Change is about to come alright, just maybe not the kind most are hoping for. Like a great man once said, “you aint seen nothin yet.”
It has only been 17 days. After 17 days of throwing around executive orders like he is handing out free comedy show tickets in times square, Barack Obama has managed to go from the pragmatist that would reach across the isle to get things done during the brilliant and historic campaign that he waged, where he talked so abhorrently about “pork barrel spending,” “earmark spending,” and “eliminating the special interests,” (stopping special interest groups from having so much lobbying power in Washington) to stating yesterday in his speech to House democrats, with the most arrogant smirk he could muster, that “there hasn’t been a bill that’s gone out of here without some earmarks.” (Translation= I know I spoke passionately against it a thousand times during the campaign but c’mon guys you know how campaigns go. You know what I meant.) He has proven unequivocally to be very much the Ideologist.
He goes on to say that the failed policy of the last eight years has gotten us into this mess because of the huge deficit it created. Yep that’s right; he is really standing there explaining how his new “stimulus package” is going to help fix the problem, caused by the deficit that the last administration created, by doubling that deficit with one stroke of the pen. Wait what? I had to read that again myself, and I wrote it! My reaction to that was just like Borat’s when the driving instructor told him driving instructor: “in this country women have the right to choose who they have sex with.” Borat: “whaaaaaaaaaaattt????!!!!”
Ronald Reagan helped explain how much a trillion dollars is. He said imagine a nice fresh $1,000 bill. If you have a stack of them 4 inches high you are a millionaire. If you have a stack of them that is 63 miles high, then you have a trillion dollars. Some of these expenditures are certainly needed and are great, and many more are well meaning, such as buying hybrid vehicles for government employees at the cost of 600 million, but Is this really the time for such spending? Really? As much as I love the idea of helping out the environment by replacing the 2008 Chevy Tahoe with a 2009 hybrid Chevy Tahoe, wouldn’t a pragmatist wait until the 08’ needed replacing and just replace them as needed? Some of the expenditures just upset me though and actually threaten my freedom. I don’t want money taken out of my pocket to buy a boatload of condoms. This is my main issue with socialism. The small amount of time that people have on this earth and the time that they spend working for a better life and a better life for their children is taken away from them to provide for someone else. The most dangerous part is that it represents the extreme opposite of the foundation upon which America was built into the greatest and wealthiest country in the world.
Stimulus package includes but is not limited to:
• $2 billion earmark to re-start FutureGen, a near-zero emissions coal power plant in Illinois that the Department of Energy defunded last year because it said the project was inefficient.
• A $246 million tax break for Hollywood movie producers to buy motion picture film.
• $650 million for the digital television converter box coupon program.
• $88 million for the Coast Guard to design a new polar icebreaker (arctic ship).
• $448 million for constructing the Department of Homeland Security headquarters.
• $248 million for furniture at the new Homeland Security headquarters.
• $600 million to buy hybrid vehicles for federal employees.
• $400 million for the Centers for Disease Control to screen and prevent STD's.
• $1.4 billion for rural waste disposal programs.
• $125 million for the Washington sewer system.
• $150 million for Smithsonian museum facilities.
• $1 billion for the 2010 Census, which has a projected cost overrun of $3 billion.
• $75 million for "smoking cessation activities."
• $200 million for public computer centers at community colleges.
• $75 million for salaries of employees at the FBI.
• $25 million for tribal alcohol and substance abuse reduction.
• $500 million for flood reduction projects on the Mississippi River.
• $10 million to inspect canals in urban areas.
• $6 billion to turn federal buildings into "green" buildings.
• $500 million for state and local fire stations.
• $650 million for wildland fire management on forest service lands.
• $1.2 billion for "youth activities," including youth summer job programs.
• $88 million for renovating the headquarters of the Public Health Service.
• $412 million for CDC buildings and property.
• $500 million for building and repairing National Institutes of Health facilities in Bethesda, Maryland.
• $160 million for "paid volunteers" at the Corporation for National and Community Service.
• $5.5 million for "energy efficiency initiatives" at the Department of Veterans Affairs National Cemetery Administration.
• $850 million for Amtrak.
• $100 million for reducing the hazard of lead-based paint.
• $75 million to construct a "security training" facility for State Department Security officers when they can be trained at existing facilities of other agencies.
• $110 million to the Farm Service Agency to upgrade computer systems.
• $200 million in funding for the lease of alternative energy vehicles for use on military installations.
You may ask how the American people could stand for something like this. Well it’s all wrapped up in pretty new presents called “economic stimulus” and “putting Americans back to work,” (although the senates version of the package will put 300,000 illegal aliens to work, subsidized by the American taxpayer and the American taxpayer’s grandchildren, but that’s a story for another day.) What little money is left over, after large government expansion, (another tenet of socialism) that will actually go into taxpayer pockets will be small compared to the debt incurred by that taxpayer, which is around $7,000 per household. The bill is said to be creating about 3,000,000 jobs; a good bit of them being private sector jobs which is great, but what this means is that the total cost of creating each of these jobs would be about $285,000 per job.
Tim Coburn, Republican Senator from Oklahoma said, less than 10% of the bill could be considered true stimulus, if one assumes tax credits and infrastructure spending will jolt the economy. (It won’t! Sorry had to jump in there, back to Coburn!)The other 90% of the bill represents one of the most egregious acts of generational theft in our nation's history, with taxpayer money going to special-interest earmarks, an ill-conceived bailout to states, and permanent spending increases that expand government's reach in areas like health care and education.
Barack Obama has also suggested, in his first 17 days, that he wants to institute government control over the salaries of Executives who have received a bail out. This would set the most dangerous precedent that I have seen in this country in a very long time, and it’s only been 17 days. Who is next? Are we going to start capping the salaries of baseball players, doctors, lawyers, movie stars? What about movie producers? (See line item #2 above, they will officially be tax payer subsidized just like the corporate executives that received a bail out.) What about professors? why don’t we go down to the subway and start capping the income of subway performers? They are benefiting from taxpayer money. Subway performers are provided a platform, by the tax payers, for their music through which their salary is made. They are, in a sense, government employees.
All jokes aside, doing small things like this, which are initially disguised as good and helpful ideas, send us in a direction that is very un-American, among many other much worse descriptions. If you throw a frog into a pot of boiling water he will jump right back out of it, but if you put a frog in a pot of cold water and turn the stove on high, he will cook to death. We can learn a major lesson from this so that we can avoid becoming a socialist state.
--Brooks Johnson
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