Feb 09 2009
Keep The Pressure On, Spread The News, Kill The “Stimulus” – Updated!
Major Update: Finally, the Washington Post has exposed the major fraud behind the fake panic to get a bill quickly, when in fact we could wait weeks since the Federal Acquisition infrastructure is in no position to absorb this much spending all at once:
The Obama administration’s economic stimulus plan could end up wasting billions of dollars by attempting to spend money faster than an overburdened government acquisition system can manage and oversee it, according to documents and interviews with contracting specialists.
The $827 billion stimulus legislation under debate in Congress includes provisions aimed at ensuring oversight of the massive infusion of contracts, state grants and other measures. At the urging of the administration, those provisions call for transparency, bid competition, and new auditing resources and oversight boards.
This infrastructure is just not in place. The Feds are struggling to manage what they have now on going. I see this close up everyday. Here is the rub, either do it quick or right – you can’t have both:
The stimulus plan presents a stark choice: The government can spend unprecedented amounts of money quickly in an effort to jump-start the economy or it can move more deliberately to thwart the cost overruns common to federal contracts in recent years.
It will take MONTHS for this money to start flowing as spending projects. So there is no rush. One or two weeks of debate is not going to slow the money, it will simply mean the liberals will have defend this pork-a-thon.
– end update
I am on travel today so posting may get light, apologies ahead of time.
One thing I think I can see happening is a ground swell of doubt, swiftly followed by anger as the liberal elites try and con all of us out of massive amounts of money. Our money! A normal stimulus package pushes money into the economy and allows it to flow wherever it needs to or wants. It is not directed by ideology as much as a need to get people spending again.
That’s the normal definition. But the Wall Street Journal noticed why the bill being debated in the Senate is not a stimulus package but a pure waste of money – our money. This is a perfect example of why the bill must die:
The Milwaukee Public School system, for example, would receive $88.6 million over two years for new construction projects under the House version of the stimulus — even though the district currently has 15 vacant school buildings and declining enrollment. Between 1990 and 2008, inflation-adjusted MPS spending rose by 35%, per-pupil spending increased by 36% and state aid grew by 58%. Over the same period, enrollment fell by a percentage point and is projected to continue falling, leaving the system with enough excess capacity for some 22,000 students.
Emphasis mine. This is insane. This is just wasting money – lots of it. Send me the $88 million, I can spend it just as well as anyone else, it seems. This example is why people are wondering how it is the government can bail out the screw ups and the crooks but not average Americans. Everyone, but the average voter, is getting something. Voters are the ones footing this highjacking.
But there is more. It has become clear that the stimulus is only being sent out to Comrades of the Liberals. Union-only construction companies, only certain banks and investment firms, only certain left leaning lobbyists are allowed inside the lobbyist free White House. Only Obama and Rahm can run the US Census.Â
This pattern of ‘us verses them’ is in the spending bill in spades:
The Milwaukee situation is instructive for another reason. The city is home to the country’s oldest and largest school voucher program, which provides public funds for children to attend private schools. Families who participate in the means-tested voucher program receive $6,700 per pupil, while the city spends more than $13,000 per student. In addition to saving the taxpayers money, voucher students graduate at higher rates and outscore their counterparts on reading and math exams, which is one reason waiting lists for the program are common.
Yet language in the stimulus bill expressly prohibits any dollars from going toward financial assistance to students attending private schools. In other words, Milwaukee can use the money to build schools it doesn’t need, but not to expand education programs that are producing better outcomes for disadvantaged kids. The Senate version excludes provisions in the House bill for teacher merit pay and charter schools now serving more than a million students, two more education reforms that are gaining popularity nationwide despite opposition from teachers unions and local school boards.
The CBO claims we will work our way through this recession before this bill’s pork even begins to role out of DC. We clearly don’t need this bill to avoid catastrophe – it IS a catastrophe. It is a lame attempt by the liberals in DC to appear like they are doing something useful. It is a naked power and money grab.
When I see someone in DC taking massive loans out in the name of my family (debt raising bills) I expect them to be serious about it and use it well. Otherwise I will be spending a lot of time exposing them as the  liars they are. If the Democrat Party continues down this path it will not only consume all the federal dollars the mind could imagine for the next 50 years, it will have consumed all its political capitol and good will.
No more benefit of the doubt.
Update: Did someone just spill the beans on the Obama-Pelosi-Reid con?
I was in a meeting after Obama got elected and I was told by the Democratic officials in that meeting that we were gonna give billions of dollars that was gonna come down the pike, our way, and what we were to with it was we were supposed to with it…
We are gonna build an army of Democratic patronage jobs…. gonna completely freeze up the Republicans forever and ever…
It’s a job-capturing system, the same one they have in Chicago… everyone’s asking ‘why isn’t that money being release until 2011 and 2012?’
Because it needs to be released at a time that’s close to the election, so that they don’t go blow the money and spend it. So they’re gonna hold some back and that’s where… the real bucks will be spend, right up close to the election.
Joke? Realistic sounding false information? Who knows – and that is the scary part.
Excellent post. I appreciate your work in helping to expose these shams.
You know it’s gotta be bad if even the Washington Post is against something the Dems want.
Wouldn’t it have been a totally different world if the Liberal Media had done a little bit of scrutiny such as this before the election…
You keep posting these opinion pieces with the underlying postulate
that Obama is a good man, just hopelessly naive and deluded.
That postulate leads you to gasp after gasp about the apparent stupidity
of the man you once said you’d give a chance.
You cannot admit, it would seem, the darker possibility – that these
manoeuvres are not a mistake but rather a deliberate attempt to weaken
and destroy our country, as much as possible before he is removed from
power.
Go here:
http://octaman.com/comments/MalcolmO.html
Just a photo montage, about a dozen comparisons side by side,
“Obama” and Malcolm X.
You will have to admit the lineage is unrefutable. Short of a DNA test,
which we will not get, this is as good proof as anybody could want
about the origins of this “remarkable man” shooting like a meteor
across the political sky, and what he means to have happen to us.
“Obama” is an evil man, and we are fools to regard his evil as mere
political ineptitude.
This is fear mongering at its best and when they use the education”race card” it only gets better. We have wasted more than enough money on education in this country to get a lousy, ideological bastion of incompetents to lead the young unwashed masses. How about parents taking some responsibility and dedicating the time kids need of them. How about following some of the billions in lottery monies that are supposedly earmarked for “education”.
What we really need is accountability—–or an uptick in gun sales to send a message that the peeps be watching!!!
dave m
I’m not sure when all that will be confirmed, I strongly suspect after he’s out of office, or at least when he won’t be running again for office. Since there is no proof, anytime it is said, the libbies will accuse you of ‘race baiting’.
Originally from all I was hearing I thought he was really the son of Soetoro, but he, as Obama, bears absolutely no resemblance to him, but as anyone can see, he’s a dead ringer for X.. All the dates surrounding time of conception makes it very likely.
The amazing thing is that so many people do support it. I think that the CNN and Gallup polls out today make that plan. People are scared and they think Obama is trying to save them..
gag me.
Cloture passed on the substitute Collins/Nelson amendment
61- 36 All the dems plus Collins ,Snowe and Specter
Merlin:
Look at it this way, more Democrats have crossed over to vote with Democrats than the other way around.
Not in the Senate maybe, but in the House.
That means 3 Republicans out of both houses have strayed. Kind of amazing considering Obama’s popularity.
By and large the people have no idea what the bill is about. They have been led to believe by the press that the government runs the economy of the US (as in a President getting blame whenever the economy goes down and the credit when it goes up).
The government can not just waive a wand and make the economy go up but they darned sure can waive one to mess it up. In fact, the more government gets involved with the economy, the worse it generally gets. The best thing the government can do is butt out and if they want to pour out money, do so by building adventurous, bold projects such as a national nuclear electric rail system that would put thousands of people to work and upgrade the national electrical distribution grid in the process.
Obama’s got this one covered, AJ. He’s going to hire 3 million new government workers to oversee the projects and manage the spending. Yes, we can!!
🙂
The Stinkulus Bill:
I knew it would be bad and it is. Lots of posters are discussing
“president†“Obama†’s actions as if they were merely the actions of
a naive and inexperienced sycophant making mistakes.
These thoughts are encouraged by an army of Myrmidons telling
us why “Obama†deserves a chance, to learn and grow.
THESE ARE NOT MISTAKES.
Obama and his handlers know exactly what they are doing.
The ridiculous economic stimulus plans, and we have seen only the
first of many, are all designed to fail. As each one fails and
“Obama†tells us the situation is even more desperate, our whole
economic system will appear to collapse. All of our savings will become worthless as the US dollar assumes Zimbabwean
values. The plan is to ruin America once and for all. And you buy
into it if you assume Obama is a nice chap really, though stupid.
He is an evil communist agent, answerable to Soros and his
masters.
Read the opinion here: http://investigatingobama.blogspot.com
The three republican senators who voted his stinkulus bill into
existence are the willing killers of our country. If we survive until 2010,
and the plan seems to be go all in for it in the first year, realizing
that is all the time Obama has left to destroy our country, then it is
vitally important to throw every democrat out of Congress and
out of the Senate. Forget moderation – survive, to talk another day.
Please please do not be surprised when the stinkulus plan fails –
it was designed to fail. Failure is the goal.
Has anyone else picked up on this tidbit from the ‘Porkulus’ bill? Seems as though they will set up even more government controls on healtchcare. It may even lead to rationing and denial of services. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&refer=columnist_mccaughey&sid=aLzfDxfbwhzs Thanks to the Jawa Report and AOSHQ for finding this one.
Never underestimate the ability of our government to confiscate and spend money.
Rush is on now talking about 9/18/08 and what a democrat, Kanjorski (sp?) said about that date on a program in January (27th.
According to Mr. Kanjorski, $550 BILLION was withdrawn around 11 am that day… and apparently it was told to the president that by 2pm that day, $5 1/2 TRILLION would have been drawn down.
A rapid selloff was happening that day.
I was in the financial industry for 20 years and my RED FLAGS went up BIG TIME back in July. I was telling my broker friends that this financial situation was “smelly”. Everything was eroding TOO FAST. The economy was in a state of being that was NOT ORDINARY i.e. BEING MANIPULATED, IMHO.
We were hit with FINANCIAL TERRORISM last year and I am not the only one that was saying that.
WHERE WAS THE MEDIA? They looked the other way.
And…I find it very interesting that a liberal business associate (and very well connected to the democrat party) with whom I was doing business back in July was talking about what industries would survive that coming fall…HOW DID HE KNOW TO ASK THAT QUESTION?
Why such a large withdrawal on that particular day?
Dave, I have been saying this came straight from the top. Obama is the culprit (and whoever is running him). Even I am amazed at what all he is doing. True evil man because he is deliberately lying. I now love Bill Clinton. Obama is turning out to be the nastiest of all. Pure nasty. He constantly is dissing Bush and Pugs. Never stops. I just want to say to him………….STOP and just shoot the bird. That’s easier and more your style.
I came to rant about my flag. Just watched the Tax man almost be swallowed by it. Why don’t they just do wallpaper and flooring? Make their suits out of it? They are insulting our flag to such a point it is sickening. Insulting. Sick.
Anyone remember when wearing a tiny flag pin was too much?
And the three nitwits that voted for this Obamanation? I actually think the money is the small part. It is what they are power grabbing. If anyone wonders who helped our dear MSM destroy Bush…………….I give you two of these nitwits. SPECTER made it a point of being the thorn of FISA and anything that branded Bush and all of us as destroying privacy. Two-brain cell COLLINS, branded Bush and all of us as the incompetents that trapped poor black people in New Orleans. She just could not snoop out that Blanco squatting on her buses.
Even though he happens to be on the right side this time, I give you McCain. He was the only man in the USA that had the power to stop the MSM/Dems from branding Bush and all of us as Torturers. He could have stopped the Abu Ghraib fiasco. He also had the best shot of any candidate to stop Obama but refused to fight with the ammo. His honor. FISA, Katrina, Torturer…………………..Obama.
I don’t understand why no one knows who is pulling the strings.
Who manipulated the money supply in Europe that made him billions? who is using those billions to support moveon and the dems? who is publicly calling for the downfall of America? I clearly remember thinking back last year that if he could manipulate the European money supply that he had enough savvy to manipulate the US stock market and that he would do it just in time for the election. Well, he did it and still no one knows who? Amazing.
The flag thing? actors need props.
Redteam:
Soros comes to mind, but not even he has this kind of money.
I think that several players may have been involved, but I also think that it got away from them. The Saudis have lost trillions, the Russians are in trouble. All of the people you think might have been part of some attempt to sabotage the economy actually lost money on the deal.
I wonder if they tried to play with the market,but the whole thing took on a life of its own. I have always thought that the high price of oil had a lot to to do with all this. I mean come on, how crazy is it that oil got to $145 a barrel. But even the free marketers were saying that was just supply and demand. I have my doubts about that.
owl:
I agree with a lot of what you say, but not even McCain could have made a dent in the Abu Ghraib nonsense. He would just have been called another torturer.
Lurker, that is the 5 trillion dollar question. The fed closed their window to stop the bleeding that day.
I just smell the blood of the man who took down the Bank of England all over this. Just my opinion.
And I want to know why Harvard (endowment, I believe) was shorting the market so much last year…
stinks, stinks, stinks to me.