Christine Romer, some economic hotshot on the Comrade's staff who until today always bounced chirpily around like she was entertaining children, reported that the 2nd and 3rd quarters of 2009 (ending Sept. 30, 2009) saw the peak effects of the $787 billion stimulus package. She doesn't expect that this spending spree will have any significant impacts in 2010.
What?
Not all of that $787 billion has been spent yet, has it? Or where did it go? Was it spent in the US?
I can't imagine anyone spending that amount of money and it doesn't even register a perceivable blip on any radar screen. The money must be in somebody's bank account in the Cayman Islands.
This is just unreal. It's like a magical trick. We'll be paying this bullshit off for the next 10 years and.... there are no perceivable results from it? In fact, unemployment continues to rise.
How incompetent do you have to be to spend nearly $1 trillion dollars and have nothing to show for it? I'm rather disappointed when I spend $30.00 at the supermarket and only take home two plastic bags half-full of buy-one-get-one-free canned goods and off-brand chocolate chip cookies. I can't even picture spending $787 billion and seeing absolutely no returns whatsoever.
I mean, what the hell did they do? Set it on fire?
If any of those funds have not yet been spent, the rest of that bill should be repealed and the funds applied to the national debt. Quickly. Before they flush any more. I'd like that $410 billion from the Pork Bill back, too.
Of course, Romer could be lying. I mean, the way you can tell if the White House is lying is to check and see if their lips are moving.
I had heard some talk that most of the "stimulus" wouldn't be spent until next year to give the nation an economic high and grease the skids for the next election. I mean, create a false sense of prosperity so the Democrats could get re-elected.
Maybe they're just pretending the money is gone now so that when the inflation and all that hits next year, they can act like they have no idea why that's happening. I'm sure they'd find some way to blame George Bush.
That's the trouble when the White House and its minions show themselves to be habitual liars. You can't believe anything they say, whether it's good, bad, or otherwise. It's like that line from "Law & Order": "Were you lying then or are you lying now?"
These people don't seem to be able to tell the difference between their pipe dreams and real life. There's such a gaping breach between "what is" and their interpretation of it, you have to double-check everything they say.
And then there's the little trick about the "Doc Fix." That is, they took $250 billion to fund payments to doctors out of the socialized medicine bill and stuck it into its own bill in order to make it look like the socialized medicine bill will cost less than $1 trillion.
Obvious lies and deception. Not even very skillful. Fortunately, the general population is not half as stupid as the people in Washington.
And after this stimulus fiasco, who in their right mind would trust them managing the health care industry?
A Man Goin' 'Round, Takin' Down Names
Meanwhile, starting last year this time, the Dept. of Commerce has been sending gophers to my house to try to get me to participate in an Economic Census. They showed up every month for about three months last year. Now they're b-a-a-a-ck.
I told them I don't volunteer to help the government destroy me.
They say, "Do it for your neighbors."
I shut the door. I used to yell at them, but now I just shut the door.
What ticks me off is that these people -- and there's been three different ones so far -- show up on the doorstep and reach for the handle on the storm door to let themselves in. Like they have a right to come into my house. Like they were invited.
"Hi. I'm from the government and I'm here to help you."
Yeah sure. I tell them to go away. They want to stand there and argue with you. They say they don't care about me personally, but their computer gave them my address, so they need to know how much money I make and apparently a bunch of other questions. I don't really know the questions because I never got that far into the process with them. But I'm absolutely sure that my personal information is none of their goddamn business.
I tell them if they're not interested in me personally, then they can go across the street and knock on someone else's door. I'm sure they'll find some hapless citizen somewhere who's anxious to help the feds calculate how much welfare my county is due. Or what our "fair share" should be in paying into their socialist scheme.
And these census-takers persist. You have to slam the door or they won't go away. I had to tell one person to "get the hell off my property." And she still didn't go away. She stood on the porch for a while, apparently believing that I was just teasing her, and sure, come on in and go through my bank records. Wanna see my appendix scar, too? Wanna go through my laundry basket?
I suppose they want to know how much change I've got in my wallet, just so they know how much to steal next tax season.
Have to keep thinking about the Constitution and Washington and all those guys or else the USA just wouldn't be worth it anymore. "Not worth a pitcher full of warm spit," as one politician said once. He was talking about the vice presidency. But I'd put the whole country -- as it stands right now -- into that category.
On the Plus Side
One good thing: The White House offered the press interviews with their czar-who-dictates-executive-salaries -- every news organization but Fox. So all the news organizations refused the offer.
The White House relented and let Fox do an interview. However, then the White House limited each interview to only two minutes. Two minutes is probably about as much as anyone could stand of that crap.
Anyway, during the Civil War, General Ambrose Burnside for a time was in charge of one military district of the Union (north of the Ohio River, generally.) The military had to defer to civilian authority in most cases, but in one incident, the Chicago Sun newspaper, which was quite pro-secession, encouraged the idea of young men dodging the draft. So Burnside ordered the newspaper suspend publication. The Sun and a couple others that were doing the same thing.
Horace Greeley, rabid pro-Union Republican, along with other prominent publishers, immediately went to Abe Lincoln and expressed their displeasure. Lincoln repealed the order. The newspapers were closed for maybe a few days at most.
We do have a tradition of freedom, especially freedom of speech and the press. That does go deeper than the Comrade's silly notions of hopenchange.
Have to remain focused on the positive. The ideals remain, even when those in authority seem to believe they have a better idea. They don't.
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