking for that $1 billion loan to Chavez to be quickly repaid, but that may be a problem.
The price of oil is now below $100/barrel. If it goes below $85, the Iranian economy will crumble, but at current levels all of OPEC will be feeling some pain.
Who would have thought that you could impose something worse than economic sanctions on Russia, Iran and all their OPEC buddies and put low income Americans in their own homes at the same time ?
The legacy of George Bush may actually get some credit based on a debacle not of his design.
So why does Congress have to go an ruin a good thing by voting for a “bailout” ??
I think the $700B bail out was necessary. Europe is sinking into a depression of hugh proportions. No structure to help them out. I’m angry about all the other things tacked on.
FOR MCCAIN:
ENERGY INDEPENDENCE.
HALT GOVERNMENT EXPANSION, CUT UNNECESSARY PROGRAMS.
LOWER CORPORATE TAXES, KEEPING JOBS AT HOME, INSPIRING GOOD MIDDLE-CLASS JOBS.
I am not happy about the process myself, but a lot of the stuff that people are calling pork, are in fact extensions of tax breaks. And tax breaks are not pork. Pork is an expenditue, a tax break is where the government does not take someone’s money.
That does not mean that there is no pork here, but I think some of it has been misunderstood.
I think they would probably have been better off passing the first bill to tell you the truth.
I may not like this, but I think it was necessary to keep the economy from tanking. If it was just some ordinary recession we were looking at it would not be worth the bill, but this is something else. Institutions like Fannie and Freddie have polluted the market place with bad loans and it has made it impossible for the market to function the way it is supposed to.
For all the people who do not want this, if we don’t take control of this someone else will, would you prefer Saudi Arabia and China be buying up this debt?
kathie:
Me too.
Terrye – you are right, they would have been better off passing the first bill on Monday. But instead, they waited until 450 pages of congressional bribes had been added and then the house republicans folded like a cheap lawn chair.
Yup, a party of principles, that’s them.
If you were in *favor* of the bailout (I was from the start) then the House Republicans, by killing the bill on Monday, came off as ignorant stooges willing to put idealogy far above country. “miss nancy hurt our feelings, waah, waah, waah, now the entire country has to pay.”
If you were *against* the bailout, then House Republicans, by voting for the bill on Friday, came off as willing to throw their beliefs down the first hole they see as long as the bribes are high enough. Oh, and of course now Miss Nancy talked nice to the little chiddrens.
Either way, what a disgusting batch of cretins.
And no wonder the “republican” brand name is going down the toilet.